Category Archives: First Amendment

You Have Less Than a Year

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Our Dutch correspondent H. Numan sends this follow-up to his previous essay about the dystopian regime that now governs the Former United States since the Investiture of the Puppet last month.

You have less than a year

by H. Numan

Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve just witnessed a coup. I wrote about it a few days ago. Plenty of people still don’t understand that the rules of the game have changed. Permanently. So I’ll expand on my previous essay, in the hope that the message gets through. You have less than a year to correct the situation. This is a grim and very dark essay. If you can’t tolerate it, sorry. Better read something else. Don’t continue reading.

Let’s start with the coup. It certainly wasn’t a revolution. Revolutions are usually more violent or come with force to some extent. The Democrat Party didn’t do that. They planned, many years in advance, a fraud to gain full control. It was no accident that mail-in votes and harvested ballots gave Biden, now president for (the remainder of his) life, the presidency. The vote, in general terms, has been diluted for many years. You should have seen this coming — but nobody did. It’s not a coincidence that the DNC, wherever possible, wanted no ID checks and more ways to vote. Not because voter ID is racist, but because more people can vote the ‘right’ way. They have fought with success to give everybody they need a vote. Including dead people. The trick worked. Suddenly the bombshell exploded. Now it is too late.

Not really too late, but you have to act. Fast. REALLY fast! You do have an advantage over Nazi Germany, but a very small one. Biden and his DNC are not Hitler and the NSDAP. Hitler didn’t hesitate for a second to use extreme force, and built many concentration camps. As quickly as possible. Given their background, that is something Biden and the DNC will hesitate to do.

Why this coup? Well, despite my dislike for your Democrat Party, they are not Nazis. Socialist in some way? No doubt. But not — yet — true international socialists. At the moment the old party hacks control the party. All they wanted was to be in power forever. Now they are. Their major problem is to remain in power forever. And that requires a real socialist, or — as they will describe it — democratic policy. You have less than a year to stop it.

Biden is now in full control of your parliament, both houses. That means he can — and bloody well will! — write any kind of legislation he wants. Biden himself is not a Hitler. More like one of Hitler’s more slippery henchmen, like Martin Bormann. Always hovering in the background, filling his pockets. Just enough in the limelight to be noticed and to be powerful enough to hand out favors. But he definitely is no Hitler. Like Hitler, Biden will have to consolidate his power. That is a process he can complete in about one year. That’s all the time you have left. Less than a year. After that, better sign up for DNC membership. If they will still accept you.

Please don’t parrot empty meaningless slogans, such as: they can pry my guns from my cold dead hands. Very few people will actually do that. Pretty soon a new mass shooting incident will happen. No need to arrange for one; mass shootings happen several times every year in the USA. All the DNC has to do is wait for the next one. Then Harris Biden will act decisively and ban most handguns. Just about everybody will hand in their guns, without a fuss. That’s what happened in Australia in 1996. The government said: That’s enough. No more guns! It was enough, and there are no more guns in Australia. Why is it an empty slogan? Because most people like to live. Given the choice between handing in firearms or facing at least a very lengthy jail term, they choose handing in their weapons. If only because they have a family to take care of.

That is exactly what will happen, in a few months’ time. What about those ‘pry my gun’ people? Well, America is not Australia, and no longer democratic. America is now a Democratic Republic. Which means your police will simply send in a SWAT team, and blast them to kingdom come. Live on TV. It will be all over the media. Not as martyrs, but as brave police officers getting rid of dangerous hysterical fascists. The remainder of the pry-my-gun people will get the message and quietly turn in their guns. Willingly even, as the media will go apes**t about really dangerous fascists refusing to obey Big Biden the law.

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We Could Do Nothing, Being Sold

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From time to time Saturday is Poetry Day here at Gates of Vienna, and today seems an appropriate occasion — given that it’s the first Saturday since the Investiture of the Puppet — to repost an old favorite by Edwin Muir. I’ve posted it at least twice in the past, but it’s worth revisiting.

I don’t know why people are complaining about the legitimacy of last November’s election. I mean, we got the best election money can buy* — what’s not to like?

As a matter of interest, I memorized this poem for my O-Level examinations when I attended the High School in Harrogate. Except for the odd preposition here and there, the text in my head seems to be intact some fifty-three years later:

The Castle
by Edwin Muir

All through that summer at ease we lay,
And daily from the turret wall
We watched the mowers in the hay
And the enemy half a mile away —
They seemed no threat to us at all.

For what, we thought, had we to fear
With our arms and provender, load on load,
Our towering battlements, tier on tier,
And friendly allies drawing near
On every leafy summer road?

