Last week I was invited to give a speech on the escalation of government censorship for Western Heritage Australia. We were there to talk about the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill, which sits dead on arrival after the Greens promised to vote it down.

My fear is that with all the political attention on the MAD bill, the Under 16 ban, which has far more serious implications for digital liberty, will slide through with ease – rushed into law by Labor and the Liberals.

They threw us a bone – and then broke into our house.

To understand how we ended up in a situation where so many people salivate at the idea of shutting down the greatest resource of knowledge and communication in human history, we need to go back to its creation. There is more than ignorance and greed at play.

Below is my speech and my story.

As an editor, presenter, and political advisor, I have lived a fair bit of my life navigating the politics of censorship. But first and foremost, I am a science fiction writer.

Not published – sadly – but when I was in school and – yes, when I was under 16 – I was part of an enormous, thriving community of artists and writers who used social media platforms to create works of art.

As geeks and misfits who had no real place in school, and being unbelievably bored with the curriculum, we spent most of our free time on the ‘evil internet’ entertaining ourselves by being creative.

If I had to guess, I would say that 90 per cent of the skills I use today were learned as a child mucking around on social media – certainly not in the classroom where teachers wanted us to re-imagine the Classics through the lens of Post Modernism.

Yes. We stayed up until 4am writing stories about our favourite TV shows. Yes. We had hundreds of friends whose real names we never discovered.

In between our creative outbursts, we talked about the differences between our countries and usually ended up making fun of Germany – a place where our creative work was always blocked due to ‘copyright reasons’. Finding a German in a fandom forum was like spotting a Tasmanian Tiger. It was our first hint that the European Union could be a bit tyrannical.

All throughout the late 90s and early 2000s, social media was a place of immense creativity – and it was self-governed by strict social guidelines. A bit like Victorian England, you had to be invited into a creative community by someone else, and if you misbehaved, not only were you banned – but so was the person who invited you.

Despite anonymity being the default, accountability was important.

The best way I can describe this digital realm to those who were not part of it is to compare it to the Parisian cafes of the pre and inter-war period where history’s most famous writers, artists, and intellectuals frequented. Except we were the disciples of the less-sinister Canadian entertainment industry – not plotting a revolution against the Russian Czar while living in exile.

Trotsky – I’m looking at you.

Actually, the taking over of Parisian cafes by the nuisance political class – including Adolf Hitler – is a reasonable approximation of what happened to social media.

You have to remember that social media sat largely undiscovered by politicians for the best part of 15 years. Even the media was slow to dip its toe into Twitter and Facebook. When they did, it was an awkward fit.

Back in those days, the system was designed to facilitate millions of micro conversations but suddenly we had these professional entities – these businesses – trying to squeeze themselves into personal profiles to promote their off-site content.

The reality is, you cannot accumulate hundreds of millions of global customers in one place – effectively burlying the waters – and then expect the area to remain shark-free. The commercial intrusion was inevitable, but not the death of social media. That will depend entirely upon what we do next.

The important takeaway is that social media was predominately built by the young. It was not an adult space, even though adults were on there. It was a place where kids escaped what they viewed as an increasingly insufficient education system.

Let us not forget that their panicked parents told them not to play outside because the sun would kill them. Not to walk home because a stranger would abduct them. Not to go to the shops because a terrorist might kill them. Not to ride their bikes through the bush because a magpie might swoop at them.

On and on it went.

Children retreated to a different world where they could play out a version of the social interactions you had as kids but in a way that their parents could hover over them. It is no wonder adventure video games were so popular. How else could they explore new worlds?

Keep in mind it’s the adults who intruded on social media, not the other way around, which is probably why even today, many adults find the structure and nature of social media to be awkward.

Before we talk about the censorship of social media by politicians, advertisers, and individuals – and also what the press might have to gain by cheering them on – I want to take you back to the moment it all started going wrong.

Most experts and advisers who write about social media won’t tell you this – because they don’t know. They were never part of the social media Renaissance and they did not witness the birth of Woke ideological puritanism which corrupted social media and crippled politics.

But you have to understand how this mess started if you have any chance at fixing it.

By the time I was approaching the end of High School, I had been a forum manager for nearly 10 years. A fandom queen, as they were known.

