International
Immigration ‘powder keg’, violence, and the suppression of free expression: Just what is going on in the UK?
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Douglas Murray at the Theatre Antoine in Paris on June 3, 2024. (Geoffroy Van Dew Hasselt via Getty Images)
News release from The Free Press
Our Friend Douglas Murray
We know that nothing will stop our columnist from truth-telling. The more they try to intimidate him, the more they prove him right.
Douglas Murray is not just a Free Press columnist with a love of poetry and rhetoric. He has also emerged over the past decade as one of the most important and articulate defenders of the West—and, especially since the massacres of October 7, one of the most fearless.
If you haven’t read his best-selling books—including The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam—now would be a good time to purchase hard copies. Because if certain authorities in Britain have their way, we suspect they’ll be titles that might be harder to find.
To understand why this is the case, we need to go back two weeks. The story begins in Southport, a small town in the northwest of the country, when, on July 29, a 17-year-old named Axel Rudakubana allegedly murdered three girls—ages 6, 7, and 9—in a Taylor Swift–themed dance class. Many others were critically injured.
The alleged perpetrator was neither Muslim nor an immigrant; his parents immigrated from Rwanda. But none of that mattered to the thugs who attacked the local mosque based on the rumor that he was both. In Belfast and Bristol and in towns across the UK, mobs gathered to variously harass migrant centers, attack mosques, and burn police vehicles.
These working-class rioters catalyzed others. The counter mobs were composed of Muslim men, some wielding hammers and knives, who were spoiling for a fight.
It’s very clear who started this: the brutes who went hunting for migrants and Muslims. But the violent breakdown is not a two-week-old story, but a tragedy years in the making and one with many authors. Namely, it is the story of a governing class that offered few answers as immigration took off and ignored a population that, at every turn, voted against it.
Almost everyone ignored that powder keg primed to explode because the price of noticing it was to be called a racist and a xenophobe.
Don’t take our word for it. Listen to what Nadhim Zahawi—who fled Saddam’s death squads as a boy only to become Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer—wrote last week in our pages.
The warning signs have been present for years, but for every person who tried to tip-toe through the minefield of topics pertinent to this disorder—society, culture, religion, disenfranchisement, racism, the speed of change, feelings of powerlessness—there were ten more who wanted to bury their heads in the sand. Even I, a brown man born in a Muslim country, feel the need to caveat what I say, and hide behind facets of my identity such as the color of my skin (facets that I largely consider unimportant) just to pass comment on things of importance to my country.
Almost everyone buried their heads in the sand. Almost everyone, that is, except Douglas Murray.
For years now, Murray has been one of the voices warning of what might happen in Britain with poorly controlled, exploding immigration; an obvious lack of assimilation; and a police force that appears more worried about violating multicultural pieties than enforcing the law. He has also warned about the cost of suppressing, rather than debating, difficult subjects.
You would think that now would be a good time to heed his advice. To look carefully at how this happened. To impose law and order. To assure those citizens who are convinced that their country has adopted a two-tiered justice system that justice remains blind—meted out equally, irrespective of the religion or ethnicity of the perpetrator. That is how things are meant to go in liberal democracies.
But the United Kingdom, which lacks a First Amendment equivalent, has opted for a different strategy: a campaign of suppression that includes criminal charges for speech.
On Thursday, a 55-year-old woman named Bernadette Spofforth was arrested “on suspicion of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred” and “false communications” after she spread the false rumor that the man who killed three girls in Southport was an asylum seeker.
Spofforth is just one example of how the United Kingdom is prioritizing jailing its people for social media posts rather than addressing the causes of the violence. The director of public prosecutions of England and Wales, Stephen Parkinson, said this week that even retweeting a post “which is insulting or abusive, which is intended to or likely to start racial hatred” makes one liable for arrest.
Worse yet, in the same interview, Parkinson spoke about “dedicated police officers who are scouring social media. Their job is to look for this material and then follow up with identification, arrests, and so forth.”
Police officers are authorized to show up at your door for comments on a Facebook page based on a law prohibiting “incitement of racial hatred.” The chief of London’s Metropolitan Police has even suggested that the UK might try to extradite American citizens suspected of violating UK’s hate speech legislation. This is the same police, mind you, that prevented a Jewish Londoner from crossing the street during a Gaza protest, and threatened him with arrest, because his “openly Jewish” appearance was deemed a provocation to the violent mob. The police, in other words, incapable of keeping the peace during an anti-Israel protest, turned looking Jewish into “incitement.”
Last week, the British government issued a warning on X: “Think before you post.” The embedded post reminds Britons that “content that incites violence or hatred isn’t just harmful—it can be illegal.”
Which brings us back to Douglas Murray. It’s not just that his past warnings have gone unheeded. It’s that they are being viewed as incitement to violence rather than as prophecy.
On Friday, Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former spokesman and former director of communications for the Labour Party, posted a clip of Murray with the following caption:
“Think @metpoliceuk might want to take a look at this book plug.”
Read that twice.
That is a powerful journalist and former spin doctor with more than a million followers on X calling for Murray to be investigated by the police for discussing the ways in which his 2017 book foretold the current violence in the UK. Campbell, the flack that he is, knew just what he was doing, and has succeeded in stirring up others.
You need not agree with Murray on this subject or any other to be alarmed by this turn. But that point seems to be lost on Britain’s commentariat, who are all too relaxed about their country’s speech crackdown. One senior Guardian journalist egged the authorities on, arguing that Elon Musk should face criminal prosecution for tweeting about the disorder in the UK.
As for us? We’re honored to publish Murray’s fabulously popular “Things Worth Remembering” column, which celebrates freedom as well as the beauty of the English literary tradition. Nobody we know embodies the credo articulated almost 400 years ago by John Milton: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
Our columnist—who has reported from Ukraine and Gaza and Israel in the past year—understands that the fight over free speech is, as much as any literal battlefield, at the core not only of Britain’s future but that of the West.
We know that nothing will stop Douglas Murray from truth-telling. The more they try to silence and intimidate him, the more they prove him right.
To read all of Douglas’s columns click here.
And to support our mission of independent journalism, become a Free Press subscriber today:
Business
‘No One Is Paying Attention!’: Google Whistleblower Tells Rogan ‘Free And Fair Election’ Is An ‘Illusion’
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From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Hailey Gomez
Senior research psychologist and Google critic Dr. Robert Epstein told popular podcast host Joe Rogan on Wednesday that a “free and fair election” is an “illusion” now, warning about the rise of the “technological elite.”
In June 2019, Epstein addressed Congress over his concerns that Google not only poses a “serious threat to democracy and human autonomy,” but also advising how the lawmakers could “end Google’s worldwide monopoly on search.” Appearing on the “Joe Rogan Experience,” Epstein explained his belief that there hasn’t been a “free and fair election” nationally since 2012, because tech has been used to manipulate public opinion.
“We are finding overwhelming evidence that they are very deliberately and systematically messing with us and our elections, especially. I personally believe that as of 2012 the free and fair election, at least at the national level, has not existed,” Epstein said. “It’s just been manipulated since 2012. I say this in part because I met one of the people on Google’s tech team — on Obama’s Tech Team, I should say — which was being run by Eric Schmidt, head of Google at the time.”
“I talked to him at great length about what the tech team was doing. They had full access to all of Google’s shenanigans, all those manipulations and one member of that team, asked by a reporter, how many of the four points by which Obama won, how many of those points did he get from the tech team? And the guy said … two of the points came from us. Now Obama won by 5 million votes, roughly, and two out of four points came from the tech team — that’s two and a half million votes,” Epstein said.
Epstein, along with several others at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT), released a study that claimed tech companies have the ability to influence decisions of undecided voters through search suggestions on search engines. The Google whistleblower told the Daily Caller News Foundation that search engine operators controlling search suggestions could have “the power to shift a large number of votes without people’s awareness.”
Epstein continued to call out the 2016 election between former President Donald Trump and former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, stating that if Google’s interference had been taken out, the popular vote “would have been tied.”
WATCH:
“By 2016 I had calculated that Google could shift — and it would be toward Hillary Clinton of course, whom I supported at the time — that Google could shift between 2.6 and 10.4 million votes to Hillary Clinton in that election with no one knowing. She won the popular vote by 2.8 million votes,” Epstein said. “If you take Google out of that election the popular vote would have been tied. Couple days after that election everyone — all the leaders in Google get up on stage … and they’re talking to all of Google’s 100,000 employees and one by one they’re going up to the mic and saying, ‘We are never going to let that happen again.’”
The Google whistleblower added that between President Joe Biden and Trump, if Google had been taken “out of the equation,” Trump would have won “11 out of 13 swing states instead of five.”
“So going forward from roughly 2012 I think the free and fair election has been an illusion, an illusion. And this is something — it’s very weird and kind of ironic, but this is something that Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about in that last speech of his farewell speech he warned about the rise of the military-industrial complex, everyone’s heard about that,” Epstein continued.
“But he also warned about the rise of a technological elite that could someday control public policy without anyone knowing. And the technological elite are now in control. That’s what we have. That’s where I get back to my ranting and my pain because I realize no one is paying attention! Eisenhower said we have to be alert or this will happen,” Epstein said.
espionage
Former ICE chief: Biden-Harris created greatest national security threat since 9/11
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From The Center Square
Former Border Patrol agent asks 23 years after 9/11: What does ‘safe’ mean?
Twenty-three years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Americans are not any safer than they were before because of a border crisis facilitated by the Biden-Harris administration, national security experts argue.
One U.S. Army veteran who later served as a Border Patrol agent for 10 years but left citing Biden-Harris policies told The Center Square that Americans’ safety and security means something different depending on the administration in charge.
Since fiscal 2021, more than 12.5 million foreign nationals have illegally entered the country under Vice President Kamala Harris, designated the “border czar” by President Joe Biden. That’s by far the greatest number of any administration in U.S. history.
The illegal entries include two million who evaded capture, known as gotaways, alarming those in law enforcement because they say they don’t know who or where they are or how many are connected to countries of foreign concern or state sponsors of terrorism. Several hundred with connections to the Islamic terrorist organization, ISIS, have illegally entered the country, authorities confirmed this year.
Those who’ve been apprehended by U.S. authorities attempting to enter the U.S. include a record number of known or suspected terrorists – more than 1,700 since fiscal 2021. This is the greatest number in U.S. history, and equivalent to nearly two U.S. Army battalions.
The majority of those on the terrorist watch list apprehended by Americans came from Canada, nearly 1,100. They total the equivalent of one U.S. Army battalion.
The administration has “unsecured the border on purpose” and “created the greatest national security threat since 9/11,” Tom Homan, former director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told The Center Square.
The total number of illegal border crossers under Biden-Harris total more than the individual populations of 45 U.S. states, The Center Square reported.
The record number parallels Biden’s stated goal at a North American Summit in Washington, D.C., in 2021 to facilitate more foreign nationals coming to the U.S., The Center Square reported. He also formalized a Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection in 2022 with roughly two dozen countries to facilitate the “safe, orderly migration” of foreign nationals into the U.S. and in other countries.
The terminology has been repeatedly used by Harris and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. It’s also been embraced by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, whose agents have been ordered to release illegal foreign nationals into the country through new parole programs and a CBP One app. The programs and app are illegal, multiple states who sued to stop them, argue. Mayorkas was also impeached over them.
Despite Biden, Harris and Mayorkas claims that the border is secure and those being released into the country are being vetted, DHS Office of Inspector General audits prove otherwise. Federal agents can’t find foreign nationals released into U.S. as terrorism threats are heightened, The Center Square reported.
Despite this, Canadian officials have told The Center Square, “The Canada-U.S. border is the best-managed and most secure border in the world.” Mexico’s outgoing president said Mexico doesn’t have a cartel problem, the U.S. “drug problem” isn’t Mexico’s problem and “we are not going to act as any policemen for any foreign government.”
“The record number of people on the terrorist watchlist coming across the northern border” disproves the “most secure border in the world” claim, Homan said. “What they won’t tell you are the unknown gotaways coming through the northern border.”
Former Border Patrol chief Mark Morgan agrees, adding, “To say that our borders are secure is simply not a factual statement,” he said. “It’s just not. What level of threat is coming across is unknown.”
Morgan, also a retired FBI chief, was among several officials who warned Congress that the volume of single military age men illegally entering the U.S. equates to a “soft invasion” and a terrorist attack is likely imminent but preventable if security measures were put in place.
Ammon Blair, former Border Patrol agent and U.S. Army officer and senior fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, said if the border were secure, the number of illegal border crossers would be zero.
He also pushed back on Biden-Harris administration claims about “safe, orderly migration,” saying, “Who would it be safe for? According to Mayorkas, safety means the safe, orderly, humane migration for illegal aliens into the country.”
“What does safe mean, and who are safe?” he asks. “Where are the protection protocols to protect Americans? There aren’t any. The only agency that has a protective order to secure a border is the U.S. military.”
Multiple officials have said there aren’t enough agents to patrol the northern or southwest borders, not to mention other ports of entry along the U.S. coast.
“We don’t have the resources to patrol the border, the technology or manpower,” Blair said. “The capacity to have 100% awareness of the border is astronomical and doesn’t happen with the current system under Department of Homeland Security.”
During Tuesday’s presidential debate, Harris deflected from answering questions about her role as border czar and didn’t say how she’d protect Americans from terrorist threats.
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