I have been writing about the decline of free speech in the United Kingdom for years, including in my book The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. One of the most critical components of the British censorship system is Ofcom, the Office of Communications, which regulates the broadcasting, internet, telecommunications, and postal industries. The most recent controversy is detailed in the Telegraph, with Ofcom investigating GB News over the simple replaying of a Trump interview in which he called climate change a “hoax.” Ofcom is investigating GB News for failing to challenge Trump’s characterization, even though many people share his views on climate change.
It is a breathtaking demonstration of the censorship culture in the United Kingdom. World leaders make controversial statements in every interview. A free press allows the public to hear such viewpoints and reach their own conclusions on the merits of such arguments or policies.
The debate over the climate change data continues to rage. The dates for dire predictions for massive environmental disasters, including those of Al Gore, have passed. Professor Guy McPherson received widespread press attention for his 2016 prediction that the entire human race would be wiped out by 2026. It appears that he is wrong.
Al Gore received the 2007 Peace Prize for his film The Inconvenient Truth as media, academic, and government censors attacked anyone questioning his data. His apocalyptic predictions have not borne out, and recent scientific papers have rejected the predictions found in the underlying studies.
Gore predicted more frequent and stronger hurricanes, but some insist that global data reveal a slight decline in both frequency and intensity. Others argue that the number may be decreasing but the intensity is increasing. We have not seen the type of global hurricane disaster that Gore described in the movie.
Critics point to NASA data to argue that the areas burned by wildfires have fallen by more than 25 percent over the past quarter of a century.
While the global population quadrupled in the last century, deaths from climate-related disasters have plummeted from the 1920s, when an average of nearly half a million people died annually from such events.
Even the film’s famous use of polar bears has not panned out. Polar bear populations have more than doubled from around 12,000 in the 1960s to over 26,000 today. While some have contested those figures, it has certainly not resulted in the wipeout predicted by Gore.
I believe that climate change is real, and there are other signs of more severe climate events, including flooding, that present real dangers for various countries. The point is not to say that it is all a hoax, but that reasonable people can disagree on this question.
That brings us back to the British censors.
In the last two decades, free speech protections in the U.K. have been eviscerated and the government is doubling down on the criminalization of speech. The criminalization of speech has expanded exponentially as individuals and groups call the police to silence those who criticize them or advocate opposing views.
Even silent prayer or “toxic ideologies” can lead to arrest. Expressing concerns over Western cultural values is now treated as an admission of “right-wing ideology,” warranting investigation. A few years ago, a neo-Nazi living with his mother was found to have a room filled with hateful symbols and material.
Judge Peter Lodder dismissed free speech concerns over the defendant’s possessions with a truly Orwellian flourish: “I do not sentence you for your political views, but the extremity of those views informs the assessment of dangerousness.” Calling the defendant “a right-wing extremist,” Mr. Lodder said the contents of his room were evidence of “enthusiasm for this repulsive and toxic ideology.”
The British people have become conditioned to censorship as different groups seek to silence those who express opposing viewpoints. The result is one of the most speech-phobic nations on Earth as offices like Ofcom fuel the fear of free speech.
I’ve never understood why we give a rats rectum about the British anyway. Bad government, bad weather, bad food, horrible accent. Send them all back, starting with the golf commentators.
Not to mention, bad teeth.
With all due respect, Professor, your readers know full well about your recent book. Would it be possible to omit the mention of it in every column, if even by 50%?
Thank you for doubling the mention of JT’s book:
The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.
The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.
The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.
The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.
Let us know what book(s) you’ve written and we can can give it a review.
Granny, we get a great column for free every day with no ads popping up and wreaking havoc with our computers and all you can do is complain about a guy trying to sell a few books?
Try reading the NY Post, or the Hill or Fox News online and check out how bad the ads are. Watch a football or basketball game, watch any tv show, the ads are ruining all enjoyment of these events and yet you can’t scan past a sentence in a column written daily by a well known law professor?
PS. I record all sporting events and TV shows.
Hear, hear!
“Climate Change real?” Yes. The geologic record shows climate, a statistical measure of weather, has always changed. Get over it. Is it controlled and caused by the molecules of carbon-dioxide emitted by humans (other than their exhaled breath). Not proven. Nor by eliminating all CO2 emissions by “fossil-fuels” et. al. will the weather change. The weather will change.
