The Slow Death of Free Speech in Britain (America, You're Next!)
From the Internet to the press to the public square, Brits' speech is being policed and punished
Freedom of speech no longer exists in Britain. The land that gave the world the Magna Carta, the Levellers, and John Stuart Mill—three of the key foundation stones of the modern conception of liberty—is now arresting and even jailing people simply for speaking their minds.
To see how bad things have got, consider three cases from the past week alone:
Twitter Crime
A man has been investigated by the police for a hashtag he used on Twitter. Seriously. Never mind speechcrime, or even tweetcrime—now we have hashtagcrime, the criminalisation even of those snarky, ironic asides people pepper the internet with. The man in question, Stephen Dodds, committed the sin of taking a photograph of two Muslims praying at Anfield, the home ground of Liverpool Football Club, and posting it on Twitter alongside the tweet: "Muslims praying at half-time at the match yesterday. #DISGRACE." That hashtag saw him become the victim of a furious Twitterstorm, the modern version of a tomato-wielding mob, and he was eventually reported to the cops. They investigated the matter for two weeks—two weeks!—before finally instructing Liverpool FC to take appropriate action against the evil hashtagger. Liverpool this week said it is deciding how to punish this man who dared to type the word "DISGRACE" on the internet.
Aggravated Meanness
2. A journalist, Katie Hopkins, has been reported to the police, and, bizarrely, to the International Criminal Court (ICC), for writing a column for the Sun in which she referred to the African migrants trying to get into Europe as "cockroaches." Hopkins is known for her outré views. She's been reported to the police before, for "hate crimes against fat people"! She said "fat people are just lazy," which is apparently a police matter now. The police didn't charge her over her fat-shaming, but they might well interrogate her over her migrant-bashing. Her cockroaches column caused the Twittersphere to go into meltdown; 285,000 people have signed a petition calling on the Sun to sack her (my preferred solution to Europe's migrant crisis is to swap these 285,000 intolerant Brits who fancy they have the right to shut down writers they don't like for 285,000 Africans who want to live in this country); and now the Society of Black Lawyers has reported Hopkins both to the UK cops and also to the ICC, demanding it investigate her comments "under the provisions of incitement to commit crimes against humanity." Am I allowed to call this a DISGRACE?
Shameful Bodies
TwitterThe Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has launched an investigation into the appropriateness of an advert for protein supplements which features a sexy woman in a bikini next to the words: "Are you beach-body ready yet?" The ads, which appear on the London Underground, have been vandalized by SJW feminists who claim they "body shame" the plump. More than 30,000 people have signed an online petition—again with the petitions—demanding the ads be removed because they make women "feel physically inferior to… the bronzed model." And now the ASA, overlord of advertising in Britain, which has the power to expunge from the public sphere any ad it judges to be offensive, is heeding the feminist vandalizers and subjecting the ad to one of its stiff-lipped investigations. We wait with bated breath to see if this unelected institution will graciously allow the rest of us, the 64 million people of Britain, to keep seeing this actually quite pleasant ad.
These three cases of the past week encapsulate the crisis of free-speaking in 21st century Britain. They show that no zone of British life is free from the peering eyes and always primed red pen of the new censorious set that longs to scribble out or shut down anything dodgy, eccentric, hateful, or upsetting (to some.)
The cases confirm that everywhere from the new virtual terrain of the Internet (that hashtag guy), to the old-fashioned printed press (the Katie Hopkins case), to the public square itself (that bikini ad), speech is under threat from an unholy marriage of intolerant virtual mobs, censorious Social Justice Warriors (SJWs), and state institutions keen to censor stuff in order to protect the allegedly fragile public.
And these cases aren't one-offs. In relation to the Internet, numerous people have been arrested for tweetcrimes. In 2010, a man was found guilty of being "grossly offensive" after he joked on Twitter about blowing up an airport in Nottingham that was experiencing severe delays. He was fined £385 and lost his job. His conviction was finally quashed on the third appeal. In 2012, a student was imprisoned for 56 days for making racist comments on Twitter. Also in 2012, a 20-year-old man was sentenced to 240 hours' community service for writing on his Facebook page: "All [British] soldiers should die and go to hell."
