Does ICE's Arrest of Pro-Palestinian Activist Set a Dangerous Precedent for Free Speech? | DW News

Mar 13, 2025 | The Trump administration is seeking to deport a Palestinian activist who took part in protests at Columbia University last year. Mahmoud Khalil was detained over the weekend by federal immigration agents. His detention has drawn widespread condemnation from civil liberties organizations, given that he has not been charged with a crime. Khalil is US a greencard holder and thus a permanent resident of the United States. A judge has ordered he cannot be deported until his lawyers' legal challenge is considered.

Donald Trump is turning the USA into a police state, an authoritarian state, a dictatorship. Americans had better wake up FAST! – © Mark Alexander

Inside Trump’s Crackdown on Dissent: Obscure Laws, ICE Agents and Fear

THE NEW YORK TIMES: President Trump is clamping down broadly on dissent using the tools of the federal government.

For months now, President Trump has been threatening to deport foreign students who took part in last year’s campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war.

Behind the scenes, his administration got to work.

Investigators from a branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that typically focuses on human traffickers and drug smugglers scoured the internet for social media posts and videos that the administration could argue showed sympathy toward Hamas, administration officials said. The investigators handed over reports on multiple protesters to the State Department, which used an obscure legal statute to authorize the arrest over the weekend of a 30-year-old lawful permanent resident: Mahmoud Khalil.

Mr. Trump said this week that Mr. Khalil’s case was the first of “many to come.”

Civil rights groups say the arrest of Mr. Khalil, who is a legal permanent resident and is married to an American citizen, is a clear violation of the First Amendment. But it also illustrates how Mr. Trump is using the tools of the federal government to launch a crackdown not only on those who break the law — but also on dissent more broadly. » | Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Hamed Aleaziz | Reporting from Washington | Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Trump and Vance Want to Take Away Your Rights | The Warning with Steve Schmidt

Mar 4, 2025 | Donald Trump and JD Vance present themselves as defenders of free speech but they're actions say otherwise. Steve Schmidt looks at recent comments from Trump and Vance and explains why it's all part of their plan to silence you.

Donald Trump Attacks Freedom of Speech Just Hours after Weird JD Vance Interview!

Mar 4, 2025 | Jesse talks about Donald Trump's open threats to the 1st Amendment and free speech, including the people's right to protest and raise their voices to redress their government. Donald Trump posted to Truth Social, "All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on [sic] the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter." This is rich since JD Vance was on Sean Hannity's Fox News program only hours before when he said, "Are we willing to defend people even if we disagree with what they say? If you're not willing to do that, I don't think you're fit to lead in Europe or in the United States of America."

‘The Scale of Censorship Is Insane’ | Greg Lukianoff on Britain’s Speech Police

Dec 30, 2024 | Is the UK a free country anymore? An estimated nine people per day are arrested for making offensive comments online. In fact, more people had their collars felt in Britain for speech crimes in 2015 and 2016 than were arrested in the US during the entirety of First Red Scare. Here, Greg Lukianoff – president of the US’s Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression – warns that laws against so-called hate speech, and the elite panic over ‘misinformation’, have given licence to the British state to trample on our liberties. He also discusses the Trumpian threat to free speech, the explosion of campus censorship in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, and what it really means to ‘incite violence’.

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Starmer’s Britain Is No Longer a Free Country – It’s an Orwellian Dystopia

THE TELEGRAPH: The Allison Pearson witch-hunt lays bare this country’s despicable slide into authoritarianism

We must urgently speak out, or risk having to forever hold our peace. Free speech, the foundation of our liberties and democracy, is under threat like never before – yet much of the public remains blissfully unaware of the enormity of what is being taken from us.

The shocking treatment meted out to my colleague Allison Pearson, a brilliant columnist much beloved of Telegraph readers, must serve as the final wake-up call. She recounts how two police officers came knocking at her door at 9.40am on Remembrance Sunday to inform her that she was being investigated over a post on X, formerly Twitter, published a year ago.

