I doubt whether most people really understand how advanced the assault on this core Western liberty, derived from the Enlightenment, actually is.
The Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Enlightenment), was a philosophical movement which dominated the world of ideas in Europe in the 18th century. The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy and came to advance ideals such as liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.
One of the greatest achievements of the Enlightenment in Europe and the United States is the principle of free speech and reasoned criticism. Democracy is underpinned by it. Our courts and parliaments are built on it.
It is enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Without full freedom to express ourselves in speech or in print, none of us could criticize a religion, an ideology, a political party, a law, or anything else we might feel to be misguided, flawed, or even dangerous. Through it, we are free to worship as we choose, to preach as we see fit, to propose new ideas, and to criticize and satirize governments and religions.
The chief threat to free speech today comes from a combination of radical Islamic censorship, left-wing groups, and Western political correctness. Over the past century and more, Western societies have built up a consensus on the centrality of freedom of expression.
Many Muslim bodies – including, notably, the 57-member-state Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – have been working hard for years to render Islam as the only religion, political system and ideology in the world that may not be questioned with impunity. They have tried – and are in many respects succeeding – to ring-fence Islam as a creed beyond criticism, while reserving for themselves the right to condemn Christians, Jews, Hindus, democrats, liberals, women, gays, or anyone else, often using vile, even violent language. Should anyone say anything they deem to be disrespectful of their faith, he or she will at once be declared an “Islamophobe.”
Even more worrying is the way in which so many politically-correct Western writers, journalists, and politicians have turned their backs on our most basic values. In many cases, the cries of “Islamophobe” emanate from left-wing journalists.
The OIC had succeeded in winning a UN Human Rights Council resolution (16/18, 2010) that makes “defamation of religion” (or blasphemy as Muslims see it) a crime. But the OIC knows full well that only Muslims are likely to use Western laws to deny free speech.
The greatest defense of our democracy, our freedom and our openness to political and religious debate, is now under serious threat. The West survived the totalitarianism of the Third Reich and the Soviet Union without losing any freedoms. But today, a new enemy has arisen, global in its reach, and more and more militant in its expression. This enemy is rooted in 1.4 billion people, is seated at the UN and other international bodies, and is already partially cowing us into submission to its repressive prejudices.
Once the intellectual, cultural and moral foundations of American universities crumbled under the onslaught of the communist/Marxist-led radicals, it was relatively easy to advance to the next stage, the attack upon freedom of expression, utilizing political correctness and racial vilification laws. Such attacks were assisted by conventions passed by the Soviet/Chinese/Muslim-dominated United Nations, each of these groups having a vested interest in suppressing free speech.
Racial vilification laws
The United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states that “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.” More specifically, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) requires all signatory states to “declare an offense punishable by law all dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred… as well as all acts of violence or incitement to such acts against any race or group of persons of another color or ethnic origin….”
Across almost the entire Western world, apart from America, the state has grown ever more comfortable with micro-regulating public discourse – some political parties find it convenient to regulate the press to prevent scrutiny of their own performance.
The power of words
We know that words cannot move mountains, but they can move the multitude, and men are more ready to fight and die for a word than for anything else. Words shape thought, stir feelings and beget action; they kill and revive, corrupt and cure. The “men of words” – priests, prophets, intellectuals – have played a more decisive role in history than military leaders, statesmen, and businessmen.[1]
When those words were written in 1963, American philosopher Eric Hoffer may have had in mind the millions of Soviet agents, both in the Soviet Union and abroad, engaged in propaganda, disinformation, and agitation.
To the priests, prophets, and intellectuals, we should add the Soviet agitators and propagandists, and, resulting from their activities, many Western journalists, academics, lawyers, judges, and well-meaning dupes in the movie and entertainment industries.
The devastating use of attack words by leftists and Muslims
Racist
Nothing more starkly demonstrates what Diana West calls the capture of the American mind than the demonization of “racists.” The use of the word “racism” is a prime example of the re-definition of words as propaganda tools. The original meaning of racism is quite innocuous. The 1980 edition of the American Heritage Dictionary defines racism as “the notion that one’s own ethnic stock is superior.” By this definition, most people could be described as racists.
The Marxist propagandists and their minions have re-defined the word to turn “racist” and “racism” into emotional battering rams, used to stifle free speech and the public discussion of ethnic crime and Muslim immigration. A “racist,” in the public mind, is now a criminal, comparable to a pedophile or terrorist. Just watch how politicians cringe in fear when accused of racism.
