Friday, February 21, 2020

A mixed week for freedom of speech


It’s been an interesting few days for anyone with an interest in free speech. There's been one positive development, one negative and one inconclusive.

First came the surprise announcement last Friday that Sir Robert Jones was abandoning his defamation case against film maker Renae Maihi.

To recap: Jones wrote a self-evidently satirical column for National Business Review* in which he suggested that Waitangi Day should be replaced with Maori Gratitude Day.

“I have in mind a public holiday where Maori bring us breakfast in bed or weed our gardens, wash and polish our cars and so on out of gratitude for existing,” he wrote.

It was classic Bob Jones: wilfully provocative but quite funny, not least because it was outrageous in a Private Eye-ish fashion. And while it was clearly not meant to be taken seriously, he was making a valid point – namely, that for all the talk about the harm done to Maori by British colonisation, they benefited in ways that are not often talked about. The fact that colonisation brought an end to slavery, cannibalism and savage inter-tribal warfare must surely count for something.

But Maihi didn’t see the joke. Describing the column as a vile rant, she called Jones a racist and launched an online petition urging that he be stripped of his knighthood. (The petition, which reportedly attracted 85,000 signatures, was twice submitted to Parliament but not accepted for consideration.)

Jones sued, but not for damages. All he wanted was a declaration from the court that he was defamed and an order for Maihi to pay his costs, though he left open the question of whether he would accept her money. He took particular exception to the claim that he was racist.

I found myself in the unusual position of supporting both parties. You can understand why Jones objected to being called a racist – a deeply offensive term that is thrown around far too freely, often with the aim of intimidating people into silence.

But it seems unrealistic to exercise your right to free speech, as Jones did, then call in the lawyers when someone strikes back. Even allowing for the argument that the word racist should be viewed as technically defamatory, the free market of ideas and opinions is a rough-and-tumble place where you can expect to be bruised. Jones knows this, and has inflicted more than a few contusions himself over the decades.

It seems to me that the more provocative a columnist is, the more he or she should be prepared to tolerate blowback. The old saying about heat and kitchens applies. This might not be a view that would stand up in court, where prolix legal arguments often succeed in making simple things seem complex, but I think it’s a fair and reasonable one.

There was also the perception that a man with very deep pockets was using the law to squash a critic whom we can safely assume didn’t have a lot of money to fight an expensive defamation action. Of course Jones was entitled to exercise his legal rights, but rich property investor versus young(ish) Maori film maker was never going to play well.

In my view, then, for what it’s worth (which I admit is probably bugger-all), Jones should have sucked it up. 

As it turned out, he discontinued the action anyway, after five days. In a conciliatory statement, Jones said he remained deeply offended by Maihi’s allegations but accepted that she was expressing a sincerely held opinion. One wonders why he couldn’t have come to that conclusion in the first place.

Jones went on to say that the parties differed on what was acceptable humour, but no malice was intended by either side and it was sensible to put an end to the proceedings.

It was an uncharacteristic backdown from the old warhorse, and one wonders whether his heart was in it. Perhaps he sensed things were going badly in court (the news and comment website The Spinoff carried a savage critique of his performance in the witness box) or simply decided that he didn’t need this sort of carry-on at his stage in life (he’s 80). Who knows?

I was disappointed by the non-outcome because I thought this might be an opportunity for a judge to attempt a definition of that troublesome word “racist”. The term is used so indiscriminately that it would be helpful for the courts to pin down its meaning and rule on whether it can be defamatory (I would have thought yes, in which case I’ve been defamed more than a few times myself). But I guess we’ll have to wait.

As it happens, on the same day as Jones’ defamation case came to its non-conclusion in Wellington, a High Court judge in England was delivering a judgment that applies some overdue common sense to another vexatious and overused term: hate speech.

I’ve already outlined the bare bones of this case in the COLUMN posted on this blog yesterday, but you can read Mr Justice Julian Knowles’ judgment in full HERE. It lays bare the frightening extent to which the British police have been contaminated by the fashionable ideology of identity politics.

The facts of the case were that a man named Harry Miller posted a series of comments on Twitter that upset a “post-operative trans-gender lady” identified as Mrs B. (In passing, it strikes me as fundamentally unfair that the complainants in such cases have the protection of anonymity while those they accuse – often unfairly, as in this instance – must suffer the unpleasant consequences of being publically named.)

