Elon Musk has announced that his company, X (formerly Twitter), will sue partner organisations of George Soros’s Open Society Foundation (OSF) after the NGO network was accused of spreading ‘hate misinformation’ to justify an unprecedented crackdown on lawful free speech.
Musk made the statement in response to an article by journalist Ben Scallan, in which he claims that OSF-linked leftist NGOs are manipulating the statistics to show a steep rise in hate crimes across Ireland – despite the government’s own data indicating the opposite is true – and helping to usher in a new hate speech law that will restrict freed speech and open up new pathways for political persecution.
The article was reposted on X by Twitter Files journalist Michael Shellenberger, who added: “The reason politicians and Soros-funded NGOs are spreading hate misinformation is to justify a draconian crackdown on freedom of speech.”
To this, Elon Musk simply replied, “Exactly. X will be filing legal action to stop this. Can’t wait for discovery to start!”
It’s unclear which OSF-linked groups Scallan is referring to exactly or which NGOs will be the target of Musk’s suit – although interestingly the self-styled “free-speech absolutist” has recently threatened to sue the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), having accused the U.K.-registered NGO of using flawed methods to promote “misleading narratives” and of running a “scare campaign” that has driven away advertisers from the platform. Although the CCDH – which is listed in journalist Matt Taibbi’s report into the organisations comprising the “censorship-industrial complex” – doesn’t declare its funding on its site, Companies House information shows it received almost £1 million in 2022.
Despite an Ipsos survey commissioned by Ireland’s Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth showing that over eight in 10 Irish people feel “very comfortable” living next door to people with different nationalities, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, religious beliefs (and non), or marital statuses, the most up-to-date Garda Síochána data suggests the country has actually seen a 29% increase in reported ‘hate crimes’ in 2022 compared to the previous year.
Of course, an increase in reporting is not necessarily the same thing as an increase in actual hate crimes or incidents. As Scallan points out, the discrepancy between these two data sets is partly if not entirely explained by the fact that Soros’s NGO network has for many years been running campaigns to lower the threshold for hate crime reporting in Ireland, while encouraging citizens to report hate crimes and hate incidents to the police.
In fairness, the Garda does at least acknowledge this, having conceded that a “very low threshold of perception” currently applies to hate crime reporting. Yet methodological sophistication of this kind has been curiously absent from proposals put forward by Ireland’s governing classes that argue for a new, allegedly desperately needed, hate crime law. In those proposals the distinction between perceived and actual hate crimes has all but collapsed: ‘increased reporting’ is breezily conflated with ‘increased crime’ such that for politicians like Justice Minister Helen McEntee and Senator Pauline O’Reilly the need for intensified state censorship of perfectly lawful speech that certain sub-sections of Irish society happen to regard as ‘hateful’ now seems entirely unproblematic.
This confusion isn’t just to be found in the debating chambers of the Dáil and Seanad Éireann. It constitutes the underlying philosophy of the country’s draft Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, in which a hate crime is defined as an episode “perceived by the victim, or any other person, to have been motivated by prejudice, based on actual or perceived age, disability, race, colour, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender”.
As Scallan points out, under this definition, you don’t even have to be the victim of an alleged crime to report it. “A random bystander who has nothing to do with the event can say, ‘I think it was based on prejudice,’ and it will be categorised as such.”
By and large, of course, it won’t be “random bystanders” with a priggish manner, flapping ears, and a little too much time on their hands that end up weaponising this definition of what constitutes a ‘hate crime’. The real damage will be done by activist groups and George Soros-funded NGOs bent on criminalising perfectly lawful views that they happen not to like for doctrinaire ideological reasons.
“Will mocking memes be tolerated?” asked independent senator Ronan Mullen during a debate on the proposed legislation in the Senate earlier this year. “Will carrying a placard stating, ‘Men cannot breastfeed’ warrant a hate-speech investigation or up to five years’ imprisonment, a lifelong label as a criminal hater, and all of the stigma and life limitation that goes with that? Nobody actually knows.”
Nobody actually knows, no. But each of Mr Mullen’s hypothetical scenarios could potentially lead to a reported ‘hate crime’, which would then feature in the Garda’s annual reporting dataset, which would then perpetuate the myth that Ireland is becoming less tolerant, which would then lead to calls for even more draconian hate speech laws, which would then… and so on and so forth, in an endless cycle of intensifying state censorship.
Perhaps the most shocking of all the authoritarian provisions in the Bill that flow from this vague, entirely subjective definition of ‘hate’, is one that will make it a criminal offense to possess material on one’s person or in one’s home likely to “incite hatred”.
With regard to the obvious question of how something saved on, say, a mobile phone could possibly “incite hatred”, the Bill simply reverses the usual burden of proof in criminal cases, presuming “that the material [is] not intended for personal use”, and that a suspect must be planning to disseminate it, unless they can prove otherwise.
If passed, this provision will allow police to raid homes and seize devices, with a potential penalty of a year in prison and a €5,000 fine just for refusing to give up your passwords. Possession of hateful material will carry a penalty of up to five years in prison.
Despite many critics calling the law “Orwellian” and campaigning against it, the Irish parliament’s lower house adopted it by a vote of 160 against 14 earlier this year. The legislation now only needs the approval of the upper house in October to become law.
Dr. Frederick Attenborough is the Communications Officers of the Free Speech Union.
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Scientism. Secular religion. Obey, pray to, follow.
Long list of non-science, posing as Deities including Darwinism. All come from the Enlightenment and materialism.
Follow the Money.
Follow the Power.
Very material indeed.
Fair play to this guy for articulately describing how he was wrong. I’ve way more respect for people like this then the sneaky reverse-ferrets trying to weasel out of their previous stances and attempting to memory hole the damage they’re responsible for. Grow a pair and own your sh*t. Don’t insult our intelligence by pretending you were always on our side.
”But the scorn that we laid on them was a disaster for public trust in the pandemic response. Our approach alienated large segments of the population from what should have been a national, collaborative project.
And we paid the price. The rage of the those marginalized by the expert class exploded onto and dominated social media. Lacking the scientific lexicon to express their disagreement, many dissidents turned to conspiracy theories and a cottage industry of scientific contortionists to make their case against the expert class consensus that dominated the pandemic mainstream. Labeling this speech “misinformation” and blaming it on “scientific illiteracy” and “ignorance,” the government conspired with Big Tech to aggressively suppress it, erasing the valid political concerns of the government’s opponents.”
https://www.newsweek.com/its-time-scientific-community-admit-we-were-wrong-about-coivd-it-cost-lives-opinion-1776630
From the bits you’ve quoted it sounds like he only thinks the censorship was wrong not that the response was wrong.
I’m even getting numerous emails on the dangers of the Great Reset etc in my spam emails now, it’s that mainstream
The attempts at censorship we are experiencing are appalling. No argument. But are we worse off than we used to be, or better off?
The reason there are so many attempts at censorship is precisely because the internet and the much maligned social media have opened up channels for us to hear other versions of what is going in the world.
And the problem the establishment has is not that social media and the internet are sources of lies and misinformation, but the opposite, sources of facts and opinions they don’t want aired.
30 years ago before widespread internet, smartphones and social media the establishment had a firm control of information, Now they don’t.
If government succeed in passing all these censorship laws and clamp down on alternative sources of info, then we’ll be reverting to where we were before.
Good points, though it does seem to me that compared to 30 years the MSM reflected a slightly broader range of political views, and now reflects the general drift leftward – ditto the mainstream political parties.
Agreed – the key change for me over the last 20-30 years is that the business model of the MSM, particularly the Press, has undergone massive change. Journalism used to be about exposing the truth and holding power to account, but the MSM is now beholden financially to corporations, governments and other bodies that provide it with advertising revenue and other funding.
Indeed, but I also think that because of the general leftward drift of public opinion, a lot of those in leadership positions genuinely believe in some of the crap they come out with. I’d love to be a fly on the wall and privy to the inner workings of their minds.
Undue advertiser influence on editorial decision is something people already lamented in the 1920.
I’m not sure traditional media ever held power to account. I think it might have appeared that way.
What I think was going on was that conflict between established powers were reflected in the media (e.g. the power struggles between the different established political parties.)
But I think we see.less of that now because all of a sudden the plebs with their easy to set up information channels are doing their own thing, which threatens established power. And so all of a sudden their finding they have a common enemy they want to subugate together: us, the plebs.
Perhaps when theiy are done putting down the “rebellion” they’ll go back to fighting each other more and it will look to us once again like the mainstream is “holding power to account”
Watergate would be a good example.
Were Bernstein Woodward holding power to account or were they useful idiots in helping the Democrats deal a huge blow to Republicans?
To me it’s obvious it was the latter given that American politics since then has become more corrupt, way beyond anything Nixon did and nobody in the MSM says much about it.
I agree with both your posts. But newspapers in the USA taking a Democrat stance or a Republican stance were probably smoothing the wheels of democracy and holding power to account (albeit Democrat-leaning papers holding Republican power to account, and vice versa). Whereas what we have witnessed over recent years (your “plebs” point) is the press acting as propagandists in advancing agendas which would not necessarily be supported democratically by the people (net zero, woke ideology, covid, arms to Ukraine, immigration, etc). And newspapers which used to take pride in being newspapers of record (The Times or The Telegraph or the NYT) seem now to be happy to lie and misinform.
Yeah, fine. But this guy is a final year medical school student.
He does not represent the scientific establishment and perpetrators.
That he was given a platform in Newsweek is noteworthy.
The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that this is due to it being part of the official whitewashing agenda via limited hangouts etc.: let a nobody repent in an MSM outlet and the bigwigs won’t have to and can carry on.
With a closing statement of ism, ism, and ism must end to restore public health and our democracy! the whitewashing bit can be taken for granted.
I was involved in some of the pandemic planning for Avian Influenza (remember that one?) it was still believed to have the potential to be a true worldwide crisis. We went to briefings given by people who attended COBRA meetings, disseminating their planning.
The government was clear and firm in its plan. As little as possible would be changed in the UK. It would be, as far s possible, “Business as usual.” There would be no restrictions, and no lockdown, even though, as they told us, they knew many European countries, though by no means all, were planning on lockdowns.
The UK, however, wouldn’t even be imposing restrictions on its ports or airports. The most significant change the government intended was to raise the number of hours HGV drivers could drive without having to take a break, knowing how crucial they were to the economy.
Other than that, the government’s biggest concern was that the banks should be able to run as normal, and there was to be a concerted effort to ensure that there was sufficient cash available in the system. This was expected to be a bit of a headache, so much stress testing was put on banks to ensure this would work.
When the Covid panic-demic came along, I fully expected the government to dust off its old Avian Influenza plan and carry on as usual. Indeed, I believe that that’s what I was hearing at the start of the government’s announcements. Until… the MSM, chiefly the BBC, started banging on at Johnson about why was he not emulating so many of the EU countries.
Suddenly, after a couple of days of the BBC bashing the government’s plans, everything changed. Look where that got us.
How much better off would we have been if Johnson (Carrie?) had stuck to the already stress-tested plans and carried on “Business as usual”? Would we have had this impact on debt, education, censorship, the work ethic, etc., etc., etc.?
.
“How much better off would we have been if Johnson (Carrie?) had stuck to the already stress-tested plans”
Bozo was never in charge. Once the Scamdemic got the ‘Go’ sign from the Davos Deviants everything was taken out of his hands – Locksteps are Go and that was it.
Chunt and Fishy were installed precisely and only because they signed up to the WEF Agenda. They are pathetic, middle management order takers.
Your final para suggests ‘cock-up’ but what is occurring is pre-planned.
The illustration is missing those at the head of the procession: The Mobs – the environment/climate changers, food-Gestapo, animal rights, alphabet people, gizzagrant ‘scientists’, social justice warriors, pharmaceutical and medical industrial complex.
’But now, Mr. Bass admits to his error: “I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong.’
It would be interesting if he were to explain how? Can’t ‘we’ in the scientific community read? Decades of experience, accumulated knowledge, trial and error, papers and text books written, resulted in clear ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ for contagious disease. These were written down too in Government pandemic plans, and published on the WHO website until their sudden disappearance.
What ‘we’ in the scientific community, did was to promote and support every don’t and loudly admonish, denigrate, vilify and silence anyone who supported the ‘dos’ and highlighted the consequences of the ‘don’ts’. They then invented ‘science’ to justify themselves.
Now comes the backside-covering, hand-wringing sort-of apologies. ‘We got it wrong.’ Did you? I am not convinced. I want the ‘we’ in Court having to explain themselves so we can see what it was they did.
I found it interesting to see so many who had been loudly exhorting cancellation and no-platforming for anyone questioning the WEF/WHO/UN cabal’s totalitarian line suddenly calling for a Covid Amnesty at latterly last year.
Only too happy to dish out the punishments when they had the whip hand, they appear unable to suffer for themselves a fraction of what they so readily dished out.
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An occasional medic admitting error isn’t going to change anything unless the likes of Bill Gates recants …. and that will NEVER happen.
I imagine all the ‘official narrative’ liars will be denigrating Kevin Bass as he is “only a year 7 medical student”
As for the Project Veritas piece, I’m intrigued as to how they knew about the Pfizer exec and how they knew he could be set up for the ‘sting’
If I was Mr Jordon Trishton Walker I’d be seriously worried as the ultimate conclusion to removing his whole identity from public access would be to err ‘erase’ him physically too.
On politicised issues we do not have “Science”. We have “Official Science” with “Designated Experts”