This weekend, a football player had a heart attack on the pitch. Twitter went mad, with people who had no connection with the club or the team grieving and paying fulsome tribute to someone they didn’t know or care about five minutes before. Of course, some idiots went the other way:

A man has been arrested after allegedly making racist remarks on Twitter relating to critically ill footballer Fabrice Muamba.

The 21-year-old man from Pontypridd, south Wales, was arrested on Sunday.

As it happens, I read some of the comments this chap made, and there is no doubt whatsoever that they were despicable, unpleasant, uncharitable, racist and mean-spirited. I read them because people were retweeting them to show how outraged they were. Now, there are a couple of points I want to raise about this:

• the people who retweeted the racist comments are, as I understand it, technically just as guilty of “hate speech” as the man from Pontypridd
• given that the person was not advocating any kind of harm to a particular race, merely approving that a black man was harmed (from the tweets I saw, anyway) I’m not sure what grounds there are for arresting him

Even if he was advocating stringing up “the blacks”, I don’t really see that being an offensive, “intolerant” idiot is something that you should be arrested for, or have anything done to you except being ignored for being an idiot. If you look at what he was arrested for, he was arrested by people who are being intolerant of intolerance. I don’t advocate any form of bigotry, but it’s clear that bigotry is not going to ever go away, no matter how much legal thuggery you bring to bear.

But it seems to me curious, in the way that so many things are in the statist, social democratic world, that the one kind of intolerance that is perfectly acceptable is to be intolerant of intolerance. This is somehow magically transmogrified into “tolerance”.

It is no such thing. It is merely a socially acceptable intolerance … at the moment. I have lived and worked in countries where other, state-sanctioned and socially-approved intolerances existed and changed over time and I have never found any state-decreed intolerance to my liking. Bigotry is bigotry, irrespective of the target.

The man from Pontypridd has been vilified and abused, his personal details have been published on the internet and he has been hounded by thousands of baying, self-righteous people, in much the same way a black man might have been treated in apartheid South Africa or the pre-civil rights “deep south” in the USA. The justification in both cases is exactly the same: “these are the laws and norms by which we live now”.

Somehow, I find the justification as unsatisfying now as I would have then.

Jeremy
Poynton March 20, 2012 at 16:31

Do remember – if you are a Labour functionary, this sort of behaviour is
quite acceptable

http://order-order.com/2012/02/22/labour-councillor-dearly-wishes-thatcher-would-go-blind/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8096040/Labour-councillor-calls-for-Margaret-Thatcher-to-burn-in-hell.html

Perhaps the CPS should have these links referred to them?

Jeremy
Poynton March 20, 2012 at 14:59

@Engineer

I think – witness my post above regarding the crime of “racism” – that if
you say something that someone deems offensive, it may now be an offense. Pace
Sunny Hundal, most of whose output is Leftist gibberish – he is right on this,
it is a thought crime, and is one of the may timebombs the last shower of
bastards left us. And that includes the “Equality” laws the grotesque Harmen
got in before New Stasi were kicked out.

Jeremy
Poynton March 20, 2012 at 14:53

I believe that legally, an act that anyone perceives to be “racist” is
deemed to be so.

Enough said.

JimS March 20, 2012 at 10:39

“Tolerance” is being redefined. It used to mean “put up with”, now it is
“wholeheartedly accept”.

Before Twitter the mainstream media did, and still does, spread the
“offence”. I recall hearing of the closed meeting where a senior police
officer made a comment that a reporter thought might upset the ‘Soham’
parents, so he put his theory to the test. Who was being offensive there?

Just last week the BBC was hyping up a stolen post-Hillsborough memo,
completely out of context and time-expired, to try and work up victim anger.
When the messenger makes up the message he dserves to be shot.

john malpas March 19, 2012 at 23:54

When the state wants to suppress something the mob comes in handy.
At
first the ‘crystalnacht’ will be purely local but it will spread as nobody
wants to be seen to be a doubter.
Followed by the ‘racists’ being removed
from prison to camps. For their own good of course.
Maybe tories will
follow them.

AnnaNonAMoose
March 20, 2012 at 04:23

They already removed “the smokers”, something pre-WWII Germany was happy
to remove early on as well, along with property rights, along with
disbanding people from congregating in a non state-approved fashion, lest
anyone forget. 2007 July1 was early fair warning.

davidb March 19, 2012 at 20:39

I thought I read in the Museum of Scotland that Calvinist Scotland had a
bad rep for witch burning. Not just Catholic countries – though I thought they
persecuted Jews more.

SadButMadLad
March 19, 2012 at 20:36

And unlike just about any other website/blog/forum/newspaper, most of them
on the progressive side of the fence, we aren’t repeating the tweet
involved.

I just wonder why everyone is getting into such a tizzy about the tweet.
I’m sure a fellow reader of this blog could bring up an example where someone
on the left said something horrendous about the death of a ring wing person –
but no action was taken.

And the offence? A racially-aggravated public order offence to incite
violence. I doubt in any way that it incited anyone to violence against
Fabrice. The only violence expressed has been by the progressive lefty right
on people into violence against Liam himself.

Dick
Puddlecote March 19, 2012 at
21:18

You referring to things such as the planned street party when
Thatcher dies?

alan March 19, 2012 at 21:26

about the death of a ring wing person – but no action was
taken.

