Tag Archives: free speech

Alison Chabloz, Alt-Right, Campaign Against AntiSemitism, Carl Benjamin, Colin Robertson, Count Dankula, David Icke, free speech, historical revisionism, Ian Millard, Jewish lobby in UK, Jez Turner, Mark Meechan, Millennial Woes, Nick Griffin, Paul Watson, Prison Planet, Reminiscences and Musings, Sargon of Akkad, society, Tommy Robinson, Uncategorized

The New UK Crown Prosecution Service Guidelines on “Hate Crime”: Thoughts and Suggestions

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Background

Yesterday, Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions, announced updated and expanded “guidelines” on how the Crown Prosecution Service will deal with so-called “hate crime”. These new guidelines have been heavily criticized as, in effect, creating new and tyrannical law, despite the fact that the guidelines are neither primary nor secondary legislation.

In this blog post, I examine only those aspects of relevance to socio-political tweeting etc, meaning in practice those with a racial or religious element.

Part of the concern around the guidelines revolves around Alison Saunders herself. Many regard her as a sinister though incompetent figure, a “graduate” (member) of the pervasive and infiltrative organization (some say “cult”) called Common Purpose. In 2013, when Alison Saunders was CPS chief for the London area, a Freedom of Information request was made as to her connection with Common Purpose. At first, the reply was affirmative, but that was then altered to negative:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/alison_saundersgraduate_of_commohttps://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/alison_saundersgraduate_of_commo

The answer is relevant to the new CPS guidelines because the motto of Common Purpose is “Leading Beyond Authority”. In other words, the citizens of the UK cannot rely any more on law or decent public administration, because organizations such as the CPS, full of “CP” “graduates”, will, it is suspected, manipulate the regulations etc in order to achieve a desired (by them) result.

Definition of “Hate Crime”

It is vital to note that there is no statutory (or accepted Common Law) definition of “hate crime”:

“A hate crime law is a law intended to deter bias-motivated violence. Hate crime laws are distinct from laws against hate speech: hate crime laws enhance the penalties associated with conduct which is already criminal under other laws.” [Wikipedia]

Wikipedia continues: “For England, Wales, and Scotland, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 makes hateful behaviour towards a victim based on the victim’s membership (or presumed membership) in a racial group or a religious group an aggravation in sentencing for specified crimes.”

In other words, there must first be a crime as designated by law and only then can that alleged crime (if one of those “specified”, i.e. assault, criminal damage, offences under the Public Order Act 1986, and offences under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997) be treated by the police and CPS as a “hate crime.” The new guidelines reflect that existing position:

“The police and the CPS have agreed the following definition for identifying and flagging hate crimes:

“Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person’s disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.”

“There is no legal definition of hostility so we use the everyday understanding of the word which includes ill-will, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment and dislike.”

It will be noted that there must first be a criminal offence. If there is not, then it matters not at all how “unfriendly”, “prejudiced” etc is the alleged perpetrator.

Further, sections 145 and 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 require a court to consider whether any crime which is not specified by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 is “racially or religiously aggravated.”

Incredibly, while the police and/or CPS will “flag” a case as a “hate crime”, “it is not CPS policy to remove a flag in the absence of sufficient evidence to support a sentence uplift. This in part reflects the commitment to treat hate crime seriously and to support the victim’s perception and also to encourage community confidence in reporting all such offending.”

So a crime which is “flagged” at first as a “hate crime” but for which flagging there is eventually no evidence, will still be treated, in Court, as a “hate crime”, resulting (on conviction) in a far more severe sentence. How can this be regarded as in any way just?

The guidelines now continue:

“If the case passes the evidential stage and it is a case of racial or religious hate crime, or it is motivated by discrimination against the victim’s ethnic or national origin, or religion or belief, it is more likely that a prosecution is required in the public interest.”

