Marc Glendening is Head of Cultural Affairs at the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Lizz Truss has demonstrated decisive courage regarding economic policy. Will she please now do so concerning freedom of expression? The early indications are confused. Sadly, she confirmed at her first PMQs that the government will be pressing ahead with the Online Safety Bill that Kemi Badenoch commendably pledged to scrap in her leadership campaign.
What on earth persuaded Boris Johnson and Nadine Dorries to press ahead with this illiberal monstrosity in the first place? This has been the piece of legislation the Labour party, and groups wanting extensive state regulation of the media and internet such as Hacked Off, have long been campaigning for. Their agenda is to turn Britain in its entirety into one giant ‘safe space’ in which the contemporary, Culture-Control Left (CCL) get to dictate what opinions make the identity groups they claim to represent ‘unsafe’.
The new Prime Minister has at least pledged herself to try to limit the threat it poses to free speech. There is speculation that Sections 53-55 and 187 committed to erasing content that is ‘legal but harmful’ might be amended in some way. This will be complicated because of the government’s desire to psychologically and physically protect children, as well as adults, who are of ‘ordinary sensibilities’, but also with special regard to any ‘certain characteristic’ they may have. How on earth is this to be defined by the moral guardians of the cybersphere?
At one time it was said that “patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel”. Now, for me at least, it is politicians and activists justifying more censorship of adults using the excuse of wanting to protect the kiddies.
As things stand, the provision relating to legal but harmful would, for example, enable anti-vaccination and Covid-sceptical material to be removed. The Secretary of State, Ofcom and big tech regulators will then be in the business of determining what lines of argument we as citizens are allowed, and not allowed, to access and evaluate for ourselves.
The draft Bill, independently of this particular objective, seeks to give regulators the right to cleanse what is alleged to be dis/misinformation. This is something the Left generally is gagging for. Some, such as the Carnegie Trust, have lobbied for the Bill to restrict the spreading of climate change-scepticism. Revealingly, it wants the legislation to “capture not just harm to individuals but to society as a whole.”
The extension of regulation in the way proposed would open the floodgates for greater state enforced political censorship which is what the CCL are desperate for. Stonewall, naturally, wants what it considers to be transphobic disinformation communicated by newspapers subject to state censorship. Just imagine how a future Labour government might use these powers.
There is, sadly, no suggestion, however, that the criminal provision that the Law Commission for England & Wales (LCEW) lobbied for, namely, that causing ‘serious emotional distress’ should be made a criminal offence will be revisited. The police will not even have to have identified an actual ‘victim’ to go ahead with arrest and prosecution. If they assume that a communication might have caused a likely audience psychological harm they can potentially can come round and feel your collar. It will further entrench the concept of identity group politics into law. The LCEW is the same body that urged the government to criminalise private conversations, something now enacted in Scotland.
The DCMS’s justification for the new charge relating to causing emotional harm:
“Serious does not simply mean ‘more than trivial’. It means a big, sizeable harm.”
And what will be the precise methodology the cops will employ to evaluate this beyond their own highly subjective values and biases? It goes without saying that this provision has very serious implications for the rule of law, our capacity and right to know even what the law means.
Given that no indication of the specific type of ideological content that could result in prosecution is provided in the draft, how are we supposed to confidently appreciate what kinds of intervention we might make could result in us being prosecuted? Especially in this era of victim culture when those asserting that they have been traumatised by hearing, reading something they dislike must, post the MacPherson Report, be believed by the police. Part of the recent prosecution case under the Malicious Communications Act 2007 against a Scottish feminist, Marion Millar, was that she had retweeted the image of the Suffragette symbol and this had caused a complainant ‘anxiety’.
This is an incredible new power to be handing over to the police and Crown Prosecution Service given that ideologies such as critical race theory and transgender ideology now so dominate the thinking of the contemporary left. Given their close links to organisations like Stonewall it is difficult to imagine this extraordinary new power also being used against militant transgenderists who engage in virulent abuse of ‘TERFS’ and others who have the audacity to challenge them.
Leaving aside the politically asymmetrical way in which any extension of the state’s capacity to punish free speech is likely to be used, the fact that a Tory government is planning to legislate in this way is an indication of how many on the contemporary centre right possess absolutely no firm philosophical foundations for their politics.
The CCL’s assertion that society is divided into oppressor and victim groups and that psychological injury can be visited by the former upon the latter through speech is passively accepted by many conservatives. The new left has achieved for its worldview what the Italian marxist strategist, Antonio Gramsci, called the status of a ‘common sense’. Its metaphysical assumptions are philosophically uncontested and beyond legitimate political dispute.
As a result, despite 12 years of Conservative government, the CCL’s long march through the institutions has gained momentum even in relation to the Blair years. The Online Safety Bill, with its explicit assumption that individuals can be harmed, made unsafe, by some images and the expression of opinions, is the ultimate manifestation of this. When will the Conservative party actually stand up and fight for the values of the open society? If it refuses to do so, what is its point exactly?
