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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day – Censorship is contagious Imagine facing your nation’s Supreme Court for the “crime” of sharing a Bible verse. On October 30, that’s the reality for Päivi Räsänen, a Finnish grandmother, medical doctor, and parliamentarian. Her soon-to-be seven-year ordeal began in 2019, when she questioned her church’s support for Helsinki Pride and posted a Bible verse on X. That single tweet triggered 13 hours of police interrogation, two full trials, and now a third prosecution under Finland’s “hate speech” law.
Räsänen’s case might sound like an exclusively European story — but it also serves as a warning about the growing threat of censorship coming from the EU. While someone living outside of Europe might assume they are exempt from the troubling wave of censorship spreading across the continent, that assumption is dangerously mistaken.
– Lorcan Price
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?”
– attributed to Joseph Stalin.
The specific origins of this censorship are from Frankfurt School Marxism – Herbert Marcuse and co, who regarded Freedom of Speech as “Repressive Tolerance” and taught that “Reactionary” opinions had to be crushed by what are now called “Hate Speech” laws, so a coalition of (supposed) victim groups (later called the doctrine of “intersectionality”) could crush “capitalist” society – by destroying its foundations.
And the left was-and-is correct on this – “capitalist” society does rest on traditional society foundations, destroy the foundations (for example undermine the traditional family) and “capitalism” falls.
However, the roots of censorship go back much further – all the way to Plato (another enemy of the family and so on – as Aristotle pointed out) and his Gold Guardians, planning society and making everyone else their puppets.
In Britain the most popular thinkers with the establishment elite have long been Sir Francis Bacon – Thomas Hobbes – David Hume – Jeremy Bentham – and one can not get rights AGAINST the state from these thinkers (this is why they are popular with the establishment elite) – and Sir William Blackstone (whilst dishonestly playing lip service to Natural Law – Natural Justice) taught that “law” was whatever ravings Parliament came out with, if they wanted to censor the theatre – that was “law” and must be obeyed, if they wanted to execute everyone with blue eyes – that was “law” and must be obeyed.
The American Revolution of 1776 and the Bill of Rights of 1791 (and the Bills of Rights of the various States) is a rejection of Blackstone – and of the other British thinkers mentioned above. There are many good British thinkers – but you will not find the establishment elite citing judges such as Sir John Holt (Chief Justice from 1689 to 1710), or philosophers such as Ralph Cudworth or Thomas Reid on the nature of man, how humans are beings (reasoning free will moral agents – not just objects).
The massive protests in London yesterday (which the media is reporting is such a biased way) are also a rejection of Blackstone – and the rest of the writers that the establishment elite draws comfort from.
“But Paul – European nations have Constitutions and Bills of Rights and….”.
Read-them-carefully – and you will find that these high sounding documents do NOT limit the state, do NOT stand for rights AGAINST the government.
And this is not new – for example the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen” of the French Revolution is often held to be a French version of the American (or British) Bill of Rights – but it is nothing of the kind.
The French document does not defend the rights of the individual against those who purport to speak for “the people” – not at all.
And in the modern world where are the defenses of Freedom of Speech against “Hate Speech” laws, or the defenses of the right to keep and bear arms of ordinary people in defense of their families and in defense of other people?
It is sometimes said that the United States should ally with nations that share its principles – and I agree with that. The tragedy is – I suspect that such nations, at least in terms of the rulers, do-not-exist.
I already knew that there were anti-gay verses in the Bible, I suppose there are many people who didn’t know but do now. These verses are very brief and just a few in a book of over a thousand finely printed pages. The Bible contains a huge quantity of rules, some of which even ultra orthodox Jews don’t follow. There is a rule against getting tattoos, I don’t see any outraged Bible quoting being triggered by this modern trend. In any case, Biblical rules only apply to people who practice a religion based on the Bible, quoting it at non-religious people who are gay or have tattoos is meaningless.
The main point that I want to be making here is that you don’t need to arrest people, especially when it is very simple to point out how they are wrong and why.
Of course you need to arrest people. That’s how you create fear of saying badthink.
Um, I mean, that’s how you protect the vulnerable from being exposed to hate.
Stonyground – the left is not pro Gay, it is anti traditional family – and there is a very big difference.
The left do not care about homosexual people as people, any more than they care about black people, or Muslims, or women, or any of the other groups they seek to USE – they regard these human beings as TOOLS to use to help destroy society, nothing-more.
