Ireland’s deeply sinister hate crime bill

These are certainly interesting times in Ireland. Like every other European country, there’s a cost of living crisis. Mortgages are going up. Inflation is wiping out savings and the ruinous impact of our strict lockdowns is still killing jobs.

We’ve even spent recent days convulsed in a bizarre national uproar over RTE’s highest paid star being allegedly bunged money ‘off the books’; a scandal so serious that it led to the Director General of RTE being suspended while investigations are carried out.

This is both a crank’s charter and a heckler’s veto

Yet while these various issues dominate the papers and the airwaves, the really important issue of freedom of expression has been largely ignored.

In recent weeks, the Seanad (Ireland’s Upper House) has been busy ratifying the utterly draconian Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate offences) Bill.

Many of us have looked on with growing horror at the UK’s laws against free speech, which have seen mediocre comedians investigated for making a lame joke, or a Celtic fan having his collar felt by the police because he mocked the late Captain Tom Moore.

But this Bill, which is expected to become enshrined in legislation in September, will make the UK look like a libertarian bastion of freedom of expression.

First mooted by previous Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan three years ago, many observers assumed that when he left office his terrible idea would be simply forgotten. Far from it.

In fact, the current Justice Minister, Helen McEntee, has embraced it with gusto.

Under the Bill, soon to become an Act, it will become a crime to say anything, in person or online, which anybody from a protected category (race, gender religion, sexuality etc.) finds hateful or offensive.

Of course, offence is in the eye of the beholder and the fact that there is no actual definition of what ‘hate’ actually is has not deterred the current Justice Minister from blithely dismissing any objections or criticisms by saying that, apparently, ‘we all have an understanding of what hatred means.’

The new law won’t just prosecute people who go online and say stupid things on Twitter (we’re going to have a build a lot more prisons when that particular piece of legislation comes into force). The Gardai will soon have the right to search your laptop or phone for anything that may be deemed ‘offensive or hateful’. That includes books you may have downloaded on your Kindle. So, for example, if you have a copy of something like The Turner Diaries or Mein Kampf on your phone or laptop, you are now looking at a potential sentence of five years in jail.

It is, to use a technical term, completely bonkers.

So we have a justice minister ushering in frighteningly authoritarian restrictions on freedom of expression and railing against ‘hatred’ while being unable to actually define what hatred is, and an already overworked, understaffed and demoralised police force who will shortly be forced to round up people who have expressed an opinion that someone else didn’t like.

So why is the government taking such a hard line on this vexed issue?

Well, in Ireland, our political leaders simply like telling us what to do, and many citizens are quite comfortable with that arrangement.

Perhaps it’s part of our colonial history. But even when the Republic of Ireland achieved independence, it quickly swapped English overlords for the belt of the crozier and rule from the Vatican. Then after half a century of servitude under the bishops, we became more liberal and decided to serve the EU instead.

Indeed, it was rather interesting to see one university lecturer of social policy come out and demand the Bill be enacted immediately because otherwise we will be ‘laggards in Europe on this issue’.

And that’s the real fear of many in what passes for the Irish intellectual elite – a paralysing fear that we aren’t as eager as our European masters to stamp down on mean things being said on the internet.

In reality what this means is that Irish pro-life groups can expect calls from the cops when they say that life begins at conception. It means that feminists who assert that a man is a man and a woman is a woman and who believe in biological reality can expect criminal prosecution, with jail and unlimited fines lurking over their shoulders.

Frankly, this is both a crank’s charter and a heckler’s veto.

The effect on free speech in this country will be so chilling that many people will simply be afraid to say or write anything that may cause an activist mob to descend on them and demand the state takes action.

It’s bad law with bad intentions and will have terrible consequences for Irish democracy and freedom.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/irelands-deeply-sinister-hate-crime-bill/?

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http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

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http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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