Britain's Hate Speech Trap.

It's a good overview but missing much contextual detail. There are also several ahistorical errors such as implying that the Public Order Act dates from 1986. The first version of the POA was enacted in 1936.

It's also excessively mono-causal, as is typical for the particular source. In fingering the Jews as more or less exclusively responsible for the repressive race-related legislation in the UK it gives a misleading impression of who the actual culprits were. Many if not most were not Jews.

The 1936 act was mainly in response to clashes between rival factions (Blackshirts/Reds) but the amendments of the 1986 act brought in the offences relating to hate speech. This is what the writer is pointing out.

I see the green shoots of pedantry starting to emerge .

It's quite remarkable that the terms 'hate' and 'hatred' are not defined anywhere in the great raft of legislation that has been put in place to eradicate them.

What we have seen is a group of people who dont know what racism is.
Rhey remind me of groups who used to refer to black people as inferior ( like why do we have to have black people in adverts) butc would take huge offence at being called a whitey b**tard.

Freedom of speech goes both ways.

One slight factual innacuracy

Griffin was brought up before the court on a charge of racism for declaring islam to be ‘a wicked and vicious faith’

The trial collapsed pretty spectacularly when the court was forced to review the published words of a chap known under the pseudonym of ‘Ed Hussain: The Islamist’

Mr Hussain (whose name is not Hussain nor is his first name anything like Edward) publicly states that he turned his back on a certain group in (manchester ?) university when it became clear their views were too extreme, but the comments he made that took down the trial referred to activities of islamist recruiters in various countries following the treatment of followers of the cult of mohammedanism in kosovo. Folliwers of the prophet there were for the main part blonde, blue eyed Aryans and their treatment at the hands of non cult members while NATO forces deployed by SHAPE looked on gave the average ISIS recruiting sergeant the delightful propaganda line ‘see how the infidel beat, murder and rape your brothers and sisters in Islam in that land, and see how they do these things to blond, blue eyed, white skinned brothers and sisters. Imagine then how the infidel will treat YOU…..

The entering into testimony of the fact such ‘recruiting sergeants’ were able to make much of the fact the cult welcomed white, blonde, blue eyed men and women into its ranks pretty much nuked the legal case that islam was a race and that therefore legislation which at the time made it illegal to say these things about racial groups applied to the religious group

Anyone with half a brain could see that of course but not the left leaning CPS and magistrates / judges. They had to be MADE fools of

The upshot was the extension to hate crime legislation making it a hate crime to bad mouth islam, but strangely NOT a hate crime for moslems to kick the shit out of, or murder, or maim, infidels