Still in her dressing gown, she was stunned. The officers refused to tell Pearson which of her many posts their visit related to. They wouldn’t remind her what she had written. They weren’t allowed to tell her who complained; so much for open justice. The officers weren’t to blame: they were following Kafkaesque procedures dictated by an out-of-control technocratic machine. » | Allister Heath | Wednesday, November 13, 2024

It was because I feared that we were losing our freedom of speech that I wrote this back in August, and temporarily stopped blogging. — Mark

Authoritarian Labour's Attack on Free Speech in Pubs Strikes at the HEART of British Culture

Oct 18, 2024 | NCF (New Culture Forum) Founder & Director Peter Whittle addresses Labour's latest attack on British pubs.

Ann Widdecombe | On Censorship and Freedom of Speech | Oxford Union

Jul 10, 2019

It is to be hoped that our Führer, Herr Starmer, is listening! – © Mark Alexander

Nigel Farage: This Poses the 'Biggest Threat' to Free Speech We've Seen in UK History

Aug 11, 2024 | Reform U.K. Party Leader Nigel Farage reacts to riots following the murder of three children and the U.K. government's threat to arrest and prosecute social media users who post riot-related content.

Salman Rushdie and Freedom of Speech | ARTE.tv Culture

In 2022, Salman Rushdie narrowly survived an assassination attempt by an Islamic extremist. This year's winner of the German Publishers' Peace Prize at the Frankfurt Book Fair, we interview the acclaimed writer in New York. Also in the programme: Russian journalist Elena Kostyutchenko, Slovenian authors Pia Prezelj and Suzana Tratnik, and a focus on the graphic novel “Woman, Life, Freedom" by Marjane Satrapi.

Salman Rushdie and Freedom of Speech | ARTE.tv Culture

The Escalating Frequency of Quran Burnings in Sweden and Denmark Sparks Outrage in the Muslim World

Sep 4, 2023 | The burning of the Quran in Denmark and Sweden has raised security concerns both domestically and internationally for the traditionally secular Nordic nations. Denmark has recently suggested a ban on burning all sacred texts. Could this move by Copenhagen be a solution that balances the preservation of freedom of speech while also addressing security and diplomatic challenges?

That Denmark is re-introducing a form of blasphemy law to deal with these Quran burnings is as insane as it is outrageous. This will put Denmark, once a bastion of enlightened liberal values, on a fast track to the ‘New Dark Age’ I wrote of so many years ago!

It is not difficult to understand WHY the Danish government may conclude that this is the right political decision; but it is NOT. The re-introduction of ANY form of blasphemy law is WRONG. And it is wrong in so many ways and for so many reasons.

The blasphemy law in Denmark has only relatively recently been repealed. I am pretty sure that it was never, if ever, used by the Danish Christian community. But here, we are dealing with a very different community! The Muslim community will take every opportunity to use this law against any perceived transgressor. Be sure of one thing, Denmark: The Danish courts will used by Muslims to help firmly establish Islam’s hoped-for supremacy in the country.

By re-introducing a rejigged blasphemy law into the nation’s statute books, Denmark is embarking on a new journey on a very slippery and dangerous road.

This is the beginning of the end of true freedom for the Danes. – © Mark Alexander

Finnish Politician Could Face Jail Time after Sharing Bible Verse

Aug 10, 2023 | A Finnish politician on trial for sharing her biblical views on sexuality is heading back to court later this month as her four-year legal battle stretches on. Dr. Päivi Räsänen, the embattled member of Finland’s parliament, told CBN's Faithwire [that] a hearing in a prosecutor's appeal after she was cleared of hate speech charges last year is scheduled for Aug. 31. She said she's prepared to defend herself in any and all necessary courts of law.

"It was four years ago in June 2019 when I posted a Twitter post and also to Facebook, and it was about the Pride event that was going on, and the main church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, decided to support it officially," Räsänen said. "And it was a shock to me, and as a member of that church ... I asked the leadership of my church ... how is it possible that you are supporting something, as a matter of pride, what the Bible calls shame and sin."

Her simple social media post, which included Scripture from the Book of Romans, soon landed her in legal hot water, as a citizen made a criminal complaint. Then other past comments from Räsänen came under scrutiny. Another complaint was reportedly filed over a radio program she was on and another over an old pamphlet she wrote about same-sex relationships. Police interrogated Räsänen over her views and Finnish prosecutors decided to up the ante and file charges.

"I was first interrogated by the police altogether 13 hours," Räsänen said. "And I have to say that the situation was really absurd, because just some years ago I was a minister of interior in charge of police." Räsänen was accused of "inciting against sexual minorities," a charge which could carry two years in jail, or a fine. Listen to her story…


It seems clear to me that we, on this side of the Pond, need to have a written constitution so that we know exactly what can and cannot be said, or written.

I have raised this point before in a newspaper comment in the Telegraph. Here in the UK, there have been so many changes in the make-up of the country and in the nation's value systems, and in a very short time, that it has become very difficult to know exactly what may, or may not, be said or stated without falling foul of the law.

Americans, by contrast, do not have this problem, because they have a written constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech in the First Amendment of the US Constitution. We Brits, however, have no such clear determination or understanding of freedom of speech or expression. In the UK, it is a fudge. Yes, we have freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but with restrictions. (See here). Where there are restrictions, there is no total freedom. So the whole thing is left open to another’s interpretation of what is right and/or fair.

This might have been acceptable and workable in a bygone age, whilst the nation was made up of the indigenous peoples of the UK, who were largely Christian in belief and lifestyle. But today, this is clearly not the case. Today, we have a hotchpotch of beliefs and non-belief, and a hotchpotch of sexual orientations, too. All must somehow live together in total harmony. But for this total harmony to be facilitated, people need to know exactly where they stand and they need to know exactly what can and what cannot be said, or written. A written constitution is the answer. – © Mark Alexander

It’s Not the Police’s Job to Shut Down Political Debate. They Should Stick to Solving Crime

THE OBSERVER – OPINION: The appeals court has rightly upheld Harry Miller’s freedom to express his views

Aman gets a call from a police officer. He is told that, while he has done nothing criminal, his social media posts have offended someone, so the police have recorded them as a non-crime hate incident that may show up on criminal record checks. The officer warns that if he continues to “escalate” matters, the police may take criminal action against him, a message later reinforced by his superiors.

It may sound like something out of a police state. But this happened in Britain in 2019, in a case that led the high court judge who later ruled the actions of Humberside police force unlawful to warn them, “in this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi”. Despite there being no evidence that Harry Miller, the man in question, might ever stray into unlawful speech, the police took action that reasonably led him to believe that he was being warned not to exercise his right to freedom of expression on pain of potential criminal prosecution; they also opined to the press that Miller’s tweets were “transphobic”.

And just before Christmas, in a landmark judgment that has attracted surprisingly little commentary from human rights lawyers given its profound implications, the court of appeal went further in ruling that the College of Policing’s guidance that the police should record all non-crime hate incidents, as perceived by those taking offence at them, is an unlawful incursion on citizens’ freedom of expression. » | Sonia Sodha | Sunday, January 2, 2022

Labour to Vote against Tory ‘Hate Speech’ Bill

THE OBSERVER: Plans to protect free speech leave universities in England and Wales ‘at risk of being sued’ by anti-vaxxers and Holocaust deniers

Government plans to “safeguard” free speech in universities would allow Holocaust deniers, anti-vaccination groups and conspiracy theorists to take legal action against higher education organisations that denied them a platform to air their views, Labour said last night.

Announcing that its MPs would vote against the higher education (freedom of speech) bill, which has its second reading in the Commons this week, Labour claimed that it was a hugely divisive and harmful “hate speech bill”.

Universities UK and the National Union of Students have also expressed grave concerns about the bill, suggesting it is wildly disproportionate, and could leave institutions and student unions wide open to costly legal actions from people making vexatious or frivolous claims that they have been denied public platforms. » | Toby Helm, Political editor | Sunday, July 11, 2021

Ian McEwan on the Burka and Freedom of Speech – BBC Newsnight

Author of the Children Act Ian McEwan gives his take on religious freedom v freedom of speech.

The Debate - US Racial Tension: How Far Should Freedom of Speech Be Allowed to Go?

Bad News in the Battle for Freedom of Speech

Ezra Levant of TheRebel.media reports more bad news in the battle for freedom of speech as the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear his appeal of the defamation judgment against him.

Robert Spencer on the Jihad Against the Freedom of Speech

On November 12, 2016, Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer spoke at the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Restoration Weekend at The Breakers in West Palm Beach, Florida, on the ongoing Islamic efforts to compel the U.S. and the West to curtail the freedom of speech.

Freedom of Speech Conference – Sweden | Hamed Abdel Samad

The conference DANGEROUS WORDS 250 was held in Stockholm October 1st, 2016, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Swedish Freedom of the Press Act.

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff | Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)