{"id":1459217,"date":"2024-02-25T12:35:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-25T17:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1459217"},"modified":"2024-02-25T12:35:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-25T17:35:00","slug":"the-irish-should-reject-the-new-hate-speech-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/the-irish-should-reject-the-new-hate-speech-bill\/1459217\/","title":{"rendered":"The Irish Should Reject The New ‘Hate Speech’ Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Irish Should Reject The New ‘Hate Speech’ Bill<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Paul Coleman via The Critic,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Republic of Ireland\u00a0could soon become one of the worst violators of the human right to free speech in the Western world.<\/strong> Despite the government claiming to espouse liberal ideas, the looming\u00a0Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences Bill<\/em><\/a>\u00a0would usher in a dangerous new standard for state-driven censorship. The expression or possession of content or even ideas deemed \u201chateful\u201d would be illegal under the law, with serious implications for everyday people simply seeking to live according to their convictions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Irish need only look to the case of Finnish member of parliament\u00a0P\u00e4ivi R\u00e4s\u00e4nen<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 criminally prosecuted for over four years for a Bible-verse tweet, to recognise the suffocating impact \u201chate speech\u201d laws engender.<\/strong> Finnish state prosecutors are pushing her case into its fifth year with an appeal to the country\u2019s supreme court, making no attempt to hide their insatiable quest to silence and sanction the parliamentarian for her peaceful expression of Christian conviction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

R\u00e4s\u00e4nen\u2019s \u201ccrime\u201d consisted of sharing her Christian position on marriage and sexuality in a 2019 Twitter post. When her church decided to officially sponsor a Helsinki \u201cPride\u201d event, she expressed an objection in light of Biblical teaching, posting a verse from the New Testament book of Romans. Lengthy police interrogations followed by criminal prosecution ensued, absurdly under the section of the\u00a0Finnish criminal code<\/a>\u00a0titled \u201cwar crimes and crimes against humanity\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

R\u00e4s\u00e4nen was dealt three criminal charges, carrying a potential prison sentence of two years, for the tweet, in addition to her comments on a 2019 radio debate and in a church pamphlet she had authored nearly 20 years before. Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola was charged alongside her for publishing the booklet for his congregation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

R\u00e4s\u00e4nen and Pohjola were twice unanimously acquitted of all charges, but with the pending supreme court appeal, it\u2019s clear that free speech in Finland hangs very much in the balance. <\/strong>The prosecution of individuals in the public eye has a particularly repressive effect \u2014 few and far between will be the brave person willing to speak their mind when the state, utilising near limitless resources, makes clear its tireless pursuit of censorship.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Such is the reality increasingly facing us in the West who dare to voice our beliefs in the public square. While \u201chate speech\u201d laws are pervasive throughout Europe, with the proposed new law, Ireland is setting a new low bar for censorship. <\/strong>Notably, the draft bill goes so far as to include a sentence of up to five years in prison for the mere possession of \u201chateful\u201d material.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not content with its existing array of free speech restrictions,\u00a0the government has based the necessity of the new law on the need to counter rising violence in Ireland, following a surge of incidents largely tied to tensions over immigration. The argument is that restricting speech somehow increases safety on the streets\u2014but history has shown no proof of this. What it has shown is that censorship is the preferred answer to any problem the state faces. It\u2019s easier for those in power to silence dissent, than to deal with the problems plaguing their societies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The thought of Irish police raiding homes to seize materials, including books and even something as ridiculous as memes on phones, recalls some of the darker episodes of the past century.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Leo Varadkar, Taoiseach of Ireland<\/em><\/p>\n

While\u00a0proponents<\/a>\u00a0of the law point to the \u201csafeguard\u201d that criminalises possession only \u201cwith a view to the material being communicated to the public,\u201d the ambiguity could allow for prosecution of any content regardless of intent to share publicly. What is clear per the draft law\u2019s wording, though, is that refusing to turn your phone password over to authorities could be enough to land you a conviction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Further, the bill contains an infinite number of \u201cgender identities\u201d as \u201cprotected characteristics\u201d. These would be given the protection of the criminal law, creating a situation where perceived criticism is criminally prosecutable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As with \u201chate speech\u201d laws across the West, an underlying problem with the Irish law is that \u201chatred\u201d is not defined \u2014 left subject to the whims of those in power.<\/strong> This lack of definition is a clear design feature of \u201chate speech\u201d legislation. After all, why unnecessarily restrict the future scope of the censorship?<\/p>\n

As ominously put by Irish senator\u00a0Barry Ward:<\/a>\u00a0\u201cI\u00a0don\u2019t think there is any doubt in people\u2019s mind about the material that we are talking about\u201d<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Similarly, the\u00a0Irish Minister for Justice<\/a>\u00a0has rejected the inclusion of any definition in the bill, saying it would hamper the ability of the \u201cprosecution to secure convictions\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But while the government may claim to know exactly what it\u2019s going after, the average citizen will have no clue if what they are saying, holding, or even thinking will land them in jail.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s precisely the vagueness inherent in defining \u201chate\u201d that makes the law appealing to a state seeking to wield its power in the name of public order. Based on our experience with these laws in the past decade, we can safely assume that \u201chatred\u201d will morph into anything understood to go against the reigning cultural and political ideology of the day, subject to wherever the ideological winds blow.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hope the righteous\u00a0outrage<\/a>, both at home and abroad, in response to the law\u2019s evident failings will stop its passage, or at least mitigate the worst of the damage with substantive amendments.<\/strong> And to fuel those efforts one need look no further than Finland \u2014 where a longstanding parliamentarian, respected public figure, and grandmother of 11 is being subjected to five years of gruelling prosecution simply for sharing her deeply held beliefs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Is this really the future Ireland wants? If so, those in favour of the \u201chate speech\u201d bill should be honest enough to admit it.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSun, 02\/25\/2024 – 07:35<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bRead More<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Irish Should Reject The New ‘Hate Speech’ Bill Authored by Paul Coleman via The Critic, The Republic of Ireland\u00a0could soon become one of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1459217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbimBl-67BL","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1459217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1459217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1459217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1459217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}