Other tweeters have been arrested and interrogated by police for making off-colour comments. In December last year, a 19-year-old man was arrested for making a joke about the truck disaster in Glasgow, when an out-of-control truck hit Christmas shoppers and killed six. The tweeter said: "So a bin lorry has apparently driven into 100 people in Glasgow eh, probably the most trash it's picked up in one day." For that, for doing what people have been doing for generations—making up stinging jokes in the wake of a tragedy—he was arrested. He was let off, but the police sent a chilling warning to us all: anyone who makes horrible jokes on Twitter we will be visited and given "strong words of advice," they said.
Various laws enable this police invasion of the online world: the Public Order Act of 1986, which criminalizes "racially aggravated" speech; the Malicious Communications Act of 2003, which criminalizes "offensive, indecent or menacing" speech in electronic media: these are the statutes the cops have used to colonise the internet.
The war on Katie Hopkins isn't a one-off, either. It follows hot on the heels of the Leveson Inquiry's creation of a chilling, choking climate in relation to the British press.
Launched by David Cameron in 2011 ostensibly to investigate phone-hacking at the News of the World, but actually having the vastly expanded remit of looking into the whole "culture, practice, and ethics of the press," the Leveson Inquiry has created a situation where Britain might soon have a press regulator set up by Royal Charter—which would be the first system of state-backed regulation of the press in Britain since 1695.
Even before that Royal Charter has been signed, Leveson has already, predictably, emboldened the petty censors in our midst who have long desired to silence offensive columnists, especially tabloid ones. As one agitator against Katie Hopkins admitted. "Leveson was a smack in the teeth" of newspapers like the Sun, he said, which should now feel less able to publish Hopkins' and others' "vicious… right-wing opinioneering." In short: A state-decreed, judge-led inquiry is leading to the castration of the press, and we should be happy about that.
As to the ASA's investigation of the bikini ad—such topdown regulation of the words and images of the public sphere has become commonplace in recent years.
The ASA has banned ads for hair products that were offensive to Christians (they featured nuns in suspenders); ads for an airline that had a woman dressed as a schoolgirl, on the basis that they could cause "widespread offence" (in fact, only 13 people complained about them); and even an ad for a supermarket that showed a girl taking the salad out of her hamburger on the grounds that it "condoned poor nutritional habits." Censorship in the UK has become so psycho that even the presentation of hamburgers is now strictly policed.
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Will they still publish Page 3?
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They stopped in the print editions back in January.
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*rends garments, puts ash on forehead*
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"America and Britain might be divided by a piece of paper...—you have one, we don't."\
And that's pretty much all it is. Americans can (and have) vanquish said scrap of paper by simply not reading it, or pretending you never read it. -
"Congress shall make no law" has turned out to be more a dare than a prohibition.
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"Congress shall make no law" means "have all the laws made by other parts of the government."
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Present-day constitutional scholars agree that "Congress shall make no law" was written by a guy stifling a chuckle as he wrote it.
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HE WUZ A SLAVE OWNER!
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FWIW speech is a lot more free now that it was 100 years ago. If you don't believe me look up cases like Whitney V California. Naturally since this is one of the few areas liberty has actually expanded it is important to the proggies and SJW's that we fix that.
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I think this is a good observation. It's easy to assume that everything always gets worse. And except for in the specific areas of commercial and election related speech, free speech protection has mostly improved in the US. There used to be a lot more censorship. And even electioneering speech has become a bit more free in recent years, despise noisy calls for further restriction.
I think there is reason to be optimistic about free speech in the US. There is plenty of reason to be vigilant and some reason for concern too. But I think we are still pretty far from going down the road the UK is on. Outside of the areas I mentioned, free speech is pretty absolute these days. You can publish any kind of wild criticisms of politicians or public figures, obscenity laws are generally ignored.
I'm not saying things are perfect, but it's never been perfect and it's still better than anywhere else. -
obscenity laws are generally ignored
Depends on the location and if a prosecutor gets word of it. Less dependent on location if it's a Federal case. You don't hear about most cases because they're not widely reported, like this one. Only a couple were by reported by Reason like this case. Most prosecutors don't actively go after it because it's no one knows ahead of time what exactly constitutes obscenity. Usually the process is, someone complains or the Post Office opens your package, LEOs investigate, prosecutor comes to you with a plea bargain. There are also harmful-to-minor laws that's similar to obscenity but more subjective and coercive.
