Tag Archive for: hate speech

Political and Scientific Censorship Short-circuits the Quest for Truth

/in , , , , , , , /by

Those who seek to streamline online discourse, according to “official standards”, end up impoverishing public debate.

Over the course of the past decade, numerous regulatory authorities, both public and private, have increasingly positioned themselves as guardians of the integrity of our public sphere, standing watch over the content of information, and flagging or suppressing information deemed to be harmful, misleading, or offensive.

The zeal with which these gatekeepers defend their power over the public sphere became evident when billionaire Elon Musk promised to undo Twitter’s policy of censoring anything that contradicted leftist ideology or questioned the safety of Covid vaccines. There was an uproar, a wringing of hands, and lamentations, as “experts worried” that Twitter would collapse into a den of “far right” extremists and misinformers.

Sound and fury

Threats by the EU Commission to fine Twitter or even completely ban the app in Europe, if it did not enforce EU regulations on hate speech and misinformation, show that the hand-wringing over Twitter’s potential embrace of free speech is much more than empty rhetoric: the European Commission has declared its intention to force Twitter to revert to its old censorship policies if it does not play ball. According to Euronews,

The European Commission has warned Elon Musk that Twitter must do much more to protect users from hate speech, misinformation and other harmful content, or risk a fine and even a ban under strict new EU content moderation rules.

Thierry Breton, the EU’s commissioner for digital policy, told the billionaire Tesla CEO that the social media platform will have to significantly increase efforts to comply with the new rules, known as the Digital Services Act, set to take effect next year.

Censorship has recently occurred principally on two fronts: Covid “misinformation” and “hate speech.” Some forms of censorship are applied by agencies of the State, such as courts and police officers; others by private companies, such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Google-YouTube. The net effect is the same in both cases: an increasingly controlled and filtered public sphere, and a shrinking of liberty of discussion around a range of topics deemed too sensitive or “dangerous” to be discussed openly and freely.

Censorship, whether public or private, has proliferated in recent years:

  • First, there was Canada’s bizarre claim that people had an enforceable human right to be referred to by their preferred pronouns
  • Next, UK police were investigating citizens for using language the police deemed “offensive”
  • Then, we saw Big Tech giants, in particular Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, censoring perspectives that dissented from their version of scientific and moral orthodoxy on issues such as transgender rights, vaccine safety, effective Covid treatment protocols, and the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

Now, advocates of censorship have argued that it is all to the good that vile, hateful and discriminatory opinions, as well as every conceivable form of medical and scientific “misinformation,” are shut out of our public sphere. After all, this makes the public sphere a “safe” place for citizens to exchange information and opinions. On this view, we need to purge the public sphere of voices that are toxic, hateful, harmful, and “misleading” on issues like electoral politics, public health policies, and minority rights.

Thin ice

While there is a strong case to be made for censorship of certain forms of manifestly dangerous speech, such as exhortations to suicide or direct incitement to violence, the hand of the censor must be firmly tied behind his back, so that he cannot easily decide for everyone else what is true or false, just or unjust, “accurate” or “misleading”, innocent or offensive.

For once you hand broad, discretionary powers to someone to decide which sorts of speech are offensive, erroneous, misleading, or hate-inducing, they will start to purge the public sphere of views they happen to find ideologically, philosophically, or theologically disagreeable. And there is certainly no reason to assume that their judgement calls on what counts as true or false, innocent or toxic speech will be correct.

The fundamental mistake behind the argument for aggressive censorship policies is the notion that there is a set of Truths out there on contested political and scientific questions that are crystal clear or can be validated by the “right experts”; and that anyone who contradicts these a priori Truths must be either malicious or ignorant. If this were true, the point of public discussion would just be to clarify and unpack what the “experts” agree are the Truths of science and morality.

But there is no such set of pristine Truths that can be validated by human beings independently of a free and open discussion, especially on difficult and complex matters such as infection control, justice, climate change, and economic policy. Rather, the truth must be discovered gradually, through the vibrant back-and-forth of dialogue, debate, refutation, and counter-refutation. In short, public deliberation is fundamentally a discovery process. The truth is not known in advance, but uncovered gradually, as an array of evidence is examined and put to the test, and as rival views clash and hold each other accountable.

