A columnist for the Telegraph has been arrested and held in a cell for saying that the rural minority should have “the same rights as blacks, Muslims and gays.”
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How quickly we learn what laws against “hate speech” are really about.November 21st, 2002 |
 41 comments to How quickly we learn what laws against “hate speech” are really about. |
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This is unbelieveable! I am still having trouble coming to grips with this – I simply can’t believe that a Western democracy has sunk this low this fast. I hate using the adjective “Orwellian” because it’s so often been abused but that is exactly what this is.
What is happening in Britain?!
(That anonymous callers turned him – doesn’t he have a right to confront his accusers? – doesn’t surprise me given the existence of weasley leftist swine out there, but the police officers who arrested them – WTF is their problem? If they had a shred of morality, they would have refused to carry out the arrest. They, and of course those who wrote this vile law in the first place, are the ones who belong in jail.)
I had independently made much the same comment, “I did not know we had sunk so low”, when posting the story in my own blog.
FeloniousPunk,
Like all state agents, police are just robots who obey the orders handed down to them by their political masters.
Unfortunately, the bulk of the British public are similarly disposed
How long before Natalie, or Perry, or David, end up in the cells as well?
I’m an optimist- you won’t see the inside of a nick until at least 2004.
This makes me physically ill. What are you going to do about it?
I recently got into hot water because I told a gag which made less than flattering remarks about radical Islam. So does this mean that Christopher Hitchens, Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds, and just about every other blogger who has done the same should wind up in jail?
How much longer can we put up with this crap?
So people complained to the police, I see. Such filthy rats do not deserve to live in a free society.
Most of them are in the US and have nothing to fear. I’m going to push my minority status here in the UK as a UN national. It’s part of my unique cultural heritage and expression of my national and american racial identity that I want the US Army et al to put a bullet in the head of each and every single Islamist who calls for jihad on my country.
So there you have it Tony Blair. Fuck You.
It could be argued that laws are written in words and that makes them a form of speech. These hate speech laws are designed to encourage state sponsored violence against the minority of people that don’t like minorities. Therefore, hate speech laws violate themselves and everyone who supports them should be punished under them.
That kind of logic is fun but it doesn’t really convince anyone.
In the States there is no law against being a racist however the social disapproval associated with it makes it very unfashionable. This means that White people are often very nervous around Blacks because one slip up could get the White person labeled a racist.
Blacks usually understand this. It’s almost standard practice for Black people to make some form of racial joke to let the White person know they aren’t easily offended. This lets the White person relax a bit and drop their guard.
But when a person can go to jail for what they say what will happen? All I can say is that I would stay away from members of any group I might accidentally offend. If I was forced to interact with them I would keep the contact as brief and formal as possible.
This leads to resentment and fear, which leads to hatred. So, hate speech laws will likely just cause hatred.
I’ve already confessed.
And I’ll be updating that post right this moment with a link to this story.
Well,
Us Yanks don’t look so foolish now, what with our revolution and all, do we?
You Brits might want to give some thought to expatriating. That sounds like a joke. It is not.
Would someone please provide a sensible plan to get rid of these fucking reactionary, overbearing, determined to follow the evil PC road to hell politicians and their shitty ridiculous laws. Someone raise a standard, I’ll follow it.
Damn right it’s not a joke. I left. Things like this were part of the reason.
In Britain, as everywhere in the West, the time for mere expostulating is obviously long past.
This may be a bit “off point” but a common parody in the US of the far right mocks certain individual’s belief in an evil superstate, the mysterious “black helicopters” of the UN surveilling the coutryside. It is stories like the one you posted which bring that parody closer to reality. All of this ties in with objections to the International Criminal Court, the Durban conference on racism, the UN treaty on women and the EU’s encroaching statism. Hey Britain, thanks for the Anglo-Saxon body of law and Enlightenment philosophy which we in the US now enjoy. Too bad Britain is casting it aside. Hopefully, we will learn from it. Oh, and the job market is looking up in the US. See ya’ soon.
