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Actions should have consequences. Her lie set of at least a week of needless chaos and destruction. It gave racist shit-heads an excuse (in their minds at least) to vandalize property, attack police and counter-protesters, and terrorize innocent people.
If she was the person who originated this lie then I hope they throw the book at her. If she just publicized a lie she heard from elsewhere she should still be punished, but probably not as much.
Freedom of speech should not equate to impunity for spreading egregious lies and hate-mongering. We should be coming down harder on people here in America who deliberately spread lies with bad faith intentions. Skin color, religion, etc should have any sway in when we apply such actions and when we don't.
ETA: I didn't downvote you, by the way. You're entitled to your opinion, and I feel like your point is a gateway to deeper discussion.
I appreciate the discussion. I knew this wouldn't be a popular take and almost deleted it before commenting.
Again, I think spreading lies on the internet is an appalling thing to do, but I just wanted to share my disbelief that someone could be arrested for it. Like, imagine if the cops showed up with handcuffs for everyone's grandparents for every racist email forward (or Facebook post) they shared.
I know it's tempting to want bad things to happen to people we don't like, but I think situations like this are a test of our ethics and values.
How is it really different from starting a white supremacy group and calling to 'expel immigrants' in posters around a city? The only difference from any other racist/terrorist action is that it was placed online. Do we really need to allow that to be okay?
I'd consider another big difference that one was a tweet with misinformation and the other is a call to action to "expel" people. The tweet is appalling but hardly terrorism.
Why? It was obviously a lie to rile people up. Why shouldn't it be considered cyber terrorism?
If only. Wouldn't that be fucking grand.
The amount of harm and loss of live those stupid things lead to has no place in society and people should be held responsible for it.
Quite a dystopian world you're pining for.
Damn a world where I'm free from baseless hate being openly spread.
I think the problem is - who decides what speech qualifies and is arrestable?
What if it's Trump? Or congressional Republicans?
What if they claim that talking negative about Trump is hate speech and is arrestable? Or saying Vance fucks couches?
I take it that you can see a distinction between "Vance fucks couches" and "burn those people in their hotel". They are not the same thing.
If the distinction is hard to determine - that's why there's a judicial process.
Except no one said "burn those people in their hotel".
That's kind of the point being made by all of the dissenters in this thread.
Cf. previous comments about dogwhistles.
Do you have a source for her saying that? I haven't heard any reports that she did.
It's a paraphrase. Read the tweet, not as if you're her defence lawyer, but ask yourself if a reasonable person would interpret it as a racist argument that violence was justified.
It doesn't sound even remotely like what her tweet said. That's not a paraphrase.
If you're/they're going to use quotes of things to compare whether each should be free speech, your quote should at least resemble the actual speech used.
This isn't the usa and she doesn't have the absolute right to say anything she likes, and if her tweet leads to rioting, she's guilty of inciting violence. Where do you think the false idea that the child murderer was an asylum seeker and violence should happen as a result came from, and what makes you think you're a better investigator than the British police?
Wtf are you talking about? Did you follow this conversation at all...?
I'm talking about what her tweet said and why it's a crime in the UK. What did you think we were talking about?
Deliberately lying with an agenda of misleading the public in order to achieve certain goal should 100% be a criminal offence.
I'm on your side. Without a direct call to action that breaks some laws, the idea that you can be arrested for "false communication" is straight up dystopian to me.
I mean, you're pointing the finger at the spark while ignoring the barrels of fuel stored in dangerous conditions. These people WANTED to riot, if she hadn't given them the reason, they'd have found another soon.
Yeah, and the rioters who were caught are in police custody. But the person going in the fuel depot with the lit match absolutely is not innocent of causing the inferno.
She literally ended with "If this is true"
There's a logical reasoning thing called modus ponens (it has a latin name because it's not exactly new). It goes
A. If A then B.
Hence B.
That's exactly how she called for all hell to break loose. You can't claim that you didn't mean B when you say "A. If A then B." It's just that A was false and "If A then B" was also false. Nevertheless, a lie-ridden far right call to violence over the murder of innocent children is what it was, and it was heeded by the far right nut jobs who rioted over the issue, targetting the immigration lawyers that had nothing to do with the deaths of the children until she posted the lie. She incited violence. Jail. Good riddance.
Keep your far right racist lying incitements to violence to yourselves, or you'll end up in prison, fascists! You're not welcome in the UK and you never have been. Thousands of ordinary people counter protested against hundreds of racist agitators. Good.
But she was saying if A. As in, questioning A...
No she wasn't. She already unequivocally stated A.
My friend has a UK driver's licence.
If she has a UK driver's licence, she must be at least 17.
Now, can you honestly claim I'm sceptical about whether she has a driver's licence or whether she's over 16?
Please Google modus ponens before coming back again. She even used it in the classical form.
"If that's true" pretty clearly implies skepticism. She wasn't stating a theorem. She was conversing.
