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Online rhetoric & imagery cause real-world violence, say officials. But no good evidence supports their claims. For 140 years, censors have tried and failed to link media to violence. Behind the false claims lie arrogance, ideological intolerance, and a panic over populism.
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Over the last decade, politicians, NGOs, and journalists across the West have blamed online speech for real-world political violence.
In Australia recently, politicians and others blamed social media for an attack on a left-wing member of parliament, Helen Haines, who was run r.
“We’ve got these big US social media companies and their business model, to me, seems pretty incompatible,” said Senator David Pocock after the attack. “That’s something we’ve got to look very hard at as a country and as elected representatives.”
Said Bill Shorten, a former Labor leader who now runs the University of Canberra, “I think that some people, through the algorithms of the big tech bros and social media, have been radicalized online.”
Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), Australia’s FBI, decried a “permissive environment of violence.” And Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police Krissy Barrett said the things politicians said online “does have a direct correlation to what we see in terms of threats and abuse.”
But it was clear within hours that the alleged attacker of the Australian MP was intoxicated and likely mentally ill, and within days it was revealed that he and his family had been friends with her for years.
A source close to the investigation said he “was known to police” and that “It is understood he has undergone a mental health assessment.” People online quickly discovered that the alleged attacker had posted regularly about climate change and Gaza and that the head of the Australian Green Party followed him on X.
As such, he attacked the member of Parliament closest to his apparent views, which challenges the notion that his politics motivated him. As for Barrett, she declined to give a single example of things people said online resulting in real-world violence.
Meanwhile, correlation is not causation. Killers may have consumed violent media, but so too did practically everyone else in society. It would make sense that would-be killers, who often fantasize about their violence before doing it, would consume more violent content. And so if there is a relationship, it could show the opposite causal direction.
Moreover, relying on the testimony of killers, many of whom suffer from personality disorders or mental illness, is irrational. The man who shot Ronald Reagan said he did so out of an obsession with Jodie Foster in Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver.” Nobody proposed censoring “Taxi Driver,” Scorsese movies, or Foster, and yet politicians and bureaucrats around the world proposed mass online censorship because the Buffalo shooter said he was inspired by Christchurch....
x.com/shellenberger/…
Please subscribe now to support our defense of free speech, fund our award-winning investigative journalism, and read the rest of the article.
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In Australia recently, politicians and others blamed social media for an attack on a left-wing member of parliament, Helen Haines, who was run r.
“We’ve got these big US social media companies and their business model, to me, seems pretty incompatible,” said Senator David Pocock after the attack. “That’s something we’ve got to look very hard at as a country and as elected representatives.”
Said Bill Shorten, a former Labor leader who now runs the University of Canberra, “I think that some people, through the algorithms of the big tech bros and social media, have been radicalized online.”
Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), Australia’s FBI, decried a “permissive environment of violence.” And Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police Krissy Barrett said the things politicians said online “does have a direct correlation to what we see in terms of threats and abuse.”
But it was clear within hours that the alleged attacker of the Australian MP was intoxicated and likely mentally ill, and within days it was revealed that he and his family had been friends with her for years.
A source close to the investigation said he “was known to police” and that “It is understood he has undergone a mental health assessment.” People online quickly discovered that the alleged attacker had posted regularly about climate change and Gaza and that the head of the Australian Green Party followed him on X.
As such, he attacked the member of Parliament closest to his apparent views, which challenges the notion that his politics motivated him. As for Barrett, she declined to give a single example of things people said online resulting in real-world violence.
Meanwhile, correlation is not causation. Killers may have consumed violent media, but so too did practically everyone else in society. It would make sense that would-be killers, who often fantasize about their violence before doing it, would consume more violent content. And so if there is a relationship, it could show the opposite causal direction.
Moreover, relying on the testimony of killers, many of whom suffer from personality disorders or mental illness, is irrational. The man who shot Ronald Reagan said he did so out of an obsession with Jodie Foster in Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver.” Nobody proposed censoring “Taxi Driver,” Scorsese movies, or Foster, and yet politicians and bureaucrats around the world proposed mass online censorship because the Buffalo shooter said he was inspired by Christchurch....
x.com/shellenberger/…
Please subscribe now to support our defense of free speech, fund our award-winning investigative journalism, and read the rest of the article.
x.com/shellenberger/…
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Michael Shellenberger retweeted
Islamo-Leftism Is Not a Conspiracy Theory
It’s an unrequited love affair
“The Red-Green alliance does not rest on covert coordination behind the scenes, but on ideological kinship, a shared enemy (Western civilization, modernity and capitalism) and a hefty dose of naivety on n is straightforward: leftists coddle Muslims and give them preferential treatment, while Muslims respond by voting for left-wing parties.”
“What makes this love affair tragic is that it is mostly unrequited.”
“There may be ‘Queers for Palestine’, but there are no ‘Queers in Palestine’.”
It’s an unrequited love affair
“The Red-Green alliance does not rest on covert coordination behind the scenes, but on ideological kinship, a shared enemy (Western civilization, modernity and capitalism) and a hefty dose of naivety on n is straightforward: leftists coddle Muslims and give them preferential treatment, while Muslims respond by voting for left-wing parties.”
“What makes this love affair tragic is that it is mostly unrequited.”
“There may be ‘Queers for Palestine’, but there are no ‘Queers in Palestine’.”
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Just in: France's Prime Minister asked telecom companies to prepare to block social media platforms. "I wish to have the ability to temporarily suspend access to these services in case of a repeat of urban violence," he wrote. @blast news broke the story.
Information exclusive Blast : le Premier ministre a préparé la coupure des réseaux sociaux pour le 24 octobre
Deux jours avant la manifestation du 24 octobre, le Premier ministre Sébastien Lecornu a demandé à Orange, SFR, Free et Bouygues Telecom de se tenir prêts à couper l’accès à TikTok, Instagram ,Snapchat et X. Blast révèle la lettre et le compte rendu de la réunion qui a suivi, où les opérateurs ont exprimé leurs doutes. Le gouvernement avait déjà utilisée cette mesure liberticide en Nouvelle-Calédonie en 2024, avant d’être désavoué par le Conseil d’État.
Par @yanmdi.
blast-info.fr/articles/2026/…
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Full text in English and translated letter attached
Madam, Sir,
The urban riots that occurred in several French cities during the day of mobilization on October 17, 2026, and that continued on Sunday, October 18, revealed the convergence of several protest and grievance olent and particularly determined elements. Other individuals took advantage of the resulting disorder to smash, vandalize, set fires, ransack, and loot.
It is evident that several social networks played a decisive role not only in the crystallization and viral spread of unlawful slogans (“mots d’ordre illicites”) but also as levers for the operational coordination of violence during the demonstrations (organization of looting, exchanges about targets, movement of groups, or positions of the security forces).
In the event that such events were to recur, I wish to have the ability to temporarily suspend access to these services in case of a repeat of urban violence. This would mean temporarily blocking access to the applications Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram by filtering their domain names (DNS), while preserving, as far as possible, fixed-line Internet access to these applications and, in any case, access to other Internet sites and services on both fixed and mobile networks.
In order to prepare such a measure, which could be decided on the weekend of October 24 and 25 depending on the operational context, I ask you to anticipate as of today the technical operations necessary to implement it. The point is to put you in a position, if I give the instruction, to proceed without delay with the temporary suspension of the services concerned, for a duration of a few hours.
I would like you to inform me of the technical conditions under which you could implement such a suspension. It is indeed necessary to carry out a suspension that is as targeted as possible, without introducing distortion between operators.
Madam, Sir,
The urban riots that occurred in several French cities during the day of mobilization on October 17, 2026, and that continued on Sunday, October 18, revealed the convergence of several protest and grievance olent and particularly determined elements. Other individuals took advantage of the resulting disorder to smash, vandalize, set fires, ransack, and loot.
It is evident that several social networks played a decisive role not only in the crystallization and viral spread of unlawful slogans (“mots d’ordre illicites”) but also as levers for the operational coordination of violence during the demonstrations (organization of looting, exchanges about targets, movement of groups, or positions of the security forces).
In the event that such events were to recur, I wish to have the ability to temporarily suspend access to these services in case of a repeat of urban violence. This would mean temporarily blocking access to the applications Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram by filtering their domain names (DNS), while preserving, as far as possible, fixed-line Internet access to these applications and, in any case, access to other Internet sites and services on both fixed and mobile networks.
In order to prepare such a measure, which could be decided on the weekend of October 24 and 25 depending on the operational context, I ask you to anticipate as of today the technical operations necessary to implement it. The point is to put you in a position, if I give the instruction, to proceed without delay with the temporary suspension of the services concerned, for a duration of a few hours.