This is a hardening of the position taken in the earlier CPS guidance and may mean an increase in the number of prosecutions. However, there is still a requirement for a substantive crime to have been committed and there is still a requirement for sufficient evidence to support prosecution. New crimes have not been created, but the danger is that zealous CPS and –especially– police persons will get the bit between their teeth and start to ignore the basics in their quest to hunt the witches. Anyone who has read the outpourings of the UK police forces online recently will not be reassured as to their objectivity in this respect. There is an unthinking “me-too” political correctness abroad, one which seems impervious to logic, argument, reason or plain commonsense.

Other Aspects Relevant to a Charge

The CPS legal guidance for its staff can be found here:

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/p_to_r/racist_and_religious_crime/

The full details can be found via the above link but one key element is that there must be one or more identifiable “victims” of the “crime”. In other words, if there is no identifiable victim, then the matter falls in respect of the “hostility” required under the relevant statutes.

How the CPS regards freedom of expression

“In deciding upon the public interest of charging these offences it is essential that prosecutors keep in mind that in a free, democratic and tolerant society people are able to robustly exchange views, even when these may cause offence. However, the rights of the individual to freedom of expression must be balanced against the duty of the state to act proportionately in the interests of public safety, to prevent disorder and crime, and to protect the rights of others.”

Other Thoughts

It is noteworthy that the body of the new guidance neither mentions nor lists the Communications Act 2003, s.127 as among the statutes utilized in the prosecution of “hate crime”. However, under the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, ss.145 and 146 (see hereinabove), anyone sentenced for having posted a “grossly offensive” tweet (etc) under the 2003 Act can receive a sentence uplift if the offending tweeting (etc) had a “hate crime” element (the maximum sentence being 6 months’ imprisonment, though the usual sentence is non-custodial).

One cannot analyze these matters without noting that the Zionist special-interest lobby is likely to try to pursue its political ends by abusing the new guidelines. Readers are referred to my own experience of January 2017:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/when-i-was-a-victim-of-a-malicious-zionist-complaint/

Advice for Social Nationalists

I advise a defensive approach. Malicious persons, notably Zionists, try to make provocations by saying offensive things online, eg on Twitter, then (if the interlocutor replies in similar vein), reporting to Twitter, Facebook etc and even to the police. I have found that the easiest way to deal with such nuisances (in the short or medium term) is to block them (on Twitter), which tends to avoid conversations and disputes. It also means that it is much harder for the Zionists to report a tweeter to Twitter. I myself have seen, in the past few years, several Zionists lamenting that “he blocks us, so we cannot [make false accusations].” Yes, it means that the individual tweeter cannot answer back to the lying allegations the Zionists often make, but the solution is simple: just do not care what they may write about you! I don’t…

In other words, just try to avoid having any conversations with malicious Zionists or other nuisances online. Make it hard or impossible for them to make false or malicious reports to Twitter (etc) or the police.

In respect of tweets not specifically addressed to anyone, it is more difficult for those wishing to destroy freedom of expression to report them to Twitter or (a fortiori) to the police, so long as there is no evidence of direct incitement within the meaning of the relevant (1988) Act.

In extreme cases, just protect your tweets. You can also pre-block any obvious Zionists on Twitter (and most of them are indeed very obvious…).

The ultimate and longer-term protection for social nationalists lies in future relocation to “safe zones”, as I suggest on my website: http://ianrmillard.com/social-national-communities, which will then limit the powers of the wider State.

In essence, the new social media guidelines are indeed another nail in the coffin of free speech in the UK, but are unlikely to stop socio-political comment online– which is why the conspiracy –and behind Alison Saunders stand Theresa May, Amber Rudd, secret groups, the whole #NWO and #ZOG farrago– is trying to get the big online platforms signed up to repression.

In the end, the net result of this latest silliness is likely to be a tsunami of pointless and/or malicious complaints to the police.

Update, 29 April 2019

Since I wrote the above blog post, Alison Chabloz has been convicted under Communications Act 2003, s.127, and is appealing (at time of writing, to the Divisional Court). However, the “guidelines” which are the subject of the article above do not seem to have had much practical effect in terms of changing prosecution or sentencing policy.

Update, 21 November 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/20/right-offended-does-not-exist-judge-says-court-hears-police/

Update, 17 January 2021

Much water under the bridge in relation to the Alison Chabloz case(s). To find out more, please use the search function on this blog.