Miller, a former police officer whom the judge described as intelligent and highly educated, opposed government moves to enable people to “self-identify” as trans-gender. He objected to the distortion of commonly understood biological concepts such as male and female – a concern shared by many feminists – and thought that self-identification posed a threat to existing sex-based rights. He also objected to the politicisation of the police in their “open campaigning” in support of the law change.

He told the court he had no hatred for the transgender community and believed “such persons have the right to present and perform in any way they choose, provided that such choices do not infringe upon the rights of women”. But he wanted to raise awareness of the issue “by stating that which used to be instinctively obvious – a biological man is a man and a biological woman is a woman. To claim otherwise is extraordinary.”

A friend of Mrs B drew her attention to some of Miller’s tweets and she complained to the Humberside police, describing Miller as transphobic and “a bigot” who “eighty years ago … would have been making the same comments about Jewish people”.

So what was the nature of these heinous tweets that evoked comparisons with Nazism? One tweet dismissed as “bollocks” the notion that “transwomen are women”.  In another, Miller joked about being assigned mammal at birth when his real orientation was fish – thus poking fun at the idea that people could create their own biological reality. On another occasion he retweeted a verse from a song by a feminist songwriter which referred to silicone breasts, synthetic hormones and a vagina that “goes nowhere”. The judge said this was the tweet that most concerned the police, though it’s not clear why.

Justice Knowles said the police recorded the matter as a hate incident without any critical scrutiny of the tweets or assessment of whether what Mrs B was saying was accurate, which he ruled it wasn’t. A hate crime report referred to Mrs B as “the victim” and Miller as “the suspect”.

A later entry in the police file said Miller had been making comments that were “designed to cause deep offence and show his hatred for the transgender community” – a claim for which the judge said there was no evidence.

The complaint was placed in the hands of a Constable Mansoor Gul, who is described as a “community cohesion officer”. His witness statement reveals the startling extent to which rank-and-file British police officers are empowered to form what are essentially political judgments about matters they are investigating – to say nothing of their susceptibility to faddish ideology.

“Where I am assigned a hate incident to investigate,” Constable Gul said in his witness statement, “I review the report and decide whether it has been correctly classified as a hate incident. If, having reviewed the evidence available and spoken to the victim, I consider it to be more serious than a hate incident, then I can recommend that it be re-classified as a hate crime.”

PC Gul viewed screen shots of the tweets supplied to him by Mrs B and formed the view that they were properly treated as a hate incident. Having considered the risk of matters escalating to criminal offences being committed, he decided to speak to Miller.

He went to Miller’s place of work. Miller wasn’t there, so he left his card with a company director with a request that Miller phone him. Gul wasn’t in uniform, but the company director would have known he was a police officer and must have wondered what Miller had done to warrant police attention.

Gul said that in their subsequent phone conversation, he explained to Miller that although the tweets were not criminal, they were upsetting many members of the transgender community [in fact only one, as the judge was at pains to point out]. Gul told Miller that although his behaviour did not amount to criminal behaviour, if it escalated then it might become criminal and the police would need to deal with it appropriately.

Gul said he was acting in line with national guidelines known as the Hate Crime Operational Guidance (HCOG), which are issued by the College of Policing – the first defendant in the action.

Miller testified that he asked for, and received, confirmation that none of his alleged 30 tweets were criminal. He then asked why Gul was wasting his time and was told: “I need to check your thinking”.

“I replied: ‘So, let me get this straight, I’ve committed no crime. You’re a police officer. And you need to check my thinking?’ PC Gul answered: ‘Yes’.

“I said, ‘Have you any idea what that makes you? Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel, not a police training manual.’”

At this point in his judgment, Justice Knowles helpfully explains that Nineteen Eighty-Four is the 1949 novel by George Orwell which coined the term ‘thoughtcrime’ to describe a person's politically unorthodox or unacceptable thoughts.

Miller said the clear implication from the conversation with Gul was that he should stop tweeting on transgender issues or risk the matter being escalated from non-crime to crime, thus promoting further police intervention.

As the British columnist Melanie Phillips acidly observed: “Got that? A non-crime can morph into a crime simply by virtue of the non-crime being committed on multiple occasions.”

But it was what came next in the conversation with Gul that “stunned” Miller.

