It seems UK defines hate speech differently depending on who incites. Some people are allowed to incite while others aren't- kind of like US universities.
Multiple factions claim that 'the other side' is getting away with things that their side isn't. What unifies everyone is that they are cognitively preconfigured to form these sorts of impressions without reference to any proper data.
Thank heavens that I don’t live in the UK. The fact that freedom of speech is held in such low esteem there is a clear sign that they are acting out of fear instead of principle when it comes to maintaining a free society.
You might want to listen to what Sacha Baron Cohen has to say about close calls during his career. Apparently the only times he and his crew were in genuine fear for their safety was during the filming of Borat and Bruno in the united states. That chimes with the experience of Ivor Dembina, a far less well known Jewish comedian in UK. He did a stand up show called 'this is not a subject for comedy' in the 2000. During that he explained that as a Jew he didn't feel any safer when he toured parts of the US outside of New York than when he was doing peace observer work in Gaza; he states that and he was actually advised by knowledgable locals in both regions to keep his Jewishness very much to himself. And yet the US has lots going for it. Perhaps we should both try and hold more than one idea in our heads about individual countries at once.
No kidding. And how many times was he arrested for his filming of Borat? Concrete arrests by authorities trump vague feelings of danger. Good try. These things are not the same.
Somehow, I don’t see Greg as an “activist.” I think the news person was posturing so as to make speech suppression appear as the default option for reasonable people.
FIRE's mission focuses on America, but we've been banging on about the situation in the UK for a long time. I was in London last October sounding the alarm on radio and in public speeches.
My understanding is that that GL was arrested under Section 3A of the Public Order Act 1986-which relates to the offence of intentional harassment, alarm, or distress. It has nothing to do with incitement. The precise mechanism has alot in common with common law assault, which includes causing someone to apprehend harm. The police have asked for better guidance on this section as it leaves to much for jobbing police officers to work out on the fly. I personally think the section has been shown to be very open to the sorts of problems we are seeing with GL. However there is nothing new about the basic problem-the Thatcher administration consciously designed the Public Order Act to delegate a broad range of powers to the police. It's been a bug bear of human rights/civil liberties enthusiasts ever since.
Hi Brit here. This article is depressing, not only because it accurately reflects the mess we have got ourselves into in the UK, but because I don't see any way out of the mess.
We are a small densely populated country where mob violence has historically been common (our football hooligans were the exemplar of this) and free speech has been made to take a back seat in the cause of protecting minorities (the disabled, the religious, the non-white, homosexuals, now transpeople etc) from verbal attacks inciting negative consequences for the minority in question. There's a broad consensus that, I paraphrase "burn down the hotels with the (brown people) in them" is criminal incitement- that's our choice, as a nation.
But we have ended up judging it "criminal" to express negative opinions about any of the minority groups, or to express an opinion that is offensive to any individual in the minority group.
Because we don't have your First Amendment we are currently at the mercy of activists, who have weaponised the laws for their own agenda, and of a "captured" senior police bureaucracy who have adopted wholesale the opinions of the activists about what is "hate speech".
The only ray of light is that our current (left-wing) Government is expressing concern at the police overreach, and have read and understood the mood in the country. How this ends though I do not know..
Sure, it's reasonable to think that the recent direction of travel has been towards fairly a authoritarian attitude to speech against minorities. However, the British state has a long history of silencing dissent, but doing so to 'protect minorities' is admittedly a new thing. We could notice that the Public Order Act which forms the basis for much of the current problem was introduced by the Thatcher administration in 1986, during a period when that administration literally gave M15 an office in BBC broadcasting house with orders to screen and veto the appointment of news editors that weren't onside. The Act itself was needed to equip the police to attack trade unions and others who disagreed with the government. You may recall that the policing of the miners strike was so repressive that local police forces wouldn't cooperate, so Thatcher had the army dress up as the police to beat people up before charging them with public order offences. Let's also notice the UK has a long history of banging people up for other, non union related speech, most usually for offending the sensibilities of the Christian right (as was the case with Oz magazine where actual prison sentences were handed out for sexualised Rupert the Bear cartoons). We could also notice that the last successful blasphemy conviction was in 1979-incidentally it was the first and last conviction for blaspheming against Islam, and the law was changed shortly after. That didn't stop Christian Voice from relentlessly harassing artists.and publishers through the courts for decades to come though. I'm going to channel Ghandi now and say that British historical literacy would be a good thing.
My historical literacy was earned by hosting striking miners, who slept on my floor. I'm an old, leftie Brit. I don't trust the state and I also don't trust so called "progressives" who disregard the views of the working class and are using the "thought police" to keep them quiet.
There's a big difference between the British State's attempts to silence dissent ( I remember the insanity of the BBC muting the voices of Irish politicians) and the current culture war - which was started by people who, in my opinion, have abandoned the hard slog of traditional left-wing politics for the easy life of "identity politics" - as learned from the US.