You're not prepared to change your mind, you'd rather contradict literally thousands of years of logical thinking. 2+2=3. Got it. I really really wasted my time talking to you.
I read what I read. I'm not saying it's definitely what she meant, but if it's how I interpreted it, it may be what she meant. Language after all is largely fluid, and not a mathematical equation. But sure, just insult me instead.
OK, you're a right winger who spends his time online defending racist liars who post inflammatory lies stirring up hatred and violence in my country and you won't listen to reason and literally deny logic.
Your reasoning is that that is the phrasing in formal logic. My point is how people converse doesn't necessarily follow formal logic. So that may not be what she meant. I can't say she definitely meant what I said- but that is the impression I got. And as I said if it's how I as a fluent English speaker interpreted it, then it may also be how she meant it.
You missed this bit:
you’re a right winger who spends his time online defending racist liars who post inflammatory lies stirring up hatred and violence in my country
And I think I know why you're spending the best part of a week online defending racist liars.
What am I supposed to say "no you insulting and attacking me isn't true". Like Chomsky said "The person who throws the mud always wins. Because there's no way of responding to such charges." All I said is the way I read it they're saying "if this is true" which is inherently questioning it. That may not be what they meant, I can't read their mind. But yes go ahead and insult me, there's not point in me denying it and you know that, that's why you said the insult.
I insulted you because you invited me to and I found it so hard to resist, but actually, I just said
Which was all very factual. So no, you're not claiming it isn't true because I kept it so factual, I didn't feel you needed any more insulting than the straight up facts about our conversation. But then I afterwards went for an insult for which the evidence wouldn't stand up in court for here:
And here you go again with the invitation:
(Because it's true, of course), and because you find it so hard to follow really, really simple, millennia-old logic like "A is true. If A is true B is true. Hence B is true", I'll spell the conclusion out for you: you support racist liars online because you yourself are a racist liar.
Okay so you're just trolling, sorry not going to engage. Hope your week gets better so you don't feel like this is a good use of your time. Bye
The problem is in who decides what speech should be punished.
How about we get both sides of the argument to meet in a big large room, we can present the facts of what happened, and allow trained professionals and/or a selection of her peers to judge what should be punished on a case by case basis?
Nah sounds ridiculous, let’s just do nothing.
I don't think that would do a lot in terms of protecting unpopular speech.
There's unpopular speech and there's speech that starts nationwide riots. I don't get how you're confusing them.
I'm not confusing them. But I'm also not a fan of using the power if the state to punish people I disagree with, even if they say vile things. Such power will inevitably be abused, turned against me, etc.
It's safer in the long run to preserve free speech and expression, even if it means people get away with being asshats.
They're not being punished for disagreeing with the government - that was when the conservative government made it illegal to protest climate change. No, they're being punished for causing violence. It's not that the opinion is wrong, it's that the far right lies caused far right rioting. I don't know why anyone thinks that should be consequence free. It's crazy that you would think it should be allowed.
It's not a question of what speech I think should be allowed, but rather a question of what powers I think the state should have.
Well I think the state should have the power to jail people for starting nationwide riots. I don't see why you don't. It's weird. You think the rioters should go to jail but the ones that kicked it off shouldn't? Really odd.
It's less about thinking she shouldn't be punished for her speech, and more about thinking that the state shouldn't have the power to punish speech. To quote Thomas Jefferson, "I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery."
The UK doesn't have a written constitution. A principal is that no Parliament can bind its successor. The state can give itself whatever powers it likes. The conservatives gave it the power to prosecute people for protesting climate change and made it inadmissible evidence for them to explain the reasons for their protest, which rather goes against "I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." The people who went to prison for saying we'd better not kill the planet went uncommented by you, but this woman triggering a sequence of riots is where you draw the line?
No, in the UK there is no absolute and overriding right to say anything. If you incite violence, you can be sent to prison. Do you not have laws about libel? Is that not the state punishing people for speech? Why is it worse in the USA to say a nasty and untrue thing about a celebrity than to say a nasty and untrue thing that triggers riots? Is Trump OK to call for insurrection because it was only words? I think you may be overvaluing the freedom to cause problems with words and underestimating the extent to which you can get in trouble for it in America.
I've never heard a "Free speech absolutist" with good motives. I'm very much not one. The state stopping bad things from happening is a good thing, no?
I feel like you're arguing a point I haven't taken a position on. I'm only saying that arrests like this seem insane to an American sensibility.
But I will say that changing the law like that is also insane to an American sensibility.
Is it OK to go after Trump for inciting insurrection?
Is it OK to go after people for libel and slander?
If so, why is it OK to restrict speech for harming a reputation but not OK to restrict speech for causing violence?
It seems to me that the American line on free speech is really inconsistent.
I think you're spitting the situation on the wrong horn of Jefferson's dilemma. They have the freedom to speak. It comes with the danger of being arrested if that speech meets the requirements of being an exhortation to violence.
I'm not familiar with the idiom "spitting on the wrong horn." Here's the context of the quote: