Scotland has passed a new hate crime act, formally called the Hate Crime and Public Order Act 2021, which takes effect, appropriately, on April Fool’s Day (April 1). It was passed in 2021, though, which accounts for its name.
The whole law is here, and part 3 is the most contentious part, including this (click to enlarge).
Note that it is a crime to make statements about age, disability, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, transgender identity, or “variation in sex characteristics”, stuff that a “reasonable person” would find “threatening”, “abusive”, and even “insulting”. You don’t even have to have the intent of stirring up hatred.
Further, look at (2)aii above. You are committing a crime even if you “communicate to another person material that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive”. So, for example, if you email a friend that a guy you don’t like “must have a small dick” (a common insult for males, but also abusive because it makes fun of “variation in a sex characteristic”), or say to someone “Jack is a dotty old codger”, which insults someone on the grounds of age, then those might be offenses.
Also, as one reader said, “Part of the reason why people are so worried is that the guidance that Police Scotland have issued seems to be somewhat different from what the law itself says. It’s a download document 29 pages long.” Looking at it briefly, I find two things extra worrying.
First, even if what you do doesn’t amount to a “crime,” it’s supposed to be reported and the coppers will investigate it, probably putting your name on the record (bolding below is mine):
While it is accepted that not every hate report will amount to criminality, officers are required to take preventative and protective measures even when a non-criminal offence is apparent. Seemingly low level or minor events may in fact have a significant impact on the victim. Crime type alone does not necessarily dictate impact or consequences of the action. Repeated targeting of a person, whether by the same perpetrator or not, can lead to what is known as the ‘drip drip’ effect i.e. although seemingly minor incidents, the repeated nature could affect the person’s ability to cope. Each individual will be affected differently.
Further, as implied above, intent doesn’t matter; it’s the effect that does. And that, of course, leaves the act open to all kinds of “I’m insulted” complaints:
For recording purposes, the perception of the victim or any other person is the defining factor in determining whether an incident is a hate incident or in recognising the malice element of a crime. The perception of the victim should always be explored, however they do not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief and police officers or staff members should not directly challenge this perception. Evidence of malice and ill-will is not required for a hate crime or hate incident to be recorded and thereafter investigated as a hate crime or hate incident by police.
If you want an example of something that creates a slippery slope of crime, the bit above is it. For what is seen as “threatening”, “abusive”, and especially “insulting”, will depend on the “victim’s” perception.. Especially ridiculous is the (2)aii provision that restricts your freedom to insult a person to someone else, without insulting the “victim” directly. This is going to create a mess, and I hope it’s tested in the courts soon after it goes into effect.
I’m hoping this ludicrous law won’t be enforced as written, or really enforced at all, for in America this law would violate the First Amendment, except insofar as you harass someone repeatedly, defame them, create an atmosphere bigotry in the workplace, or say something publicly that incited “imminent and lawless action.”
Another reader said this, though I haven’t checked on the assertion:
“In the meantime, Police Scotland have published a list of third-party locations where people will be able to report hate crimes – it includes a sex shop in Glasgow, a mushroom farm, and the address of a council office block that was demolished a few years ago… What could possibly go wrong?”
The police, trying to explain to a befuddled public how the law will work, have confected an example that involves, of all people, J. K. Rowling, who has committed NO hate crimes. Read the Torygraph report by clicking the headline below (probably paywalled), or find the piece archived here:
Excerpts from the Torygraph are indented. The picture above was part of the article and was surely not part of the police example, and I’m not certain about the decorative part on the left. But, based on the story below, I take the text on the left to be accurate.
Police officers who invented a trans-hating “parody” of JK Rowling [above] must be stripped of any role in enforcing new hate crime laws, more than 200 women have said.
In an open letter, female signatories expressed “disgust” that a fictional character called “Jo”, alleged to be modelled on the Harry Potter writer who called for trans people to be sent to gas chambers, had been created by serving Police Scotland officers.
