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Over at Steynonline.com, Mark Steyn talked recently about the death of free speech on the internet, and his
”last photocopier in the woods” scenario, as posited at multiple times over the last decade:
I said about twenty minutes ago this thing that Alexandria Casio Cortez believes—the world will end in twelve years’ time ...2030, 2031, the world’s going to end.
No.
But the civilized world will end—because, at the rate we’re going, in twelve years’ time we will not be doing these Clubland Q&As over the internet like this. They’ll have figured out some way that this isn’t gonna happen anymore. I’ll be in the middle of the woods with a little generator trying to crank up an old Xerox machine and copy it off in fading purple Times New Roman typeface in order to distribute it through some kind of underground railroad system. That’s the way we’re headed.
The ”last copier in the woods” scenario is showing up somewhat sooner than scheduled. In Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and elsewhere, the micro-regulation of speech—even in your own home—is being imposed without much in the way of coherent political pushback. Likewise in the land of the First Amendment, my misplaced faith in which has cost me twelve years of my life and millions of dollars in the choked septic tank of DC ”justice”.
See Mark Steyn Loses Climate Lawsuit.. .To A D.C. Jury, by John Derbyshire.
It is, however, even worse for others: at least I was ”sued”; there was a ”case”, a ”controversy” to be ”litigated” and ”adjudicated”. By contrast, VDare.com, a rare source for honest discussion of demographic transformation and its consequences, has not been convicted of any crime or even charged with one. Nevertheless, the State of New York, via a malign alliance between a hyper-politicized Attorney-General and an indulgent if not corrupt judge, has targeted VDare for destruction—and seems likely to succeed.
That’s a link to Allan Wall’s Border Hawk piece on Letitia James’s lawfare against VDARE.com:
VDARE is in imminent danger of being abolished by Letitia James, the NYAG and her endless costly subpoenas.
— VDARE (@vdare) April 9, 2024
VDARE has been very shabbily treated by the conservative movement.
Anybody concerned about immigration and freedom of speech should defend VDARE https://t.co/ynO0Iiy0OO pic.twitter.com/Sh6SpU8qRW
Conservative Inc has, as is their wont, remained largely silent. If VDare can be taken out merely for choosing to focus on immigration, what is the likelihood of the butch boys with the butch bumper music seriously addressing this subject in the years ahead?
The Habits of Liberty—Frank Haviland interviews Steyn, SteynOnline.com, April 9, 2024
The ”butch boys with the butch bumper music” are Conservative Inc. talk radio jocks—who haven’t been standouts on immigration.
That was on Tuesday; on Wednesday Steyn did his audio show [Kippers, Kedgeree and Kiev, Clubland Q&A, April 10, 2024].
And what he said [MP3] was this (my transcript, links added):
Three minutes before I came on air, some new motion was filed in the District of Columbia Superior Court, where justice goes to die. Meanwhile, we’re just two months from my other court date in the King’s Bench Division in London against the UK media censor Ofcom. That’s June 11th. I thank all of you who, in order to show support for one or other of both of these free speech cases, have bought a chum a SteynOnline gift certificate or a Mark Steyn Club gift membership.
The King’s Bench Division is one thing because these cases—I think this case was filed late summer last year and we had a court date in February and then Ofcom said no, we’re washing our hair in February so it got postponed to June. But that’s, you know, that’s basically, that was basically as the court saw it, six months soup to nuts, not 13 years and counting as in the evil District of Columbia court system.
These are bad times for free speech in Scotland, in Ireland, in Canada, but most of all in America. If you haven’t—I mentioned this yesterday, but if you haven’t read it, I urge you to do so because as awful as my experiences have been in American courts, what is happening to VDARE.com, that’s Peter Brimelow’s anti-immigration website:
He thinks quite reasonably that Ted Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration Act was a disaster for America.
And whether you agree or not with that, it’s certainly not something that should be, you should be destroyed if you advance that position. Yet that is what the evil state of New York... and actually that should be destroyed.
Sorry, start spreading the news. Let’s destroy it today.
