‘Lawfare’ on free speech
Vilification claims used to attack when it suits
VICTIMHOOD is not only being glorified but weaponised to silence those who challenge the leftist orthodoxy that dominates our public and increasingly our private institutions.
It’s all too easy to make a racial vilification complaint, no matter how nonsensical, that will tie up the accused in costly legal proceedings for months or years.
The process is the punishment.
There are no consequences for vexatious, hypersensitive, permanently aggrieved miscreants who waste not only taxpayer funds but cause enormous stress and often financial hardship to those unfairly accused.
A number of state and federal bodies, staffed by wellpaid public servants, facilitate this taxpayer-funded “lawfare” where “wrong speech” is punished by lengthy and often costly legal action.
The Australian Human Rights Commission, Civil and Administrative tribunals and a number of other state-based human rights bodies are being used to censor free speech.
Less common but just as sinister is the “lawfare” that sees activist lawyers, who are happy to work for free, using the legal system to financially punish and ultimately silence their ideological adversaries.
It seems nowadays stating an opinion that is held by half the country is a potential hate crime that could lead to years of costly legal proceedings, not to mention the corresponding anxiety.
A number of polls in recent years, including a 2016 Essential poll and a 2017 survey commissioned by the Australian Population Research Institute, show that one in two Australians have major reservations about Muslim migration and would support full or partial bans.
But if you dare utter that sentiment on television you may find yourself facing a racial vilification complaint.
Little wonder that those in the entertainment industry who deviate from leftist groupthink are reluctant to publicly share their views.
The climate of censorship and the use of racial vilification laws to silence criticism of religion is a worrying trend. As someone who escaped an Islamist country where blasphemy and apostasy were crimes punishable by jail, beatings or even death, I shudder to see quasi-blasphemy laws being created under the guise of human rights.
No one who values free speech and critical thinking should characterise criticism of religion, any religion, as hate speech or bigotry.
It’s self-evident that Islam isn’t a race; how can people as diverse as Indonesians, Sudanese, Bosnians and Afghanis be considered to be a single race?
It is plainly absurd to argue that blonde, blue-eyed Sunni Muslims from Chechnya are the same race as Sub-Saharan African Sunni Muslims from Niger.
Islam is a doctrine, a set of ideas that should be freely discussed and criticised without hyperbolic cries of Islamophobia.
Of course, anti-Muslim bigotry is real and does occur, but false cries of Islamophobia often accompany any criticism of Islam, even when it is militant, radical Islam that is at the heart of sectarian violence and terror attacks around the world.
Brilliant writer and religious and literary critic Christopher Hitchens warned us back in 2006 about the way “the shady term Islamophobia” would be used to smear and silence.
“The word Islamophobia is in fact beginning to acquire the opprobrium that was once reserved for racial prejudice,” he said. “This is a subtle and very nasty insinuation that needs to be met head-on.”
How right he was and how weak the West has been in protecting one of the most fundamental human rights as recognised by the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights: freedom of expression.
Instead of protecting free speech, bodies like the AHRC are actively inhibiting it.
It’s not only those with high profiles like late and great cartoonist Bill Leak who are or have been subjected to tribunal and commission complaints.
Have a look at what the QUT students endured for three years for harmless Facebook posts about being thrown out of an indigenousonly computer room.
One of the victims of that ordeal, Calum Thwaites, gave up his dream of becoming a teacher, fearing that students and parents would Google his name and learn he’d been accused of racism.
The emotional and financial hardship and damage to reputations caused by such complaints cannot be overstated.
It’s easy to understand why at least two QUT students handed over $5000 to the complainant Cindy Prior even though they had solid legal grounds to defend the case.
Barely a week goes by when I’m not subjected to racial slurs from supposedly tolerant lefties. Some are even columnists for leftist publications. I could keep the AHRC and a number of statebased human rights bodies busy with complaints but I’m not a fan of victimhood or silencing my opponents.
However, I sometimes wonder if it would be beneficial for conservatives to play by the progressive playbook and hold commentators of the left accountable for their words.
Perhaps if the left-leaning commentariat feared AHRC or state-based tribunal action they’d be greater supporters of free speech.
As it stands it is a one-way street. Such bodies, and laws like Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, are used exclusively by one side of politics to punish the other.