Tag: wrongthink

“It’s Not OK Any More”: UK Free Speech Crack-Down Targets “Extremist Ideologies”

The crackdown on free speech continues in the United Kingdom as officials use recent rioting to justify a roundup of citizens who they view as “pushing harmful and hateful beliefs.”

The government is ramping up arrests of those with “extremist ideologies” in the latest wave of arrests. 

The crackdown includes those accused of misogynist views.

In my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how difficult it is to get a free people to give up freedoms. They have to be afraid, very afraid.

For that reason, governments tend to attack free speech during periods of public anger or fear.

That pattern is playing out, yet again, in the United Kingdom.

The recent anti-immigration riots have given officials a renewed opportunity to use anti-free speech laws to target those with opposing views.

For years, I have been writing about the decline of free speech in the United Kingdom and the steady stream of arrests.

A man was convicted for sending a tweet while drunk referring to dead soldiers.

Another was arrested for an anti-police t-shirt. 

Another was arrested for calling the Irish boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend a “leprechaun.”

Yet another was arrested for singing “Kung Fu Fighting.” 

A teenager was arrested for protesting outside of a Scientology center with a sign calling the religion a “cult.”

Last year, Nicholas Brock, 52, was convicted of a thought crime in Maidenhead, Berkshire.

The neo-Nazi was given a four-year sentence for what the court called his “toxic ideology” based on the contents of the home he shared with his mother in Maidenhead, Berkshire.

While most of us find Brock’s views repellent and hateful, they were confined to his head and his room.

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Six Straight Minutes of Democrats Calling For Re-Education Camps

In a classic case of neoliberal reality inversion, the Democrats took the opportunity at the DNC Convention to fearmonger predictably about whatever alleged subversion of Democracy™ Trump has planned for his next presidency.

Meanwhile, for eight straight years uninterrupted, these same people have openly called to put American dissidents (bitter clingers) in re-education camps so they learn to think right.

If a few million starve in the process, that’s just the price we pay to maintain this, Our Sacred Democracy™.

Via NBC Philadelphia, 2015 (emphasis added):

“Hillary Rodham Clinton says the nation’s political class could use “camps for adults” to foster cooperation but too many leaders get backed into partisan corners and refuse to work together.

Clinton offered a bipartisan, feel-good message Thursday during a paid speech to camp counselors in the weeks before her expected presidential campaign launch. She was presented with a gray sweatshirt emblazoned with “Camp David” — the presidential retreat in Maryland — but otherwise steered clear of her prospective campaign, pointing to a “huge fun deficit” in the nation and the need for politicians of all stripes to reach across the aisle.

“We really need camps for adults,” Clinton said at the American Camp Association, New York and New Jersey’s Tri State CAMP Conference. “Maybe mix it up a little bit.” Playing on the colors of U.S. politics, she imagined a red cabin and a blue cabin where people “have to come together and actually listen to each other. Wouldn’t that be a novel idea?””

Here is diverse Washington Post hack Eugene Robinson, from January 2021:

“We have, there are millions of Americans, almost all white, almost all Republicans, who somehow need to be deprogrammed. It’s as if they are members of a cult, the Trump-ist cult, and have to be deprogrammed. Do you have any idea how we start that process, much less complete it?”

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UK to release criminals early from jail to accommodate ‘keyboard warriors,’ protesters arrested after riots over school girl murders

Britain’s prisons are set to release prisoners in order to make room for those locked up due to the recent riots that took place after three school girls were stabbed to death by the son of Rwandan immigrants. Many of those who are facing prison terms were convicted over social media posts. Some 460 people have been arrested due to the riots so far. 

“The UK is turning into a police state,” Elon Musk said. “Keyboard warriors” are facing specific scrutiny from the judiciary, with one man facing jail time for posts said to have “instigated” riots. A 53-year-old woman who posted “burn the mosque down” and is the only caretaker for her disabled husband was sentenced to 15 months in prison. 12-year-old boys are also among those convicted.

The prisoner release plan, called Operation Early Dawn, was “triggered for a week in March,” The Times reports, and it requires police to release suspects on bail if confinement space is lacking. In this case, the plan will be enacted in the North East and Yorkshire, Cumbria and Lancashire, and Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire regions.

