Country’s proposed ‘hate speech’ law targets memes, online speech with possible jail time

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar is pushing for the country to enact strict and vague hate speech legislation in the wake of anti-immigrant unrest following a serial stabbing incident on Thursday.

The anti-immigrant The riots erupted in response to a suspected Algerian immigrant who allegedly stabbed three children and two adults outside a Dublin school. seconds to Reuters. Varadkar called for the swift passage of restrictive speech legislation after the riots, which would make it illegal to encourage “hate”. seconds in the current text of the bill.

“We will modernize our laws against incitement to hatred and hatred in general, and this is more necessary than ever before,” Varadkar said. he stated Friday. “I think it’s very obvious now to anyone who has ever doubted that our hate speech legislation is not up to date … we need this legislation, we need it in a matter of weeks.”

The legislation makes it illegal to be a person who “prepares or possesses” content that may “incite violence or hatred … or be reckless as to whether it incites such violence or hatred,” according to your text This could lead to fines and prison terms of up to two years.

“We are restricting freedom, but we are doing it for the common good,” Irish Green Party senator Pauline O’Reilly said of the bill. seconds on Fox News.

Critics argue that there is a lack of clarity in what qualifies as “hate speech” in the law, seconds to the messenger The law can make content such as social media posts and even memes illegal and could carry penalties of up to five years in prison, they say.

“All reasonable people are against hate speech, of course,” said independent National University of Ireland senator Rónán Mullen. he wrote in June in the Irish Examiner. “But the combination of the vagueness of the legislation and the new ‘cancellation culture’ to silence certain viewpoints unlocks the potential for … censorship.”

The current text of the bill does not define “hate” but reads: “”Hate” means hatred against a person or group of persons in the State or elsewhere because of their protected characteristics or any of these characteristics”.

“It’s not just the [social medial] platforms that have a responsibility here and do,” Varadkar added. “There are also people who post messages and images online that incite hatred and violence and we also need to be able to use the laws to go after them individually.”

Police arrested 34 people on the night of the riots, with hundreds of individuals looting shops and setting fire to vehicles. seconds on PBS.

Varadkar’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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