Policing Hate: Have We Abandoned Freedom and Equality?

 Here is a link to the paper, written by Joanna Williams.  Click on the link and download the pdf file.

The paper pertains to the UK.  The US is headed in the same direction.  The paper is a must read for people who want to know where we are headed and the danger of Progressive ideas about speech.

Here are some excerpts.

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In March 2019, Caroline Farrow, a well-known Catholic commentator, writer and the UK Campaign Director for CitizenGO, was contacted by Surrey Police and threatened with an interview under caution for comments she had made on Twitter. Farrow was told that if she did not attend the interview, she would be arrested. The case was dropped when her accuser withdrew the complaint.

Farrow told me:

‘Because I’ve got a public profile and I’ve picked up some detractors over the years, people are now reporting me to the police and accusing me of hate crimes all the time, either for things I’ve said on Twitter or, if they can’t find anything I have said, for making anonymous accounts. The first time the police got in touch with me about these accusations was in March 2019.’

‘I had been in touch with the police myself, long before this time. I first contacted the police about a blog that was being published online about me. The people behind it were publishing photos of my children, they insulted me, they called me a Catholic cunt, a Catholic bitch, and made obscene sexual suggestions. They published details identifying my childrens’ schools and also outlined detailed knowledge of the journey my eldest child makes to and from school every day. Our details and photographs were published on online pornography sites and explicit posts were made in our children’s names on teen transgender forums. A malicious online complaint was submitted to the NSPCC – which prompted a same-day welfare check from the police and resulting trauma to the children. I reported this to the police, but they did nothing. Even when these people threatened to come to my house, the police still did nothing. All the while it was getting worse.’

‘The police eventually interviewed one man under caution, someone who owned the original site. But then the site moved and the original owner denied having anything to do with it. I was subject to this tsunami of harassment and the police again refused to do anything about it. At one point a police officer asked me, “Are you posting about transgender issues online? You just need to stop that.” I felt like a rape victim being told they asked for it because they were wearing a short skirt.’

‘What was going on was a hate crime, I was being targeted for my Catholic faith, but the police were not doing anything about it. Worse, they told me that because I was continuing to speak out about what was happening to me, I was asking for it. I told the police I was experiencing a form of cyber bullying that leads people to kill themselves. At this point I was asked for the names and ages of all my children so that social services could be contacted as I had made a suicide threat.’

‘Then, in the middle of all of this, in March 2019, the police phoned me up and told me they wanted to speak to me about tweets I had made back in October in which I misgendered Susie Green’s daughter. I knew I had been on Good Morning Britain with Susie Green [Director of Mermaids, a charity for transgender childen] at that time. But the police wouldn’t let me know the full details of what I was being accused of until I came in for an interview. I knew I’d said that she had had her son castrated and that this was child abuse. But I told them this was within my right to free expression. I hadn’t bombarded Suzie Green with tweets, I hadn’t even copied her into the offending tweet.’

‘What really shocked me was the disparity. My family had been threatened, at one point we were receiving takeaways up to 10 times a day, we were receiving notifications of massive orders from companies supplying sex toys and goods to the adult entertainment industry, my children had been targeted and threatened and the police did nothing. Yet I had sent four tweets offering a social commentary on an activist who had chosen to put her story into the public domain and I was being investigated by the police. You get the feeling it’s just political. They see this noisy, critical woman who is always complaining and think this is not worth bothering about; whereas as soon as Susie Green complains, a police force comes and knocks on my door. There’s been a blog post written musing about whether or not it would be worth disfiguring my children with acid, or whether or not someone is waiting in the bushes “to stab me in the pussy”, and no-one does anything. But a few tweets about Susie Green prompts a police investigation.’

‘The police told me that I needed to come in for the interview there and then. I said I wanted to get a solicitor but they told me I should use the duty solicitor. I insisted I wanted my own solicitor and they said to me, “if you don’t turn up for this interview then a warrant will be issued for your arrest”. I told them there was a national conversation about transgender rights and I was just expressing my opinion and I was protected under Article 10 of the European Human Rights Act. She told me I was being charged under the Malicious Communications Act.’

‘When I made all this public, it got dropped. All I had been told was that I had been accused of misgendering Susie Green’s daughter. Susie Green went on the Victoria Derbyshire Show to say that she’d decided to drop the charges against me because she didn’t want me to be the victim. It felt like she was using the police as her personal army because she informed the world she was dropping the charges against me on national television, but the police didn’t contact me to let me know this for another two or three days. The police gave me a “mind as you go” warning and told me to watch what I say in the future. Their LGBT liaison officer contacted me to say, “Well, a lot of people have been hurt over the past few days.”’

‘I’m now being sued, for a second time, by a notorious transgender activist (don’t name them) who is attempting to re-open a settled claim against me for comments they are alleging I made over a year ago. I feel constantly exposed. And because of the ongoing harassment, I feel constantly on edge, every time the doorbell rings I jump. I don’t trust the police to help me anymore. I try to rationalise things. I like to think I wouldn’t be arrested for a false accusation, but I don’t have that confidence any more. The police view towards me seems to be that because I put myself out there on social media then I deserve everything I get.’

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In January 2015, 12 people were murdered and 11 others injured in a terrorist attack at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Islamist terrorists sought to avenge the magazine for featuring cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. Their act sent a broader message that satirising Islam and portraying images of Mohammed is punishable by death. In October 2020, a French school teacher, Samuel Paty, was brutally murdered by an Islamist terrorist after he showed his students the Charlie Hebdo cartoons in a class on the importance of free speech. The Law Commission’s proposals, and indeed their choice of example – the posting  of inflammatory cartoons online – shows that in the UK, free expression will be policed by the state on behalf of Islamists. Potential terrorists see that violent acts lead to reward, in this case the reintroduction of blasphemy law, albeit under a different name.

The all-encompassing nature of the Law Commission’s proposals is made clear:

‘We provisionally propose a single offence of disseminating inflammatory material, based on the existing sections 23 and 29G of the Public Order Act 1986, which would explicitly, but not exhaustively, include: (1) written and other material; (2) plays and other staged performances; (3) television and radio broadcasts; (4) distribution and exhibition of film, sound and video recordings; (5) video games; and (6) online material. We provisionally propose that this offence should be distinct from the “use of words or behaviour” offence currently in sections 18 and 29B of the Public Order Act 1986.’

The Law Commission calls for a particular focus on inflammatory material spread on social media, citing a 2017 report by the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee which found that it was ‘shockingly easy to find examples of material that was intended to stir up hatred against ethnic minorities on all three of the social media platforms that we examined – YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.’ They conclude:

‘If social media companies are capable of using technology immediately to remove material that breaches copyright, they should be capable of using similar content to stop extremists re-posting or sharing illegal material under a different name. We believe that the Government should now assess whether the continued publication of illegal material and the failure to take reasonable steps to identify or remove it is in breach of the law, and how the law and enforcement mechanisms should be strengthened in this area.'

Not only does the Law Commission propose the policing of all forms of communication, it also calls for more groups to be protected by ‘stirring up’ offences. It calls for protection to cover race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity, disability and women. At the same time, their Consultation Paper argues that:

‘it would be possible to replace the offences in sections 18 and 29B with a single offence of unlawfully stirring up hatred, with the definition of “hatred” listing not only each of the current and proposed characteristics, but also hatred against a group defined by a combination of more than one characteristic.’