John Bolton - September 21, 2025


I WILL NOT be silenced! - STOP the LIBERALS anti FREE SPEECH law


Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

159.31586

Word count

2,012

Sentence count

151

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Deborah Lough is a transgender woman who was arrested in front of her children for allegedly posting a "sexually offensive" meme on her social media account. She claims that she was mistaken for a transgender person and that the police arrested her because they thought it was her.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 You
00:00:30.000 The state of free speech in this country has never been in a poorer state.
00:00:54.980 I mean, we're at risk of becoming the North Korea of the North Sea.
00:00:58.360 And Deborah's case is just the very latest example.
00:01:01.420 But, you know, there was an article in The Times a few months ago saying that the police are arresting over 12,000 people a year for supposedly saying offensive things online.
00:01:11.780 That's over 30 a day.
00:01:13.480 I'm not going to put cuffs on you.
00:01:15.800 We'll just put it on the front, OK?
00:01:23.180 I'm not going to put cuffs on you.
00:01:26.540 I was arrested in front of my five children in 2022 on suspicion of posting a meme.
00:01:35.820 Literally, somebody had posted something offensive.
00:01:38.080 And the person, the complainant, the transgender activist said that it must be me and he knew it was me because I had posted similar things on my Twitter feed.
00:01:49.560 I hadn't.
00:01:50.260 So the police actually came and arrested me in front of my children, seized all my devices, tried to feed my children's devices because they have actually admitted this.
00:01:58.580 They were looking for material that might link me to the meme.
00:02:03.040 It's not easy being a dissident these days, though.
00:02:06.500 Police will find a way to arrest you.
00:02:08.640 Even just for a post on social media, 30 people a day across the UK are arrested for mean tweets.
00:02:16.420 Some of them, like the mother, Lucy Connelly, are sent to prison for their words.
00:02:21.720 This in the country that gave us the Magna Carta and set the standard for free speech.
00:02:27.620 Thank you, Mr Speaker.
00:02:29.580 Like many, I was deeply concerned that a police force deemed it necessary to take five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer from a flight.
00:02:38.240 Some may have found Mr Linehan's comments offensive, but that isn't the point.
00:02:42.940 If you don't support speech you don't like, you don't support free speech.
00:02:46.900 Will the Prime Minister commit to reviewing our speech laws to ensure the legitimate free expression is protected?
00:02:54.620 And will he condemn the culture within the public sector which prioritises this dangerous and perverse nonsense?
00:03:02.780 Well, I thank you for raising this.
00:03:04.580 You will have seen that the Commissioner has put out a statement in relation to the particular case this morning.
00:03:10.740 I've been clear throughout, we must ensure the police focus on the most serious issues.
00:03:16.040 And the issues that matter most to our constituencies and all communities.
00:03:21.080 And that includes tackling issues like antisocial behaviour, knife crime and violence.
00:03:26.980 And we have a long history of free speech in this country.
00:03:29.580 I'm very proud of that and I will always defend it.
00:03:31.980 I will just say that in terms of UK, strange things are happening over there.
00:03:36.800 They are cracking down and surprisingly so.
00:03:39.460 And I've spoken to the Prime Minister and let's see what happens.
00:03:44.540 But it is a different, a little bit different situation.
00:03:48.440 I'm very surprised to see what's happening.
00:03:50.620 And are you talking about the UK in particular, right?
00:03:53.260 Yeah, I'm very surprised to see what's happening.
00:03:55.480 Sad.
00:03:55.720 And the Trump administration has officially told them that the State Department gave them a statement saying if you continue to arrest people for praying outside an abortion clinic legally, if you continue to arrest people for their speech, if you continue to push all this stuff on the kid, the transgenderism, all of it.
00:04:11.900 And I've told Canada this too, and everybody else.
00:04:17.360 We will not take the tariffs off.
00:04:21.680 Because I don't understand.