What’s particularly depressing about these incidents is that anyone who gets into this kind of trouble, instead of growling something along the lines of, “Okay, so you think I’m a racist. So what? When did thought become a crime?” instead always bleats, “I’m not a racist!” like some terrified victim of a Moscow show trial desperately defending himself against charges of Trotskyism without even knowing what the fug Trotskyism is.
By the way, “multicultural” is simply a euphimism for the destruction of traditional white society. The multicultis don’t want everybody holding hands and dancing and singing songs of peace. They want to take you down.
This is sick. And a waste of our money and police time while real criminals are running around assaulting blacks, whites, gays, muslims and everyone else.
And for the record, we gay people don’t have equal rights with straight people, or blacks. Are they going to arrest me? That aside, Robin said nothing anyone could disagree with. Well, you’d have thought.
Now, if he were an immigrant,say, preaching to the faithful and telling them the Jews, the gays, adulterers and virtually everyone else must be exterminated, well maybe then the law might have a legitimate interest in him. Not that the state seems to give a f*** about what the islamofascists do.
And what would happen to a black person who said white people have more rights?
What can I say? This is pretty much unbelievable.
Amnesty International will often write to foreign governments about “prisoners of conscience”.
Perhaps we inhabitants of the blogosphere should adopt Robin Page as an “oppressed foreign journalist, jailed for expressing his opinions”, and everyone then bugging the hell out of the Home Secretary until someone fires the idiot cops who arrested Mr. Page.
Who do I contact first?
Kevin
I agree with Kevin.
Robin Page = Political prisoner
Contact these people:
Amnesty International Gloucester & Cheltenham Group
http://www.amnesty-gc.fsnet.co.uk/
“After being asked if he was a racist”
Does Section 18 (1) of the Public Order Act include a thought crimes provision?
“the Prince said he agreed with a farmer from Cumbria who claimed that the farming community enjoyed less protection from discrimination than black or gay people”
Maybe he should get arrested too.
Contact these people:
Amnesty International Gloucester & Cheltenham Group
http://www.amnesty-gc.fsnet.co.uk/
“After being asked if he was a racist”
Does Section 18 (1) of the Public Order Act include a thought crimes provision?
“the Prince said he agreed with a farmer from Cumbria who claimed that the farming community enjoyed less protection from discrimination than black or gay people”
Maybe he should get arrested too.
How about someone conducting a parody contest for the anti-hate crime posters? Maybe even print them out and post them up if you’re really brave or stupid.
http://lonewacko.com/blog/archives/000083.html
we are all racists now
racism is no longer simply the endorsement or practice of racial animus. It certainly isn’t a belief that race is fundamental to one’s character or ability – these ideals are now anti-racist. Racism is simply whatever an individual of an aggrieved group , or their approved proxy , deems to be racist.
I suspect that were the advocates for this policy to become the targets , they’d see the injustice in it all and seek more subtle means of coersion.
so perhaps the easiest way to motivate their enlightenment, is to simply ‘divine’ evidence against them and report this to the police. I am sure that each of them , somewhere , has written or spoken ideas that can be considered offensive, even if they were anti-racist at the time.
It’s our duty to ensure that England’s oppressed are fostered by people with clean minds !!
Yet another instance of me almost spluttering my coffee onto the monitor. There aren’t words strong enough to describe my contempt for the loathsome, whiny little crybabies that complained to the police. I think everybody is going to be keeping an eye on this one.
He should defect. Obviously He’s being oppressed in his home country. If he was Cuban, there would be no question of his fate.
David
Loathsome whiney little crybabies they may be but there could also be cold, political cunning behind the complaint. The Countryside movement is utterly despised and feared by the left and they have been trying to smear it as some sort of White Supremacist conspiracy for some time.
So Robin Page goes to jail while that crazed mullah in the Finsbury Park mosque is free to rave? What a joke.
You know, the more I think about Robin Page going into a cell while that piece of excrement Abu Hamza spews his hate from what is supposed to be a house of God the more enraged I become.
This has come about because the only people one can openly scorn and persecute these days are white males. I put up with it for a long time. Like a lot of white males I felt a modicum of guilt over the power white males have wielded in history.