“He [Gul] said, ‘You have to understand, sometimes in the womb, a female brain gets confused and pushes out the wrong body parts, and that is what transgender is.

“I replied, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Wrong body parts? You have to know that is absolute bullshit. Is this really the official police line?’ PC Gul said, ‘Yes, I have been on a course’.”

In his witness statement, Gul denied saying this. But given that Justice Knowles found other statements by Gul to be incorrect, I know whose account I’d believe.

The judge said Miller experienced a deep sense of personal humiliation, shame and embarrassment as a result of the police action and hadn’t been back to work since the day he was first contacted by PC Gul. It’s interesting to contrast this with the total absence of any adverse consequences for the mischievous complainant, Mrs B.

Justice Knowles was sharply critical of PC Gul, saying he had “misrepresented and/or exaggerated the effect the Claimant’s tweets had had and the number of complaints the police had received”.

He went on to say that the police left Miller with the clear belief that he was being warned by them to desist from posting further tweets on transgender matters. “In other words, I conclude that the police’s actions led him [Miller], reasonably, to believe that he was being warned not to exercise his right to freedom of expression about transgender issues on pain of potential criminal prosecution.”

I’ll skip the next 30-odd pages of Knowles’ 65-page judgment, which are largely concerned with argument over the legality of the Hate Crime Operational Guidance, which Miller challenged. 

Knowles upheld the legality of the HCOG, which arose from recommendations made by the Macpherson Inquiry that followed the racially motivated killing of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in London in 1993. But to quote Melanie Phillips again: “It was the toxic and ideologically distorted Macpherson report which led to the introduction of the Orwellian concepts of hate crime, the replacement of objective reality by subjective ‘victim’ opinion and the policing of thought itself.”

Let’s fast-forward now to the last section of the judgment, where Knowles considers the specific issue of Miller’s treatment by the police. He doesn’t hold back: “It is clear that there are those on one side of the [transgender] debate who simply will not tolerate different views, even when they are expressed by legitimate scholars whose views are not grounded in hatred, bigotry, prejudice or hostility, but are based on legitimately different value judgments, reasoning and analysis, and form part of mainstream academic research.”

He held that Miller’s tweets were protected by Section 10.1 (Freedom of Expression) of the UK Human Rights Act. They were expressions of opinion on a topic of current controversy and were congruent with the opinions of respected academics.

Gul had no rational basis on which to believe there was any risk of Miller committing a criminal offence, Knowles said. “There was no firm evidence that anyone had read his tweets and been upset, apart from Mrs B. There was no evidence anyone would read any future tweets and be upset by them.” He added that Gul was wrong to say that the tweets had upset many members of the transgender community. “There was no evidence of that and Mrs B does not say that in her witness statement.”

As for Mrs B, Knowles commented: “I consider it fair to say that her reaction to the Claimant’s tweets was, at times, at the outer margins of rationality.”

Knowles went on to say: “The undisputed facts plainly show that the police interfered with the Claimant’s [Miller’s] right to freedom of expression. PC Gul’s actions in going to the Claimant’s place of work and his misstatement of the facts, his warning to the Claimant, coupled with the subsequent warnings by the police to the Claimant that he would be at risk of criminal prosecution if he continued to tweet ... all lead me to conclude that the police did interfere with his Article 10(1) rights even though he was not made subject to any formal sanction.”

Arguments advanced by lawyers for the police did not properly reflect the value of free speech in a democracy, he said. Then this: “There was not a shred of evidence that the Claimant was at risk of committing a criminal offence. The effect of the police turning up at his place of work because of his political opinions must not be underestimated. To do so would be to undervalue a cardinal democratic freedom. In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society.” He held that the police’s actions, taken as a whole, had a chilling effect on Miller’s right to freedom of expression.

Knowles concluded his judgment by quoting from John Stuart Mill’s 1859 treatise On Liberty: “If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

It was an emphatic defence of free speech in a country that has been waiting a long time for one. In the meantime, as Melanie Phillips has written, Britain has fallen into a “terrifying state of authoritarian imbecility”. Whether one judge’s ruling will be enough to arrest the process remains to be seen.

I’ve taken the trouble to describe this case in some detail because it’s relevant to New Zealand. While our police force hasn’t been politicised in the way Britain’s has, there’s no guarantee it won’t happen.  The same angry, illiberal ideological forces are in play here, and we have a police commissioner who has made sympathetic noises about the need for "hate crime" and "hate speech" to be more actively policed.

