Brexit Party MEP Claire Fox has told the European Union its “obsession” with hate speech has resulted in it “leading the way” on censorship and empowering the transgender lobby to deplatform lesbians and feminists who criticise its agenda.
At a Special Hearing on media freedom and freedom of speech, the left-wing Brexiteer took the European Union to task for its “obsession with clamping down on elastically defined hate speech”, which she believes has led to a situation where the EU is “now leading the way on censoring what we say/read etc.”
“I hate antisemitism, I hate racism, I hate anti-working class bigotry, I hate anti-democratic illiberal authoritarian politicians,” she said. “I’ve got a lot of hate in me — should I be censored?”
“I’m really sorry but I fear that one of the greatest threats to free speech today are hate speech legislation,” she continued.
“I think it silences legitimate speech — usually the legitimate speech of your opponents,” she told the chamber, which is dominated by politicians who favour subsuming Europe’s nation-states into an increasingly powerful supranational federation.
“Who gets to decide what is hate? … [T]he LGBTQI movement in the UK is tearing itself apart, it’s a really toxic atmosphere, but what that means is that the legitimate concerns expressed by lesbians and feminists concerned about some trans activist orthodoxies are now being labelled as transphobic hate, and those lesbians are being banned from social media, being reported to the state police, and actually being charged,” she said by way of example.
“We can’t sit here and talk about press freedom and free speech and then argue for things which will ban more speech,” she said.
“This is a betrayal of European enlightenment commitment to more speech in order to win arguments where we argue back.”
Ms Fox reported that, as a consequence of her intervention, another speaker in the debate branded her “transphobic” — which her supporters may believe serves to underline her point.