‘Everyone was Charlie… for about a minute.’ So said Douglas Murray in the years following the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks. I first discovered Murray’s work in January 2015 as an expat living in Paris during the Charlie Hebdo era. Watching the home of Voltaire descend into despair, I desperately sought out commentary in English. From Australia, my mother directed me to Murray’s fearless debates; his media presence was a lifeline to us expats.

There is something, sadly, full-circle about seeing Murray’s 2024 Australian tour where he has had to employ the sort of security you expect at an airport just to be able to speak his mind. Almost ten years post- Charlie, the situation in the West is worse, not better.

We are living through a rapid decline not just of free speech, but the freedom to listen and read. The attempts we have seen in Australia to derail Murray’s tour have acutely reinforced that this bastion of democracy, free speech, is being lost. It is part of a strategy to destroy the foundations of our political system.

Voltaire’s famous quote, ‘To hold a pen is to be at war,’ needs to be updated to the present time. Not just the penholder now, Murray’s Australian tour has shown that the audience and reader are also at war.

In the weeks that followed Charlie Hebdo, print editions of the magazine became hot property in Paris and sold out. When I finally got a hand on one from a kiosk near the Arc de Triomphe, I was quick to hide it from view. Voltaire would have turned in his grave.

Prior to Murray’s Queensland show, the audience dutifully lined up for the high-level security; body scanners were used and handbags checked in. None of those attending were surprised; high-level security to hear a writer is quickly becoming the norm. How very progressive.

One fellow audience member at Murray’s Queensland show joked to me that attending felt a bit like being in an AA meeting; strangers coming together for a shared goal. We were exercising our right to listen, but careful to conceal our identity out of fear of the consequences – just as I had with that magazine almost ten years ago.

Indeed, when loud shouting was heard from outside at one point during the show, no one blinked, Murray quipping, ‘I didn’t hear that.’ Post-Charlie Hebdo and Salman Rushdie, it is not just an act of bravery for a writer to speak up; it is also an act of bravery to be in the audience – and we knew it.

Murray’s Queensland audience got off lightly compared to Sydney, where audience members were shouted at as they tried to get into the Enmore Theatre. Will bookshops and book clubs be next?

The theatre itself had been vandalised the week prior to the show. Riot squad officers were dispatched amongst a heavy police presence that tried desperately to cope with the unauthorised protest (aka baying mob). More than sixty modern-day Brownshirts shouted, ‘Douglas Murray, you can’t hide, you support genocide.’

You would be forgiven for hearing the threats ‘You can’t hide!’ outside a theatre where antisemitism was being discussed and feel you had been transported back to 1930s Germany. For those in attendance, it was a rare opportunity to gather publicly and listen to a journalist who dared to dissent from the dominant narrative.

Murray’s right to express an opinion regarding the Israel-Gaza war is attempting to be denied by those who do not recognise free speech as a linchpin of our society. Not only against Murray, but this was also a protest against free speech and all of us who went to listen.

The right to dissent from the dominant narrative in Western society is being erased bit by bit until it will cease to exist. In this instance, anyone who supports Israel’s right to exist and is angry that Australian taxpayers are funding Unrwa, is now open prey for the mob. It takes bravery now to buy a ticket and run the gauntlet of the mob. Intimidation is the first step in the erasure of free speech. Thank goodness Sydney police are pressing charges against nineteen of the weekend’s protesters; this would not happen in Murray’s hometown of London.

Those who champion Hamas as the saviour of the Palestinians need to look at the facts. Murray’s only crime has been to point them out. To attempt to stop people from having a chance to hear Murray explain this is to ignore the reality of what has happened in Gaza since 2005.

Free speech is essential for any understanding of the myriad of current conflicts throughout the world. Who really speaks for the people of Gaza? Is it Hamas? Only freedom of expression will allow the voices of all Gazans to be heard. To hold a pen is not just to be at war; to hold a pen is to ensure that more than one voice is heard.

Listen to Murray, or our own Dr David Adler; it will give you pause to think. Maybe one or two of those Newtown hipsters might learn a thing or two from them? It is breathtakingly ignorant to try and censor a writer who has spent months in Israel observing the war in person. These same protestors are unlikely to have even heard of the Kibbutz Be’eri – they are too busy sipping soy lattes and nodding alone to the unhinged, antisemitic tirades of Greens MP Jenny Leong.

I recall taking a stroll down Rue des Rosiers post-Charlie in 2015 and learning that the Grand Synagogue of Paris had been closed, the first time since the German occupation. Attack free speech, and unfortunately there are consequences.

It is a tragedy our grandchildren will ponder; how we gave away the treasure of free speech that our forebears fought and died for. Many Millennial parents appear more concerned with posting selfies and the trivia of social media than thinking about what Murray has spent two decades warning us about. Our grandchildren will curse us for it.