Hate Speech: The Elite's Cover for Social Strangulation, By Richard Miller (Londonistan)

Hiding in the shadowed salons of power, where champagne flutes clink over the muffled cries of the silenced, "hate speech" isn't a shield against bigotry, it's a straitjacket for dissent. Fresh off Lionel Shriver's razor-sharp takedown in Spiked on October 7, 2025, where she eviscerates the UK's descent into speech-policing purgatory as a "poisonous" warning to the world, the facade crumbles further. Shriver, speaking amid the fallout from Charlie Kirk's assassination last month, nails it: What starts as a noble crusade against venomous words morphs into an elite-orchestrated chokehold on the rabble. The Right's post-assassination clamour for "hate speech" prosecutions, led by a tone-deaf U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi claiming it's not First Amendment-protected, proves the poison's bipartisan bite. But peel back the rhetoric, and it's clear: These laws aren't about fairness or safety. They're a velvet glove over the iron fist of social control, wielded by the powerful to neuter threats to their perch. And fairness? That's a myth they peddle to the peasants while the scales tip eternally in their favour.

Hate speech laws arrive cloaked in empathy's finery: Safeguard the vulnerable! Curb the bigots! Who could object? Yet, as Shriver warns, this "Left-wing concept" is inherently subjective, "hate" is whatever offends the overseers. In the UK, without a First Amendment bulwark, it's metastasised into a daily dragnet: 30 arrests for online "offense" every 24 hours, per Shriver's dispatch. That's not justice; it's a panopticon, where bobbies knock on doors over tweets that bruise elite sensibilities.

The genius of the disguise? It reframes control as compassion. Governments and Big Tech, uneasy bedfellows in the surveillance waltz, promise to "combat harm" while harvesting compliance. X erupts with the unvarnished truth: As @GoodwinMJ thunders in a February 2025 thread, Europe's "elite class uses 'hate laws', speech codes and censorship to try and control debate and shut down alternative views." But the people? They're rebelling, from French farmers torching barricades to British mums doxed for "misgendering" stickers. It's social engineering 101: Redefine dissent as danger, then deputise the state to "protect" you from your own thoughts.

And the power play? Pure class warfare. These laws entrench the status quo, as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) lays bare: "Hate speech laws are inherently likely to be enforced in ways that further entrench dominant political and societal groups." Elites don't fear the slurs; they fear the scrutiny. When a podcaster like Graham Linehan gets cuffed for a TERF tweet, it's not about hurt feelings, it's about hobbling voices that puncture the progressive piety machine.

Fairness in hate speech enforcement? That's the punchline to a cosmic joke. These statutes are scalpels for the many, sledgehammers spared for the few. Ordinary Joes, truckers griping about migration, nurses questioning mandates, get the full Monty: Fines, jail, social exile. Elites? They get a wink and a waiver.

Consider the ledger. In the UK, the Public Order Act 1986, amended into a hate-speech hydra, has snared thousands for "stirring up hatred," yet when Labour grandees like Diane Abbott sling racial barbs at "white people," it's crickets or context. X user @The_Right_Axis skewers the hypocrisy in a May 2025 post: "If a white TikToker said this about black refugees, it would make CNN's front page... But when it's reversed, it's 'nuanced context.'" The DOJ? It hounds school-board mums as "domestic terrorists," but shrugs at campus chants glorifying violence; 60% of FBI hate probes in 2023 were speech-tied, yet selectively swung.

Globally, the pattern persists. France's 1881 Press Law, a hate-speech relic, jails yellow-vest protesters for "inciting hatred" while Macron's inner circle jets unscathed past Islamophobic slips. In Canada, Trudeau's Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, looms as a vagueness vortex, where "hate" could criminalise convoy critiques, but cradle elite edicts. As @CanadaFreedom18 warns in February 2024 (echoed into 2025's chill): "Hate speech is a vague term by design... all opposing viewpoints can be deemed as 'hateful' therefore a serious crime." Elites like tech overlords or Davos darlings? Their "nuanced" takes on globalism or gender, however venomous, float free, untethered by the laws they lobby into being.

Shriver's UK autopsy is autopsy gold: No enshrined free-speech right means a legislative flood of muzzles, the Human Rights Act, Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, each a brick in the wall. "Where is the law that says you have a right to express your opinion?" she asks. Nowhere. Instead, it's a one-way ratchet: Shut up, or else. The Charlie Kirk echo? Even conservatives now flirt with Bondi's blunder, demanding "hate speech" scalps for lefty ghouls celebrating the hit. But as Shriver retorts, true free speech swallows the bitter pill, abhorrent words included. Otherwise, you're just swapping one censor for another.

X amplifies the alarm: @JayGenXer rails against Canada's Liberal "NEW HATE SPEECH LAWS" mirroring UK's door-knocks, branding it "DICTATORSHIP/TYRANNICAL." @esjesjesj twists the knife: Such laws "exist to stop fascism from rising... [but] define fascism only as censorship to hide that they are fascists." Britain's export? A model for elite insulation, Keir Starmer's regime has jailed "tens of thousands" for social posts, per @SemperVeritasX, while Westminster whispers slurs in safety.

This isn't parochial; it's planetary. The U.S. teeters with the bipartisan STOP HATE Act, a July 2025 Trojan horse compelling platforms to snitch on "hate, scorn, racism, and disinformation," code for dissenting data on borders or vaccines. Backed by Leftist heavies, it's less anti-terror than anti-talk, targeting "political dissent" under a terror fig leaf. Heritage Foundation dubs it "the new tyranny over the mind," where speech policing criminalises critique of the sacred cows, race, gender, globalism.

Elites orchestrate from on high: UN pacts enshrine "hate speech" interventions, yet ignore their own diplomats' drips of disdain. Cato's verdict? These laws "undermine free speech and equality" via "insulting, abusive" ambiguities that elites exploit to entrench power. It's control cosplaying as civility, freeze dissent, freeze the frame.

Shriver's salve? Return to principle: Free speech as "neither 'right' nor 'left'... a non-partisan issue." Ditch the hate-speech hydra; codify the affirmative right to speak. Reform UK's mandate? "Stick up for the majority who just want to say what they think." In the U.S., Bondi's gaffe demands a constitutional cram session, hate's protected, period. Globally, amplify the X revolt: As @ReclaimTheNetHQ exposes, push back before bills like STOP HATE become stop-thought.

Yet hope glimmers in the fractures. Linehan's arrest has Yanks agog — "What's going on in the UK?" — sparking transatlantic tremors. When elites overreach, the masses mobilise.

Hate speech laws aren't broken; they're built this way, an elite power play disguised as public good, fairness a fairy tale for the flock. Shriver's siren wails true: Embrace them, and you trade liberty for a leash. The Kirk aftermath? A mirror to our madness, where even the aggrieved ape the oppressors. Heed the UK's 30-daily shackles, the X chorus of "totalitarianism," the web's warnings of entrenched tyrants. Or watch society splinter: Not from words, but from the silence they enforce.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/10/07/the-idea-of-hate-speech-is-poisonous/