4 ms·

Imagine for a moment that the situation was reversed. An LGBT activist would retweet a meme comparing the Catholic church to the devil. A conservative churchgoe

Imagine for a moment that the situation was reversed. An LGBT activist would retweet a meme comparing the Catholic church to the devil. A conservative churchgoer would get offended and would report the tweet. Do you think, the police response would be 100% identical? Selective enforcement of unenforceable rules is a century-old trick. Here's a relevant quote from Atlas Shrugged: You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted—and you create a nation of law-breakers—and then you cash in on guilt.

notavalleyman 4y ago
> Do you think, the police response would be 100% identical Yes I absolutely do. Do you have some examples of the opposite to share?
- Jiro 4y ago
  "Examples of the opposite" being people who don't get arrested?
  - davisoneee 4y ago
    "Opposite" being opposite groups, not opposite action...being left/'woke'/social tweeting about something like the catholic church, and getting arrested for it. edit: Assuming the parent means that they think 'left' offensive tweets would equally dealt with by the Police. I'm from the UK (Scotland) and I cant remember a 'pro left' offensive tweeter getting arrested, but then again the number of arrests for social media posts is pretty damn small in the first place, so not exactly something I think ANYONE can reliably draw inferences from.
    - orwin 4y ago
      What? UK is like the poster child for arresting leftist people on no ground at all. Started in the 80s (it might have been even earlier). I mean, France isn't far behind, but at least we dissolve far right groups too (well, after they kill people, whereas no far left group has killed anyone yet). I think the most recent was Toby Child (Correction, Toby Shone), but there was a Walker something arrested for owning "the Anarchist cookbook" in the last 10 years, and more recently multiple members of extinction Rebellion were arrested juuust before an authorized protest, on no ground, for no particular reason, which -what a surprise- prevented them to assist the protest (This is actually a French tactic, good job implementing it UK police). It really picked in the 90s against "ecoterrorists", but arresting lefties is like 50% of your counterterrorist police job, because they smoke pot and like to trespass a lot, which give ground to search their home and arrest them for cannabis possession (or fuck with them, just because) and way less dangerous than going against real terrorists with guns and explosives. What i find really weird is people complaining "It's always against my camp", forgetting that most of the time, it's actually not.
- abnry 4y ago
  You can dig up examples where the police did do this. I bet that is harder.
- kelnos 4y ago
  If so, that's also gross. I get that UK law is different from US law, and that they actually have hate speech laws (while, in the US, hate speech is protected by the first amendment). But it's really bad that governments have this sort of power, where they can persecute people based on speech they don't like.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  It seems you must either think that it's correct to arrest people who compare the Catholic Church to the devil or that you think this is a bad law and law enforcement. If you think the former I must warn you that that would cause me anxiety and I will report you to your local thought police.
ineptech 4y ago
It's a law against offensive speech. If more people in the UK are offended by trolling gays than by trolling Catholics, you don't need a conspiracy theory to explain why one gets you in more trouble than the other. To clarify, I don't agree with the law - I think offensive speech should be legal - but this Ayn Rand stuff just sounds petulant in this context. If you want to insult gays on social media as a hobby, the main thing stopping you is not government oppression, it's the fact that a majority of voters want you to not do that.
- throwaway8582 4y ago
  > the main thing stopping you is not government oppression, it's the fact that a majority of voters want you to not do that Do you really think that a majority of voters would want somebody to be arrested for a post like this? If we're going to automatically assume that all government actions are simply what the "majority of voters" wanted, then nothing the government does can ever be wrong.
  - ineptech 4y ago
    Don't expand what I said to make it easier to argue against. I don't think all laws automatically reflect the will of this people. I think this one, the highly publicized one, the controversial one that basically everyone is aware of and has an opinion on, either does reflect the will of the people or will get changed if it doesn't. And the reason I think that is, making fun of gays used to be both widely accepted and totally legal, and those two things changed at roughly the same time. If that's not the law changing to reflect the evolving will of the electorate, it's a hell of a coincidence.
notahacker 4y ago
Imagine for a moment, that people were accused of violating this law in a way which was not offensive to a specific ideology, or at least not the same one as the chap here.... Actually, we don't have to imagine this. First they came for the bloke that posted bad taste jokes about a murder victim, and he got 12 weeks in jail [1] Then they came for the man who insulted a policeman by sharing a Snapchat picture of his face with a penis superimposed on it, and he was fined £400 and required to do a community service punishment [2] Then they came for the people who direspected military dead by burning poppies and they got nights in cells and fines and hastily organised commemorative apologies [3] Then they came for the bloke that tweeted something about tEh LGBT AgEnDA, he got off relatively lightly and the police got their wrists slapped, and people started quoting Ayn Rand and talking about how uniquely oppressive "woke" people are [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-19869710 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-19869710 [2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2552269/Builder-ordered-pay-policeman-400-drawing-two-penises-picture-posting-Facebook.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2552269/Builder-ord... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/nov/12/kent-man-arrested-burning-poppy https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/nov/12/kent-man-arrested...
- matrix_overload 4y ago
  Thank you for actually finding good counter-examples. Come to think of it, the problem is deeper. The first level is that many western societies have vocal groups of people whose joy in life comes from bullying others (getting other people fired, targeting them with rather disproportionate punishments, campaigning outside their houses, etc). The woke/progressive movement has attracted a lot of these people, but I agree that blaming all progressives for doing that is like blaming all conservatives for being racist. The second level is that the governments realized that by giving platform to bullies they can keep the public busy with an endless third-world-style feud, while escaping accountability for many real problems (former middle class plunging into poverty). The third level is that most people refuse to scrutinize the actions of those who claim to be fighting for a good cause, refuse to check for conflicts of interest, refuse to distinguish between anti-discrimination and attention seeking and refuse to focus on actions rather than identities. And this makes the 2 previous levels possible.

notavalleyman 4y ago

> Do you think, the police response would be 100% identical Yes I absolutely do. Do you have some examples of the opposite to share?

Jiro 4y ago
"Examples of the opposite" being people who don't get arrested?
- davisoneee 4y ago
  "Opposite" being opposite groups, not opposite action...being left/'woke'/social tweeting about something like the catholic church, and getting arrested for it. edit: Assuming the parent means that they think 'left' offensive tweets would equally dealt with by the Police. I'm from the UK (Scotland) and I cant remember a 'pro left' offensive tweeter getting arrested, but then again the number of arrests for social media posts is pretty damn small in the first place, so not exactly something I think ANYONE can reliably draw inferences from.
  - orwin 4y ago
    What? UK is like the poster child for arresting leftist people on no ground at all. Started in the 80s (it might have been even earlier). I mean, France isn't far behind, but at least we dissolve far right groups too (well, after they kill people, whereas no far left group has killed anyone yet). I think the most recent was Toby Child (Correction, Toby Shone), but there was a Walker something arrested for owning "the Anarchist cookbook" in the last 10 years, and more recently multiple members of extinction Rebellion were arrested juuust before an authorized protest, on no ground, for no particular reason, which -what a surprise- prevented them to assist the protest (This is actually a French tactic, good job implementing it UK police). It really picked in the 90s against "ecoterrorists", but arresting lefties is like 50% of your counterterrorist police job, because they smoke pot and like to trespass a lot, which give ground to search their home and arrest them for cannabis possession (or fuck with them, just because) and way less dangerous than going against real terrorists with guns and explosives. What i find really weird is people complaining "It's always against my camp", forgetting that most of the time, it's actually not.
abnry 4y ago
You can dig up examples where the police did do this. I bet that is harder.
kelnos 4y ago
If so, that's also gross. I get that UK law is different from US law, and that they actually have hate speech laws (while, in the US, hate speech is protected by the first amendment). But it's really bad that governments have this sort of power, where they can persecute people based on speech they don't like.
ALittleLight 4y ago
It seems you must either think that it's correct to arrest people who compare the Catholic Church to the devil or that you think this is a bad law and law enforcement. If you think the former I must warn you that that would cause me anxiety and I will report you to your local thought police.

ineptech 4y ago

It's a law against offensive speech. If more people in the UK are offended by trolling gays than by trolling Catholics, you don't need a conspiracy theory to explain why one gets you in more trouble than the other. To clarify, I don't agree with the law - I think offensive speech should be legal - but this Ayn Rand stuff just sounds petulant in this context. If you want to insult gays on social media as a hobby, the main thing stopping you is not government oppression, it's the fact that a majority of voters want you to not do that.

throwaway8582 4y ago
> the main thing stopping you is not government oppression, it's the fact that a majority of voters want you to not do that Do you really think that a majority of voters would want somebody to be arrested for a post like this? If we're going to automatically assume that all government actions are simply what the "majority of voters" wanted, then nothing the government does can ever be wrong.
- ineptech 4y ago
  Don't expand what I said to make it easier to argue against. I don't think all laws automatically reflect the will of this people. I think this one, the highly publicized one, the controversial one that basically everyone is aware of and has an opinion on, either does reflect the will of the people or will get changed if it doesn't. And the reason I think that is, making fun of gays used to be both widely accepted and totally legal, and those two things changed at roughly the same time. If that's not the law changing to reflect the evolving will of the electorate, it's a hell of a coincidence.

notahacker 4y ago

Imagine for a moment, that people were accused of violating this law in a way which was not offensive to a specific ideology, or at least not the same one as the chap here.... Actually, we don't have to imagine this. First they came for the bloke that posted bad taste jokes about a murder victim, and he got 12 weeks in jail [1] Then they came for the man who insulted a policeman by sharing a Snapchat picture of his face with a penis superimposed on it, and he was fined £400 and required to do a community service punishment [2] Then they came for the people who direspected military dead by burning poppies and they got nights in cells and fines and hastily organised commemorative apologies [3] Then they came for the bloke that tweeted something about tEh LGBT AgEnDA, he got off relatively lightly and the police got their wrists slapped, and people started quoting Ayn Rand and talking about how uniquely oppressive "woke" people are [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-19869710 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-19869710 [2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2552269/Builder-ordered-pay-policeman-400-drawing-two-penises-picture-posting-Facebook.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2552269/Builder-ord... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/nov/12/kent-man-arrested-burning-poppy https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/nov/12/kent-man-arrested...

matrix_overload 4y ago
Thank you for actually finding good counter-examples. Come to think of it, the problem is deeper. The first level is that many western societies have vocal groups of people whose joy in life comes from bullying others (getting other people fired, targeting them with rather disproportionate punishments, campaigning outside their houses, etc). The woke/progressive movement has attracted a lot of these people, but I agree that blaming all progressives for doing that is like blaming all conservatives for being racist. The second level is that the governments realized that by giving platform to bullies they can keep the public busy with an endless third-world-style feud, while escaping accountability for many real problems (former middle class plunging into poverty). The third level is that most people refuse to scrutinize the actions of those who claim to be fighting for a good cause, refuse to check for conflicts of interest, refuse to distinguish between anti-discrimination and attention seeking and refuse to focus on actions rather than identities. And this makes the 2 previous levels possible.