It sounds like a “Black Mirror” episode: a small country announces a crackdown on hate speech to seize control over the entire Internet. Except it’s not a “Black Mirror” episode. It’s real life. And it’s happening right now in Ireland. The so-called “Hate Speech” bill isn’t what it seems. It’s not a bill about protecting the Irish people from hate crimes. It’s a Trojan Horse designed to control the world’s Big Tech companies — X, Facebook, Google, and YouTube. This is a free speech emergency. We thought the legislation was dead. But the Irish government is using recent riots as an excuse to ram the legislation through before Christmas.
THIS IS NOT A DRILL. THIS IS NOT ABOUT IRELAND. THIS IS A TOTALITARIAN EFFORT BY GLOBAL ELITES TO CENSOR ALL OF US. It’s right there in black and white: “One of the key features of the Bill,” write two attorneys with a leading Irish law firm, “is the provision for offences by corporate bodies.” matheson.com/insights/detai How can Big Tech companies avoid censorship? You guessed it: by agreeing to regulation of their content by the Irish government. “The current iteration of the Bill provides a defence for the corporate body to show that it took all reasonable steps and exercised due diligence to avoid the commission of the particular offence.
Therefore, to establish and maintain such a defence, companies will need to have the appropriate processes and procedures in place.” The Irish government is almost certainly not acting alone. As my colleagues and I have reported, the demand for censorship is coming directly from the militaries, intelligence agencies, and their front groups in the US, UK, and around the world. x.com/shellenberger/ The intelligence communities of the Five Eyes nations of the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand have been working together to censor ordinary citizens and politicians alike for disfavored speech for the last several years. x.com/shellenberger/
There’s no time to mince words. What governments are doing is against the law. They are violating the constitutions of the nations that the people elected them to uphold. Because of the high level of secrecy they are using, we can’t say whether or not these are “rogue” elements within governments or whether these orders are coming from heads of state. But we do know that demands for censorship have come both directly from the US military and from heads of state of Western nations around the world. What’s happening should terrify all freedom-loving people. We must fight back. We will fight back. That starts with recognizing what’s going on. Please follow @FreeSpeechIre @Ben_Scallan and other Irish free speech leaders. Please share this post and tell friends and family what’s going on. Finally, please consider getting involved directly.
We have created and personally contributed to an Emergency Free Speech Fund to get the word out: censorshipindustrialcomplex.org/donate-1 This isn’t about “hate speech.” This is about out-of-control elites within the intelligence, military, and security agencies around the world who are grotesquely abusing their power in a mad bid to take control of the Internet. If we don’t stop them, this terrifying “Black Mirror” episode will become real life.
It sounds like a “Black Mirror” episode: a small country announces a crackdown on hate speech to seize control over the entire Internet.
Except it’s not a “Black Mirror” episode. It’s real life. And it’s happening right now in Ireland.
The so-called “Hate Speech” bill isn’t… pic.twitter.com/YsqFJRVtGL
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) December 6, 2023
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NEW DOCUMENTARY: “The Censorship Files” How much would you pay to protect your freedom? by @lwoodhouse&@shellenberger One year ago, we and other journalists gained access to the Twitter Files. What we discovered shocked us. Not only were highly partisan and ideological individuals within Twitter censoring people for holding views with which they disagreed, they were often doing so on behalf of US government officials and contractors with the FBI, CIA, and Department of Homeland Security. And so, one year later, we are happy to announce a new, full-length documentary film, “The Censorship Files.” You can see the trailer above. The film, made by Leighton Woodhouse and Jonah Markowitz, will bring you inside the Twitter Files and the race to the Supreme Court, which will hear the Missouri v. Biden censorship case early next year. Today we must ask you a personal question: what price would you put on your freedom?
Many of us tell ourselves that freedom is priceless: we would sacrifice everything, die even, to protect our freedoms and keep America a free nation. Even if we weren’t willing to die or go to prison for our nation, we would make a significant financial investment to protect it. We are asking you to make a far more modest payment: less than $9/month, or about half the cost of a Netflix subscription. A subscription to Public is an investment in our investigative reporting, our free speech campaigning, and the final production and distribution of “The Censorship Files,” a film that will change how Americans think about free speech. We believe $9/month is a tiny investment to pay to ensure that, in the future, you can read what you want to read, watch the programs you want to watch, and voice your opinions.
“The Censorship Files” will be a landmark film in educating younger Americans, who are more censorial than their elders, about America’s remarkable history of strong free speech protections. They will learn about the Civil Rights movement, the right of the New York Times to publish “the Pentagon Papers,” and the right even of pro-Nazi and pro-terrorism activists to march freely through America’s streets. “The Censorship Files” will reveal the origins and scope of the Censorship Industrial Complex, its leaders and architects, and its victims of censorship, from moms sharing stories about the Covid vaccine’s side effects on their children to two of the world’s foremost experts on the Covid response, Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya.
Finally, we will use “The Censorship Files” to build a new free speech movement in America, city by city, campus by campus, from the grassroots up. Because if we can’t persuade America’s youth to support free speech, then the First Amendment is just some words on a piece of paper. We can’t save the First Amendment without you. We can’t even finish “The Censorship Files” without you. This is not complicated. We need more paid subscribers. We need more than 10% of our subscribers to contribute thirty cents daily. If we could get 30% of our free subscribers to support our movement, I believe that we would have a fighting chance to save our first freedom and the other pillars of democratic civilization along with it.
One year ago, we didn’t even know we lived in a heavily censored society. Today, we have ripped back the veil of the Censorship Industrial Complex and are on the cusp of defunding and dismantling it. Such a process will take years but won’t take a decade. It may even happen much more quickly than that, depending on the actions of the Supreme Court and Congress. What’s certain is that we can’t do it without our paid subscribers — and we don’t want to do it without our unpaid ones. We promise that, in the future, you’ll be grateful you funded the fight for our first freedom.
NEW DOCUMENTARY: “The Censorship Files”
How much would you pay to protect your freedom?
by @lwoodhouse & @shellenberger
One year ago, we and other journalists gained access to the Twitter Files. What we discovered shocked us. Not only were highly partisan and ideological… pic.twitter.com/bAnnmitqxw
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) November 21, 2023