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Or possibly you're mistaking a spurt of unconstitutionality in the nation for the history of the nation. The 1900s were the start of the era of federal growth, with the creation of the income tax the government started using taxation to commit unconstitutional social/economic engineering. With the advent of radio, television and moving pictures that 'need' for a centralized social/economic control became seen as far more important than constitution or freedom. While our first prohibition was by constitutional amendment because both citizens and politicians respected that the federal government did not have that power, and that amendment was repealed when we realized that a more powerful federal government was worse than the problem of alcohol, we quickly after that decided to just allow fiat power to prohibit anything it desired without actually giving the federal government that power. The power of the federal government to commit charity, something Madison himself could not find anywhere within the constitution he wrote, came with SSI, medicare, welfare. Power to tax or not tax speech, power not only of the federal government but even the state governments to abridge constitutionally guaranteed rights and turn our bill of rights into a bill of privileges, these all happened within the 1900's and the nation went into a biblical frenzy in the 50's. Today the democrats are just government dependents and the republicans are just democrats with bibles.
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I don't think so. Up until the 20th century states were completely free to restrict speech. It wasn't until the incorporation doctrine of the 14th amendment that the first amendment applied to states. See Gitlow V New York. The Alien and Sedition acts go all the way back to our founding. Lincoln famously persecuted the copper heads etc. There was an article here some time ago about libertarians romanticizing a much freer past. In some ways we were definitely more libertarian especially at the federal level but many of those statist abuses were going on in the past they were just being done by the states not the federal government.
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Thaddeus Russell has talked and written about how despite having some more restrictive laws people before were much more rebellious and able to get away with more. A lot more, even by smaller groups of people. As we modernize, there's a more to loose, resulting in greater compliance, more effective social engineering, so we have to rely on the beneficence of the state nowadays.
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By definition, anyone involved in vanquishing the Constitution, it's protections of rights, liberty and freedom is *not* American. Perhaps they were American at some point, but allowed themselves to be fundamentally transformed into something else, something not-American.
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Definition? I thought the definition of American was someone who was born in America or who has made it their permanent home.
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Don't interrupt Mr Flag Waver. He climbed on his soapbox with that apple pie for a reason.
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I get your point. I'm not completely sure I agree. Yes, in literal terms they are Americans. The thing is, in a real way, they're betraying the defining factor of what the country is, or at least is supposed to be, about. Is an Englishman who doesn't honor his country's traditions an Englishman? Is a Frenchman who doesn't respect his culture a Frenchman?
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Is a Scotsman not a true Scotsman?
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+1 Ardbeg
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But slavers like you believe government will follow the constitution, and keep their power limited. After you've lied to yourself, waved your flag, and told yourself you support freedom and liberty, do you then go and vote others into slavery.
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pay 97$ per hour my last pay check was $8500 working 1o hours a week online. My younger brother friend has been averaging 12k for months now and he works about 22 hours a week. I cant believe how easy it was once I tried it out.
This is wha- I do...... ✹✹✹✹✹✹ www.netjob80.com -
Speech codes are just the legal precedent for the eventual muslim ruling class to use to turn the UK into another Pakistan.
OTOH, nevermind I didn't say that.
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Pretty much. They are using the gullibility of leftists.
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It's not all gullibility. The psychotic left has consciously chosen to ally themselves with the Islamonazis because they share their virulent hatred of Christians and Jews.
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Truly, Judenhass is a plague worse than AIDS.
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All of Limeytardia will be in burquas within a decade. They have just given up and told the invading horde, 'hey, we're all a bunch of pussies, just take over, we won't fight back, we can't because we're a bunch of pussies'.
ISIS are licking their chops just watching all of these European countries turn into a bunch of spineless effeminate jelly fish, afraid to even speak any word that might offend some whiny bunch of immature spoiled children.
People get upset with me for saying this, like I am cheering on ISIS or something. But I'm only being honest about what is inevitable they way things are going.
