Tag Archive for: defense of free speech

Poll: 69% of Americans Believe Free Speech Is ‘Heading in the Wrong Direction’

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Over the years, research centers have routinely polled American citizens on the topic of free speech. And with each passing year, the country seems more convinced that while freedom of speech is important, how one practices that right can be problematic.

For example, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the Polarization Research Lab (PRL) at Dartmouth College recently released a poll that revealed 69% of the 1,000 Americans they surveyed believe free speech is “heading in the wrong direction.” However, it’s noteworthy that their concerns stem from the growing inability for people “to freely express their views.” And “alarmingly,” the researchers wrote, roughly one-third of the Americans polled believe the First Amendment “goes too far in the rights it guarantees.”

The poll experimented with a variety of controversial statements, asking respondents to choose which ones they found most offensive. Out of the most surprising results, 52% felt their community “should not allow a public speech that espouses the belief they selected as the most offensive.” Additionally, “A supermajority, 69%, said their local college should not allow a professor who espoused that belief to teach classes.”

Reason magazine summarized, “These results indicate that though the average American is concerned about protecting free speech rights, a significant portion of the population seem poised to welcome increasing censorship.”

FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens said the “results were disappointing, but not exactly surprising.” He continued, “Here at FIRE, we’ve long observed that many people who say they’re concerned about free speech waver when it comes to beliefs they personally find offensive.” But Stevens, as well as Family Research Council’s Joseph Backholm, believe the best way to protect free speech is, in fact, to protect the right to be potentially offensive or controversial.

Backholm, who serves as a senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at FRC, commented to The Washington Stand, “It isn’t just that the First Amendment also protects offensive speech, it primarily exists to protect offensive speech.” He explained that there’s “no need to recognize the right to say, ‘I like tacos,’ because” most people wouldn’t see a reason to silence that. The entire reason for the constitutional guarantee to the freedom of speech,” he added, “is because the Founders understood the government’s instinct to stop people from saying things the government disliked.”

Especially with the rise of cancel culture, Backholm emphasized, “A lot of people today believe there is a constitutional right not to be offended.” Additionally, they also often “believe the right not to be offended is of greater importance than the freedom of speech,” which he noted is commonly the reason why “pronoun laws and campus safe spaces” are created. “Yes, there are limits to free speech, but those limits are not triggered by the emotional stress associated with discovering there are people in the world who disagree with you,” he said.

As for the Americans in the poll who are more worried about offensive beliefs being freely expressed, Backholm said, “The problem with restricting ‘offensive’ speech is that different things are offensive to different people. The pro-life position is offensive to some while the pro-abortion position is offensive to others.” Ultimately, it begs the question: Should all conversations about the issue be banned? To which he answered, “Obviously not.”

Stevens emphasized the importance of teaching this generation about the value and meaning of the First Amendment. “These findings should be a wake-up call for the nation to recommit to a vibrant free speech culture before it’s too late.” Because, as Backholm concluded, “If we want to be free, and most of us do, we must accept the fact that being exposed to ideas and behaviors we dislike is the cost of being able to do and say things other people don’t like.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Elon Musk: Justin Trudeau is trying to ‘crush free speech in Canada’

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The biggest accomplishment of Justin Trudeau is that he managed to make Canada a focus of intense international media attention, but not for respectable reasons. Canada’s freedoms are being severely compromised, and it is drowning economically as well. The latest out of Canada: Elon Musk tweeted that Trudeau is “trying to crush free speech“ in Canada.

The proverbial ship has sailed. It has been a long, tough process for patriotic Canadians as they watch Trudeau strip away their freedoms. Musk was responding to a new law in Canada, Bill C-18, that requires social media and streaming services with revenues over $10 million to register with the government, starting in November 2023. Subscription television services which are available online, as well as Facebook, X, Netflix, and Disney, are also included, as are radio stations that livestream online, and podcast services. Individual podcasters need not worry, unless, of course, they make over $10 million in revenue.

The wing of the Canadian government overseeing Bill C-18 is the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). Details of the requirements can be found here.