The word “racist” has become the most powerful and, at the same time, the most sinister word in the English language. Some of the most horrific crimes have been covered up, and the perpetrators of those crimes hidden from scrutiny, due to the powerful use of this diabolical word.
Upwards of 100,000 young white British schoolgirls were groomed, sexually exploited, raped, bashed and prostituted by gangs of Muslim men throughout England for a 20-year period, all while the police, authorities, social workers, and journalists averted their eyes for fear of being branded racist (see Chapter 9 below).
Bigot
Another innocuous word that has been re-defined by the propagandists is the word “bigot.” The only definition of bigot in the Australian Oxford Dictionary is “an obstinate and intolerant believer in a religion, political theory, etc.” This sounds like most left-wing journalists and Greens members to me. These same people love to apply the “bigot” epithet to any person opposed to their ideology.
Islamophobe
Muslims, learning from their leftist colleagues, created the word, “Islamophobe,” to be used to stifle criticism of Muslims and Islam. A compliant media duly self-censor on these topics.
The infamous Andrew Bolt trial
Aboriginals are Australia’s sacred cows. They are beyond criticism. No one dares criticize them for fear of being howled down as a racist. Years of political correctness and bleeding-heart paternalism have seen special laws passed to favor them, and untold billions of taxpayers’ dollars lavished on them.
Journalist Andrew Bolt wrote two articles critical of certain persons clearly of European descent, who claimed Aboriginal status to receive, according to Bolt, some of the special benefits available only to Aboriginals.
In two columns written in 2009, Bolt says a number of people, often more European than Indigenous, have been able to advance their careers by applying for positions, prizes and scholarships by self-identifying as Aboriginal.
Nine fair-skinned “Aborigines” brought an action in the Australian Federal Court against Bolt and his publisher, The Herald & Weekly Times, claiming that he “offended, insulted and humiliated” them in breach of the federal Racial Discrimination Act.
Below are four of the so-called “Aborigines” who brought the Federal Court action against Bolt and his publisher.
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| Pat Eatock | Anita Heiss | Larissa Behrendt | Bindi Cole |
These four, together with their cohorts, will forever be remembered for their role in curbing free speech in Australia.
On September 28, 2011, Justice Bromberg, in a long and rambling homily, found Bolt and the Herald & Weekly Times guilty of conduct that contravened section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.[2]
In a massive blow to freedom of speech in Australia, Bolt, on the advice of his lawyers, has not been able to comment on Aboriginals and part-Aboriginals since that time.[3]
In Canada, Mark Steyn, another conservative writer, was hauled in front of a human rights commission to defend his views about multiculturalism and the growing conflict between Islam and the West.
Mark Steyn noted:
… Let us accept for the sake of argument that racism is bad, that homophobia is bad, that Islamophobia is bad, that offensive utterances are bad, that mean-spirited thoughts are bad. So what?
As bad as they are, the government’s criminalizing all of them and setting up an enforcement regime in the interests of micro-regulating us into compliance is a thousand times worse. If that’s the alternative, give me “Kung Fu Fighting” sung by Mohammed’s nine-year-old bride while putting down two lesbian hecklers sending back the Cat of the Day in a Chinese restaurant.
As John Milton wrote in his Areopagitica of 1644, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
Or as an ordinary Canadian citizen said to me, after I testified in defense of free speech to the Ontario parliament at Queen’s Park, “Give me the right to free speech, and I will use it to claim all my other rights.”
Conversely, if you let them take your right to free speech, how are you going to stop them from taking all the others?[4]
Political correctness
In an address to American University, conservative commentator Bill Lind said:
Where does all this stuff that you’ve heard about this morning – the victim feminism, the gay rights movement, the invented statistics, the rewritten history, the lies, the demands, all the rest of it – where does it come from? For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think. They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic.
If we look at it analytically, if we look at it historically, we quickly find out exactly what it is. Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism, the parallels are very obvious.
First of all, both are totalitarian ideologies. The totalitarian nature of Political Correctness is revealed nowhere more clearly than on college campuses, many of which at this point are small ivy-covered North Koreas, where the student or faculty member who dares to cross any of the lines set up by the gender feminist or the homosexual-rights activists, or the local black or Hispanic group, or any of the other sainted “victims” groups that PC revolves around, quickly find themselves in judicial trouble. Within the small legal system of the college, they face formal charges – some star-chamber proceeding – and punishment. That is a little look into the future that Political Correctness intends for the nation as a whole.[5]
That address was delivered back in 2000. Since then, political correctness has spread from American campuses to envelop the entire English-speaking world with its totalitarian suffocation of free speech and wacky social engineering experimentation.
