Last week a Green Party Junior Minister called for the Electoral Commission to be given shiny new powers to shut down so-called “misinformation” and, quote, “inauthentic behaviour” – whatever that means – even during elections and referenda.
So, to put it another way, the State will decide if they agree that what you said is true, and if they don’t agree, you’re not allowed to speak your opinion on political matters. And that’s certainly not creepy or open to being abused at all. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
The comments were made by Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Malcolm Noonan.
Malcolm Noonan goes through some of the proposed powers to be given to the electoral commission in relation to shutting down what they call "misinformation" and "inauthentic behaviour" online around elections and referenda.
These powers will almost certainly be abused. pic.twitter.com/DORrbjNDus— JRD (@JRD0000) July 2, 2022
Noonan said that while the mainstream media was always traditionally trustworthy, now the internet is allowing what he calls “false information” to spread quickly:
“Traditionally, we have trusted the professional values of the media and the perception of the public to filter all the noise that surrounds our electoral events.
But the online world now provides unprecedented opportunities to spread false or misleading information very quickly and create a false impression that a particular position has widespread support, thus giving it unwarranted credibility.”
Now, of course, we’ve seen this movie before. We don’t have to speculate what might happen if the State was given the power to label things as “misinformation.” The HSE was doing it all through the Covid pandemic, and we saw exactly how the system was brutally abused.
For example, as Gript’s Gary Kavanagh revealed last year, the HSE reported material from the Hill, Politico, ABC, the New York Post, the New York Times, Reuters, the British Medical Journal, and many more as misinformation. And obviously Gript was included in that list as well, as you can well imagine.
EXCLUSIVE: The HSE has gone far beyond reporting misinformation
Why were these outlets flagged to social media as misinformation, you might ask?
Because many of them reported that there may be a link in some cases between blood clotting and the Covid vaccine. This, apparently, is harmful “misinformation.”
Except, of course, the European Medicines Agency has now confirmed that this was actually true. And yet the HSE confidently labelled it “misinformation” because they didn’t agree with it at the time.
The HSE also labelled obvious jokes as misinformation, such as the tweet below…
THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT THE COVID-19 VACCINE ‼️‼️ i got my second dose & now i have a fat ass, please be aware of vaccine side effects 😞 pic.twitter.com/A3WjjyekIK
— negraux (they/them) (@lesbianoir) April 7, 2021
…and tweets which made no medical claims whatsoever. For example, Tracey O’Mahony, who is anti-lockdown, posted a tweet promoting an event, and the HSE labelled that as misinformation:
Le Cheile Day for Mental Health
Families Supporting Families pic.twitter.com/4j41T0iRrJ— Tracey O'Mahony (@TraceyOMahony81) March 7, 2021
They appear to have just lashed out misinformation stamps against anyone and anything they don’t like. Which is exactly how you would expect these powers to be used. You know the drill – power corrupts, absolute power, yadda yadda yadda.
As for the mainstream media being generally trustworthy, if that was a joke, then I’d say that this Noonan lad would have a bright future in stand-up comedy.
Just to take one recent example, this is the same mainstream media that said Ireland’s Rally for Life last week was attended by, quote, “hundreds of people.”
https://twitter.com/Ben_Scallan/status/1543950193292460033
Does this look like “hundreds of people” to you? Either the journalists writing these articles are deliberately trying to downplay the numbers for political reasons, or they need to invest in glasses and possibly Maths grinds.
By contrast, by the way, a pro-abortion event outside the US embassy featured what looked like 80 to 100 people, and that was described as a “large crowd” by the Examiner.
https://twitter.com/Ben_Scallan/status/1543951048972374018
So according to Irish journalists, a “large crowd” is so small it can barely fill a phone box, but a packed event that takes up the entirety of O’Connell street is just a few hundred people. These lads certainly sound like very trustworthy and reliable conveyors of the facts alright.
In fact, many publications did the same all through Covid, if you remember. Thousands of people would come out to protest the lockdown on camera for everyone to see, and the mainstream media would later say that a couple of hundred people showed up – even though that was quite obviously not true to anyone with functioning retinas.
