For a country that has spent a good portion of its existence with a boot on its throat, you’d think the Irish would be a bit more particular about the concept of “freedom”: which constituted the same, what measures impede or crush it, and thereby do everything in their power to avoid those. Again, you’d think but WHOA, NELLY, would you ever be wrong.

Currently wending its way through the Oireachtas (Oireachtas Éireann, is the bicameral parliament of Ireland) are updates to sections of their Prohibition of Incitment to Hatred Act 1989. As there were no innerwebs or social media in 1989 they felt they needed a new, improved version. They came up with a doozy.

…What does the new law state?
Current law on hate speech will change very soon. A new draft law, published last October, is now making its way through the Dáil and Seanad, steered by Justice Minister Simon Harris.

The Criminal Justice Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences Bill aims to create new laws to deal with hate crimes and expand the characteristics given special protection. These will include gender, along with gender identity and expression, and disability.

Genocide
The proposed law will also make it an offence to deny or trivialise genocide. It will define a hate crime as any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim, or any other person, to have been motivated by prejudice.

Such prejudice can be based on a person’s age, disability, race, colour, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or gender.

I mean, while the protected class establishment free-for-all is going on, can anybody claim aggrieved status? Why not throw in immigrants, illegal or otherwise?

Brilliant idea!

Minister for Justice Simon Harris is to consider including migration status as a protected category under forthcoming hate crime legislation.

…The Bill includes 10 protected characteristics including race, religion, gender and disability.

…Independent TD Thomas Pringle submitted an amendment adding immigration status as a protected characteristic, noting the recent surge in anti-immigrant activity in the country.

“I think in the current climate that it is important it is recognised in such a way,” he told Mr Harris. He submitted migration status should including people with permission to remain in Ireland as well as people with no status.

Fabulous. It sure seems like the Protected Class Train’s leaving Victimhood Station, so you might want to jump on board before the conductor slams the doors shut – get your dibs in now.

Well, that sounds like a pretty sticky wicket already, doesn’t it? Who’s going to be left “unprotected”?

I mean, what exactly are they talking about here?

Maybe I don’t want to know…prosecuting individuals for possession of “hateful materials” even if they haven’t or have no intention of disseminating it?

Amendment from by @pb4p to include the UN Convention on Human Rights protections on Free Speech within the Hate Speech bill, has been defeated.

As well as one to excise the section allowing for the prosecution of individuals possessing offensive material without communicating it pic.twitter.com/3s7hFFZfnW

— Free Speech Ireland (@FreeSpeechIre) April 26, 2023

That seems like a nebulous thought crime. Who gets to determine what’s “hateful”?

WHO IS AUTHORIZED TO CRAWL THROUGH AND CHECK MY PERSONAL POSSESSIONS?

This single line is absolutely chilling to anyone who has any reverence for the presumption of innocence as a God-given right in a free state. Whatever it is you have in your custody that someone determines to be offensive by the definition of the statute – whether it truly is or not – you are PRESUMED to know it was a violation just by having it?

There is a whole lot of projection and #hurtfeelingz being codified into law here. That’s terrifying.

Massive attack on freedom of speech

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 29, 2023

The Irish government is giving themselves the power to monitor speech and thoughts and deem them hateful if they so choose, sometimes even before they are publicly expressed.

The Hate Speech bill has passed through the lower chamber of the Irish Parliament (Dáil) and is now under consideration in the Irish Senate.

This is the most aggressive attack on freedom of speech in the history of the Irish State.

Where's the pushback from media? What… pic.twitter.com/MFb1QbYtbI

— David Thunder (@davidjthunder) May 1, 2023

Protected classes are already pretty protected by media and the government in Ireland. Now they’ll also be able to strike back viciously and legally at those who don’t surrender to the Victimhood Thought Stasi.

…A Department of Justice spokesman said the laws will create new ‘hate crime’ offences, where specific offences are aggravated by hate of a protected characteristic, and that there will be tougher sentences for these. The Bill will also criminalise any intentional or reckless communication or behaviour likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or persons because they are associated with a protected characteristic, including hateful online content.