The riots are being blamed for the expansion of these measures and it’s believed, per a senior government source cited by The Times, that “the large numbers of people imprisoned for their role in the riots will probably lead to emergency early release measures staying in place for longer than expected.” 567 new prison cells have been opened ahead of schedule to cope with the demand.

“From September 10, thousands of prisoners will start being released 40 percent of the way through their sentence as part of the emergency measures announced last month,” The Times reports.

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Yvette Cooper vows to crack down on promotion of ‘hateful beliefs’

The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has vowed to crack down on people “pushing harmful and hateful beliefs”, including extreme misogyny, as she announced a new approach to fighting extremism.

The Home Office has commissioned a rapid review to inform a new government counter-extremism strategy on how best to tackle the threat posed by extremist ideologies online and offline.

The review will assess the ideological spectrum and is intended to address “gaps in the current system” that leave the country exposed to hateful or harmful activity that promotes violence or undermines democracy.

Officials will assess “the rise of Islamist and far-right extremism” alongside “ideological trends” that have gained traction including extreme misogyny. The scheme also aims to assess the causes and conduct of radicalisation of young people online and offline.

Cooper has previously said the last government’s counter-extremism strategy was nine years out of date. She believes the review will lay the foundations for Labour to deliver on its manifesto promise of preventing people from being drawn towards hateful ideologies.

It comes after a decade of warnings from the police and former government advisers about the need to address the rise of hateful extremism and the proliferation of dangerous material online.

Responding to concerns that treating misogyny as extremism could criminalise free speech, the Home Office minister Jess Phillips told LBC: “You just use the exact same test you would with far-right extremism and Islamism, wouldn’t you.

“The same test would have to apply.

“People can hold views about women all they like, but it’s not OK any more to ignore the massive growing threat caused by online hatred towards women and for us to ignore it because we’re worried about the line, rather than making sure the line is in the right place as we would do with any other extremist ideology.”

The MP for Birmingham Yardley, who has been open about the misogynistic hate she has received online, said social media companies “are undoubtedly going to have to be part of the solution”.

She said: “With the previous government’s online safety bill, that still hasn’t come into fruition yet but we’re going to have to make sure that is as robust as possible because if my teenage sons watch something on the television, there is a far, far greater place for me to have that regulated and to know that can be trusted than when they’re in their bedrooms and I have no idea what they’re looking at and the level of regulation is considerably lower at the moment.”

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UK Man Arrested For Social Media Posts Containing “Anti-Establishment Rhetoric”

The BBC reports that a 40-year-old man has been arrested and criminally charged for social media posts that contained “anti-establishment rhetoric.”

Yes, really.

Wayne O’Rourke becomes the latest example of the wave of authoritarian hysteria to impact free speech in the UK following the recent anti-mass migration riots.

O’Rourke was arrested on Sunday in connection with “posts made from a social media account,” according to Lincolnshire Police.

“Nottingham Magistrates’ Court heard the posts were alleged to contain anti-Muslim and anti-establishment rhetoric,” reports the BBC.

O’Rourke had nearly 100,000 followers on X and predicted his own arrest days beforehand.

So now apparently posting “anti-establishment rhetoric” in the United Kingdom is enough to get you locked up.

The report does not give any specifics of what the thought criminal actually posted, but he had “allegedly expressed support for the recent riots and offered advice on how to remain anonymous to his 90,000 followers.”

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US Court Reimposes “Disinformation” Device Monitoring on January 6 Defendant

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has issued an order in the United States v. Daniel Goodwyn case reimposing the computer monitoring measure against Goodwyn, a January 6 defendant.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

Goodwyn was charged and convicted for briefly entering the US Capitol during the January 6 events, and although he stayed inside the building for just over half a minute, left when he was asked to, was not involved in violence nor did he cause any damage – it was his social media posts (among others, screenshot of public documents that show names of government employees) that were seen as a threat.

In initial proceedings in 2023, Goodwyn pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of trespassing. As legal experts noted, normally a first-time offender isn’t sent to jail for this, but the US District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Reggie Walton sentenced him to two months in prison.

This was accompanied by probation conditions that included unusually harsh and ongoing restrictions on Goodwyn’s online speech and access to information. Walton – a vocal critic of Donald Trump decided that Goodwyn’s computer must be “monitored and inspected” to make sure he was not “spreading disinformation.”

