The Burial of the Blarney Stone:
Ireland’s New Hate Speech Legislation

2,641 words

The recent tilt towards authoritarianism across Europe and the Commonwealth, aided and abetted by the Covid-19 pandemic which, even if not intentionally manufactured was certainly deliberately manipulated, has a curious aspect. It seems to the casual eye that certain countries have been selected to test-run various globalist designs.

The Antipodean nations, Australia and New Zealand, got to try out statist control with lockdown policies more restrictive than just about anywhere bar China. Jacinda Ardern has now wisely left the building of Kiwi politics and has a new gig at Prince William’s Earthshot Prize, where she will be in charge of handing out funding for approved green causes, which is the hobby of the next in line to the throne of Britain. But she it was who said that where the virus was concerned, the government was the only source of truth.  In Australia, Victoria’s runty Governor Bob Andrews also showed just how much he enjoyed wielding the whip over the peasants.

In Canada, Justin Trudeau was tasked with stamping out dissent with his war on the Canadian truckers, a punishment offensive which extended to the closing of bank accounts not just of the drivers themselves, but even those who donated to their cause. He was also a mandatory vaccination ambassador, a fact he is now trying to erase. One of the fault lines running through the new totalitarians is that they think they can erase the past the way Stalin did: by doctoring a few photos, redacting some newsprint, and killing a few people. It doesn’t quite work like that with the Internet, however.

In Europe, the Dutch, second-largest food producers in the world after the United States, have been selected for the experiment of decimating the farming industry as part of an eco-policy aimed at reducing the nitrogen content of the soil as a result of fertilizer use. The government will buy out the farms, at market value, meaning half the country’s food-production will be under the control of the administration of Mark Rutte, a globalist shill if ever there was one. Control the food supply, said one Henry Kissinger — a bastard, but a clever one — and you control the people.

As part of this program to put half its farming families — and farming is a dynastic industry there, as in many other countries, with all the expertise that brings over time — out of business, it seems the Dutch government is running the risk of an agricultural brain-drain. But the European Union has taken care to ensure that the new laws on compulsory purchase of farmland include a clause forbidding any compulsorily retired farmer affected to farm in any other EU country, ever again. In fairness, the Dutch Farmers Party — a mere four years old — has seen astounding results in recent elections, and it is to be hoped that this indicates the green shoots of European rural conservatism, as it were. It is important to remember that the political Right are, or ought to be, wedded to the land, while the Left prefer the relentlessly urban.

Germany and France had long been selected as the laboratories for unrestrained Muslim immigration, but Britain’s notional exit from the EU gave the European gauleiters an opportunity to use that country to illustrate that decoupling from the Schengen Agreement (which guarantees free movement between EU countries) means more illegal immigration, not less. Everyone is fully aware that the so-called “Brexit” vote was in reality a referendum on immigration, and specifically Muslim immigration, which the indigenous British neither want nor need. The EU has facilitated accelerated mass immigration essentially to punish Britain for its impudence in voting to leave the mother ship.

The Scots looked like they had passed the audition to try out some outrageous curtailments of freedom of speech in this globalist delegation of tasks. The Scottish First Minister is now Humza Yousaf. He is a Muslim who took his inaugural oath in Pakistani dress and made his ministerial acceptance speech in Urdu, and yet turned up at the recent Coronation in a kilt, presumably tailored in the famous tartan of the Yousaf clan. He famously emphasized that his 2021 amendment to the already controversial Hate Crime Bill would criminalize “hate speech” even if uttered in the (former) privacy of one’s own home. This is genius disruptive politics, all aimed at the white people Yousaf so despises. If, at a dinner party, your Uncle Jock says “transgender folk are all poofties,” and you are a millennial keening for attention, you can call the police. Welcome to Soviet Stasi Scotland.

Sadly for Yousaf, his party are mired in financial scandal and he is desperate to extricate himself. So, this is no time for further controversy involving the most anti-white politician in Britain, and it presents a problem for the Euro-globalists. Who is going to test-drive the hate-speech laws they require? Fortunately, a situation the EU itself created gave it the perfect opportunity to try out continent-wide suppression of speech: Ireland. Paddy is getting a bit annoyed about the boosting of immigration into a country of five million people, and the globalists felt that something had to be done.

