The hate crime noose is tightening. Speak up or suffocate!

Sep 22, 2019 by

by Andrew Tettenborn, Rebel Priest:

It’s not often that Tony Blair agrees with the likes of Priti Patel. When this happens there is likely to be dirty business about, especially for anyone interested in freedom from government interference.

Last month’s report from the grandly-named Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, entitled New Policy Responses to Stop Hate Crime, was no exception. Its suggestions for further restrictions on what we can say about people’s religion are bad enough.

Essentially the argument is that anti-religious speech is just as bad as blatantly racist speech and needs to be suppressed to the same extent; you can gauge its flavour by the statement that “recognising anti-Muslim hatred is not about restricting free speech, but acknowledging the harm that British Muslims are experiencing.”

So too the report’s unqualified approval of the Government’s online harms white paper. But let those wait for another day.

The proposals about so-called hate groups are much more disconcerting. Put bluntly, the report’s complaint that the government does not have enough powers to make life difficult for organisations that promote views we don’t like, and ought – all in the name of giving everyone a fair chance, of course – to award itself some more.

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