By Olivia Pierson
[First published on Incite 27/3/19]

Freedom of Speech laws were first created for the sole purpose of protecting controversial speech. It became a civilisational hallmark of a free society and still is.
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If all speech were harmonious, warm and fuzzy, there would be no need to protect it via the law. The use of controversial speech – speech that those who rule over us are now seeking to re-classify as illegal “hate speech” – is a fundamental right of people living within a country which values liberty.

Right now, prominent New Zealand bureaucrats are calling loudly for controversial speech to be reclassified as hate speech.  Prime Minister Ardern, MP Golriz Ghahraman, Susan Devoy, Head Censor David Shanks, Race and Ethnic Relations expert, Paul Spoonley and many others are making this their urgent mission.

Paul Spoonley says: 

“We have been complacent and a little naive to think we were exempt from this. We need now to have a debate about what constitutes hate speech in New Zealand and we need to act upon that definition.”

Jacinda Ardern and David Shanks have already enacted a ban on the Christchurch terrorist’s manifesto, which came into force on Saturday.  Banning this manifesto will only mystify it and therefore increase its value.  As the Free Speech Coalition of New Zealand stated in its recent press release, “For the same reason we don’t ban Mein Kampf, the manifesto should not be driven underground.” 
 
But this is not primarily about the damned manifesto. It’s going to become about New Zealanders not being allowed to voice their views on Islamic immigration from the Third World into our country. Last week it was our gun legislation that was swiftly altered, this week it’s our online free speech rights; being informed that it is now illegal to view, download, quote from, or print the manifesto –  and very soon there will be legislation against us being able to criticise our country’s immigration policies, including no criticism of migrants, their religious practices, culture or religion.  That will be deemed racist hate speech, as it is by some already.  

Green MP Golriz Ghahraman said in Parliament last week: 

"It [the shootings] began with hate speech, allowed to spread here online. History has taught us that hate speech is a slippery slope to atrocity. We now know that New Zealand needs to address this…There sit among us those who have for years fanned the flames of division in here and out there. Blamed migrants for our housing crisis. There sit among us here who deliberately spread hysteria about the UN Migration Compact… We must change the way we do politics here. Our most vulnerable communities are hurt. We are scared. White Supremacists want us dead."

No, Ms. Ghahraman, only one “eco-fascist” from Australia did. Keep it real.  Just as you like to argue that most Muslims are not terrorists, neither are most misguided eco-fascists.

Susan Devoy, who, in her previous role as Race Relations Commissar has been trying to shut down free speech in New Zealand for years, writes in the most smug tone imaginable: 

"If you were one of those commentators: do not write an op-ed today crying about how shocking yesterday’s murders were. Because you helped make it happen. You helped normalise hatred in our country. You helped those murderers feel that they were representing the thoughts of ordinary New Zealanders." e

Helped make it happen?  Helped normalise hatred? 
 
Well, Ms. Devoy. I’ve actually heard you in conversation refer to men as “stale, pale and male” – exactly the sort of snide contempt that has become part of the toxic Left’s ugly rhetoric against white men.  If you keep using that kind of terminology, then you may be contributing to pain, frustration and anger in young men. Would you like to then be held responsible when one flips out and kills innocent people in a world where he feels he is neither wanted, loved, nor respected? Perhaps you contributed to Brenton Tarrant’s frustrated views? Silly-bitch reasoning back at ya.

When Devoy refers to “one of those commentators,” I assume she means “hard right libertarian” (you can read her whole piece to fully understand her context). 

I would like for these folks to pause for a moment and consider that the most bloody regimes of the 20th Century were the ones which carried out exactly this exercise, reclassifying speech as soon as they came to power: 

Nazi Germany
Imperial Japan
Communist Russia 
Communist China
Kim regime of North Korea 
Khmer Rouge in Cambodia 
Viet Cong of Vietnam & Cambodia
The GDR dictatorship of East Germany after WWII.
Gaddafi’s Libya   
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq
The Islamic Republic of Iran
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

These regimes aggressively clamped down on free speech (some still do) in order to persecute any individual who critiqued their leadership, thus silencing dissent and opposition. This tell-tale sign of a lurch toward tyrannical authoritarianism casts a long, dark spectre over the freedom of human affairs. 

Forceful speech is perfectly legitimate as a method of fighting back against bad ideas. The only thing forceful speech needs to be met with is more forceful speech. The line in the sand that needs to be drawn is people ought not to use freedom of expression to call for acts of violence to be perpetrated, like ISIS frequently does – and is doing now to avenge the deaths of Muslims in New Zealand.  Never mind that ISIS itself murdered many, many Muslims (also Yazidis and Christians) while it took control of lands in its attempt to usher in a new Caliphate. Do you think the ISIS leaders allowed for freedom of expression? Fat chance. It’s not a common cornerstone of many majority Muslim countries.