Our gates were strong, our walls were thick,
So smooth and high, no man could win
A foothold there, no clever trick
Could take us, have us dead or quick.
Only a bird could have got in.

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Why?

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I’m to old to engage in the kind of kinetic action that lies ahead, even if I had the requisite skill set, which I don’t. My only skills involve writing, editing, and propagating information. Which is what I am doing here with this essay from Western Rifle Shooters Association. Concerned American respectfully requests that this piece be disseminated as widely as possible, so please pass it on.

Why?

It wasn’t when the US Army attacked the “Bonus Army”, which was peacefully assembled in DC in 1932 seeking early payment of their WWI service bonds.

It wasn’t during the postwar era, when an activist Supreme Court abolished private property rights in the name of “equality”.

It wasn’t when, via the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, the American people learned that the entire war in Vietnam had been founded on lies — the biggest of which was that the US military, under the geopolitical and operational constraints they faced, could ever have won the war.

It wasn’t over the torrent of governmental power abuses that ensued over the next 20 years, nor was it when the Ruby Ridge and Waco atrocities happened.

It wasn’t over the establishment of a permanent, unconstitutional omnisurveillance state before and especially after 9/11.

It wasn’t over the nearly 20 years of US military foreign entanglements that took a generation of brave young men and women and sent them home in boxes, broken in mind and/or body, or permanently disillusioned about their country and their leaders.

It wasn’t even over the past five years of lies, deceit, and outright treasonous collaboration with enemy actors to drag America and its people from the smoldering remains of its constitutional past into the gulag of global totalitarianism.

But when, between November 3rd and January 6th, the globalist elites stole both a Presidential election and two Senatorial elections to deliver complete control of all branches and levels of American governance into the hands of the techno-tyrannical Kommissars, it was finally time for resistance.

Finally.

Today, the spokesbots of the global tyranny superstructure are howling for the heads of not only President Trump and his (few) loyalists, but also the heads of anyone who supports him.

The international dictators-in-the-making have declared war, by both the Big Steal itself and the subsequent refusal to allow independent inquiry into those elections, on the traditional American people and their progeny.

So be it.

We will see how the soft-palmed Stalin wannabes deal with a permanently-outraged population of real-world makers (and breakers).

The anti-Trump United States government parasites have eternally destroyed their own legitimacy.

Having sown the wind, they will now reap the whirlwind.

Godspeed to all traditional Americans.

May God empower each with courage, discernment, and zeal.

In the absence of orders to the contrary, find something Communist and destroy it.

Lather, rinse, and repeat.

1848 And All That

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Some of my friends sit around every evening
And they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference
And the promise of an early bed.

— Elvis Costello, from “Radio, Radio”

January 6 was a sobering moment. For many of us it was not unexpected, but it was sobering nonetheless.

We have finally reached the End of the Republic. The results of future elections will lie within parameters established by the Powers That Be. There will be no more successful “dark horse” candidates; the system has been rigged to prevent them.

On a related note, Sundance at Conservative Tree House has joined the dreamers at Power Line, although his desperate optimism takes a somewhat different tack: he proposes the founding of a new political party led by Donald Trump, which would siphon off most Republican voters, as well as a big chunk of Democrats and independents.

It’s a nice idea, and it might have worked before the widespread adoption of Dominion voting machines. But after 2020, how does such a party go about actually winning an election? The machinery to prevent that possibility is already in place. Nobody can get elected without the approval of the Deep State. Which means it will be the UniParty — Democrats plus safe (neutered) Republicans — from here on out.

We have unfortunately entered the era of TINVOWOOT: There is no voting our way out of this. We’ve used up three out of our four boxes — soap, ballot, and jury — and there’s only one left.

There has been a cavalcade of “conservatives” eager to denounce Donald Trump and the angry crowd at the Capitol. Their general theme is that “violence solves nothing.” How easily they have forgotten the means by which the Patriots of 1776 threw off the yoke of King George III and established a constitutional republic! If these modern-day talking heads had their way, we’d still be sending politely-worded lists of grievances to the queen and her ministers.

Meanwhile the Left and the media (but I repeat myself) have characterized Wednesday’s events as an “insurrection”. Well… Except for the cops, everybody at the Capitol that day was unarmed. How would our esteemed progressive brethren describe a real insurrection if one ever broke out?

Given the level of anger on the patriotic Right, some sort of future kinetic action is a distinct possibility. Whether we’re heading into a full-fledged Boogaloo or not is an open question. A shrewd, charismatic leader would seem a prerequisite for that to happen, and now that Donald Trump has abdicated the position, there’s no one else on the horizon who fits the description. For all I know, this simmering political cauldron may yet cool down and accept the New Normal that has been prepared for it.

