Scotland’s Controversial Hate Crime Bill Criminalizes Statements Made In The Privacy Of One’s Home
Conservative “Party leader Douglas Ross said the pledge to repeal the legislation would see the Scottish Parliament ‘overturn the dangerous threats to freedom of speech'”
On Thursday, Scotland passed a watered-down version of its Hate Crime Bill. The attack on free speech is still rather alarming even in its less overtly tyrannical state. For example, it includes criminalizing utterances made in the privacy of one’s home.
The Bill, which passed what passes for a parliament on Thursday, is weaker than the one introduced but it is no less sinister. It is an authoritarian smash-and-grab on freedom of speech, extending the power of the state to regulate and punish expression far beyond consensus functions such as maintaining public order and deterring incitement to violence.
The legislation creates a sweeping new offence of ‘stirring up hatred’. Liable for prosecution will be anyone who ‘behaves in a manner that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening, abusive or insulting’ — or communicates such material — if he or she ‘intends to stir up hatred against a group of persons based on the group being defined by reference to race, colour, nationality (including citizenship), or ethnic or national origins’, or if ‘a reasonable person would consider the behaviour or the communication of the material to be likely to result in hatred being stirred up against such a group’.
The same offence applies for hatred based on ‘age; disability; religion or, in the case of a social or cultural group, perceived religious affiliation; sexual orientation; transgender identity; variations in sex characteristics’, except for these categories only ‘threatening’ or ‘abusive’ language will be criminal. Yousaf freely admits that his law will even apply to utterances made in the privacy of the home. Penalties range from fines to seven years in prison.
The sheer scope of the offence cannot be overstated. The definition of ‘communicating’ hatred, for example, includes ‘displaying, publishing or distributing’ material, ‘giving, sending, showing or playing’ material for another person, or ‘making the material available to another person in any other way’. It will be for sheriffs and judges to determine but that definition could very well capture the boomer who hits the ‘share’ button on a grim Facebook meme about Muslim demography as readily as the skinhead who distributes neo-Nazi pamphlets on Jewish racial inferiority.
While some of the more outlandish provisions in the original Bill have been excised — including a section on prosecuting actors and directors of stage plays deemed to ‘stir up hatred’ — this law remains to its core a radical assault on liberal principles. It is a reflection of the insurgent ideology of coercive progressivism
Speaking of Scotland's ruling party, they've also just ushered through a new "Hate Crime" bill which criminalizes "stirring up hatred" by "displaying, publishing or distributing" materials which members of various identity groups may "reasonably" deem "threatening or abusive" pic.twitter.com/T91jSDurWz
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) March 14, 2021
Given recent expansions in popular notions of what constitutes "incitement," "harassment," "violence" etc. it would be folly to just assume that the First Amendment provides a complete bulwark against these trends. Particularly as Trans issues continue to grow in prominence
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) March 14, 2021
Scottish conservatives are already campaigning on it, promising to repeal it should they win the majority in May.
Party leader Douglas Ross said the pledge to repeal the legislation would see the Scottish Parliament “overturn the dangerous threats to freedom of speech”.
He said other opposition parties “did not do enough” to stop the bill from becoming law, calling for a cross-party alliance to repeal the Bill in the next Parliament.
The Bill, which aims to consolidate and extend existing hate crime law, was passed 82 votes to 32 on Thursday after months of debate and multiple amendments.
Mr Ross said: “Backed by Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens, the SNP have passed one of the most extreme and outrageous laws in the history of the Scottish Parliament.
“We opposed the SNP’s Hate Crime Bill and our manifesto will pledge to repeal it.
“We will seek to overturn the dangerous threats to freedom of speech and our fundamental rights that [justice secretary] Humza Yousaf refused to remove. The SNP Government has no place criminalising what people say in their own homes.
“Other opposition parties did not do enough to force the SNP to fix this shambles of a Bill, but I now ask that they take this moment and reconsider. Work with the Scottish Conservatives, stand up for free speech and join us in including a pledge to repeal this Bill.
Scottish comedian Leo Kearse posted a great (and hilarious) take on the bill. He gets serious towards the end, including a quote from President Reagan, so watch the whole thing. (Strong language warning)
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Scotland’s done. There’s really no difference between Communist China (the gold standard of enemies of freedom) and Scotland: save for the murder and concentration camps.
But, of couse, that’s coming to Scotland: after all, what do you do with all those people ratted out by their own grade-school children.
What a stupid bunch. All that said: Scotland should be treated like North Korea and Iran for purposes of trade. They’re just as dangerous.
There is a difference. There is no such stupid law in China.
If they actually apply that law, they are going to have to prosecute a good portion of the 1% of the population in Scotland that are black people in Scotland (googled it and it’s 1%, no lie) for the racist things they say against whites.
Wouldn’t happen – Blacks can’t be racist according to Leftists thus no charges are possible.
