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Dr David Cumin
Spokesperson
Free Speech Union
The team at the Free Speech Union haven’t been wasting our time in lockdown. We’re planning our next steps in the fight against the Government’s proposed hate speech laws and put a stop to the erosion of our civil liberties under the cover of the current emergency powers.
Recently the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (which reports directly to the Prime Minister) advertised a position for a ‘Senior Analyst, Disinformation’. With a cool $110,000 dollar salary, the Government’s spending more on this disinformation “ministry of truth” official than our budget for the entire hate speech campaign!
Even if the role was well-intentioned, it should never be up to politicians and bureaucrats to determine what is “truth” vs “misinformation”.
The Government claims this new role is to focus on COVID, but even that is outrageous.
Here are some claims that were previously deemed ‘misinformation’ by governments and social media companies (often working in tandem) but are now widely accepted:
- At the beginning of the pandemic the American government said masks were not only not needed, they were dangerous! Some who claimed that masks were a prudent measure to take were labelled by officials as spreading ‘misinformation’ and were banned from sharing their views on social media.
- Six months ago, pointing out that the virus might have been linked to a lab in Wuhan was labelled racist and harmful. This theory is now widely accepted as at least possible, if not probable.
- Claims that the vaccines don’t stop you from getting COVID-19 (as opposed to just preventing serious illness) were labelled ‘misinformation’ by the New Zealand Government – even though it is now becoming clear that over time the vaccines become less effective at stopping ‘breakthrough’ infection.
You can see it is a slippery slope the moment you task Government with arbitrating truth. Even if it’s not misused by the politicians (though history would suggest it usually is) it is dangerous to have ‘disinformation’ departments to censor what you and I can say.
We must stand up to this creeping deference to high priests of ‘truth’ and stop the acceptance of censorship of science and debate.
Make Orwell Fiction Again
Your support will enable our staff to closely monitor the work of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. If we can’t force them to drop this dangerous role, we’ll make damn sure the public know what this new Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” is doing.
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Protecting free speech isn’t free. Unlike so many of the opponents of free speech, we are not funded by the Government or politicians. We’re relying on your support.
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