freedom of speech and ideological warfare

Those with conservative leanings (and especially those with cuckservative leanings) put great store in freedom of speech. The trouble with this is that it’s essentially a defensive strategy. It means accepting the liberal paradigm, and then begging for permission to express the occasional dissenting viewpoint. It’s tantamount to asking to be allowed to argue for minor adjustments to a system that is corrupt to the core.

What we’re seeing is a clash of ideologies. It’s an ideological war to the death.

We need to forget freedom of speech and other liberal fetishes, all of which are basically misguided Enlightenment nonsense. We need to attack the entire structure of liberalism. The objective should not be freedom of speech, which is merely the right to write indignant letters to The Times. The objective should be to replace the entire liberal paradigm.

Conservatives like to argue that a healthy democracy depends on tolerance of noxious opinions. This is nonsense. For half a century we have tolerated noxious viewpoints such as feminism, the absurd notion that homosexuality is natural and healthy and the even more ludicrous notion that “gender” is a social construct (in fact gender is merely a grammatical term – people don’t have gender). We have tolerated these poisonous views and they have destroyed our civilisation. Societies that tolerate noxious viewpoints are doomed societies.

The truth is not a matter of opinion. It’s not like expressing a preference for French food in preference to Italian food. That there are profound differences between men and women is not an opinion. It is a fact. That homosexuality is unnatural and unhealthy is not an opinion. It is a fact. That biological sex is unchangeable is not a matter of opinion. It is reality.

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Freedom of speech is and always will be a recipe for chaos and societal breakdown. It’s a refuge for those who don’t have sufficient confidence in the truth, and for those who don’t understand the nature of ideological warfare.

how not to lose your country and your freedom – stop apologising

What has happened in the West in the past few decades seems incomprehensible. How could people possibly throw away their freedoms and at the same time tamely accept demographic replacement?

Various theories have been put forward to explain this phenomenon. Maybe it was the loss of so many young men in the two world wars? Maybe the loss of the best and the brightest of an entire generation weakened Europeans genetically and produced subsequent generations of miserable weaklings. But in this case how to explain Sweden’s self-destructive frenzy, given that the last time Sweden fought a war it was against Napoleon?

Maybe additives in food are feminising the population. 

Maybe too much prosperity and too much easy living breeds apathy and self-hatred.

My theory is that western Europeans (and I include Americans and Australians) have accept these dismal changes because a very large proportion of them genuinely don’t know that things have changed. Those responsible for these changes have been very much aware of the principle that you if you boil the frog slowly enough the frog won’t realise what’s happening. 

The changes have happened gradually and we now have a couple of generations who have grown up taking these changes for granted. Millennials don’t know that there used to be a time when people could say whatever they wanted to. They can’t conceive of such a society. They have never known such a society. They can’t conceive of a society without the stresses and the outbreaks of violence that accompany diversity. They have never lived in such a society.

How could Londoners have allowed one of the world’s great cities to become a cesspit? The answer is that a very large number of Londoners have never known the city as anything other than a cesspit. Just as a large proportion of Parisians have never known Paris as a peaceful and beautiful city.

Millennials think soft totalitarianism is normal. They think it’s normal to have to self-censor yourself constantly.

You can’t miss what you’ve never had.

And it’s not just Millennials. Even the second cohort of Generation X, those born between 1975 and 1985, have only the haziest recollections of living in a free and decent society.

If this is true, what can be done about it? I think that about the only thing we can do is to try to awaken people to the past. We can try to encourage people to read about the past, to experience a taste of the past by sampling the books and movies and TV of the past. This has to be done carefully. Generation Snowflake gets scared very easily. 

And we have to defend the past. We have to stop apologising for the fact that people smoke in old movies, that characters in old books and movies sometimes speak their minds and express politically incorrect views. We have to stop apologising for the fact that our ancestors sometimes did things that would be considered to be unacceptable to today’s Thought Police. We have to stop apologising for the fact that the past wasn’t politically correct. 

We have to stop apologising altogether, but we need to be especially vigilant in avoiding making apologies for the history and the traditions and the traditional culture of the West.

Could even Labour be worse than David Cameron?

With “conservative” Prime Minister David Cameron planning sweeping crackdowns on what’s left of freedom of speech in Britain it’s surely time to ask – can even Labour be worse than this? The argument  that even a lousy Conservative government is better than having a Labour government is now looking rather threadbare. Trying to scare potential UKIP voters by telling them that they may be helping Labour gain office now seems beside the point. The only possible hope for Britain is for the Cameron Conservatives to be utterly smashed. Then it may be possible to build an actual conservative party out of the ruins.

