Category: “hate speech”

Should there be even more curbs on free speech?

January 12, 2026 • 10:00 am

Reader Gingerbaker called my attention to a Substack post by Elder of Ziyon (henceforth “EoZ”), who also has an extensive and useful pro-Israel website I’ve cited several times. The post, which you can access by clicking the screenshot below, advocates for restrictions on the kind of freedom of speech presently allowed by America’s First Amendment.  The Elder’s view that the courts’ construal of our First Amendment needs to be modified is in fact shared by many, though the restrictions demanded are varied. All, however, try to restrict varieties of “hate speech.”

There are already well-known exceptions to freedom of speech as outlined in the First Amendment.  These, adjudicated by courts over the years, include speech that is defamatory, constitutes harassment, poses the thread of imminent and predictable violence, “fighting words,” false advertising, and so on (Wikipedia has a list of more exceptions).

The EoZ uses as his example the fundamentalist Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahir, which is active in Western countries. Several of them have banned it for its Islamist views, but it’s banned even more widely. As Wikipedia notes,

Hizb ut-Tahrir has been banned in Bangladesh, China, Russia, Pakistan,India, Germany, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Kazakhstan and “across Central Asia”, Indonesia, and all Arab countries except Lebanon, Yemen and the UAE. In July 2017, the Indonesian government revoked Hizb ut-Tahrir’s legal status, citing incompatibility with government regulations on extremism and national ideology.

Why the banning in paces like America?  EoZ explains:

The justification for these bans usually begins with the group’s stated aims. Hizb ut-Tahrir rejects liberal democracy and advocates replacing it with a global Islamic caliphate governed by sharia law. It presents Islam not merely as a religion but as a political system destined to supersede Western civilization. Its rhetoric is frequently antisemitic, dismissive of pluralism, and grounded in a vision of Muslim supremacy.

It is no stretch to say that the group’s ideas are hostile to Jews, to women, to dissenters, and to the moral assumptions that underlie liberal societies. If Hizb ut-Tahrir ever held power, its worldview would translate into repression.

There is a problem, though. Hizb ut-Tahrir is explicitly non-violent. It does not carry out attacks. It does not issue operational instructions for terrorism in Western countries. Its leaders insist, consistently and publicly, that their method is ideological persuasion rather than armed struggle. Their ideas are corrosive, but they remain ideas.

It appears to have used socialist concepts to build itself this way specifically to take advantage of Western freedoms and inoculate it from being banned legally in the West.

This brings up the question of where free speech ends and where limiting speech is better.

The EoZ gives this photo in his article, widely published without attribution, but it’s not clear that the people pictured are from Hizb ut-Tahi. Still, the issue under discussion is instantiated by that poster.

The EoZ notes that banning peaceful organizations for what they believe is not only a very slippery slope, but one that’s been descended many times.  And, for example, calling for the destruction of America or replacement of democracy with ideologies like Communism still counts as free speech in America. So why ban this particular group?  According to EoZ, it’s because the “violence” that may be produced by such organizations is delayed,  so that minds can be changed by gradually contemplating a group’s message, eventually leading—in the case of Hizb ut-Tahir—to the replacement of democracy with Islamist autocracy.

At the same time, pretending that Hizb ut-Tahrir is merely another set of opinions that should be ignored is willfully naive. Its ideology does not sit in a vacuum. It is a sustained narrative that delegitimizes Western society, portrays Jews and non-Muslims as exploiters, and presents the destruction of the existing order as morally necessary. It may not tell followers to commit violence, but it devotes considerable energy to explaining why violence committed by others is understandable, justified, or admirable. Over time, that difference becomes less sharp than Western legal categories would like it to be.

The problem, as I see it, is that the West’s concept of free speech is unnecessarily expansive and out definition of incitement is needlessly and extraordinarily narrow. We tend to locate responsibility almost entirely at the moment of explicit instruction, as though speech and action are cleanly separable until a specific verbal threshold is crossed. That approach forces societies to wait until violence is imminent before acting, while treating years of ideological conditioning as irrelevant. It assumes that moral preparation is harmless so long as it avoids certain words.

