UK Men Arrested For Anti-Semitic Tweets After Football Game

magic maverick writes "Reuters reports that three men were arrested for posting anti-Semitic comments on Twitter following the English Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United in October, police said on Friday. 'Two men, aged 22 and 24, were arrested on Thursday in London and in Wiltshire, while a 48-year-old man was arrested at his home in Canning Town in London last week on suspicion of inciting racial hatred. The investigation following the match on October 6 was triggered by complaints about tweets that referred to Hitler and the gas chambers.' I guess it goes to show, you'd be stupid to use your real name or identifying details on Twitter. Perhaps the British should also work on reforming their laws on free speech (or lack thereof)."

Comments

Perhaps not

[Space cowboy]

Perhaps racist behaviour should be punished independent of any mindless "free speech" worship.

Simon

Re:Perhaps not

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe people should be free to speak their mind without being arrested. I'd rather live in a world where someone can call me a name and not be locked up than any alternative.

Re:Perhaps not

[Charliemopps]

Making "racism" illegal is no different that declaring thought crime. When the state can govern your speech and your thought, alls well, as long as you agree with the state. Once you don't, you're fucked. I've always argued, you can easily determine if a law is a good one by the simple thought experiment: "Once we inevitably elect the next tyrant, will this law help or hurt his ascent to power?" What do you think Hitler would have done with such a law? I think it's rather clear.

Re:Perhaps not

[HBI]

Perhaps every unthinking idiot who proclaims free speech to be 'mindless' should be reminded that this sort of power is always abused ultimately. It won't be just used to curtail racist speech, but any speech that the authorities dislike. Yet another right that once given away, will have to have much blood spilled to regain.

Re:Perhaps not

[ShanghaiBill]

This! It's always the racist Republicans in the USA that whine constantly about free speech.

But where do you draw the line? If the government has the authority to arrest someone for hating Jews, then why can't they also arrest you for hating Republicans?

Re:Perhaps not

[epyT-R]

as opposed to the racist/sexist democrats who blatantly build race/sex-based protectionist law into the system instead? The fact they do this under the guise of fighting discrimination on these attributes makes it doubly galling.

Re:Perhaps not

[epyT-R]

'The People' of course.. For example, north korea is a 'People's Republic'!

Re:Perhaps not

[Anonymous Coward]

And you do. You live somewhere that allows for that.

But I assume you can understand that not everyone wants the same things. Many people would rather live with civility than unbridled and often thoughtless speech.

Re:Perhaps not

[Entropius]

The way I would prefer to make sure that nothing like the Holocaust ever happens again is to publically ridicule the neo-Nazis, not send the police after them. The entire country pointing and saying "You people are crazy and dangerous" is a better safeguard than throwing some folks in jail. (Hitler got thrown in jail too, and look what happened to him...)

You cannot ban your way into removing things from society.

Re:Perhaps not

[Dunbal]

Someone who would put someone else in a cage for being rude or for having a different point of view deserves no civility.

Re:Perhaps not

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Europe has some rather strict hate crime laws because of a certain incident that happened during the 30s and 40s.

Seems like they didn't learn from their experience. Just look at how common neo-nazis are in Germany and Austria today.

The lesson Europe should have learned isn't that hate-speech enabled hitler, it was that hitler put words to what a great deal of people already believed. The hate speech wasn't the cause of the problem, it was a symptom. Make it illegal and all they accomplish is to make it harder to diagnose the problem in the future.

Re:Perhaps not

[richlv]

Europe has some rather strict hate crime laws because of a certain incident that happened during the 30s and 40s.
It'd be nice if they had strong free speech laws, but their history has led them down a different path.

why do american "news" people say "n-word" ?

Re:Perhaps not

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

look: it's easy for americans to grandstand and showboat on this issue, because they didn't have something happen in the usa within 80 years ago which consumed the lives of millions of people because of a hateful, racist ideology.