00:04:23.380 I posted something that he posted.
00:04:25.180 You come to arrest me.
00:04:26.080 You don't arrest him.
00:04:27.040 Why has it come to this?
00:04:28.060 Why am I in cuffs?
00:04:28.960 Because it's something he shared, then I shared.
00:04:31.500 Because someone has been caused, obviously, anxiety based upon your social media page.
00:04:38.460 That's why you've been arrested.
00:04:39.480 We've kind of forgotten the Voltairian principles that we'll fight and defend to the death your right to say something that we fundamentally disagree with.
00:04:49.460 That is the absolute foundation, if you think about it, of free speech, of democracy, of living in freedom.
00:04:54.680 It's kind of why we fought two world wars at massive, massive cost to defend that very principle for ourselves and for many, many others around the country.
00:05:04.900 And I first became worried about all this with cancel culture. 0.99
00:05:08.120 You know, the idea that we can't have this speaker go to a university because some people might be offended by what he or she have to say.
00:05:17.560 And it's extraordinary that, you know, I come from a land of Magna Carta.
00:05:21.760 I come from a land that gave us the mother of parliaments.
00:05:24.820 And it doesn't give me any great joy to be sitting in America and describing the really awful authoritarian situation that we have now sunk into.
00:05:35.500 J.D. Vance did us all a service at the Munich Security Conference back in February this year.
00:05:41.220 He really got this debate up and running.
00:05:43.600 A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes.
00:06:01.560 Not obstructing anyone, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.
00:06:08.880 After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.
00:06:20.840 Now, the officers were not moved.
00:06:24.200 Adam was found guilty of breaking the government's new buffer zones law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person's decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility.
00:06:37.060 He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.
00:06:41.100 Now, I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person.
00:06:50.260 But no, this last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.
00:07:06.620 Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime.
00:07:14.780 In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.
00:07:20.180 It's on the 70th and 10th of 2023, on Bathurst Green Road, at 10 of 4, you were witnesses saying, obviously, people, while they're over here, et cetera, we let them into our country, et cetera. 0.99
00:07:32.320 So, thank you.
00:07:33.240 Yes, okay.
00:07:34.100 So, thank you.
00:07:34.780 Why don't she's on the television? 0.86
00:07:36.320 See that?
00:07:37.340 Yes, ma'am.
00:07:38.120 Take them.
00:07:39.360 Disgusting.
00:07:40.060 You're not disgusting.
00:07:41.460 They're all influencing violence.
00:07:42.180 That's fine.
00:07:42.860 I would like you to leave now.
00:07:44.020 I'd like you to leave.
00:07:45.180 Lisa, this is why you're...
00:07:46.080 Okay.
00:07:46.600 I have nothing more to say to you.
00:07:48.700 A social media post.
00:07:50.680 I've got nothing more to say.
00:07:51.800 I'd like you to leave.
00:07:52.500 You've harassed this child enough.
00:07:54.840 I'd like you to leave.
00:07:55.760 Lisa, that's no worries.
00:07:57.040 You are literally more likely to be arrested for transgressing their political dogmas than you are for mugging someone, robbing a shop or burgling someone's home.
00:08:10.100 In 2023, the police made 33 arrests a day for speech crimes.
00:08:18.060 Now, all the while, Keir Starmer just keeps repeating his robotic nasal mantra.
00:08:23.560 We've had free speech for a very, very long time here.
00:08:27.680 He is, of course, lying.
00:08:29.300 We are being humiliated on the world stage.
00:08:33.060 Our allies cannot quite believe the stories they are hearing.
00:08:36.880 Arrests for tweets.
00:08:38.300 Arrests for silent prayers.
00:08:40.040 Mothers in prison for Facebook posts. 0.88
00:08:42.640 These are not the behavior of a free country.
00:08:45.520 Well, you can't say anything, especially in Britain now, if you say a boy can't be a girl or a girl can't be a boy, you get the police at your door.
00:08:54.260 You know, if you get burgled, if you get your house burgled, the police will never show up.
