The Antisemitism Awareness Act Is the Death Knell for Free Speech

 The Antisemitism Awareness Act Is the Death Knell for Free Speech

Mike Whitney • November 21, 2024

 

Freedom of speech is the principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins….Ben Franklin

The Antisemitism Awareness Act is a wrecking ball designed to pulverize the First Amendment. While the alleged intention of the bill is to make Jewish students feel safer on campus, the real purpose is to put an end to the anti-genocide demonstrations that have broken out across the country and to prevent the criticism of Israel. The proposed bill invokes a dodgy legal mechanism to derail the protests and to silence Israel’s critics. By using a broad and ambiguous definition of antisemitism, the bill compels university administrators to crackdown on free speech invoking sketchy claims of discrimination. Political analyst Paul Craig Roberts summed it up like this: “if universities …don’t suppress student protests against Israel’s massacre of civilians in Gaza and Lebanon they will lose their accreditation and federal financial support.” In short, universities are being encouraged to quash the free expression of political ideas to preserve their federal funding. This helps to illustrate how Zionist lobbyists are now engaged in a full-throated assault on constitutionally protected civil liberties, namely free speech.

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Mask Off: Globalist Technocrats Reveal Plan To Kill Free Speech

Posted By: Brandon Smith via Alt-Market October 11, 2024

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First, globalist Technocrats launched Covid plus “safe and effective” mRNA shots: thanks to some modicum of Free Speech, they failed to take total control. Now, it is crystal clear that Free Speech is on the chopping block. In January 2024, I pointedly said that Free Speech would be dead by the end of the year. Its soon and coming demise is on track.

Why Free Speech? Because that was the only thing that scuttled Technocrat’s planned takeover in 2020. They underestimated the power of Free Speech, and they won’t make the same mistake twice. This is why you hear a constant diatribe about killing “misinformation,” ‘disinformation,” and “malinformation” at every globalist meeting.

First, there is the incessant talk. Second, there is the setup (AI algorithms are lined up and tested). Third, they take aim (algorithms are locked and loaded). Then, the firing squad fires (algorithms cut loose).

My friends, if these megalomanic tyrants succeed in killing Free Speech, Technocracy will have won for good. If history is any guide, that’s when the killing will begin. ⁃ Patrick Wood, TN Editor.

Remember the last time the globalists took the mask off?  It wasn’t that long ago, but some people might have already forgotten how the Western world almost lost all individual freedom under the guise of an over-hyped health emergency.  When globalists are honest about what they truly want, it usually coincides with an engineered calamity.

In the two years since the failure of the covid pandemic narrative, I have argued that globalist organizations are trying to regroup under a new plan. The evidence suggests that these people suffered a shocking revelation after their attempt to implement perpetual medical tyranny. They’ve realized they don’t have as much control over the flow of information and public discourse as they originally assumed.

Even with full-spectrum censorship using algorithms to bury contrary data, even with the full force of the government partnering with social media to silence dissent, even with the threat of economic exile for anyone refusing to take a steady series of mRNA jabs, they still failed. The truth about covid’s minimal Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) still spread, along with data proving the uselessness of the mandates and lockdowns.  There was nothing they could do about it.

Their golden ticket to total control was pushing the vaccine passport concept; the alternative media crushed that agenda like a pestilent cockroach. If the passport had been successful we would not be having this conversation now. Everyone would be in fear of having their passport rescinded. Everyone would be afraid to lose their economic access for saying the wrong thing. Everyone would be afraid of being forced into covid camps (which were indeed a real agenda). Or, we would be in the middle of a bloody civil war.

The events of 2020 were meant to initiate the ultimate coup against humanity. The globalists admitted to their plans over and over again. Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum proudly declared covid the catalyst for the “Great Reset” and the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” They asserted that the lockdowns were just the beginning and that the sweeping restriction on our freedoms would be extended to climate change as well.

