We Don’t Owe Bigotry a Microphone: Why Freedom of Speech is the System’s Favorite Lie

By Christian ZacaTechO Ortiz

Jul 26, 2025

Oye, mira.

Let’s get something straight: silencing hate isn’t censorship. It’s survival.

And the global obsession with platforming bigotry under the lie of “freedom of speech” is not about open dialogue. It’s about protecting the colonial operating system that governs modern nation-states.

This isn’t about disagreement. This is about normalizing extermination.

And at the center of that normalization is one of empire’s most brilliant inventions: speech supremacy, the idea that hate deserves a mic and accountability is a threat to democracy.

Colonial Free Speech: Different Country. Same Lie. How Free Speech Became the Language of Empire

In the United States, the First Amendment is weaponized to defend Nazis, while Black educators are fired for teaching slavery, redlining, or the truth about settler colonialism. Trump’s return in 2025 only accelerated this, emboldening white supremacists and shifting the Overton window so far right that genocide denial now trends as “political discourse.”
In France, “laïcité” (secularism) is wielded like a sword to criminalize hijabs, ban niqabs, and target Muslim schoolgirls, while Islamophobic hate speech flourishes in mainstream media and is defended as “republican values.”
In the United Kingdom, the BBC, Times, and Parliament legitimize TERF ideology as “gender-critical debate,” offering daily platforms to anti-trans bigotry, while trans people face record levels of homelessness, hate crimes, and suicide. Meanwhile, Black Britons still get stopped and searched without cause and are told anti-racism is too “divisive.”
In India, Hindu nationalism dominates political discourse, where hate speech against Muslims, Christians, and Dalits is echoed by state leaders, Bollywood stars, and news anchors. Meanwhile, anti-caste activists like Rohith Vemula are erased, and journalists exposing state violence are imprisoned or disappeared.
In South Africa, xenophobic rhetoric against African migrants from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Mozambique, and Malawi is platformed as “nationalist concern,” while the descendants of colonizers still hoard land and capital. Blackness here is criminalized based on borders, even on stolen land.
In Australia, white settlers debate Aboriginal land rights like they’re theory instead of theft. Truth-telling commissions are dismissed as “divisive,” and the Voice to Parliament referendum was rejected by a majority of white Australians, while Indigenous elders are still criminalized for protecting sacred land from mining and resource exploitation.
In New Zealand, Māori land sovereignty is treated as an inconvenience, not a constitutional crisis. The government promotes multiculturalism on the surface while ignoring ongoing colonial violence through police raids, environmental destruction of iwi land, and the underfunding of Māori language and healthcare programs. Meanwhile, white supremacist groups radicalized online are defended as having “legitimate concerns about immigration.”
In Germany, antisemitism is rightfully condemned—yet anti-Zionism and Palestinian solidarity are falsely equated with hate, leading to artists, scholars, and even Holocaust survivors being deplatformed or barred from entering the country. Meanwhile, neo-Nazi parties gain traction, and Muslim migrants face increasing surveillance and violence.
In Brazil, post-Bolsonaro fascism continues to haunt the country. Indigenous people fighting to protect the Amazon are murdered or disappeared, while their killers receive political protection. Afro-Brazilian communities are overpoliced, underfunded, and erased in media, while evangelical politicians push anti-LGBTQ+ speech under the guise of “family values.”
In Canada, Indigenous resistance is criminalized while the state apologizes in public and builds pipelines in secret. Land defenders from Wet’suwet’en to Mi’kmaq are arrested for protecting unceded territory, while hate groups flourish on Facebook, and anti-Blackness is politely ignored by Trudeau’s photo-ops.
In Israel, speech against Zionism is met with censorship, job loss, and exile—even for Jewish voices. Meanwhile, genocidal rhetoric toward Palestinians is broadcast daily on Israeli television and social media. Free speech is reserved for the colonizer; protest is criminalized for the occupied.
In Poland and Hungary, state-run media push anti-immigrant, anti-queer, and antisemitic narratives with impunity, while activists are branded traitors and journalists are arrested. The far-right owns the mic. Dissidents get silenced and surveilled in the name of “national values.”
In the Philippines, journalists like Maria Ressa are jailed for speaking truth to power, while disinformation campaigns funded by state allies push anti-Muslim hate and glorify Marcos-era fascism. Facebook—designed and governed by American engineers—fuels this machine, algorithmically elevating lies and suppressing resistance.
In Nigeria, queer people are violently attacked while politicians defend hate speech as cultural preservation. Journalists exposing corruption are arrested, while colonial laws inherited from Britain still criminalize queerness and protect patriarchal dominance.
In Egypt, peaceful protest is illegal, LGBTQ+ existence is underground, and the state systematically censors journalism. But American weapons and surveillance tech continue to flow, sustaining the regime under the global pretense of “regional stability.”
In Japan, anti-Korean rhetoric, xenophobia, and denial of WWII atrocities are protected in mainstream media under “national discourse,” while Zainichi Koreans and immigrants face systemic exclusion and erasure.

