Shutting art galleries down is never a good idea. I don’t care how offensive you or I may find the art they show or the events they organise. Haven’t we learned by now that art has the right to offend, and that art galleries are spaces in which to be shocked, provoked, even disgusted?

Only yesterday it was conservative taste that found the contemporary art world offensive. Now it is the liberal left that wants to literally “shut down” an east London art space that has shown, among other things, the work of Jake and Dinos Chapman.

Art gallery criticised over neo-Nazi artwork and hosting racist speakers Read more

LD50 has gone further than the Chapmans into shock tactics. Last year it hosted a conference called Neoreaction at which far-right extremists spoke; concurrently, it put on an exhibition called Amerika which explored the imagery of the fascist right. Now, due the Shut Down LD50 campaign, this comparatively obscure art gallery and its dalliance with extremism have suddenly become news.

Calling for an art gallery to be closed because you do not like its (supposed) views, or the art and speakers it promotes, is intolerant, bigoted and destructive. It is a pathetic attack on free speech.

I sympathise with the anger of these campaigners. The far-right is terrifying. The urge to simply shut it down, shut it up, deny it a platform is natural. Having spent a night in a police cell for trying to “no platform” a Conservative MP when at university, I really can understand where the protest against LD50 is coming from, as well as the mood across the western world, from California university campuses to the Speaker of the House of Commons, that wants to silence the far-right (which now includes the elected president of the US).

Yet when they come for the art galleries, it is time to speak out. Not because art is somehow more sacred than other forms of expression. Rather, because art has a strong recent history of testing the limits of free speech, and when the liberal left starts attacking that libertarian culture, it triggers alarm bells that perhaps ought to ring equally loudly when anyone tries to no-platform a speaker or stop a book being published – this month it may be an alt-right whizkid, but not so long ago it was Germaine Greer.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michel Houellebecq: free speech champion, Islamophobe – or both? Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images

Art is ambiguous and experimental and by allowing it free expression, we enable creativity. The best novelist writing now – the only one whose books I rush out to buy – is Michel Houellebecq, whose work has been called Islamophobic. Although he has conceded he is scared of fundamentalist terrorism, I don’t think Houellebecq hates Muslims – he is a sensitive, serious writer and the only thing you can honestly say against his books is that they are depressing. Yet there is no question his troubling take on modern life remorselessly exposes the current crisis of liberal Europe. I can’t completely explain how I am both a diehard remain voter and a Houellebecq fan, but I am, and that is the nature of free speech in a free society. You can adventure in other people’s opinions.

It is a disgrace that so many of us are responding to the Trump age by trying to silence those we disagree with. In a Facebook correspondence, LD50’s owner Lucia Diego has (shock!) refused to condemn Trump: “I’m not even sure if I disagree with the Muslim ban. I see it also as a temporary measure in order for America to get sorted while they transition to another form of government,” she said. I totally disagree with her, but is sympathising with the president of the US grounds for having your business shut down? Inevitably, Diego called her critics the “real fascists”.

She has a point. Historically it is not art galleries flirting with extreme images or ideas that kill democracy. Nor is it books. Closing down galleries and burning books does however, unquestionably, damage intellectual freedom and crush creativity.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rightwing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, who prompted protests over his book deal. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

I regret the time I was involved in trying to silence an MP. We took action because we believed him to be racist, but in retrospect I can’t really prove that accusation any more than I am inclined to accept Shut Down LD50’s claims at face value. The issue, perhaps, is what art galleries are for. As public spaces, do they have a duty to promote community understanding and tolerance? Should that preclude giving a platform to far-right extremists?

Not necessarily. In a free society you cannot oblige everyone to be good-willed. There is no law against being a bad citizen. Commercial, privately owned galleries like LD50 are part of a free market and can do what they like within the law. You and I do not have to go to a gallery if we don’t like it. Galleries diverge hugely and one gallery thinking it is clever to flirt with nasty opinions is not surprising. It should be left to go its own way with its own tiny audience instead of getting free publicity from a clumsy attempt to close it. And why not make a less absolutist demand? Why not call the campaign Reform LD50 and ask it to put on a balancing exhibition of anti-racist art?

In an extreme age, extreme measures seem called for. Yet we risk becoming the extremists ourselves if we give in to the impulse to shut down opponents. Trump repels me, the far-right scares me and Brexit makes me cry. But it is not justifiable, or intelligent, to make martyrs of the lunatic right by taking every bait it throws out.