Up until now we could fight politicians and their individual policies, through protest and the ballot box. We could argue our case. But what do you do when every branch of government and the police have been co-opted to push one contested ideology? When the police can be used, by individuals, to stop us from saying anything that they don't want to be said?
This is not about protecting minorities from hate crime any more, it's about enforcing certain points of view as the only permissable ones, on pain of punishment - a heresy hunt, just like the Church used to run.
The UK for years has been in deep self imposed shit that’s simply incomprehensible from the other side of the pond. I do understand that the exact same view of the US is probably felt by those overseas. What I simply don’t understand is the lack of freedom of speech, the kowtowing to Muslim immigrants and especially the seeming tolerance of the rape of their daughters. What the fuck has happened to the country of Shakespeare and Churchill? When will they once again show some pride in their long heritage?
Yes the man that was arrested was incredibly odious but to treat him as if he was Timothy McVeigh is most appropriate. His speech is by no means any less disgusting. But that's the problem with free speech we have to defend the rights of the scoundrel or else it's us that are next
Remember that day in 2017 when the First Amendment was temporarily suspended? There was a march to protest the impending removal of the Lee Statue. Antifa and allies decided they had to stop it. The police chief said "Let them fight, it will easier to shut it down." Normally, of course, police separate the two opposing groups, but not this time. There was some mutual combat or maybe simply acts in self-defense by the pro-Lee protesters, yet only those from one side spent time in jail or prison. The true story was in the official report by ex-US Attorney Heaphy, but no one paid attention to it so Heaphy went on to become chief investigative counsel for the dubious Jan 6 Committee. No "hate speech" laws were needed to carry out this project, just a 21st Century more moderate equivalent of lynch law. Trump objected a bit for one day, everyone else joined in the wolf pack or remained silent.
It seems UK defines hate speech differently depending on who incites. Some people are allowed to incite while others aren't- kind of like US universities.
That’s what makes hate speech laws a bad idea generally. They are _always_ applied selectively.
Multiple factions claim that 'the other side' is getting away with things that their side isn't. What unifies everyone is that they are cognitively preconfigured to form these sorts of impressions without reference to any proper data.
Thank heavens that I don’t live in the UK. The fact that freedom of speech is held in such low esteem there is a clear sign that they are acting out of fear instead of principle when it comes to maintaining a free society.
The UK is somewhere between Yemen and North Korea on my “must visit” list.
You might want to listen to what Sacha Baron Cohen has to say about close calls during his career. Apparently the only times he and his crew were in genuine fear for their safety was during the filming of Borat and Bruno in the united states. That chimes with the experience of Ivor Dembina, a far less well known Jewish comedian in UK. He did a stand up show called 'this is not a subject for comedy' in the 2000. During that he explained that as a Jew he didn't feel any safer when he toured parts of the US outside of New York than when he was doing peace observer work in Gaza; he states that and he was actually advised by knowledgable locals in both regions to keep his Jewishness very much to himself. And yet the US has lots going for it. Perhaps we should both try and hold more than one idea in our heads about individual countries at once.
No kidding. And how many times was he arrested for his filming of Borat? Concrete arrests by authorities trump vague feelings of danger. Good try. These things are not the same.
Somehow, I don’t see Greg as an “activist.” I think the news person was posturing so as to make speech suppression appear as the default option for reasonable people.
Thank goodness I am a US and UK citizen. Thanks for writing this, Greg and co.
Better late than never.
But I wish FIRE had spoken up about this sooner. And I wish they had said something about Sam Melia.
I have been talking about the situation in Britain for at least 10 years
Thanks.
FIRE's mission focuses on America, but we've been banging on about the situation in the UK for a long time. I was in London last October sounding the alarm on radio and in public speeches.
Greg has also hardly been silent on this:
https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/online-censorship-in-the-uk-has-led?utm_source=publication-search
https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/word-wars-the-british-empire-strikes?utm_source=publication-search
https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/censors-nerf-the-world-the-uk-goes?utm_source=publication-search
https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/barbara-oakley-launches-mooc-feat?utm_source=publication-search
My understanding is that that GL was arrested under Section 3A of the Public Order Act 1986-which relates to the offence of intentional harassment, alarm, or distress. It has nothing to do with incitement. The precise mechanism has alot in common with common law assault, which includes causing someone to apprehend harm. The police have asked for better guidance on this section as it leaves to much for jobbing police officers to work out on the fly. I personally think the section has been shown to be very open to the sorts of problems we are seeing with GL. However there is nothing new about the basic problem-the Thatcher administration consciously designed the Public Order Act to delegate a broad range of powers to the police. It's been a bug bear of human rights/civil liberties enthusiasts ever since.
Hi Brit here. This article is depressing, not only because it accurately reflects the mess we have got ourselves into in the UK, but because I don't see any way out of the mess.
We are a small densely populated country where mob violence has historically been common (our football hooligans were the exemplar of this) and free speech has been made to take a back seat in the cause of protecting minorities (the disabled, the religious, the non-white, homosexuals, now transpeople etc) from verbal attacks inciting negative consequences for the minority in question. There's a broad consensus that, I paraphrase "burn down the hotels with the (brown people) in them" is criminal incitement- that's our choice, as a nation.
But we have ended up judging it "criminal" to express negative opinions about any of the minority groups, or to express an opinion that is offensive to any individual in the minority group.
Because we don't have your First Amendment we are currently at the mercy of activists, who have weaponised the laws for their own agenda, and of a "captured" senior police bureaucracy who have adopted wholesale the opinions of the activists about what is "hate speech".
The only ray of light is that our current (left-wing) Government is expressing concern at the police overreach, and have read and understood the mood in the country. How this ends though I do not know..
Good luck!
Thanks, we need it!
Sure, it's reasonable to think that the recent direction of travel has been towards fairly a authoritarian attitude to speech against minorities. However, the British state has a long history of silencing dissent, but doing so to 'protect minorities' is admittedly a new thing. We could notice that the Public Order Act which forms the basis for much of the current problem was introduced by the Thatcher administration in 1986, during a period when that administration literally gave M15 an office in BBC broadcasting house with orders to screen and veto the appointment of news editors that weren't onside. The Act itself was needed to equip the police to attack trade unions and others who disagreed with the government. You may recall that the policing of the miners strike was so repressive that local police forces wouldn't cooperate, so Thatcher had the army dress up as the police to beat people up before charging them with public order offences. Let's also notice the UK has a long history of banging people up for other, non union related speech, most usually for offending the sensibilities of the Christian right (as was the case with Oz magazine where actual prison sentences were handed out for sexualised Rupert the Bear cartoons). We could also notice that the last successful blasphemy conviction was in 1979-incidentally it was the first and last conviction for blaspheming against Islam, and the law was changed shortly after. That didn't stop Christian Voice from relentlessly harassing artists.and publishers through the courts for decades to come though. I'm going to channel Ghandi now and say that British historical literacy would be a good thing.
My historical literacy was earned by hosting striking miners, who slept on my floor. I'm an old, leftie Brit. I don't trust the state and I also don't trust so called "progressives" who disregard the views of the working class and are using the "thought police" to keep them quiet.
There's a big difference between the British State's attempts to silence dissent ( I remember the insanity of the BBC muting the voices of Irish politicians) and the current culture war - which was started by people who, in my opinion, have abandoned the hard slog of traditional left-wing politics for the easy life of "identity politics" - as learned from the US.
Up until now we could fight politicians and their individual policies, through protest and the ballot box. We could argue our case. But what do you do when every branch of government and the police have been co-opted to push one contested ideology? When the police can be used, by individuals, to stop us from saying anything that they don't want to be said?
This is not about protecting minorities from hate crime any more, it's about enforcing certain points of view as the only permissable ones, on pain of punishment - a heresy hunt, just like the Church used to run.
The UK for years has been in deep self imposed shit that’s simply incomprehensible from the other side of the pond. I do understand that the exact same view of the US is probably felt by those overseas. What I simply don’t understand is the lack of freedom of speech, the kowtowing to Muslim immigrants and especially the seeming tolerance of the rape of their daughters. What the fuck has happened to the country of Shakespeare and Churchill? When will they once again show some pride in their long heritage?
This is exactly why FIRE is the only political organization I support financially. Bravo, as always!
Thank you, Cate!
Many thanks for your work.
Yes the man that was arrested was incredibly odious but to treat him as if he was Timothy McVeigh is most appropriate. His speech is by no means any less disgusting. But that's the problem with free speech we have to defend the rights of the scoundrel or else it's us that are next
Remember that day in 2017 when the First Amendment was temporarily suspended? There was a march to protest the impending removal of the Lee Statue. Antifa and allies decided they had to stop it. The police chief said "Let them fight, it will easier to shut it down." Normally, of course, police separate the two opposing groups, but not this time. There was some mutual combat or maybe simply acts in self-defense by the pro-Lee protesters, yet only those from one side spent time in jail or prison. The true story was in the official report by ex-US Attorney Heaphy, but no one paid attention to it so Heaphy went on to become chief investigative counsel for the dubious Jan 6 Committee. No "hate speech" laws were needed to carry out this project, just a 21st Century more moderate equivalent of lynch law. Trump objected a bit for one day, everyone else joined in the wolf pack or remained silent.
Trump caused J6 Insurrection by saying "fight" in a speach.