- Great Britain and the United States may not be quite
prepared to crack down on dangerous thinkers, but where those guardians
of Anglo-Saxon liberties fear to tread, the European Union is ready to
gallop. This week the London Daily Telegraph reported that the Union is
even now sprucing up new laws against "xenophobia and racism"
to make sure no one has any unusual thoughts at all -- and that British
subjects will be extradited to the continent if they violate them.
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- The recent Scotland Yard investigation of journalist
Taki Theodoracopulos for violating British laws against inciting "racial
hatred" seems to have gone nowhere, but Taki, as the wealthy jetsetter
journalist is known, may still not be safe. Thought crimes that the British
won't prosecute could still be punished if the EU bureaucracy can get its
claws on the culprits through the extradition process. Moreover, of it
works for British Thought Criminals, it may also work for those in this
country.
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- In an article in the Telegraph last week, Home Affairs
editor Philip Johnston reported that the British government "has undertaken
that if such 'offences' take place in Britain the perpetrators would not
be extradited -- but it will be for the courts to decide the location of
the crime. This opens up the prospect of a judge agreeing to extradite
someone whose observations, though made in Britain, were broadcast exclusively
in a country where they constitute a crime. Legislation now before Parliament
will make 'xenophobia and racism' one of 32 crimes for which the European
arrest warrant can be issued without the existing safeguard of dual criminality.
This requires that an extraditable offence must also be a crime in the
UK. Alongside the arrest warrant, EU ministers are negotiating a new directive
to establish a common set of offences to criminalise xenophobia and racism."
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- Under current law, "Holocaust denial," for
example, is a criminal offense in some European countries like Germany
and Austria. A British citizen who committed that "crime" in
Germany and then returned to Great Britain could not be extradited back
to Germany to stand trial. But under the proposed new laws and directives,
he could be -- if British judges so ruled.
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- What that means, presumably, is not just that Britons
who committed such offenses while physically on the continent could be
prosecuted. Also subject to the new laws would be those who merely broadcast
or published their criminal thoughts, including through the Internet.
"Holocaust denial" is one offense, but new legislation against
"xenophobia and racism" could broaden state control over thought
and expression far more, even when those expressing verboten ideas never
left their own living rooms.
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- The Telegraph article quotes Lord Filkin, a minister
with the Home Office, as saying that no British citizen would be extradited
to the continent "in respect of conduct which has occurred here and
which is legal here". But, asked whether "comments originating
in Britain but carried abroad on television or through an internet chatroom
would be extraditable," he said, "It will be for the courts to
decide." In other words, neither British law as written nor constitutional
tradition will protect the British citizen from being hauled out of his
own country to face trial in a foreign state under laws to which he never
consented and possibly jailed merely for expressing unconventional thoughts
that are legal in his own country.
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- Given the broad scope of existing European laws that
punish "Holocaust denial," there's no telling how far the new
laws could reach, but clearly they reach well beyond merely inciting racial
violence. Scientists who study racial differences and come up with the
wrong answers, clergymen who criticize Islam and other non-Western religions,
political leaders who object to mass immigration, and journalists who
merely criticize political correctness and double standards may all have
good reason to shut up and get jobs selling cars.
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- Could the laws reach into the United States? This country
recognizes the European Union and generally extradites European criminals
wanted in its member states, as they do Americans wanted for trial in this
country. Just this month immigration authorities expelled alleged "Holocaust
denier" Ernst Zündel to Canada, giving only the thinnest technical
rationale for kicking him out. Mr. Zündel, who broke no laws while
living in this country, may eventually wind up back in his native Germany,
where he could go to jail for what he has written about Nazi policies toward
the Jews.
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- Mr. Zündel, of course, is not an American citizen,
but the parallel with what may well be in the works is clear enough. Any
thought, any idea, any statement that challenges the official egalitarian
ideology faces repression by the emerging global state, and neither constitutions
nor national borders will protect those who question that ideology or the
global power it serves.
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