Social Items

TPQ
Showing posts with label free speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free speech. Show all posts
Jason Michael McCann ✏ writing in Unprecedented Times last year discusses the limits of free speech. 

According to the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States (1791), ‘Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;’ thus securing US citizens’ right to speak their minds freely without fear of censorship or legal consequence. 

In recent decades, this particular idea of free speech as a right has been imbued in popular belief across the entire world, thanks in large part the United States’ efforts at global cultural dominance, with the status of a universal human right. In December 1948, following the horrors of Nazi totalitarianism, the Holocaust, and the Second World War, something of this was articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Art. XIX):

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Naturally, this leads to some confusion. As the racist far-right continues to recruit support across social media and to make its presence felt on the ground in real world populist opinion and politics, its activists have vociferously taken up the fight for the protection of the right to free speech. 

Continue Reading @ Unprecedented Times.

The Limits Of Free Speech

Matt Welch ✊ writing in Reason. Recommended by Christopher Owens.

When it comes to conflicts with people engaged in unpopular or disfavored speech, too many journalists side with the feds.

The sitting vice president, shortly before moving to Washington, D.C., successfully scapegoated through heavily publicized if legally unsuccessful pimping prosecutions a career newspaperman who last week shot himself to death at age 74 rather than sit through yet another prostitution-facilitation trial that he insisted to his dying days was an attack on free speech.

Yet the chances of Kamala Harris being asked this week—or any week—about the late James Larkin, or her starring role in the demonization of his and Michael Lacey's online classified advertising company Backpage as "the world's top online brothel," are vanishingly small. That's because people have a natural revulsion toward anything associated—however falsely—with child prostitution or sex trafficking, true. But it also stems from something far less excusable: When it comes to conflicts between the feds and those from the professionally unpopular corners of the free speech industry, journalists have been increasingly taking the side of The Man.

Continue reading In Reason.

Why Kamala Harris Won't Be Asked About the Suicide of a Newspaperman She Persecuted

Guardian ✒ Attorneys for protester argue law is unconstitutional restraint on free speech as legal defense fund organizers also arrested. Recommended read by Stanley Cohen.

Timothy Pratt
Attorneys representing an activist arrested while protesting against the building of “Cop City” in Georgia have launched a legal challenge to the use of a state domestic terrorism statute against protests, claiming an “act of free speech” is being unconstitutionally targeted, the Guardian can reveal.

The move comes amid the unprecedented arrests of organizers at a bail and legal defense fund that has helped some of the people arrested while protesting against the multimillion-dollar police and fire department training center planned for a forest south-east of Atlanta.

Cop City came to global attention after police shot dead an environmental protester in a raid on the forest and its defenders on 18 January – the first incident of its kind in US history.

Police staged a Swat-style raid on Wednesday on the Atlanta Solidarity Fund (ASF), arresting three of its members. The fund, operating in Atlanta since 2017, has helped some of the 42 protesters so far facing charges linked to protests against Cop City, nearly all of whom have been bailed out.

Continue reading @ Guardian.

‘Cop City’ Protest Lawyers Challenge Use Of Domestic Terrorism Statute

Stanley Cohen ✒ takes Twitter to task for its persistent erosion of free speech and its decision to ban him from the platform.

16-September-2022
The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth … If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. The theory of our Constitution is that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market . . . The First Amendment itself ensures the right to respond to speech we do not like, and for good reason. Freedom of speech and thought flows not from the beneficence of the state but from the inalienable rights of the person … Society has the right and civic duty to engage in open, dynamic, rational discourse.”– United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709, 724 (2012).

With these words, the Supreme Court echoed an aged but essential ideal . . . a timeless reminder to censors everywhere be they the algorithm muzzle of trendy social platforms, arid academic institutions, or poising political pens that the voice of freedom demands more than pious inapt platitudes. It mandates an unfettered even clashing marketplace of ideas.

Although preached worldwide by pariahs for time immemorial, in its most recent historical iteration the marketplace of ideas traces back hundreds of years to the quills of John Milton and John Stuart Mill and is bottomed fundamentally on the premise that the free dissemination of ideas creates an essential social process where truth competes and will eventually win out over falsehood, if only left to its unbridled natural device. It is this air of fact over fiction; of surety over sophism; of particulars over proselytism that threatens the status quo ante of the privileged that maintain power no matter what its price against those that fight to rid themselves of that very occupation of narrative, be it physical or one of ideas.

The move from the abstract philosophical debate in the United States to practical First Amendment application finds its genesis in the dissenting opinion of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in Abrams et. al v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919) an early case in which a constitutional challenge was raised to the conviction of anti-war dissidents under the Espionage Act for distributing leaflets calling for a strike at U.S. munitions plants. In finding such acts to be protected political speech enshrined under First Amendment jurisprudence, Holmes noted “that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas — that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.”

Challenged by the test of time and petty political posture to be sure, the marketplace of ideas has only grown in ardor and reach since Abrams. As reaffirmed most recently in City of Austin v. Reagan Nat’l Adver. Of Austin , LLC, 142 S. Ct. 1464 (2022) “[t]he First Amendment helps to safeguard what Justice Holmes described as a marketplace of ideas . . . A democratic people must be able to freely generate, debate, and discuss both general and specific ideas, hopes, and experiences.” Some twenty years earlier in Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343,358 (2003) the Supreme Court opined that “[t]he hallmark of the protection of free speech is to allow ‘free trade in ideas’ — even ideas that the overwhelming majority of people might find distasteful or discomforting.”

It is clear the dissent in Abrams is no longer a marginal voice in the wilderness looking for welcome for it has evolved to become the linchpin upon which speech–even painful, hurtful and disturbing speech– remains protected under now well-settled constitutional norms. Be it the obscenity of the Klan and neo-Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, the rancid screed of “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottsville or “death to Arabs” heard not just in the weekly Zionist pogroms in occupied Jerusalem, but from the thoughts, if not prayers, of its fanbase from coast to coast, these words may anger, they may hurt, they may intimidate but yet they are protected speech which play an essential role in the search for truth in the marketplace of ideas.

To be sure, the marketplace allegory is routinely used by the Supreme Court in the resolution of free-expression cases. Justices have used it to protect expression in virtually every area of First Amendment jurisprudence: prior restraint, libel, invasion of privacy, pornography access, advertising, picketing, expressive conduct, broadcasting, and cable regulation. The Court has repeatedly said the primary purpose of the First Amendment is to protect an uninhibited marketplace where differing ideas can clash. It is a fundamental rule of freedom, a bellwether of liberty, that Twitter in its ever-changing cherry-picks of good speech and bad, has not heard.

Social media was intended to unite the world in ways not known before: to move beyond the narrow artificial confines of state borders, banners and oaths to facilitate an exchange of ideas among a community of international strangers, but nonetheless a world of fellow travelers. Predictably, what began with the high hope of a legion of virtual street corner pamphleteers, has morphed to become another controlled megaphone of the rich, the powerful, the political class who sell costly shares in its commercial loudspeaker to the highest bidder, but yet the lowest of shareholder.

