Today's Update – The Daily Sceptic (2024)

By Will Jones

The Reform activist filmed by Channel 4 using a racial slur about Rishi Sunak while campaigning in Clacton has turned out to be an actor who is well-spoken but specialises in ‘rough voices’ – though the activist and Channel 4 have denied that he was a plant. Isabel Oakeshott broke the story on TalkTV this morning. She said:

You know, there was bewilderment within the party yesterday, as to who this guy was. The party was certainly familiar with some of the other characters and there’s no excuse for any of the languages that they used, but the worst language – the most egregious comments – were from Andrew Parker who is really not a player within the Reform Party. So it’s just very, very murky.

He bears a remarkable resemblance to an actor whose details can be quite easily found on the internet. You can use software recognition that gives a 99.9% confidence rate that they are the same people – a professional actor, and crucially, this professional actor specialises in so-called ‘rough voices’.

So if you’ve been to his show reel his rough voice is exactly the same as the voice of the character in the on the Channel 4 undercover documentary. An urgent investigation is now underway.

If it turns out that this character was a paid actor or even acting in a voluntary capacity for whatever their reasons, you know, maybe they have a political agenda. I don’t know. If that turns out to be the case. Then there will be hell to pay for the production company and Channel 4.

Reform leader Nigel Farage tweeted:

Andrew Parker was the man that made the astonishing racist comments that have given us so much negative coverage. We now learn that he is an actor by profession. His own website says he is “well spoken” but from the moment he arrived in Clacton he was doing what he calls “rough speaking”. This whole episode does not add up.

Farage adds that Parker initially lied to the Telegraph about being an actor: “When the Telegraph spoke to Andrew Parker earlier he denied being an actor. He has now admitted that was not true. What else is he being untruthful about?”

Oakeshott retweeted a clip posted by James Sutherland showing Parker’s ‘rough voice’. Sutherland writes: “Here’s a clip of Andrew Parker, the actor featured in Channel 4’s footage making racist remarks to voters. In the first part of the video you can hear his natural voice. He then does what he calls his ‘rough voice’, which is how he spoke in the C4 footage. Hit job? You decide.”

Oakeshott notes that Parker lists “secret filming” as one of his “special skills”.

Parker himself has apologised and claimed he was “goaded on”.

Andrew Parker said he made the comments, recorded by undercover reporters, “in the heat of the moment”.

Mr. Parker also confirmed claims that he was a part-time actor but said he got involved with Reform U.K. after contacting the party himself and volunteering to do leafleting because he believes in its message.

He said he had not told the party that he was an actor.

Mr. Parker said: “Of course I regret what I said. Christ, I’m not a racist. I’ve had Muslim girlfriends. It was typical chaps-down-the-pub talk.”

Asked whether he would like to apologise, he said: “Of course I’m sorry. They were off-the-cuff things that everyone says.”

He said he had “a lot of Pakistani friends” and “Muslim friends”, and that he was “sick to death” of being asked about the footage.

Parker’s comments were quite extraordinary – some of which were made to a member of the public on the doorstep:

Giving his view on Muslims and what the party would do with mosques, he said: “Sick mate. Sick m—-f—–”, adding: “It’s a cult. I tell you what, if you don’t know about Islam, it is the most disgusting cult.

“We’re f—— kicking all the Muslims out of the mosques and turning them into Wetherspoons.”

In the same conversation, Mr. Parker said: “I’ve always been a Tory voter but what annoys me is that f—— p— we’ve got in. What good is he? You tell me, you know. He’s just wet. F—— useless.”

Talking to a prospective voter on the doorstep, Mr. Parker is also heard expressing his views on how to stop the boats, suggesting Army recruits should carry out “target practice”.

A spokesman for Channel 4 denied that Parker was paid or previously known to the production team:

We strongly stand by our rigorous and duly impartial journalism which speaks for itself. We met Mr. Parker for the first time at Reform U.K. party headquarters, where he was a Reform party canvasser. We did not pay the Reform UK canvasser or anyone else in this report. Mr. Parker was not known to Channel 4 News and was filmed covertly via the undercover operation.

Oakeshott admits – though with obvious incredulity – that it could just be a coincidence: “Yes, sure, it’s theoretically possible that Channel 4 just *happened* to strike gold by finding a horrendous racist who just HAPPENS to be an actor who just HAPPENS to specialise in the same ‘rough voice’ used in the undercover footage and just HAPPENS to be a Reform supporter. It’s possible!”

By Will Jones

Joe Bidenimmediately faced calls from Democrats to drop out of the Presidential race following his catastrophic debate withDonald Trumplast night, but the 81 year-old insisted he would go on. The Mail has more.

