We Must Resist the Urge to Censor

Commentary The knife attack earlier this month in Perth, in which the assailant was subsequently shot and killed by police, is the second seemingly religiously motivated knife attack within a month. In both cases, the alleged attackers were young males, only 16 years old, and some of the blame is already being attributed to “online radicalisation.” The reaction to these events is now an all too familiar one—a demand for greater censorship of the internet. Even some on the political right are beating this drum. That would be a mistake. We have seen far too often how this “do something, anything” mentality operates in practice....