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Truth cannot survive the attentions of the free speech absolutists
The Observer
|June 01, 2025
Philip Collins
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It is time to defend free speech against its worst advocates. It is a remarkable display of confusion that Lucy Connolly's case to the court of appeal was funded by the Free Speech Union. In the immediate aftermath of the Southport killings in July 2024, when false rumours were rife that the killer was an illegal immigrant, Connolly posted that they could set fire to all the hotels housing asylum seekers for all she cared. Connolly was jailed for 31 months for inciting racial hatred, and her appeal against the sentence has just been rejected.
There are free speech absolutists on the British right who are trying to turn Connolly into a cause celebre. Barely an hour goes by without some GB News presenter claiming that she is the new Nelson Mandela. The former home secretary Suella Braverman said, absurdly, that Connolly is “effectively a political prisoner”. Donald Trump then weighed in to say that, for some unknown reason, he was “monitoring” the case.
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