Elon Musk is being threatened by Ausrtalia’s socialist Federal government, the conservative opposition, and independents, simply because it won’t remove a video of an Orthodox Assyrian priest being attacked by a young Muslim man in church – and it wants this video removed worldwide.
What is going on with Australia’s politicians? Censorship (see all the ๐ tweets below) from a socialist government is understandable – they want to control the narrative, they believe ever more government is the solution to the problems of too much government, and they’re in it to helpโฆ themselves, as much as they can.
They pay lip service to caring for the working man, but socialism is not the path to genuine free market prosperity – indeed, it is the path to the opposite.
But when conservative politicians who are meant to be on the side of liberty, freedom and free market capitalism join the fray and side with the socialists, serious questions need to be asked as to what the political class is really doing, and whether they believe they are the servants of the people, or our masters.
Now we have the head of Australia’s eSafety Commission – which started life in 2015 as the “Children’s eSafety Commission” (won’t somebody think of the children) going well beyond that mandate to want to actively censor Elon Musk’s ๐ platform from hosting a video, and they want that video censored on a worldwide basis, even though Australia’s laws do not apply to other jurisdictions.
eSafety’s head is Julie Inman-Grant, a former Twitter 1.0 employee in its “trust and safety” division, itself responsible for a stack of censorship during Twitter 1.0’s life – now the unelected head of the eSafety Commission, noting that Australia doesn’t have to abide by the free-speech First Amendment protections of the US Constitution, because Australia is not the US.
So why should the US listen to Australia’s demands that content, explicitly protected in the US, be taken down?
Now, it’s not as if ๐ hasn’t actually acquiesced to the demands. The video of a young, said to be “mentally challenged” Muslim man attacking the Bishop of an Assyrian Orthodox Church in Sydney has been geoblocked from Australian IP addresses (and thus Australian ๐ users) who aren’t using a VPN to appear as if from a different country.
The video in question is stored on US servers, outside of Australian control, but this isn’t good enough for Australia or Ms Inman-Grant.
There’s also the issue of the “Barbara Streisand” effect that has focused so much attention on this video that the Australian authorities want banned, to “protect the children”, that millions more have seen it. As per usual, government actions have unintended consequences.
And let’s not forget the mainstream news media which broadcast the same video on nightly news services with nary a word from the eSafety Commissioner or anyone else, yet these same mainstream news services are calling for Elon to be censored – and by extension – all Australians.
We now have independent senator Jacquie Lambie calling for Elon Musk to be jailed, which saw Elon Musk note Lambie having “utter contempt for the Australian people”.
Australians are rightly outraged at the denial of free speech in Australia, and conservative Australians are equally outraged that our conservative politicians are also calling for censorship.
These are dark times for Australia’s western democracy. What happens next is yet to be seen, but Elon Musk, freedom lovers and conservatives aren’t going to go down without a fight!
Here is eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant noting US laws don’t apply in Australia, and the she wants to “limit Australians” being able to see content on the Internet:
Here’s a tweet showing X has become the most downloaded news app in Australia, with Elon Musk commenting: “The Australian people want the truth. ๐ is the only one standing up for their rights.”
Here’s Elon Musk posting Benjamin Franklin’s most famous statement about giving up a little liberty for a little security:
Here’s Elon’s tweet showing the two choices for freedom lovers:
Here’s Jacquie Lambie showing her disgusting behaviour:
Here’s Jacquie Lambie repeating the same views on Sky News, without any pushback from the Sky News host who failed to mention Sky News itself was running ads defending free speech on its news service only last year:
