Remaking Rights: Australia's Censors Exploit Stabbing Attack
Australia's censors exploit Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel's stabbing to push the agenda of an activist censorship lobby remaking human rights
If you are in Australia, this section of a church livestream should not be available to you.
That's because the livestream caught a teenager shouting "Allahu Akbar" before stabbing Australia's maverick Assyrian Bishop Mar Mari Emanuel. The victim has forgiven his attacker, but says he still wants the video to remain online (the Bishop is himself a prominent TikTokker).
But if Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has her way, it will not be available. Indeed, it would be unavailable to everyone in the world, since she has given digital platforms a global removal order for this content. The Commissioner and the rest of Australia's censoriat are very upset that Elon Musk's Twitter (aka X) is openly protesting and complying with the order only within Australia.
They are much happier with the other platforms that have meekly agreed to comply with these orders. Actual compliance does not seem to be the point: Sydney Radio station 2GB reported that the video was still readily available on Facebook, yet the government does not seem to have noticed. It looks as if the censoriat is more interested in using this attack to pursue a vendetta against Mr. Musk than it is about controlling the video, let alone actually preventing such attacks in future.
Politicians cheering the Commissioner on claim that letting other people post videos is but a narcissistic power trip of Mr. Musk who should instead be helping to "keep Australians safe online" from "violent and distressing content". As if we were children.
Now, in fact, I personally do avoid watching violent viral videos (since I am not a child, I can protect myself from content if I choose). But I did watch this video, and I'm glad. It revealed something that I could not get from any verbal description. Something about the cool ferocity of the criminal struck me in ways that can't be put into propositional sentences. I am an ineffably wiser adult for having watched it.
That's right, violent videos can be good for you! Indeed, there's something suspicious about censoring video just because it's violent and disturbing. Australia's leaders never put up much fight against films like Terminator, The Silence of the Lambs, or Natural Born Killers. Even videos of real-world violence, such as the death of George Floyd, have not only been allowed to go viral but have been celebrated.
So by what principles is the censoriat deeming this particular video to be unacceptable for public consumption? Not only have they failed to articulate any clear, viewpoint-neutral rationale for targeting this content, they also don't seem interested in having one. The exercise of arbitrary power seems to be the goal of the censoriat and the activist industry behind it. I recently wrote in Quillette:
As is usual in democratic politics, Western governments are being steered down this path less by a simple lust for power than by the efforts of an activist industry: in this case, a network of individuals and organizations that earn their keep by warning of the dangers of harmful information and taking it upon themselves to determine what information is "harmful" and what is "safe."
You should go read the whole thing in light of the Commissioner's latest rampage. It was finalised just before any of this hit the news, and doesn't mention the Commissioner at all. The gist is that the risks of dystopian private-sector censorship by Big Tech are receding, only for the old-fashioned government kind to reassert itself. You can compare my analysis there with how things are panning out in the news.
I admit that current news makes me question my suggestion that the government censoriat is not lusting for power. The Commissioner wants to “really minimise the amount of content the Australians can see”. Our Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants social media to crack down on people who mock him in memes. No wonder such a person also finds it extraordinary that Twitter/X is “trying to argue its case”. Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie thinks Mr Musk should be jailed for his cheek.
But the Commissioner is part of that activist censorship industry. According to her official webpage, she came out of Washington DC to work on "safety policy" at big tech firms including the (pre-Musk) Twitter. Then via some sort of transcontinental revolving door, she seems to have moved from government relations to actual (Australian) government.
Now, as Commissioner, she is also part of a welter of global digital safety and woke-sounding QUANGOs, including even the dreaded World Economic Forum (WEF). From her official webpage:
As Commissioner, Julie plays an important global role as Chair of the Child Dignity Alliance’s Technical Working Group and as a Board Member of the WePROTECT Global Alliance. The Commissioner also serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Coalition for Digital Safety and on their XR Ecosystem Governance Steering Committee on Building and Defining the Metaverse. Under her leadership, eSafety has joined forces with the White House Gender Policy Council and Government of Denmark on the Global Partnership for Action on Gender-Based Harassment and Abuse.
Inman's greatest hit at the WEF was a panel comment in which she called for “... a recalibration of a whole range of human rights that are playing out online”.
I don't want to single Inman out, recalibrating human rights is what the whole digital safety lobby is all about. As I wrote in Quillette
These laws are not simply an expression of countries’ own constitutional norms. They are a dodge around those norms. Free speech traditionally flourishes in democracies because their citizens can’t be muzzled at the mere say-so of some censor appointed by a theocrat, strongman, or authoritarian. Even in democracies with nothing like America’s First Amendment, speech can traditionally only be limited by specific laws. But on the Internet, none of this applies. Posts can be quietly downranked or deleted at will. The platforms are not accountable to anyone and the censored have no legal recourse. Civil servants, government officials, security forces, and other agencies of the state can exploit this by pressuring platforms to mute their critics.
This hostility to the rule of law has been on full display recently, not merely in the insolently authoritarian language of our Prime Minister, but also in the actions of the Commissioner. The Free Speech Union of Australia points to legal gamesmanship by the Commissioner who obtained an injunction against Twitter/X over the Wakeley stabbings without giving them a chance to respond. The Union is also helping Chris Elston, a Canadian activist nicknamed “Billboard Chris” who has also had a tweet subject to a removal order. The Union claims not only that the removal order was invalid under the law, it also points out that the Commissioner failed to notify Elston of the order, as required under her enabling legislation.
The most enraging thing about the government's behaviour is that they are not interested in the actual problems. The boy in the video has been charged on terrorism-related offences. Very likely, terrorism is the right way to think about his act. Around the world, billions of people keep their mouths shut about some of Islam's darker tendencies out of fear of young men just like him. In Britain, the Mother of Parliaments is twisting her own procedural knickers in fear of Islamist violence.
Australia's leaders should be working on how to free our country from that cloud of fear, which has no place in the workings of liberal democracy. But they are uninterested in the traditions that keep liberal democracy alive. Instead, they are champing at the bit to attack Mr Musk, because he is doing the job that is rightly theirs: standing up for the ability of Australians to communicate with each other.