Socialist governments in the West are reaching new levels of political correctness insanity.
“No Gender December” runs all year in one Berlin district, where laws prohibit billboard adverts depicting girls in pink with dolls or boys in blue playing with “technical toys,” and women smiling is an absolute no-no.
In Sweden, where a new gender-neutral pronoun “hen” has formally replaced he and she (han and hon), schools are banned from gender stereotyping. In Stockholm, a government-funded gender-free preschool named Egalia forbids teachers from using terms such as “boys” and “girls,” only “friends.”
European Union declares war on Internet free speech
In a move blasted by pro-democracy campaigners as “lamentable and Orwellian,” in May 2016, the European Union (EU), in partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, launched a “code of conduct” to combat the spread of “illegal hate speech” online (in Europe), in an effort, the EU says, to counter jihadist propaganda online.[6]
Opponents counter that the initiative of the unelected bureaucrats at the EU Commission amounts to an assault on free speech in Europe. They say that the Commission’s definition of “hate speech” and “incitement to violence” is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of Islam, mass migration or even the European Union itself.
Excerpts of the “code of conduct” include:
By signing this code of conduct, the IT companies commit to continuing their efforts to tackle illegal hate speech online. This will include the continued development of internal procedures and staff training to guarantee that they review the majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to such content, if necessary.
The IT companies will also endeavour to strengthen their ongoing partnerships with civil society organisations who will help flag content that promotes incitement to violence and hateful conduct. The IT companies and the European Commission also aim to continue their work in identifying and promoting independent counter-narratives, new ideas and initiatives, and supporting educational programs that encourage critical thinking.
The IT Companies share the European Commission’s and EU Member States’ commitment to tackle illegal hate speech online. Illegal hate speech, as defined by the Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA of 28 November 2008 on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law and national laws transposing it, means all conduct publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin.
“Illegal hate speech” has become, at least to the authorities, a metaphor for the criticism of Islam. The last paragraph of the excerpt above makes this plain, with its references to “combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia” and “publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of a of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion….”
In a scary move, after identifying the so-called “hate speech,” the code calls for “promoting independent counter-narratives.”
Former UKIP Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Janice Atkinson said, “It’s Orwellian. Anyone who has read 1984 sees its very re-enactment live.”[7]
And in a move reminiscent of communist “re-education” camps, the Commission also pledged to “support educational programs,” the content of which is likely to be determined by Brussels chiefs, which will be aimed at those accused of posting hate speech online.
Implementation of the code comes amid repeated accusations from ex-Muslims that social media organizations are censoring them online. The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain has now begun collecting examples from its followers of Facebook censoring “atheist, secular and Ex-Muslim content” after false “mass reporting” by “cyber jihadists.”
A typical example from the ex-Muslims Facebook page is a post by Tanveer Kaan who says, “I have been banned twice in May. Seven days each time. Quoting verses from Quran and Hadith that exposes the vulgarity of Islam are upsetting Muslims who then mass report ex-Muslims like me.”[8]
[1] Eric Hoffer, The Ordeal of Change (New York: Harper, 1963).
[2] Eatock v. Bolt (No. 2) [2011] FCA 1180, Federal Court of Australia, October 19, 2011.
URL: http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/556710/14699089/1318984806783/eatock_bolt_2.pdf
[3] Read more about the Bolt trial at: Ken Schultz, “The decline and imminent fall of the West – part 3”, Global Comment (Australia), June 2, 2014.
URL: http://globalcomment.net/article/the-decline-and-imminent-fall-of-the-west-part-3
[4] Mark Steyn, “Gagging us softly”, National Review (New York), August 29, 2011.
URL: www.steynonline.com/4409/gagging-us-softly
[5] William Lind, “The origins of political correctness”, Accuracy in Academia (AIA), February 5, 2000.
URL: www.academia.org/the-origins-of-political-correctness/
[6] “Code of conduct on countering illegal hate speech online”, European Commission, May 31, 2016.
URL: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/fundamental-rights/files/hate_speech_code_of_conduct_en.pdf
[7] Nick Gutteridge, “EU blasted for ‘Orwellian’ crackdown on online criticism”, Daily Express (UK), June 1, 2016.
URL: www.express.co.uk/news/world/675535/EU-referendum-Brexit-Brussels-blasted-Orwellian-crackdown-online-criticism-UKIP
[8] Tanveer Kaan post, Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB), Facebook, June 1, 2016.
URL: www.facebook.com/exmuslims/posts/738614062909015