British Veteran Arrested for ‘Causing Anxiety’ After Sharing Swastika Made Out of Progress Pride Flags on Social Media
“Someone has been caused anxiety based on your social media post. That is why you have been arrested.”
The Hampshire Police arrested veteran Darren Brady, 51, for allegedly “causing anxiety” when he retweeted a swastika made out of the progress pride flag.
If you saw this video go viral, the details are even more insane.
British police arrested a guy for posting this meme on social media of the trans flag shaped like a swastika.
They also arrested the guy who filmed the video for good measure. pic.twitter.com/1nnUxZR0jU
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 31, 2022
The Hampshire Constabulary justified the arrest because “they were prevented from entering the address to discuss a potential resolution to the matter.”
Except…that’s not what the police told Brady. From The Daily Mail:
In the video, shot on a mobile phone, Mr Brady can be heard asking the three police officers: ‘Why am I in cuffs?’
One officer responds: ‘It didn’t have to come to this at all.’
Mr Brady replied: ‘Tell us why you escalated it to this level because I don’t understand.’
The officer adds: ‘Someone has been caused anxiety based on your social media post. That is why you have been arrested.’
Laurence Fox, an actor and now campaigner, first shared the picture on Twitter He explained that “the image reflected his belief that LGBT pride month ‘is enforced with a sense of hectoring authoritarianism.'”
Twitter froze Fox’s account. A London Assembly member demanded the police investigate him.
Police and Crime Committee in the Greater London Authority member Caroline Russell said: “I hope the Met Police will look into Laurence Fox using pride flags to create nazi imagery and posting the images on a public platform. This is a hate crime.”
The officers also arrested former police officer Harry Miller when he tried to stop them from arresting Brady. Miller has had some run-ins with the Hampshire Police, too:
He told MailOnline: ‘Hampshire Police showed a blatant disregard of the law. They approached Mr Brady and acted as summary judge, jury and executioner – but didn’t know what offence he’d actually committed. They said he was being arrested for causing anxiety, which is utterly ridiculous!
‘Mr Brady is a British Army Veteran and they were trying to extort him for money by making him pay around £80 for educational course so he could downgrade from a crime to a non-crime, which would still show up in a basic Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.
‘They thought they could get away with it. It was the world’s worst shakedown.’
Commenting on the video circulating on Twitter, Mr Miller wrote: ‘I’d been locked up by this time and missed this exchange. I’m speechless.’
Mr Miller, who in December won a Court of Appeal challenge over police guidance on ‘hate incidents’, said police visited the man 10 days earlier and has informed him that he could take the option of attending an £80 education course to avoid being arrested and possibly charged with a criminal offence.
“Education course.” My goodness.
Brady said on Twitter: “It’s nice to be able to enjoy a Sunday morning in peace without being harassed by Hampshire Police trying to extort money from me, or have me ‘re-educated’ for sharing a meme on the Internet.”
“Re-educated.” My goodness.
Is the meme in poor taste? Yes. It’s still no excuse to arrest someone.
Police and Crime Commissioner for Hampshire Donna Jones criticized the officers:
‘I am concerned about both the proportionality and necessity of the police’s response to this incident. When incidents on social media receive not one but two visits from police officers, but burglaries and non-domestic break-ins don’t always get a police response, something is wrong.
‘As Police Commissioner, I am committed to ensuring Hampshire Constabulary serves the public as the majority of people would expect. It appears on this occasion this has not happened.
‘This incident has highlighted a really topical issue which Hampshire Constabulary and other police forces need to learn from. In order to support this I will be writing to the College of Policing to make them aware of this incident and encourage greater clarification on the guidance in order to ensure that police forces can respond more appropriately in the future.’
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Comments
The British grow more pathetic by the day.
I mocked that transflag too. The point is the woke trans activists are the Nazis. These british cops just proved that point.
Police choosing to prioritize violations of online speech codes with their resources which they claim are too thin to respond to more traditional crimes.
Way easier to arrest an otherwise law abiding person who is far less likely to resist much less offer violence to LEO than actual criminals. People are beginning to notice the pattern and adjust their default positions re LEO.
They go for the easy stuff, I still remember my high school days: school would let out, and the LAPD were there to pull over students on their Honda 50s to stick rulers up the tailpipe to make sure the baffles were still in place.
I’m still baffled.
I’m not surprised…
As Mark Steyn puts it… the wanker British cops police everything but crime.
A heck of a lot of ours are no better. They are often nothing more than revenuers.
Isn’t there a lot of anxiety in getting arrested? Maybe the cops should arrest themselves…
it’s no different here.
Sounds like something Meathead would support.
If the Dems and their sychofants have their way, within the next 5 years, this is what will be happening to anyone deemed to the Right of her ilk. Share even a remotely Conservative thought and you will find yourself under arrest.
*Pelosi and her ilk
No. It can’t happen in this country. Thank God for that. That alone is sufficient reason to live here, even with all the problems here.
Please tell me you are not that naive. (No, none of the downticks are mine.)
I don’t think it’s naïve. It’s reality. The first amendment is strong, and we have a judiciary committed to keeping it that way. That didn’t have to be the case, but by God’s grace it is. Pray that it remain that way.
The government doesn’t have to punish for wrongthink when, say, Big Tech and Big Business do it for them right now. These people do not check themselves. This idea that the Constitution by itself can hold the line no matter what is ludicrous. We just had a SCOTUS decision supporting gun rights and the House said – screw you, we want to ban rifles. This was years after their first ban didn’t do squat – except ban rifles. Do they care? No. They don’t care. Democrats never give up and they will damn well gladly take over punishment duty from the private sector when the time is necessary.