I would like you to inform me of the technical conditions under which you could implement such a suspension. It is indeed necessary to carry out a suspension that is as targeted as possible, without introducing distortion between operators.
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A few brave French people like @noellelenoir are speaking out against a government that cares more about censoring its citizens than preventing riots
x.com/shellenberger/…
x.com/shellenberger/…
Whatever happens with the current riots, the @EmmanuelMacron government is in free fall, says former Supreme Court justice @noellelenoir. "We have no government," she says. "Macron is disconnected, afraid, & doesn't know what to do.... Without X, we would not have a democracy."
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Whatever happens with the current riots, the @EmmanuelMacron government is in free fall, says former Supreme Court justice @noellelenoir. "We have no government," she says. "Macron is disconnected, afraid, & doesn't know what to do.... Without X, we would not have a democracy."
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Unrest continues in France. Seeking context, I spoke with one of that nation’s most insightful observers, Noëlle Lenoir, a respected former French Supreme Court Justice. — MS
Michael: Tell us what is happening, Noëlle.
Noëlle: We no longer have a government. [President ally disconnected and, in my view, afraid. He is afraid because he wants to remain in office until the very end. He wants another life, and he has already said he wants to come back in five years and run again, which is not forbidden. He does not know what to do.
He spoke twice, and both times it was a disaster. The first time was when these riots began, with so-called young people from the schools and universities. In fact, they were militants of the far left, and also immigrants. As you may know, official statistics show that 34% of immigrants come to France to study at university. Then 25% come to join their families, which is called family reunification (le regroupement familial). Then around 15% are supposed to come to work. So you can imagine that there is an overrepresentation of young people who are supposed to be at university but do nothing. They are there because they want to leave their country.
Macron spoke at the very beginning, not on October 17 but two or three days before, when the riots started with young students, Palestine militants, and Palestinian flags. He asked the police to show empathy with the demonstrators. For the police who were beaten and attacked, with around one thousand of them wounded, the fact that he asked them to show sympathy with these young people, some of whom are not young at all, was felt by all the security forces in France as an insult. I don’t think anyone still supports Macron and the government.
What is amazing is that he said nothing. He just said, “I want the judges to be very tough.” But as you know, in France a large part of the judiciary is very politicized on the far left. They are organized in trade unions. One of the main judges’ unions, the Magistrates’ Union (Le Syndicat de la Magistrature), published a guide years ago, revised and republished in 2024, in which they explain to demonstrators how to escape from the police and how to make it harder for the police to prevent them from stealing, looting, and rioting. It is absolutely amazing.
So when Macron says, “I want the judges to be very tough and to inflict very severe sanctions on the rioters, the looters, all those who attacked the police,” it is null and void, because he has never said anything against this union, and neither has the hierarchy of the judiciary itself. In my view, this union is a political party. They are militants, and they hould not exist....
x.com/shellenberger/…
Please subscribe now to read and listen to the full interview
x.com/shellenberger/…
Michael: Tell us what is happening, Noëlle.
Noëlle: We no longer have a government. [President ally disconnected and, in my view, afraid. He is afraid because he wants to remain in office until the very end. He wants another life, and he has already said he wants to come back in five years and run again, which is not forbidden. He does not know what to do.
He spoke twice, and both times it was a disaster. The first time was when these riots began, with so-called young people from the schools and universities. In fact, they were militants of the far left, and also immigrants. As you may know, official statistics show that 34% of immigrants come to France to study at university. Then 25% come to join their families, which is called family reunification (le regroupement familial). Then around 15% are supposed to come to work. So you can imagine that there is an overrepresentation of young people who are supposed to be at university but do nothing. They are there because they want to leave their country.
Macron spoke at the very beginning, not on October 17 but two or three days before, when the riots started with young students, Palestine militants, and Palestinian flags. He asked the police to show empathy with the demonstrators. For the police who were beaten and attacked, with around one thousand of them wounded, the fact that he asked them to show sympathy with these young people, some of whom are not young at all, was felt by all the security forces in France as an insult. I don’t think anyone still supports Macron and the government.
What is amazing is that he said nothing. He just said, “I want the judges to be very tough.” But as you know, in France a large part of the judiciary is very politicized on the far left. They are organized in trade unions. One of the main judges’ unions, the Magistrates’ Union (Le Syndicat de la Magistrature), published a guide years ago, revised and republished in 2024, in which they explain to demonstrators how to escape from the police and how to make it harder for the police to prevent them from stealing, looting, and rioting. It is absolutely amazing.