We certainly shouldn’t expect government politicians to defend free speech – not when the Minister of Justice has seized the Christchurch mosque massacres as a chance to crack down on opinions that upset aggrieved minority groups, and when the comically misnamed Human Rights Commission promotes restrictions on what New Zealanders should be allowed to say.

That the prevailing climate is one of dangerous censoriousness was again demonstrated this week by the SkyCity convention centre’s decision to cancel a speaking engagement by the controversial Australian philosopher Peter Singer. In a particularly nauseating example of PR-speak, a spokesperson said: “Whilst SkyCity supports the right of free speech, some of the themes promoted by this speaker do not reflect our values of diversity and inclusivity.”

What bullshit. If SkyCity truly believed in free speech, it would honour its contract with the promoter of the event. And if it truly valued diversity, it would recognise that this must extend to diversity of opinion.

In truth, a gutless SkyCity bailed out because it was worried about “reputational damage”, to use another hideous PR term. It appears to have been unnerved by the possibility of disability activists protesting against Singer.

Why should disability activists protest? Because Singer has argued that parents of seriously disabled babies have a moral right to kill them.

It’s a stance I consider utterly repulsive, but it won’t become less repulsive if Singer is denied the chance to talk about it. Barring him from speaking may simply enhance his mystique among those who are drawn to "edgy" thinkers.

Besides, Singer’s abhorrent ideas serve one useful purpose: they highlight the hypocrisy and inconsistency of prevailing attitudes toward abortion. Because if people are appalled by the thought of newborn babies being euthanased, how do they justify babies being killed in the womb – especially those that have passed the point where they can survive on their own? What’s the qualitative difference? Where is the line to be drawn, assuming one can be drawn anywhere?

Singer’s de-platforming follows similar action taken against the Canadian speakers Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern in 2018, which prompted the formation of the Free Speech Coalition, and even more reprehensibly against Don Brash by Massey University. 

Not surprisingly, commentators on the left who applauded the banning of Molyneux and Southern are appalled that it’s now happened to Singer – although they don’t explain what the difference is, other than that they hated the right-wing Canadians but regard Singer as “a category of thinker we should pay attention to”, to quote The Spinoff’s Danyl Mclauchlan.

Myself, I believe it’s vital that people support Singer’s right to speak in Auckland, notwithstanding his abhorrent view on the killing of disabled babies. We should also support the right of disability activists to protest, provided they don’t try to deny people access to the venue or seek to disrupt the event (and as far as I know, that wasn’t their intention).

After all, that’s how a liberal democracy is supposed to function: by allowing people to engage freely in the contest of ideas. As the American academic Noam Chomsky, himself a darling of the left, once said: “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”

* To its eternal shame, National Business Review later removed Jones’ column from its website, citing “inappropriate content” – a weaselly phrase beloved of people who lack the courage to stand up to the enemies of free speech.




13 comments:

Rory said...

Thank you again Karl.
Simply stunning.
I read it in almost disbelief until I realised the NZ mirror of intravenous absorbing of the Orwellian 1984 tactics to brainwash New Zealanders by stealth, using Mainstream Media, Academia, to name but a few and Political manoeuvring to obtain this repulsive outcome.

Hilary Taylor said...

Straight from the 'truth is stranger than fiction' files...this UK litigation. Scarcely believable even a few years ago.
Same for the ludicrous Skycity ban...taking their cue from the unlovely & cowardly Massey exemplar.
Confused folk, lots of them nowadays, seek to ban what they don't like, or are puzzled by, with no regard to the free society we've fought to create.
Jones? The piece was forgettable in the first place, & best ignored...a bit of low-brow satire. But things got out of hand here too. Everyone needed to calm down and breathe. A bit like the Holmes 'cheeky darkie' thing. Who could be po-faced enough to 'see' racist intent? Some with axes to grind.
Keep on keeping on Karl, please.

Odysseus said...