Turley is exactly right to focus on Ofcom’s investigation of GB News for replaying an interview in which Trump called climate change a “hoax.” The point is not whether you agree with Trump. The point is that a regulator is now treating the mere airing of an unorthodox view, without on‑air correction, as a potential offense. That is not “fact‑checking.” That is the state narrowing the range of permissible questions.
Now take that logic and apply it to the rest of public life. Imagine if public education worked this way. The moment you ask for hard data on what students actually know, how unions shape incentives, or what is really being taught in the classroom, you are not treated as a citizen doing due diligence. You are treated as a political problem to be labeled and dismissed before anyone has to answer you with evidence.
Imagine if businesses operated on the same principle. Any employee who questions product quality, costs, or the way the process actually runs is not thanked for protecting customers and shareholders. He is sent to HR, written up, or quietly pushed out. No serious company could survive for long under that culture of enforced conformity, and no honest manager would call that “quality control.”
Yet that is the culture we are normalizing in key areas of civic life. Questioning outcomes and examining systems is being treated as a moral offense, and in some cases even a legal risk, instead of a basic duty of free citizens. When leadership decides that certain stories about the system are beyond challenge, it is not defending truth. It is outlawing the very systems thinking and intellectual rigor that make truth discoverable in the first place.
Um… but whose or what truths are or should be discovered? Not all so called truths are universal. You should write a book. Just kidding. Hogwash.
“but whose or what truths are or should be discovered?”
That is the point of Free speech – YOU decide for yourself – no one else gets to decide for you.
“Not all so called truths are universal.”
There is only one reality. There is only one Truth.
But reality is constructed in a way that we will never know all that truth with certainty.
Even Newton’s laws of thermodynamics are WRONG – but they are close enough that in 99.999% of what humans ever do they will work perfectly.
Your Truth, my truth – everyone’s claimed truth is “a lie” – at best an inaccurate over simplification of a very complex reality. If you fall off the empire state building – the gravity of the sun, the moon, Jupiter will effect your path on the way down – but not consequentuially.
In the world of humans – perfect Truth does not exist.
Ultimately we have “Your Truth” and “My Truth” – Both are false.
But NOT equally false.
Free speech is required so that YOU – and the rest of the world can hear if you wish My Truth – and if you are persuaded – adopt it or modify your own.
The entire evolution of humans is the process of gradually discovering, forever coming closer and closer to “absolute truth” but never reaching it.
What you are calling Hogwash is the process of hundreds of millennia that has brought humans from nasty, brutish and short lives to where we are today – and where we will be tomorrow.
the left are FASCISTS…who want to destry the west!
Fight them now
much harder to fight them in the 1940’s….1930’s easier!
It really wasn’t that many years ago that we thought the earth was flat and also the center of the universe. Fast forward a couple thousand years and we have climate change theology that if you question, you must be a heathen.
Professor Guy McPherson received widespread press attention for his 2016 prediction that the entire human race would be wiped out by 2026. It appears that he is wrong.
There’s still time 🙂
We have always had climate change whether humans were here or not. Al Gore and others who predicted the end of mankind (sarcasm) by this point in time were clearly jumping the gun Their claims were ludicrous from the start and have become only more hysterical of the years.
The fact that Europe turned into ChickenLittleStan and has gone about removing itself from meaningful economics and politics and turned into a parody of 1984, only makes for more entertainment.
We know that climate change was always a scam by the fact that the powers that be had to shut off all funding for contrary studies and papers. That seems to have ended and more open discussion is now in the climate community.
The fact that the British have instituted open warfare on free speech is not new but these events now are simply a means of keeping track of how far in the depths British society is sinking before it (hopefully) turns around and returns to some semblance of it’s past glory.
I wish the people of the UK well but they have some heavy lifting to do.
We know that climate change was always a scam by the fact that the powers that be had to shut off all funding for contrary studies and papers… that’s a lie.
Are you are a scientist in any field related to meteorology, or any science? Didn’t think so.
So how can you claim with perfect knowledge that it is a scam?
‘OFCOM’ – The Ministry of Truth. An Orwellian acronym if there ever was one.
The tyranny of the unelected bureaucracy.
We fought a revolution over that some 250 years ago. The same year Adam Smith wrote a little book on The Wealth of Nations and the dynamism of the free market. These watershed events and ideas of The Enlightenment gave birth to the most successful politico-socioeconomic model in world history.
