Establishment media outlets in Ireland, the government are still scrambling to do damage control after Green Party Chair senator Pauline O’ Reilly’s admission that the proposed “hate speech” legislation would be “restricting freedom for the common good”.
The profoundly sinister Orwellian phrase could have been lifted directly from George Orwell’s magnum opus 1984 or one of the plethora of books about dystopian futures where a political elite and compliant media have removed basic human rights in the name of the “common good”.
The Criminal Justice (Hate Crime) bill was surreptitiously snaking its way through the Oireachtas with the government’s agenda to control speech being support by the so-called opposition, in particular Sinn Fein before free speech activists and international commentators drew attention to it.
Despite it being a profoundly unpopular piece of legislation and one that should be redundant it banning incitement to hatred is truly its goal given the 1989 incitement to hatred bill, it enjoys the support of all government TDs and major opposition parties, Sinn Fein, Social Democrats and Labour.
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