Biden’s campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt declared early this morning: “Of course he’s not dropping out.”

But a torrent of his own party members and strategists areclamouring for their aged Presidentto throw in the towel off the back of the car-crash debate, with one anonymous Democrat telling NBCit was “time to talk about an open convention and a new Democratic nominee”.

“Biden is about to face a crescendo of calls to step aside,” one Biden-backing strategist told theNew York Times, while another Democrat put it even more flatly to the Washington Post.

“We’re so f***ed,” he said. “He has great material. He just cannot deliver a single line.”

David Plouffe – a Democratic strategist who worked onBarack Obama‘s 2008 campaign – told MSNBC Biden’s showing was “kind of a DEFCON1 moment” – a reference to the highest alert level used by America’s defence community.

Plouffe also remarked that Trump and Biden looked “30 years apart”, despite an age gap of just three years between them.

Onepolitical analystsummed it up in the hours following the torturous 90-minute ordeal: “There’s going to be a lot of bedwetting (among Democrats) tonight.”

Trump meanwhile was seen contorting his face in shock and derision at Biden’s confused meandering and frequent gaffes in the debate, at one point telling millions of Americans watching at home: “I really don’t know what he [Biden] just said. He’s not equipped to be President. You know it and I know it.”

Worth reading in full.

The Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley quips that “this wasn’t a debate, it was a medical emergency… Never mind, will he last four years? The audience wasn’t sure he’d last 90 minutes.”

“Now I’m certain: Donald Trump willwin in November,” he adds.

On Substack, Eugyppius writes that “Biden has declined substantially over the past four years; at least in 2020, he could debate Trump with minimal coherence”.

Last night,after a full week of preparation, practice and apparently even advance access to the questions, he frequently forgot what he was talking about, offered blank baffled expressions to the camera while Trump spokeand had substantial difficulty leaving the stage when the event was over. Afterwards, as he greeted supporters, his wife Jill Biden praised him like a child: “Joe, you did such a great job! You answered every question! You knew all the facts!” Nobody can any longer deny that the United States is in the hands of a senile figurehead suffering from serious dementia. Biden remains in office for reasons of convenience and political patronage; who is actually steering the executive branch is anybody’s guess.

In the Telegraph it’s being reported that major Democrat party donors have now turned on Biden.

Donors have urged Mr. Biden to step aside, suggesting California’s Gavin Newsom andMichigan governor Gretchen Whitmer as potential replacements amid rising panic about the future of the campaign. …

The high-profile Democrat donor, Mark Buell, raised the possibility of replacing Mr. Biden following the debate, saying: “Do we have time to put somebody else in there?”

Strategists working for at least three separate Democrats said they have received texts from party donors asking them if their candidate would step forward to replace Biden as the presidential nominee.

“Biden needs to drop out. No question about it,” one said, proposing a ticket led by Ms. Whitmer and Wes Moore, the Governor of Maryland.

“This is terrible. Worse than I thought was possible. Everyone I’m speaking with thinks Biden should drop out,” one Democrat donor told NBC News.

One adviser told Politico that they had “taken no less than half a dozen key donors texting ‘disaster’ and [the] party needs to do something”.

By C.J. Strachan

How much longer will the corporate world attach its brands to causes that are being increasingly exposed as divisive and intolerant? How many more ‘Bud Lights’ do we need before the penny drops with these employers?

In all the noise, there’s an important point being missed by the mainstream media in the Tennant-Badenoch spat: that the awards dinner was being sponsored by numerous corporates including Tesco as headline sponsor. At a time when the whole value of DEI initiatives is beginning to be questioned in boardrooms, here we have an example of the folly of linking your brand to a third party involved in a highly febrile and bad-tempered debate that is dividing the nation.

All the great and the good from the LGBT world were there, and so were their corporate sponsors:

• Tesco (Headline Sponsor) (supermarket retail giant)
• Macquarie (financial services)
• HSBC U.K. (bank)
• Swinton (insurance services)
• Network Rail (U.K. rail network)
• Johnson & Johnson (fast-moving consumer goods, FMCG)
• Just Eat (retail/logistics)

And as we all know now, during these awards, actor David Tennant won the ‘Best LGBT Celebrity Ally’ and during his acceptance speech attacked Conservative Minister Kemi Badenoch, who, for our overseas readers,is the most senior black female politician in British history.

Tennant said:“We shouldn’t live in a world where that is worth remarking on. However, until we wake up, and Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist any more[rapturous applause and cheering] – [pause when he realised what he said]I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up.”

