Lindsay Perigo: Comrade Ardern's "Social Cohesion" = Coerced Conformity!

Judith Collins has joined the Free Speech Union.

Oddly, she doesn't mention the fact in her Collins Comments of July 2, but she does say this:

The National Party believes that freedom of speech is a fundamental right. We will fight any attempts Jacinda Ardern’s Government makes to criminalise speech beyond the threshold of ‘inciting violence’, which is already provided for in New Zealand law.

While the National Party condemns vile speech that is intended to insult, it is a big leap from condemning it to criminalising it.

The Prime Minister needs to be clear about the intent of this law reform. At the moment it seems only approved opinions about some subjects will be allowed and questioning those opinions will be a criminal offence.

The government has not said who will decide what opinions are acceptable. The Minister of Justice is not clear on what “hatred” is and there is no clear threshold for punishment stated.

I invite every New Zealander to have their say on these changes on this government website, please click

https://consultations.justice.govt.nz/policy/incitement-of-hatred/

Judith's link includes another link to where you, dear reader, can state your own opinions on the proposed abolition of free speech. Be prepared to navigate some Woke-Fascist blather as to whether you are male, female, other (please specify) or would prefer not to say, before being able to submit your thoughts.

https://consultations.justice....

Please note, I have not yet myself proceeded beyond this page, as I am still deliberating as to which gender I am (sarcasm; a gay man is still a man!). But I shall go there. Everybody should. 180 years of freedom of speech is about to be overturned by the Woke-Fascist regime of Comrade Ardern and her Jacindistas, leaving one to wonder why did we ever bother fighting Hitler?! Let this glorious era end with at least a bang, rather than a whimper. That bang must come from We the People. It is unlikely to come from the mealy-mouthed, word-mincing, punch-pulling Free Speech Union, who, in their July 2 press release celebrating the launch of their online "Hate Speech Detector" said this:

The website is a part of a new campaign from the Free Speech Union to convince the Government to withdraw its proposed new laws, or at the very least limit the changes to what the Royal Commission actually said. [Bold mine.]

Whoa!! What the Royal Commission actually said?! No way, Free Speech Union! What the Royal Commission actually said was reprehensible, and is the exact basis on which the evil Ardern is proceeding! It included:

39. Amend legislation to create hate-motivated offences in:
a) the Summary Offences Act 1981 that correspond with the existing offences of offensive behaviour or language [Bold mine] ...

40. Repeal Section 131 of the Human Rights Act 1993 and insert a provision in the Crimes Act 191 for an offence of inciting racial or religious disharmony, based on an intent to stir up, maintain or normalise hatred, through threatening, abusive or insulting communications with protected characteristics that include religious affiliation [Bold mine] ...

42. Direct New Zealand Police to ... train their frontline staff in:
a) identifying bias indicators so that they can identify potential hate crimes when they perceive that an offence is hate-motivated;
b) exploring perceptions of victims and witnesses so that they are in a position to record where an offence is perceived to be hate-motivated; ...

Fundamental to New Zealand's future well-being is social cohesion.

Elsewhere in their execrable document the Royal Commission commended the practice of taking umbragees (the "offended") at face value, without evidence or corroboration, and pursuing the umbragers accordingly, as is now common in Britonistan.

How does this differ in any way from what the Ardern Regime is proposing?!

The incitement of hatred against a group based on a shared characteristic, such as ethnicity, religion or sexuality, is an attack on our values of inclusiveness and diversity. Such incitement is intolerable and has no place in our society.

The aims of the proposals are to:

Increase the number of groups of people that are protected by the incitement provisions, such as religious groups and rainbow communities

Make it clearer what behaviour the law prohibits and increase the consequences for breaking the law

Improve the protections for groups against wider discrimination.

The six proposals that we would like to hear your views on relate to:

Changing the language in the incitement provisions in the Human Rights Act 1993 so that they protect more groups that are targeted by hateful speech

Replacing the existing criminal provision in the Human Rights Act 1993 with a new criminal offence in the Crimes Act 1961 that is clearer and more effective

Increasing the punishment for the criminal offence to better reflect its seriousness

Changing the language of the civil incitement provision to match the changes being made to the criminal provision

Changing the civil provision so that it makes ‘incitement to discriminate’ against the law

Adding to the grounds of discrimination in the Human Rights Act to clarify that trans, gender diverse and intersex people are protected from discrimination.

We may be sure that this is mere Orwell-speak for: "criticism shall henceforth be conflated with incitement, and thus, criminalised." Any dissent from the dictatorship's Woke-Fascist agenda will be imprisonable.

Criticism of what, exactly? Well, more than anything the Woke-Fascist regime wants to criminalise criticism of Islam, whether that criticism be long and erudite or crude and succinct. Say "Islam sucks," and you'll go to jail. (Say "Christianity sucks" and nothing will happen at all. Ditto "Atheism sucks." Neither should anything happen. I'm an atheist, but I defend to the death the right of any religious person to his or her beliefs, and of me to mine.) Islamic leaders were demanding this within hours of the Christchurch mosque slaughter. Liberty-lovers must continue to reserve the right to proclaim that Islam does suck, and the horror of that slaughter does not mitigate the horror of Islam.

Almost in equal measure Apartheid Ardern wants to criminalise criticism of her racist Brown Supremacy agenda. Say "separatism sucks" and you'll go to jail. (Say "white people suck" and nothing at all will happen, apart from applause from Woke virtue-signallers.) Say, "It sucks that the Mongrel Mob is getting taxpayer money from the so-called Human Rights Commission" and you'll be called a racist. Don Brash could go to jail multiple times, and not necessarily concurrently, for umbraging so many umbragees, as he so admirably did at Victoria University last year:

In most Muslim-majority countries, for example, there are laws which make it a criminal offence to speak ill of Islam, or to make an attempt to convert people from Islam. Laws against blasphemy – speaking ill of Islam – can get you killed in Pakistan. Even suggesting that Muslims are free to vote for a non-Muslim as Governor of Jakarta can get you jailed in Indonesia, as the former Governor of Jakarta discovered to his cost.

A couple of years ago, a Turkish writer who had been invited to give three lectures in supposedly modern Malaysia was detained and forced by the religious affairs authority in that country to abandon his third lecture. His crime: arguing that Islam should never use coercion either to win converts or to keep those who are already Muslim in order.

Nor is it only Muslim-majority countries which seek to suppress free speech in the name of religion. Since 2013, insulting the feelings of religious believers has been a criminal offence in Russia. ...

In March last year, New Zealand saw the tragedy of 51 Muslims killed, and many more injured, by a man who clearly hated Islam with a passion and who saw it as his duty to kill as many Muslims as he could. No sane person could condone such an atrocity and the perpetrator has rightly been sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole.

But the event has prompted serious discussion about whether New Zealand needs laws prohibiting so-called hate speech, with both Attorney General David Parker and Justice Minister Andrew Little talking publicly about the need for laws to criminalise hate speech. The Human Rights Commissioner has also called for such laws.

But it’s a hugely tricky area, and perhaps that explains why we haven’t yet seen any draft legislation which would restrict hate speech.

What does “hate speech” actually mean? Nobody defends the right for people to urge violence against persons or property of course. But beyond that opinions will differ.

Should Israel Folau be allowed to point out that the Old Testament says that gays will go to hell after they die unless they repent of their homosexuality? I would argue “yes”.

Should Muslims be allowed to argue that gays, adulterers, and those who abandon Islam should be killed, thus implicitly condoning murder? I would argue “no”.

But those are, at least to me, relatively straightforward cases. There are many other areas where societal attitudes are effectively shutting down discussion or debate, with mainstream media simply refusing to entertain debate in areas where views differ strongly.

For example, it is judged to be too insensitive, or too judgmental, to suggest that the children brought up by their two natural parents are likely to have a much better start in life than those brought up in single-parent families, or in families where the adult male changes at irregular intervals.

It is regarded as quite inappropriate to recommend that adoption be regarded as an alternative to either abortion or single parenthood.

It is regarded as verging on treason to question whether human-induced climate change is really the most serious challenge facing humanity, despite the contrary views of people as different as Canadian Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, and Matt Ridley, a well-known British science writer.

It is regarded as far too judgmental to suggest that some cultures are superior to, or more advanced than, others.

It is regarded as quite inappropriate to publicly question the wisdom of allowing as immigrants people who believe that adulterers should be stoned to death.

And you dare not suggest that the Enlightenment civilization brought to New Zealand by the early British settlers was significantly more advanced than the Maori culture of the early nineteenth century, even though early nineteenth century Maori had no written language, had not yet invented the wheel, and were still practising cannibalism.

Please note, all of this is true right now, without the explicit killing of free speech being advocated by the Jacindistas.

This is where we are. With the assistance of the Communist Party of China (of whom criticism will also be criminalised), and the Wuhan Virus it so generously gifted to the rest of the world, Comrade Jihadi Jacinda Podesta is about to impose China's "social credit" system, a modernised version of George Orwell's 1984, upon all New Zealanders. Big Sister has replaced Big Brother. This is the "social cohesion" so avidly promoted by the Royal Commission. What it really is is coerced conformity. Society will "cohere" because there's a government gun at everybody's head.

The zombified young (moronnials), far from being fired up in defence of freedom, have been lobotomised and brainwashed into believing that freedom is a patriarchal, capitalistic, White Supremacist ruse. The media have become the regime's lickspittles. A sisterhood of snowflakes has overtaken Academia. Infantile "feelings" and Thunberg tantrums have supplanted logic, reason and their indispensable crucible, open and forthright debate. Fry-quacking, upward-inflecting wannabe umbragees get out of bed each day, if they get out of bed at all, just to find someone to be umbraged by; now they'll have the satisfaction of seeing their umbrager jailed, as well as cancelled, sacked, censored, doxxed or otherwise lynched by the repulsive mindless Woke-Fascist mob on "social" media.

Freedom-lovers must react, not with the FSU's weasel-worded "concern" about the pending tyranny but with utmost disgust and righteous revulsion and an unflinching determination not to let it happen. (The problem with the FSU probably derives from the fact that it's stuffed with lawyers, who may well be salivating at the endless litigation that will come their way as they try to keep umbragers out of jail. Shakespeare had a good idea about lawyers, but I shan't repeat it lest I be accused of "incitement"!)

Rather than entrenching totalitarianism, let us boldly proclaim that there is indeed no such thing as a right not to be offended, and that the precept, "I disagree with what you say but defend to the death your right to say it" should permeate all social discourse and be emblazoned across the sky.

Lindsay Perigo is a former TV presenter, interviewer, founder of The Free Radical and of the Sense of Life Objectivists. He is a former host of The Politically Incorrect Show (Radio Pacific), occasional talkback host on Radio Live, as well as NZ's most notorious libertarian.