Hundreds of people protest Government response to pandemic https://t.co/0Wzu4mQQ6O
— The Irish Times (@IrishTimes) July 15, 2021
It’s worth noting, of course, that this is the very same mainstream media that is mostly either in receipt of State funding already, or is lining up for it as we speak.
The Irish Times Group has called for the introduction of State financial supports for journalism, news publishers’ technology investments and the home delivery of newspapers https://t.co/TwNJXo0FRP
— Irish Times Business (@IrishTimesBiz) February 3, 2021
And yet according to Noonan, they are totally reliable, and it’s only horrible people on the internet who are spreading misinformation and need to be reigned in by the State.
He apparently longs for the good old days when only the holy and blameless RTÉs and Irish Times of this world were able to report on current events, as opposed to filthy internet rabble like you and I.
“The government doesn’t need your opinion on carbon tax, you ignorant peasant! High priest Fintan O’Toole, Peace Upon Him, has already made his thoughts known.”
Noonan went on to say that there has been an increase in interference with elections, which is why stamping out misinformation is necessary:
“The growth of interference with elections and the increased number of people who rely on the Internet and social media as their main source of news make this problem an urgent one.”
So, to be clear, is Noonan’s position here that recent Irish elections have been interfered with? That appears to be what he’s saying.
But if that’s true, why would he gloss over that major bombshell?
Apart from Thomas Byrne saying that Russian bots were trying to disrupt the Programme for Government, I’m not aware of anyone claiming this has happened in Ireland.
Fianna Fáil TD says 'Russian bots' seeking to influence party vote on government deal https://t.co/vsjkItdSlt pic.twitter.com/IdlFigAI6D
— Irish Independent (@Independent_ie) June 16, 2020
If Noonan believes there’s funny business going on, he should say which elections have been tampered with, and how. He should tell us who interfered with them. And most importantly, he should provide evidence. You can’t just casually throw out there “Oh yeah, and by the way, our electoral system is totally compromised” and not back it up. That’s absolutely mental.
As an aside, it’s probably not a good look to say our elections have been interfered with when your party is in government. It’s also not a good look to suddenly want to seize greater control over speech and public discourse as your party languishes on single digits in the polls. But that’s a whole other conversation.
POLL – Dáil Éireann
Ireland Thinks / Sunday Independent
SF: 36% (+1)
FG: 22% (+2)
FF: 15% (-2)
GP: 4% (+1)
LP: 4% (nc)
SD: 3% (-2)
PBP-S: 3% (nc)
AÚ: 3% (nc)
I/O: 10% (+2)July 2022
+/- June 2022— Ireland Votes | #Vote2024 (@Ireland_Votes) July 2, 2022
At the end of the day, the whole “misinformation” and “hate speech” debate comes down to this, and simply this:
We have a government which, objectively speaking, has failed on the most basic bread and butter issues.
Housing is a disaster. Health is a disaster. Violent crime, homelesness, drug addiction, sexually transmitted diseases, the soaring national debt, the rising cost of living, illegal immigration, the crumbling defence forces, non-existent cyber security, the rising pension age, high taxes, wasteful public spending, native industries like fishing and farming being hammered.
And now, the same people who have butchered all of those projects say “And by the way, we want to take control of your right to speak and think freely as well. We’ll decide what you’re allowed to say and what you’re not.”
Does that really sound like a good idea to anyone? We’re basically saying “Let’s take the people who have failed to run anything effectively, and let’s give them control of everything. They couldn’t handle the little bit of power and workload we initially gave them, so let’s give them 10 times more, and see if they handle that any better.” Is that really a wise or prudent thing to do? If anything, we should be pushing the government out of areas of society – not inviting them into new ones.
Even if you trusted their character and believed they were lovely, well-meaning people – which is a big if – their atrocious track record alone should be enough to disqualify them from being able to control the words we are allowed to speak during national debates.
The fact that they would even seek powers like this is alarming, and should be met with uproar from the voting public at large.