Before we go any further, it is now glaringly obvious just how much of a democratic treasure America’s First Amendment is, and how unprotected Europeans and citizens of the Commonwealth are without an equivalent. The American Left are, as you would expect, attempting to chisel away at it incrementally — whites having to say “N-word” is an obvious abridgement of the First — but it is still there, if not carved in stone then written in ink indelible to traditional Americans. If you are American, you can close your eyes, and I bet you can imagine that beautiful flowing script.

The EU is now beginning to realize just how far it can go without this guarantor of the freedom to speak, worship, and assemble. France has just banned “anti-Macron protests.” Christianity is under relentless attack, physically (with the burning and desecration of churches, particularly in France) and culturally, and that is taking care of itself nicely courtesy of the new Muslim arrivistes. Now there is only the most difficult target of all: freedom of speech (also synchronic with Islam). Finally, here was something to try out in Ireland.

The Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill was drafted last year and is now passing through the Oireachtas (the Gaelic word for the Irish government). It replaces 1989’s Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act, and there are subtle differences intended to further curtail what the Irish call “the gift of the gab.”

Whenever new legislation is drafted in any sovereign country with at least a nominal democracy, look at the pre-existing laws covering the same area and compare the difference. There won’t be much, but the devil is very much in the details. Exactly the same thing is happening in Britain — Ireland is, of course, still a part of the EU, while Northern Ireland still part of the United Kingdom — with the Online Safety Bill essentially doing what the Malicious Communications Bill of 1988 did, with a few crucial amendments. These are always said to be to keep pace with technology — the Irish legislation makes just that claim — but in actuality the refinements are to catch the people they couldn’t get the first time around. I covered the British Bill here at Counter-Currents.

You can buy Mark Gullick’s Vanikin in the Underworld here.

Also — and we are used to this now, or should be — governments have learned that certain words become powerful pronouncements, magical and affecting the real world. “Hate” is one of the most important in this gain-of-function lexicon. Along with “racism” and “fascism,” “hate” has proved to be one of the most useful phrases for the Left’s genetically-modified vocabulary. “Incitement to hatred” follows on from the denomination of “hate.”

I don’t have that much of a problem with a law that proscribes incitement to violence. However, the semantic elasticity the Left — and this includes nominally conservative governments — have given to language means that suggesting that there are probably only two genders and instructing your social media buddies to go and hit a black guy with a bat are now equivalent, and both are incitement to violence. If I hear one more person say that this is “crazy,” or that these people need to wake up, I will need a bat myself. If anyone thinks this epistemological sleight-of-hand is due to incompetence, then the luck of the Irish to you.

Let’s look at the categories in the original legislation. It was made an offense to disparage anyone on the basis of the following characteristics:

1. Color.
2. Nationality.
3. Religion.
4. Ethnic or national origins.
5. Membership of the travelling community.
6. Sexual orientation.

Okay, so #4 does partly replicate #2, but other than that, the categories are reasonably defined, even for governmental legislation, which is notoriously tangled (this is part of the point of it).

The new Act, however, has had a makeover. The six categories from 1989 have expanded to ten, and that is even given the dropping of the “travelling community.” A quick word about them.

I don’t know if there is an American equivalent to Irish travelers. Typically, they have fine houses in Ireland but spend the summers in England for tax reasons, and to raise hell. They are generally violent drunks given to fighting, stealing, and con tricks, usually on the old and vulnerable. They are a vile blight on mainland Britain and have been since I was a boy. I’ve seen them in action. But why are they missing from the new Hate Crimes Bill? It seems that they are now protected by the added categories, which are certainly worth looking at.

The new bill talks about “protected characteristics.” This is an interesting legal concept, as no characteristic is protected until legislation protects it, unless it be by fists and weapons. The legislative tail in Ireland, as elsewhere, is now wagging the constitutional dog. Here is the baffling new list of the protected characteristics.

1. Race.
2. Color.
3. Nationality.
4. Religion.
5. National or ethnic origin.
6. Descent.
7. Gender.
8. Sex characteristics.
9. Sexual orientation.

