What the world needs to know about Australia’s Censorship Regime. The case of the Wakely knife attack on a Christian priest, Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel.
As someone who loves to study history, I am often intrigued how the small, obscure things of the world can lead to much greater events. Who would have thought that a wrong turn down a narrow street in Sarajevo in 1914 would lead to one of the most catastrophic wars in human history? Or that a little lady from Cincinnati, Ohio would write a novel that would galvanize public opinion in America prior to the Civil War? Or, as in this case, that a knife attack on a priest of a small, obscure segment of Christianity, himself ministering to people far from their home, would bring the hammer of censorship against two social media platforms: X and Gab? And that the repercussions of Australia’s censorship could have global implications?
The event I speak of was a knife attack during a church service. The victim was Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel at Good Shepherd Church in Wakely, near Sydney, Australia. It was at an evening service on April 15th, 2024. The good news is that Bishop Emmanuel survived the attack, despite being stabbed multiple times in the head and upper body, particularly his right eye. Two others were stabbed while subduing the attacker. Ironically, more were injured by the ensuing disturbance that evolved outside the church, with people demanding that the police bring out the suspect. On April 18th it was revealed that Bishop Emmanuel had lost one eye. And … an aspect of hidden history, that he had forgiven his assailant and he urged people not to retaliate.
As regards the role of social media, it is here that the controversy expands. The rapid-fire spread of the video of the attack caused considerable tension in Sydney as police provided added protection to mosques. While it was clear the young man attacked the priest because he had insulted the Prophet (Mohammad), it was not at all certain that he was doing so on behalf of a terrorist operation. Even his parents were reportedly surprised. Yet it wasn’t until Bishop Emmanuel spoke on the matter did things begin to calm down. He also made this important assertion, that the video should remain on social media platforms because it was a matter of free speech.
Australia’s Attempt at Censorship
Australia, like Canada, is on a crusade to curb social media. Most of the motivation for this evolved from the resistance to government mandates during the COVID pandemic. The US was not immune to this temptation as the social media companies themselves endeavored to control the messaging, going as far as destroying a free speech competitor, Parler. But when the government gets involved, things can get ugly. As the truckers in Canada discovered, censorship can easily migrate from what you cannot say to what you cannot do. Truckers discovered that their bank accounts were frozen by the government. The Bishop Emmanuel episode put a target on several social media platforms, but two in particular were threatened with fines: X and Gab. Whereas there is little evidence that major social media platforms have restricted the video, some have done what they can to mitigate the effect of the video by placing warnings, introducing several steps before a viewer can see the video, or invoked geoblocking1 to temporarily block Australians from viewing the content. But X and Gab have a problem because they are messaging platforms. Postings sometimes arrive even as the event is occurring and there is no way to effectively and fairly intercept these postings. Australia has told them to set up a censorship screening of their postings, or face fines. Both X and Gab have AI components, so it is theoretically possible they can analyze anything that comes across the screen. But is it workable? And is it really necessary? Who decides? In spite of the technical options, it all comes back to free speech.
Australia and Canada are currently run by left-leaning, socialist-lite governments where the elite leaders and the bureaucrats have confidence that government can manage what people say and publish. It just needs to be fine-tuned. It just needs to have the right technology applied. But, in essence, it just needs the “right people” to mind the store.
Australia, through targeting Gab, has employed a sinister strategy. Gab is a very small platform in comparison to X, about 90% smaller! Levying a fine of the same size to Gab will have an impact many times greater than a threat posed against X. Gab does not have the legal resources to fight Australia to the same extent as X.
What remains hidden is that major media is not really discussing X much, and Gab has barely been mentioned at all. The only news media outlet that has published news of this threat to Gab is The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing news service. They basically posted what Andrew Torba, owner of Gab, sent to all Gab users. They were being threatened with a fine of $500,000 (US dollars) unless they comply, removing the video. Subsequent research showed, however, that streaming media was much more active in posting video of the event, many of which came from both mainstream and independent news sources. So it is a bit peculiar that printed media seems to be sparsely covering this event, but independent video postings have been much more active. And that, again, points to the power of a posted video, how quickly it can shape the narrative.