Over the years Twitter has grown from a platform of unbridled hope to orchestrated dictate as states have unleashed armies of paid trolls and bots to control the narrative. No one has spent more time or money in the effort to own the storyline than has Israel which has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into recasting its horrors and targeting those it sees as a threat to its tale of deadly fiction. It is clear I’ve become a favorite target of the Israeli/Zionist narrative with increasing complaints filed against me for nothing more than mere words. Be it a post of “Springtime for Hitler and Germany” from the famed musical The Producers, or another challenging the assertion that Judaism is a race, but wishing its author a good day at the tanning salon, on Twitter I have long used fact or sarcasm to challenge the palpably false sale of Israel as a democracy victimized by the world.

This past week I was permanently banned by Twitter for “hate speech” and “incitement to violence” without any example of where and when my words crossed that line. Twitter does not understand or simply refuses to accept a world where words, be they from the pen of the author to the book of their reader, are essential to the marketplace of ideas. It does not accept that one’s vision and voice is not a commodity to be owned by an algorithm be it a robot or private jet. Ideas are eternal. They bring friction, at times anguish, but ultimately no matter what their language they can bring boundless unity in a world of endless pain.

Twitter is a US-incorporated and US-based corporation. Unlike dozens of countries throughout the world, there is no “hate speech” or penalty for such within the United States. Though advocates of hate speech legislation have argued freedom of speech enhances an oppressive narrative disparaging equality and the Fourteenth Amendment’s purpose of ensuring equal protection under the law, it is an argument long in search of constitutional relevance.

From its earliest days the framers dispatched with little difficulty the notion of good speech and bad and rejected a test of ideas to be resolved through a balancing of the relative costs and benefits of a given declaration or debate. And though at times of great political tension or national peril, efforts have been made by some to tailor an otherwise unbridled pathway of words, the Constitution has held–foreclosing any effort to revise the First Amendment paradigm on the basis that some speech is simply unworthy of protection. More than 220 years ago the Supreme Court pronounced that the Constitution is not a mere abstract manuscript “prescribing limits, and declaring that those limits may be passed at pleasure.” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 178 (1803).

Is speech absolute? No. Are there categories of expression that cross a very wide wall of shelter, along the way shedding First Amendment protection? Of course. For example… neither obscenity nor defamation; fraud nor actual incitement are protected speech. They represent “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem.” Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U. S. 568, 571-572 (1942).

Yet, there is no constitutional exception for so-called hate speech. That some, perhaps many, may find expressions of bigotry, racism, and religious intolerance or ideas to be vulgar, offensive, profane is of no constitutional moment whatsoever. The First Amendment permits speakers to utter racially charged and offensive words in public directed at minorities and political groups. Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949). It permits them to express “virulent ethnic and religious epithets.” United States v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990). It allows sponsors to exclude members of the LGBTQ community from marching in a private parade. Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, 515 U.S. 557 (1995). It allows me to wear a jacket in a public building that says “Fuck the Draft” [Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971)] or to burn the American flag in protest. Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1990). It even tolerates a call for the overthrow of the United States government. Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969). The takeaway from these cases and many others is palpable and settled. Ultimately in a free society “[t]he right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is, therefore, one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes.” Terminiello, 337 U.S. at 4.

Lest there be any question about the continuing protection of so-called hate speech any such concern was resolved twenty years ago, in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, Minnesota, 505 U.S. 377 (1992). In R.A.V. the Supreme Court put to bed the notion that “hate speech” . . . words — actual or expressive– can, without more, be legislated against in almost all circumstances. R.A.V presented the high court with a particularly egregious challenge in that a group of white teenagers after a conversation fueled with racial hatred toward a Black family who had recently moved into the house across the street, made a cross and set it afire in the middle of the night on the lawn of their home. Later they burned another one on the street corner clearly visible from that home.

There could be no debate about the hate -filled motivation of the teens as historically, cross-burnings had been the trade-mark of the best-known hate group in America, the Ku Klux Klan, the penultimate white supremacist, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, xenophobic organization which terrorized many communities by lynchings, murders and other acts of violence in the name of racial segregation. Arrested and convicted, the Supreme Court in a unanimous decision overturned their conviction for a hate crime striking down an ordinance against speech that causes “anger, alarm, or resentment” based on race or religion. Noting that the teens could be convicted for offenses such as trespass or mischief, the Court made clear that the injuries of racist epithets and symbols does not outweigh the right to free speech. As noted, R.A.V is not an anomaly but reflects a long unbroken line of constitutional matters in which offensive even hateful speech has been deemed to be protected by the First Amendment. In case after case where the issue of hate speech has arisen, the Supreme Court has held that statutes penalizing such speech “must be interpreted with the commands of the First Amendment clearly in mind in order to distinguish true threats from constitutionally protected speech.” Perez v. Florida, 137 S. Ct. 853 (2017).

Ultimately that distinction, like Twitter’s mantra of incitement, turns on the speaker’s intent and the likelihood of result. One of the landmarks of American political liberty is the celebrated case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969) which finds its genesis in the Holmes dissent in Abrams some fifty years earlier. Originally arising in the political hysteria of the First World War, with the prosecution of activists for sedition and espionage on the basis of speech for its “tendency and the intent behind it,” Brandenburg raised the bar to heights that remain no less strong or compelling today. Under Brandenburg:

the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.

Brandenburg unmistakably insists that any limit on speech must be grounded in a realistic, factual assessment of harm. So, Twitter, tell me just what actual harm my decade on your platform has caused anyone. Where have my words these past ten years been directed to inciting imminent lawless action and such that they were likely to produce that result? Can it be using Twitter to share my numerous essays, opinion pieces and podcast interviews some of which, perhaps many, have caused unease or aggravated others? Or is it my public solidarity with oppressed peoples? Or my posts about the meaning and application of domestic and international law? Or my preach about the continuing injustice rained down by extant colonial projects on indigenous communities throughout the world? Or is it my expose on the American criminal justice system and its carceral state? Or has it been my challenge to a corrupt political process in the United States? Or my decades of representing political dissidents and movements and ideas throughout the world? Or my indictment of imperialist attacks and sanctions imposed upon states that say no to Western hegemony? Or my biting sarcasm that embarrasses cults of personality that are always the first to raise questions and challenge but last to provide seasoned consequential answers? Of course not.

Is it hateful or inciteful speech that brought me to address student bodies at Yale’s Divinity School and the law schools at Cornell and Pace; or involved me in the acclaimed international debates in Doha or Intelligence Squared in NYC; or had me lecture state and federal public defenders on criminal law; or selected me to serve as a mentor for young interns from top law schools throughout the country; or to appear dozens of times on live domestic or international televised forums discussing controversies of the day; or had me speak frequently at international conferences, or to advise foreign heads of state on legal issues and process; or has seen me regularly published in several languages in media outlets throughout the world; or had me designated as an expert on free speech by an administrative court in South Africa? Perhaps its decades of trying cases, writing briefs, and arguing appeals in state, federal, and international courts including the Supreme Court of the United States, six separate federal Circuit Courts of Appeal, the New York State High Court, the Hague, the ICC, and at INTERPOL that have left me woefully ill-equipped to convey the interest of clients or my own thoughts without digressing into so-called “hate speech” or “incitement to violence.” So just what is it that I did to invoke the wrath of the finely tuned, experienced, skilled censors of Twitter? In the first instance, I received a notice I was being blocked for a “hateful” post that said “death to Arabs,” death to Arabs,” and “death to Arabs.” Indeed, that was my post, but not my commentary.