Or maybe not. It’s still early days, so it’s hard to tell.

Regardless of how kinetic things get, what seems likely is a concerted effort to crack down on dissent. Up until now the Left has relied on the private sector — Big Tech, social media companies, and major employers — to suppress doubleplus ungood opinions held by deplorable citizens. We can expect that praxis to change now that the Woke brigades control the entire apparatus of state, especially given the public statements from their numerous spokesbeings about the need to silence us.

The past two months have proved that the Constitution is a worthless scrap of paper. Nothing remains to stop the permanent government from passing whatever laws it deems necessary to suppress “misinformation”, “intolerance”, “extremism”, “hate speech”, “white supremacy”, and all the other terms used to describe publicly expressed thoughts that run counter to the Narrative.

I’ve never used social media, and I have no employer, so up until now the storm has passed me by. When the Harris administration is fully ripened, however, I expect the government to enact new laws or regulations requiring ISPs to close down independent “hate sites” like this one. When that happens, the torches will be extinguished here at the Gates, and I will be out of business.

Depending on how frisky things get, the dénouement could happen sooner, or it could happen later. But that time will eventually come. The darkness will flow out of Mordor and cover everything, and the armies of orcs will march against us.

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Doubling Down on Deplorable

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When political topics come up in conversation with my liberal friends, I tend to say: “Let’s not talk about politics. I’m a right-wing extremist; everyone knows that. So any discussion would be fruitless, and probably unpleasant.” My political opinions haven’t changed much in the last eight or ten years, but I’m much more of a right-wing extremist than I used to be, because the “center” has moved so far to the left.

Years and years ago I used to keep up with the latest news by checking Google News every day. Yes, it was obviously biased, but it still listed relevant news items. It might not feature or headline the ones I wanted to see, but they could be found. However, it gradually became more and more restrictive and censorious, so I gave up using it, and relied on the Drudge Report to headline the news stories that were most likely to interest me. Then a couple of years ago Drudge sold out, and his former site became just as useless as Google News. I had to cast about in other places to find relevant material. Doug Ross is an excellent aggregator, and provides useful tips. And Conservative Tree House is invaluable.

My most frequent stopping places are Power Line and Western Rifle Shooters Association, for very different reasons.

I’ve been reading Power Line since the “fake but accurate” Killian Memo days in the campaign season of 2004. Back then its contributors were Scott Johnson, John Hinderaker, and Paul Mirengoff. Since then they’ve added Steven Hayward. They’re generally more deplorable than National Review, but still well within the conservative mainstream. They live in the world of foundations, think tanks, and reputable right-wing journals. Which is fine with me; I’ve hung out with plenty of think-tank people since I started doing Gates of Vienna full time. I don’t fit in very well with that crowd — I’m more radical, and disinclined to zip my lip just to protect my income streams — but I like them well enough.

So I read Power Line to keep abreast of the right-wing mainstream. At least three of the contributors are lawyers, and often focus on legal issues, which is very useful. Two of them are from Minnesota, and feature the Woke absurdities of progressive Twin Cities political issues, which are as bad as those of Ann Arbor, Berkeley, or Portland.

But they don’t stray beyond the pale of the mainstream. That fact became glaringly obvious in the wake of last month’s election. All the massive, egregious shenanigans that came up in the weeks after the vote made it abundantly clear that the election was a complete fraud. There’s plenty of documentation available for those who care to look for it, but the Power Line guys are reluctant to discuss it, and tend to insist that the malefactions of the Democrats were insufficient to change the result. Joe Biden was the people’s choice, maybe not as much as the official tally would indicate, but still the winner.

I can understand their reluctance look the facts squarely in the face. Even if they dissent from liberal orthodoxy, they are still denizens of that environment where people have jobs talking politics and going on TV and writing books and papers and attending conferences. To admit that the election was a sham would be to acknowledge that their world is constructed of the flimsiest gossamer and can be rent asunder with the twitch of a pinky.

No, it’s better to pretend that conservatives can somehow manage to prevent the worst forms of electoral fraud in the future. They’re already gaming out strategies for the midterms in 2022, and thinking about Republican prospects in the 2024 presidential contest. As if future elections had any real meaning. As if Republicans differed in any fundamental ways from Democrats.

And maybe they’re right. Maybe the deplorables who descend on Washington D.C. next week will have no lasting effect. Maybe the new socialist regime will only be temporary, and Republicans will get another chance to pretend to be conservative in Congress and the White House. Maybe the earnest foreign policy wonks of the Right will get their hands on the levers of the military-industrial complex and initiate new military interventions to bring democracy to Berserkistan or engage in nation-building in Gondwanaland.