Of course Rowling hasn’t come close to posting videos urging putting LGBT people in gas chambers, much less asserting that they all have “mental health conditions.” This example comes close, in my view, to defaming Rowling. But let’s read on:
They said the revelation had left their confidence in police to fairly enforce hate crime legislation at “rock bottom” and claimed the narrative created reinforced offensive “tropes” that gender critical women were comparable to Nazis.At an official police “youth engagement” hate crime event last month, attendees were presented with a “scenario” in which Jo, an “online influencer” with a large social media following, is “passionate” about her beliefs such as there being only two genders.
“Jo” is what Rowlings friends call her, but is also the derisive name that her haters use.
The story escalates with “Jo” stating that trans people “all belong in the gas chambers”. Attendees were then asked to consider whether “Jo” had committed a hate crime.
The letter, signed by high-profile political figures, academics and gender-critical campaigners, said the story reinforced offensive claims about women who believe biological sex should take precedence over self-declared gender identity.
Such women are often compared by trans rights activists to racists while they also regularly face unfounded accusations of having links to the far-Right.
In a letter, the women said the “Jo” character had clearly been “a thinly veiled parody of the author JK Rowling, who in recent years has championed the sex-based rights of women and girls”.
“We write to you to express our disgust that public servants, not least those charged with enforcing the new offences created by the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, were responsible for this material,” the women’s letter, to Jo Farrell, the chief constable, stated.
“It plays into long-standing, offensive tropes that women who are concerned about the erosion of their sex-based rights are akin to Nazis.”
The row comes just days before Scotland’s new hate crimes laws are enforced.
Trans, non-binary and cross-dressing people, though not biological women, will receive new protections under the legislation which critics claim will be “weaponised” against gender critical women such as Rowling and erode freedom of speech.
The 235 signatories, who include Johann Lamont, the ex-Scottish Labour leader, former Labour MSP Elaine Smith and Sarah Pedersen, a professor at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, called on Ms Farrell to launch an investigation into the creation of “Jo”.
. . . . The Time for Inclusive Education campaign group, which jointly ran the hate crime event, last week revealed that Police Scotland officers have invented the “Jo” scenario “based on their expertise”.
Police Scotland has declined multiple opportunities to deny that the “Jo” character was based on Rowling, whose first name is Joanne and is called Jo by her friends.
Meanwhile, the organisation has so far refused to release training materials for officers charged with enforcing its hate crime law.
The article further reports that the cops won’t let anybody view the training materials until April 9, more than a week after the law takes effect, and further claims that the slow police response violates the UK’s Freedom of Information Act.
Knowing Rowling, she’ll take action against being defamed in this way. After all, the training materials above may constitute a hate crime itself; abusing Rowling because of her statements about sex and gender. If you think the name “Jo”—as well as the beliefs used to attack the “online influencer with a large following”—doesn’t refer to Rowling, I have some land in Florida to sell you.
Oh, woe is Scotland!
h/t: Christopher, Jez
It might be 2024 in the rest of the world, but in Scotland it’s still 1984.
Woe is Scotland indeed! The UK (from the traditions of which we have derived our system of relatively free and unfettered speech, now, unfortunately, under increasing attack from the illiberal forces of wokery) is truly lost on this issue, Scotland being even more regressive than England. At least, across the Irish Sea, Eire’s Parliament would now seem to be having second thoughts about its ill-advised proposed legislation concerning so-called “hate crimes” and so-called “hate speech”.
Christopher Hitchens :
“Ladies and gentlemen, I beseech you, resist it while you still can and before the right to complain is taken away from you which will be the next thing … you will be told you can’t complain … because you are Islamophobic .” : youtu.be/CcePEZqn7Wg?si=1TS-m5iSiHlTCikl
That was on criticism of Islam. And I thought that was all he was talking about.
Btw I think – is that John Lennox in that talk?
Looks like the full talk is here : youtu.be/32KRwzJsy1o?si=eyfk7gWud2xiYf9w
Not sure what year.
The SNP are showing the defects of having been in power way too long, with Scotland pretty much amounting to a one-party state now (at least as relates to the Scottish Parliament, rather than Westminster). I hope that they get totally stuffed at the next election.