Hizb ut-Tahrir operates comfortably within that space.

But this case can also be made for many organizations, including the Communist Party and the many Islamist groups of young people who adhere to Islamism and want to see the end of “Turtle Island”.  Groups like antifa and sundry anarchists feel likewise.  Should they be banned, too? But the EoZ somehow sees Hizb ut-Tahrir as an exception, probably because it’s a threat to Jews, and the EoZ is ardently pro-Jewish (he mention that threat several times.)

 . . . . the problem posed by Hizb ut-Tahrir is not that it holds extreme beliefs, but that it functions as a preparatory environment. It habituates listeners to a worldview in which violence by others becomes morally intelligible. That places it in a different category from ordinary dissent or even radical critique, and it justifies a different kind of response.

This does not require banning ideas. It requires acknowledging that speech operates within systems. A society can restrict organizational activity, funding, coordination, and amplification when those structures predictably serve as pathways toward violence, without criminalizing theology or private belief. That approach is narrower, more defensible, and far less likely to metastasize than ideological prohibition.

Free speech in the West has gradually ceased to be treated as an instrument and has come to resemble an article of faith. . .

. . . The question, then, is not whether Hizb ut-Tahrir should be banned. It is whether Western societies are capable of developing a more mature understanding of incitement, one that accounts for moral enablement and foreseeable harm without granting the state a license to police belief.

I find this unconvincing, and I see no distinction between Hizb ut-Tahrir and the many other groups that want to replace democracy (in this case American democracy) with various forms of autocracy or theocracy, including groups that cry, “Globalize the intifada”—an explicit call for Islamic theocracy and violence. But note that this group doesn’t even call for violence, so how is it possible to blame future violence on its pronouncements?

The reasons I’m unconvinced are several, and not new.  First, it’s probably impossible to determine when a group’s beliefs or utterances promote eventual violence rather than imminent or predictable violence.  There’s a difference between a lone moron on the Quad crying “Gas the Jews”, and a person saying the same thing in front of a synagogue or group of Jewish people (who in America aren’t violent anyway). If someone eventually torches a synagogue, even citing certain groups in a written manifesto for the actions, those groups cannot be retrospectively indicted for violating the First Amendment, as we cannot be sure how much they contributed to the violence. “Imminent” is far easier to prove than “much later”. After all, many people who commit acts of violence are deranged, and have a mixture of motives that may be mixed up with mental illness. Thus, although P. Z. Myers, contemplating Joe Lonsdale, has said “maybe it’s time to hang a few billionaires to teach a lesson to those greedy parasites“, I don’t think Myers should be arrested even if someone who reads his site hangs or kills a billionaire after citing Myers’ posts.

Just think of all the manifestos written by violent criminals who have cited a variety of influences! We can’t simply go back and arrest them all because they contributed to violence, for contributions are fuzzy, unpredictable, and often mixed up with mental illness or a propensity to be violent per se.

Second, the remedy for “hate speech” like the nonviolent calls for Islamism by Hizb ut-Tahrir is, as we all know, counterspeech. And that involves pointing out how Islamism is a repressive, theocratic form of government that is inimical to the well being of its believers—and of any country that adopts Islamic tenets. Women and gays are oppressed, people of other faiths (or of no faith) are endangered, and free speech itself is usually outlawed or greatly restricted.  That alone guarantees the failure of Islamism to replace American democracy, but in fact there is no way, given our Constitution, that a democracy would vote itself out of power in favor of Islamism or any government that violates the Constitution. (I’m not speaking of Trump’s probable violations of the Constitution to buttress his own power, as they will eventually be sorted out by the courts.) Even despite Trump, America remains a democracy, though a currently dysfunctional one.

Third, as John Stuart Mill pointed out in On Liberty, allowing people to say odious things has a number of beneficial effects, including “outing” those people who believe such stuff and would otherwise remain underground. Such odious views also help us us to sharpen our arguments against them, and their utterance also gives us the chance to correct the misapprehensions of their opponents (see this blog post on “Mills’s trident”).