Can it be the finely tuned sophisticated algorithms that flagged this tweet did not have the cognitive capacity to understand nuance or to juxtapose it to another’s the preceding tweet which, in essence, applauded Zionism and Israel as expressing the finest in the Jewish tradition of love and humanity? Is it possible the robot censor did not understand that my rejoinder was not of my own design but rather referred to that of Zionists chanting “death to Arabs,” death to Arabs,” “death to Arabs” during what has become their almost weekly pogrom in occupied Quds?

Full stop. Having filed my initial appeal pointing out the actual meaning and context of my “hateful” post, not long thereafter Twitter notified me that I was now blocked not on the basis of a single tweet but rather because of hateful and inciteful speech in general. In the days since I have filed several additional appeals requesting particularized examples to support this generic allegation that I am an inartful evil person, asking it to preserve related records and seeking the involvement of one of its attorneys. Twitter has gone silent not replying to any additional inquiries.

As the self-anointed protectorate of what it considers to be worthy values and speech as opposed to the unseemly, Twitter has long reserved unto itself the unitary power to impose sanctions for the daring of those who break with the arbitrary tenor and tone of its ever-changing “guidelines”. Putting aside for another day, but one surely yet to come, the constitutional question of whether and to what extent Twitter is mandated to comply with First Amendment edicts because it invites and serves as a public forum fulfilling a quasi-public function [Pruneyard Shopping Ctr. v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980)] nevertheless its subjective value-based edicts must be viewed in the light of settled constitutional law. It is there that Twitter and other social platforms will ultimately lose. Although the constitutional arguments that have addressed and rejected the Twitter pen pals of hate speech and incitement to violence are, by now, rich and legend, I will save for another time, perhaps another venue, a full argument as to why Twitter is bound by the same constitutional obligations that granted Citizens United and its private corporate cash cow the full protection of the First Amendment.

And what of the grand masters of the Twitter universe and their dutiful enforcers of good speech and bad … those who’s insight, experience and commentary about the pressing issues of our time is so widely respected and in demand as to be sought out not by political scientists, theologians and world leaders but by the sounding-board of their own cloistered mirrors. To be sure, the Board Chairman of Twitter, Bret Taylor has no doubt spent his life pursuing social justice for all as evidenced by an estimated net worth of $226 million dollars. This obvious sacrifice of personal reward for the benefit of those in need found its launch in providing software to businesses that were looking to increase productivity and massive profit. It worked. It still does.

Who is Parag Agrawal? Having been heralded by the Times of India with the headline of “India gets a handle @Twitter as Parag Agrawal named CEO,” the new chief executive officer quickly caved to the demands of the Modi Government when Twitter deleted accounts and tweets connected to farmer protests after the Delhi High Court authorized the government to take any steps against it should it refuse. Later when facing the prospect of criminal prosecution for any failure to observe new guidelines to regulate digital content on social media and streaming platforms, Twitter once again self-censored by adopting new local digital rules essentially promulgated to ensure content control of unpopular domestic speech or dissent in India. But alas, in banishing me from the marketplace of ideas, Mr. Agrawal’s censors failed to recall his own personal taunt at the hands of trolls who accused him of hate speech for his post “If they are not gonna make a distinction between Muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists.” No matter how upsetting that post might be, like mine, it was not his own original thought, but simply a recast of an earlier commentary of another.

What of Board Member David Rosenblatt? Although sure to draw the predictable tedious shriek of antisemitism for merely noting his devotion to Israel, can Mr. Rosenblatt’s presence on Twitter’s small Board of Directors and the special treatment Israel has long enjoyed from its platform be mere coincidence? A co-founder of the Arava Power Company, an Israeli solar development enterprise, Rosenblatt, known for his “strong ties” to Israel, where he is a frequent visitor, sits on a number of other Boards which maintain offices in the “nation-state” and which encourage and support Zionist activities there. Among their endeavors is the “Onward Israel” program which funds internships in Israel for young American Jews; Birthright Israel which sponsors trips to the occupied age-old communities of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights; the Center for Israel Engagement which subsidizes delegations between Israel and the US; sponsorship of programs providing economic and cultural support for the Israeli “sister-City” of Nahariya; and a college scholarship program which provides financial support to recent immigrants in Israel, with a priority for those who were in the Israeli Defense Forces.

What about this special relationship between Twitter and Israel? As a starting point, any examination of this bond and its impact on honest fact-based discussion and debate must necessarily begin from the recognition that Israel, like India, and a number of other autocratic regimes has stripped Twitter of any meaningful discretion let alone the ability to ensure an untethered exchange within the marketplace of ideas in the demanding state.

For example, according to Quds Press, Israel requires social media giants to permit it to have input, if not control, over the content of the posts which ultimately find their way into the stream of debate within the Israeli public at large. At one point Twitter allegedly deleted thousands of posts, pages and accounts following demands made by the Ministry of Justice based upon little more than vague unsupported claims that the information posed a threat to the safety of Israel. Elsewhere with unflinching regularity, Twitter suspends accounts of Palestinian journalists posting tweets critical of Israeli activity.

Recently the account of renowned Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti was suspended while she was reporting from a Sheikh Jarrah solidarity demonstration in the occupied West Bank. While Twitter later reported the suspension as “accidental,” it did not provide the specific grounds that had prompted its initial precipitous decision. Several years ago, Twitter precipitously suspended multiple accounts of Quds News Network with several hundred thousand followers based solely on the complaint of the Palestinian Authority that the accounts had violated one of their local rules in the occupied territory. Reportedly the PA action was a result of Israeli pressure. Last year it suspended the account of CODEPINK co-executive director Ariel Gold, a prominent Jewish activist known for her indefatigable support of justice for Palestinians. Long targeted by Zionist trolls, her suspension followed a number of tweets including one mourning the extrajudicial execution of a Palestinian man. So, too, famed Palestinian academic and author Ramzy Baroud’s account was recently blocked for unspecified violations of Twitter rules. After an international uproar, his account was reinstated with no particularized grounds provided for its suspension.

Elsewhere Twitter has permitted the Israeli government to use its platform not just for the dissemination of patently false information but as a cover for its military operations. For example, the Israeli military’s official Twitter account posted a clip that purported to show Hamas embedding missile launchers into civilian neighborhoods. In reality, the footage was but a decoy weapon used by Israel during a training exercise. On other occasions, the IDF posted images of buildings it bombed in Gaza, including one that housed various media outlets including Al Jazeera, the Associated Press and Middle East Eye journalists. Although the images are typically accompanied by blanket assertions the building harbored Hamas military assets, no evidence is provided to support these indiscriminate claims. In an even more brazen violation of Twitter rules, if not international law, the Israeli military once announced in a post that its troops had begun attacking Gaza. A deliberate lie, it was part of a scheme to draw Hamas fighters into exposing themselves by thinking an invasion was underway when one was not. Likewise, the English version of the IDF account falsely accused Palestinian model Bella Hadid of advocating for “throwing Jews into the sea”, when in fact she had chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” In none of these instances did Twitter take any action against Israeli state accounts, or its supporters, despite their willful dissemination of calculated misinformation and libel, or a clear intended purpose to bring about the loss of Palestinian lives.

In the light of what is very much a glaring all-out surrender to the political and military interests and demands of Israel and Zionists across the world, Twitter has increasingly, almost eagerly, forfeited any vestige of objectivity in the marketplace of ideas regarding the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, liberation and justice. Comfortable with accepting, indeed readily furthering, the Zionist narrative, it has unleashed its auto-censors against Palestinian voices and those that stand with them opting instead to market the distorted and dishonest Israeli tale of perpetual victim to overwhelm the reality of the life and death of Palestinians at their colonizer hands. I am but one of many such targets.

Over the course of my decade on Twitter, I have drawn to my voice some forty-thousand followers and published almost half a million tweets. While they have covered a wide, diverse range of topics and issues, much of my effort has been born of solidarity with my Palestinian cousins . . . a united family of resistance, one determined to expose and to defeat the criminal aims of a European colonial project.

For those reading this essay through a link on Twitter, unlike the dozens of occasions when it served as a launch for other controversial often uncomfortable views of mine, this missive posts not from me directly, but through a supporter, as I am banned: victim to Twitter’s corporate hypocrisy, one that gauge’s speech not by the value of its untempered exchange, but rather its monied popularity and cheap, political and social convenience.

Regrettably, over these years we have seen Twitter, once a largely independent platform of timely social and political discourse and conscience, essentially crumble to become an intimidating merry-go-round of often irrelevant thought and commercial sale that challenges little but what to eat; what to wear; how to look. This may be the public square of mercantile ease . . . it is not the marketplace of ideas.

Since the day when at age16 my nose was bloodied and eyes burned by police batons and pepper spray as one of the thousands who marched across the Brooklyn Bridge in an antiwar protest to shut down the headquarters of the New York City Police Department, I have fought against hate and state violence everywhere. As a student activist, community organizer, Vista, social worker, public defender and international human rights litigator, in and out of courts I have sided with the despaired, the despised the disaffected at every crossroad of my life. Although at times my journey has taken me into the midst of armed struggle, be it at Wounded Knee, Oka, or in Palestine, my personal passage has been that as an advocate, a wordsmith of sorts who has learned to navigate the marketplace of ideas with and on behalf of those whose voice, but not their vision, has been muffled if not muted by the state and its agents because of color, faith, poverty or principled politics. For me, nowhere has that fight been longer, louder or more essential than it has been in support of Palestinian liberation and justice.

So, Twitter, against the backdrop of your duplicitous corporate logo that exalts your multi-national empire as “a microblogging social media platform which gives you the freedom to post and share anything without any barriers or restrictions” . . . your words, not mine- do what you must.

At day’s end, you can take from me the virtual stairway to your trembling co-opted platform, but you will never silence my voice.
Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City.
You can no longer follow Stanley Cohen on Twitter @StanleyCohenLaw

Twitter ✑ Platform of Exchange … Vehicle of Duplicity

National Secular Society ✒ has reiterated its commitment to free speech at an event to show solidarity with author Salman Rushdie.


NSS campaigns officer Alejandro Sanchez (pictured) joined other free speech campaigners at 'Stand with Salman', which was held in London last week following the recent attack on Rushdie.

Rushdie was stabbed on stage while giving a talk on free speech in the US last month by a man who accused him of 'attacking Islam'.

Rushdie has faced attempts against his life after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989 ordering Rushdie's execution following the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, which some Muslims consider blasphemous.

At the event, which was subject to heavy police presence, Alejandro read NSS chief executive Stephen Evans' official response to the attack.

Other speakers included Toby Young of the Free Speech Union and anti-extremism academic Wasiq Wasiq.

Alejandro's reading called for the end of the "stealth blasphemy code" and "climate of self-censorship" that have developed. Just last year, a teacher was forced into hiding for using images of Muhammad in class, while this year a film was pulled from cinemas following religious protests.

Continue reading @ National Secular Society.

NSS Defends Free Speech At ‘Stand With Salman’ Event

Maryam Namazie ✒ Interviewed by Emma Park for The Freethinker.


Maryam Namazie is the founder of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and a founding member of One Law for All. Born in Iran, she moved to the US in 1983 after the revolution of 1979, and to the UK in 2000. She is a tireless campaigner for women’s rights and against both Islamism and racism. In 2005, she was named Secularist of the Year by the National Secular Society. She has received many other awards, including the International Secularism Prize of the Comité Laïcité République in 2016.

Maryam’s uncompromising stance, such as in her topless protests, and her refusal to censor her views, have caused controversy in some quarters. For instance, in 2020, she spoke at Warwick University for a TedX event. Her title was ‘Creativity in Protesting Religious Fundamentalism’. TedX waited a year before publishing a video of her talk, but refused to publish her slides and accompanied the video with a trigger warning.

I met Maryam in the office of the CEMB, King’s Cross, on 23rd February 2022. She spoke to me about the CEMB and its work, the experience of not ‘belonging’ in the UK, and why the radical Left seems to have allied itself with the Islamist movement. Other topics included the Iranian tradition of political protest, the relationship between religious freedom and freedom of speech, and more. Below are extracts from our interview, edited for clarity and concision, with occasional glosses inserted in square brackets.~ Emma Park.

Maryam Namazie In Her Office In King’s Cross.
Photo: Emma Park

EP: Let’s start with the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. How large an operation is it?

MN: It started quite small in the sense that very few people were willing to call themselves ex-Muslims or to come out publicly and do that. The idea behind the organisation was that having people come out publicly normalises it and breaks the taboo, and makes it accessible to all. When there’s all this discrimination and pressure and intimidation, coming out publicly is a way of resisting the status quo and trying to change things.

When we started it [in 2007], people were saying that we were being absurd, there are no ex-Muslims around, and we were trying to get attention. It was hard initially. For example, at our first conference at Conway Hall, there were very few ex-Muslims there, and those that were there were hiding on the balcony, up where they couldn’t be photographed or filmed. People were like, “You’re talking about ex-Muslims – where are they?” Now, fifteen years on, things have changed incredibly in favour of this visibility and presence, and there are many ex-Muslims.

So I would say, yes, we are a small, a relatively new movement. We are not as established as other freethought, atheist, humanist, secularist movements in Europe and Britain, partly because a lot of us are refugees, new migrants, and we don’t have access to the same resources. CEMB is largely a volunteer-run organisation. All our funding comes from individual donors primarily, but people have been hit hard by Covid, so it’s really gone down, to the point where we are not sure we’ll be able to carry on next year. But somehow people are helping every time we’re about to close down. Our costs are quite minimal. It’s the rent, the website, publicity, stipend, and volunteer support and assistance. I’m the only paid person, on £10,000 a year.

EP: Where would you put yourself on the political spectrum?

MN: I’m a communist – so basically as far left as it goes. But not a communist that supports the Soviet Union or China or all of these so-called communist groups out there. I’m on the left spectrum of pro-refugees, pro-open borders, pro-freedom of expression. And also anti-racist and against bigotry against Muslims, or placing collective blame on all Muslims because of the religious right amongst them.

