More Authoritarian Crackdowns on Speech That’s Critical of Israel
British “counterterrorism” police raided the home of Electronic Intifada editor Asa Winstanley on Thursday morning, seizing multiple electronic devices on suspicion that the journalist violated the UK’s 2006 Terrorism Act with his social media activity.
The Electronic Intifada is an independent outlet which focuses on Palestinian rights and the abuses of apartheid Israel. It has spent the last year publishing critical journalism that has later been vindicated by more mainstream outlets questioning empire propaganda on issues like the “mass rape” hoax and Israel’s implementation of the Hannibal Directive on October 7. Winstanley has been a major contributor to this journalism.
The Electronic Intifada reports:
“British counterterrorism police on Thursday raided the home and seized several electronic devices belonging to The Electronic Intifada’s associate editor Asa Winstanley.
“Approximately 10 officers arrived at Winstanley’s North London home before 6 am and served the journalist with warrants and other papers authorizing them to search his house and vehicle for devices and documents.
“A letter addressed to Winstanley from the ‘Counter Terrorism Command’ of the Metropolitan Police Service indicates that the authorities are ‘aware of your profession’ as a journalist but that ‘notwithstanding, police are investigating possible offenses’ under sections 1 and 2 of the Terrorism Act (2006). These provisions set out the purported offense of ‘encouragement of terrorism.’
“An officer conducting Thursday’s raid informed Winstanley that the investigation was connected with the journalist’s social media posts. Attempts to reach the Metropolitan Police Service for comment for this story have been unsuccessful.
“Although his devices were seized, Winstanley was not arrested and has not been charged with any offense.”
UK “counterterrorism” police raid home, seize devices of EI’s @AsaWinstanley https://t.co/8QWBHMJILM
— Electronic Intifada (@intifada) October 17, 2024
“The amount of authoritarianism and erosion of rights in the West to protect Israel — by censoring criticism of that foreign country and punishing its critics — is almost impossible to overstate,” journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted on the news of the police raid, adding, “Mass firings in the US and speech-restricting laws. The UK, as always, is worse.”
As soon as the British government gave itself the right to designate targets of British warmongering as “terrorists” and then made it a speech crime to support those “terrorists”, it became inevitable we’d start seeing British journalists persecuted for criticizing their government’s foreign policy.
Basically what we’re seeing with the police raid on Asa Winstanley is the west finally reconciling (A) its need to suppress speech that’s critical of western warmongering with (B) its stated support for free speech. All it has to do is outlaw speech that can be deemed supportive of “terrorism” while designating the targets of western warmongering like Hamas and Hezbollah as “terrorists”.
This maneuver allows the western empire to stomp out critical speech about western foreign policy in a way that can be framed as reasonable, because obviously we can’t have people encouraging terrorism! That would be tantamount to shouting “fire” in a crowded theater — which we seem to have arbitrarily decided is the line where free speech must end.
We’re seeing the UK spearhead this initiative over the past year, with “counterterrorism” police persecuting journalists like Winstanley and Richard Medhurst and activists like Mick Napier, Tony Greenstein, Richard Barnard and Sarah Wilkinson, but we’re seeing similar iterations sprout up throughout the western world. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have been increasingly censoring speech that they deem supportive of “dangerous individuals and organisations” like Hamas and Hezbollah, and here in Australia police are investigating protesters for waving Hezbollah flags at a demonstration in Melbourne under a new law banning the public display of symbols of designated “terrorist” groups.
Israel has lost so much credibility, western govts are enforcing their propaganda matrix by raiding journalists who criticize them. Full solidarity with @AsaWinstanley https://t.co/wwgJNdwPaw
— Abby Martin (@AbbyMartin) October 17, 2024
Ever since 2016 we’ve seen western empire managers publicly wringing their hands and fretting about the disadvantage the western world has in the information age because of its laws supporting free expression which allow the enemies of western governments to spread “propaganda” and “disinformation” to westerners. In its increasing criminalization of any speech which can be interpreted as supportive of designated terrorist organizations, they’ve found a major loophole which allows them to rein in the highly democrati
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