Yet more problematic stuff

[Scot Dutchy]

Breitbart? A news source? JFCOAPS.

[Animavore]

Breitbart?

[Scot Dutchy]

Yep Trump never lies either. FFS

[Svartalf]

well, if youi believe breitbart, he doesn't.

[Animavore]

It's arguable Trump never technically lies. Lying requires some sort of grasp on the truth of things.

[Scot Dutchy]

Trump understands how the RoI feels about its border with NI. Solution: build a wall.
"The cunt is fuckin' mental Jimmy".

[Cunt]

Oh look, attacking the source instead of addressing the fact.

The arrests are being made. Speech is unlawful in the UK, if you *** ****** *** *** ***** ******. LOL

[Brian Peacock]

People being questioned for allegedly offensive or hate speech is one thing, and quite legitimate imo, but how many of those arrests were converted into convictions? Any idea?

[Hermit]

People being questioned for allegedly offensive or hate speech is one thing, and quite legitimate imo, but how many of those arrests were converted into convictions? Any idea?

It's impossible to tell. Breitbart, as usual, is somewhat free and easy concerning available data. To be fair, its apparent source, an article by The Times* made the very same mistake on the matter. It goes from "Freedom of information requests have revealed that 3,395 people across 29 forces were arrested last year under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003" to "Nine people a day are being arrested for posting allegedly offensive messages online as police step up their campaign to combat social media hate speech." The trouble with that inference is that the data provided includes all arrests made under the Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. Telephones are part of the public electronic communications network. The published data make no distinction between the various electronic communications so used. This means that even if we knew how many arrests led to successful prosecutions, we could not determine how many of them harassed ex-partners, or broke AVO conditions and how many ran foul of Section 127 via public statements on the internet. Your guess is as good as mine, but both of us can be certain that the number for the latter is way below nine per day. Breitbart has no monopoly on spreading misinformation, though that site indulges in the practice with greater consistency and enthusiasm.

As to Section 127 itself, I do regard that law as highly problematic. For starters, as Stephen Fry argued, everyone has the right to feel offended. Section 127 does not even define the crimes it calls "grossly offensive" or "menacing" messages.

So, Pastor James McConnell's Islamic remarks land him in front of the beak. He was not even addressing Muslims. He described the religion of Islam as "heathen" and "satanic". He went on: "Islam is heathen, Islam is satanic, Islam is a doctrine spawned in hell." The court found him not guilty, but the decision was 19 months and fuck knows how many lawyers' fees in the making. He should never have been faced a judge for his sermon. Neither should Paul Chambers. His conviction was quashed on the third appeal 30 months after he was charged.

Contrast this with the fate of the unapologetically militant Islamist, Nadia Chan. Her tweets were legendary and personal. I don't know if her account was closed by twitter, or if she closed it herself. Either way, the original tweets are gone, but as is usually the case, someone made copies of them.







If I were in favour of prosecuting people for publishing "grossly offensive" or "menacing" messages, Nadia Chan would have qualified for it rather more than Pastor James McConnell. To my knowledge the authorities have made no effort to do so.


*The article is behind a paywall, but a kind soul has copy-pasted a good portion or perhaps all of it on reddit. You can read it here.

[Brian Peacock]

Cheers Hermit.

The Breitbart and Times (NEWSCORP) story is all about the headline, and the headline is all about THE OUTRAGE!!, and THE OUTRAGE!! basically boils down to fear. The Right have a stake in cultivating people's resentment, indignation, and outright fury because, as we know from advertising and psychology, when people are emotional they are more receptive to persuasion or blantant manipulation. I'd guess that anyone going to Breitbart for their news has already been persuaded but the Right have just as much invested in validating and fanning the flames of THE OUTRAGE!! as they have in farming it, as the initial impetus for this thread aptly demonstrates.

Something which rarely crops up among both the friends and foes of the Right-o-sphere is the question of who or what is actually triggering those visceral responses. We tend to think that it's the 'facts' in the matter, the information being conveyed in the stories and the actions of the people being reported on, which from the Right's perspective are invariably SJWs, Socialists (of course), anti-freedom gun-snatchers, feminists, Black Lives Matter activists, #metoo-ers, masked antifa anarcho-communists, and... well... the list is pretty long isn't it(?). These are the characters in the story and we usually end up arguing over the detail of the events and/or the correct reading of the main actors' motivation and behaviour: basically over what it true and what isn't etc.

But the truth about the facts of the matter or the motivations of the supposed villains isn't important to Breitbart or NEWSCORP. What's important to them is THE OUTRAGE!!, in stoking it and maintaining it, and every time we get into a slanging match with the TRULY OUTRAGED about the facts of the matter or what so-and-so really said or really meant or really did we are, to some extent, perhaps even to a large extent, doing the Right's work for them - we are stoking and validating THE OUTRAGE!! of THE OUTRAGED!!

So the answer to the question who or what is making the primed-and-triggering feel those visceral emotions is not really SJWs, or pink-haired feminazi's, it's Breitbart, it's FOXNEWS, it's the Koch brothers, etc: it's the true elite, the 1%ers, it's money, it's power. And while they've done a great job of cultivating (in both senses of the word) the emotions of ordinary people and then planting the seed of the idea that the Bannons, Murdochs, and Kochs of this world are basically on your side and the last, great hope for civilisation, the only thing these agents are really, really, really interested in is gaining and maintaining perpetual growth in their wealth, status, influence, and reach.

All this puts us in a bit of a bind doesn't it? We can't let the Right's errant, manipulative arse-gravy go unchallenged or else true elites just stroll in for the win, but if we get stuck in we only reinforce THE OUTRAGE!! regardless of, and usually in spite of, the facts of the matter. Cultivating emotion might be the main tactic of the Right, but cultivating division, polarisation, and antipathy between the Right and the rest also works - and all the time we're scrapping among ourselves they're scooping up the political and financial rewardss. I mean, the US has a president who basically rode THE OUTRAGE!!! of pretty much everyone right up the steps of the White House.

[Joe]

People being questioned for allegedly offensive or hate speech is one thing, and quite legitimate imo, but how many of those arrests were converted into convictions? Any idea?

An article I found in the Times had some coherent data:

Nine people a day are being arrested for posting allegedly offensive messages online as police step up their campaign to combat social media hate speech.

More than 3,300 people were detained and questioned last year over so-called trolling on social media and other online forums, a rise of nearly 50 per cent in two years, according to figures obtained by The Times.

About half of the investigations were dropped before prosecutions were brought, however, leading to criticism from civil liberties campaigners that the authorities are over-policing the internet and threatening free speech.

Arrests are expected to rise after Amber Rudd, the home secretary, last week announced a national police hub to crack down on hateful material online. Freedom of information requests have revealed that 3,395 people across 29 forces were arrested last year under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, which makes it illegal to intentionally “cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another” with online posts.

It is a rise of nearly 50 per cent since 2014, when there were 2,315 arrests, and an increase of 23 per cent since 2015 when there were 2,755 arrests.

The total number of arrests under the act, which also criminalises public online messages that are “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”, is likely to be much higher because the request for data was rejected by 13 forces and two did not provide adequate information.

Data from two of the UK’s largest police forces show big increases. The Met detained 867 people last year, up by 53 per cent from 2014. West Midlands police arrested 635 people, an increase of 877 per cent since 2014 when there were 65 arrests. The number of cases reaching the courts has remained stable. Last year 1,696 people were charged and 1,399 convicted.

The article is paywalled, but Reddit came to the rescue.

I guess the number that I'd be interested in is what percentage of online users are affected here. 3,300 seems awfully small.

[Cunt]

I guess the number that I'd be interested in is what percentage of online users are affected here. 3,300 seems awfully small.

How much protection do you think is appropriate, to shield you from harmful ideas?

Also, who will be deciding which ideas you need to be protected from?

Or is this 'protection' something you are ok with only when it is 'protecting' someone else?

[Cunt]

People being questioned for allegedly offensive or hate speech is one thing, and quite legitimate imo, but how many of those arrests were converted into convictions? Any idea?

You can go look. My claim was that people were being arrested. You whinged for examples, which I provided.

You want to look deeper into it, feel free. You want to back hate speech laws, support them by not speaking. It's really best for those laws that they don't be examined too closely.

[Animavore]

You think being arrested for hate speech is bad? Try 20 years for protesting oil pipes under Trump!

[Cunt]

It looks like Animavore responded, but I ignore her bullshit, because there isn't anything new - it's always the same thing I can hear on Rachel Maddow, or from the Clintons on their desperation-tour.

Maybe someone interesting will comment, but for now, back on topic.

It's problematic that I had run 50km and was then forced to run a gauntlet of shilling and garbage.

After the finish line, I reached across the fence and hugged my sweetheart, her Mom, her best pal (who ran the 10k with her) and a couple other fans. Then I had to follow the path around damn near another kilometer, facing offers of deep fried snacks, then every kind of packaged garbage snacks you could imagine. That they were pushing this garbage, right at that time, left me feeling not-hungry.

Something about pushing highly processed, pre-packaged foods on runners is more offensive to me than when they pushed it on my fat ass while I was surfing the couch.

I enjoyed a banana (which no-one was pushing) and thought about it. The problem is that corporate asshats can find ENDLESS money to pay people to enthusiastically pitch their trash, while bananas, apples and water were unattended, left alone on a table. I would be impressed if a snack food corporation paid someone to push fresh fruit, with no added garbage.

Anyway, this was partly a humble-brag, but very humble. I finished near dead-last, and only take solace in the fact that most of the other 12000 people chose to run shorter distances, like the marathon.