Badenoch isn’t one to take things lying down and fired back the next morning on X: “I will not shut up. I will not be silenced by men who prioritise applause from Stonewall over the safety of women and girls.”

Was one of her pithy replies.

The Prime Minister then waded in, as did Sir Keir Starmer who distanced himself from Tennant: “In politics, as in life, it’s important that we are able to robustly disagree with others – obviously that happens a lot in the general election campaign,”theLabourleader told reporters on a visit to a GP surgery near Nottingham.“But we should do it with respect for everybody involved in that robust discussion.”

This heated debate shows no sign of going away, and indeed, it’s rapidly becoming a major talking point in the election.

All this took place in front of a backdrop of the various brands of the corporate sponsors. Which prompts the question: if the sponsors had known there was going to be such controversy at the event, would they have sponsored it in the first place?

Having attended such corporate events in the past, I can tell you now that, along with the branding opportunities, all the above will have been given several tables at the ceremony as part of their sponsorship deal. At the last one I was at – a Marketing Awards Dinner in London – the lead sponsor, a large FMCG, had 15% of the available tables and all at the front of the stage.

Now I don’t know who these companies invited to join them at their tables: it will have been the usual mix of executives, advocacy group members, marketing team etc. I don’t know their political beliefs or their opinions about the issues of the day. But I couldn’t help hear the huge cheer Tennant got from guests when he said: “Until we wake up, and Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist anymore.” Caveat: we don’t know if any of the guests at the corporate tables were cheering this comment.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they had. For some time now our larger employers have been increasingly diving down the DEI rabbit hole, driven by external factors – third-party initiatives, procurement and corporate finance ESG, Government funding requirements, aggressive activist groups etc. – and internal factors – board level sponsors, employee activism, DEI/EDI policies and training, employee advocacy groups etc. However, with the emerging evidence that contrary to the now debunked McKinsey report touting the benefits of DEI in the corporate world, EDI (the U.K. way of writing DEI – which I will follow from now on) has actually backfired spectacularly and is damaging British businesses, workers and the economy in general. Rather than spreading unity, it’s spreading division, resentment, disengagement and fear. You can read the details in the Government independent reporthere, in the Dynata and Free Speech Unionreport hereand in the Datapoll/Policy Exchange reporthere.

On top of this, large employers are losing a growing number of employment tribunals where they have discriminated against employees who have objected to being forced to deny their beliefs, beliefs that are protected under law every bit as much as gay rights and trans rights.

Corporate HR, so frequently blamed for EDI in the workplace, has rather belatedly woken up to the folly and we are seeing the brakes being slammed on across the U.K. Corporate Landscape. Only, the message has yet to make it through to marketing, comms, procurement and other departments. I can only imagine how the Chief People Officer Emma Taylor would have winced as Tennant attacked the U.K.s most senior black female politician underneath the Tesco Brand. Whether this dawned on the marketing and comms team, who would have decided the sponsorship opportunity, is up for debate. Those who saw what happened to the Bud Light brand and have learned their lesson were probably also wincing, but there would have been a decent number applauding and cackling along with Mr. Tennant.

Now, I am not suggesting the boards and shareholders of these companies hold the radical gender views that Mr. Tennant does. We don’t do guilt by association in the rational world; that is the woke Leftist way, not ours. However, brand association does matter: this is why companies protect their brands so aggressively and are incredibly sensitive when they are exposed, inadvertently or otherwise, to bad publicity. Risks are explored, scenarios gamed out.

So here’s the question: given the likelihood of a backlash in the current febrile public debate around the gender question, why would a corporate sponsor willingly wade into the fray like this? Didn’t it gameplay the risk? Is it an example of groupthink? (I’ve written about how this manifests in the corporate world here.)

It does appear to indicate a failure in governance. HR is frantically pressing the brakes here, realising the risk of indirectly discriminating against gender critical employees and those of faith, and the potential incoming Employment tribunals and discrimination fines, but the message seems to be too firmly embedded in the corporate culture to stop.

American academic James Lindsay has recently spoken about DEI in the contextof the current Bill before Congress in the USA to overturn Joe Biden’s Executive Mandate to make DEI mandatory in the U.S. public sector. His analysis may explain the failure of corporate governance. This excerpt from his interview with Andrew Doyle this week is one of the best and most incisive analysis of the root problem of DEI:

What I call the “Politics of Compliance”, where you say:“This is how everything is going to be and it’s going to be a lot better when we all do this thing.”Everybody who complies gives in and then they are taught to resent the people who resist: “We would have a more inclusive workplace if only these racists and transphobes and hom*ophobes and sexists and misogynists and everything else were silenced or kicked out.” So you end up making this dynamic that’s extremely polarising and extremely divisive.

