When Ireland voted out its blasphemy law five years ago in a constitutional referendum, advocates celebrated it as an example of freedom and enlightenment. So what are we to make of a new effort by progressives to criminalize so-called “hate speech,” in a bill so broad that it effectively amounts to a secular blasphemy law?

Last week, Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar insisted on proceeding with the bill despite the results of his government’s ‘consultation’ with voters. While Varadkar and his administration bragged about getting over 3,600 responses to the ‘consultation’ (roughly analogous to the required comment period on regulation in the US), Gript’s Ben Scallan gained access to the actual responses to see just how unpopular the hate-speech bill actually is:

However, Gript has now individually analysed 3,597 submissions in total, both in the form of written submissions and surveys, and can reveal that the overwhelming majority of responses from private individuals expressed negative views towards the government’s policy.

A total of 73% of respondents to the government’s consultation – 2627 individuals total – did not support the government’s plan to ban hate speech. Many argued that the only valid restriction on free speech should be credible threats or incitements to violence, but stressed that simple offensive speech should not be criminalised.

One such respondent argued that “freedom of expression is much more important than protecting sensitive people’s feelings,” while another said: “I’m offended by the government quite often – but they are entitled to their opinion like I am.” Many appealed to the idea of free speech as a human and constitutional right, while others insisted that governments regulating speech was a common feature of totalitarian countries like China.

Only 24.1% of respondents, or 868 people, expressed support for the idea of non-violent hate speech being criminalised.

The Irish electorate certainly understands what the bill would do to speech and debate. It would jail offenders for up to five years for “hatred” of any one or more people on the basis of “protected characteristics.” That doesn’t even require speech for prosecution; merely possessing whatever the state defines as “hateful” material would result in arrest and conviction, whether the “possession” is actual or virtual. And if you refuse to reveal your passwords to police so that they can inspect your computers and smartphones, that in itself could result in a year’s imprisonment.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the new bill explicitly reverses the burden of proof in “hate speech” prosecutions. Defendants will be forced to prove their innocence of hatred rather than have the state required to provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s absolutely tyrannical, and one has to wonder how the Irish — who just liberated their country from eight centuries of this kind of tyranny a century ago — could even contemplate returning to an imperial view of speech.

That’s one of the questions I ask Ben Scallan in today’s episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast. Ben has covered this issue for several months, and he’s despairing that common sense and political liberty may not prevail in Ireland (lightly edited for clarity).

Q: Ben, given that history of speech suppression for hundreds of years, why would Ireland go back down that road now?

A: It’s a great point, and it’s interesting as well that one of the biggest complaints of Irish secular liberals — and there is a modicum of truth to this, I will concede that — they complained about the fact that the Catholic Church was very dogmatic at one point in Irish history and anything that deviated from the norm.  …

Two or three years ago, the Irish public said, ‘Oh no, it’s totally unacceptable that even the idea that somebody might be convicted of insulting somebody else’s religious beliefs, that’s not appropriate.’ And you know, we believe in free speech and so on. And then the same politicians that spearheaded that campaign have now turned around and are effectively attempting to institute a secular blasphemy law.

Q: … And again, we’re just a hundred years or so ago that the War of Independence and all the settlements that went along with that. That’s a pretty short time to start saying, ‘Hey, you know what, authoritarianism, that might not be so bad.’

A: We’ve kind of tried the freedom thing. We had a hundred years of it. We went, ‘you know what? This really isn’t for us. We’re going back. We actually prefer having no rights.’ But, you know, I’m obviously joking, but what’s funny, what’s funny about that is again, I mean, it’s not a referendum, it’s not like it’s been put to a vote of the general public, but still think that consultation process says a lot, that the only data we have on this, that’s basically the only kind of real poll, if you want to put it that way, that’s been put to the people and it overwhelmingly told them to shove it up their backsides and people said we want nothing to do with this. And I actually asked the Taoiseach … ‘So why did you conduct a public consultation and then totally disregard the result? What was the point?’ And effectively, he said …”Well, you know, we decided to disregard.”

First of all, he said the consultation process is important and it’s good practice. But then he said, but we kind of disregard it because they’re open to just being hijacked by activists and most of the country doesn’t participate in them, so they’re really not that reliable. … So then of course I followed up with asking, so why did you do it in the 1st place if they generally not reliable?

Here’s the exchange between Ben and Varadkar:

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar defends disregarding the results of the public consultation on "hate speech" laws, arguing that "very often" such consultations are hijacked by "campaigning groups" and are not "reflective of public opinion."#gript pic.twitter.com/X6EC0uF6NO

— gript (@griptmedia) May 4, 2023

Ben is not optimistic that this bill can be stopped now, even if public opinion rises against it. And if it does pass in Ireland, we can expect similar bills to get floated in other former liberal democracies — and it will certainly embolden the government-media censorship complex here in the US, too.

Today’s show also features:

• What is next in the legislative process in the Dáil and Seanad, and why it’s bad news for free speech
• The constitutional protection of free speech in Ireland — and the big loophole in it
• Why efforts to amend the bill to temper its application might be worse than passing it in its original form

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!