The Speech Battle on the Emerald Isle – Roger Berkeley

The US State Department visited Ireland in May to discuss its censorship regime. In Europe, free speech is dying. Though almost nobody realizes it, the front line of this war is Ireland.

Most Americans don’t remember that Ireland once established a Committee on Evil Literature. This Committee, established in 1926, recommended a censorship regime that banned over 12,000 books. Starting with books by well-known eugenicists Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes, the regime had spiraled out of hand by the time it banned Monty Python’s Life of Brian in the 1970s. Modern Ireland is embarrassed by this archaic past. With strong encouragement from Brussels, Ireland is going scorched earth on aspects of its past it would rather forget. But to atone for its history, Ireland suppresses non-modern views, reviving the forgotten spirit of the Committee on Evil Literature. Banning books may not seem like a global concern, but Ireland dominates the EU data center market and has pending hate speech legislation. If free speech falls in Ireland, it falls across Europe.

The last 50 years have revolutionized Ireland. It joined the European Union in 1973 and developed its manufacturing infrastructure in the 1980s. These two moves transformed a small island into a global hub for big tech and big pharma that quietly commands the West. Silicon Valley creates software companies; Ireland’s “Silicon Docks” operates them. Ireland is a pseudo-tax haven with an unquestioning deference to EU policy, making it a lynchpin for the digital world. Europe’s data centers are now concentrated in the country. In fact, the small city of Dublin has nearly one-fifth (18 percent) of the entire data center capacity of Europe. The battle over censorship in Ireland is a battle to censor private individuals across Europe and, ultimately, the world via Irish servers.

Mandated by the EU’s Digital Services Act, the Irish Government introduced a Hate Speech Bill in 2022. Among the highlights of this legislation were a five-year prison sentence for possessing the wrong sort of meme on one’s phone. It also gave police the right to confiscate devices and compel passwords on the mere suspicion of such possession. There was no major resistance to the bill in the Dáil (the Irish parliament’s lower house), but a small group of Senators held it up for two years in the upper house. Pro-censorship campaigners gained ground by linking immigration riots with a need to suppress speech in the name of law and order.

In the end, a coalition of various groups, including ADF International and Free Speech Ireland, forced the Government to retreat. The Ireland Free Speech Summit was the tipping point in the campaign against the Hate Speech Bill last year. Irish Senators Rónán Mullen and Sharon Keoghan were joined onstage by Public’s Michael Shellenberger, The Post Millennial’s Andy Ngo, and Genspect’s Stella O’Malley. Along with several Irish and British free speech activists, they rallied a sold-out crowd against the Hate Speech Bill. Within three months of the high-profile event in Dublin, the Government surrendered. The re-named Hate Offences Act only focuses on increasing sentences based on protected characteristics of the victim. Abominable, to be sure, but at least there’s no risk of Granny going to prison because she liked the wrong post on Facebook—for now, at least.

This compromise on hate crime, however, is not a new dawn of liberty in the Emerald Isle. Increasingly, anonymous progressive mobs brutally punish those who dare to question orthodox views. In May, a group called Breaking Point organized a public event in a university to discuss the decline in safety in Dublin. A coordinated effort from the censorious mob pressured the university to cancel the event, claiming it was “racist.” The university complied.

It may be surprising to learn that such a small country has so much potential for influence. After all, it would make more sense, surely, for censors to target Silicon Valley itself, or major international cities like Brussels, London, or Amsterdam. Indeed, even those working in Irish politics may be surprised to learn of the power the EU wields through Ireland. Domestic highlights of Irish politics in recent years suggest it is a deeply unserious country. Representatives hurl expletives at colleagues in parliament, and the former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) openly referred to Donald Trump as a certain part of the female anatomy. Government policy documents focus on condemning Israel, while young, educated professionals leave the island in search of a living wage in other countries. But Ireland is the EU’s Trojan horse. It attracts American companies by setting itself apart from Europe with its low corporate tax rates and highly educated, English-speaking workforce. American firms rely on Ireland for their European bases, and this makes Ireland the fulcrum of free speech. The EU can use the Irish government to clamp down on free speech across the continent. American companies in Ireland will play the part of the censorship police.

Key players, however, have long known that Ireland is a death ground for the West. Philanthropists like George Soros spare no expense in Ireland. Big names like Elon Musk have weighed in on Irish politics. Tucker Carlson recently travelled to Dublin to interview Presidential hopeful Conor McGregor. In every case, free speech versus censorship is the battle. When Soros’s money supported Ireland’s abortion referendum in 2018, the views of countless pro-life politicians “evolved” to the other side. Elon Musk is currently suing the Irish Government over its attempts at censorship. Carlson believes that McGregor is the leader of a suppressed conservative movement. These figures—with their private armies—understand that Ireland is the international battleground over censorship. Now the EU is forcing Ireland to revive its hate speech bill. Since it enacted the Digital Services Act in February, all member states must comply. If Ireland does not pass a hate speech bill by the end of the summer, it will face a firing squad: the European Court of Justice.

If Ireland falls, Europe’s free speech falls. The US has several peaceful avenues to pressure Ireland to defeat its obsession with censorship. While the Irish-American trade relationship is a bugbear of the current administration, it is exceptionally feeble. Since 2007, Ireland’s budget surpluses have relied entirely on the corporate tax receipts of Alphabet, Apple, and Microsoft. Without these three companies, Ireland would economically collapse. Since they must remain in Europe under data protection law in the EU, the US could easily invest in and incentivize corporate reshoring to a country more favorable to free speech. Such an option would be a key piece of leverage against Ireland or, if carried out, serve as an example to would-be censors.

The Committee on Evil Literature was formally disbanded years ago, yet its guiding principles are ingrained in Ireland. For the sake of the West, it must be rooted out. JD Vance’s Munich Security Council address set the right tone on free speech, and the State Department’s threat of visa revocation based on censorship, though strong medicine, is a strong follow-up. But for the US to win the censorship battle in the West, it must make more deliberate moves in Europe. A visit to bureaucrats in Dublin is only the first step.