In relation to repression of free speech generally, and as I predicted in the main article above, the ZOG strategy has been, not so much a tightening of laws criminalizing individual free speech, but a campaign of getting the major plaforms of social media to police free speech without any law having to be passed.

Thus we see that Twitter, Facebook, Google etc are simply expelling socio-political dissidents, and so removing both their inherent citizen-rights to free expression and (in the case of the prominent few) their online incomes. We have seen such as Tommy Robinson, Katie Hopkins, David Icke, David Duke etc removed or largely removed from online platforms, the same also happening to less prominent people.

Update, 11 January 2025

Diary Blog, 16 March 2024, including an account of my recent free speech trial and sentencing
Diary Blog, 17 March 2024, including the aftermath of my sentencing hearing

Alison Chabloz, Alt-Right, Campaign Against AntiSemitism, David Icke, free speech, historical revisionism, Ian Millard, Jewish lobby in UK, Jez Turner, Mark Lewis, Nick Griffin, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Tommy Robinson, Uncategorized

When I was a victim of a malicious Zionist complaint…

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Six months and a day ago, I attended Grays Police Station, Essex, for an interview with the police. I trudged through the snow and slush of estuarial Essex after a long rail journey involving several changes of train. A police fortress set in a snowbound urbanized wasteland. Crossing the rail line in the snow reminded me of visits to socialist Poland in the 1980s. Not pleasant.

grayspolice

[above, Grays Police Station, Grays, Essex]

A week or so before my supposedly voluntary but in fact involuntary trip to Essex, I had been surprised to receive a telephone call from a detective-sergeant of the Essex Police, who informed me that the “Campaign Against Anti-Semitism” [CAA] had made formal complaint against me.

Now the CAA, as some readers will know, is a small but well-funded Jewish Zionist organization, sufficiently in funds to be able to employ a number of full-time staff. It was founded around the time of Israel’s 2014 Gaza slaughter, in order to defend the interests of Israel and of Jews generally. Some of its members also belong to “UK Lawyers for Israel”, a similar group and the one which complained against me to the Bar Standards Board in 2014, as a result of which I was disbarred in late 2016 (though I had not practised for 9 years!). The signatory on that complaint had been one Jonathan Goldberg QC, a Jew who was once the preferred Counsel of the notorious Kray gangsters. Goldberg also appeared pro bono (without fee) for the CAA in its private prosecution against the satirical musician, Alison Chabloz (which prosecution was later taken over by the Crown Prosecution Service [CPS] and the original charges dropped, though new ones were substituted and the matter adjourned until, at the earliest, late December 2017).

The head of the CAA, one Gideon Falter, had, prior to founding the CAA, made a complaint against a Foreign Office man, Rowan Laxton, who was accused of having shouted out (while on a gym treadmill, watching a TV report of yet another Israeli atrocity), “Fucking Jews! Fucking Jews!” (yes, that is enough to get you arrested in contemporary London…). Laxton’s case ended not with his first-instance conviction before a (dozy? biased?) magistrate, but with his acquittal on an appeal by way of rehearing in the Crown Court.

The “Director of Investigations and Enforcement” (sinister title…) at the CAA is one Stephen Silverman, who lives in Essex and who was exposed in open court (possibly inadvertent admission by the CAA’s own advocate) in December 2016 as having been the Internet troll @bedlamjones on Twitter and a user (abuser?) called “Robbersdog” on another discussion site, Disqus. This person abused anyone thought to be anti-Zionist, particularly women. His posts were notorious for their gloating sadism. He particularly enjoyed looking forward to people being arrested, questioned, charged, tried, imprisoned for “anti-Semitic” comments. He was in fact part of a whole group of Jew-Zionists on Twitter and elsewhere, all following the same line of attack (Twitter has now removed several for similar abuse). Despite that, Silverman remains in post at the CAA, an organization apparently supported now by a number of politicians, all under the thumb of the Israel lobby.