00:08:58.340 But if you say a boy cannot be a girl, you'll get 15 police officers at your door.
00:09:03.360 The Times, 23, 1440, are arresting you on suspicion of improper use of the electronic communications network.
00:09:13.260 Watch.
00:09:13.700 One, two, seven, the communications act, okay?
00:09:17.080 So you do not have to say that it may harm your defense if you don't mention one question, something which you later are in court.
00:09:22.520 Anything you do say may be given evidence.
00:09:24.300 Do you understand that?
00:09:25.640 So I'm actually being arrested?
00:09:27.000 You're going to be arrested, okay?
00:09:28.560 Right.
00:09:28.940 So you've got to the police station.
00:09:30.520 Right.
00:09:31.000 Okay, this is in relation to some comments that you've made on a Facebook page.
00:09:36.640 Oh, really?
00:09:37.080 I'll say a Facebook crime, is it?
00:09:38.780 One of the greatest comedic minds of his generation has been cancelled from the Edinburgh fringe because he doesn't want a naked man next to his daughter in the swimming pool changing rooms. 0.85
00:09:49.840 Graham Linehan created Father Ted.
00:09:52.160 The IT crowd, Black Books.
00:09:54.120 He's written jokes for Brass Eye, the fast show.
00:09:56.420 But the biggest joke of all is that the show he was a part of, Comedy Unleashed, has now been cancelled in the name of inclusivity.
00:10:03.780 So I didn't immediately think they were going to arrest me, but they did ask me, they said, can we go somewhere private to speak?
00:10:12.920 So we went down this kind of tunnel and through a doorway and they stood around me and he said, your passport is on a wanted list or something or it was flagged up or something.
00:10:25.060 And you're being arrested for, you know, a tweet.
00:10:29.980 Something that we believe you've written on Facebook has upset someone.
00:10:34.200 You're here because somebody got upset.
00:10:36.240 Is it against the law?
00:10:37.720 Am I being arrested?
00:10:39.460 You're not being arrested.
00:10:40.360 Then what are you doing here?
00:10:41.700 My plan was, if you were admitting that it was you who wrote the comment, you could just make an apology to the person.
00:10:47.440 I'm not apologizing to anybody.
00:10:49.480 I can tell you that.
00:10:50.360 The alternative would be that I have to call you up for an interview.
00:10:53.020 I'm here to talk to you about the allegation.
00:10:54.860 They've reported it to the police.
00:10:56.060 So what?
00:10:56.660 Obviously, we get a lot of reports like that.
00:10:58.500 Are there no houses that have been burgled recently?
00:11:00.800 No rapes? 0.95
00:11:01.380 No murders?
00:11:01.980 Yeah, that's all going on as well.
00:11:03.380 Well, then why aren't you out there doing, you know, investigating those?
00:11:06.760 Because I've got to investigate everything that gets reported.
00:11:09.080 Well, you're not investigating houses being burgled.
00:11:11.560 Are we?
00:11:13.060 Are we going to find ourselves arrested and thrown into jail by this new elite police force that this government has set up to monitor our speech, our debate, our views?
00:11:26.580 Well, I will see you in jail because I will never be silenced as I speak up for you and this country.
00:11:36.460 Have you had a lady called Lucy Connolly since you've been here?
00:11:40.020 Of course.
00:11:40.560 I talked about her yesterday and no one knew what I was talking about in Cambridge.
00:11:43.620 Who are you talking about?
00:11:44.380 Who the students didn't know?
00:11:45.600 I mentioned her because I did the research.
00:11:47.420 My team did an amazing job.
00:11:48.660 And I think she just had her petition denied today. 0.99
00:11:51.180 In the last hour or so today, it's Tuesday today, she's had her appeal denied.
00:11:54.700 So she's going to be carrying out her two and a half year sentence for a solitary tweet. 1.00
00:11:58.940 So outrageous.
00:11:59.440 Which she deleted for four hours later.
00:12:01.340 What's your take on the whole situation?
00:12:02.440 Well, I'm going to try to get the U.S. State Department involved.
00:12:04.420 I don't know if, you know, what their bandwidth is here, but I'm sorry.
00:12:07.880 Like, again, I'm speaking as a citizen, not as a U.S. government.
00:12:09.680 I just want to be very clear.
00:12:10.840 Like, is this a way that a liberal democracy and an ally of the United States acts?
00:12:14.500 I want to be very clear.
00:12:35.740 Amen.