Senator Pauline O’Reilly
By Paul Bennett
‘We are restricting freedom for the common good,’ Ireland’s Green Party Senator Pauline O’Reilly told the Irish Senate
The Irish government have blamed recent unrest on the “far-right” and vowed to fast track freedom-curbing “hate speech” legislation before Christmas.
The November 23 riots were in response to a barbaric knife attack on innocent children and a daycare employee in central Dublin by a 50-year-old Algerian immigrant earlier that day. Leanne Flynn and three children were wounded.
Addressing the nation at Dublin Castle after the stabbings, Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar crudely prioritized legislating hate speech laws to tackle the growing public unrest in Ireland over key issues such as mass immigration.
“It’s now obvious to anyone who might have doubted it that our incitement to hatred legislation is just not up to date for the social media age and we need that legislation through,” Varadkar said.
“And we need it through in a matter of weeks because it’s not just the platforms that have responsibility here, and they do, it’s also the individuals who past messages and images online that stir hatred and violence. We need to be able to use laws to go after them individually.”
As a result of a coordinated government response to tackle ‘hate speech’, the Republic of Ireland’s new Online Safety Media Commission have urged the Irish public to report any “hate speech” to the Gardai (Irish police) in the aftermath of last week’s unforeseen stabbings and riot in Dublin.
The newly established Irish online media regulator approved by the European Commission, Coimisiún na Meán, is currently overseeing what is being billed as online safety in Europe in a move to tackle hate speech and disinformation.
Immediately after the November 23 riot, the online regulators made Ireland the first EU member state to activate an alert under new Digital Services Act (DSA) rules. The activation alerted the European Commission to contact large social media companies within hours of the riot in Dublin, to remind them of their legal obligations regarding dissemination of illegal online content, threats, hate speech, and “disinformation.”
On November 28, Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media Catherine Martin told the Irish parliament that online regulators are “calling for those who see hate speech or other illegal content online to report it to platforms or to the Gardai.”
In the midst of growing tension and concern about mass immigration, housing, and crime in communities across the country, the Irish government are instead planning to pass legislation to curb freedom of speech. The new Hate Speech Bill is considered one of the strictest draconian hate speech legislations in the world.
The Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 (the Hate Speech Bill) will criminalize any speech that is “likely to incite hatred, or violence” against so-called “protected groups.”
The legislation vaguely defines “hatred” as “hatred against a person or a group of persons in the [Irish] State or elsewhere on account of their protected characteristics.” The protected characteristics includes race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and religion.
The radical bill outlines how merely possessing “hateful” content on your devices or having signs, posters and banners that could incite “hatred” could lead to criminal charges and upwards to five years of imprisonment.
Authorities will be allowed to seize all electronic devices, including phones, laptops, and tablets, and force individuals to hand over passwords, even if no crime has been committed.
Independent Irish Senator Sharon Keogan believes the main objective of the hate speech bill is “partly designed to keep political dissenters quiet.”
In a viral video that got international attention, a Green Party Senator called Pauline O’Reilly revealed the true nature of the radical hate speech laws during a discussion about the proposed legislation in the Irish Senate.
“When you think about it, all law, all legislation is about the restriction of freedom. That’s exactly what we are doing here,” she said. “We are restricting freedom, but we are doing it for the common good.”
On social media platform, X, Ohio Senator James David Vance reacted to the viral video of the Irish Senator by saying if this was in “Russia, or China or many other nations we would call it totalitarian and threaten economic sanctions.”
Elon Musk, owner of X has called the planned legislation a “massive attack against freedom of speech.”
The Hate Speech Bill was passed in the Irish Parliament in April 2023 and is currently now at a committee stage in the Senate.
