Hi Jay,

No not all journalists are lefties - I would say most mainstream journalists are centrists or to the right - when was the last time you heard a Marxist or even Socialist voice on any subject?

I don't remember the last time I heard any anti-capitalist rhetoric in the MSM.

Is there any debate that the Abbott government is of the far right? They have done a good job of working their way through the IPA wishlist.

The anti-terror laws that limit free speech aren't limited to journalists, they apply to all of us. If anyone says something about covert operations, even badly botched ones, they can be locked up for a very long time. And there is no public interest test - Senator Xenophon tried to add this ammendment, but it was rejected.

There are plenty of right wing dictatorships that have locked up and killed dissenters.

Pinochet's Chile,
South Africa under Apartheid
Marcos' Philipines
Suharto's Indonesia

Yes, their left wing equivalents are just as bad or even worse - Many millions died under Stalin and Mao - they were evil regimes.

Jay you are welcome to your opinions, but you can't make up your own facts.

Jay,

If Hitler was such a raving pinko lefty, why did he imprison trade unionists, socialists and communists as political prisoners? In my experience, lefties are really big fans of solidarity. Wouldn't a socialist dictator have imprisoned all the fascists as political prisoners instead of the socialists?

Those who say censorship isn't a left right issue are correct, in a longitudinal sense. The right has been into it in the past as much as the left. But in Australia today the left is a bigger danger for free speech than the right.

Most of those who are active on the right these days are libertarians and classical liberals, and we actually believe what we say about rights, like freedom of speech.

When I was younger there were people on the left who fought for free speech, like the various civil liberties councils. But when I was not so young it appeared it wasn't free speech at all, but their own views. They don't come out when people they don't agree with are persecuted.

The left today is so sure it is right that there is no need to hear alternative views. That is a problem, because the left today is just as wrong as it ever was, but more numerous.

Invoking Hitler in this debate is a bit pointless, but suggesting the National Socialist Party wasn't a socialist party is a good argument for free speech. You should be able to say stupid and offensive things, and people should be able to challenge you.

Tony,
Stalin also persecuted fellow Socialists and adopted nationalistic rhetoric when it suited him, the German Right, the Wehrmacht leadership in particular were always under suspicion and lived under the spectre of a purge by Hitler's faction, in fact Hitler was prevented on many occasions from following in Stalin's footsteps and whacking generals left right and centre.
You only have to look at the situation in Dachau before the war and Buchenwald during the hostilities where fanatical German Communists basically ran the system inside the wire and "Right Wing" prisoners, conservatives, clergy, Jehovahs witnesses, conscientious objectors and such like were murdered, raped and mercilessly tortured. In fact homosexuals arrested under paragraph 175 had a better rate of survival in the camps than conservatives.
Hitler treated German communists the way Stalin treated the United Opposition (more leniently if we're honest), it's all perfectly consistent with the real world character of Socialism and you can't wish it away or get carried away with revisionism.

What this article seems to be arguing is that any form of speech that does not conform to a certain prevailing consensus of what is right should be criminalised.

Most individuals have an opinion on most things. For example, I abhor extremist anti-abortion rhetoric, but I also believe that arguments regarding pro-life concerns about abortion are valid and have a right to be heard. I also believe in a person's right to challenge the Holocaust and other 'genocides' such as Srebrenica and Rwanda, and how they are used for political purposes. I also believe in smokers' rights - why should people trapped with an addiction be ostracised and made to suffer?

I have also been subjected to horrendous personal abuse, on this and other forums, for voicing any opinion that has a feminist orientation. However, what good would it do to outlaw those who dish out the abuse? It doesn't make me any more 'right' than they are.

On this basis, some of my beliefs would be deemed criminal in the author's eyes and others deemed an expression of my freedom of speech.

The article also fails to account for how the prevailing consensus on what is right is often manipulated by controlling interests. The fact that I am a feminist does not make me immune from seeing how feminism has been used by the powers that be to disintegrate the family unit to create more consumers and cheap female labour. Outlawing hate speech against feminists does not do me or feminism any favours.

Certainly, some belief systems, if they get out of hand, can lead to widespread violence and destruction. However, this only tends to happen when society has already reached some kind of breaking point - massive poverty, financial and/or political failure, revolution or war ... to name a few.

Advocating the criminalisation of certain opinions while we still have a reasonably functioning society is the real 'slippery slope' we should be avoiding at all costs. In these uncertain times of financial chaos, increasing social inequality and environmental breakdown, the author's advocacy is bordering on dangerous.

Oh, dear! Mea culpa.

My apologies to Natasha Moore. My references to 'the author' in my above comment were regarding the article the Natasha linked to, not to Natasha's article itself - which I mainly agree with.