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But on the good side, just think how much better most British women are going to look in burquas.
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The Burkini.
HAWT -
+1 SJW achievement award.
I mean, I'm saying that lots of British women have great bodies, but the face can be quite scary. So just put one of those black things on their head so that the face doesn't show and it's all good.
As a bonus, I'm wondering if the Islamists want to sell off some good limey orphans? We can never have too many.
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They have just given up and told the invading horde, 'hey, we're all a bunch of pussies, just take over, we won't fight back, we can't because we're a bunch of pussies'.
I think that's a fair assessment of Britain's and Europe's leadership.
My concern is that, by silencing rational opposition committed to Western ideals and principles, they won't wind up with the passive populace they intend, but nativists happy to play the game on the same terms as the Islamists.
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And what would be the downside?
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"All of Limeytardia will be in burquas within a decade"
It seems like you disapprove of this. What you have to understand is that Europeans can't resist the attractions of following some desert band wagon from Asia. They did it with Christianity, they'll do it again with Islam.
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You're confusing the current governments, which have to curry favor with the elites, with the people. Anti-immigration and even some overtly racist right-wing parties in Europe are experiencing a meteoric rise at the polls, indicating that Europeans are not interested in rolling over. (Please do not interpret my comment as support for anti-immigrant or racist parties)
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The good thing about the American electorate is they tend to turn on whatever party is in power. The pendulum always swings back.
The Obama admin has stirred up something crazy in the progressive wing. Especially in the aftermath of Bush. Under Bush, we had the SoCons seemingly ascendant in their political influence.
Beyond that, the average American really doesn't give a shit about the SJW types. The far left rhetoric has always had more appeal overseas.
This comment is about as optimistic as I get on the American electorate.
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They may not 'give a shit' but how to define their influence? That an SJW can lie and still manage to convince powers that be to destroy a life for a narrative, I'd say, demands some attention from citizens.
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Not while dancing with the stars is on.
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I can just envision a couple of SJWs watching dancing with the stars.
SJW 1: Hey, look at the way she is dressed! She's being exploited and don't even know it!
SJW 2: I know and like... do you think she's pretty? I mean is she prettier than me? *starting to sulk and weep*
SJW 1: No, no, of course not honey... oh now don't cry, you're way smarter than that exploited woman!
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And if she was dressed like an Amish peasant while clogging she would be a victim of the male patriarchy who won't let her be free to dress as she chooses. Really the salient point here is they get to be outraged and weepy no matter what they see.
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It's just victims all the way down.
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The progressive left spent the last 100+ years in a painstakingly subtle but inching forward effort to take over the USA, an inch at a time.
Then, finally, when Obama was anointed the true progressive savior, who was to come, to the throne of the great Utopia, and they declared victory. Their 1000 year reign was finally here. But, they declared victory a little too soon.
Now the true lunatic fringe of the progressive left have take over the movement and run amok, and they cannot wrest back control from them. While the left now want to reign in the loonies and go back to their decades long tireless almost overly cautious plan of inching the goalpost leftward, the lunatics who escaped from the asylum are running amok and lighting fires faster than anyone can put them out.
It's going to get very interesting because it's way too late for the left to put the mask back on, and their loonies are out of control.
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America may have it 'written down' but the piece of paper (written by old dead white men) is constantly and severely under attack by the left - the parts of it that stand in the way of their agenda.
They're winning I'm afraid. Not just in Britain and the USA; but in Canada and perhaps Australia and across the West.
It's an intellectual scourge; a dark hour if you will.
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"America may have it 'written down' but the piece of paper (written by old dead white men) is constantly and severely under attack by the left"
It's cute that you can have this single minded focus on a week in which, for example, we had some SCOTUS decisions handed down where the conservative justices used the Fourth Amendment for toilet paper while the liberal ones stood up for the right thing.
I realize this has become the forum for All SJW Hate, All the Time, but we've got a fairly bi-partisan assault on liberty going on, and it's been that way for a long time.
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It's cute that you have this single minded focus on the right when it's a fairly bi-partisan assault on liberty going on.
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Most here, most of the time: We hate SJWs, we hate SJWs!
Me: er, you know it's not just coming from SJWs, right?
