New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is the latest liberal leader to call for an international alliance to censor speech. Unsatisfied with the unprecedented corporate censorship of social media companies, leaders like Hillary Clinton have turned from private censorship to good old-fashioned state censorship. Speech regulation has become an article of faith on the left. Ardern used her speech this week to the United Nations General Assembly to call for censorship on a global scale.
Ardern lashed out at “disinformation” and called for a global coalition to control speech. After nodding toward free speech, she proceeded to lay out a plan for its demise through government regulation:
But what if that lie, told repeatedly, and across many platforms, prompts, inspires, or motivates others to take up arms. To threaten the security of others. To turn a blind eye to atrocities, or worse, to become complicit in them. What then?
This is no longer a hypothetical. The weapons of war have changed, they are upon us and require the same level of action and activity that we put into the weapons of old.
We recognized the threats that the old weapons created. We came together as communities to minimize these threats. We created international rules, norms and expectations. We never saw that as a threat to our individual liberties – rather, it was a preservation of them. The same must apply now as we take on these new challenges.
Ardern noted how extremists use speech to spread lies without noting that non-extremists use the same free speech to counter such views. To answer her question on “how do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists” is that you convince people using the same free speech. Instead, Ardern appears to want to silence those who have doubts.
While referring to a global censorship coalition as a “light-touch approach to disinformation,” Ardern revealed how sweeping such a system would likely be. She defended the need for such global censorship on having to combat those who question climate change and the need to stop “hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology.”
“After all, how do you successfully end a war if people are led to believe the reason for its existence is not only legal but noble? How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists? How do you ensure the human rights of others are upheld, when they are subjected to hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology?”
That is the same rationale used by authoritarian countries like China, Iran, and Russia to censor dissidents, minority groups, and political rivals. What is “hateful” and “dangerous” is a fluid concept that government have historically used to silence critics or dissenters.
Ardern is the smiling face of the new generation of censors. At least the old generation of censors like the Iranians do not pretend to support free speech and openly admit that they are crushing dissent. The point is that we need to be equally on guard when censorship is pushed from the left with the best of motivations and the worst of means.
As the great civil libertarian Justice Louis Brandeis once said, “the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
Hi Jonathan,
May we reprint this piece in The Light paper UK please, with credit and weblink?
Let us know,
Kind Regards,
Darren Smith
So which imam from Saudi Arabia should be in charge of global censorship?
Biden’s choice is Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei
Of course Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei is from Iran, not Saudi Arabia, but neither he nor his VP would know that.
Her/he/it Arden has already implemented censorship against one of my NZ subscribers being unable to comment upon my blog here in UK, which covers Bible and contemporary prophecies and thus relevant news. He has to do so via a long-standing reader in USA!!!
What we need is a global order to censor Jacinda.
Got THAT right!!!!
Yes!
It’s Jack, actually! Now, perhaps you can understand why these people have everything all upside down?
Free speech is important. This person simply wants to crush ALL dissent from the New World Order agenda that she is a fully signed up member to. She is a graduate of the Klaus Schwab Young Global Leaders program, so that should tell you everything you need to know about her. She would probably also like to censor that SHE is not even a SHE; she is a HE, named Jack.
No American elected that b*tch, so she should stick to censoring her own tiny corner of the earth. Of course, none of these idiots ever answer the question: Who gets to determine what is “disinformation”? They just assume it’ll be themselves. Until it won’t.
Adern is a fraud. Her government is in the final stages of building NZ’s largest wind farm in a residential zone at Turitea, Palmerston North. The wind farm does not have a consent. Shonagh Kenderdine, for 13 months and with government oversight, faked being a judge, granting a fake consent for the wind farm located right on the Wellington and Northern Ohariu faults. The previous government sold off 49% of Mercury Energy to investors which owns this asset without telling them that it is subjected to massive earthquakes. A very recent video on YouTube “Out there learning” has gone viral about the extreme hazards the lower half of the North Island faces.
Adern knows all this and is hiding it. Search for “turiteadocuments” to find out more.
Is not not the further Righters who support censorship?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics
I don’t see anything in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics
supportive of censorship.
I opine that Jonathan Turley is confused, once again.
David – Wiki has a pronounced left-wing bias. It’s not a reliable source on this type of subject.
Wikipedia? LOL!!! Your head is clearly where the sun don’t shine and you think it’s an enlightening place to be, full of s-t just as you’re analysis. The Fascist left has always been about censorship; hence facebook, instagram, twitter are constantly shutting down free speech that doesn’t march in lock step with the lefts totalitarian ideology.
