A free speech platform just got yelled at for promoting free speech.
Yes, you read that correctly.
The far-left outlet, Cosmopolitan, reached out to Rumble on Monday to ask for comment on allowing Andrew Tate, a popular and controversial social media influencer, on its platform. Hysterically, Rumble told it to look in the mirror.
The New York Times has been running an extended crusade for some years now to dispense with freedom of speech. It’s run op-eds arguing that speech is violence, that the First Amendment has been misunderstood… and that we should be more like Germany.
This lunatic is all for it…
We need to be way tougher in Canada. Too many refuse to acknowledge that we are a hotbed of right wing extremism. You need to protect democracy if you’re going to keep it.
— Catherine McKenna (@cathmckenna) September 25, 2022
Freedom of speech is one of the most slippery concepts in political philosophy. John Stuart Mill pronounced it absolute but qualified it, as he did all liberties, where it causes “harm” to others. On that tenuous footing has grown an edifice of laws on slander, libel, incitement and, more recently, the causing of offence.
Canadian writers, publishers and literary figures doubled down on the right to freedom of thought and expression on Saturday, one day after an attack in the U.S. on award-winning author Salman Rushdie that has left him on a ventilator in hospital.
Doctors working on the front lines providing early COVID treatment and raising concerns regarding the safety and effectiveness of the COVID genetic vaccines have long suspected that the US Government Department of Health and Human Services was colluding with Big Tech to censor, defame, gaslight and deplatform anyone who veers from the government-approved narrative regarding these matters. But now we finally have hard evidence which documents this blatant infringement on the right to free speech by the US Government.
Though book banners may try to convince otherwise, students don’t need protection from the passion portrayed in Shakespeare’s classic.
In ninth grade, like high school freshmen all over America, I was assigned Romeo and Juliet to read for my English class. As a longtime literature geek even at the age of 14, I was thrilled to be entering the big leagues. We’d read some Charles Dickens and a little John Steinbeck. But this? This was William Shakespeare. This was serious, complicated stuff.
You’ll have to imagine my excitement as I took the book home to show it to my father, a professor of American literature. The look of irritation on his face as I passed him the book is something I’ll never forget.
Trudeau has spent the last few years cultivating support from a subset of Canadians who do not place as much value in free expression as liberals have in the past
For Canadians who believe in free speech, it’s time we recognize the damage that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has done to the Liberal Party of Canada. He has abandoned voters at the centre and appeals to an increasingly left-wing base that breaks from the federal Liberal party’s past support for free speech.
Survey suggests Canadians’ stance on free speech is swayed by their political views
A new survey suggests there is a strong relationship between a person’s political perspective and their views on free speech in Canada.
Respondents who lean right were more likely to believe there should be no limits on speech, including the right to express hateful and offensive opinions.
The national phone survey by the Canadian Hub for Applied and Social Research at the University of Saskatchewan was done between June 1 and June 27. It asked 1,000 people about their political leanings and their views on free speech.
Ontario Provincial Police are looking into the Tuesday council meeting in tiny Norwich, Ont., where a man facing criminal charges for taking down Pride flags spoke for half an hour about his opposition to the LGBTQ2+ community, particularly transgender people.
“I can tell you that we are aware of the council meeting and information is being reviewed at this time,” said Oxford OPP Const. Patti Cote.
Norwich Township council has released a statement saying it had asked for legal advice before allowing businessman Jacob (Jake) Dey to address the Tuesday meeting, leaving many “hurt and unsafe” by “what many consider hateful comments.”
Students want more restrictions on free speech and safe spaces on campus compared with six years ago, a survey suggests.
It reveals that far more undergraduates want to be protected from difficult viewpoints and see certain groups or issues banned from discussion.
Universities should set out explanations of “academic norms” to new students in freshers’ week, the report from the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) recommends. It also suggest that institutions should be careful not to invite too many controversial or inflammatory speakers.
While this is a UK survey I feel certain the same would hold true in North America. You have to wonder at the quality of education provided these young geniuses and whether it’s worth society’s continued investment.
Conservative leadership hopeful Pierre Poilievre is threatening to remove direct federal research and other grants from Canadian universities if they do not commit to protect academic freedom and free speech from “campus gatekeepers.”
He’d better cuz the Little Hitlers want him cancelled.
“… However, most “if not all” members of the advisory group appointed by Heritage Canada have suggested that the categories of harms targeted should be broadened to include, among other things, “misleading political communications,” “propaganda,” and online content that promotes an “unrealistic body image.” The government has not yet indicated whether it will accept all of the group’s recommendations.”
In theory this should spell the end of the CBC.
The Holocaust loomed large in my childhood imagination, growing up in Edmonton in the 1970s. My father’s family was one of the very few in Alberta who succeeded in sponsoring some relatives who were able to escape Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938, just weeks before Kristallnacht.
Mackenzie King was a polite anti-Semite and his government’s attitude towards Jewish refugees was “none is too many,” yet my father’s mother’s cousin Luba was somehow able to win the support of her MP from Vegreville, who, according to family lore, fought for a special order-in-council for visas to allow my grandmother’s first cousin Rosa, her husband Hans and their small children, George and Helen, to escape Vienna just in the nick of time.
Despite the federal government’s assurances that it won’t regulate videos Canadians post for fun on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, a former top regulator has warned that a government bill still leaves the door open for doing precisely that.
Imagine you woke up one morning to find out your Facebook account had been locked out.
At first you think maybe you got hacked, but when you check your email, you see something from Facebook informing you that, unfortunately, according to the new censorship laws, the status update you posted that contained a criticism of the government was labelled as “hate speech” and “disinformation,” so they were forced to shut your account down.
That may seem like a bit of a wild example, but that possible future is closer than you think.