EP: In your view, is bigotry against Muslims a form of racism, or is it analogous to racism?

MN: I think it’s a form of racism. Of course there are all different races of Muslims. We all hear, whenever there is any criticism of ‘bigotry against Muslims’, they all say, well, Muslims are not a race, therefore we can’t be bigoted against Muslims, because there are also white Muslims, and so on. That’s the argument you often hear. But the reality is that it is seen as a brown religion, a black religion, a minority religion, and one that’s alien to Western societies.

EP: What are the CEMB’s biggest achievements over the last fifteen years?

I think the greatest achievement has been to highlight the fact that there are non-believers in the so-called Muslim community. I think that’s an important thing to do, because very often, the Left that supports Islam and sees Islamism as a revolutionary or anti-imperialist force, also sees Muslims as homogenous, and therefore, if you criticise Islam, you’re seen to be attacking an entire community of people. And for the far Right, anyone who is a Muslim is bringing in a foreign ideology into the country, and they’re destroying Western civilisation and that sort of thing. So both Left and Right look at the Muslim community or Muslim society, so-called, as homogenous.

EP: So they’re just generalising?  

MN: Yes, but what happens when you generalise about something is that you recognise those in power as its authentic representatives. Given the fact that we are living in a period of the rise of the [Islamist] religious Right, it’s they who are seen to be representatives and authentic Muslims, and therefore women who don’t wear the veil are viewed as westernised, or self-hating, and the veil is viewed as the authentic dress of those who come from a Muslim background. What the Left does is that it maintains the demands of the religious Right on the population. So the Left says you shouldn’t blaspheme, because it hurts sentiments, even if it’s people from Muslim backgrounds doing it.
So I think that achievement is something that’s quite valuable, and over the long run I think we will recognise it as such: the fact that we have shown that Muslim communities and societies are not homogenous. I think this is key in humanising people and in making them see that any given community or society is not reactionary, or progressive, all at the same time. There are differences of politics and opinions. People can see that in Britain, they can’t see it when it comes to the Muslim community.

EP: How far have the radical Left got into bed with the Islamist religious Right?

MN: This is something that I’ve had to deal with a lot: progressive student unions barring me from speaking, and saying I’m inflammatory and inciting hatred against Muslims. I think it comes from a good place, in general, because it’s the attitude that you want to not tolerate racism where you see it. I think that’s a good thing. But conflating criticism of the Islamic Right with an attack on Muslims in general is very problematic.

And not everything comes from a good place. There is also political self-interest for some of these groups: they are anti-imperialist, and they see Islamism as an anti-imperialist force, and therefore they side with it versus US or UK imperialism.

EP: Is Islamism anti-imperialist?

MN: It is an imperialist force in and of itself. It has eradicated cultures and art, music, dress – it’s destroyed so much in all of the countries that it has gained access to and power over. The Left that supports it doesn’t see that it’s a counter-revolutionary force. It has eradicated Left and working-class movements in those societies.

EP: How did the Iranian revolution of 1979 affect you?

MN: I was born in 1966. When the Islamic regime was established in 1980 after the revolution, we left the country. We didn’t all leave together, because we couldn’t. My mum brought me to India to go to school, because they shut the schools down in Iran, and then my dad told her not to come back, so we stayed, and then my dad joined us later. We came to the UK in 1982, but we weren’t allowed to stay here, so we went to the US in 1983. I came back to the UK in 2000. My family is still in the US.

EP: What made you move to the UK?

MN: To be closer to Iran and my political party, which used to be the Worker-Communist Party. I left it a few years ago. Basically, I just got fed up.

EP: Are you affiliated to any political party now?

MN: No.

EP: What was it like growing up in Iran before the revolution?

MN: The Shah’s regime was a dictatorship, and the revolution was against this. There was a period when there was a lot of freedom, before the Islamic regime took complete power, which it did by massacring lots of people. I went to a mixed school, I wasn’t veiled, my family’s quite secular. Religion wasn’t really an issue for me. We didn’t fast during Ramadan. Some people in our family did, some didn’t. My grandmother sometimes wore the veil, sometimes didn’t. The first time I came across in-your-face religion was when the Islamic regime took over.

EP: Did you grow up as a believing Muslim?

MN: I was born a Muslim, the way people are out of no choice of their own, because of where you’re born. My father had a very strict Muslim upbringing. He still doesn’t eat pork, drink or gamble, and my grandfather was a cleric. My last name, Namazie, means ‘prayer’. But my father never required us to pray, to wear the veil, so I never felt that I was less because I was a girl. It’s also my family’s background. My mum is from Nepal. She was Christian, and she converted to Islam to marry my dad. All of my aunts and uncles from Iran, they’ve married Indians, Iranians, different types of people, so we’ve got quite a mixed family. Some prayed, some didn’t. I think it was like that in quite a lot of countries in the Middle East at that time. It was much more relaxed, and now it’s much more forced. Before, you could eat in front of someone who was fasting. Now, out of respect, you’re not supposed to. What happens with the religious Right is that it changes the demarcation line, makes it stricter and more difficult for people to pick and choose as they want.

EP: Would you be able to go back to Iran now?

No. I’ve had threats from the Iranian government, and also – it’s a long story. There is the possibility of being kidnapped. [Compare the alleged plot against the Iranian-born journalist Masih Alinejad.]

EP: In terms of your identity, how do you see yourself?

MN: I always believe that you are from where you live and that home is where you work and struggle. But the older I get, the more I miss Iran. It’s very strange, I can’t explain it – it’s very nostalgic and emotional.

EP: How did you become an ex-Muslim?

MN: I became an atheist many years ago, I don’t remember exactly when. It was gradual, for sure. By university I was an atheist. I never called myself ex-Muslim, I don’t even like the term. It’s just an idea that came up about being able to promote the idea that there is freethought and freethinkers amongst Muslims.

EP: How many people would you estimate are ex-Muslims around the world?

MN: We don’t really know the scale of it, but I do think that every family has an ex-Muslim. I think it’s much stronger where Islam is in power. You don’t see it as much because of the lack of freedom to express yourself. But if people said in the UK what they say in Iran about Islam, it would be considered very Islamophobic. One of the trending hashtags in Iran is #IShitOnIslam. Imagine having that here – it would be considered so inappropriate. That rage… You can see even from the response of government officials. The Egyptian government set up a partnership with the Ministry of Youth and Sports to combat atheism. Saudi Arabia considers atheism a form of terrorism. When Deeyah Khan did her documentary about us [Exposure: Islam’s Non-Believers, 2016], there were texts being sent to Muslims in Britain, warning them not to let their children see the film. Atheism is a real threat to these states.
Wall Above Maryam’s Desk In Her Office. Photo: Emma Park

EP: How connected are the different Islamist movements in different countries around the world, including the UK?

MN: They have their rivalries. There are some who are more supportive of Assad and the Islamic regime, or pro-Saudi, or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. There are divisions, in the same way that you have far Right groups in the West that have differences of opinion and divisions. But they are one movement, because despite the differences, they fundamentally want very much the same thing.

EP: What do they want?

