Monthly Archives: April 2021

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is leading the charge, picked up by a number of states, to enact tough new anti-riot legislation that comes dangerously close to infringing on freedom of speech, advocates warn. In Florida, DeSantis is expected to sign bill that bans violent or disorderly assemblies and punishes any efforts to defund police with very little detail. Oklahoma has also introduced legislation that protects drivers from accidentally hitting protesters if they are fleeing a riot. The bill also makes the protesters financially and criminally liable for damage or injuries if they are blocking streets, with penalties including a year of jail time. Iowa also has introduced a similar driver protection law after more than 100 incidents of people driving into demonstrations last summer. At least 93 similar bills have been proposed in 35 states after George Floyd protests last summer. Freedom of speech advocates warn that these bills are dangerous. These bills talk about riots, but the language that they use is so sweeping that it encompasses way more than what people imagine, Elly Page, a senior legal adviser with the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law told USA Today, adding that the bills end up criminalizing peaceful, legitimate First Amendment-protected protest.

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Wave of New 'Anti-Riot' Legislation Threatens Free Speech - The Daily Beast

Its certainly one of the most misunderstood subjects between France and the United States: freedom of speech. But this doesnt scare the organizers of the transatlantic festival: Libert dexpression, Free Speech and Cancel Culture, which will take place April 23-25.

Organized by the Services culturels de lAmbassade de France aux tats-Unis, the French Institute Alliance Franaise (FIAF), and the Maison franaise de NYU, this virtual rendez-vous assembles a dozen speakers from both sides of the Atlantic, such as the documentary filmmaker Caroline Fourest, author Thomas Chatterton Williams, philosopher Manon Garcia, and Charlie Hebdo survivor Philippe Lanon. Over the course of three days, the speakers will explore different facets of this freedom, through the themes of religion (April 23), sexuality (April 24), and race (April 25).

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The Franco-American misunderstanding of this issue of free speech stems from different visions of what constitutes a unified culture and what role individual differences, whether sexual, racial or religious, should play in a national culture, says Suzanne Nossel, director of PEN America, an organization that advocates for free speech in literature. She is the author of the book Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All and will open the festivals first discussion on religion and secularism.

The festival takes place against a backdrop of concern in France and the United States about the state of free speech. In July, nearly 150 intellectuals, activists and journalists took issue with the emergence of cancel culture on the left after the death of African-American George Floyd in an op-ed published in Harpers magazine. This trending term refers to calls for boycotts of personalities or companies whose views are deemed controversial. The free exchange of information and ideas, which is the very lifeblood of liberal societies, is becoming more limited every day. Censorship, which one would have expected to emerge from the radical right, is also becoming widespread in our culture: intolerance of differing opinions, a taste for public humiliation and ostracism, a tendency to dissolve complex political issues into a blinding moral certainty, argued the signatories of the letter, including writer Salman Rushdie and linguist Noam Chomsky.

The assassination in October 2020 of Samuel Paty, a teacher in the Paris region who had show to his students, several days before, controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons about Islam, relaunched the debate on the threats that hover over free speech in France. Today, part of the political and influential class in France has become unnerved by the arrival of cancel culture and American identity politics about race and gender in academia. The debate is so bad that the New York Times asked, in February, Will American Ideas Tear France Apart?

There are outcries in both countries, observes Suzanne Nossel. It is the consequence of the fear of a loss of privileges and the real concern that certain ideas will be suppressed or that certain opinions will no longer be recognized as acceptable.

Suzanne Nossel has seen at her level the difficulty in getting the French and Americans to agree on the subject. In 2015, PEN Americas decision to give an award to Charlie Hebdo journalists led six of its members to boycott its gala. One of the protesters put forward the cultural intolerance of the satirical newspaper to justify his decision.

While the director of PEN America is concerned about the state of free speech in the United States, where it is frowned upon by the younger generation, who associate it with something that offends them, she said she was extremely alarmed by the beheading of Samuel Paty in France. It is an illustration of the anger and extremism that inhabits this debate, she said. But it is also a mistake to blame all Muslims.

