A tweet by American author Michael Shellenberger, commenting on an article by Ben Scallan, arguing the fact that NGOs funded by George Soros, businessman and self-proclaimed philanthropist, demand a crackdown on free speech as “Politicians Spread Hate Misinformation,” was published on Public online media outlet. Elon Musk, business magnate and investor, free-speech advocate and Twitter (now X) social media platform owner, retweeted Shellenberger’s post, agreeing with it.
Michael Shellenberger’s post read: “Politicians & George Soros-funded NGOs say “hate incidents” are rising, but they’re not. The data show the opposite: higher-than-ever and rising levels of tolerance of minorities. The reason they’re spreading hate misinformation is to justify a draconian crackdown on free speech.”
In his re-tweet, Elon Musk was brief but to the point:
Exactly. X will be filing legal action to stop this. Can’t wait for discovery to start!”
Exactly.
X will be filing legal action to stop this. Can’t wait for discovery to start! https://t.co/ROxXEuO8it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 23, 2023
Musk had been noted as saying with regard to wanting to make Twitter (now X) purchased by him free of censorship:
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”
Musk apparently agrees with Ben Scallan, an Irish journalist, that the increase in “hate-based offenses,” reported by Ireland’s Justice Minister Helen McEntee, last June, “is clearly from an increase in reporting, not actual hate crimes or “incidents.”
An “increase in the reporting of hate offenses is different from an actual increase,”
argues Scallan. He goes on to explain: “you don’t even have to be the victim of the alleged crime to report it. A random bystander who has nothing to do with the event can say, “I think it was based on prejudice,” and it will be categorized as such. Someone could report what was an obvious joke between laughing friends as a “hate incident” to the police.”
The author writes that since 2019, the police and the government have openly urged people to come forward and report hate incidents. In 2021, the police said their goal was to “increase levels of reported hate crime.” However, the government cannot justify their claim that there has been an increase in actual crimes; in fact, their own data shows that Ireland is ultimately an unbelievably tolerant country. As a journalist who has followed this issue closely, Scallan says:
I can assure you that there is no good evidence that hate crimes of any kind are increasing in my country, including against people of a migrant background, of which I am one.”
All of this hype about hate is a pretext for the effort by Irish politicians to pass a strict new “hate speech” law, which would make it a criminal offense to possess allegedly “hateful material” — on paper or digitally — on your person or in your home, the author concludes.
Sound familiar?
Along with other LGBTQ organizations, last year, Amnesty launched a Workplace Sensitization Program in Hungary, where “the participants learn about the terminology surrounding gender and sexual minorities, and discuss violations affecting LGBTQ people,” basically encouraging them to speak out and report any incident they feel is discriminatory against them.
This spring, it was the US Embassy in Hungary that ruffled some feathers by funding a nation-wide poster campaign, inciting conflict and as such, seriously violating Hungary’s sovereignty, about which Hungary Today also reported.
Conservatives in the US are not happy, and they have started to voice their opinion as well. In an opinion piece entitled “Biden takes the culture war to Hungary,” the
author and researcher of The Washington Examiner asks about the democratic justification of US taxpayers’ money being poured into anti-Orbán media and radical left-wing NGOs in Hungary.
It is unfortunately not only the US administration, but bureaucrats in the European Union as well who have also surrendered to the globalist spell. Barna Pál Zsigmond, ruling party’s Fidesz MP, claimed last year that Council of Europe fell under globalist influence. Even the 2022 EU Agency for Fundamental Rights Report reflected radical NGO influence in Hungary.
But is the world waking up? The return to the fundamental concepts of democracy is indeed showing some signs of reawakening, as conservative Americans are acknowledging the actions of Viktor Orbán’s government, supporting its attempt to fight off globalist pressure and ideas of wokeism, as Tucker Carlson pointed out during his latest visit to Hungary.
Featured image: Facebook/Amerikai-Magyar Polgári Körök Szövetsége
