A System of Thought Control

Yesterday we posted JLH’s translation of a diary entry by Andreas Unterberger about the proposed law that would crack down on free expression in Austria.

As a follow-up, JLH has also translated a comment posted at Dr. Unterberger’s article by Christian Zeitz of the Vienna Akademikerbund:

For a considerable time, the EU has been systematically eradicating the Christian basis of our continent. The all-encompassing instruments of cultural transformation introduced include comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation, reinterpretation of fundamental rights through the European Fundamental Rights Agency, as well as — especially relevant right now — realization of “hate speech legislation.” These instruments are to be used to combat and eventually make into punishable offenses any form of justified criticism of Islam and its establishment in Europe, of excessive immigration, and of compulsion of behavior alien to the culture.

The Austrian Minister of Justice has smuggled one more dramatic step in this direction into a proposed law whose subject matter does not hint at pushing tendencies to Islamization. Under the title of a terrorism prevention law is a passage which threatens imprisonment for “incitement to violence and hate” against religions, among other things or “encouragement of contempt” toward religions. The specific draft of the law adopts word-for-word the EU Council’s decision on coverage of November 28, 2008, in which the highest levels of the EU issue the de facto demand that its member states enact legal punishment for the exercise of substantial aspects of freedom of expression.

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It must be noted decisively that concepts like “hate,” “causing contempt” and “incitement” are politically militant terms and can have no place in a state under a system of laws, since they express the presumptions of a thought dictatorship. In his blog entry of January 27, 2010, Dr. Andreas Unterberger renders the great service of confronting this subject and delineating it brilliantly.

All freedom- and truth-loving powers of Austria and of our continent are called upon to block, by all available means, the path to a system of thought control and dictation of feelings and — should the Austrian government not come to its senses on this life-or-death question — to refuse it their allegiance.