Ireland Government’s Hate Speech Bill Promotes ‘Thought Crime Legislation’
Posted by M. C. on May 3, 2023
The same people creating this law will decide what you say is right or wrong. Better pray the wind is blowing in the right direction on the day they decide to look at you.
BY TYLER DURDEN
Authored by Naveen Anthrapully via The Epoch Times,
Irish authorities are pushing forward a bill that will make it a crime to disseminate and possess content deemed to be hateful—a development Elon Musk warns is a threat to free speech in the country.
The Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 (pdf) seeks to “amend the law relating to the prohibition of incitement to violence or hatred against a person or a group of persons on account of certain characteristics (referred to as protected characteristics) of the person or the group of persons and to provide for an offence of condoning, denying or grossly trivialising genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace.”
It aims at “combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law.”
The bill classifies “race, skin colour, nationality, religion, national or ethnic origin, descent, gender, sex characteristics, sexual orientation, and disability” as protected characteristics.
Gender is “the gender of a person or the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender or with which the person identifies and includes transgender and a gender other than those of male and female.”
The bill empowers Irish authorities to convict people criminally for alleged hate crimes. According to the bill, a person can be deemed guilty of an offense if the individual “(i) communicates material to the public or a section of the public, or (ii) behaves in a public place in a manner, that is likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or a group of persons on account of their protected characteristics or any of those characteristics.”
“Massive attack on freedom of speech,” Musk said in an April 30 tweet responding to an organization called Free Speech Ireland, which criticized the Irish government for voting against “human rights and quite literally for thought crime legislation.”
An amendment to include the UN Convention on Human Rights protections on free speech into the hate speech bill was defeated. Another amendment to excuse the section allowing for prosecuting individuals possessing offensive material without communicating it was also defeated.
This means that Irish authorities can arrest a person for simply possessing material deemed as potentially inciting hatred if disseminated.
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ajeanneinthekitchen said
God help us all!