Darwinian Marinian

Marine biology & aquaculture graduate
🇬🇧🇫🇷🦺
There is no such thing as a right to not be offended, insulted or hated
🚫🥾🐍

[Adam Thierer @AdamThierer]

my thoughts on the new Illinois social media tax law:

“It’s a pretty straightforward tax on speech, and a discriminatory one at that. It basically suggests that it’s alright for government to be singling out types of media or media platforms that it does not like and assessing special taxes accordingly.”

And I have plenty of other concerns...

[Andrew Doyle @andrewdoyle_com]

Inevitably, the government is exploiting the horrific attack in Belfast to justify censorship.

The previous government did the same after the murder of Sir David Amess.

They never want to address the problem; they only want to prevent people from talking about the problem.

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

📣🚨 FSU Victory!!

The Free Speech Union has just heard from South Wales Police that it has withdrawn its guidance on “anti-Muslim hostility”.

The force had effectively adopted its own Islamic blasphemy law, instructing officers to record any conversation that went beyond “legitimate” discussion of Islam.

Under this guidance, criticism of Islam could have been recorded as an anti-social behaviour incident and potentially appeared on DBS checks, affecting someone’s ability to work as a teacher, carer, or in other regulated professions.

South Wales Police has backed down because the Free Speech Union threatened them with a judicial review if it chose to press ahead with the policy.

The force has described this move as a “pause” to the guidance — but we think it is highly unlikely to return.

We must also thank Shadow Equalities Minister @ClaireCoutinho for referring South Wales Police to the Equality and Human Rights Commission after we brought this issue to her attention.

Blasphemy laws were abolished by Parliament 18 years ago. We must not allow them to return through the back door.

Let this be a warning to any other public body — particularly police forces — considering the adoption of its own blasphemy laws.

Watch Lord Young below 👇

[Darwinian Marinian @DMarinian]

@DefiantLs Please watch Arrival (2016).

[Darwinian Marinian @DMarinian]

@sleepy_devo @tafphorisms No.

https://t.co/y11Vuf10ew

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

Ah yes...except that it hasn't just been "the right" pointing out how bad it is for free speech on campus for ages now, and the leftward shift began almost a century ago and accelerated in the 1990s.

But whose fault is it? Surely somebody elses!

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

South Wales Police are enforcing their own Islamic blasphemy law, 18 years after Parliament voted to abolish such laws.

The Free Speech Union has long warned that the Government’s official definition of Islamophobia — repackaged as “anti-Muslim hatred” — would silence legitimate criticism of Islam and encourage public bodies to go further.

South Wales Police have now instructed officers to record comments they deem to go beyond “legitimate” discussion of Islam. These will be logged as anti-social behaviour incidents and could be disclosed on an enhanced DBS check, potentially preventing people from getting a job.

The Free Speech Union has written to South Wales Police demanding that this guidance be withdrawn. If they fail to do so, we have warned that we will seek a judicial review.

As Shadow Equalities Minister @ClaireCoutinho wrote to the Chief Constable: “At a time of widespread concern about two-tier policing, your force is creating a separate and more restrictive category of speech that applies only in the context of one religion. This is not equal treatment under the law.”

Read Claire’s letter below 👇

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

Henry Nowak: How Anti-Racism Gave You Racism

[Darwinian Marinian @DMarinian]

@CS1_1SC @kunou126 @Orare_Deum @cheezedawgb Have you ever seen the movie Hot Fuzz by any chance?

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

Henry Nowak was an 18 year-old student on a night out in Southampton.

He was brutally stabbed with a 21cm ceremonial knife carried by a Sikh man.

The footage released last night is deeply distressing and has shocked us all.

As Henry lay bleeding out on the ground, the police arrested him on an accusation of a racial slur.

When he told officers that he could not breathe and that he had been stabbed, an officer can be heard saying “I don’t think you have, mate”.

Rather than attempt to save this young man’s life, the police were more interested in an accusation of racism.

The last thing Henry heard was being read his rights as he was arrested.

When the police are more concerned with an allegation about words potentially said than the fact that a young man has suffered a fatal knife wound, the extent of the mess our police are in is laid bare.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary have some serious questions to answer.

[Committee for Academic Freedom @ComAcFreedom]

🚨BREAKING: Following representations from CAF and a coalition of free speech organisations — including Academics for Academic Freedom and the London Universities' Council for Academic Freedom — the Government has confirmed that the recent High Court ruling in the University of Sussex v Office for Students case will not affect full implementation of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023.

The letter, which was organised by Professor @ObhishekSaha, warned ministers that some university leaders were seeking to use the judgment — in which the OfS lost on several grounds — as a reason to resist the commencement of key new enforcement provisions in the Act, including the free speech complaints scheme.

Skills Minister Baroness Jacqui Smith has now replied, stating in unexpectedly firm and unequivocal language that the judgment “does not impact” the Government’s plans to commence the Act’s key provisions. The complaints scheme therefore remains on course to open on 1 September 2026.

