Free Speech Hero Elon Musk Pays Court Fees For Anti-Vaxxer Who Tried To Silence Her Critics, For Free Speech

That sure is how that works!

Last August, notoriously thin-skinned billionaire Elon Musk announced on the Social Media Site Still Known As Twitter To Anyone Who Isn’t A Fascist that he would pay the legal bills of anyone “unfairly treated by [their] employer due to posting or liking something on this platform,” with “no limit.”

This is not because he is any kind of big fan of workers’ rights — in fact, it is the quite the opposite — but rather because he wants to make it more socially acceptable to, say, use racial slurs or get misogynistic or spread harmful conspiracy theories.

Musk announced on Sunday morning that he will be paying the legal bills of one Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill, a Canadian doctor who said a bunch of very stupid things about COVID and the vaccine on Twitter during the pandemic.

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Musk wrote:

X is proud to help defend Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill against the government-supported efforts to cancel her speech. Dr. [Kulvinder Kaur Gill] is a practicing physician in Canada, specializing in immunology and pediatrics. 

Because she spoke out publicly on Twitter (now X) in opposition to the Canadian and Ontario governments’ COVID lockdown efforts and vaccination mandates, she was harassed by the legacy media, censored by prior Twitter management, and subjected to investigations and disciplinary proceedings by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario that resulted in “cautions” being placed on her permanent public record.

The legal battles that ensued cost Dr. Gill her life savings, and she now owes $300,000 in a court judgment due Monday. When Elon Musk learned earlier this week about her crowdfunding campaign to pay the judgment […], he pledged to help. X will now fund the rest of Dr. Gill’s campaign so that she can pay her $300,000 judgment and her legal bills.

Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and a critical defense against totalitarianism in all forms. We must do whatever we can to protect it, and at X we will always fight to protect your right to speak freely.

But here’s the irony! The money she owes is not from a lawsuit with her employer, but from her own defamation lawsuit in which she sued 23 journalists, news outlets, and other doctors for — wait for iiiiiiiiiiit! — criticizing her on Twitter.

The judge in the case dismissed her lawsuit on anti-SLAPP grounds, ruling she used the legal system to limit public debate around an important issue, and ordered her to pay the court fees of the 23 people whose free speech she tried to curtail. Whose right to speak freely, and accurately, she wanted to quash.

One of the people she sued, Dr. Angus Maciver, criticized Gill for blocking him on Twitter after he had criticized her attacks on the Ontario Medical Association (OMA).

Via LawTimes News:

Gill tweeted that the OMA had a “toxic culture of misogyny, bullying, and intimidation” and called its leadership “vermin,” “corrupt,” and “a threat to patient care.” Maciver tweeted in response that COD was “continuing to fragment the profession in Ontario,” and Gill blocked him. Gill continued to criticize the OMA, and a year later, Maciver tweeted that she and other COD members were “corksoakers” and “twats.” He later publicly apologized for the tweets and was disciplined by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

Yes, that definitely seems like the kind of thing to sue someone over! Clearly, this woman is a big fan of free speech.

Her suits against the Globe and Mail’s Andre Picard and Carly Weeks and freelance journalist Alheli Picazo were similarly weak.

The claim against Andre Picard, Weeks, and Picazo originated in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gill tweeted that “we don’t need a vaccine,” those who did not understand this were “not paying attention,” and society could “safely return to normal life now” because of T-cell immunity and hydroxychloroquine.

Picard tweeted that Gill’s statement, contradicting the prevailing medical consensus, was “quite shocking.” She responded that it was “quite shocking that a journalist with absolutely no medical training is attacking an MD for stating scientific facts.” Gill also said his comment was not surprising because he was a Pierre Trudeau Foundation Mentor and member of a committee whose purpose is to “drive the political [World Health Organization] narrative.”

So, just to be clear, she said things that were factually incorrect and journalists pointed out that they were factually incorrect, so she sued them, because this supposedly “hurt her reputation.”

The judge, however, found that these criticisms met the criteria for fair comment, as they were on a matter of public interest, factual, recognizable as a comment and not motivated by malice. In an appeal, Gill tried to argue that they were motivated by malice against her, personally, and that a previous judge did not even consider that — but the appeals judge found that they were, in fact, motivated by a concern for public health. Obviously.

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Just to be clear, here — Gill sued people for disagreeing with her on Twitter, because she was saying deeply ignorant things about the COVID vaccine and lockdowns, and Musk is paying her legal bills because he believes she should have been allowed to do that. This has nothing to do with “free speech” and everything to do with wanting to promote Gill’s ignorance.

Of course, Gill probably shouldn’t expect that money to come rolling in any time soon, as Musk also promised to pay back a bakery after he ordered $16,000 worth of pies and then canceled after they had already bought everything to make them … and so far they’ve only seen $2000.

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