NO HATE SPEECH!

Of course, THIS isn't "hate speech"...

by Jack Grant

How would you like to fight the new secret war, taking on the enemies of the new multicultural, borderless Britain one social media website at a time?

Here's your chance to join the Britain's most well-funded secret army as a professional left-wing troller!

Such is the message – effectively – in this job advert for a Clapham based NGO called International Alert which styles itself as an "international peace building" outfit and apparently spends most of its time interfering in the Third World. But now it has sniffed out an another source of money available from the European Union for "combating hate speech".

Its “Communication and Europe Teams" are running a short-term social media campaign (#EUnify) to counter racist and xenophobic discourse in the UK in the run-up to the European elections." The ad was placed in an internal House of Commons MPs website.  

Anyone signing up for this is going to be a very busy bee indeed ...posting, arguing and rebutting  amplifying campaign messages, publishing daily on various platforms, managing and moderating user generated content... and so on. Combating hate speech has become something of a new online Klondyke, with a river of European money available to those who are willing to sit on their keyboards,

tweeting, posting all day. It is a job tailor made for unemployable lefties.

One of the main outfits to corner a big market share for this new racket is No Hate Speech, who have hoovered up a lot of European Social Fund money. And of course it could hardly be a trans national project without the UN getting into the act. Most of this spending is focused on combatting UKIP in the coming European elections, but you can bet your bottom euro that in the finest public sector tradition the "problem" will still need lots more funding after the elections are over. After all, the freedom of speech of the social media is deeply worrying to the Left, so much so that, courtesy of the Minority Rights Group, they recently held a hand wringing seminar on the subject.

Legislation was problematic, they thought, because it could eventually be turned against them. Self-regulation is also not ideal because of a lack of enthusiasm from ISPs. So the speakers agreed on a counter strategy – aggressive "counter speech" or state funded propaganda to you and me. This final strategy hinged on – surprise, surprise – a huge wedge of public money being made available for the fight.

In their own words, "Counter speech means raising awareness, improving education and building the capacity to speak out against hate speech. NGOs and campaigns like the No Hate Speech Movement and the Stop Racism and Hate Campaign are working towards these ends. Chris Whitwell of Families, Friends and Travellers talked about his own organisation’s efforts to challenge misconceptions and

stereotypes about Roma and Gypsies in the media."

The MRG blogger warns gravely "the events of Rwanda in 1994 offer a harrowing example of what can happen when the media becomes an unchecked platform for hate." (As far as I remember, there was no social media around at that time, but I’ll let it pass.)

There is a lot of encouragement for nationalists to take from this farcical campaign. 

First is how ineffectual it all is. Behind the fancy web sites and the young women who enjoy posing for photographs, it is obvious that there is a lot of log rolling going on. These are lefties and liberals, after all. They have never planned to do a hard day's work. They have joined up to these organisations for lifestyle reasons, going to seminars in foreign countries, socialising with like-minded types, patronising Third Worlders and most of all, congratulating each other on their own righteousness.

Secondly, and more importantly, there is the evidence that the opposition confidence in their project and the well paid jobs that go with it, is wafer thin. This hysterical campaign against freedom of speech means a total lack of confidence. And once they are defeated internally, in their own minds, then it is ‘Game Over’ no matter how well funded their organisations are.