Ben Whitelaw and Mike Masnick have an excellent weekly podcast for policy wonks, Ctrl-Alt-Speech, where they review the latest news in online speech. Given my MPhil research interests, something in their 6 November episode caught my attention. To most listeners and perhaps even the hosts, it was just another news story within our enthusiastic if wonky niche. But to me, it was one of the dangers I’ve seen coming down the road for a good while, finally arriving, and announcing that it is here to stay.

(I have a ten-year track record of “success” on pointing at obvious/ominous things and saying “here it comes”, as some of you may be aware. Some of you more than others…)

Ben discussed how he watched the livestream video from the Southport Public Inquiry hearing on the 4th of November. The Inquiry, which is a non-adversarial, non-judicial process, is exploring what led up to the Southport incident from a variety of angles, as opposed to just blaming everything on smartphones and social media, which is what would have happened under the Conservatives.

In the hearing, X’s Head of Global Government Affairs was interviewed about the violent content which the perpetrator of the Southport stabbings watched in the years, months, and even minutes leading up to the atrocity. You can read the transcript here, which for unknown reasons is printed 4-up; it begins on page 64.

There’s no need to get into the full back-and-forth about why particular pieces of content were or were not taken down; what is important here is what she told the Inquiry:

What I am saying is I wasn’t part of the discussions of what the decisions were made. What I will say is that what we are — what our guide is, that taking the God-given right of freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of expression from the masses because of the very few that have committed horrendous crimes is not something that we take very lightly.

This statement was made after she explained that a particular video of a violent stabbing which directly inspired the perpetrator of the Southport murders was, in her personal religious belief, an actual miracle:

I was watching that video live and the reason I was watching that — actually that sermon live is because Mar Mari is a bishop in my church. He just happens to be in Australia and I just happen to be in the US. And I’m a devout parishioner of the Assyrian Church because I’m an Assyrian Christian. What I saw happen and what I saw unfold, which everybody here likes to point out the horrificness of it or the tragedy that is in there, my experience was different, and let me explain to you why context matters. I saw a miracle unfold that day. People saw a monster, I saw an angel protecting Mar Mari. Where people saw a helpless victim, I saw men, heroes, parishioners, rushing to save him [ … ]  So I’m going to follow his teachings and I’m going to instead, in this hearing, tell you that what I see in that video is very different than what you see in that video. I actually see hope. I actually see faith. I actually see forgiveness. And so, yes, I do watch that video and I watch it for those reasons. For you to take that away from me, under the guise of safety, that isn’t justice; that is tyrannical overreach.

This needs some unpacking.

Set aside pub discussions about the nature of freedom of speech, the Inquiry’s discussion about the content, or the platform’s policies which led it to keep that content up, and focus on why this was the tactic she chose to deploy in front of the Inquiry.

She was inserting religion, and God, on top of all of the issues on the table. Over content moderation, over corporate policy, over law and regulation, and even over her own professional obligations.

This is common in the US political context. This is unheard of in the UK political context. Her goal at the Inquiry was to introduce it.

Note for example how she referred to the “God-given right of freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of expression“. None of those things, in the context of online speech, come from a deity or from a faith. All of them come from many other complex and tangible processes, involving many long and complex texts. The Bible is not one of them.

And note how she chose to use the time she had to win the Inquiry over to her side, as clever policy professionals do when up before a committee, to instead deliver a sermon on miracles and faith, one where she unabashedly inserted her personal spiritual needs over any other concern.

This is textbook Christian Nationalist policy tactics, built along the triad of persecution, grievance, and righteousness which Whitehead and Perry have empirically established as the movement’s ethos. That ethos holds that “freedom” means God-given rights bestowed upon the Christians within the movement. Anything not in that order is an attack on freedom, and God; anyone not in that movement is an attack on those who are, and on the God that is.

If you are to understand any of the debates about speech, privacy, and freedom of expression which will shape the discourse over the next few years, you need to understand that ethos. It does not matter if you disagree, or feel that you are in better possession of more tangible (and secular) facts. This is what the situation is. You cannot work with something you do not understand.

Like it or not, God has entered the chat.

So understand how, in this context, the discussion of the “God-given right of freedom of speech” was a clever inversion of the argument. She invoked the “God-given right of freedom of speech” to impose a chilling effect on the Inquiry’s speech. Forget the fine points of law, policy, or even soft ethics: this stuff is God-given. This is God you’re messing with. Her God: an personal insult so grievous that she was no longer obliged to dignify the committee with a meaningful response.

And how dare they even ask.

One of my many frustrations about the state of the digital rights fightback in the UK – more to the point, with the chummy amateurism which passes for a movement – is that the fightback has never learned that victory goes to those who can throw the most spaghetti at the wall.

Organisations which are restricted to the grant funding they must secure a year in advance, which must be allocated to the table cell and accounted for to the penny, cannot so much as write a social media post, respond to a media question, or fart in the general direction of an issue which is not strictly defined within the grant funding document.

Organisations with healthier cash flows are free from all of those constraints. They can pick their issues. They can pick their battles. They can pick fights. They can throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. They can do so knowing that civil society, quite literally, cannot fight back.

What Ben spotted in that seemingly dry Inquiry hearing on the 6th of November was the US Christian Nationalist movement throwing spaghetti on the walls of the UK policy establishment.

The Inquiry didn’t understand that. So they didn’t look at the wall behind them to spot what was stuck there.

You should.