Scotland is 96% white and almost 3% Asian FYI
And I suspect the vast majority of those “Asians” are “soft Asians” (i.e., Indians).
What’s “soft” about Indians? In UK English “Asian” means from the Indian subcontinent. Chinese aren’t “Asian”; until recently they were “Oriental”, but once Edward Said made that word forbidden in the USA it was only a matter of time till the prohibition crossed the ocean, so now I think they’re “East Asian”.
Hate speech or diversity dogma is politically congruent (“=”) policy with the State-establishment of the Progressive Church/Synagogue/Temple/Office/Chamber/Clinic etc, Pro-Choice quasi-religion (i.e. ethics or relativistic morality), and liberal (i.e. divergent) ideology. Not quite a wicked solution, but a progressive condition and grade. One step forward, two steps backward.
The sad thing is how many so called Americans support having such laws here. Many leading DEMONCRATS are already on record stating that free speech doesn’t include hate speech, that it can be regulated. If you search the internet invented by Al Gore for the phrase “hate speech is not free speech” you get over 300,000 results, well over half agreeing.
When did the Scots become such cowering, sniveling castrati?
The Scots may be cowering sniveling castrati but not the individuals putting forth this legislation. They are not hand-wringers trying to protect some allegedly persecuted group or groups, they are grasping for power. The real reason behind most of the “identity politics” BS is a power grab.
Not “the Scots,” just the ones who stayed in Scotland while the rest of us conquered and civilized the world.
That was long ago. Now, our own nation is devolving into a society of indoctrination, erasure of history, and children encouraged to report on the goings-on in the home. That includes firearms ownership and other things of a personal nature.
In short, we are not a whole lot better.
That’s what the Gaslight Media wabt us to believe, so that we lose hope and stop fighting them.
Scots have been politically left-wing for a long time, and they’ve followed where the left has led them.
“you can not win with this stuff”
Yes, that’s the point.
This is why, when the first Scottish independence referendum failed, I offered my condolences to the English. Keeping Scotland in the UK means the same voters who elect the Scottish Parliament also send MPs to Westminster to vote on kingdom-wide legislation.
I remember going to the Scottish Games and watching big strong men throwing cabers and such.
That country exists only in the imagination now. The communist agenda is an incredible success there.
Am I the only one noticing that “Hate crime law” protects against discrimination based on sex, gender, race, religion etc but NOT on political affiliation?
Guess what haters have in in common? They are leftist.
Btw the new loading squares look like a Windows thing. Must look terrible on a Mac, or an iPhone.
Not real encouraging on my Samsung tablet either. ?
It looks terrible in Windows as well. It was cute the first 347 times; now it is annoying, and masking slower load times.
The load times aren’t slower. The old website was very prompt at beginning to display a page, but then bounced it around your screen like Tinkerbell on acid for five to ten seconds until it settled down enough that it was safe to try to click something. The new load delay simply waits until the page is locked down to show it.
Yeah, it would be nice to reduce the absolute effective load time, but I suspect with all the ad activity on every page, we’re not going to see it. Go check out the Daily Sun in the UK if you want to experience what Idiocracy-level ad loads do to load times.
Someone elected the idiots that passed this law. And that someone is the Scots.
The only recourse is to vote them out with margins that are daunting.
But for god’s sake, hold your complaining about a situation that you created.
“Someone elected the idiots that passed this law.”
Possibly. Who built their voting machines?
The world would do well to read or reread George Orwell’s 1984. Big brother is already in the neighborhood. Soon to be in every living room.
the daft thing is their is already a functional set of hate laws, they work (more or less) reasonably well. Expanding it to include insults is stupid.
Coming soon to the country formerly known as the United States of America.
Is not expressing the tenets of Critical Race Theory hate speech? If not, it surely does make me uncomfortable to hear such talk.
Government should attend to the business of government (attending to that which the people are unable to attend to themselves). Society is a machine that runs by itself, and is directly controlled (rather than controlled via representatives) by its members, the people. There is not a more direct and honest expression of the whole people as the society they create for themselves. The direction of society is literally none of government’s business; the people already attend to it directly.
Do you see the game here? You write an oppressive bill, then you stick one really outrageous component in it. All the outrage gets directed at that component. There is a big hoo-hah, that component is renewed, “the people spoke and were listened to,” and the remainder of the tyranny stands as validated by the people.
Sorry — “renewed” should have been “removed.”
Call it what it is: Sharia law. It is no coincidence that a Muslim is pushing this law.
Tolerance of people with atypical sexual practices is hardly consonant with Sharia law.
The linked article makes an important point, that hate crime laws as they exist here in the USA are good and justified, since they don’t create new crimes; the problem with this law is that it goes far beyond that, criminalizing things that were not crimes before.
As they say, read the whole thing. It is worth it.
Pelosi says, wait, what?
Why aren’t we doing this?
Tick, Tock.