Whether in France or the United States, it is not possible to lock these issues, religious, racial or otherwise, in a box forever. They concern important parts of the population, especially young people who will play a role in media, politics and professional circles tomorrow. We must learn to give them a voice without compromising the liberal principles that govern the exchange of ideas.

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A Festival takes on the complicated topic of Freedom of Speech in the U.S. and France - Frenchly

In a March 21, 2021 column (One of the Most Significant Defenses of Free Speech in American History), Boston Globe writer Jeff Jacoby quoted the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass:

To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.

Its a sad, tragic, and shocking commentary on what some parents and many schools are teaching these days that Douglasss statement might not meet with majority approval in America. Recent polls indicate that more than half of the American public believe that the First Amendment (which guarantees free speech) is outdated and ought to be rewritten. Support for what is traditionally regarded as freedom of speech is lowest among millennials.

Political correctness, cancel culture, and presentism are erasing past events and people. Intimidation is all too frequent on campuses and in the public square. Heather Higgins, CEO of Independent Womens Voice, says:

Today, many Americans are afraid to express their beliefs out of fear of retaliation or being canceled. What is happening right now isnt about suppressing hate speech. Itsabout suppressing history, facts, and viewpoints that some self-appointed woke arbiters who are looking to be offended have decreed are damaging and hateful. Thats a recipe for a society defined by fear, division, mistrust, intolerance, discrimination, and ultimately violence.

If the rush to shout people down and shut them up doesnt alarm you, then youre no friend of freedom. When speech dies, other freedoms follow. For that reason, we must push back against anti-free speech barbarians. We must make it unmistakably plain that we will not be silenced, nor will we allow others to be silenced, for the sake of anybodys pet project or political agenda.

Here is a selection of poignant remarks on behalf of freedom of speech. I hope it stiffens the spines of all who love freedom and who understand that speech is its first line of defense.

"Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties." - John Milton, in Areopagitica

"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter ones thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason of righteousness, temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence. Slavery cannot tolerate free speech." - Frederick Douglass,in his Plea for Free Speech in Boston

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." - George Orwell, in his original preface toAnimal Farm

"Laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man may present his views without penalty, there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population." - Albert Einstein,in Ideas and Opinions

"If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." - George Washington, to Officers of the Army

"Strange it is that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free speech but object to their being 'pushed to an extreme,' not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case." - John Stuart Mill,in On Liberty

"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." - Justice William O. Douglas, in The One Un-American Act

"Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech; which is the right of every man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or control the right of another. And this is the only check it ought to suffer, and the only bounds it ought to know. This sacred privilege is essential to free governments, that the security of property, and the freedom of speech always go together; and in those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything else his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation, must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." -John TrenchardandThomas GordoninCatos Letters

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Historic Figures Who Recognized That Speech Is Freedom's First Line of Defense | Lawrence W. Reed - Foundation for Economic Education

Published: 4/12/2021 4:08:21 PM

A recent My Turn essay (Sixty Days, March 31) led me to think about the responsibilities of a local newspaper to assure that it does not give a platform to disinformation and a call for violence.

A commitment to the principal of free speech might suggest a very high bar for imposing limits on what ideas may be expressed, especially in a section of the paper dedicated to airing opinions. It might also be argued that if a viewpoint is held by a number of others in the community, beyond the author of a given piece, then it should not be subject to censure. Ill take these arguments in turn.

The Constitutions First Amendment enshrines free speech rights along with religious liberty: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

It is essential to note that this prohibits the government from limiting speech; it does not restrict the right of private companies from restricting speech unless by doing so they violate other established rights. This is why Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies were free to block the former presidents accounts without fear of being legally liable for doing so.

The Greenfield Recorder may refuse to publish whatever it sees to be counter to the principles of its business. In fact, the editor must routinely make precisely these decisions. There is simply no free speech argument restricting the Recorders decisions about publishing a particular opinion piece, any more than any such claim would force it to cover events it doesnt deem newsworthy.

The second argument is even more easily refuted. While it may be worthwhile and important to report on the prevalence of a particular viewpoint in the local community for example, in an article assessing support for a candidate or governmental policy it is certainly not the responsibility of a newspaper to provide that viewpoint with a platform, especially when it is founded on thoroughly debunked claims and promotes a military takeover of the United States government. Imagine a QAnon believer writing an essay that perpetuates the absurd claim that Democrats are cannibalistic child traffickers. Would the Recorder feel compelled to publish it even if there were others in the area who subscribed to the idea? Of course not.