This article is about someone being arrested. Big Tech and Big Business can’t do that. I don’t care what the Democrats would like to do if they could. The point is that the constitution holds the line against them and doesn’t let them do it. And the courts have a long and honorable record of standing up for the first amendment and not allowing Congress to get away with breaking it.
It’s nice to see the same thing starting to happen with the second amendment too; nobody doubts that this rifle ban would be struck down if it ever got as far as a court; but everyone also knows it will never get that far. But with the first amendment this has been the case for decades.
Milhouse, you’re arguing that the American government can never turn against its citizens like that of the UK has against theirs. I am arguing that it sure as hell can. Why? Because the Constitution cannot defend itself. It must be defended by human beings. Do Sotomayor and Kagan see the Constitution like Alito and Thomas? Of course not. Replace the latter with more of the former and America is over.
Colonel, on questions like this one Kagan and Sotomayor do see the constitution the same way as the rest of the court. If this case were somehow to make its way to the supreme court (which it would never do, because it would never make it past the district courts), the finding would be 9-0. The only question I could see the supreme court dividing on would be whether the arresting policemen would have qualified immunity.
Milhouse, maybe Kagan and Sotomayor do see things as you say, but what about the future? As I commented elsewhere in this thread, law school graduates are increasingly contemptuous of the idea that the First Amendment applies to opinions that the left disagrees with. So what if that trend continues?
unfortunately you’re mistaken. Americans have lost their jobs over similar situations. No criticism or mockery of homosexuality is allowed.
Been on a college/university campus lately? Or even K-12?
Irrelevant. Nobody on any campus has ever been arrested for expressing an opinion. And nobody ever will.
The increasingly Stalinist culture of academia shows what academia wants to do.
Glad to see you are still throwing everything else you believe under the bus in pursuit of delusions
https://www.jta.org/2014/09/12/united-states/ou-students-protest-blood-bucket-video-are-arrested
Yes an unpopular position could get you arrested on campus.
Danny, not surprised to see that you’re still lying. Did you actually read the article before linking to it? Those protesters were arrested not for saying unpopular things, but for disrupting a meeting. I wish more people were arrested for that, since that’s a tactic that is mostly used by left-wingers against speakers who are anywhere to the right of Bernie Sanders.
Milhouse, you are certainly aware of various “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” prosecutions/persecutions. These injustices show what the left wants to do to its opponents. So what happens in the future when there are *more* leftist judges? “Will never happen/Can never happen” seems extremely naive.
The First Amendment is getting beaten like a rented mule in academia (and elsewhere). While it may not result in arrests, speaking out results in doxxing, harassment, promotion loss, classes canceled and likely, your car getting keyed.
Cancellation can be worse than arrest.
students have been thrown out of school, professors have been fired
Regardless of all the problems with speech on campus and the interweb, you are correct. “This” (being arrested for speech) really can’t happen. Which, I think, is your point,
Tell that to the jan 6 victims ! ! !
I will tell it to them, if necessary. The way they’ve been treated, in contrast to the way the BLM/Antifa criminals have been treated is a disgrace. But NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM WAS ARRESTED FOR EXPRESSING THEIR OPINION. And if you say otherwise you’re a damned liar. I dare you to name one who has been.
Guy Refitt.
Shocking response, Milhouse. Wow.
You find the truth shocking?! If that is so, then you are an idiot and an enemy of America.
I second that “WOW!”..
It can happen in this country, if enough people choose to “interpret” the Constitution as not protecting unpopular speech: The purpose of the leftist doctrine of a “living Constitution” is, after all, to entitle leftist judges and legislators to do whatever they want.
And note that law school graduates (university graduates in general) are increasingly inclined to radical leftist ideology.
It “can’t happen in this country” only in the sense that it would constitute a breach of the Constitution.
But it CAN happen when, for example, school boards and teacher unions enlist the White House and US DOJ to “investigate” and brand parents as “domestic terrorists”. And when a father expressing his outrage at a school board over its failure to protect his daughter from sexual assault.
That such actions might be later found by a court to be in violation of the law does not mean that it can’t happen.
C’mon, Milhouse! You are usually spot on, but you missed this one. Notice how even in Hampshire the head cop berated the street cops for what they did. I’m not eve sure it was a prohibited act by Mr. Brady.
5 Years? You are a bloody optimist.
Subotai Bahadur
“Whew, that could never happen here!”
Really?
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/mar/3/liberals-attack-first-amendment-again-with-hr-1/
Irrelevant. Bad as HR1 is, nothing in it would restrict anyone from expressing his opinion. And if it had included any such provision, and it had passed, that provision would have been stricken down immediately.
Apparently Obama judges have escaped your notice.
No 0bama judge has even tried to punish someone for expressing their opinion. Let alone for “causing people to feel anxiety”.
Jan 6 protesters
End…. Of… Story….
I dare you to name even one such protester who was arrested merely for expressing his opinion. You can’t, because that just does not happen in this country.
“Here’s your problem,”
Democrats
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4-e-kKf1Uw
Some Democrats would love to turn us into one of those other slave states. But they can’t do it.
Jan 6 protesters
What about them? Not one has been punished for expressing their opinion. Every single one who’s been punished did something. No matter how unfair it is, even if it was something as minor as trespassing, even if it was unintentional because they had no notice that they shouldn’t have been there, the fact remains that they’ve been punished for their actions, not for their expression.
