X (formerly Twitter) CEO Elon Musk announced on Wednesday, August 23rd, that his company will sue partners of George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) after the NGO network was accused of spreading “hate misinformation” to justify an unprecedented crackdown on free speech.
In his tweet, Musk was reacting to an article by Ben Scallan, an Irish-Jamaican journalist and commentator, in which he claims that OSF-linked leftist NGOs are manipulating the statistics to show a steep rise in hate crimes across Ireland—despite the government’s own data proving the opposite is true—which is then being used to usher in a new hate speech law that’s designed to restrict freedom and open up new pathways for political persecution.
“Ireland is not only a tolerant society, but it was even a victim of British colonialism and ethnic bias historically itself,” Scallan reminded his readers. “Why is such a seemingly friendly nation undergoing such an unprecedented assault on its freedom?”
The article was shared on X by Michael Shellenberger, another journalist best known for his prominent role in uncovering the Twitter Files, noting that “the reason [politicians and Soros-funded NGOs] are spreading hate misinformation is to justify a draconian crackdown on free speech.”
To this, Elon Musk simply replied, “Exactly. X will be filing legal action to stop this. Can’t wait for discovery to start!”
The Irish hate speech law in question, which is set to be finalized by October, would make it a criminal offense to possess allegedly “hateful material” on one’s person or in one’s home. If passed, the law will allow police to raid homes and seize devices, with a potential penalty of a year in prison and a €5,000 fine just for refusing to give up one’s passwords. Possession of hateful material will carry a penalty of up to five years in prison.
What’s more, the law will define hate speech in such a way that basically anything could fall into the category, since according to the Irish government,
a hate crime is any criminal offense which is perceived by the victim, or any other person, to have been motivated by prejudice based on a person’s age, disability, race, color, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or gender.
Despite many critics calling the law “Orwellian” and campaigning against it, the parliament’s lower house adopted it by a vote of 160 against 14. The legislation now only needs the approval of the upper house in October before becoming law.
“Will mocking memes be tolerated?” asked independent senator Ronan Mullen during the debate, and continued,
Will carrying a placard stating ‘Men cannot breastfeed’ warrant a hate-speech investigation or up to five years’ imprisonment, a lifelong label as a criminal hater, and all of the stigma and life limitation that goes with that? Nobody actually knows.
According to Scallan, one of the major reasons the law exists is that Soros’ NGO network has been running campaigns for years in order to lower the threshold for hate crime perception while massively encouraging citizens to report anything they feel like to the police. So, while the official data shows that Ireland is one of the most tolerant countries and is getting more so every year, the number of reported hate incidents has increased. Note: Only the reports, not the actual crimes, were enough to justify the censorship.
It’s unclear which OSF-linked groups Scallan is referring to exactly or which NGOs will be the target of Musk’s suit—assuming the billionaire will not go after Open Society itself, which is still a possibility given his track record of picking fights with those at the top.
