1) He was convicted of racially aggravated harassment, not racially aggravated assault.
2) He certainly wasn’t convicted of “racially distressful blogging”, because that is not a thing.

As to whether he deserved it: dunno. I don’t think that anything you’ve quoted should be illegal to say, but I haven’t seen the full articles. And “harassment” seems an unreasonable term for it, but that’s pretty much by-the-by.

on lolerskates over here regarding his clarification of what he meant by darkie. WOWSERS.

out of interest, does anyone know if there has been any exploration, from a psychological perspective, into why obviously racist (and sexist, etc) people claim not to be so?

i’m curious to know how people can use language, and take political positions, that are obviously racist (etc), and yet claim not to be so. what is their rationale? has anyone explored this from a rational / logical / psychological perspective?

@ 2 bemused

“out of interest, does anyone know if there has been any exploration, from a psychological perspective, into why obviously racist (and sexist, etc) people claim not to be so?

i’m curious to know how people can use language, and take political positions, that are obviously racist (etc), and yet claim not to be so. what is their rationale? has anyone explored this from a rational / logical / psychological perspective?”

I’ve thought about it. Does that count? For my money, it’s because we’ve succeeded in making “racist” a dirty word. Society has evolved to the point where (almost) nobody wants to be considered racist. But some people ARE racist, and rather than re-evaluate their opinions, they redefine “racist” so that it doesn’t include them. Hence the whole “I’m not racist, but” thing.

i’m curious to know how people can use language, and take political positions, that are obviously racist (etc), and yet claim not to be so. what is their rationale? has anyone explored this from a rational / logical / psychological perspective?

Currently, without much research being done, the general consensus is that they’re just lying. They are racist, they just don’t like being called out on it.

I mean his quote here

“flooding this city with Muslims and blacks, a complete population replacement programme. Darkies in, whites out”.

reveals a fair bit, given that Muslims were far more involved in defending their shops from rioters than engaging in rioting.

No. As disgusting as he is, free speech is free speech. He has the right to be an ignorant asshole if he wants, there shouldn’t be any law against that.

Thinking about it, the title manages to suggest that he chose to be convicted, and to query whether he was right to do so. I think you need something more like “Was it right to convict BNP councillor for his racist comments?”

@chaise (and cylux)

i’ve got that far myself, but what i can’t understand is why someone would prefer to look illogical, irrational, insane, delusional, and/or downright stupid by denying their obviously racist statements/actions as being racist, than owning their position as racists. if you believe in your words and actions and standpoint, why not say so? why not own it? i just can’t grasp why someone would choose to look insane and/or mindblowingly stupid instead of rational holders of despicable views.

[2] ‘Gladwell, who is of mixed race himself, was shocked to discover that the IAT test revealed his automatic preference for European American compared to African American associations. His conclusion was that many if not most of us are make negative associations with African Americans despite our belief in equality of all races, despite our strongest intentions and convictions on race, in Gladwell’s case, inspite of his own racial makeup. The IAT is substantial evidence that our racial attitudes are much more firmly ingrained than we realize’.

Find out if you are a latent racist by taking the ‘implicit association test’ …. if you dare?
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/

If he had made equivalent transphobic comments about trans people, he wouldn’t have even been reported, let alone arrested, charged or prosecuted.

@ 7 bemused

“i’ve got that far myself, but what i can’t understand is why someone would prefer to look illogical, irrational, insane, delusional, and/or downright stupid by denying their obviously racist statements/actions as being racist, than owning their position as racists. if you believe in your words and actions and standpoint, why not say so? why not own it? i just can’t grasp why someone would choose to look insane and/or mindblowingly stupid instead of rational holders of despicable views.”

Because they’re lying to themselves as well. They’ve convinced themselves that they’re honestly not bigots. “I’m not a racist, I’m a realist.” Nobody thinks of their own views as despicable. Nobody wants to be the bad guy in the story of their life. So they adjust reality to justify their prejudices.

@Natacha

Agreed. Society tends to overlook trans people. The worst of it is that some feminists hate trans people (we had a bit of a flamewar with Mumsnet over it) when they really should be on the same side. A bit like the anti-bi attitudes among many gay people.

@ 8 a&e

I prefer “recovering racist” or possibly “person who is aware of their instinctive racism but overrides it” to “latent racist”. But which of these tests should I be doing? There’s a few race-based ones. I’m on this page:

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.html

This man was convicted under the law that prohibits He was intending to cause “racially-aggravated harassment, alarm or distress by displaying writing, a sign or other representation, which was threatening, abusive or insulting.”

It is clear to me that threatening someone with violence or coercion should be prohibited but writing something that is abusive or insulting should not.

So he was properly convicted of breaking a bad law. Why the CPS thought it was worth the candle is another matter.

@ 12 pagar

“It is clear to me that threatening someone with violence or coercion should be prohibited but writing something that is abusive or insulting should not.”

Bloody hell, I’m agreeing with you all over the place today.

“So he was properly convicted of breaking a bad law.”

Well put.

@chaise

but if you believe in your standpoint, then you’re not the bad person in the story of your life. “they are.” *points finger at the other*

anyway, don’t mind me, i’m just musing aloud. if anyone knows of an academic/thorough study of this phenomenon, please pass on.

@ 14 bemused

“but if you believe in your standpoint, then you’re not the bad person in the story of your life. “they are.” *points finger at the other*”

Sure. But if you’ve internalised “racist” as being A Bad Thing, you don’t want that label.

@7 They’re often not all that bright too, which generally allows paradoxes within their brains to exist unhindered.

If he had been convicted as a result of a blog post screaming “Kill all w*gs!!!” or some such, then it would have been a valid prosecution.

As it stands, so long as an online remark or comment is not seeking directly to incite criminal acts against people (including, but not confined to, certain ethnic or gender-identification (*) groups), then the police, the CPS and the courts should probably keep the hell out of it. Let bigots be bigots and identifiably so; at least that way we get to keep them where we can see them.

In any case, there should be no sentence of imprisonment for such things; just an order banning them from all internet access for a specified period.

(*) Is that a real word? And if so, can we kill it now?

God, if you prosecuted everyone who was racist on the internet…

This man is, of course, scum but there’s been far too much censorship of the internet of late and I really don’t know where it will end. In general, people should be free to say whatever crap they like as long as it isn’t libelous against individuals or incitement to commit a crime.

@chaise

but i don’t think they have fully internalised it, b/c if they had, they wouldn’t want to express beliefs that were congruent with it.

@cylux

i agree that many racists are stupid, but also many aren’t.

i suppose that you could see their comfortable dwelling within the irrational/insane place of speech as a form of defence. because how can you argue with someone who is clearly insane and/or irrational? where can you begin with a person that denies the speech they are making as they make it? if they owned their position honestly and rationally, there could be discussion and dialogue (and hopefully change). but their denial of their position inhibits/prevents this.

Yes, he’s racist – he should be completely ostracised, excluded from working, and he should receive counselling.

Maybe we could look into his family life – find a better home for his children maybe.

Meanwhile, another five million people have retreated into their homes and closed their doors on a country gone mad.

First they came for the racists…

[20] ‘Maybe we could look into his family life – find a better home for his children maybe’ – dangerous, very dangerous.

Racism is perfectly OK, in the sense that it has nothing to fear from the law, providing clever government officials are using it as a form of propaganda (look at some of the rationalisations used to prop up the likes of the israel vs palestine conflict, for example).

And this powerful speech here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8

It’s a bad law and it attacks fundamental freedoms, so he shouldn’t be convicted and the law should be repealed. It’s a shame, I would say, that the jury didn’t throw it out. The jury is the last defence against bad laws and bad prosecutions.

As for why people deny being a racist, it’s almost tantamount to confessing guilt. If this man said, ‘yes, I’m a racist’ it would be considerably more difficult to plead not guilty to the law he was charged under.

@19 Bemused,

” if they owned their position honestly and rationally, there could be discussion and dialogue (and hopefully change). but their denial of their position inhibits/prevents this.”

You are correct, but you must recognise that with the laws written as they are, you will not get the necessary rational, honest debate. You can hardly expect someone to be honest when to do so may result in their arrest, can you?

A useful data point.

@ 19 bemused

“but i don’t think they have fully internalised it, b/c if they had, they wouldn’t want to express beliefs that were congruent with it.”

People’s beliefs aren’t congruent. They just aren’t. I make a fairly massive attempt to be rational, but I’m sure I have my own share of contradictory beliefs that I’ve failed to identify. And this problem is probably worse in stupid people, and racists in this time and place tend to be pretty stupid.

@22 richard – a very valid point.

@24 chaise – i accept your point about congruence. however, i don’t accept that most racists are stupid. perhaps that might be true for cities, but i live in rural-ish central scotland and i hear a lot of racism on a very regular basis (corner shops are still called the paki shop up here, chinese takeaways are still called the chinky, etc), and they aren’t all stupid by a long shot.

@25 bemused

Is there any real prejudice behind that, among the smart ones? Do the people who talk about “the chinky” actually look down on or stereotype Chinese people? Because, if not, that’s thoughtlessness at worst. Possibly even just a valid cultural thing.

@bemused

out of interest, does anyone know if there has been any exploration, from a psychological perspective, into why obviously racist (and sexist, etc) people claim not to be so?

Not sure I’d call this a psychological perspective but Orwell tackled this question in his essay ‘Antisemitism in Britain’:-

I start off with these background facts, which are already known to any well-informed person, in order to emphasise that there is no real Jewish “problem” in England. The Jews are not numerous or powerful enough, and it is only in what are loosely called “intellectual circles” that they have any noticeable influence. Yet it is generally admitted that antisemitism is on the increase, that it has been greatly exacerbated by the war, and that humane and enlightened people are not immune to it. It does not take violent forms (English people are almost invariably gentle and law-abiding), but it is ill-natured enough, and in favourable circumstances it could have political results. Here are some samples of antisemitic remarks that have been made to me during the past year or two:

I could fill pages with similar remarks, but these will do to go on with. Two facts emerge from them. One — which is very important and which I must return to in a moment — is that above a certain intellectual level people are ashamed of being antisemitic and are careful to draw a distinction between “antisemitism” and “disliking Jews”. The other is that antisemitism is an irrational thing. The Jews are accused of specific offences (for instance, bad behaviour in food queues) which the person speaking feels strongly about, but it is obvious that these accusations merely rationalise some deep-rooted prejudice. To attempt to counter them with facts and statistics is useless, and may sometimes be worse than useless. As the last of the above-quoted remarks shows, people can remain antisemitic, or at least anti-Jewish, while being fully aware that their outlook is indefensible. If you dislike somebody, you dislike him and there is an end of it: your feelings are not made any better by a recital of his virtues.

That was written in 1945.

Orwell being as awesome as ever there. In retrospect, I should have thought of him sooner, as the issue Bemused raises centres around doublethink.

@ 8 a&e

“Find out if you are a latent racist by taking the ‘implicit association test’ …. if you dare?”

I took the skin tone one. Is that what you were talking about? I got, well, the worst result possible. However! I think there are problems with the test design, and I thought that before I got my results.

My main issue is the effect of flipping the left-right responses. It just confuses things, so results might be more to do with category confusion than underlying prejudice. It certainly slowed me down, which I think is how they’re judging responses.

I’m also suspicious of some of the verbal questions (although it’s not clear what effect, if any, they have on results). For example, I Strongly Agreed that sometimes it’s necessary to tread on other people to get the best results in life. Because that is true. However, that doesn’t mean I approve of such behaviour. It’s necessary because the test asks you to start from the assumption that you SHOULD be trying to get the best results in life.

On the other hand, I got a bad result, so I’m kinda motivated to criticise the test. Like I said, though, I did think these things before completing it.

WG

Yes, he’s racist – he should be completely ostracised, excluded from working, and he should receive counselling.

Maybe we could look into his family life – find a better home for his children maybe.

I find people with extremist views such as yours a far, far bigger threat to a free society then this Coleman’s.

In fact I find your opinion to be extremely threatening, alarming and distressing.

It’s an appalling idea to prosecute him. It will just play right into a worldview where he is being persecuted for speaking ‘the truth’.