Where does this leave us? Perhaps the editor has another reason to want the conspiracy theories and seditious ideas expressed in the piece propounded. Perhaps the editor simply wants to sell more subscriptions with controversy. Either way, it was a profound error to publish the essay and to refuse a reasonable request for the online version of the paper to carry a simple disclaimer. What the Recorder owes its readers is better judgment.

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My Turn: What does a paper owe its readers? - The Recorder

A few weeks back, in Meriwether v. Hartop, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a broad First Amendment ruling in the area of so-called academic freedom enjoyed by university teachers. The case involves a philosophy professor (Nicholas Meriwether) who was punished by the public university he works for (Shawnee State University in Ohio, or University) for failing to comply with a University policy requiring teachers to address students by the students preferred pronouns. More specifically, Meriwether, a devout Christian who had a practice of using formal titles (Mr. or Ms.) in class when leading Socratic discussions to foster[] an atmosphere of seriousness and mutual respect, objected to having to use feminine titles and pronouns in addressing and referring to a student (described in the opinion merely as Doe) whom Meriwether described as someone no one . . . would have assumed . . . was female based on . . . outward appearances. . . In response to complaints by the student, the University, after various back-and-forths with Meriwether, formally reprimanded him for failure to comply with the salutation policy, and warned that future violations would bring further corrective actions that could include pay reductions and termination. En route to the written reprimand, the University rejected at least two resolutions Meriwether proposed: (1) that Meriwether refer to Doe simply by her last name (even though, presumably, Meriwether would continue to use Mr. and Ms. in conversing with all other students); and (2) that Meriwether comply with the schools policy and use students preferred pronouns but add a disclaimer in his syllabus noting that he was doing so under compulsion and setting forth his personal and religious beliefs about gender identity.

After a faculty union grievance process (the faculty at Shawnee State apparently is unionized) did not bring him satisfaction, Meriwether filed suit in federal court bring claims under: (1) the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment; (2) the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment; (3) the Ohio Constitution; and (4) his contract with the University.

The federal district court dismissed all of Meriwethers federal claims and declined to exercise jurisdiction over the supplemental state-law claims. The Sixth Circuit reversed as to the First Amendment causes of action, holding that Meriwether had stated a valid claim under both the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment. In resolving the Free Speech issue (the only one we have space to address in this column), the Sixth Circuit panel held that although Meriwether is a public employee, the framework the Supreme Court has erected to govern, as a general matter, free-speech claims by government employees, spelled out 15 years ago in Garcetti v. Ceballos, does not apply because the Court in Garcetti explicitly declined to decide whether its framework should be used for speech related to scholarship or teaching. Instead, said the Sixth Circuit, older cases from the 1950s and 1960s, involving the imposition of McCarthy-era loyalty oaths on all public employees, including public educators, spoke grandly about the importance of preserving academic freedom for people who teach and write in American universities, and thus suggest that the Garcetti framework (under which the category of on-the-job speech by public employees, in which Meriwethers teaching would fall, would ordinarily receive little First Amendment protection) ought not be used in this setting.

Instead, the court applied the pre-Garcetti case of Pickering v. Board of Education, under which even on-the-job speech by public employees is protected if it involves a matter of public concern, unless the speech would impair a sufficiently strong interest the public employer has in the operation of the public entity in question. In ruling for Meriwether, the court, in grand fashion, observed:

Traditionally, American universities have been beacons of intellectual diversity and academic freedom. They have prided themselves on being forums where controversial ideas are discussed and debated. And they have tried not to stifle debate by picking sides. But Shawnee State chose a different route: It punished a professor for his speech on a hotly contested issue. And it did so despite the constitutional protections afforded by the First Amendment.

In our view, this was an unfortunate ruling in two important respects: it may have reached the wrong outcome on the facts, and in doing so it made some unnecessary and arguably questionable law on a big decisionthe extent to which Garcetti should or should not apply to the public higher education setting.

