[u_sama]

Someday we need to kill this myth, the wave of fascisms that appeared in Europe (Italy, Germany, Spain, Romania) are more of a cultural and economic reaction to the destruction of the Great War and not due to "unlimited free speech".

Free speech does not amplify or cultivate hate, it lets it fester in dark areas until it explodes when a crisis happens (which is what is happening currently).

Free speech and open discourse serves as a pressure valve release and self-correcting mechanism where by impopular or "untolerable" but common opinions have to be dealt with i.e the migration backlash in Europe

[Defletter]

Protests are pressure valves, not tweets.

[u_sama]

Please tell me how did the recent wave of Gen-Z protests start, hw did the Arab spring start?

Tweets (and other censored social media) for better or for worse have been at the center of impactful political movements and protests

[Defletter]

Again, you are stripping all context and content. You are pretending that protest organising and calling for the burning down of a building populated with asylum seekers are the same thing. I vehemently reject this facetious framing.

[u_sama]

You're conflating legitimate criticism with incitement. The police record suggest the opposite.

Take the example *Bernadette Spofforth, 55*, she shared false information that the attacker was an asylum seeker, adding "If this is true, all hell will break loose." (not false btw) Deleted it, apologized. She still got arrested, held 36 hours, and then *released without charge because of insufficient evidence*.

No call for violence, "misinformation", which she retracted when corrected. Yet she still was arrested during the crackdown. The state used riot prosecutions to sweep up misinformation, political speech and "hatred" on one swoop not just incitement. Spofforth's arrest (and quiet release) shows they criminalized *any speech near the riots*, then kinda sorted legality later.

You're using the retarded Lucy Connolly to justify arresting people like Spofforth (which has opinion closer to the average). That's the poisoning-the-well: conflate extremists with moderates sharing concerns, arrest both, then claim all arrested speech was violent incitement.

You also seem to not take into account that *the UK has built the legal apparatus to enable this overreach:*

- *Public Order Act 1986*: Criminalizes speech where "hatred" is "likely" to be stirred up. You're criminal based on how others react.

- *Online Safety Act 2023*: Forces platforms to remove "harmful" content or face £18 million fines.

- *Non-Crime Hate Incidents*: Since 2014, police record speech "perceived" as hateful, even when no crime occurred. 133,000+ recorded. No evidence, no appeals, appears on background checks. Court ruled this unlawful for "chilling effect" in 2021 yet police continue anyway.

In total it ends up with 12,000+ annual arrests for speech (30/day), fourfold increase since 2016. 666,000 police hours on non-crimes. Broad laws + complaint-driven policing = arrest first, determine legality never.

Free speech protects conditional statements about policy during crises or when the people has something to say to its elites. The 36-hour detention without charges proves the suppression.

[Ali-Al-Shakati]

FWIW - Bernadette Spofforth invented a fictitious Muslim asylum seeker that had arrived by small boat as the perpetrator of an awful act of violence towards small children. She ended her post with "I'm done with the mental 'health excuse'. You should be as well!" Shortly afterwords, mosques and migrant hotels were attacked in the worst race riots the UK has seen in years - fuelled, at least in part, by her disinformation.

It wasn't a retweet and it was only deleted - some 10 hours later - when the media started asking her about the source of the name she had created.

The idea that she was simply expressing legitimate concern is ludicrous.

[Defletter]

> You're conflating legitimate criticism with incitement.

You should tell the right wingers that. Here's some of the right-wing sources I found when searching Ground News for some articles about Lucy Connolly, the woman who publicly advocating for the burning down of hotels housing asylum seekers:

- "British Mother Jailed for Tweet: ‘I Was Starmer’s Political Prisoner’" (The European Conservative) (https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/british-mothe...)

- "Lucy Connolly considers legal action against police after being jailed for race hate tweet" (LBC) (https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/lucy-connolly-first-interview-...)

- "‘Silencing the right!’ Free speech boss rages over Lucy Connolly’s ‘absolutely heartbreaking’ admission" (GB News) (https://www.gbnews.com/news/free-speech-lucy-connolly-admiss...)

You may notice a theme amongst these articles about how "it was just a tweet" and "she's a political prisoner" and "calculated move to suppress conservative viewpoints on immigration". This is what the right does. I'm not conflating legitimate criticism with incitement, they are, and they're using their massive media empires to spread this conflation.

This is just going to fix itself with more speech, right?

[u_sama]

I actually do too, the issue is that in today’s wacko world the defense of Free Speech which in the early 2000s was a domain of the left/center-left, now has been abandonded due to the notion of “hate-speech” and opportunistically taken by the right (even tho many like MAGA will drop it the moment it stops being politically convenient i.e expulsion of students being critical of Israel actions).

A lot of those are propaganda peddlers who would drop the charade the moment someone on their political opposite side finds themselves in the same position (they keep crying about statements of Palestine and anti-semitism). I agree that they are stupid in their defense of Lucy Connely who literally and unrepentably pushed to “burn the asylum centers”, and that they are willfully conflating the issue to further their agenda.

The issue is both you and the retarded conservatives uses the situation to push their agendas, and as a counterpoint while they have media empires the left-wing political side also has media conglomerates pushing their ideas (BBC having a center-left slant).

No, the issue is going to fix itself with free speech, when no side is persecuted and better quality and rational discourse can arise and not be censored or overtaken by the extremes. Currently the only sane takes on many issues like immigration, economy or free speech exist only in the internet ghettos hidden from the larger public.