Last night Free Speech Ireland hosted a public talk about the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 which is intended to be put in place in the new year.
Speakers included Senator Sharon Keogan, Professor Gerard Casey, TD Mattie McGrath, Journalist Ian O’Doherty, and barrister Ed Shanahan.
Professor Gerard Casey asked why Ireland might need the new act when “we already have on our statutes the 1989 The Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act and the Non Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 which prohibits harassment”.
The bill, he said, is intended to give effect to a European Council framework and is “coming to us as an instruction from Europe”
Casey continued that the framework “was intended to combat certain forms of racism and xenophobia by means of the criminal law”.
He pointed to the distinct nature of ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate crime’ saying that while they “are not the same thing” they are “confused all the time”.
Casey explained that ‘a hate crime is an act that would be criminal even in the absence of the ‘hate’ element’. And that the ‘hate’ element confers a special category of victimhood on individuals who are perceived to be members of groups considered to be high risk – he said this very notion ‘plays right into the hands of identity politics’.
The professor expressed his curiosity at why ‘hate’ and not other motivating factors such as ‘jealousy’ should be selected as the basis of the legislation.
Independent TD Mattie McGrath said the bill is passing through the Dail with little to no opposition adding that before it was submitted for the second round of examination the date for amendments had already expired.
He continued saying that this showed how the legislation is being rushed through, and that Minister for Justice Helen McEntee was ‘indignant” when confronted on this issue by TD Catherine Connelly
“It hasn’t gone through the first and second stage process properly”, he said
He said the bill was accepted “warmly” by Dail members adding “with the exception of Peader Tobin agus me fein”.
McGrath pointed to the irony of the timing of the bill one hundred years after the founding of the Free State, saying that NGOs have Ireland “lined up” to accept more and more legislative dictates from the EU.
He said these NGOs – who receive 6 billion euro in taxpayer money annually – have “hijacked the political process”.
Journalist Ian O’Doherty said that we are ‘losing the battle for the right to freedom of expression, for the right to speak the truth, to say that a man is a man and a woman is a woman’, adding that “people can do what they want but they can’t make us lie about it”
“Nobody has ever come up with a logical or rational definition of what hate speech is” he said adding, “Every argument I’ve had with lunatics about this has boiled down to: what they think is hate speech is just speech that they hate hearing”.
He continued, ‘they hate hearing uncomfortable truths’ and things that “don’t go along with what they’ve been taught in the liberal madrasas that are now Irish universities”.
Senator Sharon Keogan addressed those gathered spelling out the definition of freedom of speech saying it is, “The right to seek receive and impart information on ideas of all kinds by any means, and the right to hold discussions about sensitive topics, the right to risk offense, the right to criticise, and to freely express deeply held beliefs all without censorship or restraint”
“It allows the free exchange of ideas allowing them to live or die on their merit” she said.
She pointed to her opposition to the surrogacy bill saying that the government appointed panel discussing the issue was “stacked” with those in favour of surrogacy.
“Open and honest debate is the bedrock of democratic societies” she said adding “if you stifle the debate you tip the scales in favour of the establishment”.
We know the left don’t like debate as they “don’t want any opinion that doesn’t match theirs”
She emphasised the vital importance of having difficult conversations if issues within society were to have any hope of being resolved.
Keogan spoke of her demand for a full independent inquiry into the over 200 Irish children who attended the Tavistock clinic and how it was of vital importance to ascertain whether or not those children were coerced into receiving gender treatments from the now disgraced clinic.
She spoke of the list of socially acceptable views that she says must be adhered to wholeheartedly “or face the consequences” saying that “for years now terminally online progressives have delighted in causing people to lose their livelihoods on account of not having the correct opinions” adding that the “Tumbler kids of the 2000s are now the HR workers in the 2020s”.
Big business, she said, are “terrified of being seen as not being progressive enough”.
The Fine Fail Fine Gael and Green government has decided to abide wholly by the social moral rubric of the progressive left” and that “keyboard warriors and the twitterati” will no longer have to “dirty their own hands to label, defame, cancel, and silence you”, as they will now be able to “bring the full might of the law and An Garda Siochana down on you instead”.
Keogan said that the message of the bill was that, “approved topics only may be discussed by the public and that there are certain groups and peoples who are above criticism”.
Barrister Ed Shanahan said that people would simply have to refused to abide by the implications of the bill by simply saying “no” saying that hate crime law and legislation “ends equality before the law”
Rather than treating people equally regardless of race, sex, or sexuality it does the exact opposite and insists that these characteristics of a person’s identity are made central to any legal dispute.
He said equality would now be defined in a new way in terms of victim groups and privileged groups deem so by means of social handicap
He said this “destroys the chance of cohesiveness across the social environment meaning that groups are working against each other”.