Apart from that, it’s also typical of the abuse of public order offences to shut down unpopular speech. The public order laws are there to protect people going about their lawful business, in public, from suffering verbal abuse. But the phrase ‘harassment alarm or distress’ now seems to be have lost the ordinary meaning of the words in it, and now just is taken to be satisfied by anything controversial or ‘bad’.

@ WG

Yes, he’s racist – he should be completely ostracised, excluded from working, and he should receive counselling.

Maybe we could look into his family life – find a better home for his children maybe.

I find people with extremist views such as your yours a far, far bigger threat to a free society then this
Coleman’s.

In fact I find your opinion to be extremely threatening, alarming and distressing.

[30] Chaise – In ‘Blink’ Gladwell comments on how social conditioning that sustains racist attitudes applies almost equally to all who are exposed to them, and will thus be reflected in IAT scores irrespective of skin colour.

In other words it doesn’t matter if you are a black participant, white participant, mixed race, or chinese participant scores almost universally result in a preference for ‘european american’ rather than ‘african american’ because that is the prevalent message through the various media, or reflected in the sort of people who get the top jobs, etc.

I’m sure you right to challenge the robustness of this particular instrument but it still tends to suggest that the issue is multi-layered and not just simply a matter of black & white if you will excuse the phrase.

@ Emma

In fact I find your opinion to be extremely threatening, alarming and distressing.

I think you’ll find WG’s post @20 was intended to be ironic.

The clue is in the last line.

@ 26 chaise – yes, definitely quite a lot of real prejudice. can i ask what you mean by a valid cultural thing though?

@ 27 unity – thanks so much for that, even if it does leave me depressed.

Since when has speaking the truth been a criminal offense? He should be given a medal instead!

Freedom of speech means the right to say things that offend others.

Sadly, we do not have freedom of speech in the UK.

@ 34 bemused

“yes, definitely quite a lot of real prejudice. can i ask what you mean by a valid cultural thing though?”

Fair enough. I may be wrong about the “stupid” thing then.

What I was referring to is that epithets are only epithets if people treat them that way. Words have different implications in different cultures. Some Americans would be offended by the English use of the word “black” for a racial group, insisting on “African American” instead (a term with several problems, but I’ll let it go for now). Time was that “negro” and “nigger” (essentially the same word) were seen as polite terms in the US. And as my personal hero Tim Minchin points out, “cunt” means “buttocks” in Dutch. So if Chinese people in Scotland didn’t mind “chinky”, it wouldn’t be racist to use it there.

@ 35 Truthseeker

“Since when has speaking the truth been a criminal offense? He should be given a medal instead!”

Fair enough. I’ll make a little swastika on a chain for him and pop it in the post.

@ 32 a&e

Fair enough. Thinking about it, the test showed that an identical percentage of people had strong preferences for white faces and non-white faces, whereas the design issue I mentioned should only prejudice the test towards claiming the former. Which rather suggests that I’m wrong.

And THAT rather suggests that I’m a horrible old racist! But it’s ok, because I knew that (annoyed to find myself in the top bracket, though). Xenophobia is built-in: you override it intellectually, not instinctively, and the test measures instincts.

I would be very interested to see how test results vary for people who grew up in mixed-race or monochromatic environments. I have a theory that the former would do better.

Sigh. Looking over my last three posts, it occurs that I use the phrase “fair enough” rather too often.

Racism is a meme, It started with ignorance, which leads to fear and hate…

Thankyou Immanuel Kant for starting it – not!!

I doubt that Mr Coleman does Chaise.

I bet Coleman has a hate rating of at least 9.8?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj4aGzooQdk

@ Jack C

Heh.

@ Dissident

I don’t know how racist or otherwise Kant was, but he certainly didn’t start it. Racism probably pre-dates humanity. For a much older example than Kant, see the Old Testament and its charming support for genocide.

@chaise

We are preprogrammed by evolution to see (we are visually based social creatures) obviously other as different. Yet if you grow up with lots of people with a different melanin count to you, it is more likely that you see the person, not the meme. It was ignorant people who built a dangerous castle on top of Kant’s treatsie, and those with a vested interest in the permission his words through his own ignorance gave them, who perpetuated the current version of the racist meme.