This government fully intends to criminalize speech they don't like. In the past few days the Ministry of Justice and the Orwellian Human Rights Commission have boasted they have consulted over one hundred people in various communities to compile their report on hate speech legislation for Andrew Little. The Free Speech Coalition has noted that it of course was not part of the consultation. We already have laws outlawing racial discrimination or abuse, as well as the catch-all of "disorderly behaviour". We don't need new laws that contradict the Bill of Rights Act and violate the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, unless certain groups are seeking to have their beliefs given legal privilege. Parliament recently got rid of the anachronistic law against Christian blasphemy. Are we now to have an Islamic blasphemy law? Religions are sets of beliefs, many of which are absurd or repellent to ordinary citizens. Some beliefs are used to justify atrocities against people going about their everyday business, as we too often read in the media these days. The outlook for the protection of our basic freedoms in this country is not good.

Doug Longmire said...

Well done Karl - an excellent article on this topic, where you lay out the facts out very clearly. I appreciate and respect your blogs, as you are the clearest most concise writer currently around.
Regarding Jones - yes, that fizzled out in the end to a non-event, which was probably always likely.
The term "racist" being defamatory? Well, I would think - yes if it is unjustified by objective evidence; but no, not defamatory if it is a statement of fact, and backed by evidence.
"Hate speech". What a Mickey Mouse term ! What is hate speech? How can hate speech, as a legal offence ever be defined? (The Prime Minister has stated that "you will know it when you see it." which just about sums it up).
Hate speech seems to be defined by the feelings of the recipient. So if someone criticizes because I am Caucasian and educated and I feel hurty,hurty/personally attacked, I could report this as "hate speech" to the thought police. Sighh --- Give me a break.

Doug Longmire said...

Here is an example of hate speech (in my opinion)

"..our tolerance for the terrible statistics of youth suicide, incarceration, and family violence in New Zealand. Like the song of the Orcs, it echoes in deep, hidden caverns in our society, menacing and frightening.

Every now and then it flashes out in actions that are simply terrifying, like the shootings in Christchurch."

It is a quote from Anne Salmond's article regarding the terrorist attack in Christchurch.

And how about this, also from Anne Salmond:-

"So let's be clear about this, white supremacy is a black strand woven through our history as a nation."

In my opinion, Salmond's views are deranged, racist, biased and from a twisted and sick attitude.

But - repugnant as her views are to me, I would always defend her right to express those views.

Trev1 said...

Yes Doug I was appalled by her vile invective against New Zealanders of European extraction. Her credibility evaporated in a flash. Others in the universities, media and parliament also jumped on the hate and hysteria bandwagon, very illuminating. But her views are mainstream for this government.



David McLoughlin said...


A lot of this is being driven by the tsunami of identity politics, in which the Woke of the West are seeking ever-tinier "groups" to campaign for because they are "more marginalised" or "worse off" than other groups. There are some interesting developments, here and overseas.

Feminists and gay men are now seen as the enemies of Woke because their views are now mainstream. They are increasingly being as despised by the Woke as white men have been. Feminists are being silenced on NZ universities (and those in the UK and US) as "anti-trans" or TERFs, while the gay cause has been shattered to pieces, with the Pride events in Auckland and Wellington being torn asunder by Woke activists (who appear to be neither gay nor trans, but Marxists, according to a writer I deeply respect, David Herkt.

In the US, universities such as Harvard and the UCs actively discriminate against ethnic-Chinese students, barring them entry in favour of Black students because ethnic-Chinese students get the highest exam scores. Ethnic Chinese Americans now also earn more on average that white Americans. Ethnic Chinese Americans were once almost as marginalised as Black Americans (though of course they were never slaves; I am in no way iminishing the atrocity of slavery).

In the UK, people of Indian descent -- also once an underclass -- are becoming a major part of mainstream society, voting Tory in huge numbers and earning more than white English folk. But only the Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Budhist and atheist people of Indian descent; the Muslim UK people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent seem generally still mired in the mire and thus have the support of the Woke. The others are being blasted as Uncle Toms, including the four (at least; I may have missed some) cabinet ministers of Indian descent. Even the Guardian is attacking these MPs on the basis of them being traitors to their race, FFS.

The UK Labour Party now despises the white English blue-collar working class it used to represent, and has lost almost all the seats where such voters are the majority, mostly from the Midlands north. Seats that had only ever been Labour are now held by Tory MPs.

