It was back in 2013 that the Supreme Court of Canada stated, astoundingly, that the Truth was not a defense against “hate crime” charges. Now this philosophy may be manifesting itself in Spain, where a populist political party daring to claim that migrants get more government money than retirees is being investigated for “incitement to hatred.”
As Breitbart reports, “Spanish populist party VOX is being investigated over a campaign poster that compares monthly spending on migrant minors to monthly spending on Spanish pensioners.”
“The poster [below], which was launched ahead of the May 4th elections in Madrid, claims ‘A [migrant minor], €4,700 [£4,080/$5,670] per month, your grandmother, a €426 [£370/$514] pension per month’ and shows a picture of an elderly woman and a young man with his face covered by a scarf and wearing a hoodie,” the site continued.
And because the Truth to the Left is like a cross to a vampire, the “Madrid prosecutor’s office announced on Wednesday that it would be opening an investigation on the grounds of incitement to hatred after receiving several complaints about the posters, including from the socialist government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Le Figaro reports,” Breitbart also tells us.
“UNICEF, Save the Children, and Caritas also released a joint statement condemning the posters and stating they were ‘fake news’ and ‘hate speech.’”
Le Figaro also states that Vox made its claims “wrongly,” but, raising suspicion among the sage, provides no specificity. Breitbart explains the failure to elaborate, writing that “Spanish broadcaster RTVE claimed that the figures presented in the poster are false and misleading as the minor migrants are not given a cash payment of €4,700, but noted the figures did come from a study showing the total costs of migrant minors that included their housing and other expenses.”
Of course, this is a distinction perhaps without a difference. Whatever form the handouts take, it’s still €4,700 transferred from taxpayers to migrant non-citizens. Moreover, when assessing an employment opportunity, people always factor benefits into the equation precisely because they can be as good as, and sometimes better than (i.e., getting more bang for your buck), cash.
It’s no surprise that Vox has been charged under “hate speech” prohibitions, which are really just a new — and dishonest and ever-morphing — form of heresy laws. They don’t actually punish “hate,” which itself is a problem because it’s an effort at thought control. Rather, they punish what the powers-that-be hate, namely, opposition to the establishment agenda.
This is why leftists can hurl at political opponents the most vile pejoratives — such as “racist,” “bigot,” “Nazi,” and “fascist” — and destroy people’s careers and reputations without consequence. It’s the same double standard that gets January 6 portrayed as the worst attack since Pearl Harbor while 600 violent left-wing riots are winked at.
And because hate-speech laws are so convenient for silencing opposition is why Vox is far from their first victim. A particularly egregious example was when the founder of the Liberty GB Party, Briton Paul Weston, was arrested in 2014 on hate-speech charges for quoting famed British statesman Winston Churchill.
A profound difference between heresy laws — at least those in medieval Europe (pagan civilizations had their “heresy” laws, too) — and hate-speech prohibitions is a troubling one. Heresy laws were based on the idea that Truth exists and that violation of it was dangerous to society. While you can disagree with the conception of Truth expressed through them, their authors weren’t making it up as they went along; since they knew that Truth is unchanging, they knew their heresy laws should also be. You could know where you stood.
Moreover, they saw themselves as defenders of Truth and never, ever would’ve said it was “no defense.”
Hate-speech thought police, however, have explicitly set themselves up in opposition to Truth. In fact, while adjudicating a 2013 case involving a Christian charged with hate speech, the Supreme Court of Canada actually affirmed “that speaking the truth is not a defence,” reported Canadian Journalists for Free Expression at the time. And enemies of Truth are enemies of civilization.
Speaking of which, I can help the Spanish thought police out: Vox’s poster absolutely could incite hatred.
So can most anything else.
During a very biased, intellectually degraded interview last night, occasionally funny comedian Jimmy Kimmel told MyPillow creator Mike Lindell that “you could potentially draw a line from” ideas he espouses “to the riot we had at the Capitol.”
Really? Okay, Jimmy, and what line led to the 600-plus violent left-wing riots that have devastated our nation? What line, and from where, brought us the congressional baseball shooting targeting Republicans in 2017? Who uttered what that sparked the spasms of violence — 99 percent of which is leftist handiwork — that have convulsed our country for years now?
In reality, any time you sound any alarm, valid or not, someone could be moved to violence. Why, inveighing against thievery could inspire irrational individuals to take rash action against accused thieves, who may very well be innocent.
As for incitement in Spain, consider the tweet below.
Who’s responsible for point, line, result there?
As I illustrated in “Violence, Inc.: A Leftist Enterprise,” it’s a bit fanciful thinking the “professional” Left has any problem with violence at all. But if most any warning could spark violence, what’s the solution? Should we all just shut up?
Well, not all potentially violence-inspiring comments are created equal. The crucial distinction is whether uttered is the Truth — or a lie.
If you speak Truth that’s prudent to express at the given moment and which sparks some violence, the latter is what’s known in moral philosophy as “a negative unintended consequence of a morally licit action.” If violence results from a lie’s utterance, however, the liar has blood on his hands.
And how can you identify the liars? Well, call me crazy, but I’d start by looking at people who claim that “speaking the Truth is not a defense.”
