Why I'm writing this anonymously and what that says about free speech in Britain today

 I have wanted to write for the Daily Sceptic for a long time. It should be a straightforward ambition to fulfil. I have opinions, I support free speech and scepticism, and here is a publication built for exactly that. Instead, my first contribution arrives unsigned. I think the reason why is, in itself, the article.

Ann Widdecombe's murder has reopened a question that surfaces from time to time: should politicians with 'unfashionable' views get extra protection? The investigation continues, so I won't comment on that, but the fact that the question is even being asked in response to a 78 year-old woman being killed in her own home tells you something regardless of how the investigation concludes. We have been here before. Jo Cox in 2016. David Amess in 2021. A pattern is forming, whatever the final facts of this particular case turn out to be.

The debate this triggers is usually framed narrowly: what security do MPs need? I want to push it wider: what if politicians are not actually the group most exposed? They have protection officers, party machinery and a public profile that makes an attack on them a national story. I have none of that. Neither does anyone else who simply has an opinion and a job to protect.

I recently listened to Professor David Betz of King's College London's Department of War Studies, who argued that Britain may be entering a period of increasing internal conflict in which political violence becomes more likely. Whether or not one accepts his analysis, it's difficult to ignore the growing sense that our public discourse has become more hostile and less forgiving. If expressing political disagreement increasingly carries the risk of intimidation or worse, the answer cannot simply be to provide more security for an ever-expanding list of public figures. That treats the symptom rather than the disease....<<<Read More>>>...

Police Track Down to Pub Man Who Criticised Green Councillor Over Outdoor Drinking Ban

Two Met police officers have tracked down to a pub a man who had criticised a local Green councillor over an outdoor drinking ban, sparking concerns that Britain is becoming a police state. The Mail has more.

This is the extraordinary moment two Met police officers tracked down a photographer to a pub over his critical tweets about a local Green councillor – despite admitting he had committed no crime.

Alastair Hilton was having a drink with a friend in Chiswick, west London, on Thursday night when uniformed officers grilled him about his social media posts.

Hilton feared being arrested when he was asked to step outside by two policemen as he celebrated a victory for his community over the Labour-run council and saved outdoor seating outside three much-loved pubs on the Thames.

As the debate over ‘two-tier policing’ in the UK continues to rage, an irate Hilton told the officers that his terrified daughter had suffered an attempted burglary while she slept just weeks earlier – and claimed that police had refused to attend.

Yet last night the Met had dispatched officers to a pub to track him down and question him about some of his tweets, despite acknowledging that there had been no crime.

At one point an officer even read out the legislation under which Scotland Yard would arrest him if he crossed the line.

Hilton has said: “They admit on video that I did not break the law at all. They came to threaten me. To warn me off tweeting about councillors and the council. This is modern Britain. This is the police state. Police coming out to threaten someone who hasn’t committed a crime. I’m fuming.”

The incident is yet another case where police have appeared to meddle in free speech....<<<Read More>>>...

The Free Speech Crisis Spreads to Schools

 A recent survey has found that a substantial number of teenagers do not want to share their political opinions, fearing they will lose friends or be cancelled. They are afraid to voice their opinions on certain political issues in school as they’re worried about being criticised by their classmates. Nearly a quarter of schoolchildren between the ages of 10 and 17, out of 4,000 surveyed, said they have been asked to stop voicing their political views at school. Whatever happened to freedom of expression?

The survey was carried out by the Economist Educational Foundation which found that 22% of 15 to 17 year-olds had stopped sharing their political opinions because they were worried about criticism, along with 20% of 10 to 14 year-olds. The survey also found students feel unprepared and have limited political knowledge heading into the next General Election, prompting 44% of 15 to 17 year-olds to say they don’t feel ready to vote in the next election.

Political debate and diversity of opinion is a strength in a democratic society. It drives innovation, improves decision-making and fosters resilience. Diverse perspectives force people out of complacency and into more thoughtful evaluations of the problems facing us. So why are many schoolchildren inhibited about expressing themselves?...<<<Read More>>>...

Global crackdown on free speech: Digital dictatorship looms as governments jail citizens for “indecent” content

 Governments (U.A.E., U.K., Germany) are imprisoning citizens for private messages, truthful reporting or criticism of policies, under vague "public security" laws.

