Nadine Strossen: Strongly Enforced Hate-Speech Laws Existed in Post-WWI Germany

Nadine Strossen discusses the "Weimar Fallacy." Strong hate speech laws prior to WWII in Germany shoved hate speech underground, out of sight, where it festered and grew. The better alternative would be to let the people say their hateful things out in the open market where their ignorance will be forced to engage with ideas that are better than hate. Strossen explains:

For more on this topic, see Greg Lukianoff's article, "Would censorship have stopped the rise of the Nazis."

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Mike Benz Offers a Sampling of USAID “Jobs”

As the USAID house of cards continues to collapse, Mike Benz responds to Alexander Vindman's whining:

On a light note, here are more (real) examples of USAID malfeasance:

More recent revelations:

These

- $1.5 million for DEI in Serbia

- $70,000 for a DEI musical in Ireland

- $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia

- $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru

This: "$15 million to George Soros's open foundation Over Obama's last four in office alone."

"Advertiser outreach" to censor news outlets.

Funding to thousands of journalists to shape the news.

Many people are assembling lists of USAID fraud. I can't vouch for all of this, but this is one of the many recent lists assembled by users on X:

Continue ReadingMike Benz Offers a Sampling of USAID “Jobs”

J.K. Rowling Summarizes the Damage Done by Gender Ideology

Here's one more J.K. Rowling post dedicated to those people who sat on your hands while thousands of confused teenaged girls were being butchered and/or injected with hormones that would lead to their permanent sterilization. Moreover, as Rowling notes, there is the problem with luxury beliefs like this, benefitting only the elites. There's also the problem with the men who take advantage of vulnerable women. Rowling, who has been subjected to non-stop death threats for years, has this to say:

"This 'why do you care about a tiny fraction of the population?' line is, and always was, utterly ridiculous.

Gender ideology has undermined freedom of speech, scientific truth, gay rights, and women's and girls' safety, privacy and dignity. It's also caused irreparable physical damage to vulnerable kids.

Nobody voted for it, the vast majority of people disagree with it, yet it has been imposed, top down, by politicians, healthcare bodies, academia, sections of the media, celebrities and even the police. Its activists have threatened and enacted violence on those who've dared oppose it. People have been defamed and discriminated against for questioning it. Jobs have been lost and lives have been ruined, all for the crime of knowing that sex is real and matters.

When the smoke clears, it will be only too evident that this was never about a so-called vulnerable minority, notwithstanding the fact that some very vulnerable people have been harmed. The power dynamics underpinning our society have been reinforced, not dismantled. The loudest voices throughout this entire fiasco have been people insulated from consequences by their wealth and/or status. They aren't likely to find themselves locked in a prison cell with a 6'4" rapist who's decided his name's now Dolores. They don't need state-funded rape crisis centres, nor do they ever frequent high street changing rooms. They simper from talk show sofas about those nasty far-right bigots who don't want penises swinging around the girls' showers, secure in the knowledge that their private pool remains the safe place it always was.

Those who've benefited most from gender identity ideology are men, both trans-identified and not. Some have been rewarded for having a cross-dressing kink by access to all spaces previously reserved for women. Others have parlayed their delicious new victim status into an excuse to threaten, assault and harass women. Non-trans-identified leftybros have found a magnificent platform from which to display their own impeccably progressive credentials, by jeering and sneering at the needs of women and girls, all while patting themselves on the back for giving away rights that aren't theirs.

The actual victims in this mess have been women and children, especially the most vulnerable, gay people who've resisted the movement and paid a horrible price, and regular people working in environments where one misplaced pronoun could see you vilified or constructively dismissed. Do not tell me this is about a tiny minority. This movement has impacted society in disastrous ways, and if you had any sense, you'd be quietly deleting every trace of activist mantras, ad hominem attacks, false equivalence and circular arguments from your X feeds, because the day is fast approaching when you'll want to pretend you always saw through the craziness and never believed it for a second."

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Reframing Anxiety as the Exciting Opportunity to Support the Eternally Radical Idea of Free Speech

Greg Lukianoff offers a history lesson starting with Henry VIII's battle with the effects of the printing press. He then turns his attention toward those who seek censorship as the remedy for feeling anxious at ever-new revelations that many of our institutions (including colleges) are dysfunctional, even corrupted to such an extent that they are betraying their stated missions:

What’s happening now is why the free and open exchange of ideas will always be radical. Yes, what the future is going to look like seems a lot less clear. Yes, we’re living through a crisis of authority. Yes, we’re questioning the legitimacy and necessity of our institutions. But those institutions and authorities don't deserve our blind loyalty. And they showed their cards when they went after the eternally radical idea — when they answered “the problem” of free speech with new speech codes, byzantine taboos, and cancellation campaigns.

The institutions and individuals that stand the test of this era will be those who show integrity and principle, those who tell the truth even when it’s inconvenient or unpopular. That’s what happened in the Enlightenment with figures like Voltaire and Diderot, Smith and Hume, Franklin and Madison. It’s also what we’re seeing now on platforms like Substack, where individuals and institutions with integrity and courage are finding new ways to lead.

I’m proud to say that FIRE is one of those institutions. We've had the courage to be non-partisan in a partisan world. Through all the tumult, we’ve defended free speech, free inquiry, and the free press for all — even at the cost of some uncomfortable Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.

Democratic principles become even more essential during times of crisis, not less. History shows us that these principles are not luxuries. No, they are the foundations of a successful and dynamic society. The Enlightenment didn’t feel like the Enlightenment when it started. To most people, it probably felt like blasphemy, heresy, and chaos. And to Henry VIII, it probably felt like quite a bit of nasty gossiping.

But freedom always feels a little scary. Free speech is the eternally radical idea, after all.

Here’s a cognitive hack I like to teach my kids: you can reconceptualize fear as excitement. And remember, I have a well-documented history of dealing with anxiety. I know what I’m talking about here. So while I don’t blame anyone for feeling anxious right now, I also hope they feel exhilarated. What’s happening in this moment is thrilling: It is the chance to reexamine everything we thought we knew.

I invite you to read Lukianoff's full essay, "Institutional decay, Henry VIII’s big fat libido, and the eternally radical idea: When you add billions of eyes to the problems of the world, the result is not just noise but incredible breakthroughs."

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X Explodes With Evidence that Numerous UK Girls Have been Raped by Pakistani Gangs. US Legacy News is Silent.

X is rapidly filling with credible posts providing evidence that numerous UK girls, at least 1,500, have been raped by Pakistani gangs over the years, yet the police have been covering this up and, in fact, criminally prosecuting UK citizens who try to express concerns about these rapes on social media.  Tommy Robinson's courageous reporting has been critical to bringing the issue of these UK rapes to the fore, yet Tommy is currently in UK prison for the crime of reporting on this issue.

Could the number of victims really be closer to 250,000 girls?

Consider Samantha Smith's allegations:

Bill Ackman weighs in:

Tommy Robinson's documentary, "Silenced," can be viewed here. It is gripping and horrifying. Tommy has made a very strong case and yet he sits in prison for exposing societal dysfunction and corruption:

[More . . . ]

Continue ReadingX Explodes With Evidence that Numerous UK Girls Have been Raped by Pakistani Gangs. US Legacy News is Silent.