We have had laws against ‘inciting racial hatred’ for 60 years. It’s the settled, apparently inviolable position of British law that there are some things so dangerous they cannot be allowed to be said. We have taken, in effect, the precise opposite path to the United States. It was in the 1960s that the US Supreme Court gave the First Amendment its teeth, following a slew of high-profile cases brought by silenced civil-rights leaders. Where America came to see free speech as the answer to bigotry, Britain came to see censorship as essential to multicultural harmony.
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Samizdata quote of the day – Abolish the speech lawsSamizdata Illuminatus (Arkham, Massachusetts) · Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · Slogans & Quotations · UK affairs May 22nd, 2025 |
 12 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – Abolish the speech lawsLeave a Reply |
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I think I see the problem.
Even saying that the United Kingdom did not use to be as it is now – is now considered some sort of offense.
For example, I recently denied that Britain was a very diverse place in 1961 (64 years ago) – answering people who said that post 1945 reconstruction and the staffing of the National Health Service was done by people from the new Commonwealth (thousands of miles away) – and denying this may get me into serious trouble.
The normal lines were deployed against me “how can you know – the 1961 census is still sealed” – as if this legal sealing applied to overall numbers, not specific individual cases.
It is also worth noting the differences between the 1964 American Act and the 1965 United Kingdom Act.
The 1964 American Civil Rights Act was against a background of a century (or more) of “Jim Crow” racial discrimination laws (although such laws had been ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court in 1955 – and had applied in some States, not all States) – no such laws existed in the United Kingdom or had ever existed here.
So the 1965 Act in Britain was NOT (unlike the American 1964 Act) justified by people arguing that it was counter balancing previous “Jim Crow” laws – as, again, there had never been “Jim Crow” laws in the United Kingdom.
The 1964 American Act also did not criminalise the expression of opinions – the 1965 United Kingdom Act DID (as the post points out).
People were told (perhaps honestly) that the 1965 United Kingdom Act would only apply to very extreme cases – say a person screaming demands for violence to an angry mob. But the 1968 Act and later pieces of legislation (of which there have been several) made it clear that it was NOT a matter of such extreme cases.
Indeed I can not be sure that even what I have typed above is lawful in the United Kingdom – as British law is now so arbitrary.
Would someone, with a “protected characteristic” “feel distress” on reading what I have written?
That may be enough to make what I have written a “crime”.
For Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to make little speeches (including in the Oval Office) about how we have Freedom of Speech in the United Kingdom, and how Freedom of Speech is precious to him, is dishonest – sickeningly dishonest.
David Thompson – yes either there is a nation (a national culture) or there is not.
The United States took in people from many other nations – but insisted, at least before the 1960s, that they become Americans.
That was the “Melting Pot” – the American position being (historically) “if you do not think you can make the transition to become an American do NOT come here”. So, for example, if your religion forbids, on pain of death, anyone leaving your religion or “mocking” your “prophet” do NOT go to the United States – as your position, that people who leave your religion, or mock the founder of it, should be killed, is in conflict with the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. If the American Bill of Rights (the ten Amendments – First Amendment, Second Amendment – and so on)) are “crime-think” to you – do NOT go to the United States. As you clearly do not intend to become an American.
“Spiked” does not seem to understand this – hence its talk of “multicultural harmony”.
When, for example, Prime Minister Trudeau said there was no Canadian national culture, that Canada was a “post national country” he was signing the Death Warrant of Canada.
People can not assimilate into a national culture, a nation, if they are told (and believe) that it does-not-exist.
“Teddy” Theodore Roosevelt was wrong about many things – but he was NOT wrong about this.
And Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle would have agreed.
We live in a time when the basic principles of Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle, the two best known ANTI Nasis of the 2nd World War, are considered “Nazi” by the international establishment.
Or perhaps “Britain came to see censorship as essential to protect the Establishment.”?
DiscoveredJoys.
Perhaps rather “protect the AGENDA of the establishment”.
They may sincerely believe that their agenda is for “the greatest good of the greatest number” – but they should still not punish opposition to that agenda.