And yes, the irony is that, if you took these police training materials and said them about a trans person, you’d very quickly find yourself being investigated for a “hate crime”.
It’s all about vagueness, subjectivity, and the police and politicians playing favourites.
Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser had a “hate incident” recorded against him by the police for Tweeting: “Choosing to identify as ‘non-binary’ is as valid as choosing to identify as a cat. I’m not sure governments should be spending time on action plans for either.”
MP Rachel Maclean had a “hate incident” recorded against her for tweeting that the Green Party “don’t know what a woman is”.
I don’t believe there should be any ‘hate’ laws or ‘hate’ speech, only crimes which may be tested in court, based on evidence. If you incite violence or hit someone that is a crime. That someone else deems it hateful because of their ‘feelings’ is neither here or there.
And we all recognise that there are many grievance mongers, activists, obsessives, and plain nutters, who will leap on the opportunity to find offence and ‘hate’ – whether it exists or not. Can we rely on the Police to reject vexatious claims? Hollow laugh.
And how quickly will a politician with their poor behaviour exposed in the media claim to be receiving threatening, abusive, or insulting stirring up of hate? And will the Police reject the claim as vexatious? Another hollow laugh.
Vexatious complaints are what the police want. More investigators and staff sergeants and supervisors and managers and chief commissioners will need to be hired.
Unfortunately the people will be found by switching them from other Police activities such as maintaining public order and investigating (real) crimes.
Cynic? Moi?
You’re probably right. Canada’s government, which has recently introduced a bill, C-63, with provisions similar to Scotland’s law, has just also introduced bail-reform provisions that will for all intents and purposes eliminate pre-trial detention after arrest and charging. There are extra-lenient provisions for black and aboriginal suspects, who over-commit the kind of violent crimes pre-trial detention is intended to protect society against.
They are clearly trying to empty out the remand centres at least to make room for hate speakers and transphobes. The prisons will come next.
maybe rowling’s will be the first legal challenge: that she sue the state for being (at the very least) insulted!
She does live in Scotland, so the issue does pass that test.
This is always the problem with any attempt to implement a “hate speech” law, which a lot of people in the US think actually exists. Of course such a law would violate the 1st Amendment. The only instances where it might be an issue is if speech is used to incite violence or civil disorder, if it is slander toward a specific person, or it might be used as evidence in the conviction of an actual crime.
It seems there might be a pattern of nations situated north of a border with a more powerful neighbour struggling to show separation by becoming more loony left. There are too many parallels between Humza Yousaf and Justin Trudeau!
There’s a lot of speculation that this Hate Crime Act was specifically crafted and passed in order to “protect” people who identify as transgender from having to deal with any form of disbelief that they’re really truly the sex/gender they claim to be. It’s going to be a nightmare— which will lead to backlash — which will be treated as the problem.
Rowling recently wrote that she’d be willing to go to jail rather than be forced by order of the law to use pronouns that aren’t sex-based. This is what the Trans Rights activists want, for her and everybody else. Watch what happens come April.
In a related event, Scottish seismologists have determined the source of low energy p-waves to be caused by Harry Lauder’s cane rapping against his casket as he chuckles uncontrollably.
The third-party locations where people in Scotland will be able to report a hate crime are referenced in this BBC report: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-68570614
Years ago, upon moving from Massachusetts to California, I wondered why California did not require vehicle inspections the way Massachusetts did. I was told it was because when there are no vehicle inspections it is easy for cops to stop anybody they want on the pretext of an unsafe vehicle.
I think this new law in Scotland is similar. It will allow the government to go after anyone they want.
While there are some minor exceptions, California does require inspections:
https://www.bentleymore.com/california-vehicle-safety-inspection-requirements/
I’m not making this up. I lived in CA from 1982-1986. Other people have made the same observation:
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-California-not-have-a-vehicle-inspection-while-eastern-states-do
Your article from 2020
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/11/12/norway-criminalizes-public-and-private-hate-speech-about-trans-issues/
Of course, people still say things in public and write things that certainly is offensive an may be considered hateful, even in articles in Main Stream Media and not least, in the comments section.
