The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Mayor says disinformation, including about London crime rates, is ‘eating away at basic bonds of trust’

If every statement made in public had to be verified by official fact-checkers of some kind, only those who subscribe to our rulers’ narrative would be safe to speak. Of course, that’s not the kind of action that Khan has in mind.

What government could do is more sinister. If they hold social media companies legally liable for statements published using their channels (an idea as crazy as holding BT responsible for slanders made over their telephone wires), those companies will over-comply. They will have no other choice. They can’t fact-check half a billion posts a day across all platforms. That’s almost 6,000 posts per second.

So their algorithms will screen (as those of WordPress already do) for any kind of “danger” words that might signal potentially actionable communication.

Danger words like “Chronicles of Narnia” or “Lord of the Rings” for example both of which (as novels with Christian morality) are regarded by the Government’s anti-terrorism “Prevent” programme as signs of potential extremism. Or support for Brexit perhaps, in line with the thinking of the UK police officers who famously noted a citizen’s “Brexity books”.

If you follow Douglas Murray, Brendan O’Neil, Lord Young of Acton or, God help you, Jordan Peterson online, the likes of X.com and Facebook will have no option but to flag you as someone whose comments might attract the Wrath of Khan.

There will be no point to this blog any more. I will have the AI equivalent of the London wets of my acquaintance sitting electronically on my shoulder,

Not too long ago, we had long-established limitations, clearly defined in law, on what might lawfully be published. Defamation (libel and slander) had centuries of case law behind it. Even that had a chilling effect. There’s no legal aid for defamation cases. The risk of litigation by people with access to deep pockets (whether their own in the case of a scoundrel like Bob Maxwell or taxpayers’ in the case of a government employee) was enough to deter many a fruity observation.

However, until political correctness morphed into wokeness and the poisonous concept of “hate speech” was invented, at least we all knew what we could and could not safely say or write.

Defamation law, through the “fair comment on a matter of public interest” defence, specifically allowed freer rein when critiquing politicians. Rightly so. They seek to exercise power over fellow citizens while living on us as parasites. The sort of people drawn to such a life are intrinsically dangerous. Their ideas – which they aim to turn into government policy and/or law – damned well need to be tested in fire.

Khan claims – of course he does – that he’s trying to avert attacks on the vulnerable in society. Even they should have heard from their mums (as we heard from ours) that

“sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”

The truth is he wants to suppress a rising tide of criticism (more or, yes quite often, less politely expressed) of a long-standing policy of our ruling elite. A policy never openly proposed in an election manifesto or approved by the electorate. The policy of extending the life of the Welfare State Ponzi scheme by shipping in people from third-world places. Places whose education systems are poisoned by authoritarianism, misogyny, anti-semitism and a general loathing of us and our civilisation. People whom our elites now welcome even when they don’t prop up the Ponzi scheme because they’re more likely than natives to vote left, supporting the relentless expansion of the Deep State.

The United States is lucky that the ideas our civilisation was founded on – including free speech – were entrenched in its constitution. Our own constitution – which can be summarised by the three words;

Parliament is sovereign

affords no such protection. We are at risk – at the behest of people like the loathsome Khan – of recreating the intellectually-sterile situation in the countries our immigrants are arriving from. Countries where science, invention and social advancement are held back precisely because discussion is not free.

It’s hard to have an amendment to a constitution that barely exists, but the UK needs – not this Khanian nonsense – but some equivalent of the US First Amendment. Free Speech has been in retreat for too long in the nation where it first took root. It’s time to turn around and face the foe.

Source: Sadiq Khan demands stronger action on social media ‘outrage economy’ | Social media | The Guardian