On Tuesday I retweeted and gabbed our friend Kevin MacDonald’s gab (he was recently nuked from Twitter) about this appalling news story: Ireland Passes Law Making It ILLEGAL To Read Non-Mainstream News Sources
The new legislation means that anything viewed online that has been deemed “hateful” by fact-checkers will result in prison time for those who have viewed or shared it.
@KeithWoodsYT is quoted as having tweeted
Ireland is about to pass one of the most radical hate speech bills yet. Merely possessing ”hateful” material on your devices is enough to face prison time.
Not only that, but the burden of proof is shifted to the accused, who is expected to prove they didn’t intend to use the material to ”spread hate”. This clause is so radical that even the Trotskyist People Before Profit opposed it as a flagrant violation of civil liberties. Dark times.
helpfully appending the relevant segment of this disgusting bill.
Ireland is about to pass one of the most radical hate speech bills yet. Merely possessing "hateful" material on your devices is enough to face prison time.
— Keith Woods (@KeithWoodsYT) April 28, 2023
Not only that, but the burden of proof is shifted to the accused, who is expected to prove they didn't intend to use the… https://t.co/DA41PEfvbt pic.twitter.com/UGKWzz66kM
Today, reading this, out of the mystic chords of memory came the lines from W. B. Yeats’ poem September 1913, last read in High School:
Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.
So, apparently, is Irish free speech.