There’s been a conviction:
https://www-nettavisen-no.translate.goog/nyheter/mann-domt-for-hatefulle-ytringer-mot-homofile/s/5-95-1208741?_x_tr_sl=no&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=no&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Actually, there been very few cases brought to court when seeing how much people say exactly what they mean here. Of course, Legal experts said that the law t would restrict freedom of speech and difficult to enforce.
A radical feminist was reported to police when she said during a TV debate (on public TV) to a trans women: “You can’t be a lesbian, your are a man”
The case was dismissed after being “investigated”. Of course, trans activist complain all the time that not more people are convicted according to breaking this law. Most people just shake their head in disbelief over the woke left hypersensitivity
As in the US, the people saying the most offending things is certainly not radical feminists gender critical women, but the ” Free palestine ” people against Jews
The political wind is blowing to the right here now (and the right here is certainly not like the right in the US, but centric). I believe one of the reason is many are just fed up with the woke left.
I have long questioned the wisdom of having crimes based on how an alleged victim might perceive a statement or action and not specifically on the statement or action itself. Crime in the eye of the beholder seems too broad to be useful—except perhaps to those who would use perceived slights as opportunities for litigation.
Seems foolish to me—and will clog the courts as well.
Not foolish, Norman. Deliberate.
The idea is to make you afraid to speak. Sure, you might say, the police are busy, the Courts are busy, the jails are already full. They can’t possibly devote the resources to this. And they mostly don’t. But one day they do, and they come for you. Then you find just how much they can devote to something they get it in their mind to pursue. So everyone else takes the message that the chance of being prosecuted is maybe a low number, but provably not zero. That’s all it takes. Because you see there is no financial upside to trying your luck with speaking the truth, the way there is with normal crimes seeking advancement. People will shut up.
A prosecution, even if you are acquitted, or a Human Rights Commission complaint (which are nearly always decided in favour of the complainant) is financially ruinous for an individual of ordinary means. And if you are wealthy, well, the fine can always be adjusted upward until you’re not.
If I said “There is no god and Mohammed is not his prophet” in Scotland would that get me arrested for a hate crime after April 1st?
Want to try and find out?
Regardless of where you live in the world, if what you wrote can be read in Scotland, you will have committed an offence that could result in your arrest if you entered Scotland. Ever.
Or Canada too if what you say about Bill C-63 comes into force and am I correct in that a supposed offence will or could be retrospective in Canada?
Scary!
It’s even worse that that. Because of the way that the law works in the UK one would not have to be in Scotland in order to be arrested on suspicion of breaking a law there, one only has to be within the UK.
For example, I am English and live in England. If I were to make a comment on social media that was reported to the Scottish police, they may well obtain a warrant for my arrest. All they would have to do is inform my local constabulary that they have a warrant and request that I be detained. My local force would then carry out a no-warrant arrest on the basis that they have reasonable grounds to suspect that I have committed a crime in Scotland and that an arrest warrant has been issued (note: I will not have been arrested at this stage for the specific offence for which the Scottish police obtained their warrant). The purpose of this arrest will be to detain me in police custody until I can be handed over to the Scottish police (either by being taken to Scotland by my local constabulary or collected by Police Scotland. Only then will I be re-arrested under the warrant issued in Scotland. No need for an extradition hearing because I will only be passed between different branches of the UK police and legal systems.
The system applies in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so if one is suspected of committing a crime in one of them, one can be arrested in any of them.
If someone heard you say it and takes offence then yes. Even if you say it in your own home or on a video from the USA that is watched in Scotland. Even if the listener isn’t Muslim. Your comment here might too, but I suspect your quote marks may save you.
The worry isn’t really that you may be arrested, then you can defend yourself. The danger is that hate crimes may be recorded against you by multiple anonymous people and you won’t know about it.
I understand the people reporting these are being called ‘victims’ even before an investigation, so you are guilty on day one.
