In a speech to Amnesty International’s national conference John Kampfner talks self-censorship, Nick Griffin and why free speech means fighting for the rights of people whose views you find obnoxious
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Canberra is making alarming advances in web censorship, says John Ozimek
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Across the world, defamation laws are used to stifle debate and persecute individuals, writes Agnès Callamard
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Why has the Left become so suspicious of civil liberties? Why has the Right hijacked the issue and turned it to its advantage? A dozen years of New Labour rule have left this sorry legacy. A party that should have intervened for social justice and greater equality instead allowed the markets to let rip. Having raised the white flag to the bankers, ministers instead sought to exert their power elsewhere, at the level of the citizen, seeking ever more ingenious ways of watching us, listening to us and telling us how to lead our lives. I am no Freudian psychoanalyst, but I can find no better example of displacement theory in modern politics.
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