One speech criminal who has summoned up significantly less sympathy is Lucy Connolly, the Northampton childminder who was sentenced to two years and seven months for inciting racial hatred, over a vile, hateful missive she posted in the wake of the Southport stabbings. Seemingly in response to rumours swirling online that those three girls, slain at a Taylor Swift dance class, had been killed by an asylum seeker, Connolly took to X and said: ‘Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.’
Liberal governance fancies itself as committed to "humane" governance, meaning a government that creates the conditions for living a full human life. It would be humane to give people a little space for things like that. Strong emotions can make fools out of most of us. On the principle of the thing, however, it's better that she be allowed to say it -- both because of the core human liberty, and because it gets it out there that this kind of thing provokes a lot of anger that could be dangerous. The UK has a habit of trying to cover these things up instead of addressing them. That's causing a lot more harm than some babysitter fuming online.
German journalist sentenced to seven months of probation for a Twitter meme poking fun at the Interior Minister's lack of commitment to free speech
Now we don't expect the Germans to be as committed to the principle of freedom of anything as the British once were. This is an egregious violation, however. Apparently in Germany public figures can sue individuals for defamation for saying things about them in public, such as on Twitter. Defamation is supposed to mean, however, that you said something that wasn't true. The very act of filing the suit to suppress the speech proves the journalist's case; yet the court sided with the powerful against the citizenry, as so often, and threatened the journalist with prison for daring to suggest this obviously true and proven thing.
7 comments:
The politicians are squeezing a balloon trying to suppress reality-but it is bulging out between their fingers. They have admitted so many "refugees" they can no longer do anything but pretend they don't have a problem. Too much political mass.
51 words, posted online, for a few hours. Two years, seven months in prison.
This fits the definition of draconian pretty well.
The question is this- if some minor "offense", like speaking your mind or trespassing is going to result in years in prison,
why should one submit to authority AT ALL?
Extrapolate this line of thought and it puts Law Enforcement (and government in general) in a very dangerous place. Yet they push.
Indeed, the British police seem to be at the forefront of this pushing. Maybe they think that policing angry Britons is still safer for them than policing angry Muslim migrant communities.
Liberal governance fancies itself as committed to "humane" governance.... It would be humane to give people a little space for things like that.
I strongly disagree. There's nothing humane about government dictating to us what it has decided is humane--particularly since "government" isn't, and never does, do anything. It's only the men and women who populate government who are making those decisions and imposing them on us.
Nor is it in any way humane for those men and women of government to tell us--and then to use their power to impose their attitude on us--that we're both too grindingly stupid to decide for our selves such things, and that we're too infantilely thin-skinned to be able to handle an insult or an ugly--our definition, not those august personages'--remarks.
Strong emotions can make fools out of most of us.
Certainly. And most of us can get over our foolishnesses and make amends where warranted.
Eric Hines
“I strongly disagree. There's nothing humane about government…”
I wasn’t attempting to impute a view to you, or even to suggest that this was the correct view. I was suggesting that this is a view that they themselves strongly endorse, and as such they should accept the consequences of their view.
I understand that. I was disagreeing with the view itself, not you for presenting it. I knew, further, that it was not your view.
Eric Hines
Just as a matter of fairness, I'll add that I don't see how she was "racist". There could be non EU white Europeans in those hotels, so the overly-emotional rant seems an equal opportunity hate to me.
It's because any kind of disapproval of immigration is racist, douglas. Haven't you updated your Newspeak Dictionary this week?
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