That depends on context and intent. Dress your insult up as the beginning of a debate and I see no problem. See s9 (b) (i).
It’s not an insult on the face of it to state one’s non-belief in a faith, or any religious faith for that matter. Being insulting is a separate issue. Similarly, I don’t think it’s offensive to state that human beings can’t change their sex.
Yes, but by the Pedant Division on the grounds that if there is no god then it logically follows that there can be no prophets, so the mention of Mo was an unnecessary addition.
I can’t speak to other university systems, but in the University System of Georgia “intent” is not an element of establishing an offense/violation of conduct code policy, including Title IX allegations. The perception of the “offended” is all that’s required. It’s insane.
Former policeman Harry Miller had a “non-crime hate incident” recorded against him and subsequently was successful in bringing a case against the College of Policing. The court found that the College’s hate crime guidance was unlawful:
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/court-of-appeal-rules-police-hate-incidents-guidance-unlawful/5110987.article
Because Scotland has a separate legal system, the ruling in Miller doesn’t apply there, but calls are being made for Scotland’s equivalent of the College of Policing to take it into account and to amend its own guidance accordingly.
And what happened to Harry Miller’s colleague Sarah Phillimore, a barrister with whom he founded the campaign group Fair Cop, is beyond belief: https://unherd.com/newsroom/farewell-to-the-non-hate-crime-incident/
Sadly, it looks like Scotland has still to learn the lessons from this nonsense.
The most worrying aspect is that you are not informed when a non-crime hate incident is recorded against you. It takes a Subject Access Request to the police force involved to find out. Police Scotland is likely to be deluged with those – they are free to make online.
And if you ever make such a request you will go on the police watch list as someone with a guilty mind.
TRAs (militant trans activist) have been all over social media encouraging others to report every single thing. Some insist they shouldn’t make false reports. I say the opposite.
I will be self identifying as circumgender and reporting TRAs who want men in my spaces. I will submit regular Subject Access Requests to ensure police are recording my complaints and also to check my own status.
The more paperwork there is then the faster the system will seize up and crash. Cops won’t be able to cope.
Joolz, don’t forget that making a false report to police is a crime. You know that favoured groups will never be so prosecuted. The police will regard it as a good-faith misunderstanding by the justifiably aggrieved. But if the police think that circumgender is something you made up just to yank their chain, and all the activist groups they do outreach with agree with them, because they will, you could find yourself in serious trouble in front of an unsympathetic judge, like Jussie Smollett with his noose. And you aren’t black, (I presume.)
Resistance here is not gumming up the administrative state by swamping it in paperwork. You are butting heads with the legal monopoly on the use of violence. Seriously, be very careful. You could go to jail. Outside the United States, you have no rights except what a judge says you do.
I won’t be making any false reports. I am genuinely offended by people who hate women and insist predators undress with women and girls. Also the men claiming they are ‘lesbian’ and physically threatening lesbians who refuse them. Every single decent man already stays out. By definition it’s only predators who ignore women’s safety and dignity.
I appreciate your concern, but we are dealing with a gov that refused to add “and sex” to the list of hate protections and they have ignored two public consultations that overwhelmingly rejected 2 of their genderwoo bills. We’ve been trying for 3 years to make them listen. They won’t, so we have to act ourselves.
The longer this nonsense goes on the more damage it will cause. We need the bill euthanased quickly rather than dragging it on and letting it be normalised. I feel scared to know that complete strangers will be reporting me to the police for standing up for my human rights and those of little girls. Many of us are prepared to go to prison to highlight this.
Thank you for caring.
No, the United States is not the only country which has law-based defendant rights.
@Phillip Helbig, I’m not speaking just of defendant rights. I’m referring to speech rights that prevent the state from making you a defendant in the first place. I believe you live in Germany. Can you display a swastika in public without being arrested and charged with a crime?
Your right to a fair trial is of course important to be legally protected. Rule-of-law countries do that. But also important is the limitation on what speech or other forms of dissent the state can make illegal. The United States limits the power of the state to do this more stringently than any other country. When a country’s constitution aspires to protect freedom of expression except where the state really, really wants to limit it (as Canada’s does), then your right to dissent is in the hands of a judge, weighing your claim against the prerogative of the state to limit it in what it claims to be the public interest.