MN: They are nostalgic for some golden age of Islam. They want a Caliphate and sharia law, they want the ideal Islamic state as was the case when Mohammed was alive. What that means to them is the idea that doubt and freethought cannot be allowed. Women need to know their place in society. In Britain, they will say, we’re not for the execution of apostates, but they are for it in an ideal Islamic state. There’s a lot of doublespeak and propaganda to dupe people into thinking that they’re the nice version in Britain.

EP: How strong is the Islamist movement in Britain today?

MN: Britain is one of its strongholds. In a country where they’re not in state power, Britain is one of those countries where they are well-established. If we look at Islamists who have got access to positions of power in the UK, and if you look at the whole idea of sharia law, how we have so many sharia courts in this country, and despite various Parliamentary groups looking into this issue, there has never been a decision made on it. The government is always justifying it as people’s choice of religion, whereas it’s something very different and very sinister – it’s part of the political wing of the Islamist movement.

EP: Roughly how many sharia courts are there in the UK at present?

MN: There’s no set number, because they’re not registered. Not that I think they should be registered – it would be like registering FGM clinics. In some reports there have been up to a hundred. A lot of them are ad hoc, in mosques. It’s not like a registered court, where you would know the exact number. Sharia courts were only established in this country in the mid-80s. It goes back to our argument that it’s part of the religious Right movement. There were Muslims before in this country, none of them needed to go to sharia courts, they did not have to go.

EP: Not being a Muslim in terms of your religious beliefs, how do you see your Iranian side?

MN: For me, it’s the protest and the resistance. That makes me proudest to be Iranian. I think it’s a continuation of the original Iranian revolution, that was never allowed to achieve its goals. Look at the French revolution. It happened so long ago, but we still feel the effects of it today, when we talk about laïcité, or secularism in the proper sense, not in the wishy-washy British sense. So I think the revolution and its politicisation of society in Iran, to the extent that a majority of people were born under an Islamic regime, and are fighting it tooth and nail. I see that as a really proud history, and one that I am a part of.

EP: Do you have any favourite Iranian authors?

MN: I’m going to sound like a party hack, I’m not in the Worker Communist Party any more, but – the leader of that, Mansoor Hekmat, I became a communist because of him. I find his writing so human, and seeing the world in such a fundamental way. But there are also many great poets in Iran. There’s Ahmad Shamlou, who was very critical of the state, or a woman poet, Forough Farrokhzad, who was such a taboo-breaker.

EP: Is there a long history in Iran of criticising the state?

MN: Yes, definitely. And also a history of freethought. There is Sadegh Hedayat, he’s a well-known writer who is an atheist, very critical of religion. Also there’s a very funny character, it’s called Molla Nasreddin, which is famous in Iran, but also in Azerbaijan and other countries, and it’s a bumbling clergyman – all the cartoons are making fun of religion and religious rule. For example, he’s following a group of donkeys and they’re going to Mecca, that sort of anti-clericalism, like in Charlie Hebdo.

EP: Talking of Charlie Hebdo and laïcité, you mentioned that British secularism seems ‘wishy-washy’ by comparison to the French version. Would you be in favour of a more French approach over here?

MN: I think that’s the only approach. Not to say that I am completely supportive of the French government, I don’t think it is completely promoting laïcité, I think there’s a lot of politics as well involved. But the idea of the state being incompetent, where it has no position on religion, it’s separate completely, is hugely important. It’s not enough to be neutral.

EP: The idea that the state should not have any influence on politics?

MN: Any influence, but also on the educational system, in public policy. Faith schools, for example, are not good for children.

EP: Why should religion not have any influence on education or public policy?

MN: Faith and education seem to be antithetical to each other. Education should promote freethought, doubt, questioning. Faith is the opposite of that. Is it the role of an educational system, to teach people to be submissive, or to learn about dogma? I think not. Also religion shouldn’t have a place, for example, in a court of law or when making public policy. Why should there be faith-based health services? We all bleed the same. It’s just a way of helping to bring the religious right more into the public space, whereas it shouldn’t really have any space. That’s different from being neutral. A state should be playing an active role in combating religion. Yes, you have the right to your religion, but that’s very different from having a right to a religious school, or a right to faith-based services. Those are separate things.

EP: So, in your view, religious freedom should have certain limits?

MN: Yes, because religion is a private matter. That’s where there’s a problem, that for some reason, it’s as if religious freedom means you can shove your religion down everybody’s throat. You may have the freedom to believe in what you want, but when it comes to the public space, it’s not about a personal right any more, it’s about a right that imposes on society. If we recognise it as a private belief, it becomes a lot easier to manage it.

EP: Talking about Charlie Hebdo: how important are laughter and satire in promoting free speech?

MN: Charlie Hebdo is really important not just for French society but for all of us. I spoke at the third anniversary of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo. I was the only English speaker there, because you know how it’s been over here in supporting them: if there have been any media reports on the attacks, they don’t show the cartoons, they don’t show any of the images – that’s the whole point, isn’t it? They [Charlie Hebdo] have been left alone to a large extent, because it is that same idea that criticising Islam is detrimental to Muslims. The argument I made was that what Charlie Hebdo does is important for freethinkers from Muslim backgrounds, because it’s opening the space up for us as well. It means a lot to Islam’s non-believers, as well as its benefits for free speech in European countries.

EP: What is the best way in Britain of countering Islamist fundamentalism, while at the same time not promoting anti-Muslim bigotry?

MN: Islamism is part of UK foreign and domestic policy. How can you have relations with the Saudi government, or with the Pakistani or Iranian government, and then address Islamism in your own country? It’s impossible, because in order to justify your relationship with those countries, you’ve justified Islamism, so it makes it easier for it to grow roots here as well.

At the same time, the idea that we foreigners are never British citizens… The jihadi bride, Shamima Begum – the fact that her citizenship can be taken away says a lot about how this government views the ‘other’ and minorities. Even if you are born here, because your parents happen to be from Bangladesh you’re never part of this country. This idea is that you belong to the Muslim umma [the worldwide Muslim community] – the Muslim community, a Muslim country, you’re never really British. It gives people the feeling that they don’t belong, and also, the government itself is saying ‘You don’t belong’ with this policy.

EP: Since being in the UK, have you experienced racism yourself?

MN: Yes. The first time I experienced it was when we left India in 1982. We went to Bournemouth, because my dad knew someone there. We were walking down the street, and some lady was saying something, and my mum was waving to her, she thought she was just saying hello, and she was like, “You fucking foreigners, get out of this country!” So that was the first time. Since 2000, it’s, you know, the looks you get if you’re talking in another language – on the train, for example. It’s constantly being told, if you disagree with anything the UK government says, “Why don’t you just go home?” You never belong.

Since I’ve got a son now, my idea was always, “You’re British, you were born here, you’re not Iranian.” This was always my propaganda to him. Then he’s grown up, and he’s faced so much racism at school [in London]. I feel very sorry for him, because it affects him quite a lot. I guess you then feel like, who are you? You don’t belong anywhere. I can see why people feel so disillusioned, that they’re not part of British society.

EP:  Have you had women in stricter Muslim communities telling you of some of the problems they have had, or what it’s like being in that very repressive sort of environment in the UK?

MN: In the work I do with One Law for All, we have been talking to lots of women, gathering testimonies. We did quite a bit of that for the Parliamentary Committee that was going to be looking into sharia courts, that never did. [See Parliamentary discussion in May 2019.] It was before lockdown. We gathered testimonies, and I provided evidence to the Committee, and we did written submissions. In those situations, there are women who talk about the awful things that have happened to them in the sharia courts. People say, “The sharia courts are not stoning anyone to death, they’re not amputating them, they’re just dealing with marriage and divorce and child custody.” But those are pillars of women’s oppression in the family. So it trivialises what happens to women.

EP: Is it difficult for these women to integrate with other British people, non-Muslims, or into wider society?

MN: It is difficult, partly because some of the problems include the fact that men may have only married women in a nikah (an Islamic marriage), and so when there’s violence or divorce, the women don’t have any rights, because it was never a proper marriage – they were led to believe that it was. Plus if you’re looking at relationships where there’s coercion and violence, women are also kept very isolated. They may not even be able to speak the language, or have many friends outside, who the husband has given them permission to have relationships with. We’re talking about some of the most vulnerable people in society. They’re not protected and they’ve been left at the mercy of these sort of kangaroo courts.

EP: What’s the attitude of the Left?

MN: I think they think it’s people’s right to religion. But again, the counter-argument is, religion is a private matter.

We’ve talked of the way that racism and criticism of religion may be associated in some people’s minds. Is one of the problems with the approach of the Left that they’re so worried about racism that they are not able to tackle these issues of abuse within Muslim communities?

MN: It’s not all the Left. Practically everyone I work with is on the Left. A lot of ex-Muslim groups are also Left-leaning, though there are other groups too – and a lot of the women’s groups I work with are Left-leaning. A lot of the protest movements that we’re seeing in Iran or Afghanistan, they are Left-leaning as well. There is a very vibrant Left that is opposed to both fundamentalism and racism.
But there is that section of the Left that hides behind the idea of racism and bigotry, as a way of saying, we’re so concerned about racism, we’re going to support sharia courts and so on. But they’re not very concerned with the racism that ex-Muslims face, for example. If freethinkers are killed, suddenly they’re not so vocal about human rights. They see Islamism as a revolutionary and anti-imperialist force. It’s an uncomfortable ally, but one that they want.

EP: Where does the CEMB fit in with other freethought movements in the UK?

MN: With the National Secular Society we have very good relations. They are also seen to be a bit more upfront with this criticism of religion. Most of our relationships in the UK are with minority and women’s groups, such as Southall Black Sisters, or Centre for Secular Space, or Iranian and Kurdish women’s rights organisations. I can’t think of any freethought groups we work with. I think we are seen to be a bit much, in the sense of going too far. But I think you need to go too far, especially with what they’re doing [in Islamism] – for goodness’ sake, they’re decapitating people.

EP: Topless protests: why?

MN: Topless protest is the most difficult thing I have ever done. The first time I did it, I didn’t get my period for six months, that’s how stressed I felt. I still feel really embarrassed when my parents come and see pictures of it. The reason I did it is because Aliaa Magda Elmahdy in Egypt did it in 2012. She was under a lot of attacks and pressure, and I said, “Let’s do something in support of her, let’s do a topless calendar.” And of course, suggesting it, I had to do it myself. The idea is that a woman’s body is considered to be the source of chaos and fitna [‘Islam. Unrest or rebellion, esp. against a rightful ruler,’ S.O.E.D.], that’s why we have to be veiled. Therefore owning your body and using it as a tool for protest and liberation is really a great way of challenging this view that a woman’s body is obscene and shouldn’t be seen and heard.

EP: Final question: what limits should be set to free speech in the law?

MN: I don’t think there should be any limits. Hate speech is really subjective. A lot of what I say is considered hate speech. Even saying that the Holocaust didn’t happen, let people say that ridiculous, absurd thing, and let others be able to challenge it. The best way to combat bad speech is with good speech. You have to have the freedom to be able to listen to various views and to be able to challenge them. We’re living in an age where speech is considered akin to causing physical harm. We need to push for a period where you could say anything, you could have very challenging conversations with one another, and manage to still be friends, families, and move on with your life without getting your head chopped off.

Of course there’s a difference between hate speech and inciting violence. That’s where we should be drawing the line. But otherwise, I think we should let people talk. And it would be good for people to learn to listen as well. You don’t have to agree with everything you hear – that’s fine. This whole thing of safe spaces, of things being so harmful that you can’t say it anywhere, is problematic for society. It feeds into this idea that that’s why they have to cut your head off, because you’ve upset them so much. I’m upset by a lot of things I hear, but nobody would say I have a right to go and attack someone physically.

⏩Maryam Namazie is an Iranian-born activist and Spokesperson of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and One Law for All.

‘The Best Way To Combat Bad Speech Is With Good Speech’

Matt Treacy ✒ It is fitting, given that five of its 15 members have a direct personal involvement in the legal system, that the first item to jump out from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission’s latest missive on racism and discrimination is a clarion call for “the need to extend access to Legal aid for people facing discrimination.”


This might be completely appropriate given that there are no greater beneficiaries of the heroic struggle against racism and discrimination than, well, the legal profession. Not just those who benefit directly from wetting their beaks in the abundant waters of racism, but those who are colour blind when it comes to ensuring that even one of the white indigenes landing up before the Beak on his or her 145th charge has a damn good chance of being given allowed go free once more to tackle whatever demons have forced them to prey upon their neighbours.

That said, we ought of course to take seriously the demands of this august body comprised of marginalized Professors of Law, Equality, Human Rights and NGO bosses. For, who better than they to know the evil beast of discrimination that lurks among the shady by-ways of liberal Ireland?

This report is timed to coincide with today, March 21, being the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The IHREC being the hall monitors for Ireland on whom they regularly report back to New York on its egregious failures to eliminate bold things.

Specifically, they refer to the apparent “pattern of delays” by the Irish state in “meeting its target deadlines” in “eliminating racism and racial discrimination in Ireland.” Which begs the question as to what exactly is the target, and how will anyone – even the experts in spotting all of this – know when they have been met?

Racial discrimination and racism is, of course, bad – as is discriminating against anyone for random reasons of religion, physical appearance, sexuality, socio-economic background or whatever. Indeed, there are laws to deal with this, so that if a person feels that they are being denied a job, an apartment, a school place or whatever just because of one of the above, then they can take legal action. They have a good prospect of gaining satisfaction once they can prove their case.

There are few, if any, such successful legal cases in Ireland for the reason that the people who mostly control the structures which would be in a position to implement such discrimination are mostly people like those who make up the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and indeed every other elite body in the state. People outside of that circle generally treat others as they find them anyway.

Even a cursory acquaintance with the public life of Ireland would indicate that far from being discriminated against, that members of favoured minority groups are punching far above their weight in almost every area. Indeed, if you were to believe that mainstream media and commercial advertising is an accurate reflection of Irish society then you might be forgiven for thinking that almost every household in the country is non-binary, non-traditional and replete with persons of colour with perhaps the token Irish thrown in, sometimes in the role of Victorian Music Hall villain.

