Why are we writing about freedoms?
Why are we writing about freedoms?
The launch and the first nine months of Freedom Research have been more successful than I would ever have imagined. Here is a little overview of what we have accomplished so far and why we pursue it.
When I think of individual freedoms, I am first reminded of scenes from life itself in the last few years and those speak clearly to me about the state of our freedoms at present time. Unfortunately, they are not only from Russia, China, or some other dictatorial or authoritarian country where trampling on personal freedoms and on people’s lives has been practised with great vigour for decades.
They are, for example, from Australia, where a gang of police officers holds up a man protesting against the Covid rules in the open air and force a mask on him. Or from Canada, where riot police beat up people participating in the Freedom Convoy protest in the country's capital, riding on horses and flashing their rifle butts. These pictures are from various Western European countries where things went the same way – police were running protesters down, using water cannons on them, and chasing them with clubs.
Let's recall, however, that the reason these protests took place was not that some people could not get into the café. They happened because the authorities literally took the bread off the table of so many people – their businesses were forcibly closed and many doctors, rescue workers, police officers, ambulance workers, members of the armed forces, and people from other walks of life who did not want to be injected with vaccines rushed onto the market were suddenly sacked.
All this was done because of a single viral disease that was portrayed as a major threat, but for which the mortality rate outside the risk group was nothing particularly notable. I will not tire of repeating that, before the vaccination, the mortality was 0.0003% of those infected in the 0-19 age group, 0.003% in the 20-29 age group, 0.011% in the 30-39 age group, 0.035% in the 40-49 age group, 0.129% in the 50-59 age group and 0.501% in the 60-69 age group.
One of our objectives this year has been to publish factual analyses on Covid issues and to draw the necessary conclusions from this crisis and the behaviour of the authorities during it. Here is a selection of our articles on the subject matter:
“100 Billion Reasons Why Woody Harrelson's Drug Cartel Joke Did Not Make Pfizer Laugh”
“On Vaccines, Censorship and Pandemic-era Lies. A View of Swedish Scientists.”
“Covid-19 Wuhan Lab Origin: No Longer a "Racist Conspiracy Theory"“
“Five evidence-based early known Covid facts - ignored and censored”
“Dr Meryl Nass. On Professional Cancellation, Post-Covid Crisis Problems and the New WHO Agreements”
Freedom of expression under attack
Broadly speaking, we have moved on from such physical "virus control" issues in society. However, Covid as well as other 'one and only truth' issues relate also to the freedom of expression, which itself is in a sad and worsening shape. The Covid crisis highlighted the extent of the power that large social media companies hold over our public debates and do so complicitly with state or 'health' authorities, such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), at whose direction direct censorship was implemented. Whatever the authorities say, is held as true by social media, even if they themselves admit it to be wrong some time later.
Such censorship has, for many respected doctors and scientists, meant being cancelled and their social media posts labelled as false or misleading when they are clearly anything but that. They were declared inappropriate simply because the views or facts presented by them did not support or were critical of the decisions made by the powers that be. Social media platforms restricted the dissemination of such messages or even blocked the accounts of their authors altogether.
The same as with health issues, we are also at risk of censorship on social media in many other areas. For example, before the 2020 US presidential election, articles about the influence peddling and corrupt dealings involving the Biden family were blocked from being shared, and those who spoke out about the possible election rigging in the US were punished with account closures – Donald Trump's Twitter account, in his last days of presidency, was memorably shut down in early 2021, etc. Twitter has changed for the better after the Musk takeover in 2022, of course.
In a similar minefield are people who are critical of climate issues and who put out information that is inconsistent with the mainstream view that it is the anthropogenic CO2 that is destroying the climate. The UN, for example, is aiming to combat such 'misinformation', even though such postings are usually not wrong in any way, i.e. not really 'misinformation' per se. In the European Union, the Digital Services Act (DSA) came into force in August, under which social media companies can be severely punished if they do not limit the distribution of 'illegal content'. This ‘illegal content’ includes information that the authorities just happen to consider to be 'misinformation'. Platforms that fail to enforce these new rules could face huge fines or even be closed down.
The extent of censorship was the subject of a number of lengthy analyses and articles this year:
“Analysis: How Censorship Has Exploded in Recent Years” Part 1 and Part 2.
“The Poor State of Freedom of Expression: How US Federal Judge Spelled It Out”
“A Global Pattern: Different Countries Suppressing Free Speech with Similar Legislations”
And then the so-called 'hate speech'
But censorship is no longer a creeping phenomenon on social media where you have to watch your language for fear of being deleted. It has now become a clearcut reality in Western countries that you have to watch what you say for fear of imprisonment. In Norway, for example, you are not allowed to publicly say that a man who claims to be a woman is in fact a man. Such statements are dealt with by the police under the hate speech offence, and people can be sentenced to prison. This is not the only bizarre example, since everywhere where the so-called hate speech laws are in force, the police have taken to prosecuting 'hate crimes'. Take Päivi Räsänen, a member of the Finnish Parliament and former Minister of the Interior in the country, for example. She was prosecuted for hate speech in 2019 for criticising the Lutheran Church's participation in an LGBT parade on her social media. Factually though, she was just expressing her own religious views while doing that. In Germany, the situation is even more tragic, with police raids on people's homes following posts that are considered hate speech. One of the most bizarre cases of this is the 'penis affair', an occasion where a person compared the Minister of the Interior of the State of Hamburg to a penis on social media, referring to his hypocritical behaviour, and some time later, early one morning, police officers arrived at his home to investigate the 'crime' and carried out a search.
All this has not left people unaffected. People feel that they no longer dare to speak out on certain issues. There is a fear of being cancelled and other problems that go along with it, up to and including losing their jobs. Add to this the fear that an utterance might lead to a summons to appear before the police or the police coming to your door in hordes. In Germany, 44% of people already admit that they do not dare to express themselves freely. However, if people do not have the courage or the opportunity to express themselves freely, and if they have become afraid, there will soon be no reason to talk of any other freedom any more – freedom of expression is the basis of all other civil liberties. Without it, self-expression at the level of the individual and any suggestion of an alternative path or policy at the level of society will be impossible. Without freedom of expression, a free society does not even exist. We know this from the many examples in history and an intelligent society should draw its conclusions from that.
We have written several stories on the problems with hate speech laws in several countries:
“Päivi Räsänen About Her Hate Speech Case: “It Was Absurd. How Can This Happen In Finland?"“
“The French Case for Freedom of Expression: Only for Selected Few”
Fear of climate
Issues related to the restriction of individual freedoms also include everything that has to do with climate change. As we have already pointed out, if you even want to ask whether there is any factual basis for all the CO2 fear, you can expect cancellations and censorship. But, of course, the whole climate change story has a whole series of consequences for our freedom to organise our lives. In other words, rules that are already in place or are planned, will inevitably restrict human life.
While creating “ultra low emission zones” and therefore effectively limiting people's ability to freely move if they do not pay the price, or making higher energy prices linked to carbon taxes reflect in our wallets, the more 'progressive' ideas include even more severe restrictions on movement, hygiene, diet, the slaughter of cows and a drastic reduction in other forms of agriculture in the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Nobody is offering good workable solutions to our energy problems or our food supply, but the private jet or fuel-guzzling luxury yachts radiate a corrosive dose of hypocrisy from some of the biggest names in the 'climate camp'.
We have had several strong articles and interviews this year on climate and climate change, but also on environmental protection in general:
Our first nine months
Our aim at Freedom Research is to draw attention, in a factual and reasoned way, to the abuses of state and corporate power and the problems associated with the restriction of freedoms. We rely on facts and show that, in many cases, the so-called 'generally accepted postulates' which form the basis for the ever tighter squeeze on our individual freedoms do not hold true. Thanks to you, dear readers, we see that fundamental values – our individual freedoms – are important to us as a society and that we are quite aware of the serious problems related to them. This gives us hope that, by joining forces, we can get things back on track. As sinologist and lecturer Märt Läänemets told me when we were talking of China as a cautionary tale, we need to be alert to any tendency towards authoritarianism, lest we want to find ourselves in a China-like state one day.
In order to make the positions we take as clear as possible, we have also published articles on 'individual freedoms' on our site. There’s an introductory text and six paragraphs on individual freedoms. You can read them here.
And finally, something that warms my heart. I never dreamed that our articles would reach thousands of people in our first nine months and we would get almost a thousand subscribers so quickly. Many of you have also decided to support us financially through a paid subscription. Yes, there’s no denying, all support is vital to us – moral, as well as material. Knowing that there are readers here who are interested in our work and support it when they can is what makes us put an extra effort into our work and be better every day. Thank you so much for that!