Peter Menzies: In Our New Era of Surveillance, the Inquisition Is Back

A Newcastle United fan looks through the gates onto the pitch at the club's stadium St James' Park in Newcastle in England on Oct. 8, 2021. Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

It didn’t take long, once Johannes Gutenberg introduced the printing press, for those threatened by its power to react.

Sure, a few eyebrows were raised when, in 1455, Mr. Gutenberg first used his invention to print the Bible, making it more available for people to read and interpret for themselves. But a generation later, after rogue priest Martin Luther stepped out of line with the Roman Catholic church’s orthodoxies and triggered the Reformation, the suppression of ideas that challenged the status quo really got rolling.

First came the Roman Inquisition, dedicated to seeking out and destroying heresies such as the Protestant belief that people could form a personal relationship with God: that they didn’t need to work through their priest to ensure the sanctity of their immortal soul and their place in the world to come. Much of the Inquisition’s investigative work focused on Venice, which by the 16th century had established itself as the centre of Europe’s growing publishing industry.

Theologically, wherever inquistions were most severely applied—Spain, Portugal, and the Italian peninsula—they were most successful. Torture, forcing families to watch as their loved ones were burned at the stake and encouraging people to turn free-thinking family members, friends, and neighbours in to the authorities worked. The Roman Catholic church remained dominant in those countries. Elsewhere, political and religious ideas spread through the power of the printing press so effectively that monarchies were eventually toppled, democracies established, and radical concepts such as those articulated in the Constitution of the United States of America, took hold.

The parallels between the response of powerful institutions to the invention of a radical new technology—the printing press in the 15th century and the World Wide Web in the late 20th century—are inescapable. Once those in command realize ideas, which are very powerful things, are spreading without their supervision or permission, they respond.

No doubt the currently powerful are thinking, just as the Vatican did in the 16th century, that this is all to save us from ourselves. And there’s probably no doubt that in some cases they are correct. One suspects that many people, after months of watching the genocidal chants of the anti-Semitic Islamo-leftists holding what amounts to a series of Nuremberg hate rallies on the continent’s campuses, have harboured the hope that mounted police armed with all the necessary tools would just make it all go away.

But most of us have retained the courage to be offended even while the hammer comes down on the web, the days of unfettered internet speech come to an end, and a new era of surveillance begins.

Many of the efforts to control the internet started in Europe and the UK, which is often cited by North American advocates for internet speech regulation as their source of inspiration. Both for that reason and for the public’s reaction to it, those jurisdictions are worth keeping an eye on.

Which brings us to the case of Linzi Smith of Newcastle, a traditionally hard-scrabble city in northeast England where fans of Newcastle United F.C. in the Premier League follow their team with a quasi-religious fervour. Ms. Smith, who is gay, counted herself among them until the club banned her for her opinions.

No, she did not hurl homophobic insults from the stands, threaten harm to others, or toss a banana towards a black player in some sort of hideously racist gesture. Had she done so, the football club would have had every right to ban her.

Ms. Smith made comments on social media expressing concern about including biological males in female sports, and other gender-related issues. This caused someone to notify the inquisitors at NUFC, who then informed the Premier League, which conducted an investigation that led to Newcastle imposing the punishment. Police were even called and interviewed Ms. Smith regarding her posts objecting to modern gender ideology.

And while the coppers swiftly concluded no offence had occurred, the non-judicial folks at NUFC decided Ms. Smith must be punished. They might just as well have locked her in stocks in the public square: She won’t be able to attend a game again until 2026.

The good news is that she has become something of a cause celebre among liberty lovers in the UK where supporters have helped her raise money to sue her oppressors.

So far, nothing like that has occurred on this continent. But Canada’s new Online Harms Act will make it similarly possible for people offended by remarks made by others on social media—heretics, if you will—to file a complaint with the federal Human Rights Commission. A body which is not governed by traditional rules of evidence, it will have the power to refer the matter to a tribunal that, if it finds in favour of the complainant, can impose compensation up to $20,000 per offence and order posts removed.

Sure, those with the means can appeal to the Court of King’s Bench for justice, but chances are most accused will be shaken down by the commission for a few grand to “settle” and make the matter go away.

Its tools are far less barbaric, its punishments much gentler, but the instincts are the same: the Inquisition is back.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.