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What is happening in Britain is people are being actually arrested for “offensive” speech, which is of course subjective, subject to abuse, and open to totalita

by nxm 1y ago

What is happening in Britain is people are being actually arrested for “offensive” speech, which is of course subjective, subject to abuse, and open to totalitarian oppression. This is why the First Amendment in the US constitution is so important

crinkly 1y ago
The US constitution is only valuable if enforced, which is clearly not the case at the moment.
matthewmacleod 1y ago
There are very significant concerns about the actions of the Westminster government recently no doubt – this is stupid legislation, and it compounds with other stupid legislation (see the recent arrests for supporting proscribed groups). Everyone should be protesting this nonsense. That said, there is equally a clear and obvious effort to distort what is happening. And I don't think anybody should really be taking lessons about "totalitarian oppression" when current US government policy is to send gangs of masked thugs to round up brown people.
- xienze 1y ago
  Ignoring the usual baiting about how those brown people are illegal aliens and that’s the underlying reason they’re being rounded up — European countries are always held up as the standard the US should strive towards. So yes, it’s fair game for us to criticize them when they do things like police “offensive” speech.
  - matthewmacleod 1y ago
    No, this isn't baiting – it's an actual thing that's happening, regardless of how much you want to remain in denial about it. And I don't care about whatever weird preconceptions you've imposed – European countries have their own struggles to deal with and equally can do it badly. None of this is interesting discussion, and focusing on these weird "purity tests" around hypothetical freedom when ignoring the actual substantive impacts of the policies is why these people keep getting away with their terrible legislation.
- dgroshev 1y ago
  The government in power has little to do with the Act, it was passed two years ago by a different party that is now refusing to own the mess that they created. Sure, one can say that the government could be more diligent at repealing bad laws, but the Parliament had quite a few things on its plate already, so it's not surprising that this Act coming into power during the summer recess wasn't high on the agenda.
  - matthewmacleod 1y ago
    This is entirely not true, and the government is entirely free to withdraw this stupid, harmful legislation. Do not make excuses, because this is how the Labour Party get away with this sort of stupid action.
    - dgroshev 1y ago
      The government can't "withdraw" an Act of Parliament, only the Parliament can, by passing a new bill. It's not a Labour Party's action, the deadline was written into the act two years ago.
  - eftpotrm 1y ago
    Passed with the support of the current governing party, it should be noted.
nrawe 1y ago
I'm happy to be wrong, but I don't believe that's correct. There have been some people arrested for inciting violence via social media during the Southport riots. There is also Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who has been remanded in custody for contempt of court for continuing to libel an immigrant even after his claims were proven to be false. And by contempt of court, he literally has produced a movie continuing to slander said immigrant for his own ends. Another is Palestine Action being made a proscribed terror group. While lots of people, as evidenced by recent protests, see this as problematic, its not particularly different to other groups like environmental activists that commit criminal acts being proscribed and there are numerous examples UK/abroad of that. PA members at the direction of PA leadership have fallen into that category not because of their beliefs, but because of their actions – like breaking into Israeli-owned security research company with a van, and into an RAF base, in both cases committing vandalism and destruction of property. Some people believe there is a problem, but there really isn't a legislative agenda against free speech.
- moomin 1y ago
  Vandalism and destruction of property is a shockingly low bar. The suffragettes threw an axe at the king and no-one said they should be a proscribed organisation.
  - nrawe 1y ago
    I'll stand to be wrong, but I believe in one case a member of staff and two police officers were also assaulted. Terrorism isn't necessarily about body count, it's about motivation. If the motive is political change, and the ends is violence/criminal damaged/anti-social behaviour that tends to be enough. Similar cases exist in the US, too. I personally think its a bit of a stretch and will likely be undone. However, to pretend they are simply peaceful protests being unfairly targeted is also incorrect.
    - tacticus 1y ago
      Yeah the assault one is interesting cause they didn't end up charging them with it at all... perhaps reading the police statements without corroborating evidence is problematic.
te_chris 1y ago
Definitely not happening in the us too! Certainly no academic visas being cancelled.
- 1234letshaveatw 1y ago
  Yes, yes! This is all well and good, but whatabout America bad?!
  - exe34 1y ago