Back now to my visit to the area some call “the arsehole of England” (it must be true: it is represented in Parliament by freeloading chancer and former receptionist Jackie Doyle-Price!). It had been arranged with the detective in charge that I would appear at Grays Police Station on 12 January at a specified time. I arranged to have a solicitor who, in the event, failed to turn up. Given the “choice” of returning within a few days or a week at most (and the expense and inconvenience therefore being doubled) or interviewing without legal advice (I last practised at the Bar in 2007-2008 and, apart from corporate “crime” on behalf of companies such as South West Water and Balfour Beatty, had not engaged in criminal law since about 1994), I decided that I had no choice but to continue to interview.

The several detectives who dealt with me were polite, even reasonably friendly; certainly professional in their approach. I was never arrested during the whole proceeding and was told that I could leave at any time. I was then cautioned and interviewed for three hours about some 60 pages of tweets, hundreds in all. Slowly, each tweet was put to me. Many were stories from newspapers, cartoons etc. I mostly no-commented, but did make some pertinent points and the odd joke.

What struck me first was the sheer injustice of all of this. The Jews complaining about me had done so at no cost to themselves and yet had wasted the time and money of both me and the police. The police should have told them, at the least, to go whistle, instead of taking the complaint seriously. I was in fact told by the police that they were dealing with another half-dozen CAA complaints of similar nature. So much for “the police are starved of resources”!

The next point that struck me, as we trawled through many tweets alleged (but not proven) to have been tweeted by me, was how brainwashed the police were in respect of the “holocaust” mythus. They referred to one cartoon (“Alice in Holohoax Land”) and asked how anyone could make a joke of people (Jews) made into soap and lampshades! They obviously had no idea at all that those WW2 “black propaganda” stories had not only been totally debunked but also accepted by the Zionists themselves as untrue! They also, needless to say, had no idea that those “holohoax” tales were in fact of WW1 origin, recycled (so to speak) for WW2 use. I did not bother to argue with them. Perhaps they will read this blog post.

Another funny moment was when the detective in charge objected to tweets poking fun at “Saint” Bob Geldof. It turned out that he took Geldof’s charitable image at face value. I thought that detectives were trained to recognize the dodgy. Apparently not.

I was able to read into the record of interview (taped) a letter I had sent prior to interview, detailing the abuse of the criminal justice system being engaged in by the CAA and by Silverman in particular, as exposed during the Chabloz case and otherwise. I asked that this letter be sent to the CPS, were the complaint against me to go further.

Anyway, after a dehydrating 3 hours (I was given one cup of water) in a hot little room, I was taken outside to the custody desk and booked out. I had never been under arrest and was not given police bail, but just released without anything more. The detective murmured something about “postal disposal” to the custody officer (I never was sent any letter of closure, though) and I was released back into the cold streets of Grays, now being blanketed by more snow.

I do not (much) blame the police involved. They were obviously under pressure from higher ranking police (probably either Zionists or, more likely, freemasons). Political pressure from higher-up, too, in a situation where the governing party under Theresa May and Amber Rudd is really just “ZOG” [Zionist Occupation Government].

Needless to add, I was never prosecuted.

So that is my account of an experience provided for me by the abusive CAA organization. It is time for the CPS to rein back the apparent latitude given to Jewish-Zionist organizations making malicious and politically-motivated complaints against private citizens (I do not belong to any political party or group).

As to my final word, I should say only that “what goes around comes around”…

Update, 10 February 2019

Since the above was written, the CAA has been (I think is still being) investigated by the police and the Charity Commission. It has suffered significant legal defeats, and Stephen Silverman, the sinister troll-stalker of women, is himself now under further police investigation.[see below]

https://twitter.com/LabLeftVoice/status/1094320750771781632

and

https://twitter.com/LabLeftVoice/status/1094321298115887105

Update, 25 October 2019

“They” are still mentioning me online, really getting “full value”…

https://antisemitism.uk/new-guidance-from-bar-standards-board-tells-barristers-to-avoid-heated-social-media-spats/

CZpdYWeW0AQXGc_

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Update, 14 January 2023

The Jew in question still pursues me, at least in his tiny mind:

Diary Blog, 15 January 2022, including an outline of the failure of the latest Jew-Zionist attempt to prosecute me

Update, 31 October 2024

More recent developments: well, I was eventually put on trial after the “CAA” pressured the Crown (or Clown) Prosecution Service to cobble together a misconceived prosecution-persecution of me.

