Europe’s free-speech emergency, with Paul Coleman

The Brendan O'Neill Show

spiked

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Paul Coleman – executive director of ADF International and author of Censored – returns to The Brendan O’Neill Show. Paul and Brendan discuss Britain’s slide into censorship, how quoting the Bible became a crime in Finland, and how Islamic blasphemy laws conquered Europe. Watch Think Before You Post, a spiked documentary on the rise of the British speech police, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0smxO4WiOA Order Brendan O’Neill’s After the Pogrom now from: 🇬🇧 📕 Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/After-Pogrom-October-Israel-Civilisation/dp/1068719303/ 🇺🇸 📕 Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/After-Pogrom-October-Israel-Civilisation/dp/1068719303/ Support spiked: https://www.spiked-online.com/support/ Sign up to spiked’s newsletters: https://www.spiked-online.com/newsletters/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	How's the business going?
0:01.2	We're busier than ever, but struggling to get the staff we need. Recruiting can be such a distraction. We gave Job Centre Plus a try, and they've really helped us out. Really? Yeah. It was dead easy. We got our own employer advisor, Julie, who helped advertise our jobs, shortlisted candidates for us and letters interview at the Job Centre. We've hired some great people, and Job Centre Plus really took the hassle out of it, And there was no fee.
0:22.8	Brilliant. That's straight on my to-do list. view at the Job Centre. We've hired some great people and Job Centre Plus really took the hassle
0:21.2	out of it and there was no fee. Brilliant. That's straight on my to-do list. Find out more at
0:26.0	business.gov.com.com. Eligibility criteria apply. Ready to launch your business? Get started with
0:32.5	the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business
0:38.9	with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your
0:43.7	products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time, from startups to scale
0:48.8	ups, online, in person and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you.
0:58.7	Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup.
1:05.5	I think in terms of freedom of speech, things have never been worse.
1:09.3	Pretty much the first question that everyone asks me, no matter where I go around the world,
1:12.6	is what is happening in Britain in regard to free speech? There's only so much speech that they have the power to censor.
1:16.6	And so I believe it's a deliberate feature of these hate speech rules and how they operate
1:23.6	to go after high-profile targets in order to create this chilling effect for everyone else.
1:30.3	If you take these combined concepts of hate speech and misinformation, you can ban anything.
1:39.3	Hello, welcome back to the Brendan O'Neill show with me, Brendan O'Neill, and my special
1:48.1	guest this week, Paul Coleman. Paul, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's always
1:52.5	good to have you on to catch up on freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion,
1:57.4	all these issues that you talk about and work on in your role at the
2:02.1	ADF International, the Alliance Defending Freedom, which listeners will be familiar with.
2:06.8	I feel there's a lot for us to talk about.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from spiked, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of spiked and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.