FUQ; look at you fixated on the right when the problem is the right and left!!!
Haha, stay golden FUQ!
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I will concede the right can be nasty too.
But all the talk to 'alter' the Constitution comes from the left, sir.
I prefer the term sexy to cute.
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Don't use Twatter or Twatbook, then?
I'm English and I hate the intellectual totalitarianism/surveillance state with a passion. But anyone posting anything whatsoever on these social media sites is a straight moronic cockwomble to begin with.
Zero upside to having any opinion whatsoever in any medium even remotely traceable to your offline self.
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So you have let them silence you then ?
Just what they wanted. Now theirs is the only voice and only opinion on any subject out there.
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I'd go scream this on Twitter.
To bust balls.
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I don't use those services because I think they are stupid and annoying. And I manage pretty well to keep a low online profile that can be connected to my real life identity. But that's mostly because I don't want just anyone to be able to find out things about me. I'm not too concerned about other things.
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Other things like....come on Reason?
Reason is Hotel California. You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave.
/Joe Walsh grimace.
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Google pay 97$ per hour my last pay check was $8500 working 1o hours a week online. My younger brother friend has been averaging 12k for months now and he works about 22 hours a week. I cant believe how easy it was once I tried it out.
This is what- I do...... ✹✹✹✹✹✹ www.jobsfish.com -
More than 30,000 people have signed an online petition—again with the petitions—demanding the ads be removed because they make women "feel physically inferior to… the bronzed model."
*looks at ad, hasn't seen any of the petition signers, still believes their feelings are justified*
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When they take away Jimmy Carr's citizenship we will know it is completely over.
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My hope is that much of this is due to fiat money. Governments that can spend infinite sums of money do. Some to bribe the plebes and more on growing the government and its power. The new positions and expanded powers this unfettered spending engenders is immune to market forces and instead is directed by whatever excuse to spend that comes to hand. This seems to be protecting the public from unpleasant realities. These include the fact that Islam and western civilization are incompatible which gives rise to the silencing of any criticism of Islam. The fact that men and women are different is also verbotten. So is any hint that man (the state) is not all powerful, in particular suggesting the state cannot control or even fully understand the climate is not yet forbidden, but the urge to do so is strong. And so on . Fortunately infinite current debasement is not possible and the ensuing hard times will sweep most of this nonsense and many completely innocent people away.
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speech is under threat from an unholy marriage of intolerant virtual mobs, censorious Social Justice Warriors (SJWs), and state institutions keen to censor stuff in order to protect the allegedly fragile public.
I was strongly tempted to post "Kill 'em all, let god sort 'em out" in response to that. But that'd probably get me an unwelcome knock on the door...
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Google pay 97$ per hour my last pay check was $8500 working 1o hours a week online. My younger brother friend has been averaging 12k for months now and he works about 22 hours a week. I cant believe how easy it was once I tried it out.
This is wha- I do...... ✹✹✹✹✹✹ www.netjob80.com -
"the Public Order Act of 1986, which criminalizes "racially aggravated" speech"
Enacted under that famed SJW Thatcher...
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One trick pony is doing his trick!
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Keep focused on those SJWs and ignore the facts that put a kink in that, we've got a two minute hate to orchestrate here!
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How does Thatcherite legislation from almost 30 years ago put a kink in opposition to SJWs?
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It wouldn't be Sunday without a Chicken Little thread!
As speech in the UK has gotten more restricted, speech in the US has gotten more free. That "piece of paper guarantee" has a lot of bite due to being uniquely cherished among the provisions of the Bill of Rights in the American psyche. Politicians and judges can erode the 4th and 5th amendments relatively easily because a large part of the American people (wrongly) sees them as protecting only criminals, but they touch the 1st at their peril.
And please don't treat the SJW mobs as a serious threat to free speech. There have been mobs demanding that speech they don't like be silenced since the founding of the Republic, and they were far more successful in the past than today. The current mob is already seeing their behavior backfire, as it always does when they have to compete in the marketplace of ideas. The problems arise when they gain control of the brute force of the state, and luckily the American people still have enough nerve endings when it comes to free speech to prevent that.