What happened then is detailed in the blog posts below:

Diary Blog, 16 March 2024, including an account of my recent free speech trial and sentencing
Diary Blog, 17 March 2024, including the aftermath of my sentencing hearing

The upshot of all that was that I was made subject to a 9-month “community order” and required to pay costs etc amounting to £734. The costs were partly (about 1/3) crowdfunded, the rest paid off in monthly instalments (all now paid).

As for the “community order”, with 15 “rehabilitation days”, the “days” turned out to be short or shortish meetings lasting between 20 minutes and a couple of hours and, after half a dozen of them (one every few weeks, I was told that, by reason of other and larger events (unrelated to my own case), the “rehabilitation days” requirement was, in my case, deemed to have been fulfilled.

All finished.

The little screeching “CAA” Jew-Zionist pack were so shocked that I was not either imprisoned or given a suspended custodial sentence (and the blog closed down) that it took them a couple of weeks (during which they were not inactive behind the scenes) to comment on my —as they wrongly termed it on their website— “absurdly lenient” sentence (which exactly followed the written recommendation of the Probation Service).

They must be fuming even more, now that the sentence turns out to have been even less harsh than when passed. They (no doubt) continue to plot and scheme.

Meanwhile, the blog continues to be published on a daily or near-daily basis.

Alt-Right, Campaign Against AntiSemitism, David Irving, free speech, historical revisionism, Ian Millard, Jewish lobby in UK, Jez Turner, London Forum, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Uncategorized

My Visit to the London Forum

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Background

Some time ago, in late 2016, I was invited to address the London Forum. At that time I had only very peripherally heard of it. This is how it describes itself:

“The London Forum is a non-party aligned conference group for nationalists, identitarians, thinkers and commentators from across the Right.”

https://identityforum.org.uk/the-london-forum/

and it is connected with the online publisher, The Identity Forum, https://identityforum.org.uk/, which says of itself:

“By publishing original work on identity, culture, race, tradition, metapolitics and other topics of interest, our goal is to provide a forum which produces engaging, insightful, high-quality content.”

At the time of my invitation, I had just been disbarred, despite having not actually practised at the Bar for over 8 years, despite having what the Bar Disciplinary Tribunal described as an unblemished record as a barrister (including commendations from the Bench and favourable mention in the main legal directories), despite many other factors in my favour. The complaint against me had been made by a Jewish-Zionist organization, “UK Lawyers for Israel” and related to (in the end) 7 tweets posted (out of some 150,000 at the time). I intend to blog about my case in detail another time. Suffice to say that I accepted the invitation to speak to the London Forum, despite convenience and ease suggesting that I decline.

I had endured “15 minutes of fame” (two days or so, in reality) in late October 2016, as parts of the Press went mad about the (supposedly) “neo-Nazi” barrister and his punishment (presented to an unwitting newspaper readership as getting my “just deserts”, of course). Did I really want more mainstream media attention stoked by Zionist extremists and their hysteria? Not really. Exhibitionism is not a large part of my personality. However, I conceived it to be my duty to speak up, not for myself but for freedom of expression in the UK, under attack from various quarters but especially from the Zionist element.

On the Day

So it was that I went to the London Forum on Saturday 4 February 2017, as one of half a dozen speakers addressing an audience of perhaps 100 people in a large tourist hotel in Kensington. Most of those who spoke can be seen and heard on the London Forum youtube channel, along with speakers from earlier events:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEwrMR1v4vK-LAp4805x6Bg

The reception was warm and the meeting, which started at 1200, proceeded peacefully, though occasionally a very faint chanting could, just about, be heard. It transpired that that scarcely audible chanting was from about 30 masked “antifa” idiots who had congregated outside the main entrance of the hotel. The London Forum was happening one floor up and on the other side of the building. I later discovered that, at first, there were only a few police personnel sent to deal with the rentamob, which had been summoned, no doubt by a Zionist, via tweets; the “activists” were probably overflow from the much larger (40,000-strong) anti-Trump march which happened slightly earlier. It seems that the fools were under the impression that the London Forum was “a secret neo-Nazi gathering”, a description which found its way into the bad-joke online rump “newspaper”, The Independent, a day or so later.

