Comment by saagarjha
11 hours ago
I'm not sharing the message because it brings me joy to have it shown to more people. I think it's a pretty reprehensible thing to say. I'm sure people say worse into their personal diary or even among friends and that is not criminalized. I might possibly even consider the defense of "oh nobody really reads my posts anyway and I deleted it quickly".
But I absolutely will not stand for trying to claim that the post was scare-quotes "hateful". It was hateful, full stop. This is not polite discourse that was unfairly marked as hate because of some political slant. It was clearly hate, even if wasn't seen by anyone, even if it got deleted.
Hate is a normal thing in human societies. Freedom of speech also encompasses expressing hatred and negative feelings. What you can do to mitigate it is to solve the problems that create hate. In the case of the UK, addressing the mass-rapes of British girls, among other things.
Sending people to prison for social media posts is a typical totalitarian move, similar to what you find in China, North Korea or Russia. None of the underlying issues are solved by intimidating your population, who, at some point, will just start to leave quietly.
Lots of countries outlaw hate speech. I know that Americans tend to think that this is a slippery slope to totalitarianism, but much of the rest of the world disagrees. And America in its present state isn't a great advertisment for its own particular model of public discourse and political freedom.
Obviously, you can also be jailed in the US for social media posts that break the law. Here is one example:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/social-media-influencer...
It's tasteless to bring up rape cases that are irrelevant here. The tweet we're talking about was posted in the wake of the Southport stabbings. Nobody can seriously suggest that historical failures to investigate rape cases in Pakistani communities can be related to an outburst decades later about burning down hotels housing asylum seekers.
I am not trying to say that it was not hateful - and proper moderation should be in place. Just like it has always been.
I am merely trying to say that there should be proportion in the reaction.
The society does not give you a death sentence to jay walk.