Controversial British author Toby Young unloads at 'woke' Australia: 'Crocodile Dundee would be in jail'

A right-wing British author has claimed Australia is surrendering its larrikinism to the ‘woke mind virus’ and argued free speech is under threat in the country.

Toby Young, 60, made the comments after wrapping up a nationwide speaking tour of Australia last week.

Young authored ‘How to Lose Friends and Alienate People’ – which was turned into a 2008 Hollywood movie starring Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst and Megan Fox.

Young, the founder of the Daily Sceptic which runs pieces challenging government positions on climate change and Covid, also founded the Free Speech Union.  

He says the union, which has chapters in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, protects the right to express opinions – across the political spectrum – from attempted restrictions by the ‘radical progressive left’.

Young told Daily Mail Australia the country was losing its famed free-spirit and anti-authority bravado – and had become more closed-minded than it was decades ago.

‘These days it is as if Crocodile Dundee is languishing in a prison cell waiting for trial,’ he said. ‘He’s awaiting trial for hate speech somewhere in Victoria.

‘The emergence of wokeism has introduced a puritanical intolerance into the left which has meant a downgrading of how much they value free speech.’

Young argued free speech was in ‘dire straits across the western world’ because America had ‘exported the woke mind virus’.

‘We’re seeing the gradual spread of the woke religion, the great awokening, across the media, universities, governments, officials, the museums and heritage sector, the arts and that’s all been deeply depressing,’ he said.

‘And here you don’t seem to have much at all to protect you.’

Young said Australia’s Online Safety Act ‘has empowered your eSafety Commissioner to effectively run amok’.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant recently made an unsuccessful bid to force X to take down images of the Wakeley Church stabbing from its platform worldwide.  

‘That was an extraordinary over-reach on the part of the eSafety Commissioner to demand not just a video be removed from X in Australia but globally,’ Young said.

‘That is indicative of just how unlimited the censorious ambitions of people like Julie Inman Grant are.

‘They want to cleanse social media of any dissenting or heretical content that challenges their radical progressive views, under the guise of protecting people.’

‘What does she think gives her jurisdiction, the authority to make a demand like that?’

Young also took aim at the Albanese government’s proposed laws to curb misinformation and disinformation online.

He argued ‘we all know’ what misinformation and disinformation ‘really means’.

‘It is any opinion that members of the radical progressive left disagree with,’ he said.

‘The fact that the losing side in the Voice referendum blamed misinformation and disinformation gives you a clue as to what a chilling effect the anti-misinformation Bill would have on free speech in Australia.’

Young said he was a victim of cancel culture in 2018 when then-British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed him as a non-executive director of the Office for Students regulator.

Young’s education credentials were established when he set up the West London Free School, a first-of-its-kind school independent of the educational authority but which received government funding.

Young said the board position was a ‘nothing burger of a job’ which was not paid and only required he meet with other directors four times a year.

‘That was the invitation to offence-archeologists to go back through everything I had ever said or written from 1987,’ Young said.

‘Because I have been a professional journalist all my life, it didn’t take long to find a Tutankhamun tomb’s worth of offensive content.

‘After eight days of leading the news on ‘resignation watch’ I stood down and apologised for some of the more sophomoric things I had said on X late at night.

‘I thought that would draw a line under it but it was just the opposite effect. It was like throwing raw beef to a shoal of piranha fish, there was blood in the water.

‘They came for me in four other jobs so I ended up having to stand down from five other positions. So, I was well and truly cancelled.’

It was that sequence of events that inspired to launch his Free Speech Union, which takes up the cause of other people who have been cancelled, fired or banned for expressing an opinion.

‘When I recovered I thought what I really needed when that was happening to me to was a professional organisation who could provide me with really good advice, should I apologise or will that make things worse?’ Young said.

‘Should I get out and defend myself or will that just prolong the story?

‘Is there anyone else this has happened to and you can put me touch with and give me a few pointers for support?

‘But there was no organisation like that so that’s why I decided to start the Free Speech Union.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13637635/Toby-Young-Australia-Crocodile-Dundee.html

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