They thought they had won without firing a shot, but it’s not that easy. Far more people are awake and aware of their motives than they realized, and, at least in America, over 50 million of those people are armed.  The lockdowns are now gone, almost no one took the vax boosters, far fewer people took the vaccine than the CDC claims, and the vax passports were defeated. This victory was made possible due to the efforts of alternative media platforms circumventing Big Tech censorship. It’s that simple.

This is why the next event will probably be far worse in scale and consequence, and the globalists are already attempting to rectify their previous mistake of underestimating citizen journalism. They will try to silence us if they can and they are openly admitting to it in recent conferences and mainstream articles.  The mask is coming off once more and this suggests to me that something very bad is about to happen.

As I noted in 2023 in my article ‘From Covid To Climate Change: Vehicles For Global Authoritarianism’, the globalists seem to have shifted their more tyrannical efforts away from the pandemic and into the climate discourse. If you really want to know what they are up to these days, you have to watch the climate conferences.

At the end of September there was a host of climate change summits including one held by the WEF in New York called the Sustainable Development Impact Meeting.  It was held by the WEF in tandem with the United Nations General Assembly. Not surprisingly, discussion often veered away from climate into “threats to democracy” as well as bitter complaints about the “spread of disinformation.”

John Kerry, former Democratic presidential candidate, former Climate Czar under Joe Biden and a longtime participant in the WEF, said the quiet part out loud at the summit. He argued that the 1^st Amendment was a “roadblock” to proper governance and was preventing the elites from controlling public consensus.

His statements are quite blatant.

First of all, consensus is highly overrated and often poisonous. The very basis of science is that it is always up for debate according to the evidence. Once you have forced a “consensus” you have abandoned all due diligence under the scientific method.

This was made obvious during covid, where the “consensus” was exposed as utterly fabricated and most of the claims made by governments and puppet “medical experts” have been proven false. Keep in mind, these were the same people that tried to ban YOU from going to parks and waterboarding at the beach in the name of “flattening the curve.”

I mean, how retarded do you have to be to believe that outdoor activities will lead to viral transmission? That’s not science, that’s hysteria promoted by people claiming to represent science. The same thing goes for the mask mandates, social distancing, the lockdowns, etc. Not one measure they enforced was legitimate.

If we are talking about the concept of man-made climate change, the claim of consensus in science is a lie. The data suggests there is simply no such thing as man-made climate change. There is no evidence of causation between carbon emissions and global warming. No evidence that global warming causes extreme whether. No evidence that our current warming cycle is significant or unique compared to any other warming cycle in history.

In fact, the Washington Post recently and accidentally proved the alternative media’s point on climate change when they tried to map the temperature history of the Earth over 450 million years, only to discover what I have been saying for the longest time – Today’s temps are far lower than they have been through most of the Earth’s history.

But the more important issue here is John Kerry’s assertion that governance requires public information control. Kerry’s fundamental disconnect is his notion that it’s the job of the elites and the government to moderate information for the greater good. No one gave them permission to do this. The government does not exist to create consensus.

The people are in charge, John. As a politician you are just a public servant, nothing more. Your opinions on free speech don’t matter.

Some of the most egregious disinformation is often released to the public by the government and their approved media sources in the name of “saving democracy.” They lie constantly. John Kerry is just angry because now the public has the means to expose him and his cohorts. If a “democracy” requires censorship in order to survive, then it’s not worth saving.

Finally and hypocritically, Kerry suggests that democracy is “too slow” in implementing the changes to society that he views as necessary to create consensus and “unity.” If the 1^st Amendment is a “roadblack” to more effective information control and governance, then he and his slimy brethren must intend to remove it. In other words, he believes tyranny would work better because it’s much faster that trying to manipulate the public with propaganda.

He doesn’t explicitly say this, but that’s exactly what he’s inferring.

Besides some of the speeches made by Klaus Schwab at the height of the pandemic, Kerry’s statements might be the most open declaration of globalist authoritarian intent I have ever heard. He’s pulling the mask off and this has me concerned.