If we empower a censor to quash opinions that are deemed by powerful actors to be offensive, false, or misleading, we are effectively short-circuiting that discovery process. When we put our faith in a censor to keep us on the straight and narrow, we are assuming that the censor can stand above the stream of conflicting arguments, and from a position of epistemic and/or moral superiority, pick out the winning positions in advance.

We are assuming that some people are so smart, or wise, or virtuous, that they do not actually need to get their hands dirty and participate in a messy argument with their adversaries, or get their views challenged in public. We are assuming that some people are more expert and well-informed than anyone else, including other recognised experts, and may therefore decide, for everyone else, which opinions are true and which are false, which are intrinsically offensive and which are “civil,” and which are “facts” and which are “fake news.”

Needless to say, this is an extraordinarly naïve and childish illusion, that no realistic grasp of human nature and cognition could possibly support. But it is a naive and childish illusion that has been enthusiastically embraced and propagated by Big Tech companies such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in their rules of content moderation, and it is a view that is increasingly finding its way into the political discourse and legislative programmes of Western countries that were once champions of freedom of expression.

It is imperative that the advocates of heavy-handed censorship do not win the day, because if they do, then the public sphere will become a hall of mirrors, in which the lazy, self-serving mantras of a few powerful actors bounce, virtually unchallenged, from one platform to another, while dissenting voices are consigned to the shadows and dismissed as the rantings of crazy people.

In a heavily censored public sphere, scientifically weak and morally vacuous views of the world will gain public legitimacy, not because they have earned people’s trust in an open and honest exchange of arguments, but because they have been imposed by the arbitrary will of a few powerful actors.

This article has been republished from David Thunder’s Substack, The Freedom Blog.

AUTHOR

David Thunder

David Thunder is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Navarra’s Institute for Culture and Society. More by David Thunder

RELATED VIDEO: Lib Gets OWNED When GOP Rep. Uses Her Own Testimony Against Her In Real-Time

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Truth-Telling Video About Jihad That YouTube Doesn’t Want You To See

/in , , , , /by

Washington, D.C. – For ten years the world’s largest and most powerful Sharia-supremacist organization – not the Islamic State, not al Qaeda, not even the Muslim Brotherhood, but the Organization of Islamic Cooperation – has worked to compel the entire world to observe Sharia blasphemy restrictions.  In 2010, with help from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, they succeeded in getting the UN Human Rights Council to adopt Resolution 16/18 which effectively calls on every nation to prohibit expression that offends Muslims and to punish those who do so.

The European Union adopted highly restrictive “hate speech” bans.  A number of the continent’s most prominent freedom-fighters have been prosecuted under these laws.

In 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that, notwithstanding the First Amendment, the U.S. government would use “old-fashioned techniques of shaming and peer pressure” to discourage such expression.

In response at least in part to such official pressure about offending Muslims, perhaps combined with corporate preferences, social media giants including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube recently announced the implementation of new “hate speech” prohibitions on their platforms.  Ostensibly, they would impede the extensive use IS and other terrorists have been making of their services.

It was predictable, however, that these new media organizations would wind up censoring those whom Islamists abhor – especially, those who tell the truth about and, therefore, help impede the Shariah-supremacists’ global jihad movement and agenda.

A case in point was the recent removal by YouTube of a powerful new video produced by the Center for Security Policy’s Counter Jihad Campaign.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THIS POWERFUL VIDEO

Everyone in America should see this video – and demand that YouTube reinstate it at once.  The Center will be redoubling its efforts to prevent this sort of suppression of free, and necessary, speech.

ABOUT THE CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY

The Center for Security Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital to American security and then ensures that such issues are the subject of both focused, principled examination and effective action by recognized policy experts, appropriate officials, opinion leaders, and the general public.

For more information please visit www.securefreedom.org.

Poll: 40 percent of Millennials want Speech Censored

/in , , , /by

This Daily Caller report is all about how a large percentage of young people favor restrictions on speech deemed offensive to minorities, and while it discusses only racial minorities, there is no doubt that its findings apply to Muslims as well, and that many young people would want speech offensive to Muslims restricted as well. In 2014 I spoke at Cal Poly (video here) and took a question from an angry young woman who told me that there was a difference between “free speech” and “hate speech,” and that the latter should be restricted.