The Woke of the West appear to have taken over the media, academia and the online space in Europe, North America and Down Under and are ardently promoting their narrow causes, which dominate public discourse because they control the public space now, which is a relatively new development. Before they controlled it, they supported freedom of speech. Now they oppose freedom of speech, which to me is probably the biggest concern of all.

Just as a final aside, I note that the Woke are only interested in controlling countries of the "West," which are general prosperous, free, have exacting and enforcable human rights law, which ban discrimination against women, ethnic minorities and the like, and where the public can lead lives generally how they wish. The Woke are utterly silent about the atrocities that take place in many non-western countries; where are the objections, for example, to the jailing without charge of the women who campaigned for the right to drive cars in Saudi Arabia (they have been in jail and subject to torture since the eve of the princely edict allowing women there to drive); where are the objections to the appalling "whipping squads" that now prowl the streets of Aceh to publicly flog women not dressed correctly or found in the company of a man other than their master? And it is not just human rights abuses the Woke ignore. While they are trying to make us all become vegan and close down the industrial wonders that have made this planet so good for the vast majority who live on it, they are totally ignoring the 650 coal-fired power stations under construction right now in China and India, whose people want the same modern facilities the Woke are determined to ban us from enjoying.

End of rant. Thanks Karl.

Andy Espersen said...

Your passion (not a rant!!) for free speech shows in the way you write, Karl - I love it. And agree wholeheartedly. I intend to vote ACT come the election simply because of its anti hate-speech policy. David Seymour is on to a winner - and knows it. One major NZ news magazine, North & South, is also getting to understand.

I believe it is becoming a major political issue in our western countries, except the United States. In the US it can never be a political issue because they have their constitution with its first amendment (but there, probably more than anywhere else, the problem exists in Academia and elsewhere).

Re Bob Jones - I would say he probably initiated his court case in defence of free speech. I remember his free spirit from the politically heady days in the 1980s when he single-handedly toppled the Muldoon economic tyranny. He wouldn't care a hoot about Maihi's ranting and allegations against him - but wanted to show her (and New Zealand) a lesson about freedom. And he dropped the case simply because of the goodness of his heart in not really wanting to ruin her life by bankrupting her - but having made his point.

Doug Longmire said...

Police in Britain have now pursued a total of 120,000 “non-crime” hate incidents. Note that there is nothing illegal in these incidents.
In the meantime, how about solving real crime ?
Well, Last year, only 7.3 per cent of UK crimes were solved.
Only one in 400 car thieves are caught and prosecuted.
Only 1.3 percent of personal thefts are caught and prosecuted.
Arrest rates for reported rape and personal violence are under 10 per cent.

Not surprisingly, 90 percent of Britons have no faith that Police could solve their case, because the current track record demonstrates just that.

Why would this be? An observer could speculate that policing in the UK has gone soft, and police are picking soft targets (ordinary non criminal citizens). After all – pursuing and catching real criminals is hard work.

We have seen the example above of Harry Miller, being persecuted for expressing his opinion while the police are ignoring real criminals.

How long before it happens here? With the "hate speech" notion being pursued by Govt, and the (joke!!) Human Rights Commission pushing it along.

Doug Longmire said...

And I might add - Harry Miller is quite right. There are two genders. A male cannot become a female because every cell in the body is male DNA/chromosones. No matter if a man dresses up in woman's clothes, takes hormones, and maybe gets surgery on genitals to modify the shape, the man is still a man.
Scientific Fact. Not a matter of opinion. Not "transphobic". Just basic 5th form physiology

Bush Apologist said...

When the narrative from our own state funded fourth estate is so partisan you know that we need to be weary here also.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018735530/how-vulnerable-is-nz-to-extreme-right-populism

The entire premise of this article is "anyone who dissagrees with our thinking is an extreme-right nationalist" and must be "countered"!

Doug Longmire said...

I have noticed this cropping up more and more in the MSM. The oft repeated reference to "far Right extremists". When the "extremists" are simply ordinary citizens who take pride and loyalty to their families, their country, and their nationhood. The Left has developed a vicious attack upon any person who disagrees with them.
We can all recall the attempted attack job by Paddy Gower on Lauren Southern and Stephan Molyneux. (Of course that one did back fire !!)

Bush Apologist said...

The long march takes another step - or should that be tip-toe behind the Wuhan coronavirus curtain!

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/120264595/justice-minister-forges-ahead-with-hate-speech-laws-for-new-zealand