@45 Dissident

What treatise is this? I confess I mainly know Kant for taking the longest possible time to say: “If the results of everyone doing something would be bad, you should not do that thing.”

sorry chaise, at this point i have to prophess ignorance myself. It is a paragraph I read in New Scientist about racism…

I will have to look it up myself!!

BTW I have met people from all over the world, literally, and never been brought up to see melanin count as somehow dodgy, so I was really talking from personal experience, which that article confirmed…

Cheers Dissident. I certainly agree that you’re far more likely to see people of other races as an “out-group” if you grew up in a monochrome place. Likewise the whole “they all look the same to me” thing (which I confess gave me problems when watching Infernal Affairs): if you don’t see people of that race much, you mark their race as a main distinguishing feature.

the Irony Chaise

I was brought up in a monochrome village. I was however brought up to see melanin count as just that. So I saw people as people when I was at Uni, very glad I did too! One or thee girlfriends, to say nothing of a welcome where said …. live!

BTW the particular one I am on about, came originally from Vietnam, lives in the south of France, has a successful business, and is half Vietnamese, half Pakistani.

Another member of my family, by marriage, came from Montana, was in USAF, so was 30,000ft above Vietnam when she was born. And he is black, chilled out dude, except when you ask him about ‘nam…

CG @ 46:

“I confess I mainly know Kant for taking the longest possible time to say: “If the results of everyone doing something would be bad, you should not do that thing.””

No, Kant was not saying that: he regarded results as morally neutral, unlike utilitarians. Essentially, very crudely, he says ‘Do as you would be done by’. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative

@ 49 Dissident

Oh, likewise. Like I said, it gets over-ridden. Probably the strongest risk factor for growing up racist would be having racist parents. But I do think there are psychological reasons why people from mixed communities would have less of an in-group/out-group instinct when it comes to race.

@ 51 TONE

Check the quote from that very page: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law”. Which is the same as what I said. If everyone doing something would be a problem, don’t do it.

So he certainly didn’t see these things as morally neutral, or if he did he’s being inconsistent. The above is a moral dictum. You can’t claim moral neutrality then hand out moral demands.

…Well, it’s not the same, because my version is only half of the principle. But it’s contained within the principle. It’s Kantian.

Yes Chaise, if you either are taught to see melanin count as just that, or grow up with people from everywhere, how can you see people from other places as a threat?

You judge in that case, whether people are either brainwashed, or psychopathic asswipes, who just so happen to target melanin count, it could be anything else, really!

I don’t think he should be proscecuted.
I’ve been in Vienna for the last two weeks. And been spending a couple of hours each day in this internet place on the western ”Gürtel” (ring road) that goes around the inner city, and is home to the largest concentration of older and new immigrant communities.

It’s quite different to a lot of regular Vienna because of that.
There are a lot of poor people here, and a lot of asylum seeker young men from Afghanistan. This internet cafe is nearly all young foreign men from west Asia. Their culture is most certainly different to the regular Austrian. They sit in here morning and night smoking and talking (loudly) and playing their ”shoot ‘em up” games and calling their families on Skype. I came in here early the other day and some were asleep in the alcove corner, at the computer tables.
These are the kinds of young men who we see try to get into England from Calais. But Vienna is a lot nearer to were they have been coming from, so a lot stop here.

When you spend any time in this district you see how much the immigrants/migrants have changed it. For a start they are more inclined to sit out on the benches along the road in groups.
Groups only of their own countrymen. Many drink beer and leave a pretty bad mess of cans and kebab detritus around the place.
There are beggers on the outside the U-bahn showing off their disability as if that was reason enough for you to give them money. One guy has no feet, and a woman has a knee which bends in the wrong direction, and she rolls up her trouser leg so you can see it more clearly.
Where they come from, this kind of begging is the norm, and they haven’t quite made the mental transition to a new society.
As for street alcololics …. they seem to be non-Austrians to a rate of at least five to one. Two homeless charities even have an ”Austrians only” policy because there are so many non-Austrians who turn up for free food and shelter.
Whole families of Roma gypsies and others from all points east and south east.
I know this becauase I’ve been visiting several of them.
The soup run at Friedensbrücke U-bahn station every evening at 7.45pm (great soup) attracts about thirty people, and only a handful are Austrian. The rest are eastern European and from the Balkans.
Serious street drinkers. I see the same ones evey day.