Yes, they have managed to prevent a couple of speeches at college auditoriums. That has been shameful, but it also has precisely zero effect on the spread of ideas in the modern age, as auditorium speeches are not how ideas are disseminated in 2015. Anybody who wants to read Summers' or Coulter's ideas is perfectly free to do so, anywhere they want.
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I would also add that, despite being heavily eroded over the past 200+ years, federalism and the separation of powers help to dampen the ability of the govt to trample on liberties. The "rule by executive order" crap that Obama is pulling right now would be business as usual under a unified parliamentary govt like the UK has.
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When you say something reasonable, even insightful like this, doesn't it make you wish that you hadn't trolled so much?
You can be spot on, but people still won't take you seriously because of your past behavior.
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If someone refuses to consider an insightful comment because of an irrational dislike, it is their loss, not mine.
And I never trolled. But thank you for the compliments otherwise.
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it is their loss, not mine.
No..really...it's yours.
I agree with your above comment completely...
AND I believe you to be a fucking asshole who's normally not worthy of any consideration whatsoever.
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I believe you to be a fucking asshole who's normally not worthy of any consideration whatsoever.
But to make the determination of whether it's worthy of consideration you have to consider it.
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Yeah that was...rational and on point.
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Moral of the story? However bad it gets, there's always some place worse.
The ASA has banned ads for hair products that were offensive to Christians (they featured nuns in suspenders); ads for an airline that had a woman dressed as a schoolgirl, on the basis that they could cause "widespread offence"
Hawt. Regarding the schoolgirl ad, there was similar outrage in America for an ad in Brazil.
Kia Apologizes, Distances Itself From Sexy Brazilian Cartoon Ads
Is This Award-Winning Kia Ad Promoting Pedophilia?
(The award was later withdrawn) -
Maybe if the British had to actually fight for their freedom would they have held on to it and fought for it as we speak.
Their country has a rich history of violence against others. The state is engrained in their collective heads, as they walk around like they are victims of violence, while they've dished out more than many other countries.
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Wow. Seriously? The UK has had to fight for its freedom far more recently than the US has. Ever heard of the Battle of Britain?
And they also had to fight Napoleon to keep from being conquered around the same time as we had our last invasion of an American state. (Of course that war was just a result of massive stupidity on the part of the US... we were lucky to get away with status quo ante bellum).
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So… what to make of this?
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Bill Maher is right-wing hatemonger?
Is that what progressives think now?
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He dared besmirch the perfect religion of Islam. Didn't you see Ben Affleck breaking into apopleptic fit about it?
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Report from America.
Not only are we following in your footsteps, I suspect that within three years we will be the ones walking on virgin sand. America is not only racing to be the world leader of restricting free speech, we are publicly advancing the idea of Thought Crimes. Example. If you are white, conservative, religious, or don't support the sweeping homosexual movement you might be fined just for having either association or thought.
Yes, we have a Constitution and Bill of Rights, but they do little good when the President hates both and supersedes his power and authority with executive orders that work in direct opposition to its existence. We also have the natural right of freedom of association, and in conjunction with the first amendment, those two should protect us from doing business with anyone we choose for any reason whatsoever. NOT THE CASE. Businesses who exercise Religious Freedoms (a protected right) are being sued out of business by Homosexuals (not a protected right) for refusing to sell them their wares.
Recently a bakery in the US was fined $180k for refusing to sell a gay couple a wedding cake. I fully support them, as they believed doing so would be seen as supporting gay marriage (which I do notReport from America.
Free speech is not dead in America, that is as long as you support the leftist ideology of Marx, Lenin, Mao, Muslim/Obama and other deconstructionist ideologies
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Sorry on the last post. Somehow my title was later embedded.
In conjunction with the Presidental abuses of the Separation of Powers act, he is being supported by a corrupt Congress, as well as a bought and paid for Supreme Court (see Justice Roberts). His abuses are unchecked, and will create in him a Dictatorship. I suspect in 2016 there will be an "event" where he will declare Martial Law, and under martial law all elections are suspended.
When we are all slaves to the government the only free speech will be the freedom to chant the approved mantra. Reeducation is free education.
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Surely the Constitution is bigger than ONE lousy President?
