The laws sure, they may be considered similar to US ones, the problem with EU and especially UK speech laws is the way they're interpreted and applied by the justice system, in way more draconical and abusive ways than in the US.
For example a UK comedian got arrested for posting a photo he took outside his balcony of a large congregation of citizens of brown skinned complexion from the Indian subcontinent captioned "imagine the smell".
Someone below said it well: "This is the problem with going after 'harmful communication'. It is not something that can be defined precisely, which allows government officials to choose to interpret it in whatever way they want when the enforce it."
So this type draconical speech laws is that it always leads to selective enforcement, it's never an objective two-way street affecting everyone equally, effectively turning into a means for public intimidation(tyranny). One bad joke about one group sympathetic to the government politics can be considered "hate speech" and land you in prison, while the same joke about the groups the government dislikes is just "free speech".
Similarly in Germany if you were to call Merz a corrupt traitor online you'd get visited by the police, but if you were to call a German right wing politician a nazi bitch, then it's just free speech. Hate speech enforcement always ends up a one way street coming from the status quo in power.
What political leaders miss is that the status quo can always flip as history has proven time again, and then those laws they set in place to silence their critics, will then be used against them, and then they'll cry fowl.
No, that didn't happen. You're confusing two different events together.
The guy who posted the photo of brown skinned people with the "imagine the smell" comment was American and lost his job. The UK wasn't involved in any way. [0]
The comedian you might be thinking of is Graham Linehan - he was arrested for inciting violence against trans people and has a long string of twitter posts quoted as possible reasons. (and had a similar post with the comment of "a photo you can smell" but with a photo of a trans rights protest, so perhaps the origin of the confusion?).
The laws sure, they may be considered similar to US ones, the problem with EU and especially UK speech laws is the way they're interpreted and applied by the justice system, in way more draconical and abusive ways than in the US.
For example a UK comedian got arrested for posting a photo he took outside his balcony of a large congregation of citizens of brown skinned complexion from the Indian subcontinent captioned "imagine the smell".
Someone below said it well: "This is the problem with going after 'harmful communication'. It is not something that can be defined precisely, which allows government officials to choose to interpret it in whatever way they want when the enforce it."
So this type draconical speech laws is that it always leads to selective enforcement, it's never an objective two-way street affecting everyone equally, effectively turning into a means for public intimidation(tyranny). One bad joke about one group sympathetic to the government politics can be considered "hate speech" and land you in prison, while the same joke about the groups the government dislikes is just "free speech".
Similarly in Germany if you were to call Merz a corrupt traitor online you'd get visited by the police, but if you were to call a German right wing politician a nazi bitch, then it's just free speech. Hate speech enforcement always ends up a one way street coming from the status quo in power.
What political leaders miss is that the status quo can always flip as history has proven time again, and then those laws they set in place to silence their critics, will then be used against them, and then they'll cry fowl.
No, that didn't happen. You're confusing two different events together.
The guy who posted the photo of brown skinned people with the "imagine the smell" comment was American and lost his job. The UK wasn't involved in any way. [0]
The comedian you might be thinking of is Graham Linehan - he was arrested for inciting violence against trans people and has a long string of twitter posts quoted as possible reasons. (and had a similar post with the comment of "a photo you can smell" but with a photo of a trans rights protest, so perhaps the origin of the confusion?).
[0] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/indians-dogpile...