The European Parliament has long been committed to cutting Hungary and its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, down to size. Last month, MEPs drew up a long resolution that calls into question Hungary’s ability to manage a successful presidency. It was passed by the parliament this week. There are other ways censorship hurts us, and society, more than speech does. Censorship dulls our critical senses. It infantilises us by imploring us to trust others to decide on our behalf what we should think about the world. It implicitly instructs us to suspend thought and analysis and instead let the wisdom of the more learned, of today’s secular shepherds, wash over us. Censorship is an invitation to revert to a childlike state, which makes it unsurprising that modern zones of censorship – Safe Spaces – so often resemble kindergartens for adults. Those spaces are a real, physical manifestation of the childish nature censorship asks us all to embrace.

The EU plot to humiliate Hungary - spiked

Most entitled of all are the interviewees who demand to know why there even has to be a discussion about gender identity. ‘Why can’t we just be accepted for who we say we are?’, is their plea. They may smile sweetly while raising this question, but a group of Scottish women’s rights campaigners reminds us that they are really asking women to allow men into all the places where they are most vulnerable. And while they’re at it, they’re asking women to give up their claim to the word ‘woman’. We are being gaslit morning, noon and night. We see a man and they tell us it’s a woman – literally, legally a woman. We see a dude with a beard and they say it’s a lesbian. ‘Let her associate with other lesbians’, they say, every word a lie. We see a pregnant woman on the front of this month’s Glamour magazine and they say it is a ‘pregnant man’. The truth – that only women get pregnant; that no man has ever been pregnant or ever will be – is cruelly overridden. It is burnt at the stake of ideology. The delusions of the elites carry more weight than truth itself – that is how arrogant the new authoritarianism has become; how determined our rulers are to remake reality in the image of their own fevered opinion. It is difficult to overstate Tyndale’s contribution to freedom of conscience and freedom of speech. In translating and printing and spreading the Bible, Tyndale was doing more than challenging the stranglehold that the Catholic Church had over religious ideas, over the Word of God itself. He was also, in turn, expressing a great faith in ordinary people’s ability to understand things for themselves. To no longer require ‘shepherds’ to instruct them and guide their thoughts. His trust was not only in God, but also in the capacity, as Clarke had it, of ‘the ignorant and the unlearned’ to enlighten themselves. It was a searingly radical idea. It remains a radical idea, still unfulfilled in so many ways. We must point out that where words hurt – and they do – censorship hurts more. Physically, spiritually, existentially, censorship is more wounding to the individual, and to society, than unfettered speech is. Those in the 21st century who claim to feel bruised and bloodied by words should take some time to read up on the heretics of history, and even the heretics of today. You want to see wounding? Witness their trials. spiked is free for all to read. But to keep it that way, we ask loyal readers like you to support our work.Remi Adekoya – author of It’s Not About Whiteness, It’s About Wealth – is the latest guest on The Brendan O’Neill Show. Remi and Brendan discuss the truth about racial inequality, the dangers of racial identity politics and how Africa can realise its potential. But to keep spiked free we ask regular readers like you, if you can afford it, to chip in – to make sure that those who can’t afford it can continue reading, sharing and arguing. So, yes, words hurt. But not as much as receiving 500 lashes and a bloodied gob for the crime of expressing dissident thoughts, of using your speech to ‘hurt’ authority.

It’s not about whiteness, it’s about wealth - spiked

No, the slaughter of 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo offices in January 2015 was not officially sanctioned, as was Tyndale’s strangulation and Lilburne’s public torture. But it can be viewed as a violent expression of an official idea – namely, that it is wrong to give offence, including to Islam.

By ‘EU values’ what is really meant is hyper-federalism, multiculturalism, diversity and the mainstreaming of gender-identity ideology. The plot against the Hungarian presidency is ultimately an attempt to prevent the Hungarian government from having a platform to promote its own values, such as its attachment to national sovereignty and to tradition. Some MEPs go so far as to claim that these values are incompatible with membership of the EU. Consider this: what if Justice Besanko had given the thumbs down to the three papers? What if he had decreed in his infinite, jury-less wisdom, by his moral judgement and his moral judgement alone, that the claims about Roberts-Smith were not true? Would we have had to accept that as fairly dispensed ‘justice’ too, despite the chilling impact it would have had not only on the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Canberra Times, but across Australia’s media landscape? Many are saying Besanko made the right decision, and I agree. But his power to make such a decision still chills me. It is an offence against public life, against democracy itself, when truth is determined by bewigged elites rather than by open discussion among the people.