And as I travel about on the trains and trams and these characters are getting on and off, I do wonder what the average Austrian thinks of it.
They are so timid about anything to do with racism (it seems) because of their history, that they just look the other way.

But I can imagine some of them sounding off about it in private.
Maybe they might even blog about it in a negative way like this guy. It shouldn’t be a criminal offence.

One slightly annoying thing about these young guys in the internet cafe is that they are completely oblivious about where their cigarette smoke goes. The guy next to me just lit up and the smoke is coming directly at me. To say something would probably be rude.
It’s their space and I’m the outsider in here. The middle aged white man. He’s too engrossed in his Arabic Youtubes to know or care. I think that objecting to cigarette smoke, or worrying about it, is just not part of their culture.

I’m a smoker, damon. Yeah, we’re bad about that. It doesn’t help that it’s hard to direct smoke even if you’re trying, but smoking in public almost always involves a little selfishness. Like talking loudly in a quiet bar; I know they’re not directly comparable because of the health issue, but it’s similar.

CG @ 53:

“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law”

is not the same as:

“If the results of everyone doing something would be bad, you should not do that thing”

Because Kant is not interested in “results”. For Kant, the only thing in the world that is good in itself is a good will – ie he thinks the morality of an action is located in its intention, not in its consequences. So he thinks you cannot tell a lie to prevent a homicidal maniac finding his victim, or torture a terrorist to save the lives of thousands, because then your will, your intention, would be mixed and so not morally pure. And his way of putting this is to say that the maxim underlying such mixed actions could not be made a universal law – of the will.

I’m not saying Kant is right or wrong here. I’m just saying he’s not interested in consequences or results. All very Teutonic. As Nietzsche sneered, only the English are interested in happiness and consequences.

@ 59 TONE

Oh, I see. I was mis-sold on Kant at college, then.

By the way, this seems to have vanished off the front page. Some error with the redesign? Or am I just losing it?

Btw, I think that ”hate speech” can be become more common because the way that we have ”set up” spaces for discussing race publicly.
Whether that be on a radio phone in programme, or even on a discussion board like this.

Last week, Loyalists in Northern Ireland rioted for a couple of days …. because of a sense of frustration in that community that they were losing out to their opponents the Republicans, and that they always get accused of being the bad guys.
That’s what a spokesman of their’s said on the radio, and as pathetic as it is, it’s probably true too.

And I’m sure the likes of these BNP people feel the same way. If they talk about some day-to-day things that they say are negative consequences of the multi-racial/cultural society, they get accused of being either racist, paranoid, or both.
Anything they might say would be dismissed.

In a way that a black person talking about how they feel they sufffer or detect racism on a regular basis wouldn’t be dismissed, but would more likely be received sympathetically.
Simon Woolley says that most non-blacks believe that blacks are inferior. Who’s going to argue with him and demand his evedence?

So while a BME person’s feelings and hunches about the society they live in (with its racism etc) are given creedence, a white person coming up with equally anechdotal stories or experiences about the modern society might just be dismissed.

So a white Austrian here in Vienna, living on a suburban housing estate with a high rate of immigrant communities, particularly Turkish for example, might over the years have picked up some little grievences about sharing living space with that other community – which while adapting to the local situation, also lead seperate lives to quite a degree. And mixed nearly always in kith and kin only groups, and were perceived to be quite thin skinned and quick to take offence at possible faux pas or ”disrespect.”

For example, talking to their female family members, (or even any Turkish woman)who wore the hijab and traditional dress.

I’m just a visitor, but I do suspect that there is that unwritten rule. Like: ”don’t even talk to my mother or sister”.

But ‘suspecting’ that people are thin skinned, and give off body language that hints that they are, is almost impossible to prove, and to even mention it makes you sound like a nutter or a racist.
Hence the frustration. Whereas someone feeling racist slights quite freequently, might be believed.

And so it builds up, and comes out in rants or even violence.
We have become a PC nation over this though IMO.