Credit must go to Charisma magazine for posting the video where Bishop Emmanuel makes his appearance for the first time after recovering at the hospital (see below), with a patch over his left eye. His message? Forgiveness. Don’t give in to hate. Interesting – in all the machinations to prevent the truth from being known, Truth is left unheard.
So far the world, as it currently operates, will make it very difficult, if not impossible, for tyrants to control the flow of information in this day and age. For Australia to effectively bar such content, they would have to penetrate the VPN2 connections which more and more people are using these days. You can bar a message in Australia, but an Australian can connect using VPN to a router in Chicago, and go straight to X or Gab. The other means of restricting access is to control the network-level of activity. But StarLink has pretty well made that difficult. The only way to keep someone from connecting to StarLink is to restrict the sale of StarLink platforms to end-users. Just think, people in the 16th century were hiding their Bibles under the floor boards. Today, it is StarLink dishes.
A Bigger Picture
Since Adam Smith penned The Wealth of Nations in 1776, the opposing arguments have centered around one fundamental belief – that the individual cannot be trusted to do the right thing. People need to be controlled, and to control them you must restrict how they talk, how they act and what they believe. Many countries of “the West” have fallen prey to the notion that what is spoken must be “appropriate.” You cannot even call someone “fat” without consequences in Germany. Heaven forbid if you compound the problem by combining two derogatory labels on someone, as in Switzerland. Thank goodness the perpetrator in Sydney, Australia, wasn’t fat.
So, as for the video, the link is posted below where you can view it at your leisure. Please be aware that the content may be disturbing. But if you are going to watch it, continue to watch it until you have heard what Bishop Emmanuel had to say about the incident. That, my friend, is the real reason for the posting.
https://gab.com/DonMatchett/posts/112278079173114632
The second video was posted through Charisma from a YouTube posting.
During my research on this article, I discovered that the Australian government has far bigger problems on their hands than X or Gab. Both Rumble and YouTube have dozens of videos depicting the event as well as Bishop Emmanuel’s response. You can also find more about the event using the search term “Bishop Mar Mari”. Facebook has followed the attack as well, although it appears the video of the attack is not available. Reddit has also been quite active. I can only imagine how much traffic the video generated on Telegram. Yes, it is quite a heavy burden that one must bear to be an Australian statist, controlling how the world thinks and behaves.
Postscript
No sooner than this article was completed that an upper court in Australia put a lid on the threat to fine X (and I would assume Gab as well). But it will be reviewed in the coming weeks as regards the legality of whether the “safety commissioner” in Australia has the authority to determine content posted by a foreign social media platform.
“At the heart of the matter is whether an Australian regulator has the power to insist on global content removals.”3
Resources
“What can the government do about X’s refusal to take down violent videos?”, ABC News, by Georgia Roberts, April 22, 2024
“Australia Tries To Censor the World”, Reason, by J.D. Tuccille, April 26, 2024
“Australian Government’s Overreach Slammed: Conservative Social Media ‘Gab’ Defies Censorship Demands, Faces $500,000 Fine for Upholding Free Speech”, Gateway Pundit, by Jim Hoft, May 14, 2024.
“Christian Leader, Worshippers Attacked During Service’s Livestream”, Charisma, by James Lasher, April 15, 2024
“Federal Court chooses not to extend temporary order blocking terrorist attack vision on social media platform X,” ABC News, May 12, 2024
“German public prosecutor’s office hunts bloggers. The accusation: He called Ricarda Lang, leader of the German Green Party, “fat”. Now his bank account has also been blocked,” Die Weltwoche, by Stefan Millius, July 13, 2023
© Copyright 2024 to Eric Niewoehner.
- Geoblocking is the technique of blocking network addresses based on their point of origin. For example, if your provider’s address is based in Australia, you can program your router to block all addresses from Australia, effectively blocking a users access to your network or to specific content. ↩︎
- VPN, short for Virtual Private Networking, is the technique of logging into a remote router that will serve as the base of your connection. The point of origin that will appear will be that of the remote router rather than that of your provider. Furthermore, all the data that is transmitted between you and the remote router is encrypted, making it impossible for any government to monitor your activity. ↩︎
- Cited from “Federal Court chooses not to extend temporary order blocking terrorist attack”, ABC News (see link under Resources) ↩︎