This is an increasingly common idea, taken for granted by large numbers of young people who don’t realize what a sleight-of-hand it is. They think “hate speech” is an easily recognized and universally accepted category of thought, when actually it is a subjective judgment used by those who are in power to discredit and marginalize their opponents. At Cal Poly I asked the questioner who should be entrusted with the momentous responsibility of determining what is hate speech and what isn’t, and pointed out that that person would have tyrannical powers over the rest of society. That didn’t trouble her at all, and that was the problem.

And meanwhile, while college students are indoctrinated into this taste for authoritarian government, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) continues to work to compel Western governments to criminalize all criticism of Islam, which would allow jihad terror to advance unopposed and unimpeded.

“Poll: 40 Percent Of Millennials Want Speech Censored,” by Kerry Picket, Daily Caller, November 21, 2015:

A new Pew Research Center poll shows that 40 percent of American Millennials (ages 18-34) are likely to support government prevention of public statements offensive to minorities.

It should be noted that vastly different numbers resulted for older generations in the Pew poll on the issue of offensive speech and the government’s role.

Around 27 percent of Generation X’ers (ages 35-50) support such an idea, while 24 percent of Baby Boomers (ages 51-69) agree that censoring offensive speech about minorities should be a government issue. Only 12 percent of the Silent Generation (ages 70-87) thinks that government should prevent offensive speech toward minorities.

The poll comes at a time when college activists, such as the group “Black Lives Matter,” are making demands in the name of racial and ethnic equality at over 20 universities across the nation….

RELATED ARTICLES:

Princeton Grad Disappointed Administrators Gave in to Student ‘Bullying Tactics’

FBI top dog: Islamic State “urging people not to travel but to stay and kill where you are. We’re not sure exactly what’s going on.”

Al-Qaeda claims Mali jihad murders: “All praise is due to Allah”

RELATED VIDEO: Robert Spencer speaking at Cal-Poly:

Austria Launches ‘Hate Speech’ Investigation of Dutch MP Geert Wilders

/in , , , , , /by

Public Prosecutors in Austria launched a criminal investigation of Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party PVV), based on his remarks in March 27, 2015 before the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) at the Hofburg in Vienna. He had journeyed there to meet with Heinz-Christian Strache, his counterpart in the Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ) and deliver a speech on “The Threat to Europe”.

Austria has a hate speech law under which Elisabeth Sabaditsch Wolff  a leader of the Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa (Citizen movement Pax Europa) and the International Civil Liberties Alliance (ICLA}has been similarly prosecuted and convicted for remarks offensive to the country’s Muslim community regarding Islamic doctrine and criticism of their Prophet Mohammed.  Wilders had compared the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf in his FPO speech and suggested that it be banned.   Both Sabaditsch-Wolff’s and Wilders’ remarks would be considered protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Wilders has suggested that the European Parliament adopt an equivalent form of free speech protection. Wilders is still under investigation by public prosecutors in the Hague for his remarks about “fewer Moroccans” during a campaign rally on March 19, 2014 prior to the European Parliamentary elections.

Watch Wilders’ March 27, 2015 Speech before the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) on this Vlad Tepes YouTube Video:

NL Times reported:

The Austrian Public Prosecutor has started an investigation against PVV leader Geert Wilders on charges of sedition. Aggrieved Muslims pressed charges against Wilders because of his statements comparing the Koran with Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf and demands that the Islamic holy book be banned during a meeting of the right wing populist FPO in Vienna in March, NU reports.

Interest group Initiative of Muslim Austrians finds that Wilders has made himself guilty of sedition, denigrating religious teachings and breach of the prohibition of reviving Nazi ideology. The theme of his speech in Hofburg, Vienna was “The threat to Europe”.

Wilders reacted on Twitter with the tweet. “It cannot get a lot crazier.”

Here is an English translation excerpt from the Austrian newspaper Kurrier –Medienhaus  on these charges against Wilders:

Press Officer Nina Bussek of the Vienna prosecutor’s office cannot say how long the investigation will take, and whether Wilders will also be questioned by a prosecutor. “I can confirm that we are investigating following complaints against declarations he made during the event.” The [Austrian] law prohibits hurting religious feelings or inciting to violence against a religion.

On 27 March, Wilders held a long speech in the Hofburg in Vienna at the invitation of the rightwing nationalist party FPÖ. He spoke strong language about the necessity to reduce Islam.