The appellate court then found that the district court “plainly erred” by imposing these surveillance measures. Judge Walton next decided that now, “on the heels of [sic] another election,” he was worried Goodwyn was spreading “false narratives” and therefore affirmed his original sentencing.

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FBI Raids Home of Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter

On Wednesday, the FBI raided the home of Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector and outspoken critic of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine and Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.

Ritter told reporters outside of his New York home that the raid was related to a suspected violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a law that requires individuals or entities engaging in lobbying or other activity on behalf of a foreign country to register as foreign agents with the US Department of Justice.

“The search warrant is related to concerns apparently the US government has about violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. I will tell you right now I am not in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act … and hopefully, by executing the search warrant and taking the information that they did, they will rapidly reach that conclusion,” Ritter said.

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UK’s Met Police Chief Threatens “Keyboard Warriors” With Terrorism Charges

Head of the Met Police Sir Mark Rowley has warned that “keyboard warriors” could be hit with terrorism charges for inciting riots online, even if they are living abroad.

Rowley made the comments in response to waves of rioting that unfolded across the UK following the murder of three young girls at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport by a 17-year-old of Rwandan migrant origin via his parents.

Asserting that the “full force of the law” would be used against offenders, Rowley made it clear that this included not just people physically involved in the riots, but those who make inflammatory comments about them on social media.

“And whether you’re in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you,” Rowley threatened.

A Sky News reporter than mentioned Elon Musk as a ‘high profile figure’ who was “whipping up hatred,” when in fact Musk merely asked Prime Minister Keir Starmer, “Why aren’t all communities protected in Britain?”.

“What are you considering when it comes to dealing with people who are whipping up from behind a keyboard and maybe is in a different country,” the reporter asked Rowley.

“Being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law, you can be guilty of offences of incitement, of stirring up racial hatred, there are numerous terrorist offences regarding the publishing of material, all of those offences are in play if people are provoking hatred and violence on the streets and we will come after those individuals just as we will physically confront on the streets the thugs and the yobs who are causing the problems for communities,” said Rowley.

As we highlighted yesterday, authorities have warned Brits that merely retweeting information about the riots could lead to criminal charges.

Stephen Parkinson, the Director of Public Prosecutions, told Sky News that people do not even need to personally post the content themselves to be deemed to be committing an offence.

Parkinson said social media users could be guilty of “incitement to racial hatred” if they post “insulting or abusive” content that is “likely to stir up racial hatred.”

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Dunkin’ Donuts and Diageo Booze Company Threaten to Remove Ads from Rumble if the Platform Does Not Remove Videos by Conservative Personalities

On Tuesday, Elon Musk’s X filed an antitrust lawsuit, which was filed in Texas federal court, seeking trebled compensatory damages and injunctive relief, against a left-leaning advertising cartel and several member companies.

The suit alleges X was targeted with an illegal ad boycott.

The lawsuit was filed against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, its parent firm, World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), and GARM members CVS Health, Mars, Orsted, and Unilever, who reportedly controls a staggering 90% of marketing efforts worldwide.

Soon after Elon Musk’s announcement, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski announced he was joining the lawsuit with Elon Musk against the GARM cartel.

Rumble CEO Pavlovski explains how organizations like GARM and the World Federation of Advertisers have monopolized control over the major advertising budgets.

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Crazed Authoritarians Demand X Be Shut Down in UK

Mimicking a policy that the west once condemned Communist China for pursuing, authoritarians are now calling for X to be shut down completely in the UK to stop civil unrest.

After the country was rocked by a series of riots over the past week in response to a 17-year-old son of Rwandan immigrants killing three little girls in Southport, the media and the political class blamed the anger on “misinformation” shared on X.

In reality, the UK has been a boiling pot of resentment and rage over mass migration for years, with huge numbers continuing to arrive, putting massive strain on the country and making some parts of major towns and cities unrecognizable, despite nobody having ever voted for it.

However, the disorder is being exploited to grease the skids for mass censorship.

Cambridge professor Sander van der Linden said the government could “geo-restrict access to a platform if the situation got so bad” and Twitter could also be “banned from the app store for violating policies.”

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