Hate speech is not free speech: this is an increasingly common slogan that is being used right now to shut down those who dissent from the Leftist line. The idea is that hate speech is an objectively identifiable category, and it does not enjoy the protection that the freedom of speech ought to be given. Who gets to decide what is hate speech? To whom should be entrusted this governing authority so that we know what hate speech is and rule it out of free speech protection? To give anyone, even Theresa May, the right to determine what hate speech is and silence it on that basis is giving a tool to the powerful to silence the powerless, and a tool to tyrants to silence their critics. The freedom of speech, the right to enunciate what others may find objectionable, is our foremost protection against tyranny. “Hate speech” is not an objectively verifiable quantity; what it is depends entirely on who is doing the judging.
Thus the question “free speech or hate speech” is wrongly framed. If a government, like Theresa May’s government, is identifying certain speech as “hate speech” and banning it accordingly, there is no free speech at all. What you can and cannot say depends entirely upon the decision of the people in power. And that is no longer a free society, it is an authoritarian regime.
“Free speech or hate speech? Right-wing activists ‘banned’ from Britain (VIDEOS),” RT, March 12, 2018:
Right-wing activists have been banned from entering the UK and held in ‘detention centers’, sparking a free-speech debate on the streets of London. Members of Generation Identity (GI) and Antifa clashed on Sunday.
Border police held three high-profile members of GI just months after the group opened its UK wing. Martin Sellner, Brittany Pettibone and Lauren Southern were detained as they tried to make their way to London.
GI, seen by some as the European equivalent of America’s so-called ‘alt-right’ has been recruiting in the UK and attempting to spread its message, but a fierce left-wing opposition has seen meetings shut down and rallies interrupted. GI has an anti-Islam, nationalist message propagated through slick social media videos.
First, Sellner, the Austrian co-founder of GI, was held with activist and American girlfriend Pettibone at Luton Airport on Friday. The pair was detained when their plane touched down.
Speaking to fans on Periscope before she too was detained, Southern, from Canada, said her peers were being kept in a “detention center.”
“I’m just in absolute shock right now. They took them away in different locked vehicles and drove them to detention centers,” she said.
“[Pettibone]’s having to call people from a detention centre phone. They gave them very specific reasons. One they were going to interview Tommy Robinson and Martin Sellner is part of GI – a right wing group – they said ‘we are detaining you and banning you from the united kingdom because you are right wing.’
“This is political discrimination – this is political profiling. I was supposed to go there tomorrow. God knows what will happen to me, will I be put in a detention centre? I can’t see my friends because of their political opinions. I can’t meet one of my best female friends to talk about right wing politics.”
On Monday morning, Southern took to Twitter to announce she was being held in Calais after trying to enter Britain by bus. Southern joked online she had self-identified as “Pakistani” to French police as she was held in Calais.
However, angered supporters called on the government to be clear about what was happening.
A free-speech row erupted in the UK over the trio’s detention. On Sunday, Speaker’s Corner was surrounded by police as left-wing activists Antifa attempted to stop a rally by right-wing groups, including GI. Sellner had been due to talk at the event.
Vinnie Sullivan of Veterans Against Terrorism and a number of other groups said right-wing groups are having free speech denied to them.
“I don’t have a platform unless I create it myself. We have to sneak around and use underground means just to get our message out,” he told RT UK. “In this country today it’s becoming a crime to be white, a crime to fly your own flag and a crime to have right-wing opinions.
“They [Antifa] turn up with their faces covered – we would be arrested for that. There is no free speech anymore – not even here.”
Sirens blared as left wing campaigners chanted “Nazis off our streets” and said there is a “difference between free speech and hate speech.”…