This is reassuring news. The scheme will provide a free-to-use route for academics, external speakers and non-student members to seek redress when their free speech or academic freedom rights are infringed. For many, it will offer a far more realistic remedy than the delays, costs and legal complexity associated with Employment Tribunal proceedings brought under the Equality Act 2010.

Without an effective enforcement mechanism, universities face little practical incentive to align their internal policies with their legal duties. At the very least, the new scheme therefore offers the prospect of a regulatory framework capable of giving meaningful effect to universities’ statutory duties to secure #freedomofspeech within the law and protect academic freedom.

@Fox_Claire @joshxhowie @MaximumCities @SpeechUnion @MShipworth @drianpace @HJoyceGender @AFFSUK @AFAF_freespeech

[Dries Van Langenhove @DVanLangenhove]

These two paragraphs of my verdict are crucial for everyone to read and understand.

"Even if all of the statements made by Van Langenhove are based on scientific evidence and statistics, it makes no difference to the criminal intent. Van Langenhove is not charged with spreading false information. He is charged with presenting facts in a way that incites hatred against persons on the grounds of one or more of the protected criteria in the Anti-Racism Law.” 1⃣

"For Van Langenhove to have committed a crime, it is not necessary for him to have incited concrete acts of hate or violence. It suffices that others are incited to take on a general attitude of intolerance or disapproval regarding a group protected under the criteria of the Anti-Racism Law." 2⃣

This means you can go to jail for "inciting hatred" even if your statements were 100% factual (see 1⃣) and even if you did NOT incite concrete acts of hate (see 2⃣).

The benchmark of "inciting hatred" , a crime punishable by prison, is thus "saying something that has the potential of inciting someone to have a general attitude of disapproval regarding a protected group". This means literally any criticism of mass migration is now a punishable offence. If you cite a statistic, and someone could potentially think less of a protected group (like migrants) because of it, you can be jailed.

The craziest part is that there is no defence possible against this. I brought the scientific studies that I cited to court, but the judge didn't care 1⃣. I also proved that the hundreds of students present at the lecture included students of all different political affiliations, and everyone was able to voice their opinion or ask questions. The lecture went very calmly, so obviously nobody was incited to hatred. But this too did not matter 2⃣, because if the judge says he believes there is the possibility that someone COULD be incited to "a general attitude of disapproval", this is enough for the judge to send me to jail, even without any evidence.

I'm telling you this to warn you that by the time these hate speech laws have come into place, it's already too late. You will NEVER be able to beat these laws in court. You have to stop them before they are implemented. Let my fate be your warning.

[Dries Van Langenhove @DVanLangenhove]

A very sad announcement.

I have just been convicted a second time for 'hate speech' and it is only due to a technicality that I could not immediately be sent to jail —to the judge's frustration.

In an ironic turn of events it's actually thanks to my previous prison sentence (for memes in a private group chat) that I am now still free —in a physical sense, at least.

Call me naive but I didn't think they would take it this far, given that this precedent criminalises many of the arguments used by even the most moderate politicians critical of mass migration.

In February 2024 I gave a lecture at Catholic University Leuven wherein I linked mass migration to crime and a deterioration of our quality of life. Every single point I made was 100% the truth and based on scientific evidence.

Cynically, even the judge that convicted me admits as much by writing in his verdict: “Even if all of the statements made by Van Langenhove are based on scientific evidence and statistics, it makes no difference to the criminal intent. Van Langenhove is not charged with spreading false information. He is charged with presenting facts in a way that incites hatred against persons on the grounds of one or more of the protected criteria in the Anti-Racism Law.”

That's a lot of words just to say he wants to send me to prison for speaking the truth.

Even the regime media write: "It did not matter to the court that Van Langenhove was quoting scientific sources. The judge argued that Van Langenhove's main message was that a big part of the societal problems like insecurity, housing shortages and lowering educational standards are due to mass migration."

You may think the regime media are being sympathetic to me in the first sentence, but in reality they are warning people: even if you speak the truth, if you go against our narrative, we will crush you in every way possible.

Both the public prosecutor and the judge did not present a single real argument as to how or against whom I would have incited hatred. So even if I would accept their crazy, dystopic law, I still did not break it.

The only argument they present is that I created a "hostile atmosphere of us versus them” in regards to migrants. But even this silly argument (which is not even a punishable offence) is not true. To me, the deadly disease is self-hatred and one of its worst symptoms is replacement migration. My enemy is thus NOT the migrants themselves but those orchestrating the mass migration.

Sadly, in Belgium, evidence is not needed and ‘vibes’ are enough to put someone in jail.

Given the fact that I have another court case coming up in September and that I have a dozen active criminal investigations for hate speech, time is running out for me. I have already paid more than €420,000 in legal fees and there is no ending in sight. I have been in an intense battle of attrition for eight years and must now regroup to make sure I can still win.

If you want to help me, you can do so via the links below. If you can help in other ways, please contact me via DM.

If you live in a country that still has free speech, never let them touch it, however noble they make the motives sound, because this is where it leads to.

