In whose interest is this allowed to happen?

Comments

1. 

   Joanna Pecorella

   June 13, 2023

   To create a precedent for future cases and as a warning to others to toe the line. I wouldn?t be surprised if your penultimate sentence irks the morality police too!

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2. 

   Adrian Galea

   June 13, 2023

   The defensiveness of this pastor is striking and is at par with his lack of practising of what he preaches. Strikes me as being on an ego trip of narcissistic proportions which has more to do with his grandiosity in his head then spirituality and being of service. A cult i would think, and i would not be surprised if skeletons will one day fall out of the cupboard.

   Reply
3. 

   Banquo

   June 13, 2023

   It is indeed progressive socialists who are to blame for the immense deterioration of free speech in Malta. After the long-overdue abolishment of the Film and Stage Classification Board, the staging of the play Stitching, the court victory of Li Tkisser Sewwi and other triumphs for free speech in the 2010s, one would have expected more speech than ever to wash over Malta.

   Instead, we got new censorship in the shape of ‘anti-hate speech laws’. A priest has just been found guilty of hate speech for saying that “being gay is worse than being possessed” (does the judge know what being possessed is like?), a man is being dragged through court for going on television and saying that he has become “ex-gay” (coming out of the closet is celebrated; is it illegal to go back into it?) , and an author is being prosecuted for writing a (no doubt inaccurate and ridiculous) sympathetic biography of Adolf Hitler.

   Sure, the speech may be awful, inappropriate in polite society, not worthy of sponsorship or promotion on national television, and so on, but should it be illegal? Apparently, progressive socialists think so. Instead of going through the slog of writing good speech to counter what they find offensive, they prefer to just ban people they don’t like from saying anything in the first place. They never stop to think that what is offensive to them may be just funny to others, or a theological truth, or whatever, and they never stop to think that the very same laws they promote may one day be used against them by a crazy pastor of a religious minority who also knows how to act offended.

   Well-meaning people who want to stop others from saying unconscionable things forget that the whole point of protecting free speech is to protect people who may say things which others may find offensive. Kind and supportive comments do not need constitutional protection because nobody is against them. And authoritarian governments are more than happy to jump on the ‘anti-hate speech’ and ‘anti-misinformation’ bandwagon, using the excuse of offended sensitive souls and people who may believe untruths about covid-19 to stop anyone from saying anything which is uncomfortable about those in power.

   Those who this morning felt shocked when they heard about Gordon Manch? using hate-speech laws to go after comedians but were nonchalant when people they did not like were charged with similar crimes should remember that “first they came for the Communists, and they did not speak out”. You know how the rest of the poem goes.

   Repeat after me a hundred thousand times:

   The answer to bad speech is good speech (or mockery)!

   We need more speech, not less!

   The solution is simple. Scrap all anti-speech laws and let the left, the right, the middle and the crazies say whatever the hell they want. Speech does, and should, have consequences – whether financial, career-wise, personal, or owners of platforms refusing to host certain speech – but people should not be turned into criminals for daring to say or write something, courtesy of the whims and predilections of police officers and judges. Manch? is going after comedians because the law allows him to do so. If you can ‘cancel’ a priest, why not a satirist?

   Reply
4. 

   Leonard

   June 13, 2023

   God ruined a beautiful arsehole when he put teeth in this man’s face.

   Reply
5. 

   The Labour Party is going to implement very authoritarian laws against free speech – Mark Camilleri

   June 17, 2023

   […] is important to note that as the government will be addressing a problem of its own making so that nutjobs like Gordon Manche don’t file criminal reports on satire, […]

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6. 

   Free speech should not be limited to artistic expression – Mark Camilleri

   June 20, 2023

   […] tabled in parliament by the government in reaction to recent criminal reports on artists filed by Gordon Manche are being worded very specifically. The Labour government is making it very clear that its […]

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