Posted on 07/16/2025 12:14:29 PM PDT by Angelino97
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal about the sad state of free speech in Britain brought this long-developing story to the attention of Americans.
The article focused on the case of Lucy Connolly, a woman who received a 31-month prison sentence for posting a message on X. In May, the 42-year-old had her appeal rejected by the UK’s Court of Appeal. By the time she is released in August, Connolly will have spent over a year in prison.
The matter has already been a longstanding concern for the White House, and free expression has been at the center of a growing transatlantic rift. At the Munich Security Conference in February, Vice President JD Vance warned EU leaders against political repression. While the vice president excoriated the aging collective managerial elite, his special concern was directed primarily at the United Kingdom.
In his speech, Vance referred to the case of Adam Smith-Connor, a British Christian convicted in October 2024 for praying silently near an abortion clinic in Bournemouth in southern England. For violating a legal “buffer zone” around the clinic, the 51-year-old army veteran received a two-year suspended sentence and was ordered to pay £9,000 (US$11,700). The buffer zone prohibits protesting, speech, or prayer within 150 meters of the Dorset Clinic.
Smith-Connor’s circumstances are typical of many individuals in the United Kingdom. In March, Donald Trump sent a team from the State Department to speak with Smith-Connor and four other pro-life activists who were arrested for silently praying outside abortion clinics throughout Britain.
The British government has ignored both Vance’s words and the warnings from the U.S. State Department. Annually, approximately 12,000 people are arrested for expressing views online deemed offensive, reflecting a notable rise in hate speech legislation.
This equates to an average of 33 arrests per day, marking a 58 percent increase since 2019. In Britain, Christian preachers are taken into custody for criticizing Islam or for asserting the reality of biological sex, while teenagers are imprisoned for posting silly comments online.
Online platforms based in the United States that rely on First Amendment protections have been drawn into Britain’s increasingly authoritarian internet regulations. The introduction of the UK Parliament’s Online Safety Act will severely impact American-based users on numerous digital platforms.
The bill—an extensive piece of legislation purportedly intended to protect young people—will force tech companies to ensure that “hateful” content is not accessible to children. Companies that fail to comply may be fined up to 10 percent of their annual global revenue, and their executives may face imprisonment. The act empowers Ofcom, the state broadcasting regulator, to prevent these platforms from being accessible in the UK. Consequently, two video-sharing platforms, GAB and BitChute, have terminated access for users in the United Kingdom.
Although the regulations are primarily intended for UK users, the global nature of the internet means they will also affect Americans. As a result of the legislation, companies must screen all messages for illegal content, which effectively discourages the use of end-to-end encryption messaging services like the Meta-owned WhatsApp. One of the consequences will be increased difficulty for Americans in maintaining personal connections with family and friends residing in the United Kingdom.
The Online Safety Act represents Britain’s war against free expression, but a homegrown assault on liberty within America began a long time ago. As part of its recent Free Speech Index, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) revealed that 62 percent of Americans believe America is headed in the wrong direction on the issue of free speech.
This is particularly evident within the realm of academia, where an upsurge in campus radicalism has made students hostile to politically incorrect viewpoints. Between 2000 and 2022, FIRE identified over 1,000 incidents in which activists attempted to dismiss or penalize professors, resulting in the termination of 225 academics. Remarkably, the annual instances of such attempts have surged by a staggering 3,525 percent, escalating from four cases in 2000 to 145 in 2022. Unsurprisingly, most of these sanction attempts have come from the political left.
America has a long way to go before it reaches the parlous state Britain finds itself in, but its citizens have bought into a common justification for censorship: that words can cause physical harm.
According to a FIRE poll from 2024, four-fifths of Americans believe that speech can be violent. In the foreword to the report, FIRE President Greg Lukianoff writes, “Equating words with violence trivializes actual physical harm, shuts down conversations, and even encourages real violence by justifying the use of force against offensive speech.” An English judge recently cited an assault by a member of the public as justification for a man’s conviction for burning a copy of the Qur’an.
The United Kingdom serves as a cautionary tale for the United States when it comes to free speech. Without the constitutionally protected right to speak freely, governments imprison its people for posting messages on the internet. Introducing any offense clause to the First Amendment would ultimately grant the state authority to erode this invaluable liberty piece by piece.
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The globalist deep-state is real - and its core is in the city of London.
It has MANY allies and co-conspirators in Washington DC also, but the roots are all in London.
And yet look how many Freepers really believe Vladimir Putin is the biggest threat to freedom and liberty in the West. LOL.
If we can please limit the variety of threads which are infected by the russkie / ukie flame wars, that would be salutary for the site.
Thanks.
Ping
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