Despite only being kids ourselves, we were the elders of the digital environment. We mentored younger users. This involved teaching them tricks in the code to get their layouts to work, sorting out massive arguments or fandom wars, and helping non-English speakers edit their stories to share with each other.

Just in case you’re wondering how big these communities are, one site I used to belong to hosts 14 million stories from seven and a half million young writers. Find me the university or school system that facilitates that kind of creative activity – for free.

And then – all of a sudden – we saw a phrase pop up. I’m sure you’ll recognise it.

Trigger warnings.

These trigger warnings started out like a movie classification system – violence, horror, etc – and most people accepted that this might be a sensible way to help people navigate the forest of content that we had created.

But eventually the trigger warnings became so elaborate that there were trigger warnings for the trigger warnings.

These originated on a platform called Tumblr – which was aimed at the youngest market. There had been a fresh influx of users from the generation beneath us and their way of looking at the world was already distinct from mine and yours.

This is the generation who were given participation awards and told that competition was some kind of precursor to the evils of capitalist markets. That winners were oppressors and losing a race at a school carnival could be damaging to a child’s mental health.

These children were displaying all the unexpected consequences of safetyism.

In trying to keep children safe from even the smallest challenge, a generation had been created that was terrified of the outside world.

They first used this terror to create oppressive networks of censorship to control speech. They did this, not the government.

And, as they have grown up, they have repurposed and internalised their fear – projecting it as power over other citizens. They latch onto the State, believing, wrongly, that if they give politicians more power to attack their enemies, they’ll be safer and more powerful themselves.

Just like they used to call their parents into the school to yell at teachers for disciplining them.

This belief is made worse because they are also the generation taught the least political history, where activism has almost entirely replaced knowledge.

When this particular generation were still children, they became so insufferable that they chased off the older users – like my generation – who simply could not deal with their constant tantrums, unbelievable demands, and general immaturity. They were entitled, and brat-like. At the time, we all hoped that university and the real-world would toughen them up and rid them of this bizarre oppressive nature gifted to them by the failures of adults.

Instead, the university system entrenched their immaturity and manipulated their childish desires into raging activist groups.

They now interfere with your lives – marching up and down the city streets shouting about Climate Change or Palestine. They are also the ones being signed up to university socialist and communist networks. I kid you not. Using the tools of capitalism, predatory university-approved groups are conning our kids into communism. And their parents were worried about letting their kids ride bikes through the bush?

While in the workforce, their demands have created sprawling HR departments which have completely stripped joy and fun from the workplace and replaced it with an exhausting nanny-state surveillance. Most of you remember when Christmas parties were fun. When you could crack a joke without being dragged off to the Wrong Think Gulag. This is the generation that ended all of that.

They are now in their early 30s and late 20s – the most influential position in society – and it shows.

They are the ones who have young kids and, having never been disciplined themselves, are struggling to help their own children navigate a technological leap.

It’s natural that these parents are begging the political class to help them raise their kids by doing stupid things, like banning free speech.

If it is just one generation, their folly could be contained by the democratic process at the polling booth. But this containment job is made a lot harder by politicians who see this misguided generation as an opportunity to attain power. You don’t even need to hand out money – just offer more policy.

Their currency is virtue and control, something the political class is naturally inclined to do.

It’s a nightmare combination for the rest of us.

We all expect Labor, the Greens, and even the Teals to reach out to these young people, prey on their fears, and lure them into supporting destructive policy. But when the Liberals do it too – as they have been under Scott Morrison and now Peter Dutton – the process of democracy collapses.

You and I no longer have a way to limit the damage through voting.

We can only speak.

And soon, we may not be able to do that either.

It’s why they call it the uniparty.

Australia’s two-party system is looking more and more like a single-party dictatorship as it absorbs collectivist theory into its politics. When anybody criticises them for doing so, just like dictators, their first instinct is to censor and restrict speech.

These are the same politicians who mocked China’s Xi Jinping for being afraid of Winnie-the-Pooh memes. Remember the last election, when Albanese tried to ‘crack down on memes’ because he didn’t like people laughing at him – at the exact same time his digital team was releasing memes of – not only himself – but also of the Opposition?

I am so disappointed that the Liberal Party – the party that is meant to represent Western values – does not have the ability to reflect upon its own actions. I was the first person to say that the danger of appointing a policeman to leadership is that you could end up with a police state.

It does not matter if Mr Dutton’s instincts to ‘keep us safe’ are well-intentioned or manipulative – the result is the same. The dismantling of our fundamental rights.

If Mr Dutton truly believes in keeping Australians safe, he must give us back our freedoms. We will keep ourselves safe from politicians and their bad ideas.

The one thing we know about politicians – from the wealth of historical knowledge from every corner of the world – is that they cannot be trusted with censorship.

It is simply too dangerous to give them that power.

There are plenty of other ways to solve problems like school bullies, for example, but the first instinct of a politician is always to ban speech. Why is that? Where has that ever worked? Do they like the way speech operates in China? Did they enjoy watching China, just last week, scrub the news – deleting information about a mass stabbing and hit and run to protect public harmony?

I don’t know but that sounds a bit like the eSafety Commissioner issuing takedown orders to Elon Musk regarding a video featuring the stabbing of a religious figure.

Seriously, these politicians will not talk to me. I have invited them onto my show many times to explain their censorship policies. In particular, I have asked the Liberal Party to confirm that after they have voted down the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill, it won’t pop up as a Liberal policy. I guess we got the answer to that with the Under 16 ban.

If I can’t ask these questions, I would like to know why the conservative media giants remain absent from the debate. They have access to Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese and yet all we have are soft interviews that appear more like propaganda tapes than interrogations. It is censorship by omission.

This cannot be tolerated when the entire fate of our civil and human rights hangs in the balance.

We cannot ignore the fact that these leaders do not wish to defend their censorship policies – only promote them. And that is how they view social media – as a place to promote their politics and manipulate voters.

It’s no wonder they want to keep their political opposition away from kids online.

They’re terrified that a new generation will be exposed to free speech at a young age – that they will hear arguments against the dogma put out by schools, and that we might have a repeat of what happened in the US with the Trump victory.

The youngest generation is an ideological mystery, but there are signs that they have an instinct for rebellion.

They have been getting in trouble for mocking pronouns in school and listening to Joe Rogan podcasts. They are seeking out a better world, a non-Woke world where girls can be girls and men can be men. They are finding that world online – particularly in content coming from their friends in America.

Let us look at the cold hard facts.

When free speech was empowered on Twitter – the Covid era ended within a couple of weeks. The iron grip of state propaganda and media compliance fell apart, almost instantly, thanks to the influx of speech.

The first victim of free speech on social media – was the Democrats. Was Woke politics.

If you want to see an end to neo-Marxism, Net Zero propaganda, and every other nonsense political agenda that has ruined this great country – you should do what Trump did and what Musk did and embrace free speech.

Trust the process.

It has always worked – this is just a different medium – a new form of town square.

I have heard a lot of people criticise Elon Musk, but I say to them that there are much worse things a rich man can do with his cash than turn the protection of human rights into a business model. He is motivated to keep us free – can you really say the same thing about politicians?

Conservatives in this country could have a landslide on their hands if only they remained true to their ideological roots.

But that is not going to happen. We have more than enough evidence for this. Every day it seems as if they have found another way to disappoint us.

Our conservative party is not a Trump party. We are the defenders of free speech – you – me – my fellow speakers.

Only a grassroots movement can save us now and I know that feels frightening in the face of such overwhelming money and power from those who seek to control us, but there is power in speech and that is why censorship exists.

Human beings are intensely social creatures, and social media is the first time – in human history – that all the people of the world can communicate with each other immediately and without the permission of their political leaders.

It is an extraordinary thing.

To share knowledge on that scale.

Of course this will threaten political and religious power structures – none more so than the political religion of Climate Change and global institutions who find themselves suddenly unable to keep their bad ideas safe.

Turning humanity into a melting pot of thought is risky, I’ll admit. There’s every possibility that bad ideas from other parts of the world might creep into our country. But like those coddled children, we cannot live in fear of what might be.