Wilders visit was special, because Vienna is the city where, in 1683, the rise of the Ottoman Empire was halted. “Also today, we have a clear message for Islam: you will not conquer Vienna,” Wilders said.

In his speech, Wilders said that Austria had to change the present reality, “that Islamic brutality has gained a foothold in our countries. We are confronted with halal meals, with headscarves, burqas, honor killings, female genital mutilation, polygamy, mega mosques.”

“Since the darkest days of paganism many centuries ago, we have not experienced these atrocities anymore. Now they are back. Islam has brought them back,” Wilders continued. “I say: let us regain our freedoms.”

To this end, the PVV leader called for a ban on the Koran. He also said “No more mosques. Close all Islamic schools. Today! No to mullahs and imams.”

In a reaction, Wilders expressed his disappointment in Austria. “It is particularly ironic that the authorities capitulate there where a few centuries ago the West was protected against Islam. But I will continue to honor the gates of Vienna and stand upright. Speaking the truth about Islam and immigration are thus rewarded with a place on death lists and prosecution or investigation for prosecution by the Public Prosecutor in several countries. Earlier in the Netherlands and Jordan, now in the Netherlands again and in Austria. This is a major attack on freedom of speech, but no one will be able to silence me.”

PVV leading party in Holland

Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) leads in poll of parties in the Hague Parliament.

This latest investigation by Austrian public prosecutors comes on the day when a Dutch poll shows the PVV as the leading party, if an election were held  forThe Hague Parliament.  Obviously many Dutch citizens agree with Wilders’ stands opposing mass Muslim immigration and admittance of illegal Migrants to The Netherlands under EU and UN High Commissioner for Refugees quota system.  Wilders has also suggest The Netherlands take back its  national border and immigration control from the Shengen system of 26 European countries that has enabled  free transit for European recruits  to join the Islamic State. He has also suggested that any returning Dutch veterans of the ISIS be barred from entry and deprived of Dutch citizenship.

As a Member of an EU parliament, we hope that Wilders has immunity against extradition to Austria to face possible prosecution for alleged hate speech brought by a Muslim advocacy group.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Geert Wilders’ Anti-Islamization Immigration Stand Resonates Across Europe

/in , , , , , /by

Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party (PVV) in the Netherlands is being investigated for the second time in five years by Dutch prosecutors for  alleged hate speech during  his March 2014 local election campaign rally statement of “fewer Moroccans”.  This comes while his ratings in Dutch polls has rocketed him to the top with fully 30 seats in the Hague parliament, if snap elections were held.  That is more than the combined seats currently held by the ruling Rutte coalition of the PvdA and VVD parties.  Note  this remark: “The short message of PVV-leader Geert Wilders to the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte: ‘The revolution in The Netherlands has started now, Mark.”

Poll 21-12-2014

Dutch polls 12-21-14. For a larger view click on the image.

Wilders drew attention to that irony in a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) op-ed, “Talking About the Moroccan Issue is not A Crime”.  Wilders is exercising free speech, something that Americans take for granted as a right guaranteed under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.  Wilders’ message about “fewer Moroccans” reflects the social consequences of permissive mass Muslim immigration undermining the social fabric of foundational  Western values of, liberty, freedom and tolerance. In Holland’s case it is exemplified by the rejection of those values by the Dutch Moroccan émigré community that even Dutch liberal parties have begrudgingly come to recognize.

What Wilders’ PVV and other parties in EU countries deemed ‘far right” have drawn attention to is the seeds of destruction of national values from compliance with UN humanitarian refugee programs straining resources and social welfare budgets caused by Jihadist warfare in the Middle East.  That is reflected in the rallies in Dresden and throughout major cities in Germany this Christmas season by the Pegida movement (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West).

As Al Jazeera reported Pegida rallies for “the right to preserve and protect our Christian-Jewish dominated West culture”, and against parallelgesellschaft – a German term used to describe immigrant communities that maintain their cultural norms and don’t integrate in local society.”  The third mass Pegida rally of more than 17,500 occurred Monday night before the Semper Opera House in Dresden where the Pegida movement arose in October. The trigger for Pegida was the more than 200,000 Syrian refugees granted asylum by Germany. Recently, the short lived Swedish Social Democrat liberal government fell on a no confidence vote allegedly provoked by the anti-immigration Swedish Democrat party. It had forged an alliance with center right parties in Sweden’s parliament over the issue of a ballooning social welfare budget to accommodate 80,000 Syrian war asylumees.