No, they are being punished precisely because of their political opinions. Pro-abortion protesters have never been treated this way. Not when they shut down SCOTUS proceedings in an abortion case, and Schumer threatened Gorsuch and Kavanaugh by name. Not when hundreds if not thousands mobbed Congress in an attempt to derail the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. They did temporarily shut down Congressional business.
When leftist protesters do exactly what the Trump supporters did they get cited for trespassing and released while having to pay a $50 fine. They don’t get held without bail for a year, have ridiculous felony charges tacked on, and they don’t face years in prison.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer was acquitted by a D.C. jury made up of Hillary Clinton supporters/donors. The judge was an Obama appointee who placed insane limits on what evidence Durham could show the jury and what the prosecution could bring up when examining witnesses. Basically the Obama-appointee gave the defense everything they wanted and didn’t give the prosecution anything.
Michael Sussman wasn’t acquitted because he was innocent but because everyone in the courtroom agreed with his politics. Essentially the same thing happened to that FBI lawyer, Clinesmith, who lied to FISA court to get a surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. He was convicted of a felony, but served no jail time, never got disbarred by D.C. Bar Association (it was suspended, but has since been restored) which is normally automatic when an attorney is convicted of a felony, and essentially only had to do community service. And he probably didn’t even have to do that as most jurisdictions allow those convicted to donate food or money to recognized charities like food banks. I’m sure Clinesmith had supporters lining up to donate in his name.
In D.C. lying to get a Republican, especially Trump, is considered a patriotic duty. I have no doubt that Clinesmith will have his record expunged.
The J6 prisoners will be convicted not because they are guilty but because they are Trump supporters. They are being punished precisely because they expressed political opinions the potential jury pool despises. They can expect the judges to do the opposite of what the judge did in the Sussman case. Give the prosecutors everything they ask for, and the defense nothing.
Just because they haven’t been charged with expressing unapproved opinions doesn’t mean they aren’t being punished for expressing those opinions. In fact, the DoJ wouldn’t have piled on with the charges if the leftists in D.C. agreed with their politics. The FBI wouldn’t be going to the ends of the earth to track down every single protester they can find to make examples of them.
The January 6th crowd are being punished for their political ideology, not for trespassing. Colbert’s crew engaged in the same antics and got away, scot-free. So, ideology is absolutely relevant, here.
I read someone was arrested for chanting even though he did not go further than the outside steps.
No, Milhouse, you’re wrong.
They’re damn well being punished for expressing their opinion, using some other trivial action they may have committed as an EXCUSE.
What were they arrested for? Something different than the Kavanaugh protesters did?
Doctors have been fired from their jobs for speaking against the vx, for recommending alternative treatment, for not submitting to the Newspeak about gender.
Guyjones, the fact that someone else got away with the same crime is irrelevant. The point is that these people committed a crime and are being punished for it. It’s unfair, it’s disgraceful, but it’s not what we are discussing.
Tbones, I think I know whom you’re referring to. He didn’t enter the Capitol himself (though he was on the grounds, which was also illegal), but he incited people to enter and to fight the police. Incitement to commit a crime will get you arrested; it is a recognized exception to the freedom of speech. But it has to be actual incitement; in this case it clearly was. He was standing there as they were about to commit a crime, and he urged them on to do it.
Again, the fact that other people got away with much much worse crimes is irrelevant to this discussion, which is solely about a person who had done nothing wrong, getting arrested simply and explicitly for saying the wrong thing.
Selective enforcement of laws is absolutely relevant.
If a law is being selectively enforced it simply isn’t a law it is a political cudgel and in no way part of a free society.
Tell that to the J6 political prisoners
A woman just lost custody of her daughter for not agreeing to the trans ideology this week; and you are claiming declaring trans ideology the law wouldn’t impact freedom….,.
By the way there have been arrests here over memes; and the Dems want the supreme court packed (yes which will happen if they get enough senate seats which is possible) so YES it could happen here.
The disclosure requirement by the way would mean any conservative in a profession dominated by leftists (i.e. The Arts and Academia which you would have to be the dumbest cretin to not want to fight for) would be disclosed as conservatives and eliminated from their positions, and yes that would have been upheld by the supreme court because the free speech crackdown would have been by private institutions in a way that Marsh made clear could be made illegal but didn’t make illegal.
I really don’t care if we become a fascist state via clique of oligarchs or the government I am against it either way as should you be (of course to a libertarian or Bush era “republican” as long as it is not the government anything goes……)
The “For the People” act didn’t make it so cops would end your freedom of speech; but an artist or musician would be prevented from the only kind of speech they could engage in without blacklisting.
Freedom of Speech sometimes requires more government sometimes less; it isn’t a measure of how much the government controls speech. It is a complicated issue that the government correctly has always had a say in. In this case the government would have greatly empowered leftist oligarchs to control what you can support by removing anonymity from a major type of speech for people who have to keep their identities secret.
If you don’t see how fighting for education and the arts is front and center you are a demonstration of why libertarians should not be in the drivers seat.
Losing custody is not arrest and it’s not a criminal penalty of any kind. It’s not punishment, because the law does not recognize any right to custody in the first place. As far as the law is concerned the state owns your children, and the only consideration for where it will place them is what it considers to be in their best interest. If it decides it’s in their interest to be raised by someone else, it claims the right to do that, and that’s not a penalty to you. And yes, this entire attitude is wrong and should be fought and defeated. The law on this is utterly wrong. But it’s not relevant to this topic.