So when Macron says, “I want the judges to be very tough and to inflict very severe sanctions on the rioters, the looters, all those who attacked the police,” it is null and void, because he has never said anything against this union, and neither has the hierarchy of the judiciary itself. In my view, this union is a political party. They are militants, and they hould not exist....
x.com/shellenberger/…
Please subscribe now to read and listen to the full interview
x.com/shellenberger/…
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And there you have it: the French government told telecom companies two days ago to prepare for it to shut down access to social media platforms
x.com/shellenberger/…
x.com/shellenberger/…
Just in: France's Prime Minister asked telecom companies to prepare to block social media platforms. "I wish to have the ability to temporarily suspend access to these services in case of a repeat of urban violence," he wrote. @blast news broke the story.
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Michael Shellenberger retweeted
Quem está sustentando Lulinha na Espanha?
Flávio Bolsonaro (@FlavioBolsonaro) fez essa pergunta no debate de ontem, ao afirmar que o filho de Lula é vizinho do Vini Jr em Madri.
Nossa investigação encontrou uma pista sobre a receita de sua empresa: em 2026, a LLF Tech emitiu a uma produtora cujo site está no nome de Kalil Bittar. Nenhuma das notas identifica o trabalho entregue.
Kalil Bittar é amigo de infância de Lulinha. Além de ter sido sócio dele na Gamecorp, já foi investigado junto com o “Ronaldinho dos negócios” em apurações anteriores. O Shalderes @andreshalders revelou no Metrópoles que, entre 2024 e 2025, Kalil recebeu R$ 750 mil da conta pessoal de Lulinha.
As conexões alcançam o neto do presidente, Thiago, que declarou ter desenvolvido um aplicativo pela empresa de Kalil, e a mãe dele, Carla Ariane Trindade, investigada ao lado do empresário pela PF em um esquema de kits de robótica superfaturados.
Agora, as notas colocam a empresa de Lulinha diante de uma nova pergunta: pelo que, exatamente, a Academy Tech foi cobrada?
Leia a reportagem em A Investigação:
ainvestigacao.com/p/exclusivo-em…
Flávio Bolsonaro (@FlavioBolsonaro) fez essa pergunta no debate de ontem, ao afirmar que o filho de Lula é vizinho do Vini Jr em Madri.
Nossa investigação encontrou uma pista sobre a receita de sua empresa: em 2026, a LLF Tech emitiu a uma produtora cujo site está no nome de Kalil Bittar. Nenhuma das notas identifica o trabalho entregue.
Kalil Bittar é amigo de infância de Lulinha. Além de ter sido sócio dele na Gamecorp, já foi investigado junto com o “Ronaldinho dos negócios” em apurações anteriores. O Shalderes @andreshalders revelou no Metrópoles que, entre 2024 e 2025, Kalil recebeu R$ 750 mil da conta pessoal de Lulinha.
As conexões alcançam o neto do presidente, Thiago, que declarou ter desenvolvido um aplicativo pela empresa de Kalil, e a mãe dele, Carla Ariane Trindade, investigada ao lado do empresário pela PF em um esquema de kits de robótica superfaturados.
Agora, as notas colocam a empresa de Lulinha diante de uma nova pergunta: pelo que, exatamente, a Academy Tech foi cobrada?
Leia a reportagem em A Investigação:
ainvestigacao.com/p/exclusivo-em…
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Michael Shellenberger retweeted
This is an blatant unfair summation. As I continue to prove many times over, information (including videos) are still withheld due to national security.
If it was all in the LIZ, it would nearly entirely be released. It isn’t.
If it was all in the LIZ, it would nearly entirely be released. It isn’t.
I guess we ran out of UFO videos?
Maybe this is all there is. Stuff in the LIZ.
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You know, take the week. Or the month. Scratch that. How about never going on social media again? While you’re at it you could stop trying to censor it. Doing both might help your mental health. I genuinely mean that
Tomorrow, I’ll be unplugged from my social media channels.
I’m doing it for Mac Holdsworth.
For every Australian child who’s encountered online harm.
And for the parents who deserve a safer digital world for their kids.
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The end result is an inversion of the long-term trend in the West of reducing and restricting the power of the state in order to increase personal freedom. Censorship is always about increasing the power of the state at the expense of the individual and the citizen.
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