Following the recent attack on a mosque in New Zealand by a white supremacist terrorist, I was asked by a national TV network in the UK to appear on a live show to give my perspective as a former white supremacist. (I served two prison sentences for “inciting racial hatred” back in the 1980s.) I was happy to do so. More recently, the same TV network asked me to appear live to comment on Facebook’s decision to ban the “far right.” “Presumably you agree with the ban,” the representative of the TV network continued, “and do you think other tech companies should follow them?” My reply was no doubt a disappointment:
Echoing the words of Voltaire that “I might despise what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” I do not agree with the banning of political perspectives from the public square. It’s a slippery slope. Today it’s the far right; tomorrow it’s critics of abortion; the day after tomorrow it’s “anti-semites” in the Labour Party and “anti-Islamists” in the Conservative Party. If an organization, on either extreme of the spectrum, advocates acts of terrorism, it should be banned for its advocacy of such acts, but an organization should not be banned because we find its policies distasteful. I will not be party to the banning of parties with which we disagree.
I added that “I presume that my defence of free speech will preclude my involvement in your discussion.” My correspondent replied that the nature of my reply was “unexpected,” and the invitation to participate in the discussion was withdrawn.
This set me thinking. It was clear that the TV company was not interested in a discussion on the rights or wrongs of Facebook’s decision to ban the “far right,” including any discussion of its implications with respect to free speech and its ramifications with respect to the future of democracy. It was clear, in fact, that the TV company was only interested in expressing its support for Facebook’s decision and intended to exclude all dissident opinion on the matter. My appearance would only to be tolerated were I willing to toe the party line. I was wanted as a propaganda tool to make the prescribed point, not as someone who might voice the proscribed viewpoint.
And what of the “slippery slope” towards tyranny to which I referred in my response to the TV network? The fact is that we are already on it.
Take, for instance, Facebook’s taking down of a fundraising page for this summer’s Chesterton Festival in Croatia on the grounds that it constituted “hate speech.” The fund-raising page in question was designed to help an African man attend the Festival so that he could give one of the talks. Where, exactly, is the “hate speech” in this? Or the racism? Is it because the Orwellian bureaucrats at Facebook consider G. K. Chesterton to be on the “far right”? And what exactly constitutes the “far right”? And who decides? And how far to the right of the faceless Facebook executives does one need to be before one faces censure? Last year, for instance, an administrator of Franciscan University’s Facebook page noticed that one of its ads had been rejected because it contained “shocking content, sensational content, excessively violent content.” The “extreme” content deemed so shocking, so sensational, and so excessively violent that Facebook executives thought it needed to be banned was the image of the San Damiano Cross, the crucifix which inspired St. Francis of Assisi to take up his own cross and follow Christ. Facebook retreated from this particular act of censorship after it caused a tsunami of protest, claiming that it had been a “mistake.” One suspects, however, knowing what we do of Facebook’s track record before and since, that it was simply the case of the bully’s retreat following unexpected resistance from its intended victim.
We are already seeing in Europe how those who teach and preach traditional Christian sexual morality are being accused of “hate speech.” Pastors have been imprisoned for doing so in Scandinavia, and a woman has been threatened with arrest in the UK for suggesting that homosexual acts might be sinful. It is a short step from this climate of oppression to Facebook’s banning of Christian sites that teach traditional sexual morality. How long will it be before Facebook declares that those who teach what Christians have always taught are on the “far right”?
And what is true of sexual morality is also true of the related issue of abortion. How long will it be before Facebook decides that the pro-life movement is on the “far right”? Indeed, we are already on this slippery slope. The new pro-life film, Unplanned, faced “a widespread paid media blackout across mainstream and some faith-based outlets,” followed by a ban on Twitter that was quickly lifted after the bullies backed off in the face of online outrage. In the light of such censorship, which was aided and abetted by the film’s being controversially given an R rating by the MPAA, the movie’s success represents not merely a triumph for the pro-life movement but a triumph for free speech and political liberty. Due largely to the democratic power of word-of-mouth communication, which bypassed the media juggernaut, audiences filled theaters across the country on the film’s opening weekend. It out-performed pre-release projections to become the fourth biggest movie at the box office, taking in $6,382,298 for the weekend, surprising the soothsayers in the movie industry who had predicted the film would earn only $2-3 million.