Trudeau is beyond “trying to crush free speech” in Canada, as Musk observed. He has already largely succeeded, and has trampled not only the freedom of speech. Other examples of Trudeau’s infringement of the freedom of Canadians include:

Bill C-18 did not suddenly appear in a kind of jump scare. The impetus for it was building over time, and its basis was actually formed under Canada’s anti-Islamophobia Motion, M-103, which “progressives” did everything they could to present as a benign motion which didn’t carry any legal ramifications. Everyone already knew that it wasn’t legislation, but few were willing to address its impact in laying the groundwork for a future bill, which we now see in  Bill C-18.

In February, Trudeau’s own appointed Senator David Richards described the prime minister’s sweeping censorship Bill C-11, a precursor to Bill C-18, as “Stalinesque.” Richards called it “an Orwellian attempt to force individuals to comply with government messaging.” Richards’ description may have seemed exaggerated to those who were unaware of Trudeau’s activities, but it was spot-on.

Bill C-18 followed. It was also known as the Online Streaming Act. It was an updated version of Bill C-11, which it incorporated, with an addition: it requires digital giants such as Google and Meta to pay compensation to Canadian news sites to share any of the news content that appeared on their platforms. University of Ottawa Professor Michael Geist characterized it accurately: “Bill C-18 is a shakedown with requirements to pay for nothing more than listing Canadian media organizations with hyperlinks in a search index, social media post, or possibly even a tweet.”

The response from Google, Facebook and Instagram to Bill C-18, when they were asked to compensate Canadian news outlets, elicited a meltdown from Trudeau. Did he really expect social media giants to comply with his shakedown? Meta said it would shut out news in the country, meaning that all Facebook and Instagram users in Canada would be blocked from accessing news on these platforms. Google stated:

We have now informed the Government that when the law takes effect, we unfortunately will have to remove links to Canadian news from our Search, News and Discover products in Canada, and that C-18 will also make it untenable for us to continue offering our Google News Showcase product in Canada.

When Canada’s wildfires broke out and news was fundamental to access, everyone knew exactly whom to blame: Trudeau. But he wouldn’t accept responsibility. Instead, he blamed Meta and Google for supposedly “putting corporate profits ahead of people’s safety.”

Vicky Eatrides, Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of the CRTC, stated:

We are developing a modern broadcasting framework that can adapt to changing circumstances. To do that, we need broad engagement and robust public records. We appreciate the significant participation during this first phase and look forward to hearing a diversity of perspectives at our contributions proceeding in November.

The government further explains:

A new bargaining regime to govern the making available of news content
The operators of dominant digital news intermediaries to which the Act applies would be subject to a new duty to bargain with eligible news businesses, which may bargain individually or as a group. This duty to bargain would arise when an eligible news business initiates bargaining with a digital news intermediary organization subject to the Act. The bargaining process could involve up to three sequential steps: bargaining sessions; mediation sessions; and final offer arbitration.

Final offer arbitration
When digital news intermediaries and news businesses do not reach agreements about making news content available through bargaining or mediation sessions, outstanding monetary disputes may proceed to a final offer arbitration process if at least one of the parties wishes to initiate arbitration. Under this process, an independent panel of arbitrators would select a final offer made by one of the parties.

This gibberish not only establishes powers of the CRTC online to set up an annoyingly inconvenient system in which potential users must now compete in a bargaining process, but it leaves a lot of questions about the players who will be comprising these “mediation sessions” and this “arbitration” on the government side. And beware whenever a government uses terms such as “independent panel,” because they are never “independent”; they end up being staffed with government cronies who are paid by taxpayers to advance the interests of the regime. And as for the sections of Bill C-18 guaranteeing the “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression,” not even the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has  stopped Trudeau from his encroachments upon Canadian freedoms.

The world is increasingly coming to know what Canadians have been enduring ever since Trudeau came to power in 2015. In a telling gesture, Trudeau shut down the Office of Religious Freedom almost immediately after taking office. Three years later, his government made a change to the Canada Summer Jobs program that required organizations to tick a box affirming that they supported abortion in order to qualify for government funding. The former head of the Office of Religious Freedom, Andrew Bennett, pointed out Trudeau’s “totalitarian tendency,” and he has been proven right.

