In this podcast episode (click here for the video version or listen wherever you get your podcasts) I speak with Dr Alan Davison, President of the Free Speech Union Australia, the local chapter of an organisation established in the UK in 2019. As its name suggests, the FSU defends freedom of expression against cancel culture and the increasing trend of governments, particularly those left-of-centre, policing speech in the name of “social cohesion”.
Here’s what I think: in an ideal world hate speech laws would muzzle racists and extremists. In the real world racists and extremists wield increasing cultural and political influence and invert the logic of human rights to further their repressive agenda. Anti-vilification laws are ineffective at best, dangerous at worst.
In the episode, we explore the proposed new bans on “hate speech” currently under debate in the Victorian Parliament. (The Federal and NSW governments have also recently introduced tougher hate speech laws.) Despite its anodyne title the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024 has until recently been most fiercely championed by radical trans activists.
At present, Victorian laws ban vilification based on race and religion: the new regime, comprising both civil and criminal penalties, would extend protection to other characteristics including sex, disability, sex characteristics, sexual orientation, personal association and — you guessed it — “gender identity”. Such laws expose critics of trans ideology — in other words, those who insist men can’t be women — to further repression from the state and harassment in the courts.
I trust you folks will visit me in prison.
Latterly, with the eruption in Jew-hatred, the State Government has sought to flog the Bill as the missing weapon in the fight against anti-Semitism. Jewish community leaders are also enthusiastic proponents of the Bill — a position that’s understandable but deeply misguided.
I suggest we already have ample laws on the books empowering police to crack down on incitement. And Davison shares his fascinating analysis of why hate speech laws ultimately fuel anti-Semitism by deterring robust conversations about Islamist ideology. We look at the UK experience where some Muslim groups are effectively lobbying to re-introduce blasphemy laws under the banner of stamping out “Islamophobia”.
This is an illuminating discussion (apart from one or two instances in which the audio drops out — apologies) in which I start by asking Davison, former dean of the faculty of arts and social sciences at the University of Technology Sydney, why universities have abandoned robust intellectual debate for groupthink.
We also cover a barely-reported tribunal finding against Australia’s eSafety Commissioner — a.k.a “eKaren” — whose office had been running an “informal” censorship regime that sought to deprive ordinary citizens of their right to appeal bureaucratic decrees.
One caveat: you’ll hear that I make reference to JD Vance’s speech last month to European leaders in which he warned that the biggest threat to the continent’s security came not from external bad actors but from “within”, and gave the suppression of unorthodox views as one example. (He cited, among other things, Sweden convicting an anti-Islam campaigner for burning the Koran in public). The Vice-President is right: suppressing free speech is a serious threat to democracy, as such measures diminish trust in public institutions and frequently inflame, rather than quell, racially-charged discord.
But after Vance and Donald Trump’s extended takedown of Volodymyr Zelensky during which they regurgitated pro-Putin propaganda and the US’ subsequent pausing of military aid and intelligence sharing to embattled Ukraine, I’m left in no doubt about the biggest threat to democracy in Europe and elsewhere. It does indeed come from “within”: from Vance and his boss.
Further reading: https://quillette.com/2024/08/07/disuniting-australia/
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