The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

What Is ‘Hate Speech’?

Posted on | March 18, 2018 | Comments Off on What Is ‘Hate Speech’?

Left to right: Tamin Rahmani, Shersha Muslimyar and Rafiullah Hamidy.

In September 2016, a 16-year-old girl was gang-raped in Ramsgate, England, by three men and a 17-year-old boy:

Throughout the trial, prosecutor Simon Taylor told grim details of how “every single orifice had been penetrated by the group of men, while others watched, laughed and joined in themselves”.
Mr Taylor added that the girl was pushed onto a mattress whilst men physically restrained her and stood by the door “so she knew there was no escape”.
The victim was then escorted out the premises, where she was found “sobbing”, “hysterical” and “pacing up the road crying” by a woman who found her on the street.

In May 2017, the three men — Tamin Rahmani, Rafiullah Hamidy and Shershah Muslimyar — went on trial and were convicted. This was only the most recent in a series of crimes against English girls perpetrated by Muslims, including the notorious rape gangs of Rotherham, which targeted girls as young as 11. There is a clear pattern to these crimes, including a stifling political correctness that inhibited law enforcement, allowing such exploitation to continue unchecked for years:

What has gone wrong in Rotherham, and what is wrong with its Pakistani community, are questions much asked in recent weeks: How could this small, run-down town in northern England have been the center of sexual abuse of children on such an epic and horrifying scale?
According to the official report published in August [2014], there were an estimated 1,400 victims. And they were, in the main, poor and vulnerable white girls, while the great majority of perpetrators were men, mainly young men, from the town’s Pakistani community. Shaun Wright, the police commissioner who was responsible for children’s services in Rotherham, appeared before Parliament after his refusal to resign over the scandal. The scandal has cost both the chief executive and the leader of the council their jobs, and four Labour Party town councilors have been suspended.
A popular explanation for what Home Secretary Theresa May has described as “a complete dereliction of duty” by Rotherham’s public officials is that the Labour-controlled council was, for reasons of political expediency and ideology, unwilling to confront the fact that the abusers were of Pakistani heritage. Proper investigation, it is said, was obstructed by political correctness — or, in the words of a former local M.P., a culture of “not wanting to rock the multicultural boat.”

People in England were understandably outraged by the revelation of the Rotherham horror, which was not an isolated incident. Part of the problem is that concerns about inciting “racism” and “Islamophobia” not only led to “dereliction of duty” by public officials, but also by the media, which for many years refused to report on such crimes. Anger about this situation gave rise to what might be called vigilante journalism, and when the Ramsgate rapists went on trial in May 2017, Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen showed up in the town to produce videos exposing the perpetrators. “We don’t want these dirty Muslim pedophile bastards touching our kids,” Ms. Fransen said in one of the videos.

Golding and Ms. Fransen are leaders of Britain First, which has been called a “fascist” organization, that came to widespread attention in November 2017 after President Trump retweeted one of their videos. Trump subsequently explained to Piers Morgan that he retweeted the video “because I am a big believer in fighting radical Islamic terror. [The video] was a depiction of radical Islamic terror.”

This publicity came after Golding and Ms. Fransen had been charged with “religiously aggravated harassment” for their Ramsgate videos, and earlier this month, both of them were sentenced to jail terms.

In sentencing them, the presiding judge said they had “demonstrated hostility” towards Muslims: “It was a campaign to draw attention to the race, religion and immigrant background of the defendants.”

This raises disturbing questions. If there is a demonstrable pattern of serious crimes committed by people of a certain “race, religion and immigrant background,” as seems to be the case in England, why should it be illegal to “draw attention” to that pattern? While we may abhor the vigilante tactics and rude language of Golding and Ms. Fransen, would it not have sufficed to charge them with some ordinary crime — disturbing the peace, trespassing, disorderly conduct, whatever — rather than “religiously aggravated harassment”? This kind of Thought Crime prosecution gives credence to those who accuse British government officials of showing favoritism toward Muslims, a suspicion that in turn is likely to inspire still more vigilante reactions.

Americans should take notice of what is happening in England, because our own First Amendment rights are being threatened by those who claim that “right-wing propagandists”should be silenced. Because they blame the “right wing” for Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016, liberals are eager to suppress “hate speech,” and they have shown themselves to be unscrupulous in making such accusations. Steven Crowder has been falsely smeared as an “alt-right neo-Nazi,” and Crowder was suspended by Twitter for “hateful conduct” for a video spoofing a “gender-fluid” gathering at the SXSW conference. Where will this lead?

“Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself,” Thomas Jefferson declared. Truth “is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”

We have laws against libel and slander, so that falsehood can be punished. If “hate speech” is a problem, the solution is speech against hate. What the situation in England suggests, however, is that people can be punished for “hate speech” even when they speak the truth. There actually were “dirty Muslim pedophile bastards” in Ramsgate, after all.

Like I keep saying, people need to wake the hell up.



 

Category: Great Britain, Immigration, Islam, Media Bias

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