Which is of course exactly what is happening in workplaces and other organisations all over the West, and the U.K. is no exception. Those of us who are students of history and who have read our Solzhenitsyn, Frankl, Sereney and Primo Levi will recognise this mindset as the same one used to dehumanise opponents and to permit the atrocities of the 20th century totalitarian regimes. As Lindsay goes on to say, it’s also precisely the mantra taught to the Red Guards by Mao before and during the Cultural Revolution, and if you want a harrowing example of the consequences of that, you can watchthis Netflix trailer(trigger warning for those of you who don’t know this history).

There’s ample evidence that such politics of compliance is firmly embedded in some of the sponsors of this event who seem to have no problem with linking their brand to controversial and radical gender and Pride events. Network Rail’s ‘Pride Pillar’ at London Bridge Station, for instance. HSBC has gone all-in: check out its HQreception:

Now, Macquarie was the leading company on Stonewall’s “league of employers” in 2022; it disappeared in 2023 (why?) but is back in 2024.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that it is commercial folly to associate your company or brand with any sort of ideological or political movement, especially if there is current controversy on the issues within or around that movement.

InThe Fair Job Initiativewe advise our clients to never get involved in politics or activism of any type because you will invariably upset and alienate a proportion of your employees and customers, and on occasion this may slip into unlawful discrimination against them, as we have seen multiple times (check the annals of the Free Speech Union).

Given that Tesco U.K. was also a sponsor behind this year’s highly controversial Mayor of London campaign, it’s unlikely that Emma Botton’s job will be in danger because of a mouthy actor who obviously missed Ricky Gervais’s tips for slebs. But with this incident now being a focal point of a very public and loud election issue, maybe even this will be too much for the Tesco board and shareholders?

We may have witnessed a turning point in the enthusiasm of the corporate world to willingly fund and nod along with activists.

C.J.Strachanis the pseudonym of a concerned Scot who worked for 30 years as a Human Resources executive in some of the U.K.’s leading organisations. Subscribeto his Substack. He is a founder ofFair Job, an accreditation and support service for small businesses to help them navigate the minefields of EDI and HR.

By Will Jones

It’s the first General Election since Covid, yet lockdown and the rest of the catastrophic response just aren’t being discussed. Huge costs, vast harms, but no one wants to talk about it. Francis Hoar highlights the absence in the Telegraph.

For over two years, the country would be dominated by the consequences of its unprecedented and unadvised reaction to a respiratory pandemic that, while unforeseen, was highly foreseeable.One might think this issue should dominate the first General Election since.Not so.

The immediate effects of this legal, economic and social experiment were more all-embracing than anything we had experienced in modern times outside total war. Never in this era had the entire population been persuaded to leave its workplaces, stay at home and deny themselves the social comfort of their friends and family: and, while the ‘persuasion’ was supported by the force of law, the immediate and almost unconditional acquiescence of the public was all the more alarming.The decision to forbid a large proportion of economic activity was unprecedented in war as much as in peace and the consequences predictably severe.And the effect of the closure of schools, together with the cancellation of public examinations for two school years, will leave a long tail as its victims enter the workplace.That is to say nothing of the consequences of the mass cancellation of operations and the effective closure of much of the NHS, justified by misleading and downright false information about the anticipated effect of COVID-19 on the healthy population.

Those harms were as predictable as they were predicted – not merely by the tiny number of usarguing against lockdowns from the startbut by the pandemic plans of most governments, including the U.K., and the WHO.…

While lockdown should have served as a warning of the harm that can be inflicted on a nation by an all-powerful state, it has only increased that power, size and reach – and the public’s reliance on it. We changed our behaviour on a sixpence listening to the modelling of a discredited epidemiologist, and we accepted lockdown on the asserted ground of safety. Our society showed how little it values its own independence and freedom when it is told to be afraid. …

The failure to talk about it is a failure of democratic accountability, says Francis:

Representative democracy only works if its representatives do their duty to scrutinise legislation and hold governments to account; and the ability to exercise democratic choice matters little if the public is unable to give its verdict on the sitting Government’s most far-reaching decision.We can only hope that time and experience will teach us the lessons that will not be learned in this election about this catastrophic error.

Peter Franklin in UnHerd makes a similar point, saying: “Covid is the forgotten issue of the U.K. election.”

Francis suggests the silence is either due to “embarrassment” or the misguided assumption that lockdown is something that ‘just happens’ in a pandemic.

