[saagarjha]

You put hateful in quotes but I do want to point out that this is the tweet from the thing you linked:

> Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f*** hotels full of the bastards for all I care …. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it

[n4r9]

The context also needs to be noted. This was part of the social media storm that whipped up a wave of right-wing, racist hatred and violence in the wake of the Southport riots. No such waves of violence have sprung out of trans activism.

[okeuro49]

There is no "far right" or people being "whipped up". Disorder is a consequence of failed government policy.

E.g. from 2023: "Northern seaside town now a 'powder keg' over asylum seeker tensions"

"The tension in Skegness has grown after hundreds of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Albania were crammed into former tourist hotels on the seafront."

"Cars have been vandalised, shop windows broken, mattresses set alight and scuffles reported between migrants and security staff. Officials say 229 asylum seekers are staying in up to seven hotels on and around the town’s promenade, but locals say the figure is more like 700."

[n4r9]

> There is no "far right" or people being "whipped up".

The wikipedia page about the riots has 127 mentions of "far-right" [0]. From the very start there were links between the protestors and organisations like the EDL. The online misinformation was spread by far-right influencers such Tommy Robinson, Katie Hopkins, and Andrew Tate, as well as a host of global right-wing accounts. The organisation Alliance4Europe which campaigns against online misinformation found that "non-domestic far-right groups played a significant role in inflaming tensions following the Southport murders" [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_riots

[1] https://alliance4europe.eu/the-international-far-rights-impa...

[okeuro49]

The EDL hasn't been around for years.

The "far right" narrative is to hide state failure.

Even the group "Hope not Hate" (former far-left "Searchlight" publication) admitted the "far right" narrative was a hoax. [1]

[1] https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1933625/uk-riots-list-hoax

[n4r9]

Is that the article you meant to link? It says that a specific document was a hoax, not the entire concept of the far right.

[roenxi]

Far-right, unfortunately, is something of a trigger word suggesting Wikipedia is about to become unreliable in its coverage. As far as I can tell any suggestion that immigration levels should be low is likely to be a far-right position which means it is a very large tent. A tent that includes some undesirables and a lot of quite normal people.

There is an odd situation where apparently countries can simultaneously adopt anti-growth policies while having an infinite surplus of real resources to handle more migrants and anyone who believes otherwise is de-facto attempting to restart the Jew ovens whether they personally deny it or not. Where a more charitable view would be if a country maintains high immigration into a situation where real resources don't grow that is quite possibly leading towards a genocide. People aren't all smiles and sunshine when times get tough; it is more sensible to engineer society towards prosperity.

[n4r9]

Not so; Keir Starmer is talking about cracking down on immigration and is certainly not far-right. You veer into the far-right when you dehumanise immigrants and use terms like "cockroaches", "Muslim invasion", or "great replacement".

[roenxi]

Keir Starmer is pushing [0] pretty standard far-right conspiracy theories about how the government was running an open-borders experiment, by design, in contravention of stated policies.

> ...and is certainly not far-right.

He's quacking like a duck. Talking about open borders is fair game for being identified as a dog whistler for people who believe in the great replacement theory - particularly when it is framed as duplicitous and intentional. I'd agree that it isn't, but once Wikipedia starts breaking out "far right" that is the sort of standard that can be applied.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-on-migratio... - although humorously it is apparently standard practice to redact parts of speeches as political in a political speech given by a politician.

[like_any_other]

Was the misinformation even material? The perpetrator of the Southport stabbings was the child of recent African immigrants, so I don't see how the true facts of the case would have calmed any right-wing unrest.

[n4r9]

The furore was whipped up on the basis of the perpetrator being Muslim, illegal, and an immigrant. In my opinion it fed off the residual unresolved tensions of grooming gang cases. But of course the actual perpetrator was none of these three things.

[like_any_other]

> on the basis of the perpetrator being Muslim, illegal, and an immigrant.

Let's not kid ourselves - it was on the basis of the perpetrator being non-white/non-ethnically-British. There's no shortage of the protesters being accused of racism, but now we're supposed to pretend it was about religion or following the law? That's called trying to have your cake and eat it to.

[like_any_other]

You mean in the wake of the Southport child murder mass stabbing, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Southport_stabbings

[n4r9]

Yes. But specifically I'm referring to how a group of far-right social media accounts exploited that tragedy to whip up a violent frenzy of riots, starting with Southport.

[leereeves]

That certainly doesn't meet the threshold for a credible threat.

It's a despicable thing to say, and it seems like even she realized that when she calmed down and deleted it. But what's the basis for treating it as a crime?

[ryandrake]

From OP's post, it wasn't treated as a crime. I would absolutely expect a background check to reveal statements like that, that people voluntarily, publicly post.

[leereeves]

No, that was a separate detail in OP's post. According to the second link, the woman who tweeted that received a 31-month sentence, as the post says: "the wrong social media post can carry a lengthy jail sentence".

[foldr]

It wasn’t prosecuted as a death threat, so it’s not really relevant whether or not the threat was credible. The relevant offense is inciting racial hatred.

[leereeves]

Ok, so it is very much political. Similar principles are being used right now to punish supporters of Palestine under the guise of preventing anti-Semitism.

Brief expressions of anger after a mass killing don't justify imprisoning someone.

Edit: the enforcement is political, I mean. Basically, not all hate speech is treated equal, it depends on who the speech is about, and what concerns the government. In the US it was terrorism after 9/11 and opposition to Israel now. It sounds like in the UK right now it is anti-immigrant sentiment. At least in the US we have a strong First Amendment to protect us from the government policing our speech.

[foldr]

The tweet was posted elsewhere in this thread. It doesn’t express any political view. It just says hateful stuff.

