Reform leader Nigel Farage has challenged UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to arrest the individuals who went on social media last week calling for him to be murdered.
After all, this is the Labour government that sent five armed police officers to Heathrow to arrest comedian, Graham Linehan, for a joke posted on X.
‘If we are serious about understanding what the limits of free speech are – right? And I will say this, actually. Those people who posted on TikTok – open TikToks – calling for me to be killed yesterday, let’s see if the police go and arrest them. Shall we? Because if they don’t, we truly are living in two-tier Britain. Alright? So, I think it’s really really important.’
Farage’s words should not be misconstrued as demanding censorship. He is calling out hypocrisy. He is using a real-world example to demonstrate the political culture of censorship in Britain which seems designed to obstruct contrary views while allowing violent elements of Labour’s ideological allies to intimidate, without consequence, the conservative population.
Nothing fuels revolution like the presumption of two-tiered justice.
Australia does not only share this problem, our growing pool of eSafety policies and fragile major parties are all merrily arm-in-arm at the thought of regaining control of the political narrative after tightly held media empires lost their market dominance.
Politicians can no longer call in favours with their friendly journalist, or promise coveted seats on the election press bus in return for running cover on unflattering stories.
The Australian press has been reduced to Blue and Red mastheads, censored with handshakes instead of an eSafety Commissioner.
The resurrection of a truly free press, which is independent of the cocktail parties and swanky dinner invitations, has Canberra scrambling to pass ever-more invasive censorship laws.
And shame – shame on the Moderate conservatives – for helping Labor achieve this. You are guaranteeing the destruction of conservatism, the natural ally of free speech, because you refused to rise to the challenge and debate against the interests of your money men.
In the UK, censorship dug its claws in through the manipulation of child safety. Protecting the kiddies was used as justification to silence adult political conversations and protect, ironically, the ideological movements that pose a threat to children’s safety.
There is a parallel language used by online commentators to avoid nervous marketing companies that control the wealth of Silicon Valley. Independent media is forced to say things like, ‘The p-word un-alived themselves after being charged with r-.’ How do you protect children from predators if you can’t describe their crimes? Does that make us safer? And if you want to detail the new horrors of radical Islamic terror groups, good luck with that. If you don’t find yourself banned for ‘spreading hate’ (because you named the terror group), one of these noxious busy-body digital censors policing Islamophobia will step up. The same is true for the crimes of illegal migrants where even the raw data is being hidden from the public. Transparency? Please. This is a world of shadows.
Free speech is dying because politicians made a mess and still want to keep winning elections without fixing anything.
This is like watching police claim that crime has fallen when they stopped attending the scene and making arrests. Are the streets safer? No. Reality is more than a statistic.
Censorship in the UK has reached the point where it’s perfectly fine to invite toddlers to bondage marches (so long as there are rainbow flags), but the Union Jack is seen as an act of racism and aggression. Madness. Totally unhinged psychosis.
All of which is given validation by legacy hosts on creaking platforms like the BBC, who act totally shocked that a figure like Tommy Robinson, fresh from jail, can drag millions of patriots onto the streets demanding their country back. Back from whom? Corrupt politicians.
These are ordinary people! complain the BBC. People you might meet down the pub!!!
Of course they are ordinary people. They’re the citizens of Britain pushed to the back of every single government list and treated like farm animals to be milked for tax and loaded onto trucks headed for pension poverty when they outlive their economic value to the Treasury.
These patriots would have rallied around the Tories, if the Tories had a spine, but Tommy and Farage stepped up first. Those two don’t particularly like each other, but then, they don’t have to. They love their country, their people, and the legacy of their ancestors. That’s enough to bind them to the common goal.
The ultra-cautious left-wing Labour government is arresting 30 people a day, that’s 12,000 a year, under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003.
Rapists and machete enthusiasts walk free, but they got the TikTokers.
Worse, your likelihood of arrest for social media speech seems to depend on your ideological allegiance.
JK Rowling demonstrated this a year or so ago when radical trans activists threatened to kill her, including using bomb threats and doxxing.
Only a handful of these hundreds of individuals saw the inside of a court room. Almost none have been to jail, collecting suspended sentences and community service instead.
Given that Nigel Farage’s friend and peer, Turning Point CEO Charlie Kirk, was allegedly assassinated by an individual who has reported social links to trans ideology, surely Keir Starmer takes these threats seriously?
Why no arrests?
If child safety is the chief priority of online censorship, why is left-wing radicalisation given a free-pass?
Is it because the UK government fears backlash from identity groups it worked hard to court during the election? Is it the same reason the government talks about right-wing violence instead of Islamic terror despite the latter being by far the greater threat to society? Is Starmer frightened of Black Lives Matter-style protests in the streets?
Or are there simply too many young people online who harbour a serious intent to commit violence against public figures?
Thousands and thousands and thousands of young people spent the days since Charlie Kirk’s death calling for more political assassinations. And universities haven’t even hinted that maybe they need to run a few de-radicalisation classes on campus.
I am going to predict that if the alleged shooter of Charlie Kirk faces the death penalty, as law enforcement and the State have called for, we will see vigils held for the murderer and a backlash against the death penalty. The assassin will become the victim and miles of column inches will be wasted defending political violence as resistance.
Nigel Farage has every reason to call out Keir Starmer. His Business and Trade Secretary openly compared Farage to Jimmy Savile when Farage dared to call out the government’s insane censorship agenda.
A summary of the argument goes something like this: if you refuse extensive digital censorship, or question its relevance to child safety, you are comparable to a child molester. Patently ridiculous, and yet it went without apology. Politicians in Australia run the exact same argument in defence of our various censorial laws, but leave out the Savile line.
Keep in mind that Jimmy Savile was not an online conservative troll, he was a luvvie of State media, the BBC.
Speaking on a BBC panel, Nigel Farage said that X CEO Elon Musk is ‘very interested in British politics’ and that ‘the reason he trolls Keir Starmer is because Elon believes in free speech and Keir Starmer locks people up who say nasty things on Facebook.’
The BBC descended into a panic, accusing him of ‘sloganising’. It was a complete denial of reality by the public broadcaster which must be able to feel itself being crowbarred out of its news empire by journalists on X.
Those who challenge government policies know that digital censorship is a shell of barbed wire placed around Westminster to keep politicians safe from criticism.
Flat White is written by Alexandra Marshall. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.