Films such as Unplanned show the power of the people to resist the fascism of Facebook and other globalist bullies. Such resistance shows how the combined power of big business and Big Brother can be withstood. It shows how we can counter the efforts of those who are using the internet to try to enforce their intolerant political agenda. It shows that the small and dissident voice of the people can speak out against those who would lead us towards the slippery slope to tyranny. It shows, in the words of Frodo Baggins, that they cannot conquer forever.
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Editor’s Note: The featured image is a detail from “Pollice Verso” (1872) by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
But let’s face the truth about this bullying behaviour from Facebook and others. By cracking down on opposing views in the first place, they are showing us what they are capable of. They ban and they permit; they arrest and then exonerate…Arrests, fines, child seizure, sex-ed indoctrination, media blackouts: These are acts of brinksmanship, akin to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is the forces of the left showing us what they are capable if those who disagree with them so much as speak out. Essentially, they are trying to frighten us into silence; into refraining from speaking out ever louder with truth about the moral issues of our day. In fact we haven’t yet…
And sure, although we proceed with some of our public disagreement with their positions, it’s easy for us to retreat ever so slightly, faced with the terror of their growing power. Yes, “Unplanned” may get a few more showings; yes, some city may lose all their Planned Parenthoods; yes, the Pride Parade may even go bankrupt in a big city. But we cannot be complacent. We must be louder, bolder, still more courageous; we must force the Left out into the open with their strongest “weapons.” We have yet to see them.
The hypocrisy at Facebook, and their ilk, is blatant. Advocacy for abortion does not seem to be included in their concern about violence. Nonetheless, this censorship being imposed by these entities is wrong.
Only solution I can see is to apply the anti-trust sledge-hammer to Facebook, Google, etc. Break them up into smaller, competing companies.
Progressives are quick to squash a Christian baker who does not want to bake a cake for a “gay” wedding. But somehow it’s perfectly all right for these giant companies to deny service to people with different viewpoints.
Middlebury College cancelled a talk on the evils of Totalitarianism after an outrage from a leftist group on campus. That’s a hoot. The one place that a free exchange of ideas should be taking place! And to think– these young minds have no idea what totalitarianism really is, yet they are working to establish its presence in our country.
I think a lot of these bannings are actually computer generated, which might explain the sheer ignorant stupidity of some of them,
If they are actually totally the work of human beings-that really is sinister,
What needs to happen is the break-up of these internet monopolies like Facebook, or the rise of rival organisations. I’m sure that will happen sooner or later. I’ve no doubt that the Russians, for example, are quite capable of producing a state-funded rival to Facebook.
Facebook is doomed in its present form, anyway. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, is working on a blockchain system with the aim of making each user the owner of his or her own data, so that it can’t be harvested and sold. That will be the end of Facebook.
Some of these banning may be computer-generated.
But others are activated in response to complaint campaigns organised by self-appointed vigilantes who have insider access to Facebook officials who can take action manually.
Your quotation of Voltaire is quite fit and paradoxical. It is the French revolution. Already then, classical liberalism went wrong, with its need for social tyranny to secure its emancipation of humankind from religion. But if liberty is not ultimately religious liberty, to seek divine grace, cultivation of the soul, and moral growth, and if capitalism is not simply the provisional means to spread such liberty, with freedom from poverty accepted as divine gift, not short of miracle, that in part needs to be shared with the poor, instead of killing unborn babies, then liberalism has confounded itself. However, access to divine grace, cultivation of virtues, and love of neighbour will not in themselves be provided by classical liberalism, as children need parents, and as people need friends. We are poor.