'In a free state every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks.' - Spinoza

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Next Wednesday 13th February, Britain First leader Paul Golding and three others face trial for speeches they made at a Belfast rally more than a year ago.

Political dissident - Paul Golding.

Their prosecution is part of a concerted drive to criminalise populist opinion, especially in respect to Islam - which holds the British establishment in a vice-like grip.

The trial will be, to all intents and purposes, a political show trial, a warning to other free-speakers, and a prelude to universal application of Sharia blasphemy law in Britain.

In the former Soviet Union, a show trial of dissidents served to frighten other, would-be dissidents into silence. It's a form of propaganda favoured by totalitarian regimes.

In this era of universal surveillance, ideological coercion and breakneck Islamisation, citizens criticise Islam, Islamic organisations or Muslims at their peril, and can expect a tap on the shoulder and possible jail sentence for doing so.

And it's not only government enforcers who crack down instantly on perceived 'Islamophobia'; media companies too, are on the alert for it - indeed, more so than for sexual perversion or Islamist extremism.

Is it too cynical to suggest that their censorship policies are driven more by fear than by moral principle?

Everyone, especially people in the media, remembers the Charlie Hebdo attack:

In January 2015, Islamist terrorists shot journalists and police at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris.

Islam's presence in the West is paralysing free speech and threatens to erode Western values.

Fortunately, people are waking up to it.

A recent survey by YouGov shows that around half of French and Germans and more than a third of Britons and Americans believe Islam is incompatible with the values of their nations.

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A vast population of Muslims has been imported into the West, not by popular demand but by corrupt politicians, for crooked reasons of their own.

These same politicians lie to us that mass third-world immigration is for our own good, that 'diversity is our strength', that Islam is a 'religion of peace'.

The results of their treachery are domestic terrorism on an unprecedented scale, a decades-long epidemic of child gang-rape, extremist preaching in mosques and schools, 'honour' killings and other mediaeval crap to regularly pollute our news headlines.

Even security service warnings of a growing jihadist threat haven't stopped European governments letting in fighting-age men from war-torn Islamic countries, as if they were a priceless commodity in a time of shortage.

It's insane.

With mass immigration, our politicians are like mad scientists throwing random ingredients into a test tube.

They point gleefully to the smoking, fizzing, overheating mess and proclaim it a successful experiment - whilst we brace ourselves for the inevitable explosion!

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We in Britain are presently in a fight for the survival of our free and open society.

Freedom of speech is our forebears' greatest legacy. It was won at incalculable cost, and we will not relinquish it merely to save the feelings of hostile, touchy or uncomprehending minorities.

Curtailment of free speech, whether through creeping 'hate speech' legislation or the edicts of unelected corporate billionaires, is too high a price to pay for absorbing alien cultures into British society.

No creed or belief system can be immune from criticism, insult or ridicule - which are grist to the mill of free speech in any mature democracy.

This is our country, and we make the rules.

Those who don't like them should leave.

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Meanwhile, Christians among us should pray for a miracle of a fair trial in Belfast next week.

No surrender!