Hate speech

Thursday

Stephen L. Miller

Brazil is showing a Harris administration how to de-platform Twitter/X

What happened in Brazil this past week — a magistrate suspended Twitter and threatened telecommunication companies, as well as Apple and Google — did not happen in a vacuum. To briefly sum up the order handed down: Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered that Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) be completely de-platformed, citing government speech rules against hate and “disinformation.” Any Brazilian citizen caught using a VPN to skirt the legal order could face fines that equal about $9,000. Moraes has also attempted to freeze Starlink accounts in the country, Musk’s satellite and internet service. What is happening in Brazil is a blueprint for a Kamala Harris Department of Justice to target X and Musk here in the United States. How do we know this?

Thursday

Jack Hunter

How did free speech become a right-wing value?

In early May, I explored the left’s reaction to billionaire Elon Musk potentially buying Twitter and his vow to make it a free speech platform again. Since then, Musk and his vision have repeatedly been portrayed as “right-wing.” It’s the damndest thing. Canadian Conservative politician Andrew Scheer picked up on this strange phenomenon back in April, saying that that the corporate media framing free speech as a “right wing value” was just plain weird. As though to drive home the point, Twitch’s Zachary Ryan called Musk a right-winger on Monday. And over the weekend, entrepreneur Samir Tabar had a question for a whiny Robert Reich: https://twitter.com/SamirTabar/status/1601984560345907200 Answer: since, well, now. The evolution of this trend is not new.

free speech

Saturday

James Innes-Smith

Are fake hate crimes still motivated by racism?

When racist graffiti appeared on the walls of a dormitory at Albion College in Michigan, the college heads and student body were outraged. The graffiti, which included racial slurs, anti-Semitic remarks and multiple references to the Ku Klux Klan, prompted college officials to put forward a $1,000 bounty for anyone with information as to the perpetrator. Albion College President Mathew Johnson warned that ‘if they are Albion College students, they will also immediately be subject to the student conduct process — including the potential for suspension or expulsion’. Criminal charges would follow. More than 450 Albion College students and staff members marched across town to boycott the injustices they believed were happening on campus.

albion college

Wednesday

Daniel Jupp

Trump’s bold defiance of Macron’s hate speech charter

In Arthur Miller’s superb examination of the nature of fanaticism, The Crucible, the key moment comes not with the initiation of the Salem witch trials which form the subject of the play, but in the leading character finally and fully rejecting them. The point of crisis comes when John Proctor refuses to sign his name to the condemnation of supposed witches which would justify their horrific punishment. 'How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul, leave me my name.' It is the moment when a man finally finds the courage that is essential to any meaningful masculinity, the courage to defy the absolute consensus of opinion that harms the innocent and taints those who accept it with complicity in evil.

hate speech