It was inevitable that Bill C-18 would now require registration with the Canadian government. The CRTC, which has been regulating Canada’s airwaves since 1976, is the reason why Canadian productions are so limited in content. Some would even say they’re boring. There is little room for full creativity. Now the CRTC has expanded online in its attempt to tighten its grip and stymie free expression, after the fashion of China and Iran.

M-103 was passed in 2018. It was cleverly presented as only a motion — not a law — but it was part of the groundwork for something more nefarious: a broad assault upon the freedom of expression. After extensive committee hearings, the Minister of Heritage, who was Melanie Joly at the time, published a document entitled “TAKING ACTION AGAINST SYSTEMIC RACISM AND RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION INCLUDING ISLAMOPHOBIA.” It stated:

The Government acknowledges that in order to fully understand the issues and challenges confronting Canada’s increasingly diverse population, comprehensive and high quality data is required to better monitor and target policies to eliminate discrimination and inequalities.

Those policies favored the red-green axis and were grounded in wokeism. They eventually resulted in the appointment of an “Islamophobia Czar“; Trudeau’s absurd designation of the patriotic Freedom Convoy as “racist” (and his subsequent crackdown on them); and the passing of Bill C-11, which promised “greater support for Black, Indigenous and racialized people’s content and viewpoints,” as determined by the woke Trudeau government. A group aligned with Trudeau, the Racial Equity Media Collective, called for a “mandatory collection of race-based data by broadcasters…” Then came a government-funded school booklet that warned the country’s children against the Conservative Party, the freedom of speech and even Donald Trump. The booklet was entitled Confronting and Preventing Hate in Canadian Schools; it was created by the far-left “anti-hate” network led by Bernie Farber, a member of the Trudeau government’s “’expert’ advisory group on online ‘safety.’” Some highlights of this 53-page propaganda booklet:

  • Freedom of expression is presented as a cover for “hate.”
  • Trump’s border wall to stop illegals is likewise presented as “hate.”
  • Mainstream Conservative parties are singled out, and are presented as being “infiltrated” by bigots, “groypers,” and “white nationalists.” The pamphlet actually states: “While the majority of Groypers are white, there are a growing number of youth of colour involved in the movement, as they engage in antisemitism, anti- feminism/misogyny, anti-2SLGBTQIA+, Islamophobia, and anti-Black racism.”
  • It condemns a “specific Canadian flavour” of the “worldview”  that is “seen on many college campuses, often under the banner of “Canada First.”
  • In a chapter on “hate promoting symbols,” the booklet names the Red Ensign flag as offensive, even though it was used as Canada’s national symbol until 1965.
  • It condemns concerns about terrorism and crime as “anti-immigrant.”
  • It references  Trump as a “problematic politician” and condemns his border wall as “racist.”
  • It warns about students who may inquire “why there aren’t any straight pride parades, or a white history month during class discussion.”
  • Without context, anti-police sentiment is taught; the pamphlet claims that “Black residents are 20 times more likely to be shot by Toronto police than white counterparts.”
  • The booklet ironically utilizes intersectional tropes and stereotypes “people of colour,” stating that “shared beliefs in misogyny, anti-2SLGBTQIA+, Islamophobia, and anti-Blackness will often attract and unite people of colour to hate groups.”
  • It heavily promotes the Marxist, anti-nuclear family Black Lives Matter movement.

The Canadian government’s mission was clear by that point, and that mission is now broadening via Bill C-18. Trudeau has severely impaired and is now working to marginalize the freedom of speech. Trudeau, with whom Canadians are stuck until the 2025 elections, is well on his way to crushing that freedom. The leader of Canada’s official opposition Conservative Party tweeted:

As Trudeau tries to extend his egoism and oft-noted totalitarian tendencies beyond the borders of Canada itself, he may be in for a tougher ride than he anticipated. The ongoing controversy with India isn’t about to disappear, especially in light of the fact that India has just ordered Canada to remove 41 diplomats from its Delhi embassy. The Hindustan Times just published a story entitled Elon Musk’s Big Attack On Trudeau Amid India Tensions; ‘Canada Govt Crushing. Now Trudeau must contend with Facebook as well as Musk’s X. Add in the brouhaha over Canadian MP’s giving standing ovation to a prominent Nazi during a Zelensky visit to Ottawa, and the accompanying calls for accountability.

