EXCLUSIVE
A right-wing British author has claimed Australia is handing over its larrikinism to the “woke mind virus” and argued that freedom of speech is under threat in the country.
Toby Young, 60, made the comments after completing a national speaking tour in Australia last week.
Young is the author of “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People,” which was made into a Hollywood film in 2008 starring Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst and Megan Fox.
Young, the founder of the Daily Skeptic, which publishes articles questioning government positions on climate change and Covid, also founded the Free Speech Union.
He says the union, which has chapters in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, protects the right to express opinions – across the political spectrum – from attempts to restrict them by the “radical progressive left”.
Young told the Daily Mail Australia that the country was losing its famous free spirit and anti-authoritarian bravado, and had become more closed-minded than decades ago.
“Today it’s like Crocodile Dundee is languishing in a cell awaiting trial,” he said. “He’s awaiting trial for hate speech somewhere in Victoria.
‘The rise of progressivism has introduced a puritanical intolerance on the left, which has meant a degradation of its value towards freedom of expression.’
British anti-censorship campaigner Toby Young said Australia was losing its right to freedom of expression
Young argued that freedom of expression was in “desperate straits throughout the Western world” because the United States had “exported the virus of progressive mentality.”
“We’re seeing the gradual spread of woke religion, the great awakening, in the media, in universities, in governments, in civil servants, in museums and the heritage sector, in the arts and all of that has been deeply depressing,” he said.
“And here it doesn’t seem like you have much to protect you.”
Young said Australia’s Online Safety Act “has empowered its Online Safety Commissioner to, in effect, go on a rampage”.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant recently tried, unsuccessfully, to force X to remove footage of the Wakeley Church stabbing from its platform worldwide.
“It was an extraordinary overreach by the eSafety Commissioner to demand that an X-rated video be removed not just in Australia but globally,” Young said.
‘This is an indicator of how limitless the censorious ambitions of people like Julie Inman Grant are.
“They want to cleanse social media of any dissident or heretical content that challenges their radical progressive views, under the pretext of protecting people.”
‘What does she think gives her jurisdiction, the authority to make a claim like that?’
Young also criticised laws proposed by the Albanian government to curb online misinformation and disinformation.
He argued that “we all know” what disinformation and misinformation “really mean.”
“It’s any opinion that members of the radical progressive left disagree with,” he said.
‘The fact that the losing side in the Voice referendum blamed disinformation and misinformation gives a hint of the chilling effect the Disinformation Bill would have on free speech in Australia.’
Young argued that freedom of speech was in “desperate shape across the Western world” because the US had “exported the virus of the progressive mindset” (pictured, Sydneysiders in Bondi)
Young said that these days an example of Australian larrikinism such as the character from the film Crocodile Dundee “would be jailed in Victoria for hate speech”.
Young said he fell victim to cancel culture in 2018 when then-British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed him a non-executive director of the regulator, the Office for Students.
Young’s educational credentials were established when he founded the West London Free School, a unique school of its kind, independent of the education authority but receiving government funding.
Young said the board position was a “menial job” that was unpaid and only required meeting with other directors four times a year.
“That was the invitation to the offending archaeologists to go back and review everything I had said or written since 1987,” Young said.
‘As I have been a professional journalist all my life, it didn’t take me long to find a tomb of Tutankhamun filled with offensive content.
‘After eight days of leading the news in ‘resignation watch,’ I resigned and apologized for some of the more childish things I had said on X late at night.
‘I thought that would be the end of it, but the effect was the opposite. It was like throwing raw meat into a school of piranhas; there was blood in the water.
“They came looking for me for four other positions, so I ended up having to give up five others. So I was fired permanently.”
It was that sequence of events that inspired the launch of her Free Speech Union, which champions the cause of others who have been terminated, fired or banned for expressing an opinion.
“When I got better, I thought, ‘What I really needed when I was going through this was a professional organization that could give me good advice. Should I apologize or is that going to make things worse? ‘” Young said.
‘Should I come out and defend myself or will that just prolong the story?
Is there anyone else this has happened to and can you put me in touch with someone and give me some tips on getting help?
“But there was no such organisation, so I decided to found the Union for Freedom of Expression.”