Tech giants (Microsoft, Google) and governments are capturing screenshots, scanning devices and monitoring all digital activity under the guise of AI training—creating a backdoor for total control.

Algorithms now pre-censor "extremist" speech (including criticism of Israel or COVID policies), while identity verification mandates hand personal data to intelligence-linked corporations.

The U.K.'s mandatory conscription proposal and disaster prep warnings signal impending militarization, while the U.S. faces UN/WHO treaties that override sovereignty with digital IDs and medical mandates.

New laws (U.K.'s Online Safety Act, Israel's misinformation penalties) jail truth-tellers, while elites and mainstream media enjoy immunity—proving this is about silencing dissent, not public safety.

In a disturbing escalation of government overreach, nations worldwide are tightening their grip on digital communication, criminalizing dissent and punishing ordinary citizens for sharing information deemed "indecent" or "harmful to public security." Recent cases in Dubai and the U.K. highlight a chilling trend toward digital authoritarianism, where individuals face imprisonment for private messages, photos or even truthful reporting—raising alarms about the rise of a social credit-style surveillance state...<<<Read More>>>...

Are We in a Free Speech Recession?

 For years, debates over hate speech laws have been framed as moral disputes about civility and protection. Increasingly, however, they are becoming legal and political battles over the limits of “free” expression in democratic societies.

A report by the Future of Free Speech project, titled The Free Speech Recession Hits Home, argues that established democracies are experiencing measurable declines in protections for speech once considered firmly safeguarded. The report contends that restrictions once associated primarily with authoritarian regimes are now expanding across Western countries under the banner of combating hate, misinformation, and extremism.

Hate speech laws are being broadly interpreted all over the Western world, and their continued expansion is reshaping the boundaries of lawful expression.

The Future of Free Speech report documents what it describes as a “recession” in expressive liberty within democratic states. According to the findings, more than half of the world’s democracies have seen a decline in protections for speech in recent years, particularly in areas related to hate speech, disinformation, and offensive expression.

The report highlights that while Western Europe has long maintained hate speech statutes, enforcement intensity and definitional scope have broadened. In several countries, the threshold for what constitutes unlawful speech has shifted from direct incitement to broader categories such as insult, denigration, or emotional harm.

The organization’s earlier 2020 Global Handbook on Hate Speech Laws catalogues dozens of jurisdictions with criminal penalties for speech deemed hateful, blasphemous, or defamatory, noting wide variation in definitions and enforcement standards.

The cumulative effect, according to the researchers, is a tightening legal environment in which individuals face increasing uncertainty over what speech may trigger prosecution. ...<<<Read More>>>....

The Official End of Freedom of Speech

 The right to freedom of expression, enshrined in the Constitution, has been trampled on for several years. Now this illegal practice is to be officially legalized.

Recently, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Irene Khan, traveled through Germany for about two weeks. During her winter tour, she first met with representatives of the federal government, the German states, and the highest constitutional judges in Karlsruhe. Ms. Khan had been invited by the federal government, presumably in the hope that she would give the government a glowing report. However, Ms. Khan also spoke with ordinary citizens and representatives of German human rights organizations. And Ms. Khan by no means delivered the hoped-for clean bill of health for the German government’s flawless human rights policy. On the contrary, the former director of Amnesty International reported a climate of intimidation and fear in Germany.

The German government justified the far-reaching restrictions on freedom of expression to the UN envoy by citing the increasing brutality and polarization spreading among the population through so-called social media. This is undoubtedly a major problem that should fill us all with great concern. The internet makes it possible to hurl insults at someone under the cloak of anonymity that one would never dare to utter in a face-to-face encounter. However, the German government and the agencies under its authority are very selective in their perception of what could undermine social peace. The German government repeatedly and more or less cleverly links the fight against hate speech to its own geopolitical agenda. To be clear: those who do not participate in the German government’s moral and mental campaign against Russia, China, and the Palestinians are preferentially targeted in the official fight against hate speech.