His arguments fall in line with a number of articles published in the past couple months from establishment media platforms. The New Yorker just posted an article asking ‘Is It Time To Torch The Constitution?’ The New York Times published a treatise titled ‘The Constitution Is Sacred. Is It Also Dangerous?’ They also wrote an article highlighting the potential positives of despotic governments in countries like Brazil threatening to shut down public access to Elon Musk’s X (Twitter) in order to force the site to censor citizen accounts. These people are on a war path to convince the public that free speech is a threat.

When political elitists and their lackey’s start attacking free speech it’s usually in preparation for a major crisis that they hope to use as a vehicle to eliminate public freedoms. Free speech is the most important liberty because it enables the populace to discern through debate what the truth is and what to do about it.

The globalists thought they had a lock on information during covid and they were wrong. They won’t make the same mistake again. Whatever the next crisis ends up being, they will definitely seek to silence the the alternative media and any rebellious social media platforms before they move forward.

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Posted with permission of technocracy.news

 

 

CIA and Nine Eyes Efforts to Control Speech Around the World Likely Behind Pavel Durov Arrest

August 25, 2024 by Joe Hoft

The world is facing a dark place.  

The arrest of the founder or Telegram yesterday in France is all part of global dominance.

All speech is under attack.

Ed Dowd, who everyone on Bannon’s War Room is familiar with, shared the following:

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The Western World Has Succumbed to Tyranny

August 20, 2024 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |  Print This Article

The Western World Has Succumbed to Tyranny

Paul Craig Roberts

We can add Richard Medhurst to Tulsi Gabbard, Scott Ritter, Amb. Craig Murray, Julian Assange, and many others who are harassed, arrested, imprisoned by police state authorities in the US, UK, EU, and Canada for practicing the disappearing profession of journalism. When Richard Medhurst can be arrested in a London airport for “expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization,” we know freedom is dead and journalism no longer exists. All that Western journalists are permitted to do today is to support the official lies in the official narratives that are used to construct the false reality in which we live.

We no longer have the BBC, the New York Times, the London Times, ABC, NBC, CBS to hold government accountable. What we have are propaganda ministries that support official narratives. The job of the Western media is to lie to the people in behalf of the establishment that rules them.

As the growing intimidation of alternative media makes clear, the ability to express truth is rapidly disappearing in the Western world. Soon we will be locked into The Matrix, only there will be no superhuman opposition.

It has been years since we could believe one word that we hear from the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, the London Times, Telegraph, The Guardian, or the main European media sources.

The notion that the West is free is a joke. When there is no free expression there is only tyranny. And that is what the Western world is. A tyranny.

The reason the Western governments have no difficulty supporting the Nazi governments in Ukraine and Israel is that they are Nazis themselves.

Medhurst describes his arrest. It reminds me of Franz Kafka’s book, The Trial, a story of a man who is arrested by an unaccountable authority who prosecutes him without ever revealing the crime for which he is being punished. This is what happened to Julian Assange who lost a decade of his life to pure tyranny, tyranny supported by American conservatives who are so utterly stupid that they were convinced by official narratives that he was a Russian spy against America. How does a people this stupid survive. They don’t. The police state that they fell for is now closing around them.

Here is Richard Medhurst to tell you about it:

