In which the UK cracks down on online incitement to violence...
... And I'm all for it. I think.
ABERDEEN — A couple of weeks ago, many cities around the United Kingdom were rocked by violent protests clearly instigated by false information spread on social media.
Some crazy teenager stabbed several young girls who were having innocent fun in a Taylor Swift-themed class at a community center in the town of Southport, near Liverpool. Three of them died.
Police quickly arrested a 17-year-old suspect, a British citizen born in Wales to parents from Rwanda. Though he was not a refugee or asylum seeker, and had no known connection to any Islamic or any other group, social media hooligans quickly spread false stories claiming that the attacker was a Muslim refugee.
As a result, riots broke out in several cities with violence aimed at shops owned by immigrants and ethnic minorities and at hotels and other places where asylum seekers, of which the UK has many, were housed.
The official crackdown was swift and merciless. The violence stopped and many people were quickly sentenced to prison terms of more than a year.
More than 700 arrests made and 302 people charged over riots in England — Vikram Dodd, The Guardian, August 9, 2024
The fact that newly elected British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer got that knighthood for the good job he did as head of the Crown Prosecution Service before venturing into politics may have equipped him to rapidly power up the nation’s criminal justice system.
It is reassuring to see that at least one democratic nation, one that respects the rule of law, can act so quickly to quell violence. That a nation doesn’t have to be a fascist police state to control riots in the streets.
When the United States is still looking to round up some of those involved in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and some people who are still taken seriously as political leaders are defending that violent revolt as legitimate political discourse, the American criminal justice system looks mighty weak by comparison.
But.
I’m not going to be rude enough to tell my British hosts that they are not running their country correctly. But a handful of these criminal cases have, to an American ear, just a bit of a frightening ring to them.
From perusing the legitimate British press online, I see at least three cases where people who did not participate in the street violence, did not throw bricks or attack police or set fire to libraries or threaten violence at the doors of hotels housing asylum seekers and refugees, were quickly arrested and sentenced to prison.
They were in the dock because they went on social media and called for others to commit murder and mayhem against immigrants.
Two men jailed for social media posts that stirred up far-right violence — The Guardian, August 9, 2024
“Two men have been sent to prison for stirring up hatred and violence online after the Southport attack, in the first cases of their kind linked to the recent riots seen across the country.
“Jordan Parlour, 28, was jailed for 20 months after pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred with Facebook posts in which he advocated an attack on a hotel in Leeds as part of the violent public disorder that swept England last week.
In Northampton, Tyler Kay, 26, was given three years and two months in prison for posts on X that called for mass deportation and for people to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers….”
Woman, 53, jailed over ‘blow the mosque up’ Facebook post after Southport riots — Mark Brown, The Guardian, August 14, 2024
“A 53-year-old woman who lived a ‘quiet, sheltered’ life has been jailed for 15 months for posting a comment on Facebook which said: ‘Blow the mosque up with the adults in it.’
“Julie Sweeney, of Church Lawton, Cheshire, pleaded guilty at Chester crown court to sending a communication to convey a threat of death or serious harm….
“… The judge said ‘so-called keyboard warriors’ like Sweeney ‘have to learn to take responsibility for their language – particularly in the context of the disorder that was going on around the country.’…”
[That last struck a chord with me. I’ve been disparaged as a “keyboard warrior” and, even though it was clearly meant as an insult, I rather liked the sound of it. I thought about having business cards made up with that as my title.]
So far, there are no reports that Starmer or anyone else in power in Britain is going after Elon Musk, the owner of X/Twitter, who has directed his followers’ attention to false posts about riot suspects being sent to detention camps in the Falkland Islands and tweeted that “civil war is inevitable” in the UK.
I don’t follow any of what are apparently many British right-wing social media channels. But in the mainstream media I’ve been looking at I’ve seen none of the kind of worry one might see in the States about criminalizing thoughts or mere words.
The UK has no written constitution, much less an explicit free speech/free press guarantee as is found in our First Amendment. It has a tradition of free speech, but it also has an Official Secrets Act and it is easier to sue the press for libel here than it is in the US.
In the US, too, the First Amendment is not absolute. There are laws against inciting violence, libel and slander and pornography. US case law recognizes the utterance of “fighting words” as an act that can be punished. Though it almost never is.
Starmer said his government would continue to look at how people in the UK use social media to incite violence. “This is not a law-free zone,” he said.
Free speech is a keystone element of a free society, that should be protected vigorously. But, on January 6 in the US and more recently in the UK, we see how lies spread on social media can cause real harm.
Part of the legal definition of free speech and free press in the American tradition is no “prior restraint.” That means the government can’t stop you from speaking. But if your speech causes harm, there may be serious consequences.