Sadly that principle, individual rights AGAINST the state, is against the basic assumptions of an establishment saturated in Hobbes, Hume and Bentham (and-so-on) – but this leads us on to old ground. Other than to point out that there is little sense of nation, of national character and culture, in the writers who make up the education of the establishment.
To the establishment people are, it seems, interchangeable units (objects) – so, for example, if the population of Turkey and the population of Japan swapped places with the population of Nigeria, both Japan and Nigeria would go on as before.
@Paul Marks
I’d argue that the Establishment is not some body with an agenda (although you are right, they do always have one) – it is a self-healing organisation whose only intention is to continue. If you look back over time the Establishment changes its agenda, and the people that make it up, but the Establishment continues – until some more weighty event intervenes.
What DJ said.
Except, I claim that we must distinguish between the ruling class (the set of people holding most of the power, including (in the US) ALSO Trump and Musk) and the Establishment, which is the cabal within the ruling class which holds most of the power *within* the ruling class.
The “agenda” of the Establishment is nothing more than their rationalization of why they should hold on to power.
The “agenda” is their “political formula”, to use G. Mosca’s clumsy terminology.
DiscoveredJoys and Snorri Godhi.
I think the establishment do have beliefs, that they are not just motivated by the desire to carry on, the problem is that their beliefs are bad.
What people believe matters – especially if they have political and cultural power. And the beliefs of the establishment elite are bad – both intellectually mistaken, and morally bad.
Their education, and the institutional environment, has led in this direction.
Ironically they think they are being morally good (not morally bad) – they appear to believe that “Nazis” and “racists” (who have not been a serious power in Europe since 1945) are the great threat to Western civilisation – and that they (the establishment elite) are justified in using any means, any means at all, to crush this terrible threat. When they see, for example, Lucy Connolly (the young mother who got upset and wrote a bad “tweet”) they do NOT see Lucy Connolly – they see Adolf Hitler. Their minds are stuck in 1945 – and refuse to move on and engage with the world as it is now.
They do not see the real threats to the Western world – including THEMSELVES.
For this is the final truth – what the establishment are doing will destroy the establishment themselves.
They are destroying the society that they themselves depend upon.
The establishment is leftist. That means an inversion of values in 2025. Freedom is slavery for instance G Orwell 1984
Why ? Because socialism is an abject failure So the answer is to change your core beliefs. Or to keep them and damn and silence your political adverseries
Paul Marks’ latest comment does not seem to me incompatible with what DJ and yours truly wrote.
Paul writes:
I previously wrote:
I did not say that the Establishment do not “honestly” believe in their own propaganda.
In fact, i am inclined to believe that they do believe their own propaganda, at least to some extent. For the simple reason that, if you cannot convince yourself that what you say is the truth, then you can hardly believe that you can convince other people; unless you also believe that your intellect is vastly superior to everybody else’s, which few people do.
— But i am puzzled by this other quote from Paul:
I am puzzled, because i seem to remember that, often in the past, Paul was positive in claiming that “leftists” advocate evil *knowingly*.
The other difference is that America is mono-cultural. Whatever their background, people migrate to America to become AMERICANS. Increasingly, people migrate to Britain with no intention of becoming Britons, and with utter hatred of everything of and about being Britons and being British.
It is very clear in the language people use. In America people describe themselves as Irish Americans, Brazilian Americans, Swedish Americans, Chinese Americans, Native Americans, always mumble mumble irrelevant adjective AMERICANS.
Contrast with British Pakistanis, British Somalians, British Palistinians… mumble mumble irrelevant adjective Pakistani; mumble mumble irrelevant adjective Somalil mumble mumble irrelevant adjective Palistinian. They explicitly declare they are not British, their allegence to somewhere else.
Also note: Black Britons. mumble mumble irrelevant adjective BRITONS.
Language is important.
I dunno. Let me take you through the part of Minneapolis now called Little Mogadishu. Then we can look at the other areas populated by insular groups from other Islamic countries.
There is no melting pot here anymore. There is no overriding desire to become American. In fact, there are loud and explicit promises to take down America and turn it into the countries they all left.
The UK might be ahead of us in this disintegration, but not by much.