Ever think the reason we didn't have that happen is because of freedom of expression? That the worst that's happened here never got to those proportions because people were free to talk about it both to blow off steam and to have their hate publicly refuted?

The one thing that the US does better than any European state is cultural integration. Freedom of expression is a big part of that, we air our dirty laundry right out there in public for all to see, to duke it out in the marketplace of ideas. It ain't pretty at all, but there is no pretty solution, only varying degrees of effectiveness and they are all ugly. We let those assholes have public freak-outs so that the people on the fence can hear the response from the sane ones.

When you censor speech it doesn't go away, it only goes underground where there is no voice of reason to point out the flaws. The cure for bad speech is good speech, not silence.

Re:Perhaps not

[Anonymous Coward]

sweet geebus: a clueless authoritarian nerd in full-libertard mode...

if you are not free to make mistakes, in fact, if you are not free to do wrong, YOU ARE NOT FREE...
fucking idiot, take your authoritarian 'civility' that is used as a cudgel, and shove it up your ass...

you WILL NOT see how you are promoting the VERY TACTICS that the authoritarian state/society uses to punish and expel ANY and ALL dissenters...

'civility' my ass, the only thing you are interested in is control...

Re:Perhaps not

[ganjadude]

Clearly you are not an american. I feel sorry for you as you have been taught that you are not free to say what you believe. The last time people were not free to speak what they believed was when the church was in control of everything. Remember the inquisition? Question the lord, get murdered. someone says you questioned the lord? get murdered.

what you are advocating is another inquisition.

Today Antisemitism Comes From The Left

[Nova Express]

In the United States, Antisemitism overwhelmingly comes from the political left, both the Occupy Wall Street crowd and the victimhood identity politics left that regard Islamists and Palestinians as protected species.

There are also significant amounts of Antisemitism among liberal black politicians. Indeed, Jesse Jackson seems to have lost no political influence after calling new York City Hymietown.

Re:Today Antisemitism Comes From The Left

[myowntrueself]

To say that Palestinians have been subjected to a form of genocide at the hands of the state of Israel is hardly 'antisemitism'.

How is it antisemitism? Israel is a nation with a parliament, army, laws. It is not Judaism itself. Much of the population is Jewish and virtually all of the genocide has been conducted by people who happen to be Jews.

But to call it genocide is not being 'against Jews' any more than calling the Nazi-era holocaust genocide is being 'against Germans'. It doesn't make sense in the context of Germany and it just doesn't make sense in the context of Israel.

The people who drive the bulldozers that flatten Palestinian houses and kill old folks who are still in them? I hate them and the fact that they are Jewish makes absolutely no difference to me. Ariel Sharon, who slaughtered Egyptian prisoners of war in cold blood, I hate him and the fact that he is Jewish is completely irrelevant.

Re:Today Antisemitism Comes From The Left

[cervesaebraciator]

[...] both the Occupy Wall Street crowd and the victimhood identity politics left that regard Islamists and Palestinians as protected species.

I'm not an OWS guy (though I do have sympathy for some of their complaints), I'm decidedly on the traditionalist right (hence my agreement with OWS that something should be done about the accumulated and centralized power of banks), and I'm no fan of Islamic fundamentalism. That being said, I do think humans ought to be a protected species. At the very least, humans ought not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property unjustly. Of course, I'm sure you regard Palestinians as human.

Free speech

[Any Web Loco]

Perhaps the British should also work on reforming their laws on free speech (or lack thereof).

The British (and the Europeans) have perfectly adequate laws against hate-speech, which is what these comments were likely caught by. Just because you don't know what those laws are, understand how or why they came about, or how their application works, doesn't mean they necessarily need to be reformed.

Re:Nosy Parkers

[fredprado]

That is why the law of most civilized countries do not let people randomly punch other people in the face. Saying things you don't want to hear has nothing to do with your nose, though.

I Hate Hate. I'm Intolerant of Intolerance...

[Baldrson]

I hate hate.

