Darwinian Marinian

The ban on social media for children under 16 is an idea that has merits. But the way it is being done is simply a way to force everyone, including adults, to identify themselves online, creating the most powerful surveillance and censorship architecture in human history.

@annbauerwriter @glukianoff @JonHaidt @TheFIREorg Did you miss this one, from 2024? eternallyradicalidea.com/p/my-first-ame…

“Protect the children” too often becomes “show me your papers.” Britain’s age-verification push and Washington’s online-safety bargain risk building speech-control infrastructure in the name of safety.

This all seems to be a ploy to link IP addresses and online activity directly to an identifiable person to make them easier to catch and track down. The government falsely assumed that everyone watches porn and they thought they would get everyone that way. It obviously did not work as well as they were hoping so they are now expanding it. (I have always said that initial laws are just a foot in the door, those laws will always be expanding after the fact into their true original intended purpose). So their plan now is if you want to use any social media or much of the internet in any way, you will need to prove that you are over 18 which means submitting an ID. This will require far far more ID submissions which will massively expand the government database, which was the real plan all along, not the safety of children. The funniest thing about this is after all the fuss about the Online Safety Act, this blanket ban on kids using social media pretty much renders the entire act pointless and made it a giant waste of time. Which to be honest, proves that the act was never about protecting children but was really about building a giant database that links all online activity directly to a person. This database would then be constantly poured over by AI to flag "citizens of concern" to the government who may be potential political dissidents, saying naughty anti-government things etc so the government can pre-emptively act against them. Minority Report. This is literally the plot of Minority Report.

Don’t let free speech be the victim of the Belfast riots, writes Hugo Timms. This Labour Government has once again jumped at the opportunity to use civil unrest to clamp down on social media. In a fractured governing party, they are united by a belief that problems can be solved by controlling what people say — increasingly online. In the aftermath of the first night of rioting in Belfast — after a Sudanese immigrant attempted to behead an innocent man in the street — Technology Secretary Liz Kendall took to X and said: “Those who use social media to incite violence and disorder are breaking the law. Next week we will lay before Parliament an update to the Online Safety Act requiring services to take quicker action to remove illegal content circulating during times of crisis.” She added: “I have explicitly asked Ofcom to discuss urgently with X and other platforms how they will comply with the Online Safety Act.” Following the Southport riots in 2024, Starmer’s Government launched a fierce assault on free speech, with many individuals convicted for statements made online being treated more harshly than the rioters themselves. This Government has used the Orwellian Online Safety Act as a tool to suppress free speech. Read more below in @spikedonline 👇

Why is Sir Keir Starmer’s Government set to ban under-16s from accessing 10 major social media platforms — including X — but not left-wing platforms like Bluesky? Since coming to power, this Government has been openly hostile to X, a forum for debate that prides itself on free speech. Ministers have even floated the idea of blocking UK citizens’ access to the platform altogether. Starmer can no longer pretend this is solely about protecting children.

Censorship rarely wears a name tag. It shows up in disguises like government jawboning, a social media tax, and conference security removing researchers for sharing the organizer’s own editorial The costumes change. The principle does not. eternallyradicalidea.com/publish/post/2…

my thoughts on the new Illinois social media tax law: “It’s a pretty straightforward tax on speech, and a discriminatory one at that. It basically suggests that it’s alright for government to be singling out types of media or media platforms that it does not like and assessing special taxes accordingly.” And I have plenty of other concerns...

Inevitably, the government is exploiting the horrific attack in Belfast to justify censorship. The previous government did the same after the murder of Sir David Amess. They never want to address the problem; they only want to prevent people from talking about the problem.

📣🚨 FSU Victory!! The Free Speech Union has just heard from South Wales Police that it has withdrawn its guidance on “anti-Muslim hostility”. The force had effectively adopted its own Islamic blasphemy law, instructing officers to record any conversation that went beyond “legitimate” discussion of Islam. Under this guidance, criticism of Islam could have been recorded as an anti-social behaviour incident and potentially appeared on DBS checks, affecting someone’s ability to work as a teacher, carer, or in other regulated professions. South Wales Police has backed down because the Free Speech Union threatened them with a judicial review if it chose to press ahead with the policy. The force has described this move as a “pause” to the guidance — but we think it is highly unlikely to return. We must also thank Shadow Equalities Minister @ClaireCoutinho for referring South Wales Police to the Equality and Human Rights Commission after we brought this issue to her attention. Blasphemy laws were abolished by Parliament 18 years ago. We must not allow them to return through the back door. Let this be a warning to any other public body — particularly police forces — considering the adoption of its own blasphemy laws. Watch Lord Young below 👇

@DefiantLs Please watch Arrival (2016).

YouTuber Jesse Ridgway, who has been under fire after deciding with his wife to abort their baby because of Down Syndrome, says he is glad his own dad didn’t abort him, “Yeah of course I’m glad my dad didn’t f*cking terminate me, I’m normal.”

@sleepy_devo @tafphorisms No. x.com/glukianoff/sta…

@tafphorisms a lot of this is going to boil down to the left's death grip on academic institutions, and most right-wingers stop thinking there a big reason the left has a death grip on academic institutions in the first place, is because the right totally ceded all ground in them

Some classic reddit slop. Almost every historian who has ever lived would be considered far right by the standards of today's left. The question is not why history teachers are all left wing--the question is why are history teachers so right wing, except those in the present?

South Wales Police are enforcing their own Islamic blasphemy law, 18 years after Parliament voted to abolish such laws. The Free Speech Union has long warned that the Government’s official definition of Islamophobia — repackaged as “anti-Muslim hatred” — would silence legitimate criticism of Islam and encourage public bodies to go further. South Wales Police have now instructed officers to record comments they deem to go beyond “legitimate” discussion of Islam. These will be logged as anti-social behaviour incidents and could be disclosed on an enhanced DBS check, potentially preventing people from getting a job. The Free Speech Union has written to South Wales Police demanding that this guidance be withdrawn. If they fail to do so, we have warned that we will seek a judicial review. As Shadow Equalities Minister @ClaireCoutinho wrote to the Chief Constable: “At a time of widespread concern about two-tier policing, your force is creating a separate and more restrictive category of speech that applies only in the context of one religion. This is not equal treatment under the law.” Read Claire’s letter below 👇

Henry Nowak: How Anti-Racism Gave You Racism

@CS1_1SC @kunou126 @Orare_Deum @cheezedawgb Have you ever seen the movie Hot Fuzz by any chance?

A “YouTuber” from California coming into a small town to seeming harass a well known local figure in small town USA is ALWAYS going to get the same reaction regardless of what religion any party happens to be. Go try Reckless-Ben style tactics in small town Mississippi! You’ll never hear about that because Reckless-Ben will just disappear. Religion has nothing to do with bad policing. It happens often and without regard or relation to religious affiliation.

As somebody that hadn’t heard of Bricks and Minifigs until last week, the more I see of this YouTuber Reckless Ben the less I believe him. There seem to be a lot of bad actors in this crazy Lego story, but Ben Schneider is near the top of my list. #Lego

Henry Nowak was an 18 year-old student on a night out in Southampton. He was brutally stabbed with a 21cm ceremonial knife carried by a Sikh man. The footage released last night is deeply distressing and has shocked us all. As Henry lay bleeding out on the ground, the police arrested him on an accusation of a racial slur. When he told officers that he could not breathe and that he had been stabbed, an officer can be heard saying “I don’t think you have, mate”. Rather than attempt to save this young man’s life, the police were more interested in an accusation of racism. The last thing Henry heard was being read his rights as he was arrested. When the police are more concerned with an allegation about words potentially said than the fact that a young man has suffered a fatal knife wound, the extent of the mess our police are in is laid bare. Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary have some serious questions to answer.

🚨BREAKING: Following representations from CAF and a coalition of free speech organisations — including Academics for Academic Freedom and the London Universities' Council for Academic Freedom — the Government has confirmed that the recent High Court ruling in the University of Sussex v Office for Students case will not affect full implementation of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023. The letter, which was organised by Professor @ObhishekSaha, warned ministers that some university leaders were seeking to use the judgment — in which the OfS lost on several grounds — as a reason to resist the commencement of key new enforcement provisions in the Act, including the free speech complaints scheme. Skills Minister Baroness Jacqui Smith has now replied, stating in unexpectedly firm and unequivocal language that the judgment “does not impact” the Government’s plans to commence the Act’s key provisions. The complaints scheme therefore remains on course to open on 1 September 2026. This is reassuring news. The scheme will provide a free-to-use route for academics, external speakers and non-student members to seek redress when their free speech or academic freedom rights are infringed. For many, it will offer a far more realistic remedy than the delays, costs and legal complexity associated with Employment Tribunal proceedings brought under the Equality Act 2010. Without an effective enforcement mechanism, universities face little practical incentive to align their internal policies with their legal duties. At the very least, the new scheme therefore offers the prospect of a regulatory framework capable of giving meaningful effect to universities’ statutory duties to secure #freedomofspeech within the law and protect academic freedom. @Fox_Claire @joshxhowie @MaximumCities @SpeechUnion @MShipworth @drianpace @HJoyceGender @AFFSUK @AFAF_freespeech

These two paragraphs of my verdict are crucial for everyone to read and understand. "Even if all of the statements made by Van Langenhove are based on scientific evidence and statistics, it makes no difference to the criminal intent. Van Langenhove is not charged with spreading false information. He is charged with presenting facts in a way that incites hatred against persons on the grounds of one or more of the protected criteria in the Anti-Racism Law.” 1⃣ "For Van Langenhove to have committed a crime, it is not necessary for him to have incited concrete acts of hate or violence. It suffices that others are incited to take on a general attitude of intolerance or disapproval regarding a group protected under the criteria of the Anti-Racism Law." 2⃣ This means you can go to jail for "inciting hatred" even if your statements were 100% factual (see 1⃣) and even if you did NOT incite concrete acts of hate (see 2⃣). The benchmark of "inciting hatred" , a crime punishable by prison, is thus "saying something that has the potential of inciting someone to have a general attitude of disapproval regarding a protected group". This means literally any criticism of mass migration is now a punishable offence. If you cite a statistic, and someone could potentially think less of a protected group (like migrants) because of it, you can be jailed. The craziest part is that there is no defence possible against this. I brought the scientific studies that I cited to court, but the judge didn't care 1⃣. I also proved that the hundreds of students present at the lecture included students of all different political affiliations, and everyone was able to voice their opinion or ask questions. The lecture went very calmly, so obviously nobody was incited to hatred. But this too did not matter 2⃣, because if the judge says he believes there is the possibility that someone COULD be incited to "a general attitude of disapproval", this is enough for the judge to send me to jail, even without any evidence. I'm telling you this to warn you that by the time these hate speech laws have come into place, it's already too late. You will NEVER be able to beat these laws in court. You have to stop them before they are implemented. Let my fate be your warning.

A very sad announcement. I have just been convicted a second time for 'hate speech' and it is only due to a technicality that I could not immediately be sent to jail —to the judge's frustration. In an ironic turn of events it's actually thanks to my previous prison sentence (for memes in a private group chat) that I am now still free —in a physical sense, at least. Call me naive but I didn't think they would take it this far, given that this precedent criminalises many of the arguments used by even the most moderate politicians critical of mass migration. In February 2024 I gave a lecture at Catholic University Leuven wherein I linked mass migration to crime and a deterioration of our quality of life. Every single point I made was 100% the truth and based on scientific evidence. Cynically, even the judge that convicted me admits as much by writing in his verdict: “Even if all of the statements made by Van Langenhove are based on scientific evidence and statistics, it makes no difference to the criminal intent. Van Langenhove is not charged with spreading false information. He is charged with presenting facts in a way that incites hatred against persons on the grounds of one or more of the protected criteria in the Anti-Racism Law.” That's a lot of words just to say he wants to send me to prison for speaking the truth. Even the regime media write: "It did not matter to the court that Van Langenhove was quoting scientific sources. The judge argued that Van Langenhove's main message was that a big part of the societal problems like insecurity, housing shortages and lowering educational standards are due to mass migration." You may think the regime media are being sympathetic to me in the first sentence, but in reality they are warning people: even if you speak the truth, if you go against our narrative, we will crush you in every way possible. Both the public prosecutor and the judge did not present a single real argument as to how or against whom I would have incited hatred. So even if I would accept their crazy, dystopic law, I still did not break it. The only argument they present is that I created a "hostile atmosphere of us versus them” in regards to migrants. But even this silly argument (which is not even a punishable offence) is not true. To me, the deadly disease is self-hatred and one of its worst symptoms is replacement migration. My enemy is thus NOT the migrants themselves but those orchestrating the mass migration. Sadly, in Belgium, evidence is not needed and ‘vibes’ are enough to put someone in jail. Given the fact that I have another court case coming up in September and that I have a dozen active criminal investigations for hate speech, time is running out for me. I have already paid more than €420,000 in legal fees and there is no ending in sight. I have been in an intense battle of attrition for eight years and must now regroup to make sure I can still win. If you want to help me, you can do so via the links below. If you can help in other ways, please contact me via DM. If you live in a country that still has free speech, never let them touch it, however noble they make the motives sound, because this is where it leads to.

In my career defending academic freedom and free speech, I never saw anything become as immediately radioactive as views that ran counter to the narrative on trans issues. Papers were retracted, compelled speech was treated as normal, and people were canceled for saying things that would have sounded like common sense just a few years earlier. It seemed to become a kind of secular blasphemy overnight. And usually, that is a sign that the true believers know, at some level, that they are on shaky ground. @hoovlet