Scotland’s fresh “hate violence” rules now is demonstrating how it will be used to squash opposition and free speech.
The so- called Hate Crime and Public Order Act, which went into force in Scotland on April Fools ‘ Day, adds time, disability, religion, sexual preference, and transgender personality to a list of guarded groups.
The law provides for various potential punishments, including jail time.
The new law has been fiercely criticized by author J. K. Rowling, creator of the” Harry Potter” series, and many others who rightly see it as an attack on the freedom of speech.
Humza Yousaf, the first minister of Scotland, stated that the bill is intended to “protect people from a rising tide of hatred.” But who will protect the people’s God- given right to free speech?
When Yousaf inquired about activists who are making lists of other people to target when the law goes into effect, he said that the only ones who should be concerned are those who are inciting hatred.
But who decides what exactly stirring up “hatred” really means?
Siobhian Brown, Scotland’s minister for victims and community safety, was asked whether intentionally “misgendering” someone would be considered a crime under the law. At first she said,” Not at all”, then continued:” It could be reported and it could be investigated. Police Scotland is up to the decision to believe that it was criminal.
Very reassuring.
The response to the law has been predictable.
In the first week since the introduction of a new hate crime law, scotland’s police reportedly received more than 7, 000 online reports of offences.
Police have described the law as a burden on their force that cannot be sustained. I’m more concerned with the strain that this law and other similar laws are putting on the sagging foundations that prevent the flimsy notion that those who are subject to such laws actually reside in a “free” society.
I disagree with the claim that the Scottish people have no concerns and that this law was only intended to protect the less fortunate.
Let’s call this what it is: a secular, authoritarian blasphemy law, as my Scottish friend Madeline Kearns described it in National Review.
I have a feeling that left-wing politicians used this legislation as a tool to support their activist base. The pols are simply putting another prop in place to secure their authority to control thought and discourse because the institutional-activist partnership is a component of the same perverse circulatory system.
Despite mounting mounting evidence that the gender transition movement’s entire foundation is based on lies and false assumptions, it still maintains its place as the core tenet in the West’s elite political and cultural institutions.
These institutions are connected by a particular globalist ideology and worldview rather than rely on science or popularity. Whether one calls this” NextGen Marxism”, as my colleague Mike Gonzalez has in his new book, or DEI, or simply the Left, the ethos is undeniably dominant in the West’s most elite circles.
That’s not changing, yet.
What is changing is that there is now a more aggressive, one might call it “populist”, counter to this worldview that’s growing against our farcical pseudo- elite.
This movement is broad and includes many “intellectuals” as was as ordinary people. Some liberals, like Rowling and Bari Weiss, have shifted to the right in their criticism of the transgender narrative, which prioritizes ideology over reality, which has caused a significant shakeup in Left/Right politics.
Scotland’s new hate crime law aims to stop the counter movement and foster a climate of fear where those who speak up and tell the truth are at serious risk.
The cultural elites of the West ca n’t find enough people to say that the emperor is unclothed or that a man ca n’t turn into a woman without being arrested. That poses a threat to the regime, the interlocking lies that the elites tell themselves and use to bolster their positions within its institutional tendrils.
Therefore, many other authoritarian and totalitarian societies have done in the past with the assistance of the cultural elites. A large majority of people will be hesitant to declare the truth publicly or even privately because they are raising the cost of telling the truth.
They are presenting these dictatorial designs in the language of “hate” and by making the penalties seem low enough to prevent the immediate abolition of images from other infamous, oppressive states of the past.
” Hey, do n’t worry, we wo n’t prosecute you for misgendering someone, yet. Unless the police and the courts say so, of course, but that’s not my department”.
That is exactly what Scottish politicians and other transgender hate crime advocates are saying.
Do n’t buy it.
Anti-speech laws intended to intimidate dissenters are n’t the only way to solve the issue; instead, they are meant to establish a government- mandated standard of what is acceptable speech. These laws are a strong but insistent swat directed at anyone who might be considering disclosing the truth rather than blatantly disseminating the party-approved narrative.
If the people do n’t comply, more repressive laws will come later.
Sure, the majority of alleged hate speech under this law wo n’t result in arrests or significant fines. At least for now. But how many people are going to be willing to speak the truth when there’s a chance they could get arrested, face a lawsuit, or even end up in jail?
Most people are n’t Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The authors of these laws are aware of this and are counting on the likelihood that the majority of them are n’t even a Rowling, Riley Gaines, or Ray Shelton either.
That’s why these” small” threats to liberty must be met and defeated now. When the stakes are still not quite gulags, now is the time to refuse to live by lies.
We must, like Thomas Jefferson, swear hostility to every tyranny over the mind of man.
We have the First Amendment, which may at least slow down this rush to control speech and thought in the United States. But that wo n’t keep back the tide of suffocating, increasingly government- mandated groupthink forever. Little islands of liberty are n’t good enough.
Although the gender transition movement seems most popular in the United States, I have a feeling that if it can be defeated, it will be defeated here.
While the law is still in effect, stop believing lies and pass laws to protect the truth rather than to create victims. That’s how we can safeguard liberty and stop the onset of a new Dark Age.
