
Man guilty of hate crime for filming pug's 'Nazi salutes' - justin66
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43478925
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zaroth
In the video Mark prefaces the joke explaining that his girlfriend thinks her
pug is the cutest thing in the world, and he’s clearly miffed by this (you can
imagine the arguments between them) as his personal opinion is that pugs are
the perfect example of why humans shouldn’t be trying to breed animals. So he
set off to train the pug to do the most decidedly least cute thing possible,
which was to raise its paw on the command of “Sieg Heil”. [1]

The concerning thing here is that the hate crime statute in the UK is based
not on the intent of the speaker or the state of mind of the speaker, but how
anyone hearing the speech decides that _they_ feel about it. In fact, even
lacking an actual complainant is no burden, the state merely claims that is
could be offensive and concerns some community afforded special protection
therefore it is hate speech.

You can argue about the comedic quality or value, but it’s pretty clear
watching the video it’s highly sarcastic and dark humor and a hell of a prank,
but not hate speech under any reasonable definition.

And this of course is exactly the problem with so-called “hate speech” and
various laws (untested by the Supreme Court in the US as far as I’m aware)
that have come up against it.

In the USA thank god we still have the right to offend, but clearly this is
something which has been lost to the UK and appears to becoming weaponized to
surpress political activism as well (see recent stories of Tommy Robinson at
Speakers Corner).

This comes on the heels, earlier this week, the London Police had to amend
their website after claiming that _people can be “charged” with an “offence”
if their actions are within the law but their “reasons for doing it” are
perceived as illegal hate by others_. Thankfully that’s not actually true
under statute. But as we see here, the thought police is still alive and well.

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYslEzHbpus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYslEzHbpus)
(NSFW - Viewer discretion advised)

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portofcall
_In the USA thank god we still have the right to offend, but clearly this is
something which has been lost to the UK and appears to becoming weaponized to
surpress political activism as well (see recent stories of Tommy Robinson at
Speakers Corner)._

You can’t lose what you never had, and the UK doesn’t have the 1st amendment.
They don’t have freedom of speech and expression (at least not In such
absolute terms) and never have.

For example, super-injunctions and (I shit you not) hyper-injunctions.

~~~
ralusek
That's a strange way to think of it, that the state can supply that as a
right. The people of the UK, and anywhere, have the freedom to say anything
they'd like...if the state intervenes, they are removing the individual's
existing liberty to do so. The first amendment is not a right provided to the
people, but rather a restriction placed on the state, removing its own
capability to impede upon an inherent liberty.

I never think it's a good idea to think of a state as affording you a liberty
which you had to begin with.

~~~
zaroth
In fact this is exactly the argument many of the framers had _against_ the
bill of rights — that they were so natural and inherently obviously not to be
infringed that listing a few of them might make people think anything that
might have been left out was not in fact a natural right of the people!

Can’t say how glad I am they decided it better to put a few key ones down on
paper. Imagine if “they are so natural as to go unwritten” had won the day?

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tropo
Just 9 days ago, the UK held Lauren Southern under schedule 7 (terrorism act)
and then refused her passage through the tunnel into the UK.

[https://twitter.com/Lauren_Southern/status/97310042441993420...](https://twitter.com/Lauren_Southern/status/973100424419934208)

That is not a free country.

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praulv
Hate speech and incitement to violence is not welcome in the UK, and quite
rightly so.

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AllegedAlec
And who decides what is hate speech and incitement to violence?

The country which Orwell called home should know better than this.

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amrx101
Lol, you should ask Indians about that.

~~~
stevew20
Ouch.

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peterhadlaw
What can be done to help this guy? It's incredibly unjust and sets a terrible
precedent.

~~~
jasonmp85
We can start by de-Nazifying his dog.

~~~
brianmurphy
I hope you are joking and not seriously suggesting a Pug that alerts on the
word "jews" is a danger to anyone.

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iggg
He should have known not to offend jewish people. In a country where you can
be imprisoned for questioning history (the Holocaust specifically), it does
not surprise me an anti-Semitic joke leads to inprisonment.