Thankfully we have Turley and others exposing your hypocrisy as well as the New Zealand’s PM.
Wiki is incredibly censored by the left, and you come here citing Wiki? lol
I will fight anyone pushing ACTUAL censorship, right, left,
I do not care.
I rarely find myself fighting against actual censorship from the right.
I constantly find myself fighting actual censorship from the left.
People right or left coming together to select or oppose a curicula for public schools – not censorship.
Sometimes – such as the curicula pushed by the left – it is idiocy. Regardless, schools are not dealing with adults,
and we do not have infinite time to educate children. It would be wise for them to learn how to read, write and add,
Before they take on questions of whenher Gender is a choice.
Conversely killing stories on social media – Censorship.
Driving speakers you do not like off your college campus – censorship.
Government telling social media companies who to block and what to block – massive unconstitutional censorship – of the kind there is no remedy for.
Firebombing pro-life pregnancy clinics – censorship.
Murdering teens you claim are ultra-MAGA – censorship – also murder.
I have not followed your link. Wikipedia is sometimes valuable.
But it is pretty bad when you need wikipedia to tell you what is happening right in front of your eyes.
Without doing a search and from your own experience – what examples do you have of ACTUAL right wing censorship ?
Few of us have any trouble recalling dozens of examples on the left.
We do not need wikipedia to tell us what is right in front of our eyes.
Look, the neoliberals are not “the left.” They’re center-right. I know because I’m really on the left (anti-imperialist socialist) and they’re censoring me.
Left of the left is hard to do these days
EXACTLY!
“Ardern noted how extremists use speech to spread lies”
Therefore, politicians are extremists since they have a nasty tendency to spread lies. Hmm…tempting conclusion.
What she said does not imply what you inferred.
I know. But it is tempting to skew things, too.
Oh, noes, Rose…When a politician lies to us, it’s privileged speech. If we lie to them, it’s a felony.
In the case of Ardern and her rabble – that is absolutely correct. They create the lying environment through lack of transparency!! Give her a job at her socialist led UN and get her right out of our hair!!!
” you clearly don’t understand what constitutes libel.”
Anonymous: You are ignorant. You need a dictionary. Libel = a defamation.
Ardern and her ilk are too stupid to tell me how to live.
Ardern is a typical, dishonest authoritarian who desires to usurp rights, while pretending to protect rights. Their formula is always this (e.g., with respect to the right to free speech): “I'[m in favor of free speech, but . . .”
That “but” is an authoritarian’s tell. It tells you that there’s a shyster in the room who’s about to pick your pocket. What comes after her “but” is this: Global governments must control (i.e., censor) “disinformation.” Which, of course, means that governments must censor opinions and speech that they don’t agree with.
The most important role of the right to free speech is not to protect those who agree. It’s to protect dissenters.
I’m not a repub or dem, but this all is being taken out of context. There is judicial precedent in common-law nations for distinction/handling between individual speech and mass published speech. It’s obvious NZ is not an authoritarian nation — the conservative CATO institute just ranked NZ the freest country in the world (US #17), and they rank most social democratic countries higher than the US. Moreover, Ardern’s speeches are entirely more cogent and objective than any US politician.
We have seen what they’ve done in NZ and Oz, we’re not blind.
Lets not misrepresent.
Most of the countries you call “social democrat” aren’t.
They may have a party named the social democratic party that sometimes wins elections.
But these countries are neither socialist. nor democracies.
As a New Zealander, I can tell you that Ardern is the most hated PM in our history – which is why she bailed when she did (of course, there are many who love her – but they are a minority). No one prior divided our country like her – she brought in some of the harshest vax mandates in the world, significantly cut our freedoms, introduced race-base, divisive legislation, led the WEF supported International Union of Socialist Youth, publically told her subjects that she (and her cronies) would be “your only source of truth”. The level of non-elected bureaucracy increased exponentially under her leadership – big, centralised government is her thing – and we were definitely an authoritarian nation the last 3 years. She is evil – and none of this is taken out of context. If our country was that ‘free’, why, in a recent poll, did nearly 1 million Kiwis say they’d consider moving to Australia – esp if Adern stayed in govt? It ain’t all roses here Todd.
How could the 20th-century despots have missed out on such opportunities to censor and track their citizens as are available now? This woman is behind the times in her thinking, but it’s frightening that so many agree with her.
ANZUS-Cracked
That’s great, we shut her up first. Gagged, a ball muzzle, 3 stacked masks, and no pen and paper or hand signals.
Wow, that would be great., not another word from that weirdo tyrannist ever again.