According to a recent report by Big Brother Watch, a civil liberties group, between 34 and 40 people a day are being arrested for speech crimes, including making risque jokes. Only about 20% are found guilty, but those who aren’t risk having a ‘non-crime hate incident’ recorded against their name. The police are logging about 65 of those a day.
But it’s about to get worse. In a speech at the United Nations on Tuesday, Andy Burnham unveiled a new surveillance unit – the National Centre for Information Defence – designed to “stem the poisonous tide” of disinformation. The Prime Minister identified Russia as the biggest threat, but the agency, dubbed Labour’s ‘Ministry of Truth’, will soon start spying on the domestic population.
By my count, this new centre takes the total number of shadowy Whitehall bodies monitoring our speech to 10. Anyone posting something intemperate on social media about, say, the small boats or drag queen story hour, could well find themselves up before a magistrate or put through a disciplinary process at work.
In 2020, I set up the Free Speech Union (FSU) to protect people who get into trouble for ‘wrongthink’ and we’ve now fought over 6,500 cases – the tip of the iceberg.
But what is not often talked about is the mental health toll that cancellation takes on its victims. To this end, I welcomed the opportunity to collaborate with two clinical psychologists – Carole Sherwood and Andrew MacLeod – on a survey about the psychological impact of being cancelled. Of the 255 victims in their study – all people the FSU has helped – 80% said their mental health had been adversely affected, with 27% reporting they’d had to take medication as a result.
Even more alarming, 20% put themselves in the most severe depression category.
This comes as no surprise. The wellspring of the idea for the FSU came from my own experience of being cancelled in 2018. …<<<Read More>>>....