Now I understand where EoZ is coming from. The Elder is certainly Jewish and is appalled by hearing things like “globalize the intifada”. Jews are being attacked throughout the world, and the EoZ holds antisemitic speech responsible. Indeed, many countries, like Germany and Canada do ban antisemitic speech or “hate speech” that demonizes identifiable groups.

Why shouldn’t we follow them? In my view, the reasons for banning “hate speech” are weaker than for allowing it, so long as that speech doesn’t lead to imminent and predictable violence or violates other restrictions the courts have put on the First Amendment. People can differ on this, just as I differ with the good Elder of Zion. But Mill laid out the reasons against speech bans in 1859, and in my view his reasons are still good.

Mount Holyoke College blatantly violates free speech: mocking a policy now becomes a reportable offense

September 7, 2024 • 9:00 am

Speaking of violations of freedom of speech by colleges, here’s a letter to the “faculty community” of Mount Holyoke College (a high-class women’s liberal arts school), telling professors that they have to report certain types of speech. Note that these violations, however, are apparently in line with the Biden Administration’s recent rewriting of the Title IX guidelines, so federal money could be withheld from schools who don’t comply. In that sense, it’s the Biden administration itself who is responsible for policing “hate speech” and creating these new—and in my view mostly harmful—regulations (Note that as a private school, Mt. Holyoke needn’t abide by the First Amendment, but, like all nonreligious and nonmilitary schools, it certainly should.)

The new rules are laid out in this email sent to the Mount Holyoke faculty by the College President and another administrator, with the text taken from a tweet by Steve McGuire (bolding is mine):

Dear Faculty Community,

Welcome to the start of another academic year at Mount Holyoke College! As you may have learned in President Danielle R. Holley’s email communication on August 20th, the College has created a new compliance department as of this past summer. To ensure that Mount Holyoke is a safe and inclusive campus for our community as well as compliant with ever-changing regulations, two new positions were created: Assistant Vice President for Compliance and Director of Civil Rights and Community Standards.

Some of you recently heard from the Assistant Vice President for Compliance, Shannon Lynch, regarding your responsibilities as Mandated Reporters at the College. Per our Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment Policy, all College employees who are not designated as Confidential must disclose to the Title IX Coordinator when they have information that may reasonably constitute a violation of the Policy.

On August 1, Title IX Regulations expanded to include misgendering, deadnaming, and mispronouning as prohibited acts and thus expanded the set of prohibited activities of concern to mandated reporters. Because faculty have a unique role in creating classrooms as spaces of mutual trust, respect, and concern—a role that lives alongside their responsibilities under Title IX—we would like to provide some guidance regarding faculty observations of misgendering in their classrooms. It is the expectation of the College that faculty report when misgendering occurs in the following ways:

  • when the misgendering has created a hostile environment;

  • when there is open mocking of our Pronoun Policy or an individual’s choice of pronouns;

  • or when a student reports being misgendered, deadnamed, or has been subject to incorrect use of their pronouns.

Shannon will follow up with all parties named in a report, offering resources and support, as well as procedural options if the policies’ definitions and standards have been met.

The scope of Title IX has shifted, but Mount Holyoke’s overarching commitment to education, care, and support of our gender diverse community of students, faculty and staff remains unchanged. Faculty can continue to look to the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, as well as the Teaching and Learning Initiative (TLI) for additional resources and support. We also want to highlight the upcoming TGNC10 programming, which will provide opportunities for education, discussion, and community related to our 10 years as a gender diverse campus. [Although Mt. Holyoke is a women’s school, about a decade ago they decided to allow transgender women to enroll.]

Additional resources related to our Title IX policies can be found here. You may also visit the College Title IX webpage to learn more about our policies and procedures, as well as support and resources available to our campus community.

Should you have any questions or concerns regarding your responsibilities listed above, please contact Shannon Lynch at shannonlynch@mtholyoke.edu for more information.

Thank you and we wish you a successful semester ahead! =

Shannon Lynch
AVP for Compliance

Lisa M. Sullivan
Provost and Dean of Faculty
Mount Holyoke College

You can see how Title IX has changed for the worse under Biden, which, beyond changes highlighted above, also removed protections for students accused of sexual harassment or assault when their cases were being adjudicated by colleges. These protections, like the right to cross-examine witnesses, are inherent in the legal system when sexual harassment or assault is judged in the courts, and were reinstated by Betsy DeVos, but dismantled again by the Biden administration. The protections afforded students when they are judged in college hearings are far weaker than when they’re judged in the courts.

And there’s more, but they’re saving these changes until after the election, presumably because they’ll be unpopular:

Absent is a proposal on transgender participation on specific men and women athletics teams, which is anticipated after the November election.

You can read about that rule at the link to the WaPo article above, which describes a proposal apparently applying to all secondary schools through high school:

[The rule] would outlaw blanket state bans but gives schools a road map for how they can bar transgender girls from competing in certain circumstances, particularly in competitive sports.

But allowing transgender females to compete against biological women isn’t a popular view, and so the administration, in an act of duplicity and mendacity, put it off:

. . . . Nonetheless, issuing such a rule risks injecting the issue into an election year in which President Biden faces a close contest with former president Donald Trump, who has promised to ban trans women from women’s sports if reelected.

“Folks close to Biden have made the political decision to not move on the athletics [regulation] pre-election,” said one person familiar with the administration’s thinking. “It seems to be too much of a hot topic.”

Seriously, how is it okay to adopt a policy that’s unpopular with the public, but not publicize it or put it into force until the three-month period between the election and the inauguration of a new administration?

At any rate, I agree with Mt. Holyoke’s first point above: misgendering should not be allowed to create a hostile climate for a given student by repeatedly harassing that student directly, although criticizing the general notion of going along with someone’s pronoun preference is simply freedom of speech to criticize compelled speech.

Ditto for “open mocking of our pronoun policy”, which again prevents someone from criticizing a policy that is debatable. That mockery, too, is in line with the First Amendment.  Finally, deadnaming or pronoun “misuse” not used to harass a student directly seems to me in line with the First Amendment as well. (Still, if a student simply hears about it and reports it, that too has become a violation.) I suspect that if this issue gets to the courts, some of the provisions of the new Title IX provisions will be struck down.

Here’s a tweet about this from Nicholas Christakis, who along with his wife Erika had their own speech run-in at Yale University:

J. K. Rowling scuppers Scotland’s new “Hate Crime and Public Order Act”

April 12, 2024 • 10:30 am

There’s a good article in Quillette showing how one person, the notorious but (to me) highly admirable J. K. Rowling singlehandedly undercut Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Act that came into effect on April 1. I explained this law on March 27, also showing how the Scottish Police published as an example a woman named “Jo” (Rowling’s nickname) who said that people who didn’t identify as one of the two genders “should be put in the gas chambers.”  That is, of course, an oblique swipe at Rowling by the government, and I suspect she could have sued for defamation. But she got her revenge in another way.

Rowling has been attacked by gender activists for two of her stands: that trans women remain (biological) men (and vice versa), and that certain positions should be reserved for natal women, including participation in women’s sports, incarceration in women’s prisons, and rape and sexual-violence counseling.  I agree with both of these positions, and also with Rowling’s insistence that with these exceptions trans people should be treated with respect and dignity, and afforded all other rights.

That, of course, is not enough for gender activists, who have demonized Rowling as a transphobe. But she refuses to be demonized, and has fought back against her detractors as well as against the new law, which basically equates trans women with biological women in all respects, and also penalizes those who oppose this view.

Click below to read, and I’ll show how Rowling took down the law. She did it with tweets.

You can see the new law, which I’ll call the HCPOA, at the first link above. It’s basically a blasphemy law that wouldn’t stand in America since it violates the First Amendment guaranteeing free speech. Here’s how I described it before:

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,

Indeed, they DO put your name on the record, even if you haven’t violated the law. And employers and others can get access to your record. Note too that women are not included in the protected class, so you can spew all the misogyny you want. Here’s one example from the article:

Most of us wouldn’t regard mocking someone’s “non-binary” identity as deserving of a “hate incident” marker, but that’s what happened to a Conservative MSP, Murdo Fraser, after he shared a post on X ridiculing the Scottish government’s “non-binary action plan.” Every “community” has to have its own action plan these days, leading to a proliferation of oppressed groups with confusingly similar titles. “Choosing to identify as ‘non-binary’ is as valid as choosing to identify as a cat,” Fraser wrote. “I’m not sure Governments should be spending time on action plans for either.”

He was aghast when he discovered that Police Scotland had logged an NCHI on his record for this joke, but hadn’t done the same in relation to the complaints against Rowling and Yousaf. He accused the force of “double standards” while SNP MP Joanna Cherry, a rare sensible voice within the party, suggested that senior officers were revising policy “on the hoof” to avoid the embarrassment of recording an NCHI against an internationally famous author. (This sequence of events became even more absurd when the force suddenly changed its tune, telling Fraser his personal details hadn’t been logged in relation to an NCHI after all.)

Further, application of this law is subjective, particularly because the determination of “hate” depends not at all on the violator’s intention, but on the subject’s interpretation of the violator’s motivation. It is, in other words, an “I’m offended” law.

That’s insane. As you might expect, the Scottish coppers are being flooded with complaints, many of them probably designed to undercut the law. They’re coming in at the rate of one per minute, and the cops are complaining that investigating every report (which they must do) distracts them from investigating more serious crimes. Finally, if you don’t want to deal directly with the cops when reporting an offense, the government has designated some weird “third party reporting centres” where you can register your offense. These include a sex shop (!) and a salmon and trout farm, presumably where you can buy some lox without being doxed.

Enter Rowling, my hero. She simply issued a series of tweets, the last one of which completely undermined the law by demanding that if anybody is arrested for misgendering (e.g., “going after a woman for calling a man a man”) she would simply repeat what got the person arrested so Rowling could be charged, too. And of course the Scottish police are not going to charge J. K. Rowling!

To show her devastating attack, delivered with with and humor, I’ll show all of Rowling’s tweets, as some will make sane people laugh.

First, her pinned tweet laying out her views. It’s long and you can click on it to read the whole thing, but note that she starts with the biological definition of the (two) sexes:

I believe a woman is a human being who belongs to the sex class that produces large gametes. It’s irrelevant whether or not her gametes have ever been fertilised, whether or not she’s carried a baby to term, irrelevant if she was born with a rare difference of sexual development that makes neither of the above possible, or if she’s aged beyond being able to produce viable eggs. She is a woman and just as much a woman as the others.

And then the devastating series of ten tweets followed by her admission that she was “just kidding”, and then her big challenge to the legal system..

“Love the leggings!” LOL.

The last tweet is her admission that she’s violated the HCPOA. Click screenshot to read the whole thing.

And, at the end:

It is impossible to accurately describe or tackle the reality of violence and sexual violence committed against women and girls, or address the current assault on women’s and girls’ rights, unless we are allowed to call a man a man. Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal. I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment. If you agree with the views set out in this tweet, please retweet it.

Yes, ma’am:

The ten tweets above, with the eleventh as a finale, is one of the great takedowns of virtue-signaling activism of our era, featuring transwomen who, says Rowling, are “men, every last one of them.” Clearly an offense!

But the cherry atop this Cake of Snark is this:

As Quillette noted, “Feminists hailed the novelist as a heroine, understanding that she had thrown the protection provided by her wealth and status over thousands of other women.”  And don’t you doubt that if anybody is charged for a hate crime by calling a transgender woman a “man”, Rowling will simply repeat it. The cops would have to charge Rowling, too, and what are they chances they’d do that?

The new law, as an “I’m offended” blasphemy law, is unnecessary, unworkable, and impossible to apply.  It is not needed and should be repealed.  I have no idea what brought this dumb law onto the books, but Quillette hazards a guess, involving the Scottish drive for independence from Britain:

The ruling Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) lost a crucial referendum in 2014, failing to persuade enough Scots to vote in favour of independence, and it has seemed rudderless ever since. Much of what has happened in Scotland in the last decade can be traced back to that crushing disappointment, as the SNP struggled to establish its purpose and identity. In an irony that’s hard to miss, a party built on the supposedly indelible differences between the English and Scottish has sought to solve its problem by embracing a faddish ideology, transgenderism, which proposes that anyone can be whatever they like. And that includes an apparently unshakable conviction that men can become women and vice versa.

Indeed identity politics has become as central to the SNP’s creed, if not more so, than taking Scotland out of the UK. In a reversal of Whisky Galore-type stereotypes, in fact, the Scots have now taken on the role of witch-finders, sniffing out heretical thoughts under the cover of a supposedly liberal ideology. A vast amount of parliamentary time has been wasted on bad and unnecessary legislation advocated by trans activists, including a bill to remove all safeguards from the process that allows people to change their legal gender. The UK government salvaged the day by blocking the reckless Gender Recognition Reform Act last year, but the SNP had another trick up its sleeve.

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act came into effect on April 1—April Fools’ day, as critics were quick to point out. It’s been on the statute books since 2021, but implementation was delayed because no one could say with any certainty what it actually criminalised.

Well, who knows? But I do know that J. K. Rowling, despite her fame and wealth, has risked something more valuable—her reputation—by standing up for her principles.

Scottish police, explaining ridiculous new “hate crime” law,” parody J. K. Rowling as an example

March 27, 2024 • 9:30 am

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

 

Dawkins on freedom of speech and the Joyce video

August 24, 2023 • 12:45 pm

This may again be old news, but after I called attention to Richard Dawkins’s video with Helen Joyce this morning, I found out two things from Twitter (it does have its uses). First, people complained to YouTube about that video on the grounds that it contained “violent speech”. (If you watched it, you’ll see how stupid that complaint is.) Second, that prompted Dawkins to write an article on freedom of speech, and the distortion of language, for London’s Evening Standard. You can see that article by clicking on the screenshot below the tweet.

Dawkins first describes several instances of censorship or deplatforming he encountered, including the American Humanist’s Association retracting his 1996 Humanist of the Year Award for this “discuss” tweet (note his explanation):

The difference between transgenderism and transracialism is a perfectly good and intriguing philosophical question to discuss, but merely raising it cost Dawkins his award. This reflects very badly on the American Humanist Association, and not on Dawkins.

But what’s relevant today is that the video with Helen Joyce was reported to YouTube as an example of “hate speech”.  And there was a punishment levied, though the video wasn’t banned:

On July 26, I interviewed Helen Joyce about her book Trans. The interview is being very well received on YouTube. As it should be, for Joyce is extremely well-informed in her subject and she spoke cogently, soberly, reasonably.

But one of YouTube’s in-house judges heard only hate. And tried to censor the interview.

Short of an outright ban, YouTube has a variety of punishments at its disposal. In this case we got a minor slap on the wrist, a restriction on our video’s licence to advertise. But the real point is, yet again, the ludicrous hypersensitivity of the complainant. Those warped ears heard not reasonable argument deserving a reply, but “hateful and derogatory content”, and “hate or harassment towards individuals or groups”.

Obviously I can’t disprove that here. The interview runs to more than 10,000 words. But judge for yourself, it’s still up on YouTube. I earnestly challenge Evening Standard readers to search diligently for literally anything that a reasonable speaker of the English language could fairly call hateful. Enter it, labelled “Challenge”, in the comments section under the video, and I promise to respond.

I just said “a reasonable speaker of the English language”, and maybe here lies the key: language. If we want a fruitful argument, we’d better speak the same language. In today’s overheated sparring over sex and gender, both sides may appear to be speaking English, but is it the same English? Does “hate” mean to you what “hate” means to everyone else?

The complaints to YouTube, if you’ve seen the video, are clearly from the hyperoffended, and should be ignored. There is nothing “hateful or derogatory” in the entire video.  But that leads Richard into a discussion of the debasement of language, in particular the words “hate” and “violence”. We all know how these words have been defanged by the woke or Easily Offended, with “hate” now meaning “any speech I do not like” and “violent” meaning pretty much the same thing. This blurs the distinction between real hatred and discussion that offends someone, as well as between genuine physical violence and, again, something that hurts someone’s feelings.

