Free speech isn’t dying by mistake. It’s being extinguished by design.
Labour-aligned governments across the UK, EU, Canada and Australia are rapidly normalizing censorship, surveillance and state control of speech as never before in recent Western history. In the United States, the Democrats perfected the model. Under them, censorship became policy. Intimidation became government. And compliance became virtue. What began as “content moderation” is now out-and-out information control.
These parties purport to stand on moral high ground. They purport to care about compassion. They purport to stand for democracy. Their actions show otherwise.
The British Labour Party has arrested citizens for social media posts. Police have seized people’s phones over jokes and opinions. Facial recognition vans have been driving through public streets. Speech that offends or challenges power is becoming a crime. This is not making people safe. It is making them subjects.
The European Union is seeking to create a form of online Thought Police. Brussels now has the power to pressure tech platforms to delete dissent or face company-destroying fines through the Digital Services Act. The ostensible goal is not to prevent harm. The goal is to stop narratives before they can even become a threat to power.
The Liberal government in Canada is following the same script. Speech codes are being expanded. Privacy rights are contracting. Words are becoming crimes. The state is deciding what opinions are acceptable. In Australia, the pattern is being repeated. Silence dissent. Expand surveillance. Criminalize disagreement.
And then there are the Democrats in the United States. They are the leading architects. They built the censorship pipeline over the course of COVID. They colluded with Big Tech to censor doctors, journalists and ordinary citizens. They labeled truth as misinformation and dissent as extremism. They normalized the notion that government should be deciding what you’re allowed to say.
There is one thing all these movements have in common. They believe people can’t be trusted with freedom.
Free speech terrifies them because it constrains power. It shines a light on corruption. It pushes back on ideological enforcement. That’s why censorship always comes first. Once speech is broken, all else quickly falls. Privacy is next to go. Due process erodes. Obedience becomes law.
We didn’t need theory for this. History recorded it again and again.
Platforms became the front line in this fight because control of speech now passes through technology. Most platforms have surrendered. They quietly complied. They began enforcing government requests. They erased voices at the sound of the censor’s knock.
Parler is here because that surrender was not inevitable.
Parler was targeted because it refused to get on board with the enforcement of public narrative control. It was punished because it pushed back against the idea that governments should control public discourse. It rebuilt from scratch. Infrastructure matters. Independence matters. When a platform does not depend on the approval of political powers, it can also resist political pressure.
This is not to suggest that every voice on a platform should be agreed with. This is a transparent and intentional distraction. Free speech is not about comfort. It’s about tyranny. The moment speech requires permission is the moment it is already lost.
Labour parties and Democrats in government paint their critics as dangerous. It is projection. Governments that willfully censor are the danger. Systems that punish speech always accelerate. They never stop with the extremists. They come for the opponents. Then the skeptics. Then everyone.
This is the fight of our time. It’s not left versus right. It’s power versus people.
Silence is not neutrality. Silence is consent. Every society that lost its freedom did so after being convinced that censorship was reasonable, temporary and necessary.
It never is.
Free speech survives only when people fight for it while it’s under attack. Not later. Not after elections. Not after laws get set in stone. Now.
This is not a sales pitch. It’s a call to see reality for what it is. Oppressive regimes don’t arrive in uniforms. They arrive bearing promises of protection. They speak softly as they tighten the grip.
The warning signs are all around. The only question now is who has the courage to speak up before speaking itself becomes illegal.
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