The problem with racialism is of course that it can cut both ways. This is argued, for example, by persons of Asian background in the United States who feel that they have been made the fall guys within the education system where their high standards of achievement have made them easy targets for positive discrimination favouring others.

It all depends on whether the IHREC or some other equivalent body decides that the random group of which you are a member is a “protected group.” If you are, then you can claim that more or less anything bad that happens to you is a consequence of your being a member of that group. If you are not, then you are just another individual piece of demographic flotsam and jetsam subject to the vagaries and twists of fortune of human existence.

Which again begs the question: Who are the protected groups in Irish society and on what basis are they, like the Corncrake, a protected group?

Even the IHREC – which one presumes is replete with experts on all of this stuff – seems pretty vague when it comes to definitions. In its current Submission on the General Scheme of the Criminal Justice (Hate Crime) Bill we are provided with a definition of “groups which have a history of oppression or inequality, or which face deep-rooted prejudices, hostility and discrimination, or which are vulnerable for some other reason.”

That the quote is taken from the IHREC submission is appropriate because they are using all of this vagueness about racism and racial hatred in order to bolster their demands that the Irish state implement greater controls on public expression in order to combat some ill-defined “growth in racism and far-right organising in Ireland.”

The IHREC categorical claim in regard to this is referenced to a January 2020 report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination which was presumably submitted by the IHREC.

And yet, if you go to the bother of reading that report there is not one single verifiable incident of any such instance of hate crime, despite the Committee being “concerned about the reportedly high level of racist hate crime targeted at ethnic minorities.” There’s that “reportedly” thing again.

The report similarly refers to “increasing incidence of racist hate speech towards Travellers, Roma, refugees, asylum seekers and migrants” without providing one single piece of evidence of any such thing. The claim is based on references to the internet where you can find more or less anything you want to find if you are so motivated.

Far more seriously is the claim on page 4 of the report, which alleges that there were “frequent instances of racist hate speech made by politicians, especially during election campaigns.” If there were, then surely they might have been able, or indeed expected by such a respectable body as the United Nations, to provide some evidence of this?

Is the Irish government happy that a Commission appointed by itself has stood over such a damning indictment of Irish society and indeed the Irish state through its police forces and other institutions including its democratic political process?

Especially bearing in mind that the United Nations, when it addresses issues of racism and actual hate crimes, has dealt with genocides and mass murder – not some NGO employee “reporting” that someone was beastly to them or to someone who rang their office.

All of this gross self-serving exaggeration based on subjective “reporting” might be safely ignored were it not for the fact that the IHREC and similar bodies wield significant clout. At the present time they are using that clout and those exaggerations in order to bolster what could well turn out to be a significant curtailing of public expression under the rubric of suppressing “hate crime.”

Perhaps we, and the state that appoints such a body, ought to be expecting somewhat higher standards when it comes to supporting the claims upon which they base their demands for such restrictions on public discourse.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

Rights Commission Says Free Speech Needs Restricting Due To Racism

National Secular Society ✒ has welcomed proposals to protect the freedom to criticise harmful cultural practices.


The Law Commission has concluded that the current protections applying to criticism of religious practices in hate crime legislation should be extended to cover 'cultural' practices.

The recommendation, made in its report on hate crime law published today, follows concerns expressed by the NSS that criticising certain religious practices may inadvertently be caught by 'stirring up' racial hatred laws.

The Law Commission's recommendations also addressed the NSS's concerns regarding 'blasphemous' imagery and inconsistencies over which groups should be protected by hate crime law.

Cultural practices and 'stirring up' offences

Laws criminalising 'stirring up' of religious hatred currently include a clause that protects "discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse" of religions or religious practices from being prosecuted as hate crime.

However, this clause does not apply to stirring up racial hatred. As a result, criticising the practices of a group considered both a race and a religion, such as Jews and Sikhs, could inadvertently fall foul of hate crime laws.

Continue reading @ National Secular Society.

NSS Welcomes Free Speech Assurances In Proposed Hate Crime Reforms

Glenn Greenwald ✒ Free speech has always been more than a Constitutional guarantee: it's also a crucial societal value. And it's more imperiled than ever.

... One of the effects of the ensuing intense controversies was that I was unable to finish an article I had been working on for months at the time: a lengthy, deeply reported examination of the internal war engulfing the ACLU, fueled by a raging conflict between its more traditional lawyers who still believe in the primacy of free speech and the need to defend it and the newer political liberal activists and lawyers who do not.

Among the people I interviewed was the organization’s long-time Executive Director, Anthony Romero, who was forced to navigate the post-Charlottesville controversy with a series of increasingly confusing statements designed to appease not only public and donor anger over the defense by ACLU lawyers of the right of white supremacists to march (after one killed a protester with his car) but also internal rage that ACLU lawyers took that free speech case. 

Romero insisted to me that the ACLU had not retreated from its historic commitment to free speech nor its resolve to avoid partisan politics despite a series of post-Charottesville memos and a highly-funded election campaign that certainly gave the opposite appearance.

Continue reading @ Glenn Greenwald.

The Ongoing Death of Free Speech ➖ Prominent ACLU Lawyer Cheers Suppression Of A New Book

Ralph Leonard ✒ We all think it. We all feel it. We all express it. And yet, lust has a bad rep. After all, lust is one of the seven deadly sins. A conduit for all those other filthy vices: avarice, gluttony, profit hunting, power, covetousness, the pleasures of the eye, the pleasures of the flesh and ‘soulless’ hedonism.

Lust is the trashy ‘other’ of the respectable Love. Love is angelic, stable and restrained by reason. Lust is Luciferean, volatile and insatiable. It doesn’t give respect to continence. It is immune to reason. It can trespass into moments where rational stoicism is required. Lust is also propulsive and brimming with vitality, a life affirming force of energy and excess. Humanity literally wouldn’t exist without it.

We almost never use the phrase ‘falling in lust’ or ‘lust at first sight’. Even though this happens all the time. So it may seem quixotic, even a bit improper, to be an advocate of lust. Yet, someone has to stand up to the task surely? 

... Fuck the horny police! Here’s to men and women of all orientations letting our libidos write freely.

Continue reading @ Ralph Leonard.

The Empress Has No Clothes ➖ On Writing Lustfully

Tongue Tied ✒ There is no right not to be offended, the outgoing chairman of Britain’s leading press regulator has told campaigners.

Sir Alan Moses, a former lord justice of appeal, defended freedom of speech, though he acknowledged that it could have “the most unpleasant” effect on victims.

He said that state licensing of newspapers would be “fundamentally dangerous” and recalled the murder of a journalist in Malta to show the importance of a free press.

Sir Alan, 74, told The Times that the media must be allowed to discuss sensitive subjects such as religion. He described offence complaints as one of the most challenging issues in press regulation, but said that the feelings of individuals could not automatically trump the right to free expression.

If you’re the victim of something that is deeply offensive, it is the most unpleasant, uncomfortable thing that you can imagine. But what we have to acknowledge is that, in striking the right balance in this country, there is no right not to be offended.

The former judge has led the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), which regulates most newspapers, since its foundation in 2014.

Continue reading @ Tongue Tied

No Right Not To Be Offended

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)