The meeting carried on, most of the audience being entirely unaware of the small protest happening one (atrium) floor down and on the other side of the hotel. The meeting ended at its scheduled time of 1700 hrs. By that time, the main public areas of the hotel had been flooded with what seemed to be about 60 police, including a police medic (I saw the back of his jacket), vans outside and a helicopter whirling overhead. A senior-looking officer (no high-vis jacket, a cap) seemed to have taken charge. He (I was told) gave the order to clear away the would-be “revolutionary” snowflakes from the hotel by issuing a “Dispersal Order” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_Behaviour_Act_2003#Dispersal_zones], after which the snowflakes presumably went home to mama or to wherever they lodge (several that I saw on the Internet, days later, seemed to be foreign). Certainly, by the time the meeting participants left the hotel, the “antifa” idiots had all (all 30!) melted away like real snowflakes.

Aftermath and thoughts

The Press, TV, radio largely ignored both the meeting and the pathetic though noisy protest. The Independent “newspaper” (now online only after its circulation dropped in early 2016 to about 20,000) carried a piece by one Niamh Mcintyre, a student-journalist. Her piece got almost everything wrong: the maybe 30 “antifa” idiots were “80” in the Independent’s “report” and the (open to all bona fide people) London Forum was “a secret neo-Nazi gathering”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/neo-nazi-meeting-london-richard-spencer-alt-right-fascist-activists-white-supremacists-a7563021.html

Niamh Mcintyre’s “report” also said that previous London Forum speakers had included Max Weber. This was remarkable, in view of the fact that Max Weber died in 1920!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber

I think that the poor snowflake meant Mark Weber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Weber

I saw tweets from Niamh Mcintyre, Independent “newspaper” “journalist” (student) to “London Antifascists” and similar “antifa” idiots, asking “what is happening?” [at the hotel] and requesting comment. At no time (right up to now) were any participants or London Forum officials asked for comment or information, it seems. However, the “antifa” idiots’ comments were printed uncritically by the Independent, even one calling for “direct action” (terrorism and intimidation) to “close down” free speech even in a private forum.

After I tweeted (Wednesday 8 February 2017) about the Independent’s ignorance and lack of journalistic ethics (not checking basic facts, not getting both sides or several sides of a story, bias etc), the egregious error of “Max Weber/Mark Weber” was removed from the Independent online report, but the rest of the nonsense is still up, including a claim that the idiots caused the meeting to close early. Untrue. It carried on to the scheduled end .

The Metro free newspaper carried a slightly more, though not very, accurate report:

http://metro.co.uk/2017/02/07/neo-nazis-allowed-to-hold-secret-meeting-at-central-london-hotel-6432405/

though it saw fit to add a laughable extra line about how it had warned the hotel that “ethnic minorities” and staff might be in danger! Journalism died one day and was replaced by something else…The Metro “newspaper” also described how the London Forum had previously “hosted” “infamous holocaust denier..Max Weber” (who died in 1920!). Not very surprising that newspapers are dying, when they employ the ignorant to make up “fake news”…

Did “antifa” achieve anything? No. The London Forum took place, the videos of speeches are online and (equally importantly) free speech was upheld.

What if the police had not been there? Well, the “antifa” idiots were few (possibly, at peak, 35) in number whereas the audience, speakers and LF security (pretty fit and skilled) numbered well over a hundred. The “antifa” may have got off lightly. They are just the “useful idiots” for others (Zionists) and of no importance.