Participants hold German national flags during a demonstration organised by anti-immigration group PEGIDA in Dresden

Pegida Rally  Semper Opera House Dresden, Germany 12-22-14. Source: Reuters.

Wilders’ WSJ op-ed reflects the Dutch unease with the policies of the ruling coalition government in the Hague  Parliament. Those concerns have  that has now cross the EU and even here in America to comply with UN humanitarian refugee standards.  The subsequent generations of Muslim émigrés in host EU countries have led to spikes in Antisemitism, Synagogue fire bombings, allegations of sexual assault and grooming of non-Muslim women, tolerance of Shariah law in so-called Muslim dominated “no go areas”, murders perpetrated in the name of Jihad against Jews and others.  The specter stalking across the EU landscape of 28 members is the threat of homegrown Jihadists as returning veterans from the barbaric Salafist Islamic State.  That threat was crystallized by the murders of Israeli tourists and workers at the Brussels Municipal Jewish Museum by returning Syrian war French jihadist Mehdi Nemmouchet.

The large Muslim émigré communities in the EU were the results of granting host country citizenship coupled with the deficit in manpower to rebuild Europe following World War II. It was also a reflection  of the Eurabia paradigm articulated by the scholar Bat Ye’or  driven by OPEC control  over the  World’s and EU’s energy needs that arose during the October War of 1973. That led to the EC and the EU ‘accommodation’ of  Organization of Islamic Cooperation demands for tolerance of Sharia Blasphemy codes  demanded  by burgeoning Muslim émigré communities under the guise of host country hate laws.

That is the wind behind Wilders’ WSJ op–ed and the sudden emergence of groups like Pegida in Germany, and anti-Mass immigration parties in Denmark, Austria and Sweden.

Geert Wilders

Hon. Geert Wilders, PVV.

Note these excerpts from Wilders’ WSJ op-ed:

In the Netherlands, as in many other Western European countries right now, problems arise when Muslim immigrants refuse to assimilate and integrate into the wider community. In our case I referred specifically to the Moroccans not because I have anything against them generally but because they are one of the largest immigrant groups here and are over represented in our crime and welfare statistics.

Moroccans are suspects in violent robberies 22 times as often as indigenous Dutch. Between 1996 and 2010, more than 60% of the Moroccan male youths born in 1984 had at least once been suspected of a crime, a rate three times as high as their indigenous counterparts. … According to Dick Schoof, the Dutch national coordinator for counterterrorism and security, Moroccans also account for three-quarters of all Dutch Muslims who leave for Syria to wage jihad.

[…]

For almost a decade, my party has proposed three measures to address this issue. First, we want an end to immigration from Muslim countries. Second, we want to expel all criminals of foreign nationality and, for those offenders who have dual nationality, deprive them of their Dutch citizenship, sending them back to the country of their other nationality. Third, we want to encourage the voluntary repatriation of non-Western immigrants.

The prosecutor’s decision can’t be seen as being anything but politically motivated, especially when he has refused to prosecute two leading politicians of the governing Labor Party, Diederik Samsom and Hans Spekman, for similar statements on Moroccans. Mr. Samsom said that Moroccans have an “ethnic monopoly” on street crime, while Mr. Spekman said that Moroccans who don’t abide by the law have to be “humiliated in front of their own people.”

Polls have indicated that more than 43% of Netherlanders agree with me…. I was thus expressing the feelings of millions in my country. In a democracy, a public debate about important political issues, such as “the Moroccan issue,” shouldn’t be restricted by criminalizing the expression of certain problems and policy proposals.

 […]

Prosecuting me as an elected politician for expressing the opinions of my constituents is absurd. Excluding certain problems from the political debate by making it a crime to discuss them won’t lead to the disappearance of these concerns, let alone contribute to a solution. This prosecution, moreover, is also dangerous. People will begin to lose their trust in the democratic process. Festering political problems do not go away simply because they are kept in a dark corner. I wish the Dutch public prosecutor had been wise enough to see that.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of a protest sign which reads “No Hatred, No Violence, No Koran” at the Pegida rally in Germany. Source: Al Jazeera Yermi Brenner