I’ve been saying for some time that traitorous so-called conservatives like Cameron are more dangerous than avowed leftists. This would seem to prove my point. In David Cameron’s Britain this is what the Justice and Security Act means – ” It prevents those accused by the government from seeing the evidence against them, or the witness testimony against them. The individual concerned would also be unable to submit evidence – or even enter the courtroom, if it is deemed to be in the court’s interests. In fact, the court will not even have to inform the person concerned of why they have been taken to court, or even that a trial is taking place. It could mean that the first a person hears of a case against them, is when the police turn up to take them to jail to begin their sentence.”

1984 has well and truly arrived.

the liberal jihad

It is only when you understand that modern liberalism is not a political ideology but a religion that you can comprehend the liberal attitude towards dissent. To modern liberals, dissent is not dissent. It is heresy. It is sin. To disagree with liberal dogma is evil.

This also explains why modern liberals want to control every aspect of our lives. They live in constant fear of falling into sin. The only way to avoid sin is by constant vigilance. And sin is regarded as an infectious disease. If one person is allowed to maintain a sinful viewpoint or to live a sinful life is a threat to the entire Church of Liberalism. It is not enough for heretics to be marginalised and harassed – heresy must be utterly exterminated. The suppression of heresy is a religious duty. When liberals seek to destroy freedom of speech, when they seek to destroy academic freedom, when they force dissenters to conform to liberal orthodoxy, they are acting out of a sense of religious obligation. To show tolerance or mercy would be to betray their religious faith.

If liberalism were really a political ideology liberals would not be concerned by the existence of dissent. As long as a political party or movement can command the majority vote the existence of a dissenting minority is an irrelevance. But that’s not how liberals see it. Any dissenting minority must be extirpated or forced into conformity. The survival of even one heretic is an affront to religious truth. Every single heretic must be forced to recant.

Liberalism as religion also explains the attitude of one of the leading liberal sects, environmentalism, towards science. They tell us that as far as global warming is concerned the science is settled. The notion that science can ever be settled is a fundamentally unscientific and anti-scientific notion. It is a religious notion. There is no need to look for scientific evidence. Global warming is a revealed truth. It cannot be questioned. It is not subject to doubt. All that is required is faith. And religious discipline.

Liberalism today is more like a jihad than a political ideology. It is a war on unbelievers.

freedom of speech and dangerous ideas

Uthman Badar, a spokesman for Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, was to given a lecture at the Sydney Opera House as part of the so-called Festival of Dangerous Ideas. The subject of his lecture was to be “Honour killings are morally justified” – certainly a provocative enough title. After predictable howls of outrage the lecture has been cancelled. 

What depresses me about all this is that many conservatives are expressing delight that the lecture has been cancelled. None of those who reacted with outrage to the proposed lecture know precisely what arguments Mr Badar intended to use at his lecture. The furore that erupted had nothing to do with the lecture’s content. The title was enough.

The problem with this is that we can’t have it both ways. Conservative speakers are frequently silenced by the same methods used against Mr Badar – a campaign of hysteria in the media, and more particularly on social media. If we as conservatives truly believe in freedom of speech we have to be consistent, and we have to recognise the rights of people to express views that we may find extremely repugnant. That’s what freedom of speech is all about. Freedom to express opinions that may offend, outrage, anger and provoke many people. You either believe in freedom of speech or you don’t. If you do then you have to see the silencing of Mr Badar as yet another infringement on freedom of speech.

It’s quite likely that, given the opportunity to hear his arguments, I would find myself disagreeing very strongly indeed with Mr Badar. No having been given the opportunity, I can’t say for certain. No matter how strongly I might disagree with him I still believe he has the right to be heard.

It seems that freedom of speech is still the most dangerous idea of them all.

a very unsurprising betrayal

It now seems highly likely that the Abbott Government in Australia will back down on its promise to restore free speech. Supporters of the government are reacting with shock and dismay. But why should anyone be surprised by this betrayal? The Liberal Party in Australia has long since ceased to be a genuine conservative party. Like the Conservative Party in Britain and the Republican Party in the US it is now a Centre-Left party with a smattering of neocons. And anyone who believes that neocons will stand up for a principle like free speech is living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

At least the avowed parties of the Left like the British Labour Party and the Australian Labor Party are quite open about their determination to eliminate free speech and to destroy our civilisation. No matter how dangerous, stupid, deluded and wrong-headed their principles might be they do at least operate according to those principles. So which is worse, a party that believes in something evil or a party that believes in nothing? The Leftists have guts and are prepared to fight to achieve their aim of destroying the country. The so-called conservative parties are in many ways far more contemptible. They are merely sniveling cowards, deserving of no respect whatsoever.