Based on what we know, people, once shown freedom and peace, are more likely to join Western thought. America is a dance floor right now, and other places want to join in. Did you know that Xi Jinping was out arresting people wearing Halloween costumes of Donald Trump and Marvel characters? He is a man fighting against the tide of liberty. A man terrified of the internet and free speech.

There are other conversations to be had about weaponising children for politics and the economic gain advertisers and politicians seek from social media – you can find all of these discussion at The Spectator Australia.

Instead, there are a couple of other points I want to make that you may not have considered.

Raise your hand if a parent or grandparent told you: ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me…’

Most of us.

Kids today are told: ‘Words are – like – literally violence.’

I realise this is often laughed off as ‘more Woke nonsense’, but consider the lesson being taught.

We were told, expressly, that words do not exist in the physical realm – that words cannot not force us to perform a physical action and that our own will is superior. Words could be ignored or challenged in a way that a slap in face could not. This is critical to creating an environment for debate.

Words were clearly separated from actions and so it was easier for us to understand why free speech has special protections afforded to it that actions do not.

You can slap someone down to the ground with a cleverly chosen comment – but not a chair. You get the idea.

When children are told that words are literal violence, they are led to believe that words are actions. And actions do not have legal protections in the same way. If a word is mean, it can cause physical harm, and therefore, why shouldn’t a politician silence mean words? It is safer, surely, to police speech?

This divergence in teaching at such a young age is the first block upon which modern censorship is built and therefore the block that has to be smashed to bits.

This is the lesson that divides generations and the seed of doubt from which the Woke rot has grown within our culture.

Once words were established as weapons, they were immediately swung at our culture, our history, and those who dared to oppose politicians.

This generation divide is as distinct as any other – but just as hard to pin down. You know it when you see it, though, just as you know we will never again see fluorescent leotards worn under leggings like 80s dance classes.

Wokeism now is behaving exactly as Nazism did when it set about re-drafting history and curating language to prop up its power. Another race-baiting socialist cult that believes itself to be virtuous and superior.

Given we are dealing with a generational divide as well as an ideological one, we need to learn how to speak across these age boundaries to reach the generation currently sitting deep within the clutches of the Big State.

This is more difficult than you might imagine. All the pop culture references and cultural asides that you have relied upon do not work. Heaven help you if you go on about Stalin or the Frankfurt school. There’s no point. You’ll get nothing but blank stares.

I have a young relative in his early 20s – a smart young man who works a full-time job and has a lot of responsibility. Well, he came up to us the other day and asked the table, ‘What is an ABBA?’

Not, ‘Who are ABBA?’

This is the generation that have never ‘hung up a phone’ on a handset, never played a DVD, video, or cassette, and live in a reality where their possessions are streamed rather than hoarded.

Given there’s nothing coming out of Hollywood worth watching, I’ve started following YouTube shows where GenZ watch movies from the 70s, 80s, and 90s for the first time. These are kids who call movies like Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy so old that they’re surprised it is in colour. These kids will watch Harrison Ford for several hours and say, ‘Gee – he looks kinda familiar.’ Or read the opening credits of Alien and shrug at Sigourney Weaver’s name. They have never seen Die Hard, Indiana Jones, Schindler’s List, Star Wars, Casablanca, The Matrix, Gladiator, or any of the other big cultural moments that we casually refer to. Let alone read the Classics.

Watching this generation react to older film content has taught me a lot about the way they think and why they struggle to listen to our arguments in favour of liberty.

I had more luck educating young people about the dangers of government overreach by comparing it to YouTube’s takedown orders, where there is no opportunity to reply or challenge ‘the company’, than I did making allusions to George Orwell. They don’t know who Orwell is and they are in no hurry to find out. But they are worried about those who cut them off from what they perceive as innocuous social activities.

It’s one of the reasons this social media ban is going to have catastrophic political consequences, even if the MAD bill is thrown out. Check out my article later about how this will throw them into the arms of the Greens.

Look, I’m sure Albanese and Dutton imagine social media as the modern Parisian cafes where all of us gathered here today are clearly revolutionaries busy plotting the demise of the old Czars.

To them, we are dangerous.

We are conspirators.

We are a threat to their political ideas.

And they would be right.

Alexandra Marshall is an independent writer. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.