British police forces don’t seem to have enough resources to track down and disrupt organized rape gangs, but they do have a burning desire to clamp down on what you say on social media. Priorities, I guess: it might be dangerous to tackle actual criminals, but it’s as safe as can be to bring the full force of law down on orange-fingered basement-dwelling keyboard warriors, critics of transgender policies, and other clear and present threats to the social order.
Patrick West sums up the situation:
It’s been a strange month for free speech. First comes the news that a stay-at-home mother of four has been contacted by the police for making comments critical of transgender ideology on Twitter.
Then, we read that the Canadian vlogger Lauren Southern was refused entry to the UK because, according to the Home Office, her presence was ‘not conducive to the public good’. Then, most absurdly, we hear that ‘self-confessed shitposter’ Markus Meechan – known on YouTube as Count Dankula – was found guilty in a Scottish court of hate speech for teaching his dog to perform a Nazi salute.
It doesn’t matter if the Count Dankula incident seems innocuous, or that he has many unpleasant supporters online. Nor does it matter that Southern is a leading ‘alt-right’ figurehead. Free speech means standing up for people you don’t care for, because if your enemies aren’t safe from the encroaching powers of the state, then you and you friends won’t be safe, either. You don’t have to be a libertarian fundamentalist to be worried about the state now prosecuting people for jokes.
But these incidents have been thrown into even sharper relief, owing to the fact that this week has also seen supporters of Tommy Robinson – not a particularly endearing character either, but an important one nonetheless – clash with extremist Muslims at Speakers’ Corner in London, of all places.
At a time when there are an estimated 20,000 Islamists at large in the country – 3,000 of whom are deemed particularly dangerous – it is perverse that the police and the courts are instead pursuing such soft targets. Because it’s far better for a police force’s profile to be seen as an ‘anti-Nazi’ rather than ‘Islamophobic’, the scandal of grooming gangs in Telford and elsewhere is ignored or brushed under the carpet. For similar reasons of denial and sheer cowardice, the issue of Sharia Patrols in London, threatening gay people with violence, is met with a proverbial fingers in the ears. If only the police and courts had been so vigilant about those who planned and then executed last year’s atrocities in London and Manchester.
The first duty of a state is to protect its citizens and their safety. The last duty of a state is to tell them what they can and can’t say. Being offensive should never be a crime.
