Elon Musk has warned that Ireland’s hate speech proposals would put Irish people at “the mercy” of politicians and bureaucrats who would define speech they don’t like as hate speech – and pledged to fund Irish legal challenges to the legislation.
"I'll bet you a billion dollars": In an exclusive interview with Gript, @Ben_Scallan speaks to @elonmusk about Helen McEntee's hate speech bill, how climate policies like cutting herd sizes will impact on Irish farmers, and much more. pic.twitter.com/MVjxDTkkNu
— gript (@griptmedia) January 23, 2024
He said that “people should be concerned” that the Irish politicians wanted to define hate speech as “whatever they think hate speech is” and that free speech is “the bedrock of democracy”.
“You have to be able to speak your mind within the context of the law: without that you don’t have a real democracy,” he told Gript’s Ben Scallan in an exclusive interview.
The investor and innovator was speaking in relation to the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, which had passed through the Dáil but which has now stalled in the Senate, though Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has insisted it would be progressed this year.
Growing criticisms of the bill, which has been described as “draconian”, point to the absence of a definition of hate in the proposed legislation – and to powers of seizure, with Free Speech Ireland saying the state would have the right to seize personal electronic devices and prescribe prison sentences for those guilty of hate speech or deemed to be in possession of hateful material, even if they had no intent on distributing it.
Independent Senator Sharon Keogan has said that the hate speech bill is partly designed to squash political dissent, while former Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, has said he is concerned the bill would lead to people making citizens’ arrests on people they believe have committed hate speech.
Mr Musk said that the default position of X was to “challenge any legislation that infringes on the people’s ability to say what they want to say”.
“And we will also fund the legal fees of Irish citizens that want to challenge the Bill as well,” Mr Musk told Gript. “So we’ll make sure that if there is an attempt to suppress the voice of the Irish people that we do our absolute best to defend the people of Ireland and their ability to speak their mind.”
He also rejected previous accusations by an Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, that Musk was “showboating” when he said that he would fund such a legal challenge, saying that his X platform has its European headquarters in Dublin, and that the company would have legal standing in taking a case to protect free speech.
Elon Musk exclusively tells @griptmedia: He will challenge an Irish hate speech law in court, and pay legal bills of any Irish person who is prosecuted under it.https://t.co/k2ORWlhXkp
— John McGuirk (@john_mcguirk) January 23, 2024
Responding to claims that X had become more prone to misinformation and disinformation on his watch, Mr Musk said that X’s “community notes” function meant that users could add clarifying responses to contentious tweets in a way that did not happen in newspapers.
“Who is deciding what is misinformation and disinformation?” he asked. “The point is to have an open and clear debate – and if something is misinformation or disinformation, to provide a rebuttal, that’s the best way, in open debate.”
He also commented on media bias, saying “the biggest lie in the media is the choice of narrative”, because media platforms could just ignore stories they didn’t want to cover.
“Because they can simply ignore anything they don’t like and they can overly focus on things that they do want to talk about,” he said.
In a discussion on the environment, he said that farmers were being attacked.
“There is absolutely no need to do anything to farming. Changing farming will have no effect on the environment,” he said.
“It’s totally fine, stop attacking the farmers they can just keep doing what they’re doing. There is only one thing that really matters with respect to the environment and that is how many billions of tonnes of CO2 do we take out of the ground and put into the atmosphere.”
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