Freedom of Speech Is Dead - UK Edition
- Thread starter GURPS
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New Justice Secretary Mahmood’s Past of Promoting “Mob Rule”
Shabana Mahmood, the UK’s new Secretary of State for Justice, brings a troubling record to her new role. In 2014, she was accused of promoting “mob rule” after leading a protest backing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, forcing a Sainsbury’s in Birmingham to close for hours. Taking the law into her own hands…
She later boasted of the Sainsbury’s shutdown to a rally:
At the time, she was slammed by Mike Freer, then MP for Finchley and Golders Green: “For any Parliamentarian to encourage mob rule as a way of protesting is shameful.” Is this the sort of enforcement of justice Mahmood will be promoting as the new Secretary of State?
UK Prepares to Go Full Fascist in Crackdown on Internet
It's unclear just how much of the rioting in Great Britain last week was carried out by the "right-wing" and how much was conducted by other parties, including Muslim mobs. By midweek, the authorities were predicting "hundreds of riots." Either they were misinformed or it was a hoax. Most of the "riots" turned out to be small groups of angry locals upset at the inaction of police. There were just as many angry Muslims confronting them, protesting against the disinformation that tied their community to the murders of children attending a dance class.
It will soon be illegal to express views against migration in Great Britain. There have already been several arrests of people who opposed migration online.
Anil Kanti “Neil” Basu, who served as the top counter-terror police officer said anti-migration riots should be treated as "terrorism."
“I think we have seen serious acts of violence designed to cause terror to a section of our community,” he told the BBC.
And Prime Minister Keir Starmer made an explicit threat that the age of free speech in England was coming to an end. The Guardian reports that he said “we’re going to have to look more broadly at social media after this disorder.” Starmer said there would be “sentencing for online behavior” in courts today, and also said “whether you’re directly involved or whether you’re remotely involved, you’re culpable, and you will be put before the court."
Breitbart:
Reuters reports that YouGov "published a survey of more than 2,000 adults, which found two-thirds (66%) believe social media companies should be held responsible for posts inciting criminal behavior."
Also, "A further 70% of respondents said social media companies were not strongly regulated enough, and 71% said they did not do enough to counter misinformation while the riots were ongoing."
There's not going to be much of an outcry if the Brits' freedoms are taken away. That's because they're not going to miss what they never had. There is no "freedom of speech" per se in Great Britain. This is evidenced by the new online speech law that was supposed to go into effect until early next year.
The "Online Safety Act" frames freedom of speech as a "safety" issue. It's a poor disguise to control people's thoughts and speech.
The United Kingdom's government is in a bit of a pickle right now. Three little girls under the age of 10 were stabbed to death at a dance camp, sparking riots. These weren't the run-of-the-mill Muslim migrant riots the police are used to ignoring, though —there were "far-right," white British natives who'd had enough. The reaction from Prime Minister Kier Starmer was swift, with police arresting citizens over Facebook posts and threatening to arrest any "curious observers" who were even watching, and not participating in, the riots.
The government blames social media for the riots, and the European Commission has even suggested extraditing Elon Musk and putting him on trial in the U.K. Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland writes:
This editor calls bulls**t on that analysis of tweets containing the N-word. We're all on X all day, every day, and we didn't see it.
Author and columnist Douglas Murray notes that the same columnist calling for Musk's arrest wrote a book fantasizing about the assassination of a president a few years back under a pseudonym.
The government blames social media for the riots, and the European Commission has even suggested extraditing Elon Musk and putting him on trial in the U.K. Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland writes:
This editor calls bulls**t on that analysis of tweets containing the N-word. We're all on X all day, every day, and we didn't see it.
Author and columnist Douglas Murray notes that the same columnist calling for Musk's arrest wrote a book fantasizing about the assassination of a president a few years back under a pseudonym.