“It is sometimes said that the United States should ally with nations that share its principles – and I agree with that. The tragedy is – I suspect that such nations, at least in terms of the rulers, do-not-exist.”
If you mean nations that have some exact equivalent of the First Amendment in their constitution, you’re right.
The First Amendment is just a piece of paper, unless POTUS is willing to live up to it.
I shall never forget or forgive the shame of US (and UK) newspapers not publishing the Danish cartoons in 2006, when most Euro newspapers published them — even French & German newspapers (!!!).
And the outrage was compounded by the reactions of the US and UK governments.
Not just POTUS Snorri – SCOTUS.
As Senator Cruz pointed out in a recent book – a couple of leftist appointments to the Supreme Court and the 1st and 2nd Amendments are as dead as the 10th Amendment.
But you are correct – as it is the President who nominates judges, so it is up to the President to nominate true “right wingers” – or all liberty will be destroyed.
In Britain judges emerge from a committee – which means the left control the courts.
JJM – I am told that a few (a tiny few) countries do have protection for Freedom of Speech – and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (the defining feature of a free person in both Common Law and in Republican Roman Law before the rise of the Emperors).
However, without “extreme right wing” judges, no Bill of Rights is worth the paper it is written on.
Would they prosecute her if she had quoted from the Koran or a Hadith?
Excellent point!
Quentin – are you thinking of the Hadith that says “kill the one who does it, and kill the one to whom it is done”.
However, there is some debate in Islam over the method of execution for homosexual acts – some suggest casting the people from high towers, others suggest collapsing walls upon them, other authorities suggest different methods of execution.
So there is debate within Islam – but it is debate within the limits set by the Koran and the Hadiths.
Unlike the Bible, which is a many different books written by different people at different times (centuries apart) – the Koran, and indeed all the legal edicts from the “Messenger” Mohammed, are supposed to be the direct word of God.
The direct word of God – NOT of Mohammed, he being just the Messenger, and, therefore, Islamic Law (being from God Himself) can-not-be-changed.
People with no understanding of the basics of Islam, people such as Prime Minister Blair, President Bush, indeed basically the entire establishment, have led the West to disaster.
They did not (and do not) understand that they are NOT dealing with a few people who have “misinterpreted” or “distorted” Islam – they are dealing with Islam itself. This meant that their wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were doomed to failure – and their Diversity and Inclusion project in various Western nations was also doomed to failure for-the-same-reason.
Geert Wilders tried to explain this in the Netherlands – pointing out that if (IF) Dutch “Hate Speech” laws were consistently applied, the Koran and the collections of Hadiths (sayings of Mohammed – of which their are three grades of reliability) would be banned.
But the “mainstream” just screamed “Geert Wilders wants to ban the Koran – what a wicked man!” – totally ignoring the point he was making.
By the way – the left were also wrong about the Afghan and Iraq wars.
The left argued that the people in these places were lovely – really nice. But if that was true then the wars of Mr Blair and Mr Bush to free these lovely-really-nice people from dictatorships would have been morally correct (morally correct – perhaps not correct from the point of view of practicality, prudence).
But the people of these lands are not little kittens, or fluffy bunnies – they are human beings with their own basic world view, a world view (a philosophy) that is totally incompatible with the West and, indeed, has been in conflict with the West for some 14 centuries.
“Uncle Bill” (a family friend – and no he was NOT Jewish) told me about them more than half a century ago – he had served in Mesopotamia in the 1920s and 1930s.
You could know someone really well – for years, have been a guest in his home, have had him as a guest in your home – and so on. But he could still try and kill you – at any time.
Why? Because you had not submitted – you had not paid the infidel tax with due humiliation, and you were clearly violating Islamic law by, for example, being an infidel and yet being in possession of weapons (such as your service pistol).
This was NOT a matter of personal dislike, or cruelty, or anything like that – by trying to kill you (when they judged the time was right – a prudential calculation), he was merely doing his duty.
And it was nothing to do with “Occupation” – if the Islamic Gentleman met you at the North Pole, or on the Planet Mars – Islamic jurisprudence would be the same.
I have always known the above – from when I was a young child, just as I have always known about Marxism (due to my father, my half brother – and so on). This can make me intolerant of people who do not understand Islam and/or do not understand Marxism – and I apologize for that.
“But you must know ….. I have known all this since I was six years old!” – yes, but other people honestly do NOT know, and I should get that through my thick head.