Censorship Is Not Counter Terrorism
Watching unarmed heroes tackle Islamist gunmen in Bondi affected me deeply this week. It takes tremendous courage to see danger and still choose to run toward it equipped only with your bare hands. Many people were extraordinarily brave that day. My fear is that this courage will not be matched with wisdom from the Australian government.
In the tragic wake of the Bondi massacre, the Australian prime minister has moved swiftly to propose sweeping new hate speech laws. For those of us in New Zealand, this feels uncomfortably familiar. After the Christchurch massacre in 2019, we experienced a similar political reflex. While the impulse to protect the Jewish community from a rising tide of antisemitism is entirely right, the response being advocated in Canberra risks being quick, symbolic, and ultimately corrosive to Australia’s liberal democratic foundations. Thankfully, enough of the New Zealand public ultimately resisted this same quick fix mentality, though it was not for lack of effort by the government of the day.
Islamist ideology, like white supremacy, is explicitly hostile to liberal democratic values. Responding by further restricting public discourse is akin to burning the house down to flush out an intruder. If our societies are to emerge intact and wiser from these horrors, we must be precise about the problem of violent extremism and disciplined in the solutions we pursue.
The Bondi attack was not the result of a lack of civility in public debate. It was a premeditated act of terrorism inspired by a specific violent extremist ideology. Islamist violence did not begin with social media or the modern internet. It has existed for centuries under various clerical banners throughout the Islamic world. Ironically, many Western advocates of hate speech laws frame Islamist violence partly as a reaction to Western provocation. In this view, those who criticize Islam or express solidarity with Israel are portrayed as needlessly aggressive or intolerant toward Muslims.
Yet Islamist terrorism, including the Bondi massacre, is driven by a totalitarian worldview that exists entirely outside democratic discourse. Hate speech laws attempt to regulate the threshold of language in polite society, but they are powerless against individuals who see themselves as soldiers in a divinely sanctioned war and regard secular law as illegitimate. By the time someone is prepared to murder Jewish worshippers, they have long since rejected the social and legal constraints that such laws are meant to enforce.
Worse still, expanding hate speech definitions threatens the very values Australia claims to defend. A free society depends on open inquiry and the right to criticise ideas, including religious and political ideologies. Granting the state greater power to punish speech that does not involve direct incitement to violence invites censorship without clear limits. Such laws are inherently subjective, vulnerable to political abuse, and unclear in their ultimate purpose. When governments begin deciding which opinions are unacceptable, they chill legitimate debate and reinforce the persecution narratives that extremists rely on to justify violence.
At this stage, Australia’s failure appears not to be a lack of speech regulation, but a lack of political nerve and institutional clarity. Alleged Bondi terrorist Naveed Akram had reportedly been on ASIO’s radar since 2019, yet was assessed as not an immediate threat despite known radical associations and a recent month long trip to the Philippines, a hotspot for Islamic State activity. Counter terrorism agencies can fall into dangerous mission creep, as seen in the UK’s Prevent program, where fear of accusations of Islamophobia produced an artificial parity in monitoring. Resources were diverted away from the primary and deadliest threat of Islamist terrorism, which accounts for the vast majority of British terror incidents. In some cases, conservative MPs and journalists were even added to watch-lists for criticising mass immigration.
This does not deny the existence of other violent ideologies. The Christchurch massacre was carried out by a white nationalist, and that reality must never be forgotten. But the pathways to radicalisation in such cases overwhelmingly occur in isolated online spaces and encrypted networks, far beyond the reach of domestic speech laws. The claim that language inevitably leads to violence relies on a simplistic psychological model that ignores the complex mix of ideology, grievance, and strategy involved in terrorism. True security in a liberal democracy rests on enforcing the rule of law and relentlessly investigating those who plan violence. Hate speech laws only push warning signs further underground, making that work harder.
Strengthening hate speech laws may offer symbolic reassurance, but it does nothing to prevent terrorism. Islamist extremists reject the democratic order outright. Australia must resist trading its civil liberties for a false sense of security. Freedom of expression allows liberal societies to confront violent ideologies openly and confidently. Only then can we meet this challenge with clear eyes, rather than blindfolded and bound.
