By Alex Gutentag

During the Dark Ages, Irish monks copied down all the books they could find. As libraries disappeared across Europe, Ireland’s monasteries preserved Western knowledge and literature. These monks eventually brought their transcribed manuscripts back to the rest of Europe and saved civilization from a period of decline that might have been fatal. 

Irish journalist Ben Scallan from Gript Media says this history is part of why Ireland is a “jewel of Western civilization.” It is also why the country’s new “hate speech” bill is of enormous symbolic significance for the world. Ireland was once one of the most traditional and religious countries in Europe, but it is now a guinea pig for woke totalitarian policies. “If they do things like this here, they can really do it anywhere,” Scallan says. 

Ireland’s “hate speech” bill would make mere possession of “hateful” material a crime punishable by up to five years in prison, and people tried under this law will be presumed guilty. It is essentially a law against thought crimes that will encourage silence and self-censorship.

The government received over 3,000 responses when it asked the public for input about the bill. Scallan went through every single one of these submissions and found that 73% of them were against the measure. He confronted the Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar about this, but Varadkar claimed the responses were hijacked and do not really reflect public opinion. 

I recorded a podcast with Scallan after he broke this story. Despite international outcry, the bill is still expected to be passed by the Irish Senate. So what is the driving force behind it?