As to the first question (the correctness of the ruling on its facts), we believe the Sixth Circuit erred for several reasons. For starters, even under the Pickering balancing test the court purported to apply (which protects public employee speech more than does the Garcetti framework), the University should have prevailed. The Sixth Circuit rejected as insufficient the Universitys argument that its policy helped it steer clear of a hostile learning environment that might itself violate federal law. But whether or not respecting students preferred pronouns is itself required by federal anti-discrimination law, isnt it obvious that a university has a strong interest in promoting a sense of equal treatment and dignity among its students so that the learning environment in the classroom liberates students to focus on the content at hand without having to simultaneously process difficult feelings of exclusion or disrespect? And if that interest is important, one can see how Professor Meriwethers proposed compromisesof using the last name only for Ms. Doe but using Mr. and Ms. for everyone else (thus singling Ms. Doe out for different treatment in a way the whole class sees and hears), or of noting his objection to the universitys pronoun-use policy in the syllabus that students like Ms. Doe must look at every class day of the semesterdo not address the problem. Indeed, if the Sixth Circuit were correct, would a faculty member have a First Amendment right to refer to women students by their first names and men by using Mr. [last name]? Or calling Blacks by their first name but Whites by Mr. or Ms [last name]? Certainly providing equal salutation treatment without regard to race or gender identification no doubt constitutes an important pedagogical interest as to which universities are entitled to significant deference. (It might be a more difficult question if the University had punished Meriwether for his private social media posts in which he railed against the policys unwisdom, since that would be one step removed from the classroom learning environment itself.)

Moreover, it is far from clear that a salutationthe way that students are addressed or called on in class or elsewhereitself constitutes the kind of distinctive academic-speech activity that may ever justify significant First Amendment protection at all when undertaken by a public employee, regardless of the applicable doctrinal framework. Certainly and importantly, the Sixth Circuit never explained what is distinctive about salutations at a university that implicates the development of new knowledge or intellectual debates. Salutations are generic and are utilized throughout public institutions, including K-12 public schools, courtrooms, and the myriad situations where public employees address their clients or the general public. In all these circumstances, government would have substantial discretion in regulating the scope and form of salutations, without regard to an employees conscientious reluctance to abide by the states requirements. Special constitutional protection for academics engaged in activities that are functionally indistinguishable from the conduct of all other public employees and which bear no relationship to the reasons why academic freedom and freedom of speech at public universities might merit unique free speech treatment requires more of an explanation and defense than the courts opinion provided.

Another way to put the point is this: Meriwethers objection to following the schools salutation policy was based on its conflict with his personal politics, not a conflict with the content or viewpoint of the class he was trying to teach. Indeed, if he were trying to make a pedagogical point about philosophy (his field) by using the way he addressed students as an example or illustration of a particular philosophical viewpoint, important questions would be raised about whether it is appropriate to enlist students as props, or unwilling performance artists, for professorial demonstrations. (Certainly in med school, for example, a professor could be prohibited from incorporating his unwilling students as subjects of experiments he were trying to demonstrate to the class.)

Pulling back the lens, as a general matter it may not make sense to construe salutations to be pure, content-based speech rather than essentially conduct-infused interactions in which speech plays the same relevant but non-substantive role that speech acts do in so many social interactions. When a teacher takes attendance to determine which students are present in the classroom, that seems more like a mechanical exercise than the expression of substantive content germane to the course curriculum. Similarly, when a teacher calls on students who raise their hand to speak, this avoids the conundrum of too many students trying to speak at the same time, but this practice itself contributes little if anything to the substantive subject matter of the course.

We recognize that there is an expressive dimension to salutations, but that is hardly dispositive. The question is whether the salutation is in essence a form of interaction that allows decisionmakers to identify and distinguish one person from another (a rather mechanical goal) rather than convey a substantive, much less viewpoint-based, message. Putting Garcetti aside, when the DMV finally calls your name to come forward to renew your drivers license, would we remotely think the salutation there is protected speech for First Amendment purposes?

Finally and relatedlyand this may be among the most difficult question raised by this case and not addressed by the Sixth Circuithow do we differentiate speech from identity discrimination for constitutional purposes? As suggested above, if a professor calls on White male students by addressing them as Mr. followed by their last names and calls on Black men and all female students using only their first names, the university would be permitted to punish that practice. One could argue that the universitys rules do impinge upon the professors freedom of speech and academic freedom liberties but that this infringement is justified by the public universitys strong state interest in prohibiting race and gender discrimination. (As noted above, if this is the right way to analyze the problem under a Pickering balancing framework, the Sixth Circuit gave no reason why the universitys interest shouldnt prevail in the present case as well.)

But there is an alternative way to understand this conflict, that neednt even require resort to compelling university interests. It is often the case that distinctions drawn between protected classes, even if expressive in nature, are construed to be discriminatory conduct that does not implicate free speech guarantees at all. For example, Title VII prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of religion. It does not prohibit employment discrimination based on secular belief systems. From a speech perspective, this statutory scheme constitutes viewpoint discrimination. The Court has repeatedly held, after all, that religion is a viewpoint of speech. But no one argues that Title VII abridges freedom of speech in this way. For the purposes of this civil rights statute, religion is understood to constitute an identity (protected against discrimination) not a subject or viewpoint of speech.

The same analysis could apply to the terms used to address a student. To the extent that ignoring students professed genders when calling on them in defiance of university regulations is construed to be a form of identity discrimination, that determination could displace free speech review of the universitys requirementsjust as prohibiting discrimination against students on the basis of their religion when calling on them could be understood as legitimate enforcement of civil rights principles rather than an abridgment of the professors freedom of speech.

For these reasons, we think the court should have ruled for the University in any event. And if it had seen things this way, it would have had no occasion to address the big and vexing question whether the government-protective Garcetti framework applies in the education setting. There are certainly arguments cutting both ways on this. In Garcetti, the Court ruled that as long as public employees [are] mak[ing] statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline, even if the matters on which they are speaking are of public concern. To be sure, applying Garcetti to all academic settings would have pronounced effects in that no public educators would be protected by First Amendment academic freedom with regard to on-the-job speech. And deciding what is on-the-job speech is not always easy. The scope of what constitutes employee, as opposed to citizen, speech can be unclear. With regard to K12 instructors, perhaps all of a teachers statements during class can be viewed as part of the job, but what of conversations with students out of class, during lunch period, or before the school day formally begins? More problematically, how do we determine the job parameters of university professors who are often expectedas part of the scholarship and service components of their jobto speak to government, the press, professional associations, and other audiences, and to publish articles and books for diverse dissemination?

Yet if Garcetti doesnt apply, where does special First Amendment protection for public professors come from? Just as the Press Clause of the First Amendment has never been construed to give the institutional media special speech protections (and that is a good thing since the very idea of the institutional media has broken down due to the internet), so too it might be problematic to try to define and confer special protection on professors. (What about independent scholars at think tanks, and conspiracy theorists who purport to do scholarly research?)

The Sixth Circuit leaned a lot on cases from public educational institutions in which the Court rejected anti-subversive laws from two generations ago. But these cases should not be overread. The Government in these cases lost (and should have lost) because it failed to make any specific showings of disruption to government operations that the laws were addressing; instead, it was arguing that all civil service should be free of anyone who holds dangerous beliefsnot that a particular persons belief, because of his or her particular job, was in fact or in all predictive likelihood going to interfere with government operations. Even the Garcetti framework and the leeway it affords government to regulate speech qua employee does not necessarily permit the government to use its employer status to silence discourse, not because it [has any effect on] public functions but simply because superiors [in the government department or office] disagree with the content of employees speechprecisely what government was trying to do during the early Cold War. So with or without application of Garcetti, those cases would have come out the way they did, and thus they dont really offer much clear support for an academic freedom exception to generic First Amendment doctrine.

Finally, we note another way in which the federal courts in this case perhaps needlessly waded into this thicket. The district court declined to address Meriwethers claims under the Ohio constitution or his contract with the University. We recognize that federal courts may not feel they are the best institutions to forge new state-law paths. But federal courts can make use of devices like certification of questions of law to state supreme courts. And in many respects these non-First-Amendment sources of lawespecially state-law definitions of tenure and the likemay be better and more durable fonts of academic freedom protections than First Amendment doctrine. If public universities want to recruit and retain top-flight academics, they will likely have to promise certain expressive leeway (something implicit in the Sixth Circuits reference to the tradition of intellectual diversity and freedom in American higher education) and should be held to their promises. But if other public educational institutions choose not to make such promises, it is not clear that federal courts should be fashioning First Amendment law to force them to so do. Finally, judges need remember that rules empowering faculty members against administration rules can cut both ways. If more progressive administrations cant rein in more conservative faculty practices, neither can conservative legislatures and boards of governors rein in more progressive professors.

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Analyzing the Recent Sixth Circuits Extension of Academic Freedom Protection to a College - Justia Verdict

In 2018 a Scottish comedian was convicted of a hate crime after filming his girlfriends pug performing the Nazi salute and putting it on YouTube.

In Canada recently, a man was reportedly jailed for contempt of court for refusing to stop talking about his sons gender transition and referring to him as she and her.

Now I need to say that I do not endorse misgendering people or teaching dogs to do Nazi salutes but getting the government involved in this is a road to madness.

But buckle up, because it looks like at least one Australian state might be about to hit the highway.

A new report from the Victorian Parliaments Legal and Social Issues Committees inquiry into anti-vilification laws has been released. It has a range of recommendations that, if made into law, will weaponise the authoritarian Karens. No longer will they just want to speak to your manager, they will take you to court.

Ominously, neither of the two Liberal Party members on the committee argued against the recommendations in a minority report. And now the Government is trying to sell it to the Victorian public with talk about banning the display of swastikas.

(On this point, swastikas are not banned in Israel.They take the approach that anyone who is ugly and stupid enough to identify which such symbols of hate should be allowed to expose their true nature for everyone to see.)

But the swastika issue is only one dot point in the report. These proposals are far-reaching restrictions on our freedom of speech that would divide this state into races, genders, the abled and disabled, the woke and the non-woke, the dobbers and the dobbed upon.

Soon enough, our public servants will become quasi-police, and Victorias courts will be full of people complaining about what they overheard someone say on the bus or read on Twitter.

Our prisons could fill up with young men who said the wrong thing at the footy and refuse to apologise.

Like much of the rest of the world, Victorian law stops people from threatening or inciting others to threaten physical harm to another person because of their race or religion.

Threats of violence are beyond the pale so this is how it should be.

But these recommendations would seriously lower the threshold. Under the proposal, bureaucrats and judges would only need to be satisfied that a person recklessly engages in conduct that is likely to incite hatred against, serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule of a person based on whether they possess or associate with someone who possesses a protected attribute.

The list of attributes would expand to include race, religion, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, sex characteristics, intersex status, disability, and HIV/AIDS status.

If this legislation came to pass, it would only be a matter of time before the list lengthened to who knows what? The short, the bald, the ginger all of them with a list of petty grievances to take to Woke Court.

Such a system will strongly favour the middle class and those with the resources to pay for lawyers.

What a nightmare.

But if the left side of politics think this might not impact them, maybe they need to have another think.

They could wind up in Woke Court for displaying the hammer and sickle that equally sickening symbol behind the deaths of millions. A future conservative government could easily turn this into law.

And would it still be okay to wear a t-shirt bearing the likeness of the notorious racist and homophobe, Che Guevara?

People of the left could equally find themselves in trouble for supporting socialism.

Where would it end? If this kind of law passes, I can guarantee that the list of prohibited symbols and protected people will grow.

People on each side seem to think only those with opinions they disagree with should be censored. It always comes as a shock that these rules might also apply to them.

And, meanwhile, it will make little or no difference to political extremists who will find new symbols, meet in secret and become harder to identify.

Where extremists are currently moderated by public opinion, soon they will lurk in the shadows. Some will recognise this as their chance to become a hero. They may choose to go to court, create gofundme pages, make speeches on courthouse steps, and some may become political prisoners.

Its a recipe for social chaos and division with identity politics turning us into warring tribes.

Free speech is fundamental in a democratic society. The Government has no place policing our private conversations. They should butt out before we become the laughing stock of the nation.

David Limbrick is the Liberal Democrats MP for Victorias South East Metropolitan region.

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Does Daniel Andrews have new bars on free speech coming? - The Spectator Australia