    No I think it's projection. It's happening over there, so they want to deflect attention and pretend "bad things" are happening over here instead, in a bid to support their chosen fascists in the next election.
darrenf 1y ago
Arrests are up, but sentences are down — i.e. fewer convictions/criminal records https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/select-communications-offences-and-concerns-over-free-speech/ https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/select-communications-off... > there are several reasons why an arrest may not result in a sentence, such as out-of-court resolutions, but said the “most common is “evidential difficulties””, specifically that the victim does not support taking further action. As mentioned at the top of the above document, there was a debate in the Lords on 17th July on the topic where many of the participants were pretty scathing about the situation: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2025-07-17/debates/F807CB70-D90D-4A19-9433-99539B7CF21F/OnlineCommunicationOffenceArrests https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2025-07-17/debates/F807C... The minister was naturally defensive towards the end, albeit they did say: > Importantly, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing, at the request of the Home Secretary, are currently undertaking a review of how non-crime hate incidents are dealt with. We expect to see some information from the police on that. It is self-evidently important that some of those incidents help us gather intelligence on potential future crime, but, equally, we do not want the police to do things that waste their time and not focus on the type of crime that the noble Lord rightly mentioned in his introduction.
- abtinf 1y ago
  That quote could be taken straight out of “Yes, Minister”.
- xienze 1y ago
  > Arrests are up, but sentences are down — i.e. fewer convictions/criminal records Well that’s certainly a relief! People are only being _arrested_ for """offensive""" speech, not convicted!
  - darrenf 1y ago
    I mean … is it not a relief that “””offensive””” speech isn’t actually a crime? There’s widespread recognition right up to the Lords that this is a shitty situation, dangerous/chilling, and a waste of police time. We all think it's nonsense, and it’s being called out for being nonsense in parliament. Literally no-one, AFAICT, thinks it’s a good thing that arrest numbers are rising for non-criminal speech. TBH I would hope when the dust settles that more people will get in shit for wasting police time — either reporting non-crimes to the police, or not actually wanting any (further) action taken. Feels like in many cases the “victims” are just playing the system as it (rapidly) develops, to take an online beef offline, rather than totalitarianism. If it were totalitarianism they’d be locking folk up, or at least convicting them of something, but that’s where we came in — those numbers are falling.
KaiserPro 1y ago
> Britain is people are being actually arrested for “offensive” speech This isn't actually new though. The difference is that they'd normally be nicked for breaching the peace, which is loosey goosey enough to be used for most things. ASBOs are far more totalitarian as they can legally stop people from doing legal things. (ie stop a child playing in a park) But to tackle your main point, Yes people are being arrested for offensive speech, but thats normally only part of the reason for arrest. I can call my MP a massive <pejorative that gets the Americans all abother>, I cannot however cause a race riot, as that's not allowed under freedom of expression. I also cannot give advice on pensions. I cannot threaten the lives of people I also cannot claim to be a policeman etc. The thing you must understand is that _most_ people (ie not columnists or former PMs) accept that there is a tradeoff between "free speech" and a pleasant society. Sure we did look at your first amendment and think "ooo thats probably nice" but then we have the human rights act that enforces freedom of expression. (which the same columnists/former ministers are decrying freedom of speech are looking to get rid of "because it protects immigrants") The Online safety act is a mess, because ofcom have not issued proper guidance, and the draft bill was directed by someone who was borderline insane (nadine dorris) Age assurance is not actually a problem, what is a problem is asking me to hand over personal details so some fly by night US startup who'll get hacked/sell my data to blackmailers. forcing websites to have moderation policies is fine, not having a flexible approach for smaller sites is not fine. The act is flawed, but its not _actually_ that different from how Network TV is moderated in the USA.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  I think you mean broadcast TV. Broadcast radio is similar. The legal justification is something about the limited supply of public airwaves. Those regulations wouldn't fly in the US for any other medium.
  - KaiserPro 1y ago
    It was about morals. Hence the hollywood code, and all that sort of stuff. The US really loved censorship, but just not in overt ways. Sure you could publish anything, but it'd never get syndicated by radio, newpaper, TV or cinema.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
lkramer 1y ago
Sure, but so are people in the US, despite the first amendment.

by nxm 1y ago

crinkly 1y ago

The US constitution is only valuable if enforced, which is clearly not the case at the moment.

matthewmacleod 1y ago

There are very significant concerns about the actions of the Westminster government recently no doubt – this is stupid legislation, and it compounds with other stupid legislation (see the recent arrests for supporting proscribed groups). Everyone should be protesting this nonsense. That said, there is equally a clear and obvious effort to distort what is happening. And I don't think anybody should really be taking lessons about "totalitarian oppression" when current US government policy is to send gangs of masked thugs to round up brown people.

xienze 1y ago
Ignoring the usual baiting about how those brown people are illegal aliens and that’s the underlying reason they’re being rounded up — European countries are always held up as the standard the US should strive towards. So yes, it’s fair game for us to criticize them when they do things like police “offensive” speech.
- matthewmacleod 1y ago
  No, this isn't baiting – it's an actual thing that's happening, regardless of how much you want to remain in denial about it. And I don't care about whatever weird preconceptions you've imposed – European countries have their own struggles to deal with and equally can do it badly. None of this is interesting discussion, and focusing on these weird "purity tests" around hypothetical freedom when ignoring the actual substantive impacts of the policies is why these people keep getting away with their terrible legislation.
dgroshev 1y ago
The government in power has little to do with the Act, it was passed two years ago by a different party that is now refusing to own the mess that they created. Sure, one can say that the government could be more diligent at repealing bad laws, but the Parliament had quite a few things on its plate already, so it's not surprising that this Act coming into power during the summer recess wasn't high on the agenda.
- matthewmacleod 1y ago
  This is entirely not true, and the government is entirely free to withdraw this stupid, harmful legislation. Do not make excuses, because this is how the Labour Party get away with this sort of stupid action.
  - dgroshev 1y ago
    The government can't "withdraw" an Act of Parliament, only the Parliament can, by passing a new bill. It's not a Labour Party's action, the deadline was written into the act two years ago.
- eftpotrm 1y ago
  Passed with the support of the current governing party, it should be noted.

nrawe 1y ago

I'm happy to be wrong, but I don't believe that's correct. There have been some people arrested for inciting violence via social media during the Southport riots. There is also Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who has been remanded in custody for contempt of court for continuing to libel an immigrant even after his claims were proven to be false. And by contempt of court, he literally has produced a movie continuing to slander said immigrant for his own ends. Another is Palestine Action being made a proscribed terror group. While lots of people, as evidenced by recent protests, see this as problematic, its not particularly different to other groups like environmental activists that commit criminal acts being proscribed and there are numerous examples UK/abroad of that. PA members at the direction of PA leadership have fallen into that category not because of their beliefs, but because of their actions – like breaking into Israeli-owned security research company with a van, and into an RAF base, in both cases committing vandalism and destruction of property. Some people believe there is a problem, but there really isn't a legislative agenda against free speech.

moomin 1y ago
Vandalism and destruction of property is a shockingly low bar. The suffragettes threw an axe at the king and no-one said they should be a proscribed organisation.
- nrawe 1y ago
  I'll stand to be wrong, but I believe in one case a member of staff and two police officers were also assaulted. Terrorism isn't necessarily about body count, it's about motivation. If the motive is political change, and the ends is violence/criminal damaged/anti-social behaviour that tends to be enough. Similar cases exist in the US, too. I personally think its a bit of a stretch and will likely be undone. However, to pretend they are simply peaceful protests being unfairly targeted is also incorrect.
  - tacticus 1y ago
    Yeah the assault one is interesting cause they didn't end up charging them with it at all... perhaps reading the police statements without corroborating evidence is problematic.

te_chris 1y ago

Definitely not happening in the us too! Certainly no academic visas being cancelled.

1234letshaveatw 1y ago
Yes, yes! This is all well and good, but whatabout America bad?!
- exe34 1y ago
  No I think it's projection. It's happening over there, so they want to deflect attention and pretend "bad things" are happening over here instead, in a bid to support their chosen fascists in the next election.

darrenf 1y ago

Arrests are up, but sentences are down — i.e. fewer convictions/criminal records https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/select-communications-offences-and-concerns-over-free-speech/ https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/select-communications-off... > there are several reasons why an arrest may not result in a sentence, such as out-of-court resolutions, but said the “most common is “evidential difficulties””, specifically that the victim does not support taking further action. As mentioned at the top of the above document, there was a debate in the Lords on 17th July on the topic where many of the participants were pretty scathing about the situation: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2025-07-17/debates/F807CB70-D90D-4A19-9433-99539B7CF21F/OnlineCommunicationOffenceArrests https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2025-07-17/debates/F807C... The minister was naturally defensive towards the end, albeit they did say: > Importantly, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing, at the request of the Home Secretary, are currently undertaking a review of how non-crime hate incidents are dealt with. We expect to see some information from the police on that. It is self-evidently important that some of those incidents help us gather intelligence on potential future crime, but, equally, we do not want the police to do things that waste their time and not focus on the type of crime that the noble Lord rightly mentioned in his introduction.

abtinf 1y ago
That quote could be taken straight out of “Yes, Minister”.
xienze 1y ago
> Arrests are up, but sentences are down — i.e. fewer convictions/criminal records Well that’s certainly a relief! People are only being _arrested_ for """offensive""" speech, not convicted!
- darrenf 1y ago
  I mean … is it not a relief that “””offensive””” speech isn’t actually a crime? There’s widespread recognition right up to the Lords that this is a shitty situation, dangerous/chilling, and a waste of police time. We all think it's nonsense, and it’s being called out for being nonsense in parliament. Literally no-one, AFAICT, thinks it’s a good thing that arrest numbers are rising for non-criminal speech. TBH I would hope when the dust settles that more people will get in shit for wasting police time — either reporting non-crimes to the police, or not actually wanting any (further) action taken. Feels like in many cases the “victims” are just playing the system as it (rapidly) develops, to take an online beef offline, rather than totalitarianism. If it were totalitarianism they’d be locking folk up, or at least convicting them of something, but that’s where we came in — those numbers are falling.

KaiserPro 1y ago

> Britain is people are being actually arrested for “offensive” speech This isn't actually new though. The difference is that they'd normally be nicked for breaching the peace, which is loosey goosey enough to be used for most things. ASBOs are far more totalitarian as they can legally stop people from doing legal things. (ie stop a child playing in a park) But to tackle your main point, Yes people are being arrested for offensive speech, but thats normally only part of the reason for arrest. I can call my MP a massive <pejorative that gets the Americans all abother>, I cannot however cause a race riot, as that's not allowed under freedom of expression. I also cannot give advice on pensions. I cannot threaten the lives of people I also cannot claim to be a policeman etc. The thing you must understand is that _most_ people (ie not columnists or former PMs) accept that there is a tradeoff between "free speech" and a pleasant society. Sure we did look at your first amendment and think "ooo thats probably nice" but then we have the human rights act that enforces freedom of expression. (which the same columnists/former ministers are decrying freedom of speech are looking to get rid of "because it protects immigrants") The Online safety act is a mess, because ofcom have not issued proper guidance, and the draft bill was directed by someone who was borderline insane (nadine dorris) Age assurance is not actually a problem, what is a problem is asking me to hand over personal details so some fly by night US startup who'll get hacked/sell my data to blackmailers. forcing websites to have moderation policies is fine, not having a flexible approach for smaller sites is not fine. The act is flawed, but its not _actually_ that different from how Network TV is moderated in the USA.

amanaplanacanal 1y ago
I think you mean broadcast TV. Broadcast radio is similar. The legal justification is something about the limited supply of public airwaves. Those regulations wouldn't fly in the US for any other medium.
- KaiserPro 1y ago
  It was about morals. Hence the hollywood code, and all that sort of stuff. The US really loved censorship, but just not in overt ways. Sure you could publish anything, but it'd never get syndicated by radio, newpaper, TV or cinema.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

lkramer 1y ago

Sure, but so are people in the US, despite the first amendment.