Tag: hate speech

There Is A War On Free Speech, And They Won’t Ever Be Satisfied Until It Is Completely Eradicated

The freedom to say whatever we want is one of the most fundamental rights in a free society.  If we are not free to speak up, it is is just a matter of time before all of our other rights are taken away as well.  So it should deeply alarm all of us that free speech is under attack like never before.  Much of the population has become convinced that “hate speech” is a special class of speech that does not deserve protection.  Of course in practice “hate speech” ends up being whatever forms of expression that the leftist elite hate.  That is why “hate speech” laws are always written so vaguely.  That way they can be used to go after whoever the leftist elite feel like going after at the time.

It is not always easy to have a society where people are allowed to say whatever they want.  People say things all the time that deeply, deeply offend me.  And there are some that have said things about me that are tremendously hateful and untrue.

But if we are going to have a free society, people have got to be free to say whatever they want.  So we should never support freedom of speech being taken away from anyone, because once we start going down that slippery slope it is just a matter of time before they come after our freedom to say what we want.

That is why what is happening in the state of Washington is so alarming.  A new law would allow private individuals to collect up to $2,000 every time they report someone to the new “hate crimes and bias incidents hotline”…

Senate Bill 5427, after it is signed into law, would allow private individuals (note: this is not limited to American citizens) to report “bias incidents*” (see definition below) to the State Attorney General’s Office, with the possibility of receiving up to $2,000 of taxpayers money for this noncriminal incident. The bill was very clear: this is a non-crime which they will then forward to local law enforcement to investigate. What’s to investigate? No crime, no investigation.

The Progressives & Marxists who sponsored this bill say it is intended to help “victims of hate crimes” before a crime even happens. Say what? In reality, SB 5427 would create a “tattletale hotline,” undermine legitimate criminal investigations, and freeze, not just chill, speech & the press in Washington State. People will stop talking to others and writing to others except very close friends & relatives, for fear a greedy “Karen” will report them to Washington’s version of the Gestapo.

This is crazy.

Do we live in East Germany now?

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Online harms act makes hate speech akin to murder

When I was a kid, we used to say that, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt.” Nowadays, offensive speech is considered violence. Silence is violence. And those whose words are deemed by the state to be most egregious will be treated like serial killers.

“All of us expect to be safe in our homes, in our neighbourhoods and in our communities,” said Justice Minister Arif Virani, after tabling Bill C-63, the online harms act, in the House of Commons on Monday. “We should be able to expect the same kind of safety in our online communities.”

Except many Canadians don’t feel safe in their communities anymore. Last summer, Statistics Canada reported that the police-reported crime rate in 2022 had increased by five per cent compared to a year earlier. The homicide rate rose for the fourth consecutive year, reaching its highest level since 1992.

Rather than focusing on the type of crime that puts Canadians’ property and physical safety at risk — the “sticks and stones,” if you will — the government has chosen to focus on the words being transmitted to our smartphones and laptops.

To accomplish this, the Liberals propose burdening “social media” platforms with heavy-handed regulations; creating a giant censorship bureaucracy to force compliance; and re-empowering kangaroo courts to persecute people for thought crimes.

Bill C-63 establishes a new digital safety commission, digital safety ombudsperson and digital safety office (to assist the commission and ombudsman), which will be responsible for ensuring revenge porn and child pornography are taken offline within 24 hours. (Though child porn is already taken seriously by social media platforms and, if history is any indication, it won’t be long before the new bureaucracy’s mission expands).

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The Irish Should Reject The New ‘Hate Speech’ Bill

The Republic of Ireland could soon become one of the worst violators of the human right to free speech in the Western world. Despite the government claiming to espouse liberal ideas, the looming Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences Bill would usher in a dangerous new standard for state-driven censorship. The expression or possession of content or even ideas deemed “hateful” would be illegal under the law, with serious implications for everyday people simply seeking to live according to their convictions.  

The Irish need only look to the case of Finnish member of parliament Päivi Räsänen — criminally prosecuted for over four years for a Bible-verse tweet, to recognise the suffocating impact “hate speech” laws engender. Finnish state prosecutors are pushing her case into its fifth year with an appeal to the country’s supreme court, making no attempt to hide their insatiable quest to silence and sanction the parliamentarian for her peaceful expression of Christian conviction. 

Räsänen’s “crime” consisted of sharing her Christian position on marriage and sexuality in a 2019 Twitter post. When her church decided to officially sponsor a Helsinki “Pride” event, she expressed an objection in light of Biblical teaching, posting a verse from the New Testament book of Romans. Lengthy police interrogations followed by criminal prosecution ensued, absurdly under the section of the Finnish criminal code titled “war crimes and crimes against humanity”.  

Räsänen was dealt three criminal charges, carrying a potential prison sentence of two years, for the tweet, in addition to her comments on a 2019 radio debate and in a church pamphlet she had authored nearly 20 years before. Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola was charged alongside her for publishing the booklet for his congregation. 

Räsänen and Pohjola were twice unanimously acquitted of all charges, but with the pending supreme court appeal, it’s clear that free speech in Finland hangs very much in the balance. The prosecution of individuals in the public eye has a particularly repressive effect — few and far between will be the brave person willing to speak their mind when the state, utilising near limitless resources, makes clear its tireless pursuit of censorship.  

Such is the reality increasingly facing us in the West who dare to voice our beliefs in the public square. While “hate speech” laws are pervasive throughout Europe, with the proposed new law, Ireland is setting a new low bar for censorship. Notably, the draft bill goes so far as to include a sentence of up to five years in prison for the mere possession of “hateful” material.  

Not content with its existing array of free speech restrictions, the government has based the necessity of the new law on the need to counter rising violence in Ireland, following a surge of incidents largely tied to tensions over immigration. The argument is that restricting speech somehow increases safety on the streets—but history has shown no proof of this. What it has shown is that censorship is the preferred answer to any problem the state faces. It’s easier for those in power to silence dissent, than to deal with the problems plaguing their societies.  

The thought of Irish police raiding homes to seize materials, including books and even something as ridiculous as memes on phones, recalls some of the darker episodes of the past century.

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X CEO Linda Yaccarino Says “Free Speech” Ends at “Hate Speech”

X continues to sit on two chairs and send mixed signals regarding the company’s stance on free speech.

A new blog post penned this week by X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino goes into this, at once claiming that society must “empower people to express its thoughts” – but also, that the line must be drawn at “hate” and “hate speech.”

Considering the platform’s long and difficult history with suppressing free speech, well documented in the Twitter Files, and the fact terms like “hate speech” not to mention “misinformation” are so often used simply to cover up straight-up censorship, Yaccarino’s intent here can be seen as confusing.

All the more so since the blog post is entitled, “Safeguarding Information Independence and Combating Hate Speech” only to be followed by the subtitle, “Building an Indispensable Global Town Square.”

This is particularly interesting since it’s an admission of sorts that X is indeed a (digital) town square. The argument that this is the case with all major social sites has been used for a long time to prove that speech there should be protected under the US Constitution’s First Amendment, regardless of the companies being privately-owned.

The term “modern public square” as it pertains to social networks is found in the 2017 US Supreme Court opinion in Packingham v. North Carolina.

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Viral footage showed protesters chanting ‘gas the Jews’. Nobody can verify it

The original source of videos appearing to show pro-Palestine protesters chanting “gas the Jews” has refused to provide unedited footage as police and independent fact-checkers have been unable to verify whether the chants happened.

On October 9, pro-Palestine protesters gathered in front of the Sydney Opera House as it was lit in blue in solidarity with Israel after the October 7 Hamas attack. At least two men were arrested after allegedly clashing with police at the rally, where some members of the crowd shouted anti-Semitic chants such as “fuck the Jews”, according to multiple reports. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong condemned the protests.

Other videos shared by conservative Jewish group the Australian Jewish Association (AJA) taken during the protest purports to show some attendees also chanting “gas the Jews”. This account is significant as the “gas the Jews” chant is likely to meet the criminal threshold for threatening or inciting violence (unlike the other anti-Semitic slogans that were chanted) and because the viral footage has become totemic of the rising wave of anti-Semitism in Australia and around the world.The Israel-Hamas war confirms the erosion of the right to protest in AustraliaRead More

The morning after the protest, the AJA shared two videos to X, formerly known as Twitter, both consisting of multiple shots of the protest cut together along with captioned audio saying “gas the Jews”. The first is a 25-second video shared with the text “Sydney, 2023 Muslim mob of 100s chant ‘Gas the Jews’ ”. The second is a 59-second video with the description “UNCUT VERSION — SHOCKING ‘Gas The Jews’ on the steps of the Sydney Opera House”, and has been viewed more than 6 million times.

Based on these videos, news outlets around the world published reports of the “gas the Jews” chants, including Reuters (which noted that the video was “unverified”), the New York Post and Fox News. 

In the aftermath of the protest, NSW Police rejected an application for a subsequent pro-Palestine protest. Premier Chris Minns declared that activists would not be allowed to “commandeer our streets” — although future protests were approved and have taken place — and his government introduced legislation to “strengthen” hate speech laws by making it easier to prosecute people who threaten or incite violence against protected groups. 

But despite the enormous amount of attention and considerable response to the reports, third parties have been unable to verify the “gas the Jews” claim, and further footage corroborating the chants has failed to emerge. Crikey has reviewed other footage from the protest captured by other attendees but has been unable to find any corroborating the AJA’s claim.

NSW Police told Crikey that no charges hade been laid relating to the alleged chant more than two months after assistant commissioner Tony Cooke told a press conference it was reviewing footage of the protest.

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Even Hateful Protests Are Protected, Free Speech Group Reminds Congress

If you know the history of Israel, that the country was created after one-third of the world’s Jewish population was murdered by Nazis (it has yet to fully recover), it’s difficult to stomach protesters who often slip from supporting the Palestinian cause to gloating over Hamas’s terrorism and the prospect of destroying the Jewish state. There’s not a lot of good will in projecting “Glory to Our Martyrs” on buildings or chanting “from the river to the sea“—let alone explicit endorsements of the attack.

But even assholes have speech rights. That’s because all individuals have rights, however they use them, and because free expression only works if it’s available to everybody, not reserved as privilege for the “right” ideas. And, importantly, respecting free speech lets people show us who they are.

Unfortunately, political officials’ natural distaste for dissent can combine with honest revulsion at despicable sentiments to produce a reaction that would violate the right to free expression.

“Today, Congressman Mike Lawler (NY-17) announced that the House passed two amendments he put forward to the House’s appropriations bill for Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (LHHS) to combat antisemitism on college campuses,” the New York Republican announced November 15. “His second LHHS amendment, rescinding federal funding for college campuses that give a platform to antisemitism hate, was adopted with broad, bipartisan support.”

One reaction to this is that the federal government shouldn’t be funding colleges to begin with. I agree. But so long as it is handing out cash, those funds shouldn’t be used to bypass legal protections for individual rights. And no, just deciding to reject federal money might not be enough; Hillsdale College did that to escape federal regulation and now faces efforts to subject the school to control just because it has tax-exempt status enjoyed by many institutions.

The only way to keep authoritarians from getting a foot in the door is to defend liberty as a principle.

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Conor McGregor Being Investigated For ‘Online Hate Speech’ For Comments on Mass Migration

Martial artist superstar Conor McGregor is being investigated by Irish authorities for ‘online hate speech’ after he expressed anger at children being stabbed in Dublin.

Over the last week, McGregor has been outspoken about the impact mass migration is having on his homeland, remarking, “Ireland, we are at war,” in relation to the chronic housing shortage that has made basic living unaffordable for many citizens.

“Do not let any irish property be took over unannounced. Evaporate said property. It’s a war,” he added.

Following the stabbing of three children by an Algerian migrant in Dublin, the former UFC champion condemned authorities for targeting Irish people who staged fiery but mostly peaceful protests in response.

“Innocent children ruthlessly stabbed by a mentally deranged non-national in Dublin, Ireland today,” he posted on X. “Our chief of police had this to say on the riots in the aftermath. Drew, not good enough. There is grave danger among us in Ireland that should never be here in the first place.”

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Governor Kathy Hochul Says New York Has Started Conducting Special Media “Surveillance Efforts” To Monitor “Hate”

In response to escalating incidents of harassment, particularly against Jewish and Muslim communities, New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul is today intensifying the state’s counterterrorism measures and is boosting the controversial practice of surveilling social media platforms, and therefore the speech of New Yorkers and other American citizens.

This measure follows ongoing tension in Israel and Gaza. Hochul revealed plans for enhancing the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force personnel and assigning an extra $2.5 million to the State Police.

“…we’re very focused on the data we’re collecting from surveillance efforts, what’s being said on social media platforms, and we have launched an effort to be able to counter some of the negativity and reach out to people,” Hochul said.

“When we see hate speech being spoken about on online platforms, our media analysis, our social media analysis unit has ramped up its monitoring of sites to catch incitement to violence, direct threats to others.

“And all this is in response to our desire, our strong commitment to ensure that not only do New Yorkers be safe, but they also feel safe.”

This isn’t the first time Hochul has stuck her nose into monitoring online speech.

A New York law aimed at regulating “hateful conduct” online was blocked by a judge. This law, signed by Governor Hochul, required social media networks to report and address hateful conduct, broadly defined as actions that vilify or incite violence based on various identity factors.

Judge Andrew L. Carter, Jr. ruled that the law violated the First Amendment, emphasizing the importance of protecting even hateful speech. The court argued that the law not only restricted the speech of social media users but also compelled social media networks to adopt and endorse the state’s definition of hateful conduct.

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Michigan Democrats’ ‘Hate Speech’ Law Could Imprison People For Saying ‘Frightening’ Words

In an unprecedented move, Michigan Democrats have passed a new law, House Bill 4474, which seeks to enforce prison sentences for those found guilty of uttering words deemed to be ‘frightening’ or ‘intimidating’.

The bill expands the definition of hate crimes to include intimidation or harassment based on a wide range of individual characteristics, including race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, physical or mental disability, age, ethnicity, and national origin.

Under the terms of the proposed law, a person can be found guilty of a hate crime if they are found to have intentionally intimidated or harassed another person based on any of the above-listed characteristics. Intimidation and harassment under this law can take many forms, including causing physical contact, damaging property, or making threats that could cause another individual to feel frightened, threatened, or harassed.

According to critics, the bill’s broad definition of hate crimes, including the use of ‘frightening’ words, raises concerns about potential infringement on free speech. The law could have far-reaching implications, potentially criminalizing harsh words or expressions of opinion if they are perceived as intimidating or harassing, particularly if they are based on the characteristics listed in the bill.

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The UN Wants People To Report Each Other For “Hate Speech”

There’s been a lot of talk about the United Nations (UN) and its actions of late – mostly, those actions that fall way beyond the scope of what its founding Charter designates the organization’s role to be.

As a short history reminder – the UN is basically the international body that succeeded the League of Nations – the one that failed to prevent the (previous, atrocious) world war.

The UN is – and has, for a long time, focused its energy on “doing better” – mediating, providing a neutral ground for dialogue, helping those places around the globe unfortunately afflicted by local wars since 1945 – and just in general, not repeating the mistake of its predecessor of miring itself into irrelevancy.

You would think that with the real danger of another global war now on the cards, that would take up all of the UN’s energy and focus. But you would be wrong.

Here’s the UN, dabbling in things like alleged “hate speech.”

But – world peace – that’s supposed to be the mission. Not policing social media for dubiously defined “hate speech.”

The UN is now using its always precarious resources (depending on member-countries’ contribution, and, consequently, the way the organization satisfies the biggest contributors’ own agendas) to deal with things like real or perceived “hate speech” online.

But can that really be the mission of the world organization set up to make sure another world war doesn’t happen, and help/mediate in regional conflicts?

It seems almost absurd. Yet here it is. The UN is reported to be descending into internet censorship by “encouraging” people to report one another for hate speech online.

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