Understandably, Ms. Khan has to couch this fact in diplomatic restraint when she states:

“While the government has rightly taken these threats seriously, it has relied increasingly on security-oriented approaches to address them. Many of these measures – ranging from heightened protection of officials who are confronted with public criticism to blanket bans on slogans related to pro-Palestinian protests and surveillance of organizations on vague, undefined rounds of ‘extremism’– are inconsistent with international human rights standards. They have generated uncertainty as to the line between protected and prohibited speech, and encourage stigmatization and self-censorship.”...<<<Read More>>>....

EU Censorship Threatens Free Speech Beyond Europe, Warns US

 On 5 February, the battle over online free speech took a decisive international turn. In a warning aimed squarely at European regulators, US lawmakers accused the EU of exporting censorship to American citizens through pressure placed on US-based technology companies.

What began as a regulatory disagreement has evolved into a broader confrontation over sovereignty and constitutional values. At issue is whether foreign governments, operating through regulatory frameworks such as the EU’s Digital Services Act, can shape what Americans are allowed to say, read, or publish online, even when that speech is lawful under United States law....<<<Read More>>>....

Non-Crime Hate Incidents to be Scrapped Nationwide

 Non-crime hate incidents are to be scrapped nationwide under plans that police chiefs will present to the Home Secretary next month. The Telegraph has more.

Police leaders have decided that NCHIs are no longer “fit for purpose” after warnings that recording them undermines freedom of speech and diverts officers away from fighting crime.

Under the plans, NCHIs will be replaced with a new “common sense” system, where only a fraction of such incidents will be recorded under the most serious category of anti-social behaviour.

An NCHI falls short of being criminal but is perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards a person with a particular characteristic. They stay on police records indefinitely and can come up in background checks.

The move to scrap them follows high-profile cases such as that of Graham Linehan, the Father Ted co-creator, whose arrest for a series of posts on X was criticised by Donald Trump’s administration as a “departure from democracy”.

The plans will be published next month by the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and are expected to be backed by Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary.

Lord Herbert, the Chairman of the College of Policing, told the Telegraph: “NCHIs will go as a concept. That system will be scrapped and replaced with a completely different system.

“There will be no recording of anything like it on crime databases. Instead, only the most serious category of what will be treated as anti-social behaviour will be recorded. It’s a sea change.”

Their exclusion from crime databases means any incidents will no longer have to be declared as part of checks in job applications....<<<Read More>>>...

It’s another wet and windy day in the free speech nation.

 In the last couple of weeks we have had NHS surgeons suspended and arrested for posts on social media, we’ve had lads imprisoned for posting memes, military veterans banned from coaching their own daughters football team after social media posts, and now a former international footballer has received a suspended prison sentence for photoshopping a pair of tv presenter’s faces onto the bodies of serial killers Fred and Rose West.

Phew.

Thank goodness the great British justice system is here to protect the people of this country, by throwing the book at folks… for hurty words and memes.

Don’t panic though, the UK hasn’t gone full draconian hellscape, and just started imprisoning everyone.

Sex offenders and paedophiles are still free to roam the streets. We’re not North Korea, y’know!?

Of course this crack down is multi-layered.

It’s about silencing free speech, and normalising prison time for offending people, and what this does in the end, is create a situation where you no longer have to silence free speech or impose prison time for offending people, because people will simply silence themselves through the fear of facing prison time if they don’t.

The sheep becomes their very own sheep dog, and if my goal was to destroy the nation unopposed, I’d want as many people silencing themselves as possible.

As the great British public, we could of course, all put down the faultlines that divide us, and join together as one indomitable force to stand against the destruction of our collective freedoms, and fight for everyone’s right to speak their truths,

But where is the fun in that?

Instead, from where I am sitting, all I can see, with notable exceptions, is people putting their tribalistic allegiances before the freedoms of the population as a whole.

If someone is cancelled, or fired, or even imprisoned for words, then the first thought should not be “But do I align with their view?”, and yet overwhelmingly, it is....<<<Read More>>>....

US stands up to Great Britain’s authoritarianism, censorship, and speech police

 Imagine a world where a silent prayer lands you in court, where a meme earns you a prison sentence, and where the government monitors your social media posts—not for threats of violence, but for wrong-think. 

This isn’t the plot of a dystopian novel; it’s modern Britain, where the once-cherished principles of free expression are being dismantled brick by brick under the guise of “safety” and “protection.” 

