"Hate speech is the definition of free speech." Where might you expect to hear this rallying call? A Tommy Robinson forum? A meeting of the Thomas Mair fan club?

No. This was the defining overture of a book launch and panel discussion at the Reform club, gilded epicentre of 'the establishment'.

It was supposedly a private affair where delegates felt free to express their true beliefs unfettered by the need to feign concern for liberal values in public, but one which I and fellow activists managed to gatecrash. We had crossed the Styx to find ourselves in the seventh circle of hell.

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Surrounded by a clutch of Tufton vampires we took our seats: the Global Warming Policy Foundation's chief denier Benny Pieser, his acolyte Harry Wilkinson and trustee Kathy Gyngell to my left; Lord Frost and Jacob Rees Mogg to my right.

Championed by Ann Coulter, the master of proceedings was Michael Walsh, editor of the book being launched, Against the Corporate Media (with contributions from out-and-out nazi apologists like Sebastian Gorka) which was given away with the invitation to take as many as we wanted to distribute to friends.

Scattered with the tired tropes of the conspiracist's playbook: the great reset, Covid vaccine scepticism, environmentalism as a war on freedom and prosperity, and the attribution of all the world's ills to, wait for it…George Soros, this book was not, it seemed, a commercial enterprise but a call to arms.

The frontispiece dedicated the collection to sacked GB News presenter "Mark Steyn, free speech warrior".

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This attribution could be taken as literal. Writing in his book, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, of what he has called the danger of 'Eurabia', (a conspiracy that suggests globalist entities aim to Islamise and Arabise Europe, Steyn concluded: "If you cannot outbreed the enemy, cull 'em."

The stage was set. Hate speech and incitement to violence, the order of the day.

Amongst those sharing the platform were the doyens of the neocon cabal.

It is worth exploring their vision of a better world through the lens of their interpretation of free speech.

Over coffee, I collared Toby Young and pressed him as to whether there was a line to be drawn when free-speech-turned-hate-speech leads to violence and harm. He merely insisted that there were laws to deal with such outcomes.

But for the likes of Jo Cox or those who, for example, commit suicide due to press goading like Caroline Flack, the law comes too late.

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At the time, MP Daisy Cooper put it succinctly: "In Britain we have trial by courts and not trial by media for a reason. Regardless of what took place she should not have been hounded to death by tabloid newspapers desperate for clickbait."

Previous commentary by panellist John McGuirk of Gript Media perfectly illustrates my point. When writing for Gript in 2019, he falsely linked the socialist republican party Éirígí to the killing of journalist Lyra McKee.

In the maelstrom of Northern Irish politics, using McKee's murder as a political weapon on national TV without accurate facts will undoubtedly have endangered those accused. His subsequent apology would have been empty had those maligned come to harm.

Earlier punditry by fellow panellist Ben Scallan further reinforces my point.

In an interview on Gript TV, he dismissed "hate motivation," stating, "If you're going to deal with crime, I'd rather you deal with people actually getting punched in the face, and mugged, and robbed". In doing so he patently fails to recognise that addressing violence essentially means preventing the incitement of it.

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