But that particular state, the Attorney General, Letitia James, the same one who’s gone after Trump for a victimless crime where she basically found a corrupt judge willing to confiscate half a billion dollars from him for a victimless crime.
She’s even worse with VDARE. VDARE haven’t been convicted of a crime. They haven’t in fact even been charged with a crime. But another corrupt judge has basically agreed to let James go on a fishing expedition that is absolutely ruinous for VDARE.com. They have to cough up whatever it is, 20 years worth of emails, and reveal the names of anyone who’s had any truck with them, which is disgusting because the idea obviously is so that those people can be targeted and destroyed. And this is the difference. As I said, I think it was a couple of days after the verdict came through in my own case, the difference between litigation in America and everywhere else is that it’s ruinous here. It just is whatever you’ve saved. I always point out the example Peter Navarro asking me just before he came on air if I could plug his book, because he was hoping to use his book royalties to fund his legal defense. Well, he’s in jail right now. That didn’t work out great for him, did it? And as I said to him, you know, unless you’re J.K. Rowling, nobody’s book royalties are enough to be able to afford to be in American litigation.
My old G.B. news comrade Laurence Fox was found guilty of defaming somebody in the High Court in London and not sure whether he’s had the fine for that. Yeah, maybe like a couple of thousand pounds. So you take your lumps and you move on here. It destroys you and they’re using it to destroy VDARE without, as I said, even a conviction or even the charge of a crime. And I’m tired of the Nancy Boy Right or you know, the guys, all the guys with the butch bumper music and the easy listening opinions. They’ve got nothing to say about this case. It moves all this. The reason I talk about fought first principles all the time is because is because the assumption is always—Is this a soccer expression?—“playing the man, not the ball.” People never look at it. So they think, oh, VDARE, their opinions were a bit strong.
When I got into trouble in Canada, the other case going through the Human Rights Commission at that time was a guy called Mark Lemire, who ran some who had some sort of neo-Nazi, I mean, not really neo-Nazi, but he’s you know, he had a sort of skinhead affect and whatever. He was this totally unsympathetic character. And so everyone’s saying, well, so he’s come up. So I then get instead and I start going, well, these Canadian Human Rights Commissions, there’s no due process, truth is not a defense. And everyone goes “Oh, so you’re defending that Nazi, Mark Lemire.”
And I go, yes, because in a land of laws, if you run a stoplight and kill a little old lady, it doesn’t make any difference, if you run down the little old lady, whether you’re Hitler or Nelson Mandela, not in a land of law.
And so everyone said, oh, so I wound up and in fact, Mark Lemire, once I’d once I’d actually pointed that out to large number of Canadians, they say, oh, yeah, maybe he’s got a point on that. You’re right. You shouldn’t make any difference if you run a stoplight and kill a little old lady whether you’re Hitler or Nelson Mandela.
And in fact, we panicked the judge. He suddenly decided that the law on which Mark Lemire was being dragged in before the Human Rights Tribunal was unconstitutional and announced he wasn’t going to hear any more cases under it. But yet, and yet Conservative Inc.: "Oh, oh, they’re a bit strong meat about mass immigration." So they’re not saying anything. You think the argument, Letitia James actually said this in public to other businesses rattled by what she’d done to Trump. Oh, don’t worry. Once we once we’ve destroyed Trump, that’s it. That’s going to be an end of it. OK, now she’s destroying VDARE.
You think she’s not going to come after your little pansy squish, RINO pseudoconservative operation?
No.
They want a world in which there is not just no effective dissent, no red meat dissent, but they want a world where there is no kind of dissent. Sorry about that. It wasn’t even a question about that, but I want to get that out there because I think it’s important.
It is important, and I personally want to thank Steyn for saying this—as he points out, there is a very large number of conservatives not saying this. You can support Steyn, who has been having his own legal odyssey, by buying a Mark Steyn club membership—I’m a member and so is Paul Nachman—which gets you subscriber content, Mark Steyn-read audiobooks, and commenting privileges.