That’s what hate-speech laws just do, and why they gain no traction in America.
(I’ll stop now.)
From the comments section of your link to the Sarah Phillimore accusation case.
“Perhaps there should have been a civil penalty for people who brought accusations of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ that could not be substantiated. It would have discouraged people from making spurious claims and shifted the burden from the innocent onto their accusers”
This holds true and should be together with open accusation reporting within this / these hate laws as a minimum protection against spurious accusations and activists with an agenda.
Harry, Sarah Phillmore, Michael Foran, Denis Kavanagh and others have been giving us free legal advice about this. We are lucky to have them.
https://x.com/SVPhillimore/status/1772741250870854054?s=20
We are! MumsNet has an information and resource thread, too: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5032028-scottish-hate-crime-bill-information-and-resources
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
The funny thing is that proponents of this type of legislation scratch their heads as to why there’s so much support for the Orange Cheeto wearing a MAGA hat. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits the type of legislation being enacted in Scotland, Canada, and many EU nations. What the MAGA crowd hears is that the Woke crowd wants to take away our fundamental freedoms as part of a deep state conspiracy; the details may be lost in telling but they’re not entirely wrong.
This will play out in the November national elections in the U.S. and no one should be surprised if Trump wins a second term.
As for the situation in England & Wales:
“The police and the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] have agreed the following definition for identifying and flagging hate crimes:
“Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person’s disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or transgender identity or perceived transgender identity.”
There is no legal definition of hostility so we use the everyday understanding of the word which includes ill-will, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment and dislike.”
Source: https://www.cps.gov.uk/crime-info/hate-crime
Notice the term “reasonable person”.
The “reasonable person” is the target / victim of the crime apparently (there is no definition in the sample above). “Reasonable person” is used four times.
This is in contrast to, simply “person” – who apparently is supposed to be the criminal (there is no definition in the sample). “Person” or “another person” is used at least nine times.
Notice that.
You’d think that a judge would be regarded as a “reasonable person”, and yet EJ Taylor ruled that Maya Forstater’s belief that sex is real, immutable, and sometimes important was not “worthy of respect in a democratic society” in his decision on her first tier employment tribunal hearing. (Thankfully, he was overruled on appeal.)
The notion of a reasonable person will be defined, or attempted to be defined, somewhere in legislation and would be referred to at some point.
But people have quite an ability to manipulate or reinterpret meaning, as shown by the plethora of lawyers in the world.
It’s largely virtue signaling since the main provisions are considerably ameliorated by the provisions contained in s9. Indeed, to use a colloquialism, it could be said that the legislation disappears up its own arse. The Courts are going to have quite an interesting time with this. What a waste of resources.
Most current US college definitions of “sexual harassment” include discrimination by hostile environment and do not require that an act be intentional. The words “or effect” create a situation much like the Scottish Law. Although the law uses the words “reasonable person” frequently, the emphasis placed on the subjective reaction of the grievant seems to undermine this safe-guard. If you look at the predictors of a situation being perceived as a hostile environment, you find that liberal lesbians are far more likely to see hostility than moderate heterosexual males. Additionally, a belief that shouting down someone expected to say hurtful things and a belief that protection from hostile environment protection is very important also increase the hostility perceived in an ambiguous situation. Anxiety and depression (and ironically some of the medications used to treat them) can distort and bias perception, experience, recollection, and testimony. As Haidt reports in his recent book, The Anxious Generation (2024), there has been a huge increase recently in anxiety levels among college age students. A report by Lahtinen (2024, 14 March) in the Scandanavian Journal of Psychology provides the results of two studies that identify the Woke’s core beliefs. The most interesting finding, however, was that the more Woke an individual was the higher their self-report of emotional disturbance and mental illness. A survey by FIRE found that the larger a school’s DEI budget was, the greater the students’ discomfort in expressing views that might differ from what they thought was politically correct.