The United States State Department, in a scathing indictment of the UK’s rapidly deteriorating free speech landscape, has sounded the alarm: Britain is no longer a beacon of democratic values but a cautionary tale of how quickly liberty can erode when power-hungry officials decide what truths are permissible. The Online Safety Act, sold to the public as a shield for children, has instead become a sword wielded against dissenters, journalists, and even silent protesters. And if America doesn’t take heed, the same forces of censorship will soon knock on our doors.

The irony is bitter. The nation that gave the world the Magna Carta, that stood defiant against tyranny in two world wars, now arrests citizens for posting memes, jails mothers for social media comments, and threatens prayerful grandfathers with fines. This isn’t just a slippery slope—it’s a free-fall into authoritarianism, disguised as progressive governance. The question isn’t whether Britain has lost its way; it’s whether the rest of the world will follow...<<<Read More>>>....

Parents 'shell-shocked' after being arrested for complaining about daughter's school

The parents of a nine-year-old girl have said they were held at a police station for 11 hours because they complained about their daughter's primary school.

Maxie Allen and his partner, Rosalind Levine, said they were arrested and detained on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property.

The couple said they had previously been banned from entering Cowley Hill primary school in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire after criticising the school's headteacher and leadership in a parents' WhatsApp group, according to the Times.

The school said it had "sought advice from police" after a "high volume of direct correspondence and public social media posts" that they claimed had become upsetting for staff, parents and governors.

Hertfordshire police said the arrests "were necessary to fully investigate the allegations as is routine in these types of matters".

"Following further investigations, officers deemed that no further action should be taken due to insufficient evidence," they added....<<<Read More>>>...

The Battle for Free Speech in Ireland Is Far From Over

 The Irish Government has announced it is scrapping its plans to introduce significant updates to Ireland’s existing hate speech laws, as there is not enough support for the proposed legislation. Remarkably, the legislation had already passed the lower house of the Irish Parliament by an overwhelming margin (114 in favour, 10 against) in April 2023, but began to stall in the Senate as its more problematic features came to light. It had gained international notoriety when it came under fire from X’s CEO, Elon Musk.

Free speech advocates across the world should find solace in the fact that a regressive piece of legislation with dire implications for free speech, is now dead in the water, in spite of being a “sure thing” less than two years ago. This is a piece of legislation, after all, that had already comfortably passed in the lower house of Parliament, was supported by all major political parties, and was initially only resisted by a handful of journalists, politicians and political activists. The Irish Government had staked their reputation on the passage of this hate speech law, so they would not have withdrawn it at the last minute unless they had come under intense political pressure....<<<Read More>>>....

Globalists target the US First Amendment as freedom of speech is obstructing their agenda

 The World Economic Forum held its ‘Sustainable Development Impact Meetings’ during last week’s United Nations General Assembly in New York City. Speaking at the meeting, far-left elitist and former presidential climate envoy John Kerry expressed frustration to fellow globalists, stating that the First Amendment frequently obstructs their agenda.

“Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to hammer [disinformation] out of existence. What we need is to win … the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change,” Kerry said.

Kerry noted, “It’s very hard to govern today.”

We’ll translate “govern” for readers as it essentially means narration control (or official government-approved propaganda) – that is, through the censorship blob at federal government agencies in Washington, DC; the intel community, Silicon Valley’s big tech, fact-checkers, think tanks and legacy corporate media.

Kerry’s choice of words and tone shows that far-left radicals in the Obama-Biden-Harris team are frightened that their own misinformation and disinformation propaganda jammed through far-left corporate media outlets is no longer sticking as the citizens gravitate to the “free speech” X platform 9formerly Twitter) run by Elon Musk for their news in the pursuit of truth after being lied to for decades by their corrupt government and corporate overlords...<<<Read More>>>...

Globalists throwing everything they have into trying to silence free speech worldwide (but it won’t work)

 The entire world is under attack by a deep state cabal that is trying to outlaw free speech in every country on the planet.

Newly obtained documents from America First Legal (AFL) show that the Biden-Harris regime is at the top of the global censorship pyramid, as is the Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) in the United Kingdom.

In essence, the governments of both the U.S. and the UK, both of which are deep state, have been colluding with very powerful non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), as well as with NATO and the G7, to criminalize all forms of dissent against their agenda.

"The DCMS led-Counter [sic] Disinformation Unit works across Departmental boundaries and is mandated to provide the most comprehensive picture possible about the extent, scope and impact of disinformation during times of heightened risk by bringing all the relevant information into one place," the documents explain.

"We've previously stood up an operational response to counter disinformation during the 2019 European elections, the 2019 UK General Election, and the local and devolved UK elections in May of this year. We've been stood up since March last year in response to Covid-19."...,<<<Read More>>>...

They Won’t Be Content Until They Have Expunged Every Heretical Thought From Our Brains

As you are likely aware, there has recently been a global acceleration in the campaigns against ‘disinformation’ and ‘hate speech’, as evidenced by three stories that it would no doubt be conspiracy-theoretical to link together too closely: the arrest of Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov and associated threats against Elon Musk, the banning of X in Brazil, and the proposed clampdown in the U.K. on ‘legal but harmful’ speech. It seems as though something is afoot: not so much a change in the weather as a sudden picking up of the wind, as though heralding an onrushing storm.

This makes it an apposite time for a brief post on the political theology of the anti-disinformation movement. This, I hope, will allow readers to see past what to my mind is the rather unhelpful way in which the subject is generally framed – i.e., as a ‘free speech’ issue. As I hope to make clear, casting the struggle in free speech terms as such is really to speak in relation to symptoms rather than causes. The problem at root is not that there are people who are seeking to suppress freedom of speech (though there are such people); the problem rather is the underlying desire to manage what I will call – following Foucault – the ‘circulation of merits and faults’ in society, and how this relates in particular to speech-acts. Put more straightforwardly, the issue is not exactly that freedom of speech is being restricted, but rather that a global effort is underway to decide what is true, and to produce a consciousness of that ‘truth’ within each and every individual, at any given moment, so that their speech indeed can do nothing but declare it.

This, as we shall see, will take us to a difficult but important subject: Jesus Christ, and his description by René Girard as the ‘first political atheist’. The secularisation of society has largely taken the figure of Jesus out of the public consciousness; my aim here is in part to show that this has been a great tragedy in terms of the loss to our understanding of politics in the round (leaving matters of spirituality and theology entirely to one side).

Let us begin all of this, then, with Foucault. As regular readers will recall, in his 1977-78 lecture series, Foucault made plain that the state was only an ‘episode’ in the trajectory of government. This, to recap, was because government itself was a practice untrammelled by borders or indeed physical barriers of any kind; the task of governing was a project embarked upon precisely because, with the advent of modernity and the Scientific Revolution, it became possible to imagine the world itself as a domain which it was possible to act upon so as to improve it. This in the first instance became the project of the state. But implicit in that project was the notion the state was merely a kind of staging post to world government (what is nowadays called ‘global governance’) properly so-called....<<<Read More>>>...

Linsday Hoyle wants a bill passed through parliament to censor speech online

Yes of course he does to prevent the dirt that is on from coming into the public arena. Shutting it down is suggested by another corrupt politician

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Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker of the House of Commons, has called for the UK government to put a bill through parliament to tackle “misinformation” on social media. This is an abuse of office and an attempt by Hoyle to censor dissenting opinions and free speech online.

Speaking to 5 Live’s Matt Chorley on Monday, Hoyle said: “Misinformation is dangerous. … [Social media is] bad when people are using it in a way that could cause a riot, threats, intimidation, actually suggesting that we should attack somebody … What we’ve got to do is make sure its factual, correct.”

“The government will have to think long and hard about what they’re going to do with social media and what they’re going to put through parliament as a bill to act,” he said.

Lindsay Hoyle is abusing his position as Speaker to advance a “distinctly political and authoritarian cause” of censorship and silencing dissenting opinions online, Spiked said.

Who gets to decide what is “misinformation”? The Government? Social media companies? They can’t be trusted. We have seen numerous examples in just the past few years of opinions and news stories initially condemned by politicians and social media companies as “misinformation” or “disinformation,” only for their truth to be revealed later on.

State clampdowns on misinformation are driven by an elite desire to silence dissenting opinions and censor inconvenient facts. Hoyle is effectively urging the government to force social media platforms to dictate online speech....<<<Read More>>>...

What people are missing about free speech attacks in the UK