I Was Arrested at Heathrow Airport as a “Terrorist” for My Journalism

August 20, 2024

My name is Richard Thomas Medhurst.
I am an internationally accredited journalist from the United Kingdom.
On Thursday, as I landed in London Heathrow airport, I was immediately escorted off the plane by 6 police officers who were waiting for me at the entrance of the aircraft.
They arrested me—not detained—but arrested me under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act of 2000 and accused me of allegedly “expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization” but wouldn’t explain what this meant.
One officer took my bags, and when I asked why he was still back in the aircraft, I was told “look mate, you can get nicked right here in front of everyone, or in there. Your choice.”
I was taken to an adjacent room, patted down, my phone confiscated.
I was not allowed to inform my family.
Despite being calm and cooperative, I was handcuffed with something that placed my shoulders in an awkward position, and my wrists on top of, rather than next to each other. The handcuffs were extremely tight. Despite the police loosening them, they left marks on me for two days.
The police took me down onto the runway and put me in a police van; essentially a mobile cage and informed me everything was being recorded.
The van was cramped. I had to struggle the entire time to keep my balance and try not to fall over as we drove to the police station.
Once inside the station, they searched me again for the 2nd time in 10 minutes.
I was told to sit on a bench, remove my shoes; remove my socks. I was told to turn my socks inside out and hold them up for the officers to inspect.
They also made me hold up my feet for them to check.
The officers took me to a room with UV lights, which they told me is used to catch burglars sprayed with something—I have no idea why they did this, since they just removed me off a plane.
My suitcase was then opened in the lobby and ransacked; all my journalistic equipment and devices were seized, including phones, sim cards, wireless microphones, microphones and headphones. Even my shoelaces.
They later took my DNA, fingerprints, palmprints, and photographed me.
I was placed in solitary confinement, in a cold cell that smelt like urine. There was barely any light, and the bed—if you can even call it a bed—was a small concrete ledge, with a paper thin mattress.
The cell had no windows. No heating. No toilet paper.
I was recorded 24/7, with audio and video— even when going to the toilet.
I had to eat food with a piece of cardboard, that you’re supposed to fold in two in order to scoop up the meal.
The police said I have the right to inform someone I’m locked up. So I said, ok I want to call my family. And then they’d go: “well, your calls are withheld because of the nature of the alleged offense”.
I tried to ask: well what’s the point of a right if you can randomly withdraw it? Why tell me that I have this right at all?
And one of them said something along the lines of: “well it’s not an absolute right. It can be waived”.
Similarly, they said I had the right to know why I was being detained. So I asked (again), and the police would say something like: “we’re just the arresting officers, we don’t really know”, or, “this will be explained to you during the interview”, or some other generic response.
Despite the police officers’ civility and cheerfulness, I felt the whole process was designed to humiliate, intimidate, and dehumanize me; to treat me like a criminal, even though they must have been aware of my background and that I am a journalist.
I was under surveillance almost the entire time, from the moment I was arrested until I was released, be it in the police van, the station, the cell—all of it. No privacy whatsoever.
Many of my requests were also delayed or outright ignored.
When I was detained, I asked for water several times. The police would always say “sure”, but I ended up waiting hours for a tiny cup of water.
I asked if I could have my own clothes because I was in a t-shirt, it was cold and couldn’t sleep. They said they’d give me a pullover but never did. Although one guard did give me a 2nd blanket.
See, you have to nag and nag for the most basic things. This is why I was afraid they weren’t even going to call a solicitor for me.
I was able to see the nurse on one occasion. But on three other occasions when I asked to see the nurse, they’d say “yes”, then nothing.
For many hours, no one in the world knew what had happened to me or where I was.
Only the police could call a solicitor for me. I had to ask 4-5 different guards for several hours until I finally received a call.
Some of my solicitor’s calls did not get through or were not answered. One of the calls, my solicitor was told would be monitored and so they siply refused to take it.
I asked to speak to them afterwards when that happened but was not allowed to.
In total, I spent almost 24 hours in detention. At no point, whatsoever, was I allowed to speak to a family member or friend.
After waiting 15 hours, I was finally interviewed by two detectives. The interview lasted just about an hour, an hour and a half.
So there was clearly no need to hold me there this entire time.
But I believe that this was done on purpose to try to rattle me psychologically.
That failed.
I categorically and utterly reject all the accusations by the police.
I am not a terrorist. I have no criminal record.
Prior to this incident, I’d never been detained in my entire life.
I’m a product of the diplomatic community and I’m raised to be anti-war.
Both my parents won Nobel Peace Prizes for their work as United Nations peacekeepers. They had a tremendous effect on my worldview and outlook, and instilled in me the importance of diplomacy, international law and peace.
I myself, am a victim of terrorism. When I attended the British school in Islamabad, the Egyptian embassy adjacent to my school was blown up in a double bombing.
I categorically and unequivocally condemn terrorism.
I am a Medhurst. My family goes back 1000 years in this country. I come from a long line of public servants. My father served in the London Metropolitan Police, before entering the UN. He is an expert and an authority on counterterrorism who taught me much. My grandfather was in the Royal Air Force during WWII, and his father before him in the British Army in WWI.
I perhaps don’t have the same career paths as them, but I consider my journalism to be a public service and my way of doing my bit for the country, by providing a counterweight to mainstream media.
I love my country and respect its laws and legal institutions.
I get the feeling, nevertheless, that those like myself who are speaking up and reporting on the situation in Palestine are being targeted.
I had booked my ticket to London on the same day. Yet an entire team of police were mobilized to arrest and question me. This is why I felt that it was a pre-planned, coordinated arrest.
Many people have been detained in Britain because of their connection to journalism. Sometimes under the Terrorism Act, sometimes not.
I think of Julian Assange, Craig Murray, Kit Klarenberg, David Miranda, Vanessa Beeley.
However, as far as I’m aware, I’m the only journalist to have been arrested, and held for up to 24 hours under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act.
Keep in mind the conditions I outlined previously: the psychological element that you’re made to wait endlessly, you’re not told what you’re accused of, nor when you’ll be questioned.
Despite being released unconditionally, I do not feel that my bail is truly unconditional.
I am effectively in limbo, not knowing if I will be charged in 3 months, or if I will go to prison.
Journalism is my livelihood. I have an ethical and moral responsibility toward the general public to inform. But I feel that a muzzle has been placed on me.
I simply do not know if or how I can work at all during the next months. Palestine—the humanitarian crisis in Gaza— remain the most pressing news story in the world, however, it seems that any statement, no matter how innocent, factual, and well-intentioned, can be skewed and twisted into an offense of the highest order.
This is precisely the danger and absurdity of the Terrorism Act that I have always sought to impress upon the public, long before I ever became a victim of it myself. 
It is out of control and has no place in a democracy.
Counter terrorism laws should be used to fight actual terrorism, not journalism.
We cannot call ourselves a democracy as long as reporters are dragged off of planes and detained and treated like murderers.
I am disgusted that I am being politically persecuted in my own country.
As I do not know if I can still report as a journalist for the next months, I kindly ask for your support during these times.
Freedom of the press, freedom of speech really are under attack. The state is cracking down and escalating, to try and stop people from speaking out against our government’s complicity in genocide.
Please stand not just with me, but with the others who are still inside. I know what they are going through, and the best relief is to know that people on the outside are rooting for you, and doing everything they can to get you out.
Thank you.
Richard Medhurst