AUTHOR

CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

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

Left: Preventing the Government from Censoring Free Speech is Censorship

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The “clear message is to have this sort of chilling effect on communication between the government and platforms.”

After a federal judge issued a ruling ordering the federal government to stop “specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

The lefty censorship lobby responded with pages of unhinged hysteria that failed to address the issue.

Conservatives were repeatedly accused of trafficking in false conspiracy theories to achieve this outcome. But if so, then why worry about the verdict? If the Biden administration isn’t actively urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing social media firms in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech, what could the problem possibly be?

Secondly, lefties and their media claimed that barring the government from advocating censorship was interfering in its free speech.

Here’s the government-funded NPR complaining that, “the government’s ability to fight disinformation online has suffered a legal setback that experts say will have a chilling effect on communications between federal agencies and social media companies.”

A chilling effect generally applies to government suppression of speech, not the suppression of government censorship.

“It’s hard to think of a more sweeping ruling,” says Evelyn Douek, an expert on the regulation of online speech and a professor at Stanford Law School.

“The injunction enjoins tens of thousands, maybe hundred [of] thousands of federal government employees from having almost any kind of communication with private platforms about content on their services,” Douek tells NPR. She notes that while there are exceptions for certain types of criminal content, overall, the “clear message is to have this sort of chilling effect on communication between the government and platforms.”

Actually, it’s pretty clear about what government employees can and can’t do. They can do most things like send a pineapple to Facebook by courier or ask it to remove pro-ISIS propaganda, what they can’t do is “specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

Pretty clear.

The term ‘Orwellian’ gets thrown around far too much but here the Left has decided to argue that preventing government employees from censoring people has a chilling effect on their speech. One wonders what the old ACLU or any 1960s liberal would have made of that argument.

Big Tech used a variation of this argument to Florida bans on internet censorship, but the government doesn’t even have a platform. It and its allies are fighting for the right to go censoring.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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

Gov. Newsom Claims State That Bans Cars and Speech Offers ‘Freedom For All’

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You can do anything in California except open a business, walk down the street, or buy a home.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, the democratic choice of the enlightened ballot harvesters of California, desperately wants to be president. Despite pledging not to run against Biden, he’s continuing to posture by announcing an “anti-Jan 6” march (whatever the hell that is) for his inauguration. The one-party governor of one of the most corrupt states in America then spent his speech ranting about Republicans in other states.

California’s unelected governor wants to reframe freedom to mean mandatory masks and car bans. Not to mention state censorship of online speech.

Freedom is slavery, slavery is freedom.

Gavin Newsom triumphantly marched toward California’s statehouse to deliver an inaugural speech that celebrated California’s freedoms and the state’s resistance to forces that “want to take the nation backward.”

“More than any people, in any place, California has bridged the historical expanse between freedom for some, and freedom for all,” he said under cloudy but dry skies for the first time in days.

“Freedom is our essence, our brand name – the abiding idea that right here anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything.”

Except work freelance, drive a truck, buy a car, get disposable utensils, buy a fur coat, install a gas stove or any of the tens of thousands of things that the Democrat one-party system has banned in some or all of the state.

You can do anything in California except open a business, walk down the street, gas up your car or buy a home. It’s the land of dreams, the hotel you check into and then escape through the back window.

California is so incredibly free that, like North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela, everyone is running away.

Gov. Newsom has the unique honor of presiding over a population loss every year in office.

“California’s population continues to dwindle. The state’s population declined by 114,000 people from about 39,143,000 in 2021 to 39,029,000 in 2020, new estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau show. It marks the third straight year that California has reported a loss.”

While Texas and Florida, the states he’s attacking, are gaining people, the only folks California is gaining are coming illegally over the border.

That and sex predators.

Unlike other states, Newsom said, California safeguards freedoms like “the freedom for teachers to teach, freedom from litmus tests about their political party or the person they love.”

California safeguards the right of teachers to “love” the kids of their choice. Republican teachers however get fired.