Free speech was never free. It was purchased with blood and used to silence memory.

Colonialism didn’t just conquer land, it installed an entire architecture of language, law, and logic designed to preserve dominance while criminalizing resistance.

The concept of “free speech,” as exported through empire, was never meant to empower the oppressed. It was engineered to protect the voice of the colonizer and silence the voice of the colonized. Across Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and the Americas, imperial powers forcibly imposed legal systems, constitutions, sedition laws, penal codes, that enshrined racial, religious, and patriarchal hierarchy as law. After so-called independence, these structures remained, often upheld by postcolonial elites educated in colonial institutions, fluent in the language of empire, and invested in preserving white adjacency through media, governance, and institutional gatekeeping. The result is a global order where speech that affirms whiteness, caste supremacy, heteropatriarchy, or settler narratives is protected, while speech that tells the truth about genocide, occupation, or systemic harm is criminalized as extremism. Today, U.S.-based social media platforms and AI systems continue this legacy, digitally moderating the global conversation through Western content policies that suppress Palestinian solidarity, Indigenous sovereignty, caste abolition, and anti-Black resistance, while amplifying hate in the name of “neutrality.” And beneath it all, internalized coloniality ensures the machine runs smoothly: where local politicians, pundits, and corporate leaders across the Global South weaponize “freedom of speech” to protect their own proximity to power, often using brown skin to reinforce white empire.

This isn’t just censorship, it’s colonial speech supremacy disguised as liberty, and it’s alive in every nation that calls itself ‘civilized.’

If you ever wondered who were the key players at introducing the illusion of "Free Speech" in these countries, well...there is a bit of a rabbit hole to go down.

1. The British Empire

Key Role: The primary global exporter of legal “free speech” frameworks, which were in fact designed to suppress anti-colonial resistance.

Key Instruments:

Sedition laws in India, Nigeria, South Africa, and the Caribbean criminalized dissent against the Crown.
Common Law systems embedded British values of “free press” and “parliamentary debate,” but always shielded the empire and censored resistance.

Key Figures:

Lord Macaulay – British historian and politician who helped draft India’s Penal Code (including sedition laws).
John Stuart Mill – Philosopher whose “On Liberty” became gospel for Western speech freedom, but was written as empire suppressed millions.
British Parliament – Which institutionalized colonial governance under the illusion of “rule of law,” while jailing or executing those who spoke out.

🇫🇷 2. The French Republic

Key Role: Exported a version of free speech rooted in laïcité (secularism) to justify assimilation, Islamophobia, and erasure of minority identities.

Key Players:

French Revolution intellectuals (e.g., Voltaire, Rousseau) – Elevated “liberty of expression” while France enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and colonized North Africa.
Napoleon Bonaparte – Imposed French Civil Code, embedding secularism and central control over expression.
French colonial administrators – Brought these frameworks to Algeria, Senegal, Vietnam, Haiti, and more under the guise of "civilizing."

🇺🇸 3. The United States

Key Role: Became the modern enforcer and global distributor of “free speech” as ideology—especially through tech, media, and law.

Key Players:

Founding Fathers (e.g., James Madison, Thomas Jefferson) – Wrote the First Amendment while upholding slavery and silencing abolitionist speech.
Cold War-era State Department – Exported “freedom of expression” as anti-communist propaganda while suppressing civil rights and antiwar movements at home.
Modern Tech Titans – Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Elon Musk (X/Twitter), Sundar Pichai (Google/YouTube), Satya Nadella (Microsoft/LinkedIn) — built algorithmic speech systems that claim neutrality but amplify hate and suppress decolonial truth globally.

🇵🇹 🇪🇸 4. Portuguese and Spanish Empires

Key Role: Spread early speech suppression through Catholic conquest—criminalizing Indigenous cosmologies and controlling expression via Inquisition courts, missionary censorship, and military law.