To your edit: If you’re making the comparison to anti-TERF “hate speech”, then it’s not treated equally because the law itself doesn’t treat racism on a par with anti-TERF sentiment. You can disagree with that, but it doesn’t show unequal policing of the law as-is.

[tossandthrow]

> So people have been arrested for posting something online, even if nobody appears to have seen it, and they delete it shortly after.

The message you are quoting is now being propagated,which is unfortunate.

Most of the western world is moving to a risk based legal system and has a proportionaly measure build in.

If the message in question had a limited reach, then it should not lead to a conviction.

Just like we don't convict people who has inappropriate thoughts or write inappropriate things in their diary.

[saagarjha]

I'm not sharing the message because it brings me joy to have it shown to more people. I think it's a pretty reprehensible thing to say. I'm sure people say worse into their personal diary or even among friends and that is not criminalized. I might possibly even consider the defense of "oh nobody really reads my posts anyway and I deleted it quickly".

But I absolutely will not stand for trying to claim that the post was scare-quotes "hateful". It was hateful, full stop. This is not polite discourse that was unfairly marked as hate because of some political slant. It was clearly hate, even if wasn't seen by anyone, even if it got deleted.

[Saline9515]

Hate is a normal thing in human societies. Freedom of speech also encompasses expressing hatred and negative feelings. What you can do to mitigate it is to solve the problems that create hate. In the case of the UK, addressing the mass-rapes of British girls, among other things.

Sending people to prison for social media posts is a typical totalitarian move, similar to what you find in China, North Korea or Russia. None of the underlying issues are solved by intimidating your population, who, at some point, will just start to leave quietly.

[foldr]

Lots of countries outlaw hate speech. I know that Americans tend to think that this is a slippery slope to totalitarianism, but much of the rest of the world disagrees. And America in its present state isn't a great advertisment for its own particular model of public discourse and political freedom.

Obviously, you can also be jailed in the US for social media posts that break the law. Here is one example:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/social-media-influencer...

It's tasteless to bring up rape cases that are irrelevant here. The tweet we're talking about was posted in the wake of the Southport stabbings. Nobody can seriously suggest that historical failures to investigate rape cases in Pakistani communities can be related to an outburst decades later about burning down hotels housing asylum seekers.

[tossandthrow]

I am not trying to say that it was not hateful - and proper moderation should be in place. Just like it has always been.

I am merely trying to say that there should be proportion in the reaction.

The society does not give you a death sentence to jay walk.

[saagarjha]

I'm not arguing with you. I'm arguing with the quotes around "hate".

[nickdothutton]

Unfortunately we are at the stage in the UK now where people do receive visits from the police to (and I use the exact language of the police here) "Check their thinking". This is a consequence of attempting to police speech which previously fell below the level of criminal activity, but now may have been elevated to a crime via volumes of new hate crime laws. Indeed society has now decayed here to such an extent that we have "non crime hate incidents" which still fall below the criminal threshold but warrant an investigation by the police.

[Arkhaine_kupo]

> If the message in question had a limited reach, then it should not lead to a conviction.

her husband shares a prominent political position. Her reach and views way larger than her twitter following. By association alone she has authoritative voice.

If Melania Trump was tweeting about racist things, how quickly she deletes the tweet would not be the main issue to give a prominent example

[Saline9515]

If Melania posts some distasteful ideas, she won't go to prison since US citizens have freedom of speech, unlike in the UK and their Orwellian laws.

[Arkhaine_kupo]

> US citizens have freedom of speech

just a reminder that anti protest laws now allow people to be send to prision for speech. But I guess as long as hippie looking they/them who are pro palestine at uni go to jail instead of racist white people then the US does not have Orwellian laws.

Please never actually read the book or else you might need to stop using it as a adjective because doublethink is what you are actively doing right now

[Saline9515]

Given how "hippie looking they/them" wanted to silence their political opponents in the past administration, it's kind of ironic how life comes back at you, fast?

Also, kudos for the classist part assuming that I have never read a book.

[Arkhaine_kupo]

> wanted to silence their political opponents in the past administration

Literally when? Bezos bought a newspaper, Elon bought Twitter, Trump was on TV daily (and not being prosecuted by the DOJ), Ben Shapiro was again the most promoted video network in facebook, RFK was spreading misinformation left and right and is now telling the worls that autistic people can never pay taxes while Elon pays his salary.

Like name 1 person who was silenced? it is literally impossible to not hear the constant, incessant, child like whinning. you can have the senate, congress, the supreme court and the presidency and still act like victims. Crash the economy and its always someone elses fault.

Accountability is perhaps a value you should cherish more than silence, cant have that can we

[DonHopkins]

Melania Trump literally did spread racist lies on national TV. And when confronted with evidence that directly contradicted her racist lies that she could not refute, she justified her racist lies with her racist "feelings".

Melania Trump Supported Her Husband's Racist Birtherism Claims on TV:

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/melania-trump-supported-her-...

>People need to stop talking about "freeing Melania."

>An old clip resurfaced on the internet over the weekend of Melania Trump supporting her husband Donald Trump's claims that former president Barack Obama wasn't born in the U.S.

>On April 20, 2011, Melania appeared on the Joy Behar Show and backed up her husband's allegations that Obama wasn't born in the state of Hawaii like live birth records suggest.

>"It’s not only Donald who wants to see [Obama's birth certificate], it’s American people who voted for him and who didn’t vote for him. They want to see that," she argued. Behar then made the point that the birth certificate had already been on display and all over the internet. "We feel it’s different than birth certificate," Melania responded.

Melania Trump On Obama's Birth Certificate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6i0YlHriKk&t=98s

>Joy asks Melania Trump if Donald is really going to run for president or if it's a publicity stunt & why he's obsessed with President Obama's birth certificate.