Individual Submissions 01
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Individual 11 Dear Department of Justice, The greatest gift that God ever gave us was that grey matter between our two ears AND the freedom to use it. What the Irish State seeks with this ‘hate speech’ law is censorship! I could give an eloquent, detailed treatise about the fight for free speech, from Mills to Milton from Voltaire to Socrates or how dictatorial regimes arose which crushed free speech. How many wars have been fought to keep our free speech and now you want to whittle it away because feelings are upset? How long will it take before the Irish State mandated speech moves from criminalising ‘I hate you because you are gay..etc..’ to ‘I hate you because you disagree with me about climate change’… Have we not learned from the prohibition era in the United States or the Streisand effect or the Reddit ban of 2015? Banning speech that you ‘dislike/hate’ will not stop it but just move it to other places. The solution to ‘hate speech’ is more speech - if you hate what your opponent says, shine a light on it, debate them bring your facts and figures and dismantle their ‘hate’ ideas. I want to see ‘hateful speech’ coming a mile away and then able to condemn it in the open. Banning it sends it scurrying into dark corners where you cannot see it coming and cannot defend against it. If we run our Irish society or indeed the Irish state based on feelings and not facts then we are on a road to a terrible destination. You cannot have free speech in Irish society where my free speech ends because your feelings begin! What the Irish State wants is allow plenty of debate in society but in narrow spectrum of acceptable speech that the State and only the State defines. This is still censorship and as Brendan O’Neill says “Censorship is the midwife of stupidity; it makes you stupid.” Please, please do not proceed with this, please do not restrain speech – please keep Ireland open & free! Individual 12 Submission to "Public Consultation" pursuant to "Review of the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act, 1989". Wednesday 11th December 2019. Introduction:- Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has been quoted or misquoted as declaring that "one should never start an inquiry without knowing the outcome in advance". Whether Blair actually said such a thing or not, it is difficult to construe this particular initiative of the Government of Ireland - this "public consultation" - as being in any way different from any such ruse in both spirit and intention - and, indeed, any objective forensic analysis of the statements made by the Government in October 2019 around what is colloquially being called "the Hate Speech Consultation" cannot but reach a conclusion that a ruse is, indeed, taking place in this instance. In his essay On Politics and the English Language George Orwell analysed how those in power manipulate language in order to manipulate individual and group perception so as to pursue an agenda (as Orwell indicated, "if those in power want to abuse someone the first thing that they have to abuse is language" - absolutely). With the Hate Speech Consultation of the Government of Ireland ("the Consultation") it is almost impossible to avoid concluding that the specific agenda of its initiators is to gain extensive control of and, then, curtailment of genuine public discourse in general, with specific regard to political discourse and, so, to achieve the goal of stifling political dissent in Ireland. The "consultation document"1 ("the Document") linked to the webpage2 in the matter (in its own words:- "If you are making a written submission it is recommended that you read the consultation document") is, in fact, so badly written in so many ways as to be unfit for purpose even on its own terms. This sloppily laid out text, lacking page numbers, is replete with sophomoric vocabulary far below a standard appropriate to a matter which is as important as this is - and there is no mitigation of such criticism by claiming "well, we wanted to put it in everyday language that ordinary people would find easy and simple to read" because the Document is not in everyday language nor is it easy or simple to read, if only in its register, tone and deficient overall composition. Everyday language is clear, concise, objective, neutral and leaves the reader in no doubt about what the intent of the author is or what the author might be trying to tell them - the Document is none of these things. This fact needs no more elaboration; there is no need to provide an exhaustive correction of the Document which, in this specific instance, is not pertinent to the substantive matter. Correction of bad writing should be done elsewhere. The Document, in its maladroit way, launches itself with some preconceptions. These same preconceptions are not necessarily expressed directly or cogently but it can be inferred that those engaging with both the process of making submissions and the Document itself are expected to accept that:- (1) there is something wrong with Ireland's present Statute; (2) there is something wrong with Ireland's Judiciary; (3) there is an urgent imperative upon the Oireachtas to change Ireland's present Statute by way of either addition or subtraction; 1[link removed] 2 [link removed] (4) the term "hate" already has legal significance overall and particularly to a point where a person might get a conviction3 under such a term; (5) any person who dissents from (1) and / or (2) and / or (3) and / or (4) above is, in so doing, automatically acting with mal fides; (6) any person who fits the category as set out at (5), above, is racist, as commonly defined; (7) any person who fits the category as set out at (5), above, deserves to be ignored, including by the Government of Ireland, overall and particularly with regard to the drafting of any proposed Statute. That is, as set out in points 1 to 7 above, there seems to be a desire to deploy an ad-hominem argument against any person whose response does not comply with those same propositions. When the situation is seen in this way it becomes clear that, of course, any such attempt to malign any dissenter from the same propositions would be both wrong and even malevolent in intent. So, to start, the definitions as expressed in the Document are inherently faulty. Nevertheless it is an imperative to address the Document directly so both this introduction and the rest of this Submission are expressed so as to make a satisfactory response to the five questions included as germane to the Document and the Consultation. The right to hate. Hate is a human emotion intrinsic to existence, an involuntary response to an external stimulus beyond the control of the person who is hating. Hate is as strong and sincerely felt an emotion as love (because the opposite of love is not hate but indifference). There was no time in the past when hate suddenly entered the spectrum of human emotions so it is entirely unrealistic, even preposterous to deny that hate exists or to try to engage in some utopian experiment of social engineering to try to "eradicate hate". Denial of this basic fact - that people will hate things or maybe even other people irrespective of whatever laws might be enacted or enforced - seems to be no less than an effort at thought control. Hate influences the opinions of the person who is hating - and people are absolutely entitled to have and to express their opinions - so trying to define and stigmatise hate seems to be an effort to control the opinions of others. The right to offend versus the right to incite violence. Different things offend different people such as communicating with expletives, wearing leather, having tattoos, getting a novel hairstyle, political affiliation, particular songs, smoking cigarettes and so on, all of which are not illegal but which many people, with varying justification, find offensive. If 3 "conviction" has a clear and unambiguous meaning in Ireland - it means that a properly convened Criminal Court of Justice has, upon the completion of what shall be assumed to be a fair trial, made a finding of fact being that the person subject to it is guilty of committing an offence presently prohibited by Irish Statute. So, the term "conviction" carries a lot of substantial meaning. In Ireland a conviction cannot arise anywhere other than a properly convened Criminal Court of Justice - not in civil litigation other than regarding perjury or contempt of Court, and at no time in any way anywhere else such as via a disciplinary tribunal, TUSLA inquiry, Oireachtas hearing, Board of Management meeting or any such like whatsoever. Many people seem not to know this fundamental point of Irish Constitutional Law yet it is important to uphold it so as to protect people from being subject to kangaroo courts. people find such things offensive they are, of course, entitled to express their offence but this does not put any imperative put upon the person who might be causing the offence. This stands in stark contrast to the implications of making statements which incite violence such as targeting a specific group of people - Muslims, for instance - and expressing a means by which such people should be victims of violence. Such a remark might be:- "when you see Muslims coming out of their mosque you should drive a car at them" or "those Muslims who live in [insert name of Irish town here] should be attacked and driven out of there".