In Hitler’s Wartime Conversations as recorded by Martin Bormann, Hitler said this about free speech: 

"The organisation of our press has truly been a success. Our law concerning the press is such that divergences of opinion between members of the government are no longer an occasion for public exhibitions, which are not the newspapers’ business. We’ve eliminated that conception of political freedom which holds that everybody has the right to say whatever comes into his head."
[Adolf Hitler]

Dictator of the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin, made this observation about free thought and speech during his brutal time as Killer-in-chief:

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?"
[Joseph Stalin]

Regarding free speech, Mao Tse-tung once stated in his own words: 

"What should our policy be towards non-Marxist ideas? As far as unmistakable counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs of the socialist cause are concerned, the matter is easy, we simply deprive them of their freedom of speech." 
[Mao Tse-tung]

The only slippery slope New Zealand happens to be on right now is the one leading to fascism: hate speech, thought crimes, firings from places of employment, doxing, arrests for disseminating ideas or opinions opposed to our government’s agenda. It’s our current Leftist leaders who are hurling us down this slope.

If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended: A Primer" ​ ​​

​By Lindsay Perigo
[Republished with permission from Solopassion.com]

"Just as I reserve the right to hold and express my opinions on any matter whatsoever, I promise to respect the right of all others to do the same. I renounce unreservedly the use of coercion and violence in the promotion of my opinions."

Let's just reiterate some basics here, two weeks on:

1) The Christchurch killer is evil beyond words. Saying this is not token virtue-signalling, which would make one sick; it is a heartfelt condemnation, by a lover of freedom and reason, of a gruesome initiation of force by a monster. Nor is it the fallacy of moral equivalence to say that monster is on a par with the Muslims who far more commonly perpetrate such atrocities. The gratuitous slaughter of innocents is never moral.

2) Islam remains one of the great toxic forces of our time, in its routine grisly initiations of force against apostates, "infidels," gays, women, children ... and each other. If "moderate Muslims" wish to persuade us that that term has any validity, they must demonstrate and proclaim much more loudly that Sharia and Jihad, beheadings and amputations, cage-burnings, stonings, "honour killings," genital mutilation, child rape, etc., are not integral to Islam. Good luck with that!

3) While we can empathise with New Zealand's Prime Minister in donning a hijab in solidarity with the Christchurch victims, we must never forget that women in Iran are jailed and lashed for not donning one. Further, it's fair to wonder if Jacinda would have donned Jewish headgear had this attack been in a synagogue? The Prime Minister is a fervent devotee of the brand of evil peculiar to our time, Soros-funded anti-Semitic Islamo-Marxism. Lovers of the great pillars and values of our civilisation must remind themselves of her hostility toward those pillars and values if there's to be any hope of preserving them. She and her dreadful regime are coming after them at break-neck speed.

4) Many of New Zealand's "journalists," in their relentless, mindless acquiescence to her agenda, are almost as venal as they are stupid, though I acknowledge the bar is very high here. They can't form human speech—rather, like the Prime Minister, they repair to another evil peculiar to our time, squawking, upward-inflecting fry-quack—nor can they spell, punctuate, construct a sentence, think an original thought, or distinguish the difference between factual reportage and the ejaculation of their uninformed uniform opinions. They are the ultimate in "group-think," though "think" is hardly an apposite word here. Like CNN and MSNBC in America, they are the print and electronic arm of Labour/Democrats.

5) Winston Peters, who previously claimed to want to protect NZ from invasions by entities whose values were hostile to ours, has turned out to be as shameless in his quest for the "baubles of office" as those he once denounced for that very thing. It was he who surreptitiously signed the Global Migration Compact, allowing for the unimpeded influx of ideological aliens into NZ, the ones now joining home-grown aliens in clamouring for an end to free speech.

6) New Zealand voters deserve exactly what they are getting. To be sure, Jacinda's Islamo-Marxists were far behind National in the popular vote and seats in Parliament at the last election, but National were then, and are now, led by limp-wristed Chamberlains, so the level of support for National—which has evaporated in any event—is no reassurance when it comes to voter wisdom. To establish their credentials as thinking humans, voters must rise up against all these detestables. I don't know whom to recommend, since no Churchills are on offer. ACT are as bad as the rest; Gutless Gormless Goofy is a pathetic appeaser. A new party must arise. But NO VIOLENCE!! Leave that to the Profa Blackshirts! Take the pledge from my previous article, now memed by Lady Olivia: 

"Just as I reserve the right to hold and express my opinions on any matter whatsoever, I promise to respect the right of all others to do the same. I renounce unreservedly the use of coercion and violence in the promotion of my opinions."

Compare the spirit of that pledge with the Muslim view of free speech cited here in the YouTube clip:

*Update: since this article was written, the Kingdom of Brunei has announced that as from next week, gays who have sex will be stoned to death, as will adulterers, and the limbs of those caught stealing will be amputated, in accordance with Sharia Law. In New Zealand, the regime of Jacinda Adern has announced it intends to ban "hate speech" (i.e. criticism of Islam). This regime is evil. Islam is evil. We must never allow our right to say so to be taken away.

A Guest Post
​By Anne Margaret McKenzie

Her plight is inhumane, her persecutors barbaric. The horror of her case makes the social, judicial and political landscape for women in New Zealand look almost trite. We have our battles, but we do not face such tyranny or forces that crush women so completely, even a fair trail is improbable.

In that awful week as ‘headscarf Friday’ brokered a standing ovation to the hijab I thought about Nasrin.

I studied her face, her expression, the substance of this woman with such a commanding intellect and good, sturdy heart.

I cannot imagine 148 lashings. I cannot imagine this woman’s life at all, staring down brutality in trying to access the very freedoms I was born into.

I can be this person. No questions. I have an empowered reality. I can learn, make choices, be independent and authentic, think for myself and gather my own gods. 

It’s a free country, wear the scarf if you want. Call it a simple ‘gesture’ if you must. And don’t forget to take the selfie.

In my world view however, the scarf is not uncomplicated. I would never wear it. My head is my wellspring, it generates my whole self, my capacity to feel, process information and take action. It means everything to me. I will never, ever use it as a billboard for female oppression or to mimic that which I am not. Moreover, after thirteen years recovering from a devastating head injury I’ll hold my naked head high. That’s what you do when you are delighted, thrilled beyond words at how far your head has repaired itself. It’s an emblem of power and betterment; it is not a turkey to dress up for political feasting.

In the call for unity, diversity and inclusion nobody should have to relinquish their culture or their god, or follow a dress code on the secular streets of Christchurch to validate their support. I will hold the hand of any woman if she will hold mine; identity of the group should be irrelevant in the true sense of solidarity.

I’ve read of New Zealand women now suddenly ashamed to be white and wanting to denounce their ‘white privilege’.

I wonder how far they’ve thought this through?
Will they hide their head in public forever? 
Surrender their choices? 
Would they honestly rather be Nasrin?

Thinking on Nasrin, I cannot reconcile her situation with images of a scarf-adorned feminist PM  (who can remove it at her convenience), getting promoted the world over.
And, like this over-inflationary reaction isn’t obscene enough when attention should have been on fifty broken families, she’s been touted for the Nobel Peace Prize.

For orchestrating what, exactly?

All I see is feminist hypocrisy, the fair-weather feminist who picks her battles like there’s no correlation between them and a subtle drip of appeasement to head-covering – oblivious to any controversy attached, that does nothing to help the real life of Nasrin.

The PM is good at compassion. 
But she’s no more compassionate than me or any of the decent New Zealanders I know.
I just don’t need to wear the badge or patrol a fleet of rolling cameras to prove it.
Plus, I’d be shockingly uneasy about my suddenly cloaked head hijacking a skyscraper when so many had perished under my governance.

But there goes the clout of an extroverted PR magnet, a path I shall never ponder.

I have kindled my submissions to the collective pool of devastation in my own private settings, stared long and hard from my porch out to Sumner Bay watching the locals ‘paddle out’, doing what they know in their act of respect. My daughter was there, bobbing in the waves. My beautiful vibrant daughter.

What mother could fathom her child taking a bullet at the dawn of their life? 

​In Christchurch’s week from hell of abhorrence and grief, kids as little as three had fallen. But sadly, the  genuine outpouring of emotion was stalled when news came through that the PM’s baby had started to crawl.

HOW could the Madonna-ed PM let that happen?

While cloth, empathy and sorrow designed the face that flood-lit every earthly ocean, the inspirational stay-at-home boyfriend was busy on the family branding.

Something crept up my spine at this.

I sat on my steps proud of my family, my friends and my community, not proud of a Prime Ministerial household which – in the aftermath of the most atrocious violence on our country’s soil, not only threw Nasrin’s chances under a truck, but managed to reach peak narcissism.

The Nobel Peace Prize belongs to Nasrin.