Editor's Note: Christian Finch, interviewed by Britain’s counter-terrorism police for criticizing Islam and Teresa May, describes how his country is descending into totalitarianism. The first step is to strangle free speech. Broad definitions of “hate speech” and measures to fight “Islamophobia” are leading us in the same direction in this country. Motion M-103 is a stealth attack on free speech and the right to criticize Islam.
My name is Christian Finch. In August 2017, I was interviewed by the UK counter terrorism police, which I recorded and posted on SoundCloud. You may be asking yourself what kind of dangerous incitement to violence it could have been to warrant the attention of the UK counter terrorism police… All I did was tell the truth about Islam on Facebook and criticise Theresa May, calling her a traitor to the people of Britain for actively attempting to subvert the people’s mandate to leave the EU by turning it into a mass burglary and keeping us as shadow members. I would like to preface this by providing some of my family history, which I believe may help the reader to understand my mindset and the motivational factors that led to my little run-in with the government. I would guess that most people reading this would have had your own names for your grandparents, but I called mine Oma and Opa. Opa, of course, had a real name, which was Josef Neuhaus, and the stories that he used to tell me when I was a child were the precursor to this whole series of events that I have willingly trundled into. Opa had lived in Germany during the rise of the National Socialist regime, so during his life he had seen the sociopolitical atmosphere of the country that he loved change for the definite worse. Like the rise of any dangerous authoritarian regime, the fuel on which the Nazi Party thrived was fear, ignorance and extreme ideological subversion. Opa and my mother told me stories of how week in and week out, the police would turn up to his house, then haul his father away to be questioned and interrogated for days. As it turned out, my great grandfather didn’t like the Nazis or Hitler and he wasn’t shy about saying it publicly, to the distress of anyone who knew him. My mum would elaborate on how her dad and his family would always spend days worrying that this time he may not return. I remember as a child feeling a great deal of pride and admiration for my great grandfather, who in my eyes and the eyes of my family is a hero. Authoritarian regimes always target dissenters and go to any length to restrict free speech under any excuse that they can find, because the awesome power of truth has a unique way of exposing corruption, cutting through double speak and ruining insidious plans like a gust of wind blowing over a house of cards. The Nazi Party relied on the same manner of ideological fear politics that the modern day identity politics-peddling corrupt establishment relies on now. First, they would attack any dissenters, labelling them unpatriotic or communist sympathisers (now it’s racist or Islamophobe); then second would come more direct measures. The thing with free speech is that it cannot be taken away, only given away through fear; however, my great grandfather wasn’t afraid of that authoritarian regime, and I’m not scared of this one, which seems to be strangling our beloved country. Many may think that my calling the British government an authoritarian regime and comparing it to the Nazis is a good way over the top, but let’s take a look at the facts of the matter. In my lifetime, schools have gone from open playgrounds to looking like prisons, while in direct contravention of the Magna Carta (which is a peace treaty between the crown and the people), religious courts have been set up all around our land. First came the laws that reduced our freedom of assembly to having to beg permission from the government to protest, then came further and further restrictions on our freedom of speech and expression under law. While the government concentrates all of its efforts to destroying what little freedom we have left, terrorist atrocities are committed with near impunity up and down the country, and in true Soviet style, thought police interrogated me for voicing my disdain for an ideology that promotes the killing and enslavement of nonbelievers. I have been asked now a multitude of times why I took the risk of recording the police officers who were interviewing me, or why I even talked to them at all. The truth is that after witnessing the quite rapid erosion of our civil rights and liberties, as well as witnessing the persecution of Mark Meechen over years for making a comedy video on YouTube, I had just had enough. When I got the call from the police to attend Chorley police station, I was glad, because it gave me the opportunity to expose how truly bad things have become to everyone. After the police interview, I received a knock on my door on at least three separate occasions from the counter terrorism officers, who “just came to see how I was doing,” and of course recommended that I engage with the Channel counter extremism programme. After telling them that I had recorded the interview, my phone mysteriously disappeared from my house, while the expensive Sony laptop, my bank card and cash that I had left lying around remained untouched. Allow me to summarise this by saying, make no mistake, we as a country have stepped well and truly through the looking glass. If you tow the line, watch your TV and keep your mouth shut, then you’ll slowly just lose what is left of your freedom. However, if you open your mouth, then they will come after you. Unless we as a nation begin to open our eyes to the seriousness of this situation, we are well and truly lost. This article was originally published on the Jihad Watch website on April 13, 2018, and can be viewed on their site by clicking here.