Regulations based on Marsh v Alabama is authoritarian but losing custody of your child because you aren’t with modern political orthodoxy isn’t a punishment.
To quote the pope your ideology is not coherent rethink it.
It’s supposed to be arbitrary. That’s its point.
People are getting police visits for criticizing pedophiles.
No, people are getting police visits when the police suspect they’ve committed some actual crime. Sometimes they have such suspicions without sufficient grounds; that can happen anywhere and to anyone. Having only suspicions, all they can do is exercise the same right anyone has, to visit whomever they like. They have to behave like visitors, including going away if asked to.
Like the guy in De who bought a few guns?
Look up the word “intimidation”. You apparently do not understand the concept.
You are just telling straight up lies here.
I am calling you out you are lying to defend a vision of less government for leftists even as it is obviously a two tiered system, as it is a system with less government for some you want it (you have been utterly hypocritical however, i.e. your insistence to be punished for a crime by law you need not be convicted a claim that no American or British court would agree with).
By the way you have to be a moron if you don’t think a police visit over speech has a major shilling effect.
Some conservatives here and in Britain are being targeted for destruction and intimidation on the narrowest of pretenses (and in the case of Britain overtly for speech).
You demonstrate why libertarianism is a losing prospect and we should leave it in the past, and move back to conservatism.
You don’t want to admit the fascist crackdown on parents for reasons best known to you.
By the way if it is a two tiered system no the police are not just doing it because they suspect a crime; selective enforcement of law is by very definition anti-freedom of speech.
I get the two tier concept, but I think it is worse than that. There is one tier, and conservatives are not part of it. Come to think of it, the remaining tier is pretty much gone, as far as I can see. Jane Q public here thinks our justice system is kaput.
Tell that to James O’Keefe and others at Project Veritas who were raided by the FBI over Ashley Biden’s diary. The FBI/DoJ is alledging the diary was stolen. It wasn’t. Ashley Biden left it behind when she checked out of a halfway house for recovering drug addicts. Abandoning property seems to run in the family. It was no more stolen than Hunter Biden’s laptops, but then drug addicts tend to forget where they left things. The individual who checked in to the halfway house found it after Ashley checked out.
But in the spirit of Clinesmith lying to the FISA court to get a surveillance warrant on Carter Page, the FBI is once again lying to judges to get search warrants. What nobody has explained is even if the diary was stolen why is that any of the FBI’s business. Then it’s also not a crime for a news organization to publish stolen documents (Project Veritas chose not to publish since they couldn’t authenticated the information but the fact the FBI is going after them at the insistence of her father President Biden means the diary must be genuine).
In other words, no actual crimes were committed but FBI goons are paying people who got on the wrong side of Joe Biden visits nonetheless.
Milhouse has a religious devotion to his views I think we are all wasting our breath.
Danny is a dishonest prick who enjoys putting down the USA, and who is an enemy of our civil liberties.
@Milhouse
You are the one who defends selective enforcement of law, taking a womans child away because she isn’t pro-transgender ideology etc.
You are the one who defends eliminating our freedom of speech on the altar of anarchism, considers the law of the land (Marsh v Alabama A SUPREME COURT VERDICT) uncosntitutional, wishes for a tiny clique of oligarchs to set community standards instead of the people who the founding fathers intended to set community standards, defends modern censorship, and you are right now defending a bill that would have eliminated secret conservatives from the arts and academia.
For who is anti-civil liberties
1. The person who wishes to continue how America always did freedom of speech
vs
2. Someone who wants the public square to be purely controlled by a tiny clique of oligarchs……
Sorry you should go back to basics.
By the way how is Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen doing? Has the warfare you keep supporting helped us or them? I am with almost the entire political spectrum of voters in thinking “ENOUGH” for both moral and political reasons.
I almost forgot to mention you also don’t seem to think that to be labelled an insurrectionist or a murderer you need to be convicted of the crime, something that no American, British, Australian or European court room would agree with. To be an insurrectionist you need to prove the person did an insurrection in a court room.
Insurrection is a federal crime by definition, you can’t be labelled an insurrectionist and classed that way without a conviction.
Sorry you don’t understand how innocent till proven guilty works.
I have 200 years of American legal precedent you have a desire to defend leftists to avoid being one of those conservatives (and you frankly don’t have any leg to stand on for any of your claims in this thread).
By the way did you like the arrest for protesting the blood bucket anti-Israel attack?
Except that I can personally testify that this statement is false in its entirety.
Tell the poor guy who made the “Benghazi Video” it can’t happen here. Or all the January 6 “insurrectionists” who have yet to be charged with anything.
Nakula Nakula Nakula was a convicted felon who violated his parole. Sure, he was only caught because he made the video, and the FBI shouldn’t have been looking for who made it, so in a sense it was “unfair” that he was caught; but it’s not as if criminals have some sort of right not to be caught, and having found him they couldn’t and didn’t arrest him for making it. Were there no legitimate reason they could not have touched him.
And there are no so-called “insurrectionists” in custody without having been charged.
Are you a cretin? There are leftists who got caught rioting who get released by request of the DOJ without charge, so yes if they are charged selectively because the government doesn’t like their speech YES they are charged because of their speech.
Second YES Jan 6th rioters did get held for months without charge.
Third YES there are people in jail for insurrection without being charged for it.
Don’t believe me read the dam judges decisions. There are rioters in jail on grounds their bear spray killed a police officer (even though they did not get charged with killing a police officer and the coroners report determined his death had no connection to the riots) and more importantly a host of Jan 6th rioters sentenced to long prison for sentences for a misdemeanor because the judges claimed it was insurrection (A federal crime THEY DID NOT GET CHARGED FOR AND WHICH DID NOT HAPPEN).
Congratulations you aren’t one of “those’ conservatives you are the good one, leftists want you at parties and unlike we deplorable subhuman conservatives you are a good one nobody will call you a racist.
However your bending the truth is still lying on behalf of leftists and to defend the liberal establishment.
This is why we must thank God every day for our founders’ wisdom in enacting the first amendment. This is the only country where we can be confident something like this will not happen to us. And that is why when we have actual nazis parading around, as they did in front of the TPUSA convention in Florida two weeks ago, and I hear people even supposedly on the right grumble and ask why the police can’t do anything about it, I tell them to thank God they can do this, because if they couldn’t we would all be in danger.
I’m glad you’re confident.
Don’t forget the proper pronouns now will yah!
In NYC it is a crime to “misgender” someone. The Commission on Human Rights released legal guidance on the pronoun issue. You could be fined up to $250,000 if you’re found to have willfully “misgendered someone.”
Bullshit. That did not happen and cannot happen. You are repeating maliciously false reporting by crazy right-wing nut sites. Whichever site you read that at, you should from now on regard anything else it reports with extreme skepticism.
NYC’s Human Rights Law covers only discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations. It is illegal to harass your employees, tenants, or customers because of their race, religion, sexual identity, and a bunch of other grounds, including what sex they think they are. As it should be. And yes, such harassment can certainly include deliberately and repeatedly calling them names that you know bother them. Nothing in the first amendment protects such harassment. And nothing in the NYC law prohibits anything else.
Milhouse,
Slow down, take a deep breath, and try to relax. You do seem to go off the deep end from time to time.
My source for this information is from that “right-wing” website snopes.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/transgender-pronouns-fine-nyc/
Today, the New York City Commission on Human Rights released new guidance that makes clear what constitutes gender identity and gender expression discrimination under the NYC Human Rights Law, making it one of the strongest in the nation in protecting the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. Although discrimination based on gender identity and expression has been illegal under the City’s law since 2002, previous guidelines never articulated the range of violations of the law. Today’s guidance provides bold and explicit examples of violations, sending a clear message to employers, landlords, business owners, and the general public what the City considers to be discrimination under the law. The guidance also offers best practices on how stakeholders can comply with the law.
Notice the inclusion of the general public in their statement.
This is snopes fact check of the following statement..
Discrimination against a transgender individual could result in fines of up to $250,000, but these fines won’t be handed out for accidentally misusing pronouns. According to the new guidelines, the commission can impose civil penalties of up to $125,000 for violations of the law and (in extreme circumstances) of up to $250,000 for violations that are the result of “willful, wanton, or malicious” conduct.
What’s True
The New York City Commission on Human Rights released new guidelines in December 2015 regarding discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression.
What’s False
Accidentally referring to a transgender person with the wrong pronoun in NYC will result in a $250,000 fine.
Richard, snopes happens to be right this time. And you have badly misread it. The “guidance” in question sends a clear message to, among other people, the general public, on how the HRC interprets and will enforce the law against people to whom the law applies, i.e. employers, landlords, and public accommodations. It does not in any way threaten the general public with enforcement; you simply read that into the statement without any basis in the words. The general public needs to know this, so it can know when to file complaints.
In NYC, just like anywhere else in the USA, in your private capacity you can call anyone anything you like; but in your capacity as an employer, landlord, or public accommodation you can’t deliberately call your employees, tenants, or customers hurtful names, for the purpose of harassing them because of their ethnic or whatever identity. That’s the case everywhere. In NYC they’ve clarified that that includes deliberately calling someone “Sir” if he’s made it clear he finds that offensive because he thinks he’s a woman.
Is not acknowledging someone who is trans is a woman harassment?
According to the left the answer is yes.
Is not acknowledging someone who is trans is a woman harassment?
If you do it repeatedly, for no other reason than that you know it upsets them, then yes, that is the definition of harassment. And of being a jerk.
And if you do it to your employee, your tenant, or your customer at a public accommodations, with the purpose of creating a hostile atmosphere for them in the hopes that they’ll quit, move, or shop elsewhere, then that’s what the anti-discrimination law is supposed to prevent.
it’s not harassment to refuse to endorse someone’s fantasy and to call them by their factually correct gender. What is harassment is to demand that people use the bogus vocabulary of Newspeak.
Milhouse, I would repeatedly call people what they actually are for two reasons:
I refuse to live in a mentally ill person’s delusion.
Second, compelled speech is always unconstitutional. Even if you’re an employer, public accommodation, etc., the First Amendment still applies. Yes, the First Amendment protects exactly that. In fact, if someone is trying to compel me to use words not my own they are harassing me.
So, you are just a hypocritical troll. First you were thanking God for the first amendment. Now you’re saying there’s a harassment loophole. You’re as bad as the Marxist college students who think there’s a hate speech loophole. In fact, you’re as bad as those British cops who arrested the gentlemen who is the subject of this article. Thank you for demonstrating that the same thing could happen here, and you’d be justifying it, as you are now doing, by claiming people don’t have the right to perceive reality on their own and use the language that conforms to that reality.
Needs to go to court and SUE the crap out of them
It is the selective enforcement of the First (and other) amendment that worry me.
Incrementalism….
Selective enforcement of any law is a very bad thing. But it is not the bad thing that is the topic of this article.