Freedom of expression on social, political and historical topics must be protected,

c4jxgm2ukae7tt_Update, 9 September 2018

Readers of the above blog post may have noticed that the links for London Forum and Identity Forum are not working. This is because YouTube decided, having been pressured by the Jew-Zionist lobby, to remove those channels in their entirety. The leading light of the London Forum, Jez Turner [Jeremy Bedford-Turner] was prosecuted after the CPS was taken to court on a judicial review application by the “Campaign Against AntiSemitism”, yet another pack of Jewish Zionists in the UK. This is what we are up against: a stealth police state and its private equivalent, which have little or no legitimacy and which must be overthrown.

Update, 6 January 2018

I have seen my own speech to the London Forum posted online recently, so it may be that patriots have posted all the London Forum speeches or talks somewhere or other.

Alison Chabloz, Alison Chabloz, Campaign Against AntiSemitism, David Irving, free speech, historical, historical revisionism, Ian Millard, London Forum, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Tommy Robinson, Uncategorized

Free Speech: Individuality and Collectivity

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Rudolf Steiner often spoke of the ever-increasing individualism in our age (that period which he named the “Fifth Post-Atlantean Age”, which started around 1400 AD and is due to run until about 3500 AD). This is an inevitable continuing process and will bring many benefits if people are guided by conscience. However, if people are not guided by individual conscience, the forces of the individual will tear apart society.

Against the forces of individualism stands “society”, which encompasses law, unwritten “laws” of convention and expectation and also the powers of the State (which holds itself out as the concrete expression of the people as a whole).

Society is, of course, a good thing. In proper measure, it makes possible and supports such aspects of life as law, public order, organized help for the sick, disabled, elderly, poor etc. It is a structure which supports the family, too. It also provides, via the State,  the structure for defence against outside forces (hostile states, natural calamities etc). However, if taken too far, society and/or the State becomes oppression, involving the repression of individual liberty in various ways (most obviously, perhaps, suppression of free speech or other freedom of expression).

Society restricts freedom of speech. It is hard to imagine a society beyond the most primitive or germinal in which complete freedom of speech exists (eg spoken or written threats against the person). On the other hand, when society (the State, or perhaps a religious or political cult) prevents individual expression, reasonable restriction becomes unreasonable repression. One thinks, perhaps, of the more extreme socialist states of the 20th Century, such as the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, China under Mao Tse-Tung, Albania under Enver Hoxha, Cuba under Fidel Castro. The same was true of anti-socialist tyrannies such as Nicaragua under Somoza.

Particular emergency conditions may lead to a temporary tightening of what is regarded as acceptable free speech. In the Second World War, the various combatants restricted free speech considerably. In the UK, those who spoke out against the war or government policy faced both prosecution (State) and persecution (society generally). Even the USA, with its famous Constitutional safeguards, clamped down on freedom of expression.

As in other fields of life, we can see that the tension between the demands of the individual qua individual and those of the collective results in what amounts to a compromise. It is a question of either where society (in practice, usually the State, but possibly a smaller community such as a town or even a family) decides where the line is drawn, or where the individual draws the line, based on conscience or preference and regardless of where the State and/or society has drawn it.

Most people, most of the time, obey the dictates of the collective. Were that not so, law could not exist except as a facade with nothing behind it (cf. Stalin’s Russia etc); neither could the State or its power, in the end. On the other hand, the individual must always obey conscience and it therefore becomes vital to distinguish between individual conscience and individual wilfulness or egoism. No outside force can decide what is conscience and what is wilfulness or egoism. The individual, the individual human soul, is the only judge or arbiter here. Where the individual and the collective collide, the results can range from martyrdom of the individual to reform or even revolution affecting the collective.

Where do I myself, as both individual and citizen (i.e. part of the collective) draw the line? For me, freedom of expression about social, political and historical matters should be absolute. Other forms of expression (eg threats, libels, fraudulent misrepresentations) can be (and commonly are) restricted to a greater or lesser extent.

It follows from the above that I prefer the approach taken in the United States to that of most EU states (including the UK). Restrictions on freedom of expression are often imposed for or from outwardly “good” motives, but rapidly become a slippery slope with evil results. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Notes

  1.  http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/a_to_c/communications_sent_via_social_media/
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution