The Day For Freedom is a rally in London led by people such as Tommy Robinson, Sargon of Akkad, and Count Dankula, among many others.With many people being "deplatformed" these individuals decided to hold an event to discuss the importance of free speech.Today we sat down with Zuzanna, "Opinionated European" on Youtube and Twitter to discuss the event and what might happen.Support the show (http://timcast.com/donate)
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I just arrived in London, because tomorrow is the Day for Freedom, and I am joined right now by Susannah, who is also known as Opinionated European, who is going to tell me what's going on, what the event is about, and what we can expect.
So, first, why don't you just introduce yourself and tell us what you do and who you are?
Hey guys, so I'm Susanna, also known as Opinionated European, Opinionated Euro on Twitter.
I basically am an independent journalist working on some projects right now, trying to expose basically the government, the left-wing media for what they are, who they are, and yeah, so... So you're another one of these conservative personalities that I tend to interview all the time for some reason?
Basically, but I'm also involved with really what is going on right now in the United Kingdom and trying to make an impact, not just sort of sitting in front of my camera and talking about, you know, my own perception of how the world should be.
So the reason I want to talk to you is, we met last time I was here during the liberalist thing, and then, I'm pretty sure that was before that video came out, the Day for Freedom video, which, yeah.
And then you have all these personalities with duct tape on their mouths, and then you were one of them.
And so I think you surely must know what's happening with this event, what it is.
So basically, the thing that tipped the balances for the people who are organizing the event was Tommy being banned on Twitter and also Lauren Statham, Brittany Pettibone and Martin Statham being banned from the country for doing a social experiment.
Basically, what is going on currently in Europe, but Predominantly in the United Kingdom is legislation which is restricting freedom of speech like the Public Order Act, for example, as well as just the general attitude of a lot of people is that we should be restricting free speech and that there is a difference between free speech and hate speech, which we basically disagree with.
And so we think that just crying about this on YouTube won't solve any problems.
And so all these people who are involved in it decided that it's important to put up this event to show how many people, the silent majority basically, actually want free speech and support this fundamental right, but simply they are afraid to speak their mind and stand up because they feel alone.
In the UK we have this thing called the silent Tory phenomenon, and Tory is like the slang for the Conservative Party.
And basically people who are Conservative rarely speak about it.
Brexit voters rarely speak about it, especially in London because it's such a liberal environment.
And so we want to show basically that there is a lot of us, that we are the silent majority, the silent 52% and that we believe in free speech.
Correct me if I'm wrong, because I went to an event here in London for YouTube, and they couldn't define hate speech.
And everybody was kind of angry, even the people who were like, we want hate speech policy, and the one person who didn't, me, we were all like, define it!
And typically it's defined as You know, targeting a marginalized group, or targeting a group with disrespectful or discriminatory language based on race, gender, national origin, things like that.
So is that basically how the law functions?
Is it similar to our perception of the hate speech policy?
Well, yeah, so you basically have, like, within some laws, you have, um, you can have laws that are, or you can have crimes that are, um, backed by religious or racial hatred.
But then you also have, um, hate speech laws, which basically are very badly defined and all we really know about them is based on the case law.
So, Basically how the judges and how the courts have ruled on those orders.
And so we have the case of Count Dankula, right?
Who was found guilty of being grossly offensive.
Now, nobody knows what grossly offensive is, right?
Because what if you make a joke about, let's say, obese people?
Or if you make a joke about, I don't know, the LGBT community?
Then immediately that becomes a hate crime because you are targeting a marginalized group with potentially disrespectful language.
And so...
Nobody really knows as you said what hate speech is at the end of the day, but you know clearly there is still There's loads of prosecutions following these hate speech laws and from like 2016-2017 there has been I think like a hundred percent no, okay, maybe I'm wrong, but like there has been a significant increase of prosecutions for hate speech basically So what is this event going to be?
Well, so basically, the people who are organizing it set it up in Trafalgar Square in collaboration
with the police and ensuring public safety, making sure that there aren't going to be
any aggression going on, or at least limited as much as possible.
Basically there's going to be a stage, a backstage, a very large screen on a bus so that the pre-recorded interviews that we have with Lauren and Brittany and myself as well can be on the big screen.
That was actually my next question because a lot of people are asking, you just answered this but I'm going to bring it up anyway, Lauren, Brittany and Martin are featured in this video but they can't come here.
And so basically what the organizers have done is include them within this by featuring them in the video because one of the reasons behind this protest is the fact that they were banned for exercising the right to free speech, which we think is wrong.
But on top of this, We're also trying to include them in the very event since they can't actually be there, so by showing them on the large screen.
I don't know if you've seen or if the people watching have seen those pre-recorded one-minute interviews with them.
Yeah, so basically a while ago I went to Sargon of Akkad's event in King's College.
Maybe quite a few of you heard of it and basically Antifa came to disturb the event and brought smoke bombs and stuff like that and so I recorded it.
It got like 400,000 views on Twitter so it went quite large and then I grew on Twitter and I contacted one of the other girls who was there because I saw that she had a Polish flag in her name and it turned out it was Lucy Brown and She used to work for The Rebel, and we became really, really good friends, and she kind of introduced me to quite a lot of people, so that's how it happened.
Like, protesters were accepting alt-right speech, and I'm like, it's funny, because if you watch the video, Sargon is in the middle of disparaging the alt-right, when the protesters come in screaming, no alt-right.
So basically, basically what they were talking about was free speech, and And Yaron Brook was talking about how YouTube and all these private platforms should have a right to exclude speakers because it is their private property, whereas Sargon was disagreeable.
This was a public forum rather than private property.
It was basically that kind of disagreement between them.
But, you know, we didn't have a chance to finish it because the Antifa was storming the room.
I mean, Sargon, it's funny, people who watch this probably know who he is and probably know that he mocks the alt-right.
He really feels that.
So it's absolutely crazy to me.
One of the things that I've been talking about, I talk about very often but has come up a bit in the past week or so, is Jordan Peterson being called a darling of the alt-right or being called the alt-right intellectual.
There's another aspect outside of the free speech issue that affects basically everybody who's involved, where they're maligned by the press, by activists.
And there was a thought of perhaps, or I suggested that actually, perhaps maybe it would be better if we edited it.
But then, you know, that's not what the event was about.
The people would still see Tan with that because it's tattooed or it's scarred on his face and, you know, everybody wants to be honest about the participants.
So it's really, it's interesting because I suppose that all these Hope Not Hate people are cultural relativists and They would want to be accommodating of other cultures, but they're really not, and they're using all this evidence, manipulating evidence, in order to present us in this really bad light.
When you... I don't know what Dankula's political alignment is.
I know that Sargon, his political compass test showed that he is, like, social liberal, he's, like, center-left.
But I wonder if there was a chance, you know, for you guys to bring on any left-wing speakers other than... Because, you know, although Sargon does his political compass test, it shows that he's left, a lot of people still perceive him as being right.
So I wonder if there was any attempt to bring on people who are perceivably left Absolutely, and we actually are.
We're bringing Ali Dawa, who was actually, he interviewed Lauren Statham at one point, and he has been following Tommy Robinson for years, trying to expose him.
And yeah, basically he's going to speak.
The strange thing is that he himself always draws a distinction between hate speech and
free speech, but because we think that free speech is so fundamental, we want to give
him that platform so he can also present his arguments.
Is there really a difference between hate speech and free speech?
And perhaps in that way, we are going to cultivate and encourage debate in that sphere.
And hopefully, because we have so many arguments, that we are going to convince the larger population
that they should stand on our side.
So yeah, there's absolutely been efforts to bring people from the left as well.
One more thing is that Antifa are planning, and you spoke about this in your video already, there's quite a lot of Antifa that are supposedly going to come.
Exactly, the MMA Antifa, but also Antifa from my university, Antifa from other universities, so it's going to be quite wild what is happening.
We're just hoping that basically the police and also the people who are going there, primarily on our side, are going with the mindset that we're not going to fight, we're going to be peaceful and we're just going to be participating in this protest.
Because if the fight and the aggression that is going to happen there is going to outshine the mission statement of this event, then it's basically us failing in what we wanted to achieve.
And so hopefully we'll be able to maintain peace and order and everything will be fine.
If you guys just, if you enjoy this, if you look up Opinionated European on YouTube and at Opinionated Euro on Twitter, you can find me there for more.
So, thank you all so much for hanging out and watching as well.
You can follow me on Twitter at TimCast.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel for more videos, and new videos every day at 4pm tomorrow is going to be a podcast discussion, and I'm not going to say who we're going to be doing the podcast with just yet, because I don't know if we're actually going to get the conversation in before, you know, Before we have to go to bed or just get ready for work or whatever.
Tomorrow is the actual event, so I will possibly be livestreaming.
We'll see what happens.
At any rate, I'll just say it again.
Thanks for watching.
Stay tuned because we don't know what's going to happen, but we'll find out.
