Salvation Magazine Issue 1 - Magazine - Page 3
The Sound of Silence
The proposed Online Safety Bill is an attack on free speech and while it may protect children
it could also ensure that the next generation grow up exposed to a limited range of ideas,
sanctioned by whatever the government in power decrees acceptable
W
elcome to this, the first issue of SALVATION magazine, a celebration
of all things associated with Salvation Films and our related film labels;
Redemption, Jezebel, Purgatory, and Carnal, as well as our streaming channels RedemptionTV.net and PurgatoryTV.net, our infamous
Satanic Sluts and soon Ghoul Girls. Aside from championing our own
brands we are also covering things that we like, or that we think will be of interest to our audience. That includes art, music, fashion and culture along with anything else that catches our
eye or ruffles our feathers. Nothing is excluded.
Our main commitment though, is not to censor or shy away from covering topics or items
that may offend or upset. Indeed as a company that has consistently fought censorship and was
instrumental both in abolishing the law of blasphemy and of initiating the legal challenges that
culminated in the decriminalisation of hardcore pornography in the UK, we are committed not
just to free speech but to our right to offend and challenge our readers when we feel it necessary.
And because of that that we are absolutely opposed to the planned Online Safety Bill (formerly
the Online Harms Bill), which, because of the Conservative leadership contest, has been delayed.
However, it is still out there and there are many people in the media and on both the left and
right of British politics that not only support this legislation but the principal behind the legislation; that is not just desirable but absolutely acceptable for the state to control what we say, read
and watch online and by extension what we say, read and watch in real life, and to enforce that by
criminalising aspects of speech and expression deemed ‘harmful’
or ‘offensive’.
We suggest that the motivation and driving force behind the
Online Safety Bill is, like so many restrictive laws, coaxed in
soothing language that this is all about protecting children and
young people from harm. Supporters and proponents of the legislation cite the proliferation of self harm and suicide sites online
as one of their key motivations in championing the legislation,
the other bugbear of course is the easy availability of hardcore
pornography online. Therefore if one opposes this legislation one
is conversely supportive of pornography, euthanasia, hate speech
and the nastier side of the web in general.
This is one of the reasons why opposition to the legislation has
been sporadic with random attacks being made on it from maverick politicians like David Davis (Conservative) and civil liberties
group like Toby Young’s Free Speech Union, Index on Censorship
and Article 19. It also has similarities to how opposition to 1984’s
Video Recording Act, brought in on a wave of hysteria to curb
‘video nasties’, ultimately failed to stop the VRA becoming law and
bringing in some of the strictest film censorship in the world. Censorship that was only relaxed following convoluted battles in the
courts by Redemption films throughout the 1990s and early 2000s;
these actions culminating in the resignation of James Ferman, the
then head of the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) and
the legalisation of pornography in 2000.
The BBFC are regularly issuing press releases and statements
that ‘parents’ want BBFC style ratings online to be able to police
what their children watch and the BBFC want nothing more than to have the Home Office extend their powers to cover the classification of online content. The Online Safety Bill may well be
the Trojan Horse that will enable them to extend their spurious and Orwellian ‘Watching What
is Right for You’ philosophy into the online world.
Currently though, it is Ofcom that is charged with regulating the internet, and is seen as
the enforcer of the Online Safety Bill should it become law. Already the characteristics used
to define ‘Hate Speech’ have been expanded from four to eighteen, and now mean “all forms
of expressions which spread, incite, promote, or justify hatred based on intolerance on the
grounds of disability, ethnicity, social origin, sex, gender, gender reassignment, nationality,
race, religion, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property
or birth or age”. Essentially, everyone will be protected online in this new utopian world
where trolls are replaced by fluffy unicorns and the rest of us are reduced to expressing
ourselves like verbose Teletubbies. The Government has also stated that it will backup this
all-encompassing list of protected categories by setting out further “priority categories’ of
‘legal but harmful material’ in secondary legislation. Here we permit a serving Government
to define ‘harm’ as the effect content or words might have on an ‘adult of ordinary sensibilities’, whatever that actually means?
The aim of all this is to legislate and impose a “duty of care” on internet companies to “take responsibility for the safety of their users”. What this means in effect is that social media companies
will be responsible in law for the behaviour of the public towards each other, with the internet
companies obliged to remove ‘harmful content’. This ‘obligation’ is backed up with fines of up to
£18 million, or ten percent of a company’s worldwide income if they fail to do this.
In addition to removing content deemed ‘harmful’ internet companies will also be obliged
to remove content that is perceived to be spreading ‘disinformation and misinformation’. In
recent times that would cover views critical of the Covid vaccines or mandatory legislation, or
currently views critical of mainstream global warming science. Further, social media companies will be forced by law and the threat of punitive fines to also remove historic content which
falls under the scope of the Bill.
If the Online Safety Bill becomes law, in whatever form or with whatever reassurances the
government adds by way of appeasing it’s critics, the UK will have
the dubious distinction of being the first ‘democracy’ in the world
to censor its citizens in this way. Not only that, but once the Online Safety Bill is made part of UK law it will be on our statute
books, and future governments will be free to add and amend it
as they fit.
The Labour Shadow Culture Minister has already criticised
the legislation for not going far enough and is worried that it
overlooked smaller or lessor known sites like 4Chan, 8Chan,
BitChute and so on. He wants the legislation to have a wider
remit in order to stop radicalisation and the spreading of ‘hate
and harm’ - essentially, as the sites he names are notoriously anarchic, censorship free and libertarian this would silence voices
already banned from Twitter and Youtube and give the proposed
legislation scope for political bias. Indeed Labour also wants the
bill to include additional legislation so that the authorities have
the power to read private messages on WhatsApp, to end encrypted messaging and to effectively outlaw secure messaging
in the UK.
The Conservative MP David Davis has called it the “Biggest
accidental curtailment of free speech in modern history” but it
is so much more than that as it will entail a massive expansion
of state censorship and state power to be able to enforce its remit
beyond Twitter banning or removing a few nasty tweets or Trolls
which is what it does already. In essence the Online Safety Bill
would give teeth to those who already cancel individuals or ban
books or take down posts online. This Bill could be expanded
indefinitely, adding fines not just to social media companies, but to individuals and smaller
companies, it will have the power to put people in prison for expressing or saying things the
state doesn’t like.
People that see stopping hateful speech as doing the right thing rarely see beyond that point,
that by stopping someone saying something blatantly offensive or hateful they have made the
world a slightly nicer and safer place. They haven’t. Instead with each ban and takedown the
criteria and definition of ‘hate speech’ moves, the boundaries shift continuously until one day
your speech or the speech and ideas of people who think like you is under threat and they too are
being silenced. Ultimately, defending free speech is about defending free speech for all, including
the bigots and extremists. Better nasty words than no words at all.
Essentially, everyone
will be protected
online in this new
utopian world where
trolls are replaced
by fluffy unicorns
and the rest of us
are reduced to expressing
ourselves like
verbose Teletubbies.
Editor and art director: Nigel Wingrove
Design: Bloody French www.bloodyfrenchdesign.com
Deputy editor: Anna Maksymluk
Contributors: David Flint, Lou Hellbaby, Pippin Ravenscourt
Features editor: Dave Edmond
All comments, review material and so on should be addressed to the editor and sent to
Salvation Films, 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX or emailed to: info@salvationgroup.com
The views of the contributors are not necessarily those of the editor and vice versa. The contents of this magazine are fully protected by international
copyright laws and cannot be reproduced in any form without the express permission of Salvation Films. © Salvation Films 2022
Front covers: Iron Rose/Françoise Pascal - special e昀昀ects, Dave Palser
Fascination/Brigitte Lahaie - Mark Kenny with special thanks to Chris O’Neill
Salvation/1
