If the police can scour the internet for hate speech, surely they can arrest protesters calling for the eradication of a nation

Oct 24, 2023 by Jill

by Richard Littlejohn, Daily Mail:

On Saturday night, senior officers at Scotland Yard no doubt poured large Glennhoddles all round and congratulated themselves on a job well done.

By their own estimation, they were certainly entitled to do so. After all, a potentially volatile large pro-Palestinian demonstration had passed off ‘peacefully’ and with few arrests.

The fact that elements of the 100,000-strong crowd appeared to be calling for a holy war to wipe Israel off the face of the earth didn’t seem to trouble the police.

No laws had been broken, the cops insisted, pointing out that chants of ‘jihad’ could be interpreted in several ways.

For instance, it can be used in a religious sense to mean a personal struggle to become a better Muslim. True, but it’s a question of context. In relation to Israel, jihad is a call to arms.

[…] There’s a very low bar when it comes to arresting someone for an alleged hate crime. All it requires is ‘any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim, or any other person (my italics) to be motivated by hostility or prejudice’.

It has been used countless times, often in the most trivial of circumstances when the ‘offender’ is considered guilty of nothing more serious than causing hurt feelings.

Any crime can be prosecuted as a hate crime if the accused has shown hostility based on race or religion. Another clause in the Public Order Act criminalises anything which causes ‘harassment, alarm or distress’.

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