“They make it harder to vote and easier to buy illegal guns. They silence speech, fire teachers, kidnap migrants, subjugate women, attack the Special Olympics, and even demonize Mickey Mouse,” he said about conservative leaders like DeSantis. “All camouflaged under a hijacking of the word ‘freedom.’”

Whereas in California, Mickey Mouse can expose himself to children. Freedom!

In California, public school teachers, whose insane salaries are subsidized by property taxes no new residents can afford to pay unless they’re millionaires, can groom 9-year-olds. Freedom!

In California, vagrants and junkies have a right to camp in front of your home, but you have to wait 3 years to get a permit to have any work done. Freedom!

In California, a race riot is a civil right while trying to defend yourself against them is a crime. Freedom!

In California, shoplifting is legal, but opening a business isn’t. Freedom!

Wait, why is everyone fleeing the land of the fee and the home of the slave? Wait for the reparations. Stay for the car ban. Or the mandatory ethnic studies. And the race riots. And the tax hikes.

Big population drops in L.A., San Francisco transform state – Los Angeles Times

Why are you leaving the home of freedom? Why?

Do you have something against systemic racism, child abuse, mentally ill vagrants smoking crack, high taxes, and no legal rights whatsoever, you reactionary bigot. You’re taking the nation “backward”.

And California is going backward. Instead of, Go West, Young Man, it’s now Go East.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

RELATED ARTICLE: U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Official Warns of Risks Posed by Heavy Electric Vehicles

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

The Fascists at The New Republic Say Free Speech Will ‘Help Ruin America’

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“Why Elon Musk’s Idea of ‘Free Speech’ Will Help Ruin America”

Saying the quiet part out loud.

The New Republic, pre-takeover, was liberal and believed in things like free speech and America.

Post-takeover by a Facebook billionaire and then assorted other leftists, it hates free speech. Literally.

“Why Elon Musk’s Idea of “Free Speech” Will Help Ruin America,” is the hot take headline.

You know this is going to be stunning when the leading argument is…

The pro-Musk arguments are complete nonsense, and there are innumerable historical and modern examples of why social media platforms with nearly unlimited freedom of speech produce horrors. The Supreme Court decided free speech isn’t absolute long ago, when Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes noted that you can’t shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater, for obvious reasons.

The “obvious reason” was a Socialist criticizing the WWI draft. That was the actual case in question.

No one at The New Republic predictably knows this. Certainly, the author, Mr. “Brynn” Tannehill, a RAND analyst and transgender advocate, has any idea that the dumb legal meme long ago joined the dustbin of history alongside segregation and slavery.

Tannehill squeals about “disinformation” while spreading it. The New Republic article is vintage hot take disinformation. Had anyone from the right written it, it would be pointed to as evidence that unfettered free speech spreads misinformation. But the Left doesn’t want a better marketplace of ideas, but a monopoly on bad hot takes and idiotic propaganda.

Any suggestion that the sort of “free speech” they envision can have highly undesirable consequences is met with howls of “Libs hate free speech” or other accusations of fascism. Similarly, warnings that unfettered free speech results in dangerous misinformation spreading are derided with “Sunlight is the best disinfectant” and the libertarian belief that in the marketplace of ideas, the best will always win out.

Only fascists want free speech.

Free speech doesn’t necessarily mean that the right ideas or the best ones, good ones or even decent ones will win out. It’s just the alternative to a totalitarian system in which the worst ones will be mandated by the government.

Fascists and other bad guys, including Communists and assorted leftists do exploit free speech (that’s why the ACLU came into being before it decided that it had enough power to get rid of free speech) and they shut it down in a New York minute when they take power.

The whole point of a marketplace of ideas is not that it rewards good speech, but that it prevents any one group from having a monopoly on speech. And that monopoly is exactly what the Left wants. It claims that only fascists benefit from free speech while defining, Soviet style, anyone who disagrees with it as fascists. That’s what progressive fascists do.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Twitter blocks Babylon Bee for naming Rachel Levine its ‘Man of the Year’

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“Truth is not hate speech,” says the Babylon Bee’s Seth Dillon. Gee, where have I heard that before? We used to say it all the time in defense of our work against jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women. The social media giants’ war against the freedom of speech today is based on actions against “Islamophobes” in years past.

