Welcome to Free Speech Backlash, the free magazine that stands for personal liberty and free speech for everybody legally resident in a country, no matter what their opinions or beliefs. We also stand for the free sovereign nation, bound only by its own laws.
“The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during the election of Members of Parliament; as soon as the Members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762.
Freedom is the state of being free from oppressive restrictions or control imposed by authority on an individual’s way of life, behaviour, property or political views. A free person has right to act, speak, think and enjoy his property as he wants. But the alarm bell is ringing ever louder, as this state no longer exists in Britain or in most of the formerly free democracies of The West. And it is likely to only get worse, if we allow it.
People claim that they have a right to freedom. It's their birthright they say. But in reality they have no such thing. The only rights we have are those we fight for and defend. Reliance on the State to defend personal liberty is foolish. Always and everywhere the biggest threat to it is government and the State. And today the State is encroaching more and more on our freedoms, reducing and restricting them. We are almost at the point where the State has redefined freedom as equating to belief in the woke globalist dogma, and holding views outside it mad, dangerous, racist, xyzphobic, abcdenialist and so prohibited.
The State and its associated Establishment is using every means at its disposal to restrict our freedom further. Law, the use of hate crime laws especially, internet censorship, cancel culture, de-banking, restrictions on movement, restrictions on how you use your property, media control, propaganda, brainwashing in schools and ultimately force are all being deployed. And increasingly, the State views your property as its own.
Soon, Central Bank Digital Currencies, possibly AI, and facial recognition surveillance are likely to be used to further tighten State control. They might copy China - they did for the totalitarian lockdowns they imposed on us - and force a social credit system on us to bind us ever more tightly to the State's sinister embrace. And to punish us if we step outside of it. That is already happening in China, with distinct echoes here. And if you think that is absurd, we refer you to Sunak's sinister comment that access to basics like a driving license or financial services could be withdrawn from young people who refuse National Service - the ultimate loss of freedom.
And we are part of the problem. Many of us have forgotten what freedom is. We constantly call for the government to 'do something', for things to be banned, or people shut up, and for more government involvement in our lives. We meekly accept totalitarian restrictions on our freedom, like the lockdowns they imposed on us a couple of years ago, and people being sacked if they refused dangerous, experimental vaccines.
We seem to no longer understand that personal responsibility is an essential part of personal liberty. Many seek to avoid responsibility for themselves, willingly passing it on to the State, society, the tax-payer, even our genes, forgetting that this inevitably leads to servitude. We allow the State in its various forms to take over responsibility for our children and aged parents and seem blind to the inevitable consequences of reduced freedom and greater State control over our lives.
And freedom means freedom for all members of our society, not just those we agree with. This magazine opposes the Climate Cult and Islam. Both, in our view, are oppressive forces that will limit freedom as they become stronger. However, we support the climate cranks’ and Islamic fanatics’ right to speak their mind, no matter how obnoxious we find their views. In exercising their legitimate right to say what they want they are mere opponents, to be argued and debated with. If, however, they start to control how we live our lives, they become our enemies.
In fighting for freedom we should accept that all political and social systems are imperfect and therefore must have limits. Pushing any political theory to its logical extreme is dangerous and leads to fanaticism. We passionately believe in free speech, but not the freedom to call for people to be killed or enslaved. We stand for freedom of action, but that too must have limits: the freedom to choose what side of the road you drive on is obviously absurd. But any limitation on our freedom should be either so obviously necessary as to need no debate, or it should be thoroughly debated and scrutinised before implementation. Obviously,actions like closing roads to assert a political opinion is unacceptable as restricts other people's freedom.
A free society must have laws. And that means it must have some form of government. And that is where it begins to get complicated. History shows that the bigger the State and the more powerful the government the less freedom people have. And the people who run the West today make no secret of their desire for ever bigger government. The EU and use of the UN and what they call 'international law' are examples, and made obvious by ever rising tax burdens. it follows, therefore, that to be free we need the smallest possible State.
Right now we do not have a genuine democracy. Instead we have what Jean-Jacques Rousseau described: an elective dictatorship. We have some choice over who will be dictating to us, and a little hope that they might be benign dictators. But they are dictators nevertheless. Once elected, they can do anything they want, as they have shown recently. To be free, we need to place limits on State power and take more control over the process of government.
The political thinker Edmund Burke MP defined liberty in 1789 as "that state of things in which liberty is secured by the equality of restraint. A constitution of things in which the liberty of no one man, and no body of men, and no number of men, can find means to trespass on the liberty of any person, or any description of persons, in the society. This kind of liberty is, indeed, but another name for justice; ascertained by wise laws, and secured by well-constructed institutions."
But Burke's approach has now failed. Equality of restraint, or equality before the law, is no longer practiced, with favoured groups receiving preferential treatment; small bodies of the woke routinely trespass on our liberties. We now face oppression in the name of justice, and laws are made in parliament that are not only unwise, but also dangerous. All our institutions have been captured by the enemies of freedom.
We think it a proven fact that our society is less free than it was or should be. We think it certain that unless we change things, we will lose more freedom. There is scope for debate on why this is happening and who, if anybody, is behind it (the subject of an up-coming article), but we do not think it possible to reasonably argue that our freedom is not in peril. In a way it doesn't matter whether there is an Establishment plot to take away our freedom, or whether it's just the spirit of the times, an accumulation of disparate forces all trending in the same direction. What does matter is that we oppose it, and fight back.
And now we come to another dilemma; how do we fight back? We can, of course, stick to strictly legal methods, by voting for the party least likely to lead us into serfdom, Reform here in Britain, Trump in the US, and by demonstrating, writing to your MP and making your voice heard. We should all fervently hope that it is still possible to change things by staying within the law, but some might argue that it is too late, that the law itself has been corrupted and turned against the people. The mind boggles at that thought and what follows from it. However, we believe that it is still possible to make real changes and to reverse the trend to tyranny, but it is a close call, and we are approaching the point of no return.
And so, in summary, we take it as a fact that our freedom and right to say what we want is under threat, and that if we want to avoid getting to the point where the only recourse is violence we need to act now, and force the changes we need to restore our freedom in full and to protect it from further attacks. If we don't, and if in the future history is written by free men, we will be compared with the German people who did nothing while the Hitler's National Socialists destroyed their freedom. Worse in fact, as 1930s Germans had at least the excuse of the humiliation of losing a world war and the destruction of their wealth under the Weimar Republic. We have no such excuses.
We aim to do what we can to promote and defend freedom and hope that you will support us, no matter what your political opinions. Support us by visiting us and leaving a comment, or better still, by writing an article. You can also donate money to cover our costs and help us develop. Whatever you do, your support is very much appreciated, and we hope that you will become a free speech champion and part of our community.
I'd like to give a hat tip to my son, who built this site in his spare time for me, and who will help me run it. I'm biased I know, but I think he's done a great job. If any one wants a website built by a very good, user-friendly designer, let me know and I'll put you in touch.