Being busted for politically incorrect tweeting is a very new phenomenon.
It wont be long before the public catches up and starts reporting all manor
of offensive tweets/blog posts.

This could well descend into chaos as an army of oppressive little
brothers starts reporting anything they deem hateful. At what point does an
ad-hominem post become hateful?

Elena ‘andcart
March 19, 2012 at 20:24

I am sick to death of people who think they have a right to say whatever
they please, no matter how hurtful or disgusting.

JuliaM March 19,
2012 at 20:36

But they do….

Engineer March 19, 2012 at 20:43

Well – I sort of agree with you, in as much as anyone with a modicum of
sensitivity would not set out to deliberately or gratuitously offend others,
but there does remain the question of what constitutes hurtful or
disgusting, and under what circumstances. Many people make remarks in
same-sex company that they wouldn’t dream of making in mixed company, for
example.

There’s also the possibility of people claiming that something offends
them just to shut down a discussion, thus curtailing freedom of speech.

Everyone has a right to offend, but most of us try not to.

Henry Crun
March 20, 2012 at 07:57

I’m sick and tired of people behaving like little children going “Awww,
he said a naughty word” everytime somebody says something “offensive”.

Offence is subjective, what you may find offensive, other people won’t.
So who determines what is and what isn’t offensive?

Grow up and get over it.

SadButMadLad
March 20, 2012 at 10:35

That’s where the law has got pretty dangerous because now someone can
complain on behalf of another. So even if the target didn’t feel offended
someone else can complain on the basis that they thought the target would
be offended. Complaint made, offender arrested on the basis of a thought
crime – the thought being that of the complainer.

So you can have the case where a white person complains about a red
white and blue sign in a bedroom window on the basis that they thought
that some minority immigrant group would be offended by the nationalism
implied by the use of the colours of the flag.

Jeremy
Poynton March 20, 2012 at
16:29

Spot on – another result of New Labour is that they have armies of
apparatchiks ready, willing and able to be offended on behalf of those
who are not.

FUBAR

alan March 19, 2012 at 19:42

Does nanny know you can tweet in any language? Is nanny targeting English
tweets sent in the UK, or all language tweets in the UK? What about English
language tweets from abroad?

If only English language UK tweeters are targeted isnt that
discrimination?

And its going to be interesting to see what happens when someone in another
country makes a racist tweet on a UK topic. If the tweet had been sent from
the US then the tweeter would be protected by Freedom of Speech. However if an
American had tweeted about the riots last year, they might have violated the
US riot act (incitement to riot is not protected by free speech).

Pandora’s box comes to mind….

Henry Crun March 19, 2012 at 19:15

How many more times do I have to say this?

Twitter is just haiku for morons

Dick
Puddlecote March 19, 2012 at 18:51

Sunny Hundal was expressing the same kind of sentiment yesterday.

Tweets are here if anyone missed them.

Engineer March 19, 2012 at 18:41

We stopped burning witches in the 19th century. Seems we’ve just changed
target a bit.

Why on earth was anyone in Pontypridd taking any notice of round-ball
football on Saturday of all days?

Tadge March 19, 2012 at 20:13

Burning of Witches was left to Catholic countries.

We just tortured, drowned, crushed and stole their chattels.

macheath March 19,
2012 at 18:02

If the man from Pontypridd was seeking attention, he’s certainly got it
now.

Whatever happened to ignoring such antics? Has the twitter age of instant
reaction and stream-of-consciousness deprived people of the ability to
reflect?

Plenty of us are familar with the idea of ‘bloggo ergo sum’ but I wonder if
the twitter generation feel that if they don’t visibly react, they somehow
cease to exist. Such a rich seam of attention is the ultimate temptation for
twitter trolls or whatever one calls them – this could be the shape of things
to come for HM Constabulary.

JuliaM March 19,
2012 at 18:37

It’s merely the next stop on the road to infantilism that we’ve been
going down for so long. Though maybe I shouldn’t use the term, since as an
infant I learned that ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will
never hurt me’…

Elena
‘andcart March 19, 2012 at 19:32

Really? I have found that words often hurt me.

Leg-iron March 20, 2012 at 00:48

Me too, but only if they’re written on a stone.

JuliaM March 20, 2012 at 04:55

James Rigby March 19, 2012 at 17:25

With regard to the arrest, it all hails back to the MacPherson report. The
police have been told that all allegations of racism must be investigated at
all times, with vigour. The result is that if someone makes a complaint to the
police, the police feel they MUST make an arrest and investigate. The risk, as
they perceive it, is that failing to act robustly means that if the perp then
goes on to commit a real crime (or someone else is spurred into committing a
real crime), the police will be guilty because they failed to act. And so they
go OTT every time.

Someone used the word “nigger” on Big Brother a while back, and
Hertforshire police spent many man hours “reviewing the evidence” and
considering appropriate action.

Nothing will happen with this twit(errer) because, as you say, no crime
seems to have been committed.

As for those publishing his name, and vilifying him, they’re entitled to.
It’s called free speech. And provided they haven’t acted illegally in sourcing
his name and address, then that’s fine.

James Rigby
March 19, 2012 at 18:32

My ghastly is now flabbered. He’s been convicted of a racially aggravated
public order offence. For using words. On the Internet.

James Rigby
March 19, 2012 at 18:35

“Ghast”, damn autocorrect.

JuliaM March
19, 2012 at 18:38

The only surprise is that you seem surprised…