They fired up a special police outfit called the Gardaí National Diversity and Integration Unit. As of now, they “monitor hate crimes and hate-related incidents” but once these new measures pass, they’ll be into enforcement. So Irish smart-asses had better watch what they chirp up in post comments, Facebook and the like. Your first tweet could literally be your last if you hurt someone’s #feelingz or, God forbid, the local Gardaí or government already had it in for you.

Big Brother IS watching and the government has given him a huge stick to beat you with.

Ireland’s proposed ‘hate speech’ laws will lead to the criminalization of religious beliefs and church teachings.

The Irish state now owns the
one-road view. Disagree with legacy media content; face time in prison.

For defenders of free speech, the new law is designed to… https://t.co/2alHw9nHyl

— Tosca Austen (@ToscaAusten) May 1, 2023

Irish Catholics see it as an assault on religious freedom. It might even be an effort at state control of the Church and other Christian denominations.

…A press release from the Department of Justice however informs that the 1989 law was ineffective because it only secured 50 convictions over 30 years, implying, somewhat worryingly, that the objective of the law is to create more criminals, and that the value and efficacy of law is assessed based on this quantitative metric.

While the Minister for Justice contends that protection of free speech has been adequately built into the proposed law, a reading of the proposed legislation tells otherwise. For defenders of free speech, the creation of a class of crime based on speech is problematic in itself. There are things that are bad to say but it is not the place of the law to police speech – save perhaps when it is libellous or clearly inciting towards violence against a person or group of persons.

The proposed law is much broader than that. The Minister for Justice laments the inability of the 1989 law to criminalise “a small minority of individuals carrying out these reprehensible acts and spouting this abuse” yet the 1989 law was never designed to do such a thing. The new law is designed to create crimes for speech that is deemed unacceptable.

Since its inception, the debate around the proposed law has centred around characterising forms of speech as “hateful” without defining “hate” and to refer to such communication as a crime a priori although it had yet to be written into law. The act of legislating is treated – by the Government as well as much of the establishment – as a mere formality of codifying what the Minister already knows in her heart to be criminal.

The proposed law extends the list of protected characteristics which include race, colour, nationality, religion and sexual orientation to also cover gender, including gender expression and identity, and disability. While religion remains a protected characteristic under the law, that protection is a defensive one rather than a freedom in this case.

…There are good reasons for the religious to be concerned. The Catholic Church has long-standing objective positions on issues, which, if they are to be uttered in public (and that may include the pulpit), may cause the priest or other adherent to be made subject to prosecution. Although there is a subjective space for “reasonable and genuine contribution” in relation to literary, artistic, political, scientific, religious or academic discourse, this is based on what is “considered by a reasonable person as being reasonably necessary”.

What is likely to be considered reasonable, or what is a reasonable person, is contested in an increasingly polarised world. And because the law also places culpability on the “body corporate” to be responsible for what is communicated on its behalf, the Church may be equally culpable for the utterances of its more forthright members.

A priest, a nun, a layperson or any practising Catholic could be prosecuted for a hate crime for saying “There are only two sexes,” or “Marriage is between a man and a woman” once this passes. Practically any tenet of Roman Catholic doctrine qualifies as a hate crime with the plethora of protected classes in this bill. And, as the Church notes, if a priest is speaking from the pulpit, he is speaking for the “corporation” so the government can come for the Church.

This is really Orwellian. It shouldn’t be happening. People should be rising in horror at the thought but you know our American Progressives are licking their chops at the thought, and they do dip their toes ever so slightly in the fascist water of hate-speech regulation now and again. Thank God they don’t get too far, but that’s only because of the courts and the tremendous blowback from outraged citizens.

Judging from what I’ve been reading, most Irish believe this is a done deal and are already demanding the President send this to the Irish version of the Supreme Court. I don’t know how they stand for it.

I know we wouldn’t.

I hope we wouldn’t.

Would we?