Ok, I have to say, this dude is clearly an utter scumbag. But what he said isn’t a million miles away from what David Starkey actually wrote in the Daily Telegraph. He just phrased it more politely (only just) and used pseudo-intellectual language. He essentially said the report into the riots didn’t blame them on racial minorities because it was too politically correct (giving no evidence for this assertion and slur on the Paul Lewis’s report) then proceeded to rant about minorities.

Luckily it was published the day Louise Mensch resigned so got overshadowed

I guess my point is that it’s obviously important to stand up to the far right in all forms, but sometimes they are scariest when they have a knack for pretending to be civilised and decent.

What’s wrong with charging and convicting someone who’s broken the law? Just because ‘millions’ of others get way with it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go for someone when you can. Otherwise you may as well not arrest anyone because other people do the same things and get way with it. Fatuous argument.

@ 64 cynic

“What’s wrong with charging and convicting someone who’s broken the law? Just because ‘millions’ of others get way with it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go for someone when you can. Otherwise you may as well not arrest anyone because other people do the same things and get way with it. Fatuous argument.”

Actually, I’d say it’s fair to be concerned about a law that huge numbers of people break, but only a cherry-picked handful of people are charged for. It suggests that the law is being misused; basically it’s a stalking-horse for silencing unwanted opinions.

Aside from that, there are good reasons why this should be illegal to begin with – but I recognise that you’re responding to that specific paragraph in the OP.

@ 64 Cynic,

as Chaise says, the problem with what you say is; selective enforcement. It brings the Law (capital L) into disrepute. It usually means that the process is drawn out over a long time, so the process becomes a form of punishment.

An interesting study in such things can be done by looking at three cases of women making allegedly racist remarks on public transport. One, I think, pleaded guilty, and got hammered. One is pleading not guilty and her case is being dragged out and has been put back at least twice. She is subject to psychiatric tests and no doubt there is a threat that her child will be taken from her. The last one gained much less publicity, and as far as I know, no charges have been filed yet. This last one was a black woman.

I’ve said above I don’t support laws taking away freedom of speech, but all that aside, these cases are a monstrous waste of time and a perversion of the justice system. They drag on for month after month. If anything needed to be done, it should have been done as a public order misdemeanor by the beak, “here’s your £100 fine, now fuck off and behave yourself”. End of story.

@ 66 Richard

I think the media is your problem there. Once it’s in the public eye, the legal system feels the need to be seen Doing Something. And being in the public eye can be the hardest punishment of the lot. Just look at that racist woman on the tram (number one on your list, I think). It’s clear from the video that she was either off her face or has mental problems, but the thing was blown into a big fucking national issue, and she’s received death threats. Or “cat bin lady”.

@ Chaise,

“I think the media is your problem there. Once it’s in the public eye, the legal system feels the need to be seen Doing Something”

This is very true. The strangely reactionary nature of the legal authorities (i.e. reacting to media storms) is one more flaw to their name.

“And being in the public eye can be the hardest punishment of the lot.”

This touches upon a profound truth (or perhaps more accurately corresponds to a particular bee in my bonnet). I think that there used to be a wide grey area between criminal activity and socially acceptable behaviour, with the grey area covering the range from mild to extreme disapproval (and taking account of different social situations and different views of acceptability). This grey area has been squeezed from both sides, so now it’s either illegal or if it’s not illegal it must be okay. Also the division between public and private has all but dissolved.

A lot of things which are now illegal should not be illegal, but rather should be subject to a severe frowning-upon.

p.s as for the cat-bin-lady, my sympathies are all with Moggy.

@ 68 Richard Carey

“A lot of things which are now illegal should not be illegal, but rather should be subject to a severe frowning-upon.”

That’s my feeling too. Or a slap-on-the-wrist legal punishment is ok, but nothing brutal, and preferably not a criminal record. I’ve never seen the logic behind telling minor criminals that they need to sort their lives out, then making it impossible for them to get a legitimate job.

As for cat-bin-lady: my sympathies were with the cat, but when I saw the sheer volume of public hatred being dumped on this woman’s head, it became impossible not to feel sorry for her. It offends my sense of reason. Plus I’ve always had a problem with those who get more angry about cruelty to animals than they do about cruelty to people.