Maybe… Maybe…

But my intuition tells me that the country has been irretrievably changed, and not for the better. The gossamer fabric of the old political system will most likely be twitched aside soon by the Fickle Pinky of Fate.

For that reason, I tend to hang out more and more at WRSA these days. They’re so far beyond the pale that they don’t even register on the National Deplorometer.

Concerned American — whose avatar is Zippy the Pinhead — posts numerous links to a variety of sites that disagree on many issues, major and minor. What they all have in common is an absolute dedication to the Second Amendment, without all the restrictions and revisions that have hobbled it for the last fifty years or so. And they also agree that serious trouble — variously known as the Boogaloo, Spicy Time, and the Big Ugly — lies just around the corner for what was once known as the American Republic.

This time it will be a real civil war. The Recent Unpleasantness of 1861-1865 is usually described that way, but it was actually a sectional conflict. The two sides held well-defined territory, and clashed in the traditional manner of opposing armies. Yes, the war divided families. And yes, the situation in the Border States was not clear-cut. Still, the war was a sectional one.

The Big Ugly will be different. It will pit rural and small-town people against the major metropolitan areas, and urban neighborhoods against each other. We have no parallels in North American history for the type of conflict that is likely to break out here. We will have to look to the Balkans or Rwanda to get a feeling for what we can expect.

Or maybe not. Maybe the Power Line boys are right, and all this will blow over. Maybe people will put on their masks, get vaccinated, and plop themselves back in front of the TV, where they belong.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Earlier today I found an excellent essay linked at WRSA. It’s called “The Next Question” by someone who writes under the pseudonym Publius Valerius at American Partisan.

The author opens by laying out the facts of the stolen election of 2020. I agree that they are indeed facts — the election was stolen, in divers, clearly identifiable ways, as documented and attested by numerous eyewitnesses in affidavits and other forms of legal testimony.

It is also a fact that state and federal courts are largely refusing to receive the evidence of the attested materials, but that doesn’t make the latter any less facts. In the long run, the historical record will feature these demonstrable facts — that is, assuming that the historical record does not end up under the control of Google, Amazon, and/or the Red Chinese.

Below are excerpts from rest of “The Next Question”:

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Bombs Bursting in Air

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Happy Independence Day, everyone!

This may be the last 4th of July that is celebrated according to time-honored custom. The Woke Brigades are well on the way to victory in the culture wars, and they have determined that Independence Day is a WAYCIST occasion. The intention seems to be to elevate “Juneteenth” to fill the void left by removing our major midsummer holiday. Which is interesting, because all the statues of Abraham Lincoln are being pulled down, so we will be celebrating Emancipation without acknowledging the Emancipator.

There may be more than usual number of bombs bursting in air today, if the BLAMtifa battalions make good on their promise to inflict major damage at various prominent public locations. However, the last time I looked at the news, everything seemed to be proceeding more or less normally.

I’ll be hanging around here for a while performing my normal functions, and then I’m going to visit some friends for a traditional 4th of July celebration that involves burgers and adult beverages.

Dig ya later!

Killing Free Speech, Yet Again

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Regular readers will remember Michael Hansen, the independent Danish-American filmmaker who produced the documentaries Killing Europe, Killing Canada, and Killing Free Speech, among others.

Amazon has now removed the first part of Killing Free Speech from its listings. Which is ironic, given that the film is a documentary about the threats to freedom of expression posed by Antifa and its allies in the media and the Democrat party.

A second part of the documentary, focused on the power of Big Tech, will be released shortly.

This is the second time that the documentary’s creator has been censored by Amazon. As Breitbart News reported last year, Hansen’s previous documentary, about mass migration and Islam in Europe, was also censored by the Big Tech platform.

Breitbart has a report on Amazon’s action against Killing Free Speech.

See also:

All That Vanished Glory

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(Click to enlarge)

The central preoccupation of Americans — those who are literate enough to be preoccupied with history — is the Civil War, a.k.a. the War Between the States, a.k.a. the Recent Unpleasantness. The degree of preoccupation varies according to the distance between where one lives and the areas where most of the fighting took place. Since Virginia is the state where most of the battles were fought, any Virginia family — black or white — of sufficiently long lineage can tell you stories that have been passed down from generation to generation for a century and a half.

Mind you, I’m not talking about the hysterical preoccupation with “racism”, “slavery”, and “oppression” that is raging in the land as I write these words. I’m talking about a deep and abiding interest in the tragic years 1861-1865 generated by the impact they had on one’s family and environment.

I wrote about such matters in my poem “Sayler’s Creek” (the full text is here), which opens with these stanzas:

There is too much history here in Virginia;
we are drowning in its muddy flood.
Every April sweeps its pontoons from their moorings
on the North Fork of the Shenandoah
with Federal soldiers watching helplessly from the bank.
Every pitcher toeing the mound
scuffs up a lode of Minié balls.
A metal detector swept over any ravine
uncovers the belt buckles and canteens
urgently shed by fleeing infantry.
A faded daguerreotype of General Lee
stares down from every wall,
a stern reminder of all that vanished glory.

The top drawer of every dusty dresser
in every second-hand shop
opens to reveal a brittle bundle of worthless banknotes.
Everyone’s great-great-uncle Theophrastus
led the charge at the Crater.

That poem was written in 1996, when one could still see photographs of General Lee here and there in public places. Those days are gone, alas. A rearguard action is even now being fought against the removal of his statue from Monument Avenue in Richmond, but the cause is just as lost as it was the spring of 1865. The Wokerati will prevail. The last depictions of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson will eventually be erased from public view in the Commonwealth, no matter what the average Virginia citizen might think of the matter. All objective accounts of Confederate history will be removed from high school and university curricula. The stories will be passed down by word of mouth only. The artifacts and written accounts of the events of those years will be confined to private collections and family attics.

And one such attic will obviously be mine.

There are little pieces of family lore in the stanzas of my poem. My mother’s great-great uncle was famous for leading the charge at the Crater in Petersburg, but his name wasn’t Theophrastus. He was Brigadier General David Weisiger (pronounced “Wizziger”, for readers who live outside the Richmond area), and was renowned, at least in Virginia, for his heroism on that day.

I am also in possession of a brittle bundle of worthless banknotes from the period. For many years they were kept in the top drawer of Dymphna’s and my dresser.

My grandmother’s first cousin (i.e. my first cousin twice removed) was the only daughter of the eldest daughter (there were five daughters, no sons) of David Weisiger’s brother, so she inherited most of the family heirlooms from the plantation. She never married, and when she died the various items were divided among her cousins.

The largest pieces of furniture went to my uncle and my mother. The item that I coveted most was a plantation medical kit, which was a wooden cabinet with little drawers and cubbies for medicinal substances, surgical implements, etc. I remember one drawer was labeled “Opium”, and there was a dried black tarry residue at the bottom of it. I really wanted that cabinet, but it went to one of my cousins.

One of the few things I received (which I had also wanted) was an envelope full of Confederate money. I’ve scanned some of the notes to display here.

In my bundle of worthless banknotes are two hundred-dollar bills, one twenty (not shown here), eighteen Confederate tens, one Virginia ten, and three pieces of fractional scrip from the City of Richmond — 25¢ (not shown here), 30¢, and 75¢. That makes a total of $411.30, which was a lot of money in 1862, especially since it was presumably received in exchange for gold and/or silver coins. I’m certain those were sorely missed in April of 1865.

This is the back of the hundred-dollar note shown at the top of this post:


(Click to enlarge)

The interest rate paid on the note was 2¢ daily, which is an APR of 7.3%.


(Click to enlarge)


(Click to enlarge)

There’s no indication that any interest was paid on the tens and twenties.

The fractional notes issued by the City of Richmond are worn and wrinkled, indicating that they saw wide circulation. The other bills were in better shape, and may not have circulated much before coming to rest in the family strongbox.

For the higher-denomination notes, the Confederate government promised to pay the bearer the face amount on demand six months or two years (depending on the note) after a peace treaty was signed with the United States. It was hoped that the delay would allow the nascent state to accumulate enough gold and silver through taxes and tariffs to be able to pay off its promissory notes.

Alas, no peace treaty ever came. The surrender was signed by General Lee on April 9, 1865 (which day I refer to in my more sardonic moments as “the Confederate naqba”), and all those Confederate, Virginia, and Richmond banknotes suddenly became worthless pieces of paper.

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Austria: The Coronavirus Chronicles

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The essay below by Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was originally published by the Gatestone Institute in a slightly different form.

Austria: The Coronavirus Chronicles

by Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff

Week 1 in a country in complete shutdown.

Austria has been at the forefront in forcing its citizens to “shelter in place” by enacting measures so draconian that even the country’s elderly, having survived World War II, cannot remember anything similar. In order to snuff out a virus that originated in China only a few months ago and has since made its way around the world thanks to globalism, countless other countries have followed Austria’s lead. Only a week ago — it seems like eons ago! — the Austrian government, led by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz who heeded a dire warning by acting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, apparently deeply concerned about the critical situation (its reasons expertly explained by Guy Miliere) in its neighboring country Italy, enacted a first set of measures, followed by the previously-mentioned drastic rules. Austria’s confinement measures were recently extended until April 13.

Countries in Europe and around the world are reacting to threat of the Covid-19 in different ways. Soeren Kern has done an excellent survey here; a collection of reports from local journalists on how they are experiencing the lockdown across Europe may be found here.

And yet there are other noteworthy findings:

  • Climate change, Greta Thunberg, Fridays for Future are now mostly irrelevant. Health measures clearly take precedence over kids cutting school. Nevertheless, the political Left has always been adept at never letting a crisis go to waste and using it to do things that couldn’t be done before (Rahm Emanuel). One case in point is the Austrian minister of health, a radical member of the Greens party, who is on the record for saying (threatening?): “I am looking forward to the day we have successfully weathered the Corona crisis and when we tackle the climate crisis with similar political consequence.”
  • Borders matter! Europeans and Americans concerned about porous borders have been vindicated as borders on both sides of the Atlantic are closed. In addition to the imminent collapse of the Schengen open-borders system, which beginning in 1995 put an end to bothersome passport controls in an area of 26 European countries. And President Trump announced that, “We will be, by mutual consent, temporarily closing our Northern Border with Canada to non-essential traffic.”
  • Sovereignty and nationalism matter. Karen Siegemund, president of the American Freedom Alliance, notes:
        Notice how each country — country! — took upon itself its right to sovereign action to protect its citizens.

    Italy imposed quarantines; Austria closed its borders and implemented various restrictions on gatherings and mandated closures of entertainment venues, restaurants etc. Even Germany has now closed its borders.

    Borders in the context of Europe is an astounding thing, and it’s heartbreaking that it took a virus, and the deaths it’s left in its wake, rather than the years-long invasions for them to assert sovereignty, and to finally, finally, turn to protecting their citizens.
     
  • “Europe” in the form of the European Union has been silent. The United Nations doesn’t even seem to be speaking out although, in a rational world they’d be calling for “Crimes against humanity” charges to be brought against China; further proof of the UN’s uselessness at best, and of the EU’s utter irrelevance.

    It’s nations putting the health, safety and security of their people above all else that will stem the spread of this virus; it’s a nightmare that it took this pandemic to wake governments up to the primacy of their people as the core of their responsibility.

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Fjordman: Why Laws Against Hate Speech Are Dangerous

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Fjordman’s latest essay has been published at the Gatestone Institute. Below are some excerpts.

In November 2019, Germans celebrated the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany 30 years earlier. That same month, Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a speech to the German federal parliament (Bundestag), advocated more restrictions on free speech for all Germans. She warned that free speech has limits:

“Those limits begin where hatred is spread. They begin where the dignity of other people is violated. This house will and must oppose extreme speech. Otherwise, our society will no longer be the free society that it was.”

Merkel received great applause.

Critics, however, would claim that curtailing freedom in order to protect freedom sounds a bit Orwellian. One of the first acts of any tyrant or repressive regime is usually to abolish freedom of speech. Merkel should know this: she lived under a repressive regime — in the communist dictatorship of East Germany, where she studied at Karl Marx University.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects freedom of speech, specifically speech critical of the government, and prohibits the state from limiting free speech. The First Amendment was placed first in the Bill of Rights because the American Founding Fathers realized that freedom of speech is fundamental to a free society. US President George Washington said:

“For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences… reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.”

Without freedom of speech, you cannot truly be free. Freedom of speech exists precisely to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

What exactly is “hate speech,” and who gets to define it? Those who love justice usually also hate injustice. But what is justice? Social justice? Economic justice? Ecological justice? Religious fundamentalist justice? Climate justice?

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When Justice Isn’t

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Tabitha Korol’s latest essay confronts the current craze for Social Justice Warfare.

When Justice Isn’t

by Tabitha Korol

A letter written by a local elementary school teacher — I’ll call her “Mrs. Krieg” — was brought to my attention by a mutual acquaintance. In light of the notice that honor classes will be discontinued, she thoughtfully agreed that equity (defined as fairness and impartiality) in the schools should benefit all students. Regrettably, she has been influenced by terminology that has been devalued and redefined to become a tool for social engineering among students. Such revisionism has been applied to Equity, Diversity and Social Justice, and comes at the expense of freedom and true justice.

Honors classes were designed to challenge students academically. The advanced work, faster pace, and higher course-credit weight have provided for smarter, happier, well-rounded children who had the opportunity to flourish according to their capabilities and not misbehave out of boredom. But now, the authorities have determined it best to cancel the honor courses across the country because of a “lack of diversity” — that is, more Caucasian and Asian students were engaged than Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans. Instead of also providing honors classes that meet the interests of the low-energy students — perhaps music, theater, artisanal handicrafts — the Department of Education has decided to close the achievement gap by lowering the bar and expectations and discontinuing all incentives. Mrs. Krieg did not foresee that by eliminating the incentives and opportunities, the resulting “equity” would be mediocrity and the loss of exceptional achievement.

Now the Department of Education will generate equity in boredom, discontent, resentment, truancy and delinquency. Academia is not unaware of these inevitabilities. Their purpose is not an improved education but the decline of achievement and the elimination of the exceptional. Former President Obama expressed a similar derogatory outlook when he denounced high-achieving Americans by saying, “You didn’t build that.”

Diversity in the schools no longer describes a richness of ideas, course studies, or specialty careers, but defines and categorizes the students themselves, by race, religion, ethnicity, financial status, sexual orientation, and however else the students choose to differentiate themselves. As with the term “equity,” the meaning of “diversity” has been corrupted, as it now implies division, divisiveness, and discord, the opposite of E Pluribus Unum — Out of many, One. These differences have led to a totalitarian-style monitoring and bullying — called Speech Control, necessitating “Diversity Officers” with doctoral degrees, credentials in counseling and inclusion techniques, and six-figure salaries reflected in higher tuition costs. The officers’ mere presence confirms the growing disharmony, isolation, discrimination, harassment, and violence that characterize the socialist strategy. These points are significant:

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The Truth Shall Get You Jailed

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Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff’s book about her encounter with Austrian “justice”, The Truth Is No Defense, will be published next month by the New English Review Press.

The Truth Shall Get You Jailed

by Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff

In the past week, two eerily similar polls — one in Germany (available in German only) and one in the United States — made it into the public sphere. Both concerned the pillar of freedom, free speech, and both sadly portend the end of what countless brave souls on both sides of the Atlantic who died on so many battlefields valiantly fought for.

November 2019 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which ostensibly ushered in the end of the Communist iron grip on Eastern Europe. Following the end of World War II, Communism had brutally separated the free West from the subjugated East, and nowhere was this partition more glaringly obvious than in individual liberty or lack thereof. Thirty years have now passed since that glorious November day. I watched the tearing down of the wall by East Berliners desperately seeking freedom — the freedom to speak, think, move, exist — live on television, having visited East Berlin only a year before. I was ecstatic for the people of East Germany, hoping they would be able to savor their hard-fought freedom as I have done over and over.

The widespread disillusionment that has set in over the past decades pains me. Just a few days ago, the Post-Communists won the parliamentary elections of the state of Thuringia in what was once East Germany, and I am quite certain post-election analyses will show that the block of Post-Communist voters consists of mostly young people who have no recollection or experience of the evil of Communism.

And so it comes as no surprise when a well-known German opinion research institute publishes a poll indicating that “nearly two-thirds of [those polled] are convinced that nowadays one must be very careful regarding the topics about which one can speak freely because there many unwritten laws indicating which opinions are permissible and which opinions are not permissible.” In addition, 58% of those polled no longer feel safe speaking freely in public, with only 17% agreeing that they can voice their opinion freely on the Internet. More than 40% sense that political correctness is overemphasized, while 35% have decided for themselves to voice their opinions only in a private setting.

The German poll is complemented by a — frankly, frightening in its ramifications — US poll: a whopping 51% of Millennials call for fines and even jail time for “hate speech.” In a survey conducted by the Campaign for Free Speech, more than 60% call for restrictions on speech in some way. While the Campaign’s director finds the results “frankly extraordinary,” they are hardly surprising. Speech restrictions coupled with hefty fines and, in some instances, even jail time have become the norm in Europe, with my case being one of countless others. Moreover, the results of both polls are what free speech activists on both sides of the Atlantic have been warning about for at least the past decade: at international forums such as the United Nations and the (perhaps lesser-known) Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, these very speech restrictions have been not only concocted, but also weaponized and successfully applied. In one case in point, at an official OSCE forum in Vienna in 2015, which I attended, we were told that speaking the truth may constitute “hate speech”, because “sometimes truth is difficult.” Secretary General Antonio Guterres of the United Nations calls for stepping up international efforts to suppress “hate speech.”

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The Truth Is No Defense

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Regular readers are well-acquainted with Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, who was convicted of defaming Islam in an Austrian court almost a decade ago. For those who joined us more recently, see Elisabeth’s Voice for all the reports on Elisabeth’s case, from her trial in Austria all the way up to upholding of the verdict against her by the European Court of Human Rights.

Elisabeth has now written a book about her experiences. It is entitled The Truth Is No Defense, and will be published next month by the New English Review Press. In her book Elisabeth discusses not only her legal case, but her life experiences that led to her understanding of the fundamental nature of Islam, from Iran in the late 1970s to Libya in the early years of the new millennium.

In the following video, Elisabeth is interviewed on the talk show “America Can We Talk?” by Debbie Georgatos:

For previous posts on the “hate speech” prosecution of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, see Elisabeth’s Voice: The Archives.

Hate Speech, “Islamophobia”, and Undefined Terms

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Next week the annual “Human Dimension” conference will be hosted in Warsaw by the ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) under the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). Volunteers from the Counterjihad Collective will be there to do rhetorical battle with the Islamizers of Europe, as they have so many times in the past (see the OSCE Archives for a chronicle of previous close encounters with the OSCE).

Since Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff and Henrik Clausen began attending OSCE conferences ten years ago, we’ve watched the organization gradually metamorphose from a (mostly) well-meaning outfit that really did respect free speech into a full-blown Politically Correct Multicultural trans-national advocacy group. It is basically a subsidiary of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and acts as a government-funded think tank for the UN (which is also a subdivision of the OIC).

Despite the odds against us, the Counterjihad Collective continues to fight the good fight, and some of us (not including myself) will be in Warsaw next week.

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The two videos below were prepared by Maj. (ret) Stephen Coughlin in collaboration with Vlad Tepes. They recapitulate material from two Human Dimension conferences, one in Warsaw in September of 2013, the other in Vienna in June of 2015.

I was present at the 2013 event, so I’ll provide a brief introduction to what happened at the notorious side event that featured the colorfully-attired Bashy Quraishy and the staid Robin Richardson of the Runnymede Trust.

On September 24, 2013 the ODIHR Tolerance and Non-Discrimination Department convened a side event, “Educational initiatives and approaches for addressing anti-Semitism and intolerance against Muslims”. This sounded like a worthwhile opportunity, and a large contingent of people from the Counterjihad Collective decided to attend it.

It was a good thing we did. It turned out that the side event was convened to highlight “Guidelines for Educators on Countering Intolerance and Discrimination against Muslims: Addressing Islamophobia through Education”, which was published jointly [pdf] by OSCE/ODIHR, the Council of Europe, and UNESCO in 2011. This document — which contains 49 instances of the word “Islamophobia” — was discussed in the detailed ICLA paper The Problematic Definition of “Islamophobia” [pdf, to which I contributed], and was part of the focus of our research.

The first forty minutes or so featured presentations by the panelists, including some of the authors of the “Guidelines”. One of them was a British gentleman named Robin Richardson, who was associated with the Runnymede Trust.

Since the panelists had repeatedly mentioned “Islamophobia” — ICLA’s topic for the week — I decided to have my say, since I was fully briefed on the word “Islamophobia” and its use in the OSCE document. After comments by one other member of the audience, I spoke up, and a lengthy discussion ensued, capped by devastating remarks made by Maj. Stephen Coughlin.

Some excerpts:

Ned May: We need new terminology. On behalf of the International Civil Liberties Alliance, I formally object to the use of the word Islamophobia. Any official use, including this document. It is ill-defined and was undefined for four years. We requested a definition for four years. And it’s not even defined in here. And when we finally got one, it was from the Turkish delegation this year. And it was based on a definition by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. That is a clear conflict of interest, to use a definition by an Islamic body of something that is used against non-Muslims.

That’s the first problem. The second problem is the definition itself as our extensive, well-sourced paper showed, has at least thirteen major problems including six logical failures. It cannot be used. And the biggest failure is that the definition calls Islamophobia based on unfounded fear of Muslims or Islam. That itself is difficult to prove in any given circumstance.

And any researcher who attempts to prove that someone has a well-founded fear of Islam is branded an Islamophobe. That turns the word itself into a Catch-22. It is circular; it is recursive.

The word must be defined through the agreement of people who share different points of view: those who object to Islamic law, those who support Islamic law, those who have no opinion.

It must be defined by Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, agreeing together what Islamophobia is. Otherwise, it should be abandoned entirely. Stricken from existing publications including kept out of future publications. Thank you.

Later on, after Maj. Coughlin made his excellent presentation, there was this brief exchange:

Robin Richardson: Just could I come back, I don’t think the word Islamophobia appears in here. It appears on the title.

Ned May: It’s in there forty-nine times.

Robin Richardson: Is it really? I guess you’re right. I stand corrected. I’m surprised. But anyway, on definition. At Runnymede, we had a working definition. I don’t think the OIC existed —

Ned May: The Runnymede definition is in here.

Maj. Coughlin has revisited the material (including his most salient comments) from that side event and provided additional context for the first composite video. Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for editing and uploading both videos.

From September 2013:


Video link

The full audio of the final 48 minutes of the 2013 side event is available here. For a more detailed account of that night’s side events, including a complete transcript of the audio, see “Torpedoing Islamophobia”.

From June 2015:

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