Source

 

When Freedom of Speech Is No Longer Free

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola

 

C.J. Hopkins, an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin, speaks openly about the pathologized totalitarianism that is subtly taking over society. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he criticized lockdowns and COVID-19 shot mandates, as well as the censorship of dissenters.

During the early phases of the pandemic, Hopkins’ work was heavily censored by YouTube and Facebook, which went so far as to even suspend or restrict the accounts of people who tried to share Hopkins’ posts.¹ Now, he’s facing another challenge to freedom and autonomy, as he’s facing criminal charges for a satirical tweet.

German Government Prosecutes Hopkins Over Tweets

The Berlin State Prosecutor’s office is pursuing criminal charges against Hopkins for "disseminating propaganda, the content of which is intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization."² The propaganda referenced is two tweets from 2022, which include an image with a mask carrying a faint image of a swastika. Writing in The Atlantic, journalist James Kirchick notes:³

"To argue that Hopkins was advancing National Socialism by imposing a swastika over a face mask is absurd. He was clearly doing the opposite: invoking a symbol of what is widely regarded as the most evil and destructive ideology in human history to express his feelings — however histrionic — for state-promulgated public-health policies he dislikes.

Hopkins was 'comparing the evolution of one system which I think is totalitarian in nature to the evolution of another totalitarian system that we all know,' he told me, not glorifying fascism."

But in Germany, national laws prohibit Nazi insignia, which is why Amazon banned the sale of Hopkins’ book, "The Rise of the New Normal Reich," which also features the swastika-emblazoned mask, in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria. If Hopkins is found guilty, he could be fined about $4,000 or sent to jail for 60 days. Kirchick writes:⁴

"Hopkins sees his ordeal as part of a broader 'criminalization of dissent' sweeping the Western world. 'Basically anyone prominent, halfway prominent, and even little fish like me, if you get on the radar of challenging the official ideology, the program of the day, they’re making examples of people is basically what it is,' he told me.

Against his lawyer’s advice, Hopkins republished the tweets in his Substack newsletter — sparking, as he reported, a second criminal investigation, this time for minimizing Nazi crimes."

Are Authoritarian Measures Accelerating in Germany?

In "The Rise of the New Normal Reich," Hopkins details how measures of totalitarian control are being normalized around the world. Depending on where you live, you may or may not be experiencing these things firsthand.

"If you're aware of how people are behaving in different countries or in different states in the U.S., what have you, there are many places where it is becoming just completely normal to walk around with a medical-looking mask on, and people don't think twice about segregating and banning people and imposing vaccine mandates and what have you.

All of these measures that were rolled out during the shock and awe phase are just subtly becoming a part of daily life," he explained during our 2022 interview.⁵

"We're being conditioned to walk around in our lives, terrified of some pathogen that is going to come and attack us, or some health threat. It's really, it's a wholesale revision of reality, and it's frightening."⁶ At the heart of his argument is that the global-capitalist ruling establishment, which Hopkins refers to as GloboCap, is using fear as a strategy for control over the population.

In Germany, Hopkins says fascist measures have been quickly accelerating. "Seriously, assuming you don’t live here, you likely have no idea how fascistic German society and culture has become," he wrote in November 2023, "and how quickly the transformation has occurred. It began in the Spring of 2020 with the introduction of the ‘Corona measures,’ and has been intensifying ever since."⁷

"The shock and awe phase that we went through in '20 and '21 is over," Hopkins said in our interview. "You can't sustain shock and awe like that forever. What we're experiencing now is really the normalization of the pathologization of society."⁸ Even the charges against Hopkins seem baseless, as, even in Germany, Nazi imagery is allowed for certain purposes, including countering anti-constitutional activities. Kirchick continues:⁹

"So far, although he retains U.S. citizenship, Hopkins’s case has attracted little attention in the American media. But his predicament offers an important opportunity to examine how we think about the most loaded political symbols — and to cherish the exceptional free-speech culture ensured by America’s First Amendment.

On its face, the charge against Hopkins seems specious. Although the display of Nazi imagery is generally prohibited in Germany, the country’s criminal code allows the display of such symbols for 'civic education, countering anti-constitutional activities, art and science, research and education, the coverage of historic and current events, or similar purposes.'"

The Goal Is to Silence Dissenters and Control Society

In the past, totalitarian regimes used drastic and obvious shows of control, putting people into concentration camps. Today’s ruling establishment is far more subtle in its tactics, but possibly even more dangerous. Hopkins says:¹⁰

"I don't think they can put us in camps ... they don't have to. If you look at what's happening to the economy, if you look at what's happening to our ability to travel, to our ability to communicate, I mean, the censorship that is going on, I think the technologies that are being deployed in the service of this new form of totalitarianism are much more subtle and, in many ways, much more effective.

I've made the point, online, I made the point in the book again, I don't think global capitalism can go openly totalitarianism in the same way that systems in the 20th century did. I think it's suicidal for global capitalism. It needs to maintain the simulation of freedom, the simulation of democracy, and so the technologies that are being deployed are much more subtle."

While people may not end up in prison-like camps, the end-game may be no less restrictive. Technologies like the upcoming central bank digital currency (CBDC), for instance, could easily lead to tight control over your finances, limiting your ability to purchase food or pay rent if your access to your funds is turned off. In the case of Germany prosecuting Hopkins, he says:¹¹

"Basically, the government no longer needs to justify its crackdown on dissidents with plausible legal (or even just rational) arguments.

They know that the majority of the German public supports the 'New Normal' Gleichschaltung campaign, or at least will look the other way as they carry out police raids on the homes and offices of 'Islamic influencers,' ban demonstrations (exactly as they did in 2020), censor and criminalize dissent, imprison political dissidents based on blatantly false criminal charges, and otherwise make a mockery of the German constitution."

In explaining why he republished the swastika-mask images again, knowing it would likely lead to additional charges against him, Hopkins wrote:¹²

"No, I am not a glutton for punishment. I’m not at all enjoying my introduction to the so-called 'German legal system.' … The goal of … prosecutions like mine (and those of many other dissidents currently) is (a) to punish us for speaking out against 'New Normal' totalitarianism by making our lives as miserable as possible, (b) to make examples of us to discourage others from speaking out, and (c) to intimidate us into shutting … up.

Totalitarians, fascists, and other power freaks are essentially just glorified schoolyard bullies. They may cloak themselves in the mantle of the law, but their modus operandi is brute force … their message is simple: 'either do what we say, or we will hurt you.' … The point is, never give in to a bully. Never reify a bully’s 'authority.' If you do, you will find yourself sucked into the bully’s sadistic, nihilistic 'reality.'

You will be playing by the bully’s rules. And that is all 'reality' actually is, a set of rules we agree to play by, or, in this case, do not agree to play by.

So, getting back to my criminal case, and the Berlin State Prosecutor’s latest attempt to bully me into shutting up and demonstrating my 'respect' for the 'authority' and 'power' of the Berlin State Prosecutor … I do not respond well to threats. I do not take orders from totalitarians and fascists, or any other type of authoritarians or bullies.

So that is why I have republished those Tweets, and why I will continue to republish those Tweets every time the German authorities threaten me with additional criminal charges for refusing to obey their 'authority.'"

Dissent Is Essential in a Free Society

When citizens are punished for criticizing government policies, we should all worry that totalitarianism is near. Using clever tactics like censorship and attacks on people’s reputations and credibility, those in control are moving toward taking away something that’s essential in a free society — dissent. Kirchick explains why, regardless of how you feel about Hopkins’ message, his prosecution should trouble us all:¹³

"Some might argue that, as a permanent resident of Germany, Hopkins ought to have known what he was getting into by conjuring the country’s ultimate taboo, and that his posturing as a sort of latter-day Martin Niemöller, the anti-Nazi theologian, would not endear him to his hosts.

'Of course; it’s Germany,' he said, when I put this to him. 'Of course they’re hyper about anything that is promoting the Nazis and, frankly, God bless them. That’s the way I feel about it; I’ve always supported it and understood it even though I’m a free-speech absolutist.'

One can call his method of argument likening anti-COVID policies to Nazism misguided, intellectually lazy, or tasteless — I personally find it to be all three — but endorsing 'the aims' of National Socialism it is not. Which strongly suggests that Hopkins is being punished not for promoting an outlawed political movement from the German past but for criticizing a government of the German present.

Such a conclusion is only reinforced by the second proceeding against Hopkins for the tweet ridiculing one particularly powerful member of that government, the country’s health minister.

That a citizen could be tried on these grounds in a Western democracy should trouble us, and Germany’s unique experience as the birthplace of Nazism offers no justification. On the contrary, precisely because that fraught history gives Germany ample reason for vigilance about support for fascism, it must be scrupulous in how it regulates expressions of said support.

According to the country’s criminal code, expression aimed at 'countering anti-constitutional activities,' as Hopkins’s swastika-branded mask clearly was, is protected. A government that prosecutes a writer for calling its policies fascistic unwittingly validates the criticism. Even if some find Hopkins’s views and the way he expresses them offensive, that does not lessen the danger that his prosecution represents."

 Source:  https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/01/25/when-freedom-of-speech-is-no-longer-free.aspx?ui=ad0b6c9f1bde25e8797f3504b8d062e396a914597c470577a2e8244ba6d2db40&sd=20200908&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art2ReadMore&cid=20240125_HL2&foDate=false&mid=DM1522496&rid=2027968795