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When we hear the term “thought police,” we think about the book “1984” or maybe recall the horrors of the old Soviet Union and its client states, where citizens were afraid to ever speak the truth.
Unfortunately, now when I hear the term, I think of England. I am a lifelong anglophile, the product of watching tons of British television and movies from “Monty Python” to the bawdy and irreverent “Countdown.” I’m a descendent of at least three parts of what used to be called the empire, so its history has always held a special meaning for me. But a two-week trip to England wasn’t especially merry with that threat looming overhead.
England arrests 12,000 people a year for what they say online. As someone who speaks his mind on the internet, that’s a terrifying prospect. No, I didn’t expect to spend a long time in a British jail, but getting in trouble for things I’ve said online isn’t restricted to British residents either.
Just ask comedian Graham Linehan. Five Metropolitan police arrested him for his posts about transgender men who claim they are women. The arrest itself looked like something from a Monty Python skit mocking a fascist state, not from a democracy that has turned into one. The police statement about the incident is terrifying: “The man in his 50s was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence. This is in relation to posts on X.” He is not English, he’s Irish and the comments he made were while he was here in the United States.
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Arrested for things he said online… here, not there. The Met police have since backed off and said, “they will no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents,” according to the Guardian. But does that mean people won’t get arrested? Of course not.
The British don’t have a First Amendment. They don’t have a right to free speech enshrined in anything. And they think it’s OK to lock up people for so-called hate speech. The Washington Post rationalized this in a recent piece, calling America’s view “extremist,” under an article headlined, “In Europe, hate speech isn’t free speech. Some in D.C. hate that.” Go figure that Americans might like, you know, freedom.
The New York Times quoted Wes Streeting, Britain’s health minister, saying things are changing and, “we want the police to focus on policing streets rather than tweets.” That sounds good except one way they intend to avoid that is making tech companies police speech. And they are trying to bully American firms to do just that with threats of fines and jail.
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They have targeted several companies to force them to comply with the British Online Safety Act or OSA. (The totalitarian left loves the concept of “safety” over freedom.) One of the targets is the meme-centric site 4Chan. Yes, 4Chan sometimes posts offensive stuff, but that is a key part of free speech the British refuse to accept.
In Britain’s demand that 4Chan obey their rules, they wrote, “A failure to comply with a requirement of an information notice may also constitute a criminal offense.” Essentially, they had to assess how well they were obeying British law, which isn’t their job because they are an American company. For that, they have fined 4Chan 20,000 pounds or over $26,000 and the fine grows if they don’t obey.
That’s a British company trying to fine an American company because it doesn’t like its speech policies. And those fines are chicken feed compared to what they could become, up to about $24 million and possible jail. Americans are lucky that 4Chan is fighting back because the major tech companies won’t. They have too much to risk with operations based in the U.K. and elsewhere. 4Chan can tell the British government no and mean it.
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Preston Byrne, managing partner of Byrne & Storm, told me he won’t even travel in England because he’s concerned he might be arrested. But the problem isn’t just England. The fight for free speech is global, and it poses a “clear and present danger to the United States,” he said. The EU is a major opponent of free speech. China is far worse, but the West has been trying to catch up. Imagine having a foreign government tell you or your business what it can say online. He asks, “At what point is the United States going to get sick of it?”
That’s a tough question to ask in an era where Congress is already so divided it can’t even end a very unpopular shutdown. “We need Congress to be involved,” he told me. Again, a tough ask, but that’s the solution.
Wikipedia, no friend to conservatives, still might be joining the fight, according to the British publication PoliticsHome. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is talking about a “political showdown” with the very censors he backed for office. He said Wikipedia won’t obey British rules restricting age for content. The site, “will not be age-gating Wikipedia under any circumstances.” Ultimately, he seems to think Wiki is in a good position: “Politically, what are they going to do? They could block Wikipedia. Good luck with that,” he said.
Not everyone in England is on board for what that nation has done to free speech, either. One of my favorite comedians, Jimmy Carr, was performing in Minneapolis recently and an audience member brought up what happened to Linehan. Carr called Linehan “brave” and said, “You’ve got the First Amendment. F—ing cherish it.”
To do that, our government needs to tell England that its censorship doesn’t apply to us.
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