Hate is the defamation of a group.

For example, I hate those who defame blacks by proclaiming blacks to have a higher crime rate than whites.

I hate those who defame Jews by proclaiming Jews to have disproportionate influence relative to their numbers.

I hate those who defame the poor by proclaiming the poor to have lesser capabilities than the rich.

I hate those who defame the rich by proclaiming the rich to have engaged in unfairly acquired their wealth.

I hate those who say that ugly people are ugly.

I hate those who say criminals are criminal.

Hate is Great!

On Racism and Hate Speech

[Taco Cowboy]

I find it remarkable that the world we live today, especially those in the West, people are trying to outdo each others in the "I am the best counter-racist there is" competition.

Who is *NOT* a racist ?

Who *DARE* to say that he or she is absolutely 100% free of racism ?

I am not here saying that racism is a good thing, but to point out that RACE is something that is deeply ingrained into what we are.

It's in our psyche, it's in the genes, man.

And regarding "Hate Speech" ... this bastard child of the Political Correct movement is DOING MORE HARM than good in the society.

What actually constitutes a "Hate Speech" ?

If you call a black a "nigger" is it a hate speech ?

Then what if a black person calls another black person a "nigger", is that a hate speech too ??

How about calling a Chinese a "chink", is that a hate speech ?

As a Chinese, (I can only speak for myself) I've met people who tend to describe me with many kinds of very very creative adjectives, and whenever that happen, you know what I do ?

I say "Thank you".

I thank them for letting me know how they feel about me.

It's better that I know how they feel about me up front, than to have someone who keep their grudges hidden and then backstab me at any given chance they get.

Furthermore, I respect their human rights - including their rights to say whatever they want, with their mouths.

Let me put it this way ...

I am born with a mouth, a mouth that is belonged to me. Ever since I was born, I have had the veto power over my own mouth, which includes each and every single words that I've spoken.

And as I do not wish to have other people having the veto power over my own mouth, I do not want to have the same veto power to control other people's mouths.

For me, this "Hate Speech" thing by itself is hateful.

It's a tool used by hateful people to limit other people's rights.

It's a tool to propagate hate, to make the society more hateful.

Re:On Racism and Hate Speech

[AftanGustur]

What you are saying is that my free speech stops where your hurt feelings begin?

Re:On Racism and Hate Speech

[aepervius]

Who *DARE* to say that he or she is absolutely 100% free of racism ?

I am not here saying that racism is a good thing, but to point out that RACE is something that is deeply ingrained into what we are.

It's in our psyche, it's in the genes, man.

And it is in our "gene" to also (as men) widely spread our sperm in as many nubile women as possible, them willing or not, and it is in our "gene"
  (as women) to sleep wizth as many strong men as possible. Yet you don't see women sleeping with any men passing by, nor do men rape any women passing by.

I am not racist. I never understood the concept of racism. So I call bullshit on you. Yes, some people have a little bit of melanine than other in their skin ? So what ? I am deeply white (I prefer cold climate so that does not help with sun exposition), but if I move to south california and go in the sun every day, my melanine amount will spike and I will get all brown. Despite the change of melanine in my skin I will not be any different. What makes me , is my environment, my education, my history. Not my skin color. Races is all bullshit made up by people to categorize other as inferior *on sight*. It has as little relevance to reality as categorizing women or men as inferior because of their gender. It has as little relevance as categorizing people as inferior by nationality. It has as little relevance as categorizing people inferior because of their belief. I am an atheist, but I am neither ifnerior nor superior to a catholic/moslem/Buddhist.
 
What makes you an idiot, and all those who qualified you as insightful, is that you fall for the trippe that race exists.

Double Standard

[mr100percent]

Amazing how people frequently bash Muslims, Asians, and Arabs in the UK and nothing happens (even full EDL and BNP rallies in the street), yet an anti-Semitic tweet is cause for arrest. Both are disgusting, but either legalize or ban both.