Who are the real thought police?

The real thought police are not conservatives but those on the leading edge of progressive politics and thought, so-called liberals but really illiberal.  It is dangerous in liberalism to allow people to disagree with the status quo of progressive political and social thought.  The mechanisms are already being put in place to monitor, for now, and eventually control even the private messages of individual people -- messages which dare to express their independence from the woke ideals and their promoters in the world.

An example of this is the fact that the European Parliament voted early in July on the urgency of Chat Control—the scanning of the private messages of citizens charged with no crime and threatening no one except the powers that be.   Of course, this will be heralded as necessary access to prevent violence, to protect children, to end hate speech, and to make for a more civil society.  Who is naive enough to believe that it will end with scanning or monitoring of such messages?  As Rod Dreher as suggested, this is not for building an infrastructure to deal with today but the establishment of an infrastructure for tomorrow.  It is always good to remember that we never surrender our freedom all at once but in small steps over time.  We surrender it line by line of rhetoric and computer code and it is never to control but to protect -- a reason no reasonable person would dare to argue with but it never stops there.

You must hearken back to the case of Päivi Räsänen, the Lutheran member of parliament from Finland now convicted by a Finnish court of hate speech — for quoting the Bible, and for criticizing LGBT ideology  —  after being exonerated several times before. Though she was twice acquitted by the courts, the Finnish state was not satisfied and tried her a third time in order to gain the conviction they wanted. The consequences of this conviction are not limited to Finland.  In fact, Päivi was prevented from flying through London’s Heathrow airport on a flight back because she’s a convicted hate criminal and that made her either dangerous or a persona non grata in the UK even for a temporary moment in an airport awaiting a connecting flight!  The UK insists she is unwelcome there.  This is Päivi Räsänen, an elected European lawmaker, denied travel through Heathrow Airport on  orders of His Majesty’s government for daring to quote the Bible in public.  The irony here is that this is done in the name of the King who is charged with defending the (Christian) faith of the Church of England.

Now who is the thought police you should rightly fear?   

Update:   Räsänen has filed an application to appeal her conviction to the European Court of Human Rights in July, commencing the final legal juncture of a landmark case for freedom of speech in Europe.  Stay tuned.