There is something loathsome about bureaucrats promising to ‘keep people safe’ by controlling the public’s access to information.

I was reminded of this when reading comments made by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner following the Southport murders.

According to reports, the Southport murderer, Axel Rudakubana, went online and searched for the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel 40 minutes prior to attacking children.

What is being implied by this observation, and what would have changed if the video did not exist?

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner released a statement:

‘eSafety notes with great sadness reports of evidence concerning the Wakeley church stabbing video presented to a court in the United Kingdom during the sentencing of Axel Rudakubana. eSafety acted swiftly following the Wakeley attack in Sydney on April 15, 2024, working collaboratively where possible with technology companies to remove the video from online platform.’

The eSafety Commissioner became a figure of international criticism after attempting to scrub footage of Mar Mari’s attack from social media. X fought back and walked away as the victor, posting sweeping statements about freedom of speech.

A spokesperson for the eSafety Commissioner claimed:

‘Research and the experience of law enforcement in Australia and internationally has shown a clear link between extreme, graphic violent material and harm to children, not to mention instances of real-world violence or attempted violence.’

The suggestion that hiding footage from the public will prevent further attacks is both wrong and reprehensible.

It would be more correct to say that hiding the ideological material that led to radicalisation can prevent further attacks. This is uncontroversial for fringe cults such as the apostolic socialists of Jonestown who drank the Kool Aid and far more difficult with a global religion like Islam that harbours terrorist sects. Is the eSafety Commissioner going to police Islam globally? I doubt it.

The Southport murderer might have watched a few minutes of an Australian attack, but he was radicalised long before this occurred. Of far more significance is his downloading of the Military Studies in the Jihad against Tyrants: The Al-Qaeda Training Manual.

His murders were premeditated, including the purchase of a knife online.

Threats of jailing the Amazon CEO for selling the knife are as ridiculous as banning news videos in Australia. The ideology responsible is an extremist branch of Islam and he was free to carry out his violence thanks to the documented failures of government-funded programs that were aware of his ideology and failed to act.

There have been half a dozen knife attacks in the last few weeks across Europe by radically-motivated asylum seekers. How many watched the video from Australia? Probably none of them.

The problem is not free speech on the internet, it is the porous nature of borders exploited by criminal gangs who smuggle hateful individuals from other parts of the world into European cities where they act out revenge on innocent people labelled as dogs and infidels by preachers. Their presence in the community encourages home-grown terrorists who would otherwise feel too isolated to act.

Western citizens are being conned by the political class into thinking this is somehow the fault of the Enlightenment and free speech instead of a sweeping failure of governments who dabbled in socialist open borders during a fit of misguided compassion.

Imagine if the eSafety Commissioner had been in existence during the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers. Would she have demanded the footage from New York be taken down in case someone in Australia hijacked a plane?

Violent footage does not radicalise individuals into terror, if that were true, Hollywood blockbusters would have turned us into a nation of serial killers. Terrorists are radicalised by ideology, much of it spread behind the closed doors of religious houses. They are not motivated by the thrill of violence, but by afterlife promises and the glory of martyrdom which they perceive as bringing meaning to the lives they have otherwise wasted with insignificance. Ultimately, the people these attackers hate most are themselves.

Strong positive social propaganda that re-enforces Western Civilisation guards against home-grown terror, but imported hatred can only be stopped by closing the door.

European citizens have decided that the pathway to safety is deportation. Rising political parties are calling this ‘remigration’ to appease those who wrongly associate the expelling of the Jewish people during the war with the modern expulsion of illegal migrants from the third-world.

Left-wing publications have written plenty of screechy pieces about the ‘shocking’ move by the right to deport illegal migrants, but there have been frequent rallies across Europe demanding an Islamic caliphate, the implementation of Sharia Law, and the murder of Jews. There are fewer articles prepared to accept this anti-progressive mantra. Citizens living on the streets beside these aggressive mobs do not have the luxury of a journalist to pick and choose which parts of mass migration they engage with, they are instead forced to decide what is best for their country and their children who will inherit it.

Governments know the cause of radicalisation, just as they know the most dangerous groups on our streets are not the handful of larping neo-Nazi psychos but the tens of thousands of terror-sympathetic protesters who openly call for the ‘fall of the colonies’.

eSafety censorship never seems to hunt down those posting evidence of their anti-Australian crimes online. (There is still no word on the group that posted the severed bronze heads of Australian Prime Ministers or the mutilated statues of Captain Cook.)

A culture of censorship has consequences for society, beyond the immediate rise of aggression as citizens become aware that they live in a two-tier legal reality.

Infantilising a nation makes the country more dangerous. Controlling what people believe creates a crucible of outrage fine-tuned to government policy. People’s minds are narrowed to a pre-approved narrative and from this, terrible and focused hatred arises.

This is exactly how Islamic theocracy works when power is held by groups such as Hamas, and why so many people within these regimes become obsessive. Their governments ban most things beyond the window of faith, which helps their leaders keep the people trapped in both mind and body.

This is not new.

When literacy was first discovered, a small group of scribes held their leaders to ransom by communicating the wishes of kings. The Sumerians and Akkadians of Mesopotamia engaged in long-distance trade with empires they never met. Sargon the Great (2334-2279 BCE) is famous for being one of the first literate rulers who could not be controlled by a glass ceiling of scribes. Religious orders also had an interest in keeping people illiterate so they could distribute the word of God as they saw fit, particularly through ancient Europe.

Once literacy spread, people began writing down ideas that posed a risk to the formal structures of power, and those books were promptly thrown in the fire. The flow of speech changed the structure of empires and facilitated the rapid rise of technology. Capitalism was the beneficiary of free speech, while historic orders were its victim.

Burning books did not destroy the problems facing human civilisation. If anything, the pillars of smoke signified that oppression was real. They were the vertical bars rising up into the heavens and casting shadows over the city.

In the digital age, information quietly disappears. It is the dream of the State to be able to edit the public conversation without their knowledge. Governments love to believe that humanity needs an editor forgetting that humans prefer leaders to jailers.

And yet every day the Australian public is gaslit by its political class into thinking free speech and social media is the cause of all civil and social problems.

To believe this is to be illiterate in the language of politics.

Alexandra Marshall is an independent writer. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.