Another possibility is that many people see Covid as a kind of freak event in the past that they don’t expect to recur for a very long time, so see no need to talk about it in an election focused on the next five years. If so, they may be underestimating the determination of some in the ‘health security’ industry to conjure up emergencies on very thin pretexts.

By James Alexander

We are tempted at times to call our enemies Narcissists. But narcissists are harmless. It is the vain that are the trouble. We live in the Kingdom of the Vain.

In chapter 28 of Leviathan Thomas Hobbes explained why he had likened the state to the sea monster called Leviathan in the Bible. He wrote that he had taken

that comparison out of the two last verses of the one and 40th of Job: Where God having set forth the great power of Leviathan, calleth him King of the Proud. There is nothing, saith he, on earth, to be compared with him. He is made so as not to be afraid. Hee seeth every high thing below him; and is King of all the children of pride.

The reason this was significant for Hobbes was that he thought that pride was one of the greatest obstacles to establishing civil order. We have pride in our own ideas, our own gods, and are willing to bring turbulence into the state for the sake of them. Cue the French Wars of Religion, the 30 Years War in Germany, the English Civil War.

Now, this is interesting, because during the recent calamitous events in the world, it was the proud who contributed not a small amount to getting us through and holding onto good sense. The problem was not the proud, but the vain and their vanity.

“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity” is a famous line from Ecclesiastes. In the Christian tradition, pride — hubris in Greek, superbia in Latin — was always the problem. But the more refined or worldly moralists of the 18th century came to distinguish pride from vanity. I am no expert, but I recall that Adam Smith made much of the distinction between the two in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, written a century after Hobbes’s Leviathan.

What is the difference between pride and vanity?

The shortest way of saying it is that pride is a fault of strength and vanity is a fault of weakness.

Pride is belief in oneself. It makes one stand alone.

Vanity is a desire to be believed in by others. It makes one stand with others, leaning on them, preening before them, ostentatiously showing solidarity. Masks, moralising, ‘vaccination’^TM, the whole six feet.

Neither Pride nor Vanity is a Narcissus. Both seek the attention of others.

In a crisis, the vain can be relied upon to fall into line, and, worse, to do so ostentatiously, clustering about to gain the approval of others, wearing masks, prating about climate catastrophe etc. Vanity was the besetting sin of most of the COVID-19 balderdashers, since it sanctioned all the other sin, especially that of avarice. ‘Virtue-signalling’ is just one modern species of vanity: trying to get approval for having received ideas by others who also pretend to espouse those received ideas.

In a crisis, the proud can be relied upon to resist, to criticise.

So obviously, in this case, and probably every case, the proud are superior to the vain. I remember when I first read Adam Smith I was very eager to convince myself that I was proud and not vain. The vain are the sycophants, the conformists, the people who post pictures of themselves looking for the approval of others — in fact, probably everyone who uses social media.

Social media is not a small part of the problem. When Facebook and Twitter first came out, I was distrustful. I had embraced email, as a modern form of letter writing. But what seemed strange, and off-putting to me, was the fact that Facebook and Twitter both seemed to depend on, demand and reward vanity. “I, Me, Mine”, as George Harrison once put it — mocking pronouns, in the days before pronouns were fashionable. Facebook and Twitter created a world in which we all, individually, now address our publics as if we are Beyoncé, Trump and Tate rolled into one — with 15 followers. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

Not so good for the pride. And I am not saying pride is a virtue: though it can be virtuous in its effects. It is egotistical, like vanity, but it is a less sheepish, a more heroic style of egotism.

Better than either pride or vanity is humility. Humility is hard work: but humility counsels against both the exaggerations of pride (“I am right” and “others are wrong”) and of vanity (“I am right” because “others are right”). Let me quote Julius Charles Hare, who, at the moment, I am coming to think was one of the wisest writers of the 19th century:

Religion presents few difficulties to the humble, many to the proud, insuperable ones to the vain.

Well, we never lived in the Kingdom of the Humble. That is an impossibility, and unattainable aspiration: the subject of the astonishing moral demands of the Sermon on the Mount. But, contra Hobbes, we no longer live in the Kingdom of the Proud. Our current Rishi-‘n’-Keir Leviathan is presiding over the Kingdom of the Vain. Not a Kingdom of Narcissists: because there is no such thing. The sin of Narcissus was fairly minor. He simply stared at himself in a pool: damning himself in so doing, but not harming anyone else. A Kingdom of Narcissus is basically a man and a pond. (No emojis or likes or thank-you-for-sharings need apply.) Our modern ‘narcissists’ are more than narcissists: because they are looking at themselves (on their phones) while knowing that they are being looked at by others (on their phones): caught up in a cycle of seeing, in an interminable Panopticonversation. They are fully involved children of the King of the Vain. Their heroes are even more vain. The world really is a Vanity Fair nowadays.

Vanity and virtuality have come together to make a world.

In the face of such unparalleled and dogmatised and politicised mass vanity — that of the WHO, IPCC, BBC, Taylor Swift etc. — we should celebrate pride. (No, not Stonewall type ‘pride’: since even that is now only vanity: narcissism turned inside out.) Pride, as Adam Smith suggested, is better than vanity. It gives us independence of spirit. It stiffens the spine. Our civilisation has retreated a long way from celebrating humility. So, for the time being, all we can hope for is that the proud will continue to see their way to clearing a path through the Kingdom of the Vain.

Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.

By Dr Frederick Attenborough

The U.S. Supreme Court has dismissed claims that various federal agencies violated the First Amendment by pressuring Big Tech companies to suppress lawful speech in a ruling that will likely make it easier for future administrations to escape judicial scrutiny of subtle, indirect yet hugely potent forms of censorship.

In the decision handed down earlier this week in the Murthy v. Missouri case, the nine-judge panel sidestepped ruling on the constitutionality of the Government’s actions, choosing instead to focus on ‘standing’, which broadly refers to a litigant’s right to have a court rule upon the merits of a particular claim. In the U.S. context, standing ultimately depends on the litigant establishing that they have a genuine stake in the outcome of the case because they have personally suffered (or will imminently suffer) a concrete injury traceable to the allegedly lawful actions of the opposing party.

Missouri, Louisiana and other Republican-led states acted as plaintiffs in the case, arguing that the Biden administration “suppressed conservative-leaning free speech” on the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 presidential election; on COVID-19 issues, including the disease’s origin, masks, lockdowns, vaccines and vaccine mandates; on election integrity in the 2020 presidential election; on the security of voting by mail; on the economy; and on Joe Biden himself.

The GOP states had argued that White House Communications Agency, the U.S. Surgeon General, the FBI and NSA Cybersecurity are among those who applied “unrelenting pressure” on social media companies to remove perfectly legal content from their platforms.

The plaintiffs also wanted limits placed on how far the federal government can go to try to get social media posts on “controversial topics” removed – specifically when the Democrat administration appears, in their view, to target Right-leaning voices.

State Attorneys General Andrew Bailey and Liz Murrill represented Missouri and Louisiana, respectively. Other plaintiffs include doctors who spoke out against the COVID-19 mandates, such as Martin Kulldorff, Jay Bhattacharya and Aaron Kheriaty; Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft; and Jill Hines, an anti-lockdown advocate and co-director of Health Freedom Louisiana.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that because federal agencies pressured social media firms into censoring some of their social media posts, they therefore automatically have ‘standing’ – or, in the words of the Court, “that they are able to bring the case due to facing substantial risk of future injury traceable to the government defendants and likely to be redressed by an injunction against them”.

The context here is that last year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit accepted that the plaintiffs had ‘standing’ and ruled in their favour on some of their claims, having found extensive evidence that federal agencies had threatened various social media companies if they refused their takedown requests.

As the Fifth Circuit decision in the case put it:

On multiple occasions, the officials coerced the platforms into direct action via urgent, uncompromising demands to moderate content… And, more importantly, the officials threatened – both expressly and implicitly – to retaliate against inaction. Officials ruled out the prospect of legal reforms and enforcement actions while subtly insinuating it would be in the platforms’ best interests to comply. As one official put it, ‘removing bad information’ is “one of the easy, low-bar things you guys [can] do to make people like me” – that is, White House officials – “think you’re taking action”.

However, the Supreme Court has now dismissed the idea that the plaintiffs are suffering “continuing, present adverse effects” from their past restrictions, as they must now self-censor on social media”.

“We begin – and end – with standing,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion. “At this stage, neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have established standing to seek an injunction against any defendant. We therefore lack jurisdiction to reach the merits of the dispute.”

Chief Justice John Roberts joined Barret in the majority opinion, along with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Samuel Alito wrote a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined.

According to Justice Barrett, the plaintiffs “cannot manufacture standing merely by inflicting harm on themselves based on their fears of hypothetical future harm that is not certainly impending”.

“As we explained,” Barrett continued, “the plaintiffs have not shown that they are likely to face a risk of future censorship traceable to the defendants.” As a result, they “fail, by and large, to link their past social-media restrictions and the defendants’ communications with the platforms”.

The plaintiffs were already incentivized to self-censor by the major companies’ pre-existing content moderation policies, she said, adding: “So it is ‘difficult to see how’ the plaintiffs’ self-censorship ‘can be traced to’ the defendants.”

Barrett went on to claim that Facebook and Twitter in particular had imposed some content moderation restrictions even before any attempts to pressure them by the federal Government.

The plaintiffs argued that while that might indeed be the case, additional restrictions had nevertheless been imposed after federal agencies started upping the pressure.

It’s a point amply confirmed by the Twitter Files, which reveal how the process worked: Federal agencies under Biden would have frequent meetings with Big Tech companies, warning about “misinformation” and repeatedly pressuring them to remove or suppress content. Federal agents and politicians would then occasionally insinuate that if the companies didn’t act, the Government would reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, removing legal protections the companies enjoyed.

Last year, the Federalist reported that White House officials “treated internet monopolies like their subordinates” and highlighted one email exchange between White House Digital Director Rob Flaherty and Facebook in which Flaherty sent irate messages demanding to know why the company hadn’t complied with the administration’s requests.

In his dissenting opinion for the Court, Justice Samuel Alito summarises some of the relevant evidence, describing multiple examples of Facebook tightening content moderation policies in response to specific complaints brought by administration officials. Judge Alito also warns that Americans will come to regret the continuation of an unconstitutional censorship regime, adding that if the evidence presented to the lower courts is correct, then Murthy v. Missouri “is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this court in years”.

It’s right that government officials must remain free to criticise speech on social media (and elsewhere) and urge firms to change their policies voluntarily. But at what point does ‘discussion’ becomes ‘persuasion’, and when does ‘persuasion’ tip over into ‘coercion’?

The problem, as law professor Ilya Somin points out in Reason, is that there are “inherent difficulties” in legal cases that depend on distinguishing between threats of coercion and mere voluntary suasion and cooperation.

You don’t have to be a scholar of Ludwig Wittgenstein to see that language is, in this way, complex. Government officials can – and do – make implicit, but clearly understood threats without spelling them out in so many words. Unlike direct government censorship, censorship through indirect coercion usually involves veiled threats and sometimes subtle messages whose meaning depends on context: “That’s a nice little social media platform you’ve got there – be a real shame if the Federal Trade Commission opened an antitrust investigation into it,” etc.

In other words, context matters in myriad ways the Supreme Court’s majority opinion has overlooked.

The obvious risk for the future is that if courts lower down the judicial hierarchy start to insist on similarly strong evidence of explicit threats and a narrow interpretation of who has ‘standing’, government agencies will be able to escape judicial scrutiny of extensive indirect censorship.

That problem is likely to become more severe as agencies figure out the relevant ‘standing’ rules and tailor their threatening communications to firms in ways that exploit them, e.g., not mentioning the authors of the posts they want taken down by name.

After all, why bother demanding a ban on the restriction of certain individuals on X if you can simply demand that social media companies enforce enforce their own rules more aggressively?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has welcomed the ruling. “The Supreme Court’s decision helps ensure the Biden administration can continue our important work with technology companies to protect the safety and security of the American people,” she said.

“Important work”, which, as Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi notes wryly, will undoubtedly include White House officials sending emails to companies like X saying things thing: “Wanted to flag the below Tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on having it removed ASAP.”

Dr. Frederick Attenborough is the Free Speech Union’s Communications Officer. You can find him on Substack here.

By Richard Eldred

• “Trump-Biden debate: Democrats panic as President stumbles” – Biden’s re-election campaign is in crisis after a faltering performance in his first TV debate with Donald Trump, reports the Times.
• “Van Jones reveals the moment Biden lost the debate with Trump” – CNN arch-liberal Van Jones couldn’t hide his disappointment with Joe Biden for his weak, lethargic, “painful” performance in the Presidential debate, says the Mail.
• “The New York Times turns on Joe Biden” – Politics is a fickle business, says Steerpike in the Spectator. One day, the idea that Joe Biden is unfit to be President is heresy; the next it is progressive orthodoxy.
• “‘This wasn’t a debate, it was a medical emergency’” – The Telegraph’s Tim Stanley and Tony Diver give their snap verdicts on how the 2024 presidential hopefuls performed.
• “Biden hits back at Trump for saying he ‘can’t hit a ball 50 yards’” – The presidential debate nearly went off the rails as two elderly candidates traded jabs about each other’s golf games, writes Geoff Earle in the Mail.
• “They knew” – Biden is no longer fit to be President. Last night’s debate exposed the lies we’ve been told, says Bari Weiss in the Free Press.
• “Joe Biden, President of the United States, advanced dementia patient, enduring symbol of sclerotic late-stage liberal democracy” – On Substack, Eugyppius dissects Biden’s car crash debate performance.
• “Britain issues legal challenge to ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu” – Britain has challenged the right of the International Criminal Courtto issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister and Defence Minister, reports the Telegraph.
• “Keir Starmer will delay recognition of Palestinian state to avoid rift with U.S.” – Keir Starmer will delay recognition of a Palestinian state under a Labour Government because of fears it could undermine Britain’s special relationship with the U.S, says the Times.
• “Don’t trust me, I’m a Gazan doctor” – The media need to stop treating medics in war zones as fonts of truth, writes Jonathan Foreman in Spiked.
• “Fury at mass migration will sink Labour sooner than you think” – Starmer must know that his migrant plan can’t work, says Isabel Oakeshott in the Telegraph.
• “The Channel Four smear job on Reform” – On Substack, Paul Sutton casts doubt on Channel Four’s ‘exposé’ of Reform.
• “Is Nigel Farage right about Putin’s invasion?” – On SpectatorTV, historian Sergey Radchenko and academic Glenn Diesen debate the role of NATO in – allegedly – provoking Putin to invade Ukraine.
• “‘I’m voting Reform’” – On Substack, Laura Dodsworth explains why she’ll be voting for Reform on July 4th.
• “Tony Blair: lockdowns in developing world did more harm than good” – UnHerd picks up on recent comments from Tony Blair stating that Covid lockdowns in the developing world “did more harm than good”. No, really?
• “Woodco*ck and Marks at FDA forced Krause out from vaccine products to ram through full FDA approval to justify the Biden vaccine mandates” – The Biden administration did what Trump never did – tamper with the FDA to force vaccination on many people who didn’t need it, writes Prof. Vinay Prasad on Substack.
• “The Court greenlights censorship” – In its Murthy v, Missouridecision, the Supreme Court has made it harder for Americans to vindicate their free speech rights, says the Brownstone Institute.
• “The climate scaremongers: proof that our Net Zero drive is pointless” – While Western countries are slowly moving away from fossil fuels, the rest of the world have made it clear that they are not concerned about climate change, real or imaginary, writes Paul Homewood in TCW.
• “Tom Bradby’s colleagues protest the ITV newsreader’s comments” – ITN staff have defendedTom Bradbyafter three colleagues demanded he be censured for saying “there aren’t many white, male anchors left” on television, reports the Mail.
• “The Church of England’s historic links to the transatlantic slave trade” – The CofE did not invest in anything connected with slave-trading and the tainted wealth never existed, writes Ian Paul in Psephizo.
• “J.K. Rowling criticises David Tennant for allegedly calling feminists ‘little whinging f——’” – J.K. Rowling has slammed David Tennant for allegedly calling women’s rights activists “little whinging f——” during arow over the trans debate, according to Variety.
• “Kemi Badenoch: ‘I do think David Tennant is a misogynist’” – In an interview with the Times, the Women and Equalities Minister claims that David Tennant’s recent attack is rooted in misogyny.
• “Election candidates who hold ‘militant views’ on trans rights ‘named and shamed’ by women’s group” – A women’s group has named election candidates who have expressed “militant” views on trans rights, reports the Telegraph.
• “German woman given harsher sentence than rapist for calling him ‘pig’” – A woman in Germany has been given a harsher sentence than a convicted rapist after she was found guilty of defaming him, reports the Telegraph.
• “Guardrails of civilisation” – If politics is downstream from culture, culture is downstream from the campus, writes Doug Stokes in the Critic.
• “What actually happened at Stonewall?” – On Substack, Andrew Doyle revisits the events of the Stonewall riots, which took place in Greenwich Village 55 years ago.
• “Lessons from the persecution of Assange” – Julian Assange’s persecution provides a reminder of how the powerful will usurp our rights to advance their interests, says the Brownstone Institute.
• “Driver who said giving police middle finger was free speech is awarded $175,000” – A driver who was arrested for giving a police officer the middle finger has won a $175,000 settlement after arguing the gesture should be considered free speech, reports NBC News.
• “The U.S. state that’s planning to physically castrate child rapists” – Louisiana is close to letting its judges sentence sex offenders to surgical castration, reports the Louisiana Illuminator.
• “Needless to say, the drugs didn’t work” – On X, Donald Trump has released a brutal video response to his debate with Joe Biden.

If you have any tips for inclusion in the round-up, email us here.