Marc Glendening is Head of Cultural Affairs at the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Lizz Truss has demonstrated decisive courage regarding economic policy. Will she please now do so concerning freedom of expression? The early indications are confused. Sadly, she confirmed at her first PMQs that the government will be pressing ahead with the Online Safety Bill that Kemi Badenoch commendably pledged to scrap in her leadership campaign.
What on earth persuaded Boris Johnson and Nadine Dorries to press ahead with this illiberal monstrosity in the first place? This has been the piece of legislation the Labour party, and groups wanting extensive state regulation of the media and internet such as Hacked Off, have long been campaigning for. Their agenda is to turn Britain in its entirety into one giant ‘safe space’ in which the contemporary, Culture-Control Left (CCL) get to dictate what opinions make the identity groups they claim to represent ‘unsafe’.
The new Prime Minister has at least pledged herself to try to limit the threat it poses to free speech. There is speculation that Sections 53-55 and 187 committed to erasing content that is ‘legal but harmful’ might be amended in some way. This will be complicated because of the government’s desire to psychologically and physically protect children, as well as adults, who are of ‘ordinary sensibilities’, but also with special regard to any ‘certain characteristic’ they may have. How on earth is this to be defined by the moral guardians of the cybersphere?
At one time it was said that “patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel”. Now, for me at least, it is politicians and activists justifying more censorship of adults using the excuse of wanting to protect the kiddies.
As things stand, the provision relating to legal but harmful would, for example, enable anti-vaccination and Covid-sceptical material to be removed. The Secretary of State, Ofcom and big tech regulators will then be in the business of determining what lines of argument we as citizens are allowed, and not allowed, to access and evaluate for ourselves.
The draft Bill, independently of this particular objective, seeks to give regulators the right to cleanse what is alleged to be dis/misinformation. This is something the Left generally is gagging for. Some, such as the Carnegie Trust, have lobbied for the Bill to restrict the spreading of climate change-scepticism. Revealingly, it wants the legislation to “capture not just harm to individuals but to society as a whole.”
The extension of regulation in the way proposed would open the floodgates for greater state enforced political censorship which is what the CCL are desperate for. Stonewall, naturally, wants what it considers to be transphobic disinformation communicated by newspapers subject to state censorship. Just imagine how a future Labour government might use these powers.
There is, sadly, no suggestion, however, that the criminal provision that the Law Commission for England & Wales (LCEW) lobbied for, namely, that causing ‘serious emotional distress’ should be made a criminal offence will be revisited. The police will not even have to have identified an actual ‘victim’ to go ahead with arrest and prosecution. If they assume that a communication might have caused a likely audience psychological harm they can potentially can come round and feel your collar. It will further entrench the concept of identity group politics into law. The LCEW is the same body that urged the government to criminalise private conversations, something now enacted in Scotland.
The DCMS’s justification for the new charge relating to causing emotional harm:
“Serious does not simply mean ‘more than trivial’. It means a big, sizeable harm.”
And what will be the precise methodology the cops will employ to evaluate this beyond their own highly subjective values and biases? It goes without saying that this provision has very serious implications for the rule of law, our capacity and right to know even what the law means.
Given that no indication of the specific type of ideological content that could result in prosecution is provided in the draft, how are we supposed to confidently appreciate what kinds of intervention we might make could result in us being prosecuted? Especially in this era of victim culture when those asserting that they have been traumatised by hearing, reading something they dislike must, post the MacPherson Report, be believed by the police. Part of the recent prosecution case under the Malicious Communications Act 2007 against a Scottish feminist, Marion Millar, was that she had retweeted the image of the Suffragette symbol and this had caused a complainant ‘anxiety’.
This is an incredible new power to be handing over to the police and Crown Prosecution Service given that ideologies such as critical race theory and transgender ideology now so dominate the thinking of the contemporary left. Given their close links to organisations like Stonewall it is difficult to imagine this extraordinary new power also being used against militant transgenderists who engage in virulent abuse of ‘TERFS’ and others who have the audacity to challenge them.
Leaving aside the politically asymmetrical way in which any extension of the state’s capacity to punish free speech is likely to be used, the fact that a Tory government is planning to legislate in this way is an indication of how many on the contemporary centre right possess absolutely no firm philosophical foundations for their politics.
The CCL’s assertion that society is divided into oppressor and victim groups and that psychological injury can be visited by the former upon the latter through speech is passively accepted by many conservatives. The new left has achieved for its worldview what the Italian marxist strategist, Antonio Gramsci, called the status of a ‘common sense’. Its metaphysical assumptions are philosophically uncontested and beyond legitimate political dispute.
As a result, despite 12 years of Conservative government, the CCL’s long march through the institutions has gained momentum even in relation to the Blair years. The Online Safety Bill, with its explicit assumption that individuals can be harmed, made unsafe, by some images and the expression of opinions, is the ultimate manifestation of this. When will the Conservative party actually stand up and fight for the values of the open society? If it refuses to do so, what is its point exactly?