Following the preview of the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee report into ‘extremism’ online that was given to the Guardian other newspapers have picked up on the findings. The report from MP’s states that social media companies are not doing enough to shut down freedom of speech, sorry I mean clamp down on ‘hate speech’. This report was put together by the great and good of parliament, or the not so good when you consider that Yvette ‘I’ll take in a Syrian refugee – sometime’ Cooper was this committee’s chair. The report which this blog has written about before, appears to have been heavily influenced by certain Islamic and left wing groups that have a hostility to freedom of speech, or who wish to protect their ideologies, organisations and practises from scrutiny or criticism. In today’s world shouting ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobe’ is what shouting ‘witch’ was to previous generations.

This report, if put into practise would be a disaster for freedom of speech and especially freedom of speech about the ideology of Islam. Also, if it does indeed result in fines being imposed on what are starting to be called ‘legacy’ social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter, then not only will these platforms start to lose money, but it will speed the ongoing exodus from these more centralised and corporate social media companies into more distributed social media. I predict that there will be a growth in users of alternative platforms like Gab.ai, minds.com and for those looking for Twitter-like features, the highly secure Twister platform. Once users of legacy social media start to realise that gangs of permanently offended snowflakes are monitoring their output and reporting the users to the police for ‘hate speech’, then they may well start to abandon those platforms that they perceive as being full of ‘grasses’.

On the subject of ‘legacy media’, this blog has also had a vicarious run in with The Times newspaper today. In connection to the previewed HASC report on ‘extremism’ online the Times interviewed Fiyaz Mughal founder of the troubled and increasingly discredited ‘Tell Mama’ organisation. Fiyaz Mughal then proceeded to use roughly a quarter of the page, I measured it as 10 linear column inches, to attack this blog. Fiyaz Mughal accused the blog of being ‘racist’, which it is not and any glance at the About page will leave readers in no doubt where this blog stands. To restate: My belief and my position is, that the things that people cannot change such as race or birth gender or disability and those who come into such categories should not be attacked, or treated as being less worthy as humans. On the other hand what people choose to believe whether that be a religious or political ideology, should always be up for debate and even at times mockery and criticism. As I have had to say so often before, it’s not race, it’s headspace.

Unfortunately the journalist from the Times, Dominic Kennedy decided that he could write the story he wanted by merely reporting Fiyaz Mughal’s views and let Mughal’s rants about how ‘racist’ this site was and how ‘racist’ the portrayal of Fiyaz Mughal as the fake Pakemon ‘Taqiyyatron’ was and how ‘inflammatory’ this blog’s recent court reports of a case involving Mr Mughal, have been.

Fiyaz Mughal was also seen to whine intensely at the refusal of Google to remove references to Fahrenheit211 from their search engine (other search engines are available and I recommend ‘duckduckgo’ as it doesn’t track searches). You can find the article reproduced below but it would have been good journalistic practise on Mr Kennedy’s behalf to have sent a courtesy email to this blog to enquire if there is an alternative view to Fiyaz Mughal’s narrative.

The full article from Dominic Kennedy can be found via the Times website but it is behind a paywall. See https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a8e41f78-2de2-11e7-acb4-4131236e799a

There may of course be a good and valid professional reason why the opinion of this blog and its supporters was not sought by Mr Kennedy, it may well be that the story needed to be cobbled together quickly due to print deadlines. I understand that with a paper about to go to the stone there may be temptations to leave stuff out or not follow things up. However, it would have been nice merely to be sent an email asking the editor if this blog was ‘racist’ or not, rather then relying solely on the words of Fiyaz Mughal? I shall be taking this matter up politely with Mr Kennedy tomorrow morning via email .

There have been a great many leftist and Islamic groups, some whom this blog has mentioned in the past, who all have their own bee in their bonnets about freedom of speech on political and religious matters or on press freedom. It seems that there has been a coordinated attempt to get things that the Left and certain Muslims and Islamic groups don’t like banned from social media. This report, where some Islamic groups have been quite ‘helpful’ in telling the Labour party members of the committee especially, what they wished to hear which there was a terrible plague of Islamophobia and ‘extremism’, should because of the influence of these groups be considered as tainted.

It’s now up to us, and the politicians who we elect to represent us on the 8^th June 2017, to stop this blatant attempt to stop people talking about incidents and ideologies that they have a damn well innate right to express. If there is any political event that shows the need for a proper UK equivalent of the US First Amendment to the Constitution it’s the sight of dodgy Islamic and Leftist groups colluding with politicians to stop the rest of us expressing an opinion.

I’d like to end by reminding some people and they know who they are, of ‘the Streisand effect’ where kicking off about something merely draws people’s attention to it. Because of the release of this report, not only will the ‘usual suspects’ of the Left and Islamic groups be calling for fines and censorship, as some are already, but others are now also aware. Crucially, more members of the wider public will be aware just how easily politicians like Yvette Cooper will throw away your rights to speak freely not just on Islam but eventually just about everything else.

Let’s hope that the voters remember how willingly our current crop of politicians, such as Cooper, will throw away the freedoms that our ancestors fought and sometimes died for. I pray that voters recall this report and vote to kick out the anti free speech crowd that have occupied the green benches for far too long and replace them with something better. This current crop of political clowns certainly don’t seem to be standing up for our rights only for those who would wish to attack those rights.