You made it the topic when you claimed, ignorantly:
“What about them? Not one has been punished for expressing their opinion. Every single one who’s been punished did something. No matter how unfair it is, even if it was something as minor as trespassing, even if it was unintentional because they had no notice that they shouldn’t have been there, the fact remains that they’ve been punished for their actions, not for their expression.”
We have video of Capitol Police opening doors for people. That is more than not giving notice. That is inviting somebody onto a property. If someone invites someone onto their property (or property they control, such as the Capitol Police have control over entry into the Capitol) then they have the legal right to be there. The DoJ then turned around and charged people for trespassing or illegal parading. They weren’t trespassing or illegally parading since the Capitol Police opened doors and by their actions invited them in. They are ONLY charging them with crimes that they didn’t commit because they were Trump supporters.
This is total B.S. As a business owner in Texas, a state with very strong private property rights, if someone enters my property without my permission I have to demand that they leave. Then I can call the police and have them removed. Only if they return and enter my property again can I have them charged with criminal trespass. The Capitol Police follows the law in all other cases. The Colbert crew was escorted off the property twice and the police told them twice that they were trespassing. They told them what procedures they had to follow in order to be legally present in the building. The Captitol Police only arrested them when they returned a third time.
In this case the DoJ didn’t charge the Colbert crew because leftists stick together. When the DoJ agrees with someone’s politics they might still feel compelled to charge them. But then the DoJ prosecutors will turn around act as the leftist rioter’s defense lawyers.
Case in point:
“Montez Terriel Lee, 26, of Rochester, Minnesota, was sentenced in January to 10 years in prison followed by three years of supervised release for setting fire to the Max It Pawn Shop on East Lake Street in Minneapolis on May 28, 2020, according to the Minnesota US Attorney’s Office.
Lee was caught on surveillance camera pouring accelerant around the shop before igniting it. As the building is destroyed, a second video recorded Lee in front of the shop saying, “[Expletive] this place. We’re gonna burn this [expletive] down,” prosecutors said.
On July 20, 2020, authorities discovered the body of a 30-year-old man in the rubble. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office attributed the man’s death to “probable inhalation of products of combustion and thermal injury (building fire).””
https://nypost.com/2022/02/07/tom-cotton-calls-on-merrick-garland-for-longer-sentence-for-blm-arsonist/
The federal sentencing guidelines for arson are clear. 16.5 to 20 years. Given Lee’s criminal record he should have gotten a sentence at the top of that range. On top of that he should have been charged with the homicide, but wasn’t as killing someone during the commission of a felony can get someone a life sentence.
The DoJ was quite clear; they argued for a lighter sentence because they approved of his politics. It matched their own.
I think the headline of this Washington Examiner article says it all.
“Prosecutors win light sentence for man who set deadly fire during Floyd riots”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/prosecutors-win-light-sentence-for-man-who-set-deadly-fire-during-floyd-riots
So the prosecutors didn’t charge Lee with a crime he certainly did commit (the prosecutors noted in their sentencing memorandum that the fire arsonist Lee set killed the victime), a homicide, no less. and then acted as his defense attorneys and argued for a lenient sentence far below the federal guidelines.
Meanwhile the DoJ is charging J6 rioters with crimes they didn’t commit in an attempt to put them away as long as possible for the crime of being Trump supporters.
If the leftists at the DoJ approve of your political opinions they will literally let criminals get away with murder. Meanwhile if they dissapprove of your political opinion they will charge you with everything they can think of knowing that D.C. juries will convict Trump supporters regardless of the baselessness of the charge.
“This is why we must thank God every day for our founders’ wisdom in enacting the first amendment. This is the only country where we can be confident something like this will not happen to us.”
Jeepers Christmas, dude, read Schenck.
Only an idiot says “it can’t happen here” when it’s already happened here.
The issue here in that our perceptions of what has happened in the US are very bleak. Your perception is more by the book, because that is your job.(?) It is hard to pin down reality when people see different movies all the time. (borrowing Scott Adams analogy)
I’m more concerned by the number of people chearing this on!
These people are the ones you need to be careful of as these people are the ones who wouldn’t bat an eye lid while loading you in to cattle carts to be shipped off for re-education.
And that’s why we have a first amendment. Other countries have long operated on the idea that the authorities will respect people’s rights because that’s what the public demands. The legislature won’t make laws prohibiting speech, unless it’s something truly egregious that everyone hates. And that’s the problem. Our founders had the wisdom to entrench a provision that no matter how many people hate someone’s opinion, the legislature can’t make a law against it, and the police can’t punish them for it.
Covid lock downs managed to help the government turn Britain in to a police state. Laurence Fox has been doing yoemans work in the anti woke arena. He also needs support.
This sort of arrest was happening routinely long before the Wuhan disease. Yes, Wuhan made it worse, or at least more visible, but the UK fell down that hole a long long time ago. And for all that it remains one of the freer countries in the world!
True. If the people accept it then shame on them. Britain is in bad need of a massive and sustained peasants revolt. Masses of revolting peasants have been known to bring down governments.
The meme isn’t in poor taste. It, in fact, hits close to home: The LGBT movement demands complete obeisance to its totalitarian perversion and will brook no dissent.
There is nothing more moral than an immoral woke Leftist.
It’s in poor taste because it doesn’t make its point clearly. It’s capable of being understood as supporting nazism rather than opposing it.