I don’t feel that way any longer. The more people OTHER THAN white males have come to prevail, the stupider things have become. It’s time to put some good old fashioned southern white boy whup ass on the PC crowd and their fellow travelers. It’s time to quit allowing the numb nuts of the world to preach moral equivalence. It’s time to make some people meek and let them inherit about six feet of the earth.
HMG should take a serious look at this week’s rioting in Nigeria and contrast it to the reaction to Last Temptation of Christ as I did here. The moral of the story is that the countries with the longest history of protecting freedom to express real and perceived “hate speech” have the least amount of sectarian violence. Or as I put it, “America has the most peaceful ideological discord on the face of the Earth.”
Tony Blair, let your people go.
I really, really wish this story would be shown in US news instead of the usual coverage of brave Tony Blair going along with W.’s foreign policy. People in the States have entirely the wrong impression of Blair. They think he’s the one reliable US ally in Europe; they think he’s not like the rest of them. Wrong, he is just like the rest of them, in every despicable way, except that he makes much more effort to support US foreign policy.
The real problem between the US and Europe is the massive divergence in attitudes towards freedom, democracy and individual rights, and on that score Mr. Blair is leading Great Britain resolutely into the European humanitarian-police state darkness.
With the caveat that I haven’t seen any reportage of Page’s remarks except his own explanation of what they were, I have to say that if this was a cold political move it was an extremely foolish one. Surely all Mr Page need do is make sure he is actually charged and brought up in court? Wouldn’t he immediately become the martyr figure the countryside movement needs? And wouldn’t the government’s hate speech law then come under the kind of withering public scrutiny it should have been subjected to in the first place?
In short, for free speech, this cock-up is probably the best thing that could have happened.
Dave Farrell makes an excellent point. If this is the person they are going to use as a test case rather than some neo-fascist loonytoon, then Her Majesty’s Government has seriously fucked up. If they are idiotic enough to bring him to trial, we could have a golden opportunity to smash these evil laws and demolish Blair politically in a way that shows that being Pro-Liberty is GOOD POLITICS!
But I have my doubts we will get the chance.
If Robin Page does take his case to court, I am willing to send him some money to help defray his costs.
Right on, Tom!
I am quite outraged at this, partly because of the Animal-Farm injustice of it, and partly because I see American leftists pushing the same laws here.
I would gladly give what little money I could for his defense; perhaps giving him some of my monthly “ammunition allowance” instead of buying ammo.
Of course, considering the nonsensical gun laws in Britain, I’m sure accepting ammunition money could be construed as a crime.
BTW, I have sent off my e-mail to Amnesty. We shall see if they do anything.
Kevin
Kevin,
While I’m sure we agree on the probable absurdity of the arrest, the vast majority of folk on this side of the Atlantic see the US gun laws as the nonsensical ones.
Life really is a lot safer for everyone if the number of guns about the place is minimised.
If it is always wrong for someone other than the police or the military to be carrying a weapon, it makes law enforcement much more straight forward.
It becomes far more reasonable for the small number of armed police we have to assume someone carrying a gun is intending to use it with criminal intent if there is no legal reason to be carrying it in the first place.
If I see someone sufficiently paranoid to feel carring a gun is necessary, they are obviosly unstable enough to think they might need to use it. If they are that unstable, how can I know they are not going to use it on me, or someone I care for, in the mistaken belief that they are threatened?
If I am also carrying a gun, are they not more likely to feel so threatened?
Michael.
>Life really is a lot safer for everyone if the number of guns about the place is minimised.
The experience in the US has been just the opposite. The rate of firearms ownership has climbed steadily since the beginning of the republic. The non-suicide, non-accident death rate has never tracked with that rate. The only part of the population that will feel safer, and thus bolder in their behavior will be the criminals.
>If it is always wrong for someone other than the police or the military to be carrying a weapon, it makes law enforcement much more straight forward.
Obviously, easier. Since the felons avoid the police like the plague, the Policeman’s role will be reduced to chalking the victim’s outline and filling out the police report.
>It becomes far more reasonable for the small number of armed police we have to assume someone carrying a gun is intending to use it with criminal intent if there is no legal reason to be carrying it in the first place.