Scottish PEN has joined the chorus of those calling on the Scottish government to cancel the College introduction of the new Hate Crimes Act: https://twitter.com/ScottishPEN/status/1773021225737973976
The Woke Left’s use of “prejudice” (in the context of the definition of “hate crime”) is an example of what Nick Haslam calls “concept creep”:
“Many of psychology’s concepts have undergone semantic shifts in recent years. These conceptual changes follow a consistent trend. Concepts that refer to the negative aspects of human experience and behavior have expanded their meanings so that they now encompass a much broader range of phenomena than before. This expansion takes “horizontal” and “vertical” forms: concepts extend outward to capture qualitatively new phenomena and downward to capture quantitatively less extreme phenomena. The concepts of abuse, bullying, trauma, mental disorder, addiction, and prejudice are examined to illustrate these historical changes. In each case, the concept’s boundary has stretched and its meaning has dilated. A variety of explanations for this pattern of “concept creep” are considered and its implications are explored. I contend that the expansion primarily reflects an ever-increasing sensitivity to harm, reflecting a liberal moral agenda. Its implications are ambivalent, however. Although conceptual change is inevitable and often well motivated, concept creep runs the risk of pathologizing everyday experience and encouraging a sense of virtuous but impotent victimhood.”
Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1047840X.2016.1082418
And this article on “concept creep” was published in 2016, which is now recognized as “way back before things got really bad.”
What if I say: “Scottish football is s$it. It’s a two team league.”?
Is that hate speech?
Yes. But they would agree with you.
+++ 🙂
The responses of the Scottish Police Federation (basically the trade union representing police officers in Scotland) and the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents (the representative body of police superintendents and chief superintendents) are worrying: https://twitter.com/mbmpolicy/status/1772912238916973011
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/03/scotlands-hate-speech-act-and-abuse-of-process/
‘It is a well-established principle in Scots law that anything published on the internet, which can be read in Scotland, is deemed to be published in Scotland. The act of publication is not deemed to be the person actually publishing the item, let us say in Tahiti. The act of publication is deemed to be the reader opening the item on their device in Scotland.’
Also:
‘In addition to holding that Scots courts have jurisdiction over anything published on the internet anywhere in the world, because if it can be read here it is published in Scotland, Scottish judges have also invented the doctrine of “continuing publication”. As it is the act by the reader of opening the matter online which constitutes publication, every time it is opened by someone in Scotland from the internet that constitutes a new publication. So any “hate speech” that has been online for ten years constitutes a new offence if you read it in Scotland now. “Hate speech” as defined in the Act, anywhere on the Internet, no matter when or where it was published, is going to be a new crime in Scotland if someone opens it or reads it after 1 April.’
Thank you for this post and the attached link.
“Scotland controls through Scottish courts everything published everywhere on the internet” Have the Scottish Courts informed Vladimir Putin about this or Donald Trump, or Kim Jon Un?
Does this apply if you “open” something accidentally? and then it is deleted, how is this going to be proven?
How did this ridiculous law ever gain “Royal Assent” in the UK in 2021?
Was it read and considered correctly, it seems not.
Phew!
Royal Assent is a formality. The last Sovereign to refuse Assent was Queen Anne in the early 18th century. She eventually relented.
This just in: Saudi Arabia to be head of UN women’s rights commission!
Hooray!!
With THAT incredible, insightful and just decision how can we NOT take the UN’s line on Gaza with deep moral seriousness?
That settles it. I’m buying a (campus swastika) keffiyeh, call for River to Sea and start murdering Jews. I’ve got the necessary brain damage for that position, I’m morally absurd and now I’ve got the UN on my side! Yallah!
D.A.
NYC
(re-posted, sorry, I put it under the birds before!)
An excellent new piece by Prof. Kathleen Stock: https://archive.ph/fuOE7
This just in from Andrew Doyle (posting before listening – AND – it came up on April Fools’ (Fool’s?) Day, for the record)…):
x.com/andrewdoyle_com/status/1774717634468040951?s=46