I didn’t know what the trans flag was until seeing this. When I found out what it was, I thought the design was clever and accurate. I don’t see how anyone could think a tranny would be a Nazi supporter, directly. It makes absolutely no sense. But when you think about how these jerks behave in conjunction with the rest of society, yeah, it’s pretty darn close minus the boxcars. And I bet that more than just a few, if they really could, would be just fine with that arrangement.
I think the point had been made very clearly, which is why Leftists are so upset. They can call you Nazis all day long, but the minute you throw it back in their faces they become apoplectic. That is because it is not slur when directed at them.
That just isn’t true.
Making something into a swastica to equate it with nazism is explicitly calling it the worst thing you could (nazilike) and I don’t for a second think you believe that.
Cops are dogs, just as a dog is as good as his master a cop is as good as the local authorities. You don’t have to make excuses for cops when authorities they serve are bad.
If Russian cops do the same tomorrow you won’t defend that and say they are going after something in bad taste if say they make a swastika out of pictures of Putin’s face.
You’re either being dishonest or sloppy here. Your saying “to equate it with nazism” is a conclusion, not in the evidence. That was indeed the fellow’s intention, but it was not clear, and his action was capable of being understood the opposite way. And that’s why people were “caused anxiety”. They thought he was supporting nazism, not opposing it. Which (1) is pretty stupid and unaware, and (2) should be irrelevant, since the freedom of speech includes actually supporting nazism, let alone merely appearing to do so. But that is what happened. His point was unclear and so it was misunderstood, and it’s that ambiguity that’s in poor taste.
Stop pretending to be brainless it doesn’t suite you neither is pretending you have no connection to American or Anglo culture.
He was very obviously equating the trans flag with Nazism which is the worst thing you could be called in our culture and in Britain.
You by the way chose to ignore my Russification of this. You would assume a Putin face swastica is anti-Putin because when Russia is concerned you have no ideology you have to defend.
He was very clearly not supporting Nazism; doing so is suicide in Britain even without a police visit.
Stop pretending there are racists under every rock, and stop trying to avoid being “one of those conservatives”.
Danny, you continue to be dishonest. No, it was NOT obvious that he was condemning nazism. We both understand that that is what he was doing, but that is not how the people who got upset and complained about it understood it. They understood him to be promoting nazism.
No, I did not “choose to ignore your Russification of this”. It’s just the same point repeated. I already addressed it once, why would you think it would be any different with Putin.
I have no idea what you even mean, by accusing me of “seeing racists under every rock”. You must be literally clinically insane to accuse me of that! How could you possibly derive such an idea from anything I’ve ever written? That’s the very last possible conclusion you could draw from my writing. I can only conclude either that you really are clinically insane, or that you are knowingly and deliberately lying out of pure malice.
“They understood him to be promoting nazism.”
Bullshit. You know it and I know it.
They understood him to be making fun of the LGBT+ flag. Which he was
And they wanted him punished for it.
Yes it was obvious, and you know and you are telling lies right now while hypocritically calling me a liar.
You either think the party he is part of and Lawrence Fox are huge leftists who happen to like Nazism (rofl) or you knew exactly what it was and that it was not pro-Nazi.
The fact is he didn’t even make the meme he retweeted it, they didn’t arrest the meme maker because it was too obviously a meme meant to attack the trans ideology by equating it with the swastica so they hoped to fly under the radar by arresting someone who didn’t have the kind of prestige of Lawrence Fox.
This meme was obvious to everyone on planet Earth except the lefts spin doctors and apparently you.
Diagrams often don’t make any point one way or the other without supporting text. Whenever I have seen this diagram, it is accompanied by text, e.g., “Do you think the rainbow people should have thought this through better?” Did this fellow post the diagram with absolutely no text at all, as it appears in the police tweet? I severely doubt it.
He didn’t post it at all he retweeted it, the original artist was Lawrence Fox who has said a lot about his beliefs on race, LGBT etc.
He didn’t ORIGINATE it, but by retweeting it he was one of numerous people who posted/reposted it. Let’s keep the language straight here.
Lack of clarity is not “poor taste”.
I’ve seen a few “rainbow Nazi” memes that were unambiguous in equating LGBTQ activists with Nazis. Will you state without equivocation that such memes are not in “poor taste”?
Note that “liberals” condemn such memes as vulgar and hateful and deserving of suppression.
Britain was the cradle of the American democratic republic. Unfortunately, the British have lost their way and are now sinking into a dystopian nightmare.
So.Are.We
The World is watching America and when it gets it’s game on signal, from either side
It’s game on
Cradle?
More like the frying pan.
If the problem is anxiety isn’t the solution to have the vaunted NHS hand out tranquilizers? Some may find this query anxiety provoking.
I was watching a TimCast discussion a few weeks ago when they were discussing the rainbow flag and what is happening in the UK. No one there except their British guest knew that the rainbow flag is considered an insult by much of the LGBT+++ community because it has been expanded to mean something completely different from what was intended.
What was most interesting were the pictures showing how those flags were being displayed in the same way as the Nazi flags were displayed all along both sides of the streets one after the other in London royal squares. Completely over the top.
Although I can understand why people are upset at all of the gay and trans crap over there, somewhere along the way, the discussion started veering into pointing out how Gay Pride is turning into Nazism. This guy may be the first one arrested for it but….
So, now, in Canada, the U.K., Australia, and, increasingly, in the U.S., you can’t criticize the supremacist and totalitarian ideology of “Submission;” you can’t criticize the LGBT alphabet soup brigade; you can’t criticize GANS (Gender-Appropriating Narcissist Sociopath) individuals; you can’t criticize race hustlers/agitators “of color;” this is lunacy.
Which is why we have to make sure to win both 2022 and 2024 the stakes are too high not to.
Assuming a) that there are elections in November and in 2024, and b) that they have any integrity. Neither is guaranteed, which if it happens rules out electoral redress of grievances.
Subotai Bahadur
Another insane person heard from. That there will be elections both this November and in 2024 is absolutely guaranteed. So long as a nuclear war or an asteroid has not wiped the USA off the map, there will be elections. Anyone who seriously doubts that belongs in a straitjacket and a padded room.
The meme is strong, but not in poor taste. It’s accurate.
England has no freedom of speech rights, not that doing that here wouldn’t save you.
Sad it’s up to this guy to make everyone happy, and it does come out looking like that with nothing but connecting them whole.
Let us not forget that the “swastika” is a HINDU religious symbol (means basically good prosper/fortune or good luck) the Nazi’s took for their own use.
So actually the Nazi use is racist “cultural appropriation”
Just saying
It was also a symbol used in ancient Troy dating back to 85 BC, as well as in dozens of other examples of ancient peoples, including the Kabbalist Hebrews.
According to some astronomers it represents the north pole and the earth’s rotation around it.
Its use isn’t confined to the ancients either as the Carlsberg brewing company of Denmark used it as their logo until the 1930s when the Nazi’s co-opted it. The Finnish Air Force adopted the symbol as their logo when it was created in 1918 as did the Latvian Air Force.
The town of Swastika, Ontario, Canada, and the hamlet of Swastika, New York were named after the symbol and American Indians have used the symbol throughout their history.
At this point, people allowing it to cause them “anxiety” are looking for something to whine about.
I just last week took a photo of a roughly 100-year-old Paiute glove on display at the Pipe Spring National Monument which uses the swastika as its central motif (albeit reversed).
If I was a citizen of the UK I would go a file a complaint against the police officers and prosecutors for causing me anxiety by arresting this guy for no good reason.
Brits are “subjects” not citizens. Filing complaints against the cops would be about as useful as micturating up a rope.
Subotai Bahadur
I had to go look up the word. Knowing full well where that was going..
From Latin. Still utilized in the medical world.
I was able to suss it out by the context… Love learning words.. TY Mr. Bahadur.
Not a snark, BTW.
good point.
I just would like to see people use their rules against them more.
That is not true. They are certainly citizens. And nationals.
If “causing anxiety” had been a crime when I was younger then most of the women I dated would have to have been jailed. 😉
That is a very thoughtful arrangement of the flags.
Pretty good to even think of it.
The monotonic, transgender spectrum banner. One step forward, two steps backward in a dysfunctional celebration of divergence Ok.
The lions, lionesses, and their unPlanned cubs playing in gay parade. excluded.
A whole lot of Leftists do things to make me feel bad
Other things that “can’t happen here”: Japanese Americans could never be interred in prison camps. Oh wait: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/323us214
They were only interred if they were dead. And I don’t think they were interred in the camps. Which were not prison camps.
Granting that the word should have been “interned” [apprehended, arrested, captive, captured, caught, confined, imprisoned, incarcerated– from Merriam-Webster Thesaurus] and not “interred” [ to deposit (a dead body) in the earth or in a tomb. –also from Merriam-Webster]; what do you think happened to them if they tried to leave/escape? Anything up to and including deadly force was used against them, just like happens when prison inmates try to leave/escape. Just in passing, I have had some knowledge and involvement with the latter case, since I was a commissioned peace officer of the state of Colorado for 28 years.
Subotai Bahadur
free speech anyone? Though if je had been mocking Christianity or promoting the musselmans i doubt he would have been arrested UK rip
I don’t think the meme is in poor taste not is it even remotely close to a hatecrime.
It conveys a very salient point about authoritarianism that was essentially proven true by the response.
Again, it’s in poor taste only because it can be misunderstood as supporting nazism rather than as opposing it.
If the geometry of a conservative group’s flag was such that four of them in perpendicular sequence created a Swastika, it would be the conservative group that would be getting cancelled, and those who exposed the flag to be “a hidden fascist handshake” would be lauded as heroes.
Remember what our radical-left-controlled press did with the OK sign, pretending that this classic Americanism was really a symbol of white supremacism? With the cultural Marxists *everything* is “heads I win, tails you lose.”
Do the men censor their joke-telling around the women? Sexism! For leaving the women out! Do they fail to censor their joke-telling around the women? Sexism! For not respecting female sensitivities!
Explicit anti-white racism is no problem, no matter how real and overt. It’s right in the course description: “Anti-whiteness,” as a *good* thing!
While invisible anti-black racism is grounds for cancelation, no matter how tendentious: “He dreams of a day when people are judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin? Racist! Fire him! Cancel him! Hound him out of every place!”
Yup, no doubt that if those were conservative flags it would be the conservative group that the mob and their mob-controlled police would be after. It’s right in the charge: “causing anxiety.”
Since everything causes anxiety for someone, an anxiety criterion is a declaration of pure arbitrary power. It’s just a matter of whose anxiety is going to be given priority.
That group then becomes the tyrannical dictator that everyone else must obey, no matter how tiny a minority that group is. To prove this point the left has declared the tiniest of all minorities to be the boss of everyone.
Are you part of the tiny minority of boys who have been duped by sexually perverted teachers into castrating yourself? Lucky you! You get to be boss of the world, and bend everyone else according to the miserable obsessions of your shattered life.
At least that is the promise. Don’t be shocked if it turns out to be as false as the promise that a boy can transition into a girl.