Currently, the Police have a monopoly on carrying firearms legally in the U.K. and yet gun crime is at an all time high. Why haven’t the criminals not come out wage pitched battle with the police? BECAUSE THEY AVOID THE POLICE! Thus the average citizen is alone in defending his life and property.
>If I see someone sufficiently paranoid to feel carring a gun is necessary, they are obviosly unstable enough to think they might need to use it. If they are that unstable, how can I know they are not going to use it on me, or someone I care for, in the mistaken belief that they are threatened?
paranoid? unstable? projecting? Why do you fear your fellow citizens? This the difference between you and I: I don’t assume that every person is a potential felon awaiting the means and opportunity to commit mayhem.
>If I am also carrying a gun, are they not more likely to feel so threatened?
NO!
Michael,
The bog-standard ovine British bleat: you’re only safe when you’re life is in the hands of well-meaning state agents.
As for policing is so much more ‘straightforward’ on this side of the Atlantic perhaps you can explain why crime rates are spiralling on this side of the Atlantic and dropping on the ‘gun-nuts’ side?
Apparently Michael just wanted to spew his “evils of guns” talk to try and get everyone to change the subject from the thought policing that is becoming more and more bold over there.
Just to put everyone at ease: here in America, we have been conducting a study on 1) the effects guns have on people and 2)evil guns themselves. In the first study we tested multiple types of firearms to EKG tests, CAT scans, and we even hooked it up to a lie detector. Much to the Anti-gun types dismay, all tests came up negative for either an aura of evil, or evil homeopathic sensations coming from the guns themselves.
For the second test, we found 6 brave souls who were willing to put their lives on the line to help us in our research. We have built a facility in the middle of the Alaskan tundra to watch a single semi-automatic pistol,24 hours a day, in pairs, in 8 hours shifts. We have been watching this gun now for almost 10 years, and it still has not jumped up by itself and shot anyone. If we can more funding, we are considering trying to antagonize it and call it bad names to see if that works.
All this just goes to prove: Guns don’t kill people, Criminals kill people.
It might be worthwhile before we all collapse in a fit of righteous anger finding out what he ACTUALLY said or did.
Robin Page is a notorious bigot, so I would be slightly wary of accepting his view of events at face value.
INFO: The actual words used by Robin Page when opening the speech for which he was arrested were: “In case any of you are of a fragile disposition and easily offended, please go for a walk round the lake and come back when I have finished. If there is a black, vegetarian, Muslim, asylum-seeking, one-legged, lesbian lorry-driver present, then you may be offended at what I am going to say, as I want the same rights that you have got already”. These are the only words the Police were interested in.
I live near Robin Page and have met him and heard speeches by him before. He is not a ‘notorious bigot’, as one poster claimed, but does express himself in colourful language. Inter alia, he plays in a cricket team [11 peope for you folk in the U.S.], six of whom are ‘Patels’ [Indian name].
If you want to express your views on the case, do so – politely please – via Gloucestershire Police – just put those two words into your search engine on the Internet to get the address/’phone number etc.
A support campaign for Robin Page has been started and – yes – this is an absolutely defining moment in the history of the United Kingdom. Robin Page is a well-known TV broadcaster and writer, and this is a sure sign that things will swiftly become more sinister [see also upcoming European Unon-wide laws on ‘racism’ and ‘xenophobia’, due to be introduced no later than June 2004].
T Bennett, 01279 635789, at: 66 Chippingfield, HARLOW, Essex, CM17 0DJ – United Kingdom
Matthew, whether or not he is a bigot – and I would’t know – he should not be subjected to arrest and interrogation for his views. That is called totalitarian policing.
Dragging the allegedly “untouchable” status of mad mullahs into it is a bit of a red herring though.
“As for policing is so much more ‘straightforward’ on this side of the Atlantic perhaps you can explain why crime rates are spiralling on this side of the Atlantic and dropping on the ‘gun-nuts’ side?”
err… well, homicide’s still much more of a problem in the US. As for the rest of it, there are so many other differences between our societies & economies, I don’t see how you can pin this down to gun ownership. In terms of murder though, I can’t think of many easier tools to kill someone with. Definitely makes the whole process, whether deliberate or accidental, a lot quicker & simpler.