This blurring is deliberate. It’s hyperbolic, meant to confuse people and make discussion almost impossible because some ideological discusssion (i.e., that which criticizes wokeness) is seen as hateful and violent. It’s telling that these substitute words are used by the woke, not the antiwoke, and are meant to control discourse by shutting up the latter.  Dawkins, of course, has something interesting to say about this:

As a textbook example of incitement to real violence, you could hardly do better than “Sarah Jane” Baker’s speech at London Pride this year, where she told the cheering crowd: “If you see a TERF, punch them in the fucking face”. Or Sky News (January 23) has a picture of two SNP politicians grinning in front of a large, colourful sign depicting a guillotine and the slogan “DECAPITATE TERFS”. They claimed they didn’t know the sign was there, and I sympathise. You shouldn’t be blamed for the company you keep. No doubt I shall be labelled “right-wing” for writing this article — and that’s the most unkindest cut of all.

The Guardian (February 14, 2020) reported that police officers turned up at Harry Miller’s workplace to warn him about his allegedly “transphobic” tweets, such as the obviously satirical, “I was assigned Mammal at Birth, but my orientation is Fish. Don’t mis-species me.” One of them told Miller that he had not committed a crime, but his tweeting “was being recorded as a hate incident”. [JAC: The UK police really need to learn the meaning of “freedom of speech”.]

Well, if Miller’s light-hearted satire is a hate incident, why not go after Monty Python, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Rowan Atkinson, Private Eye’s royal romances of Sylvie Krin, the early novels of Evelyn Waugh, Lady Addle Remembers, Tom Lehrer, even the benign PG Wodehouse? Satire is satire. That’s what satirists do, they get good-natured laughs and perform a valuable service to society.

“Assigned Mammal at Birth” satirises the trans-speak evasion of the biological fact that our sex is determined at conception by an X or a Y sperm. What I didn’t know, and learned from Joyce in our interview, is that small children are being taught, using a series of colourful little books and videos, that their “assigned” sex is just a doctor’s best guess, looking at them when they were born.

And so it goes. There’s more in the article, but read it for yourself. I’ll give you just the ending, after Dawkins has noted that we don’t live in an Orwellian society, one with a Gestapo or Stasi:

But shouldn’t we just indulge the harmless whims of an oppressed minority? Maybe, were it not for a strain of aggressive bossiness which insists, not so very harmlessly and not sounding very oppressed, that the rest of us must humour those whims and join in. This compulsion even has the force of law in some states. And alas, we often zip our lips in abject self-censorship because we aren’t as brave as JK Rowling, and don’t fancy becoming a target of Twittermob vitriol. No, we don’t fear Big Brother or the Stasi. We fear each other.

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ hate speech

April 26, 2023 • 9:00 am

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “hybrid”, once again raises the extreme craziness of the sacrifice-and-resurrect-Jesus story—a story I’ve never understood. Yes, I know theologians can twist it into something that sort of makes sense—they get paid to do that—but I don’t really get why God has to turn part of himself into a specimen of H. sapiens who then has to undergo torture and killing, and then resurrection, as the only way to save humanity.

But wait! There’s more! This gory scenario doesn’t guarantee that YOU get saved: you have to accept Jesus as your Personal Lord and Savior to get past St. Peter. So there’s a combination of an act, and then a requirement not for your acceptance of the act itself, but of Jesus as your savior. If someone can put all this into words that would make sense to, say, a ten year old, I’d appreciate it.

At any rate, the cartoon’s motto is “They’ll be sorry when they close down the Cock & Bull,” and, given Britain’s draconian behavior toward “hate speech,” they might!

A satirical video about offensive speech in Scotland

March 1, 2023 • 1:00 pm

Reader Jez sent me this video taking the mickey out of Scotland’s “hate speech” strictures, encapsulated in Scotland’s “Hate Crime and Public Order Act of 2021″, part 3. I doubt that anyone would get arrested for saying anything like thi, but one never knows in the UK any more. I know that the Scottish Free Speech Union, as well as others, are concerned about how this Act might be use to suppress free speech.

Anyway, I found this pretty funny: