The Great Dictator Part 1

Update 533. Free Speech and Freedom of Expression Special. #BeMorePorcupine

There is so much going on, dear readers, that I am splitting this into two parts.

A further pause on our current series of films. Bear with me while I explain today’s choice of film!! For the last update, one of the endpieces involved a dance by Laurel and Hardy chosen by Tenaciously who, in a comment, said she actually preferred Charlie Chaplin. That led me to The Great Dictator (1940). So this is a kind of continuation of the Readers Series 😁

A Jewish soldier who fought in the First World War returns to his previous profession as a barber in a ghetto. The ghetto is now governed by the Tomainian regime, now transformed into a dictatorship under the ruthless Adenoid Hynkel ( Charlie Chaplin, who also plays the Jewish barber). In the famous Globe scene, Henry Daniell is Garbitsch, a parody of Jospeh Goebbels.

Thanks to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.

Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.

Ireland -The Attack On Free Speech

I especially reported here on the outrageous actions of An Garda Siochána, the Irish Police in obtaining injunctions ( 10 in all it seems) againstTwitter (X) to release the X accounts and personal files of Gript News, Natural Women’s Council and others:

https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/stand-with-gript-news

https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/the-stasi-in-ireland

Good interview here by Fatima Gunning of Gript with Alastair Donald of The Academy of Ideas and Toby Young of The Free Speech Union.

And here is Jana Lunden of the Natural Women’s Council talking to Eugene Garvin and she says she is taking this further. Jana says that, to start with, the letter from X informing her of what had happened seemed so unbelievable that she presumed it was a spoof!!

Albeit that An Garda Siochána seem to have backed off, perhaps in light of an appeal from X to the court ( further details are awaited), they and the Irish Government need to be held to account for this extraordinary Stasi like overreach and fundamental attack on freedom of speech and freedom of expression that has occurred.

Appropriately enough, on his substack, Andrew Doyle addresses free speech in the context of a recent speech by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, who was in turn responding to the ( excellent) speech to the Munich Security Conference by US Vice-President J D Vance.

Free speech is not a virus

Ursula von der Leyen’s defence of censorship is a new low for the EU.

Feb 25, 2025

‘I believe in freedom of speech, but…’ is perhaps the most common phrase you’ll hear from those who don’t, in fact, believe in freedom of speech. One wishes that they would simply admit the truth, but unfortunately most people who find the principle of free speech inherently rebarbative will rarely say so openly. Instead, they resort to obfuscation, misdirection and word games so they might restrict freedom while claiming to uphold it.

Phrases such as ‘hate speech is not free speech’ and ‘you can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theatre’ are eagerly deployed by free speech sceptics. The favoured terms of the moment are ‘misinformation’ (unintentional misrepresentation) and ‘disinformation’ (intentional deception). Former Secretary of State John Kerry recently argued that when it comes to ‘disinformation’, the ‘First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence’. Chilling stuff.

Ursula von der Leyen has taken this a step further. In her speech this week at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, she has announced that she intends to create a ‘European Democracy Shield’ to protest EU citizens from foreign online ‘disinformation’. Being the unelected president of the European Commission - the executive branch of an international trading bloc that forces member states to re-run elections if they don’t approve of the outcome, and responsible for proposing and implementing new laws that can run roughshod over national sovereignty - we should assume that von der Leyen is using the term ‘Democracy’ in much the same vein as the ‘Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’.

One would have thought that she had Philip K. Dick as a speechwriter. Her phrase ‘pre-bunking’ is a valid addition to the autocrat’s lexicon, every bit as sinister as ‘pre-crime’, ‘thoughtcrime’ or ‘public safety’. This is what she had to say:

‘As technology evolves we need to build up societal immunity around information manipulation. Because research has shown that pre-bunking is much more successful than debunking. Pre-bunking is basically the opposite of debunking. In short, prevention is preferable to cure. Perhaps if you think of information manipulation as a virus. Instead of treating an infection, once it has taken hold, that is debunking. It is much better to vaccinate so that the body is inoculated. Pre-bunking is the same approach.’

According to Von der Leyen’s analogy, certain forms of speech are akin to a virus, which require the inoculation of truth by figures of authority. But there is one unanswerable retort to her argument for censorship of ‘disinformation’…

It was written almost two millennia ago. In his satires, the Roman poet Juvenal laments the fate of husbands who fear being cuckolded by their wives. One might arrange for guards to ensure her fidelity, but then, Juvenal asks, ‘quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ (who watches the watchmen?).

The full piece is here:

https://www.andrewdoyle.org/p/free-speech-is-not-a-virus

All thoughts gratefully received.

UK - Bye Bye Stonewall?

EDI Jester celebrates the fact that Stonewall may have to make half their staff redundant due to loss of US Aid. Since 2015 Stonewall have force teamed LGB people with the T and the Q (and whatever the rest of the alphabet means!!) whilst only promoting the T and the Q at the direct and disastrous expense of LGB people ( and women and children). So I join in this celebration and hope other funders may now review their funding.

The Grooming Gangs Scandal

I know that many of my readers want to be kept abreast of the grooming gangs scandal which was brought to the fore again by the release of the shocking transcripts of the judgments from the Oxford trials. This is outside the remit of this substack where, generally speaking, we concentrate on the Terf Resistance to ‘gender ideology’ and the fight for free speech, so I have just been directing readers to relevant pieces. It is vital that this issue is not allowed to die away again. The Labour Government should agree to a national inquiry.

Raja Miah has been battling away in Oldham and nationally for six years seeking to expose the scandal and the cover up. He has now set up his own substack and here is an excellent piece plus a short video:

https://rajamiah.substack.com/p/six-years-and-still-no-surrender?publication_id=816692&r=1v403b

Ireland - BelongTo

BelongTo is Ireland’s national ‘LGBTQ+ youth organisation.’ Sean, a young man who attended BelongTo’s youth groups when he was 16 and who is a member of Not All Gays, comes forward as a whistleblower to talk of his experiences of attending BelongTo sessions in an interview with Jana Lunden of the Natural Women’s Council.

Be Unbelievable

Kellie-Jay has advice on how to challenge the gender madness when you bump into it in your every day life. Be Unbelievable 😄

Malcolm Clark

I have just come across this excellent interview by Andrew Gold with Malcolm Clark. They start with celebrities ‘transing’ their kids and expand out from there!

Trans Widows

Ute Heggen who, as many of you will know, has been carrying out interviews with trans widows ( and who is a trans widow herself) looks at the fetish of autogynephilia and when it tumbles over the boundary in to paedophilia. She includes excerpts from her interviews with trans widows.

"Crossdressers' desires do not map onto anything in our world," opines Dr. Ray Blanchard. Really? AGP is a fetish, very related to MAPS! *minor-attracted persons

MAP is an acronym meaning "minor attracted persons," meaning child sexual predators. We who divorced crossdressers know the maps have few boundaries and there is no North Star.

Feb 24, 2025

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~~~Eastern tiger swallowtail, tails frayed and damaged, on a zinnia~~

Dusty - this is a photo from Ute’s garden.

“You will never know how they feel if you are not one of them. And they have to disconnect between reality and their fantasy. Otherwise, their desires are too disruptive. It’s too disruptive to acknowledge that you wish your penis was a part of your wife’s body and not yours. It’s too disruptive to acknowledge that this is a a sexual compulsion,” muses Dr. Ray Blanchard, as he dismisses women’s rights and needs.

The pioneering sexologists ignored the devastation to the family, the erasure of the wives and mothers, and the needs of children these men fathered, including their financial needs and the fact that their crossdressing patients spent the grocery money on lipstick. Kenneth Zucker, another Canadian PhD sexologist, claimed that children at age two or three can self-label their sex, when asked, “Are you a boy or a girl?” (Open Minds Podcast #178)

Psychologist Ray Blanchard developed a 2 year “map” for his male patients: keep your job, get a letter from your boss that says you look like a woman at work for these continuous 2 years, continue to request female hormones and surgeries. Then we’ll give you the letters for hormones and surgeries to take to the endocrinologists and surgeons. Who do not do any follow up and trust that you sexologists do. They created a letter mill, which often goes on through the internet now, with no in person contact. (do a search if you want, I did. Not fun.) Blanchard did not consider that every shower, every bath, every sleeping moment, does not count in this additive equation.

The full piece is here:

https://substack.com/inbox/post/157781143?publication_id=2927692&post_id=157781143&isFreemail=true&r=20xc5g&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

And here on her You Tube channel, Ute discusses the case of one trans widow.

Endpieces

From Tenaciously

Click the You Tube link

From Liz

#BeMorePorcupine

#EndGenderAffirmingCare

#AdultHumanFemale

#LetWomenSpeak

#GrassrootsArmy

#FightForFreeSpeech

#ByeByeStonewall

#GenderEnders

#NeverSurrender

Part 2 will follow as soon as feasible, Terven.

If you like this update, please send to a friend. Until next time, Terven. This isn’t over yet! Please subscribe for free or paid or buy me a coffee, like and comment.