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

In my career defending academic freedom and free speech, I never saw anything become as immediately radioactive as views that ran counter to the narrative on trans issues. Papers were retracted, compelled speech was treated as normal, and people were canceled for saying things that would have sounded like common sense just a few years earlier. It seemed to become a kind of secular blasphemy overnight. And usually, that is a sign that the true believers know, at some level, that they are on shaky ground.

@hoovlet

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

$22,567 per day.

That’s what Perry County, TN will pay Larry Bushart for every day it kept him in jail over a Trump meme.

He lost 37 days of his life and his job, and missed his anniversary and the birth of his grandchild.

All for speech the First Amendment protects.

Proud that @TheFIREorg helped Larry fight back and win, and even prouder that the First Amendment still has teeth.

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

Every attempt to shut down campus speech should trigger an independent investigation asking two questions:

1) Did administrators do anything to stop the censorship?

2) Did administrators do anything to encourage, excuse, or facilitate it?

Students are responsible for their own actions. But the deeper scandal is administrative complicity.

In a healthy university, the answer to right-wing demands to fire a professor would be: “No way.” And the answer to left-wing attempts to shut down a speaker would be: “Not on my watch.”

Does that sound fanciful? At this point, probably. Because it has become hard to imagine administrators actually acting this way.

The dirty little secret is that too many of them have enabled this for years. Some are hired into ideological jobs built around policing speech, running BRTs, and managing “harm” rather than protecting open inquiry. Sometimes the damage comes through omission: refusing to punish obvious censorship. Sometimes it comes through commission, as at Stanford Law School several years ago, when administrators actively helped the shutdown along. Here, it looks like a combination of both.

So yes, blame the students. They are adults, not infants or automatons. But look squarely at the administrators who are supposed to defend academic freedom and freedom of speech—and who too often undermine those values instead.

We have long since passed the stage where tolerated—and often facilitated—shutdowns and shoutdowns can be treated as somehow distinct from university policy. If campuses allow, and especially if they facilitate, the systematic silencing of locally unpopular points of view, that should not be treated as some weird tragic coincidence. They have the power to stop it. They don’t.

Worse, they often train students to think like censors and then protect them when they act that way. Until universities prove otherwise, the systematic shutting down of unpopular voices on campus should be understood as formal—or at least semi-formal—university policy.

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

GCSE students are being taught that it is their civic duty not to offend anyone.

A textbook designed to help secondary school pupils prepare for citizenship studies states that Britons have a responsibility “to use freedom of speech but not offend”.

The guide also states that “freedom of speech may be used to promote extremist views”.

“This should be limited so it protects rights and does not discriminate against others”.

We should not be teaching children that they have a right not to be offended. This is bad for education and bad for society. Schools should be places where ideas are tested and debated — not silenced.

General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Lord Young, has said: “This revision guide is encouraging children to cancel their classmates for saying something they find offensive. It’s whipping up cancel culture in schools.

“If children are being taught in school that the right to free speech doesn’t include the right to be offensive, God help us.”

In the wise words of Lord Justice Sedley, “Free speech includes not only the inoffensive, but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative, provided it does not tend to promote violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”

Everyone has the right to free speech, and nobody has the right not to be offended.

Read more below 👇

[Darwinian Marinian @DMarinian]

@Delachica_ @KidFl4zh @quackustrations @oanimadorgas @runwayml They only succeed when made by those who specialise in horror animation. Some that come to mind are Alberto Vázquez, Satoshi Kon, Kenji Nakamura, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Phil Tippet, Henry Selick, the Quay Brothers, Jan Balej, Jiří Barta, Cristobal León & Joaquín Cociña...
(2/2)

[Darwinian Marinian @DMarinian]

@Delachica_ @KidFl4zh @quackustrations @oanimadorgas @runwayml I don't really think the problem really lies in studio production standards & creative freedom, but more to do so with the fact that it's hard to match horror and animation together effectively. Animated horror has a tough job trying to scare an audience, it often fails. (1/2)

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

Helping no.2 child with GCSE ‘Citizenship’ revision. Get a load of this.

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

📣🚨GRAHAM LINEHAN ACQUITTED OF CRIMINAL DAMAGE

“The decision of the Court to throw out this case , is very welcome – but this case should never have got to court.

There has been a troubling pattern of police forces around the country to ��believe’ trans-rights activists, time and time again, even when there has been overwhelming evidence that complaints have been made against gender critical campaigners, in bad faith.

The police have failed in their duty to properly and fairly investigate – preferring instead to support one side over the other in a debate. All this has done is erode the faith the public should be able to have in the police. We are sick of two tier policing and I hope with today’s verdict it will end.

I have suffered greatly in my fight to protect women and children from what I believe to be a dangerous ideology. But I am proud that I have never given in and I will not do.

I have been lifted through support from friends and strangers, from women’s rights groups to London cabbies who have taken the time to stop and shake my hand.

I am very grateful to my legal team; Daniel Berke and Sarah Vine KC and to the team at the Free Speech Union”.