A reportedly drunk & possibly insane man attacked a member of parliament in Australia with his car. And so, naturally, a few vile politicians are exploiting the tragedy to demand mass online censorship. Decades of scientific evidence & common sense demolish their lies. THREAD

Truckers protest and Trudeau calls them all Nazis and freezes their bank accounts. In Australia the @AlboMP government demonized millions of upstanding citizens as Nazis and racists after a murderous attack. It’s the same totalitarian playbook everywhere across the West from EU, UK, Canada to US to Aus/NZ. Same people. Same pathological need for control from the PMC. These are people who believe they have exorcised all evil from within and project it all onto millions of good people. It’s a sickness of people who have never considered the other side to their dogma their entire lives. Everyone who disagrees with them is evil and must be silenced in one way or another. When asked politely about why they want to deprive their fellow citizens of their most sacred right, the one that allows for the protection of all other rights, they literally flee out the back door of their cathedral. These people are the dangerous ones. They want to cause harm to their critics and openly threaten the public’s safety.

Here is @AnikaWells brazenly lying about the fake accounts ("sock puppets") provision of the law: She says, "Well, there is nowhere in the bill that gives the government, and by the government, in this instance, the independent regulator, that power. It's just not there." Yes, it is there, as anyone who reads the bill can see. I'll paste it again below.

Wow, wow, wow. I just left the National Press Club where Minister of Communications @AnikaWells spoke. She repeatedly and brazenly lied about the fake accounts, claiming they were only for enforcement, even though the legislation says in black and white that the eSafety Commissioner can use them in unlimited ways for "educational" and "promotional" purposes. One big moment came when a Politico reporter got up and said something about how mean people like @PaulineHansonOz were to eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant. Seriously. A supposed reporter was white-knighting for a government official during the official Q&A. The same reporter had come up to me before Wells' speech and asked if I had criticized Inman-Grant. Who needs government censors when you have Politico? After he asked his question, Wells showed the most emotion, describing online criticism of Inman-Grant as "abuse." She also talked about her own staff's supposed suffering. I kid you not. The mask dropped, and you could see what really upset her: people — including a sitting Senator — criticizing government officials. After gaslighting the audience about fake accounts, Wells repeatedly insisted the government wasn't trying to censor content. She said this after filling her speech with examples of content she claimed harmed people. You couldn't make it up. This legislation is the culmination of decades of progressives equating words with physical violence. Wells cynically compared her legislation to prevent psychological "harm" to various laws that protect people from physical harm, like seat belt laws. BTW, Wells never said what content it was that she thought caused eating disorders. Pictures of skinny women? Dietary advice? Who knows. Nobody asked. Another important moment came when Wells explicitly said Australia would be pursuing censorship alongside other nations, including the UK, France, and Spain—all countries where governments risk losing power to populists. I spoke with Julie Inman-Grant before the speech began and asked about the fake accounts. She insisted they were there just for enforcement, and when I asked why the law allowed them to be used for government propaganda, she said she might write an "enforcement memo," which, of course, would have no impact on the legislation. After her speech, I went up to Wells and asked if she was seriously saying the legislation didn't allow the government to use fake accounts for government propaganda. She refused to answer. A man who said he was from the National Press Club stepped in front of me and said I could interview her afterward. But that wasn't possible because they rushed her out the back to avoid any difficult questions. So there you have it. The pettiest people in Australia are seeking to silence citizens and their political opponents in the name of protecting children. These deeply intolerant and cynical people want to control what you can see and say online. And they're doing it with most of the media's support. Australia has reached a new low in its rapid descent into dogmatism, intolerance, and censorship.