Now, the full description of the Bill is best read here, at the wonderful and reliable News Letter. This section, however, is representative and worth quoting in full:

To count as a crime, Section 7 [of the Bill] says that the offender must have either the “intent to incite violence or hatred” or to have been “reckless as to whether such violence or hatred is thereby incited”. (emphasis in original)

Here we have the old, familiar arbiter problem. Never mind defining “hatred.” Who gets to define “reckless”? Some might say that genital surgery and mastectomies undergone in the belief that one’s correct gender is being affirmed is reckless. The Bill says that to state this is reckless. To continue:

This, added to the definition of “gender” above, suggests it will become a crime to voice views which risk resulting in “hatred” towards people who are biologically male, but who want access to women’s changing rooms and sports because they feel female.

This, of course, is a hot topic in the States, and clearly detrimental to women. The Irish government is legislating to make illegal criticism of men who wish to be around naked or urinating women. This is beyond creepy and veering towards the genuinely evil. To complete the section:

Similarly, it will also be a crime to express views which could inspire “hatred” towards the “non-binary” movement (comprised of people who say they are neither male nor female, but instead belong to some new category like “two-spirit” or “gender-queer”.

I think you get the general idea. Or maybe you don’t. You won’t just get docked social credit points or given the cold shoulder at the office party for these offenses: “The maximum sentence under Section 7 is five years in jail.”

As the younger people say, let that sink in. Five years for saying a guy should not be allowed to go into a woman’s toilet. As Joe Biden is fond of saying, this is no joke. As for #6, criticism of “descent,” one wonders whether they are going after Darwinians.

Legislation is like the federal reserve for which the application of the law is the legal tender — the notes and coin. And there is one aspect of both which is required if either are to be valid, at least in a civilized society: the language used in due process, the semantic arbitration which decides the fate of men, must be unequivocally defined and universally agreed as such. If meaning — and I have written about this many times — becomes a free-for-all, a bouncing beach-ball to be grabbed by anyone, a Lego set where you can make what you want out of the basic bricks, people will be going to Gulag-style accommodation before too long.

This is all fairly familiar to us now, as used as we are to the various categorical imperatives that shepherd us on social media and curate what we can say elsewhere online.

So, travelers have gone, doubtless covered by #5 in the latter bill, but what of the additions? “Gender” didn’t even make the first bill’s hit parade. Now that it has, you get no prizes for guessing the bill’s definition of gender:

The gender which the person expresses as the person’s preferred gender, or with which the person identifies, and includes transgender, and a gender other than those of male and female.

This includes biological males who wish to use female spaces, and even that category. Potential jail time for criticism of this is five years. As for criticism of descent, who are they after, Darwinians? Again, as the young people say, what does that even mean?

The perfect timing of this bill dovetails with a recent phenomenon in Ireland, who are not going gently into that good night when it comes to mass immigration. If you wish to inspect the resistance, try the home page of An Páirtí Náisiúnta, The National Party.

A few heavyweights have weighed in — Musk, Peterson, and Trump Jr. — but that kind of opposition just emboldens the new breed of government. A trick has been turned here whereby for the state to deem something illegal means its opponents are malicious and evil. These are dangerous times to open your mouth, which is what the Irish love to do.

I love Ireland. I’ve been to Dublin three times, one of them a jumping-off point as myself and a university friend drove from Dublin’s fair city across the south of Ireland to Shannon. My pal’s brother ran a company that made gas detection systems for factories and warehouses, and worked out that it was more expensive for him to hire a haulage company to take two of these devices to an industrial estate by the River Shannon than it was to give his brother money to hire a van — which we nicknamed “Van Morrison” — sleep over en route for a weekend, and deliver the gizmos. He also funded me, not to share the driving — I can’t drive — but to keep my pal company. We were poor students who leapt at the chance of what turned out to be one of the best weekends of my life: part Guinness, part Withnail & I, and part talking about nothing with the wonderful people we met on the way. I am part-Irish myself (which every American politician seems to claim), my great-grandfather having been a master carpenter in Dublin, and perhaps I have a genetic affinity for pubs and chatter, or what Americans charmingly call “shooting the breeze.” The Irish call it “blarney.”

“Blarney” is named for the Blarney Stone, the kissing of which gives the kisser “the gift of the gab,” and Paddy certainly has that. It means to talk about anything and everything. At least, it does at the time of writing. In the wake of this new legislation, I can’t see it staying above ground for long.

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