What is desperately needed is a genuine alternative. Conservatives can expect nothing from any of the established parties. I personally do not see the Palmer United Party as likely to provide the real alternative that is needed. I do not see them taking a stand on stopping immigration. Not now and not at any time in the future. The time is surely ripe for the emergence of a true conservative alternative like the Front National in France. 

first they came for the bloggers…

The Thought Police in Britain are now pursuing bloggers who do outrageous things like expressing support for heterosexual marriage, which ironically happens to be the law of the land. It’s another attack on what little remains of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech has aleady gone by the board in Australia as evidenced by the persecution of Andrew Bolt. Now it seems that Britain is going down the same slippery slope.

the thin end of the PC wedge

What’s worrying about the The Australian Communications and Media Authority’s recent action against Sydney shock jock Kyle Sandilands is not just that it’s yet another attack on freedom of speech. It’s the vagueness of the ruling, and the secretiveness of it. He’s been ordered “not to say anything that could be regarded as offensive or demeaning to women or girls.” Now what on earth does that mean? It sounds suspiciously like offensive or demeaning can mean anything this particular totally unnecessary bureaucratic waste of time wants it to mean.

The fact that The Australian Communications and Media Authority won’t reveal what it means adds to the suspicions.

Whatever this guy said is not worth yet more restriction on Australians’ freedom of speech. He might be an ignorant arrogant yobbo. But if we won’t defend his freedom to speak we will all lose. Freedom of speech must include the right to offend, otherwise it’s meaningless.

And it’s yet another yard of lost ground for defenders of freedom of speech. For defenders of freedom of speech everywhere, not just in Australia. The Thought Police operate internationally. If they get away with restricting freedom in one place they will use it to attack freedom somewhere else. Even the US with its constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech is not immune. If freedom of speech disappears in other countries the Thought Police will argue that the US is “out of step with the international community” and that Americans must accept limitations on this right as well. That “out of step with the international community” line is one of their favourite arguments to extend the global reach of Political Correctness.

It’s also one of their favourite arguments to extend other aspects of their political agenda. If they get abortion on demand or gay marriage in some places they then tell other people that they are now “out of step with the international community” if they don’t allow such things.

With the PC lobby you always have to beware of the thin end of the wedge.

symbolic victories, and hesitation as censorship

One of the reasons the Leftists are winning the culture wars is that they understand the importance of symbolic victories. They know that symbols matter. That’s why they’ll fight so hard for things that initially appear not to matter very much. Because they do matter. Words and symbols are important, and making us feel hesitant about using certain words or performing certain symbolic acts matters very much. They also understand the importance on instilling fear. Not physical fear, but the fear of offending, the fear of being labelled as racist, sexist, etc.

The flag is a good example when it comes to symbols. When President Obama’s political mentor Bill Ayers gets away with literally trampling the American flag (and gets to keep his well-paid job at an American university) a significant symbolic victory has been won for the Left. It’s not a flag that is being trampled, it’s a set of beliefs. Beliefs about loyalty, honour, duty, sacrifice.

Similarly when a leftist Australian academic tells us that it’s racist to fly an Australian flag the same beliefs are being attacked.

Words matter even more. Back in the 70s when feminists started to demand than manhole covers should be renamed personhole covers we laughed. We were wrong. It was part of the long-term strategy of the Cultural Left – to put certain words and certain ideas out of bounds. To make us hesitate before expressing our thoughts, our opinions.

They have succeeded. Can there be any conservative blogger (or conservative journalist or conservative politician or even just conservative citizen) who has not at some time caught themselves in the act of self-censorship? You’re about to write something, or say something, but then you ask yourself – am I going to be accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, cultural insensitivity, fascism, neocolonialism, ableism or any other forbidden act if I say that?

Once that happens our right to freedom of speech is in grave jeopardy. Indeed all our rights as free citizens are in grave danger.

As Peter Hitchens puts it in a slightly different context, the boundaries of public discussion are being steadily narrowed.

Recently we’ve seen moves by feminazis and other politically correct types to add terms such as feminazi and political correctness to the index of forbidden expressions. If there’s one thing Leftists hate it’s having their own weapons turned against them. For years they’ve tried to stifle debate by throwing out words such as racist, sexist and fascist as soon as the start to lose an argument. When conservatives hit back by using words like ecofascist and feminazi it turn out that Leftists have a glass jaw.

The ideal censorship is the censorship we impose on ourselves. That was the objective of the Party in Orwell’s 1984, the reasoning behind Newspeak – that eventually the Thought Police would be unnecessary because people would no longer be capable of Thought Crime. They would no longer have the words to express dissent and everyone would have inside their own heads their own internal Thought Police.

the end of freedom of speech in Australia?

If the current Australian government implements the recommendations of the Finkelstein Report it will effectively spell the end of freedom of speech in Australia. And given this government’s track record there is every reason to believe they will do so.

It’s not just newspapers that will be affected. Bloggers will be targeted as well.

The Labor Party in Australia has already progressively eroded freedom of speech. This is just another step on the road.