Twitter suspends Babylon Bee for naming Rachel Levine ‘Man of the Year’

by Ariel Zilber, New York Post, March 21, 2022:

Twitter locked the account of a right-leaning parody site, The Babylon Bee, after it awarded Rachel Levine, the transgender Biden administration official, the title of “man of the year.”

The Babylon Bee story was a reaction to USA Today’s naming of Levine, who is US assistant secretary for health for the US Department of Health and Human Services, as one of its “women of the year” last week.

Twitter says it will restore the account, which has more than 1.3 million followers, if the Bee deletes the tweet, but Dillon says he has no intention of doing so.

“We’re not deleting anything,” Dillon tweeted from his personal account. “Truth is not hate speech. If the cost of telling the truth is the loss of our Twitter account, then so be it.”…

Twitter cited its policy on “hateful conduct,” which states: “You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”…

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

Defending Free Speech in an Islamic Europe

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“Keep the Faith. Don’t be intimidated. You might as well be killed standing than crawling on your knees.” – Lars Hedegaard

LISTEN to this interview with Lars Hedegaard Founder of the Danish and International Free Press Societies that aired on the Lisa Benson show, Sunday, March 13, 2016:

Hedegaard discusses his struggle and survival fighting a Palestinian émigré shooter disguised as a Danish postman in an attempted assassination in February 2013 by who fled Denmark. Today he lives under 24/7 protection of the Danish security police in what he calls “a near Fort Knox-like complex.” He addresses Denmark’s inundation in the current massive wave of Muslim immigration, desperate assertion of border control and repression of free speech concerning the Islamization of Europe.  See our original interview with Hedegaard published in the New English Review Press collection, The West Speaks. 

Hedegaard was forthright, honest about his experience in the face of the attempt on his life in February 2013 by a Palestinian émigré, a well educated engineer who had become radicalized.  The perpetrator, “BH”, as Lars discussed on the program fled Denmark only to be arrested in Turkey in April 2014, later traded to release Turkish diplomats in Mosul, Iraq in October, despite Danish extradition requests. “BH” could have ended up in Syria with the Islamic State, as did a colleague who Hedegaard said had been killed by the Americans recently. Almost Kafkaesque  was Hedegaard’s discussions of the fines levied recently on him and others in the Danish Free Press Society publishing group, other Danish  media and Pegida.dk for revealing “BH’s” true identity.

His discussion of the political and social environment in neighboring Sweden, that we heard from Kent Ekeroth, Sweden Democrat and Riksdag parliament deputy in our interviews with him, is appalling. Hedegaard spoke of Geert Wilders being denied speaking in Sweden by hordes of protesters, persecuted Jews of Malmo fleeing Sweden for safety and the rapine misogyny of Muslim migrant males inflicted on unwary Swedish girls and women.  In Sweden, today, “it is nearly impossible to hold an open meeting.”

Hedegaard gave to truth to power about the ineptness of the current center right ruling coalition government in Denmark.  He suggests that the public outrage in his country presages a move to the right politically in the hopes that might stanch Islamic immigration and bolstering free speech from intimidation by the EU and sharia Islamic blasphemy.

While Denmark’s Jews may not be as threatened as our Sweden’s; nevertheless, Hedegaard cited the recent occurrence of a 16 year girl Islamic convert from Kundby, Denmark and her 24 year old boyfriend, an ISIS returning fighter ‘mentor’, caught attempting to bomb a Jewish Day school in Copenhagen. More of that, as Hedegaard opined, might spur sending Denmark’s 6,400 Jews to Israel, Canada or the US which as he pointed the Jewish community made many contributions to the Scandinavian country.

Hedegaard readily admitted that he is not a man of the right by virtue of his former Marxist political background that he now rejects. Nevertheless, he believes that background has enabled him to analyze the dangers of Islamization to his country, Europe and the West.  His response to a final question about what message he wanted to send to the Lisa Benson Show program listeners, “Keep the Faith. Don’t be intimidated. You might as well be killed standing than crawling on your knees.”  Brought a rejoinder from host Benson about a General saying, “keep up the fire.” That reminded this writer of how Danish editorial cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, responded to a similar question in a 2009 interview , “free speech, use it!!”

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