Britain appears to be losing the plan, but recent elections seem to show that We The People are getting ready to throw off the yoke of Administrative State tyranny.
The reversal by the Supreme Court of the Chevron Deference doctrine in 2024 was a huge step in rolling back the unchecked power of the unelected, hence unaccountable to the Sovereign People, Administrative State, preserving the foundational Western Civilization Enlightenment right to be governed by the consent of the governed.
As long as people tolerate the loss of their rights, nothing will change. It’s actually relatively simple. Disobey. Do not comply. Speak out, loudly and firmly and back it up with the courage to confront your persecutors with open rebellion if necessary. Why does power torment you? Because you permit it! Don’t permit it!
Do not comply? Are you saying you’ll pay my defense lawyer and any fines. What if I wind up in jail. Who am i gonna call? Clarke Penley?
Cute sound bite Clarke. I wonder if you practice what you preach?
Free speech has a cost, namely in dollars and cents.
“Are you saying you’ll pay . . .”
Rather than cowering in the corner, you could take a cue from the Founders:
“We pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
Once they disarmed their citizenry, it was game on.
As an ardent defender of free speech, this is why you should vehemently oppose any gun control efforts and support the repeal of the NFA and other such laws.
It is clear that a majority of European Countries have fallen to Communism!!!
Communism? Which ones?
“Vee vill crush and imprison anyvone who claims vee are not for free speech.”
According to an internet search using AI (I apologize for that), almost half the population of London are not British … they come from other countries with their other cultures. London, Paris, Rome, Europe … it’s where the seat of western culture is a more a memory than a reality.
And your point?
Most thought George Orwell’s novel, “1984” was fiction . . . We now know it was prophetic!
Which came first in the UK—the complete invasion of people not assimilating or OFCom’s “you can’t say that” rule? They seem to support each other well.
I was supposed to have beach front property in SE Pa by now. Al G. and others predicted that NYC and NJ would be underwater by now. But I still have to travel 1.5 hours to the beach all these years after their dire predictions. Maybe if they would stop imitating Chicken Little people would stop dismissing them as cranks and climate hysteria would be higher than #20 on the list of people’s daily concerns.
Moving dirty manufacturing and mining to China does not and did not make our earthly environment cleaner. The air over China does not stay over China. Europeans mandated Net Zero because – why not. What could go wrong? The Iran situation combined with shutting down power plants is giving it to them good and hard. Yet they complain. I guess they were just 1st class flying posers all along.
Climate change is called weather
Over development and overpopulation are far more of a threat to our planet than fossil fuels.
I thought you conservs. thought liberals were the world’s biggest threat.
He said “more of a threat”, not “the biggest threat”.
But since neither of those two are threats, one can’t be more of a threat than the other.
“You conservs”., plural. “Liberals”, plural. Get it?
“One can’t be more of…” You mean they’re mutually exclusive. Limited vocab eh?
Not liberals. They are generally sane and normal.
Illiberals. They are a threat to democracy, the Constitution, Bill of Rights, parents rights, women’s rights and more. We know as they tell us.
Science. We are in an ice age and we need to burn all the carbon to slow it!
So only the Government knows the truth.
What could could go wrong. Right, Al Gore.
The issue is not truth, its about what can be said or written. You dimwit.
So truth has nothing to do with it?
Jezzz.
Lying to the people is fine with you..
Moron.
I’m not sure you understand the concept of free speech. Simply, any speech should be allowed, except for example the most violent or coercive per the SCOTUS guidance. It is the responsibility of the LISTENER to judge its worth, not a government. Hearing multiple sides of a topic enables one to select the most convincing.
That’s right, truth has nothing to do with the freedom of speech. People are free to lie just as they are to tell the truth. The government may indeed be the only one that knows the truth, unlikely as that sounds; but it would still have the right to silence people of lesser knowledge, or those who know the truth and lie.
You might get better replies on your posts if you left off the rant against others with whom you disagree. The term dimwit might also apply to you, so I’d recommend you look in the mirror and ask yourself is it worth it to keep chastising those with whom you disagree.
The term dimwit might also apply to you, so I’d recommend you look in the mirror and ask yourself is it worth it to keep chastising those with whom you disagree.
You should take your own advice dimwit.
We’ve seen this Turley rant before.
And will see it again as long as leftwing Fascists continue to attack free speech.