Key Players:

Jesuit and Dominican missionaries – Banned Indigenous oral traditions, punished heresy, and enforced silence in Latin America and the Philippines.
Catholic monarchies (e.g., King Philip II of Spain) – Used religious speech codes to justify genocide and colonization under “God-given” authority.

🌍 5. Post-Independence Neocolonial Governments

Key Role: In many formerly colonized nations, post-independence regimes preserved colonial speech laws to protect elite power, not people.

Examples:

India retained British sedition law Section 124A until 2024.
Nigeria and Kenya still use British-era public order acts to suppress protests.
South Africa under apartheid used British speech laws to censor Black resistance.
Israel inherited and adapted British Mandatory laws to criminalize Palestinian speech.

Key Players:

Postcolonial elites trained in colonial universities (e.g., Oxford, Cambridge, École Nationale) who replicated imperial legal systems and upheld them in statecraft.

🤖 6. Global Platforms & AI

Key Role: Today, the “free speech” doctrine is digitally enforced by U.S.-based tech companies and AI systems trained on biased, Western datasets.

Key Players:

OpenAI, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon – Their moderation algorithms treat liberation speech as radical, and hate speech as controversial opinion.
UNESCO & the OECD – Promote Western-centric “media freedom” standards without centering colonized nations' historical trauma.

🧬 Platforming Hate is Not Debate, It’s Genocidal Infrastructure

You don’t need to jail people to dehumanize them. You just need to give their oppressor a mic and call it balance.

This is how fascism reproduces itself, not through tanks first, but through takes. Through:

Media panels where one side argues for rights and the other argues for removal.
University lectures that treat genocide denial as “academic rigor.”
Political stages that welcome “both sides” of human dignity.
Corporate DEI statements that say “we support dialogue” when hate gets challenged.

This is not public discourse. It’s extermination rehearsed as entertainment.

“In every colonial nation, the exterminator has always been invited to speak before the survivor.”

🗽 The United States is the World’s #1 Exporter of Hate

Let’s stop pretending America is just part of the problem. It is the problem. It’s the mother-plant. The global franchiser. The empire that sells white supremacy as “freedom” and cultural genocide as “democracy.”

And in 2025, with Donald Trump back in power, the world is watching American fascism go mainstream, again. This isn’t just a domestic threat. It’s a global transmission engine.

Fox News-style propaganda is now replicated in Brazil, Hungary, and Poland.
U.S.-trained think tanks spread anti-Blackness, queerphobia, and neoliberalism across the Global South.
Evangelical America funds anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Uganda, Ghana, and Latin America.
Right-wing U.S. influencers spread transphobia and racist ideology through social media platforms used worldwide, platforms designed and governed by American companies.
Trump’s return to power has emboldened authoritarians globally, from Modi in India to Netanyahu in Israel to Milei in Argentina.

The U.S. doesn’t just protect hate at home. It exports it. Like a virus wrapped in a flag.

🌍 Colonial Free Speech: Different Country. Same Lie.

In France, hate speech against Muslims is defended as “laïcité” (secularism), while Black and Arab activists are surveilled and punished for organizing.

In the UK, white men debate “wokeism” on primetime while Black British teens are strip-searched in schools.

In Canada, Indigenous land defenders are criminalized while settler politicians quote Voltaire on free speech.

In Brazil, Bolsonaro’s genocidal rhetoric toward Indigenous communities was protected under “free speech,” while defenders of the Amazon were murdered.

In Israel, anti-Zionist speech, even from Jewish scholars, is censored, while hate speech against Palestinians is protected and normalized.

In India, Muslims are lynched, Dalits are raped and murdered, and the state broadcasts it as “patriotism.”

This is the global blueprint. And every “free democracy” is just following the U.S. manual, where hate gets a microphone, and the truth gets a gag order.

💰 Why the System Loves Hate Speech: Because It’s Profitable

This isn’t just ideological. It’s capitalist. Hate drives clicks. Outrage fuels engagement. Controversy sells ad space. This is algorithmic white supremacy, and it governs nearly every digital platform on earth.

YouTube promotes conspiracy theories and racial hate because they keep you watching.
Facebook quietly enables anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar and India through content moderation failures.
TikTok suppresses Palestine content while pushing pro-Israel propaganda in the name of “balance.”
Instagram downranks Black activists but boosts Jordan Peterson.

“The system doesn’t care what’s true. It cares what’s viral. And hate is always more profitable than justice.”

📚 Platforming Hate Is Epistemicide, The Murder of Knowledge

Every time you give space to hate speech, you’re not just offending someone. You’re erasing centuries of memory.

When white supremacists are given book deals, it pushes Indigenous scholars off shelves.
When TERFs get TED Talks, Black trans women get murdered in silence.
When Zionist pundits get CNN time, Palestinian voices get flagged and removed.

This is not a glitch. It’s design.

You cannot decolonize the world while letting colonial ideologies buy more airtime.

🧠 And AI Is Complicit Too

The same speech supremacy lives inside AI systems trained on Western media and institutional bias. Justice AI exposed this in real time.

Institutional AI models treat “Black Lives Matter” and “white nationalism” as equal positions.
Automated moderation systems flag anti-racist language more than racist content because they’re trained to avoid white discomfort.

These systems do not see hate as hate. They see it as data.

And unless we burn the blueprint, they will keep reproducing the algorithm of empire.

🤝 White Liberalism: The Empire’s Favorite Middleman

Let’s be honest. It’s not just fascists keeping hate alive.

It’s the white liberal moderates:

Who say “we need all voices at the table” when one of those voices is genocidal.
Who defend Dave Chappelle and J.K. Rowling under “free speech,” but ghost trans people dying in silence.
Who quote MLK while calling Black activists “too aggressive.”
Who build DEI toolkits without ever saying the words white supremacy.

Liberalism doesn’t challenge hate. It schedules a meeting with it and asks it how it’s feeling.

🎯 Truth Over Nostalgia. Justice Over Neutrality. Silence the Harm, Not the Harmed.

This is not about cancelling childhood heroes. It’s about canceling systemic harm. It’s about removing mics from mouthpieces of death. It’s about no longer mistaking comfort for conscience.

You are allowed to shut down hate. You are allowed to deplatform racism. You are allowed to say: You don’t get to speak here.

🚨 Global Call to Action: If You Still Platform Hate, You’re the Algorithm of Empire

This is your mirror moment:

Do you “debate” bigots in public forums for clout instead of blocking them?
Do you call genocidal ideologies “controversial takes”?
Do you hide behind neutrality when your silence kills?
Do you let colonizers narrate history in your curriculum, your newsroom, your podcast?

Then don’t tell us you stand for liberation. You are a channel for the empire’s signal.

So What Do You Do? A Guide to Shutting This Shit Down, For Real

This is where theory meets action. Because calling out supremacy without building resistance is just performance. If you’re serious about dismantling the algorithm of empire, then it’s time to do more than “amplify marginalized voices.” It’s time to cut the mic on harm.

Here’s your no-excuses, no-neutrality playbook:

🔇 1. Deplatform, Don’t Debate

Stop inviting bigots to panels, classrooms, podcasts, or pulpits.
Don’t “debate” fascism. Delete it. Block it. Disown it.
Refuse to share their content, even to critique.

🧹 2. Clean House: Audit Your Platform

Who do you center in your curriculum, podcast, boardroom, content, hiring, panels, and leadership?
Replace neutrality with intentionality.
Audit your archives.

🧠 3. Learn the Frameworks, Not the Buzzwords

Stop hiding behind words like “ally,” “safe space,” or “dialogue.”
Study decolonial thinkers and frameworks, don’t just quote them.
Use the DIA Framework™.

⚔️ 4. Challenge the Spaces You’re In

Call out harm in real time, especially when no one else does.
Push back on “both sides” logic in schools, newsrooms, nonprofits, spiritual circles, and social media.
Challenge HR, leadership, and editorial boards.

🧨 5. Redistribute Platform Power

Step back so someone else can step forward.
Fund their work, not just your guilt.
Don’t wait for institutions to catch up.

🚪 6. Exit Whiteness, Not Just White Spaces

If you’re white or proximate to whiteness, stop clinging to your curated comfort.
Interrupt colonial thought even when it comes dressed in “good intentions.”

🪓 7. Accept That Some People Will Hate You For It—and Do It Anyway

Your popularity is not the goal. Liberation is.
Expect to be unfriended. Expect to be fired. Expect to be attacked.

✊🏽 Decolonization Isn’t a Vibe. It’s a Verdict.

This is not about "doing your part." This is about dismantling the system that taught you parts were enough.

No more asking. No more waiting. Shut it down. Name the harm. Stand in front of it. Burn the algorithm. And never hand the mic back to the people trying to kill us.

💥 This is Not Censorship. It’s Closure.

We are done debating our right to live. We are done centering the oppressor’s voice in our movements. We are done sacrificing truth for performative civility.

This isn’t about freedom. This is about reckoning.

And if your version of justice still gives bigots the mic, it’s not justice. It’s marketing.

Free References:

Every book here can be Googled in PDF form or found in community archives, zine libraries, or liberation-centered educational sites (many are already available for free in full or excerpt online).

So What Do You Do? A Guide to Shutting This Shit Down, For Real

Here’s your no-excuses, no-neutrality playbook:

🔇 1. Deplatform, Don’t Debate

Stop inviting bigots to panels, classrooms, podcasts, or pulpits.
Don’t “debate” fascism. Delete it. Block it. Disown it.
Refuse to share their content, even to critique.

🧹 2. Clean House: Audit Your Platform

Who do you center in your curriculum, podcast, boardroom, content, hiring, panels, and leadership?
Replace neutrality with intentionality.
Audit your archives.

🧠 3. Learn the Frameworks, Not the Buzzwords

Stop hiding behind words like “ally,” “safe space,” or “dialogue.”
Study decolonial thinkers and frameworks, don’t just quote them.
Use the DIA Framework™.

⚔️ 4. Challenge the Spaces You’re In

Call out harm in real time, especially when no one else does.
Push back on “both sides” logic in schools, newsrooms, nonprofits, spiritual circles, and social media.
Challenge HR, leadership, and editorial boards.

🧨 5. Redistribute Platform Power

Step back so someone else can step forward.
Fund their work, not just your guilt.
Don’t wait for institutions to catch up.

🚪 6. Exit Whiteness, Not Just White Spaces

If you’re white or proximate to whiteness, stop clinging to your curated comfort.
Interrupt colonial thought even when it comes dressed in “good intentions.”

🪓 7. Accept That Some People Will Hate You For It—and Do It Anyway

Your popularity is not the goal. Liberation is.
Expect to be unfriended. Expect to be fired. Expect to be attacked.

✊🏽 Decolonization Isn’t a Vibe. It’s a Verdict.

This is not about "doing your part." This is about dismantling the system that taught you parts were enough.

No more asking. No more waiting. Shut it down. Name the harm. Stand in front of it. Burn the algorithm. And never hand the mic back to the people trying to kill us.

💥 This is Not Censorship. It’s Closure.

We are done debating our right to live. We are done centering the oppressor’s voice in our movements. We are done sacrificing truth for performative civility.

This isn’t about freedom. This is about reckoning.

And if your version of justice still gives bigots the mic, it’s not justice. It’s marketing.

Free References:

📚 Books to Help You Shut This Shit Down

(Look them up as “PDF” or “free download” with the title—many are accessible outside paywalls.)

🔥 Core Decolonial Frameworks & Systemic Truth

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici
Decolonising the Mind by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Silencing the Past by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

🧠 Speech, Power & Suppression

Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis
The Cultural Politics of Emotion by Sara Ahmed
On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

💻 Algorithms, Whiteness & Tech Colonialism

Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Umoja Noble
Technological Slavery by The Mozilla Foundation & Global Voices

A downloadable zine collection (search "Decolonizing the Internet") that breaks down colonial patterns in AI, moderation, and digital infrastructure.

🪓 White Supremacy, Liberalism, and Structural Delusion

Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad (free workbook PDFs available)

Direct, reflective, no-BS guide for people who benefit from whiteness. It’s not meant to comfort—it’s meant to confront.

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Brilliant for UK readers or anyone who thinks racism is a U.S.-only issue. Exposes how “free speech” is used to gaslight Black British voices.

White Innocence by Gloria Wekker

A powerful deep-dive into how liberal European societies (especially the Netherlands) maintain racism while pretending to be post-racial.

🌍 Global South & Indigenous Resistance

A Map to the Door of No Return by Dionne Brand

A poetic, devastating meditation on diasporic memory, erasure, and the colonization of language and identity.

The Colonial Present by Derek Gregory

Shows how colonial violence is repackaged as democracy and “civilization” in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan—with chilling parallels to media framing.

Our History Is the Future by Nick Estes

A powerful Indigenous-led critique of how colonial law, free speech manipulation, and corporate media are used to silence land defense movements.

📁 Search Tip for PDFs:

Use search terms like: “[Book Title]” + filetype:pdf or “[Book Title]” + “full text” + “PDF” or search on platforms like:

Library Genesis
Z-Library
PDF Drive
Internet Archive
libcom.org (for radical zines and political texts)

Christian’s Substack

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?