Douglas Murray is one of those writers and speakers who is not frightened to tell it like it is when it comes to the problems facing Western society. He has bravely criticised Islamism and has accurately reported on its links and roots within the ideology of Islam itself. An erudite former Church of England member, Mr Murray has taken accurate and sharp aim at the sacred cows of the Left and the problems that Leftist and other certain post war policies have caused.

Mr Murray is also a doughty and skilled fighter for the rights of freedom of speech and is opposed to the growth of oppressive ‘hate speech’ legislation. As we have seen in recent years much of this ‘hate speech’ legislation is being used to silence opinions that members of some minority groups and some politicians would not like to be voiced. As Mr Murray said in this article there are a number of pieces of legislation that are right and proper to use when there is a definite example of incitement to violence but to try to outlaw an emotion, something as nebulous as ‘hate’ is a dangerous path for a nation to go down.

Here’s part of Mr Murray’s article on the Home Office’s ludicrous, tyrannical and wasteful ‘hate crime hub’ from the website of the Gatestone Institute. As is usual policy for this blog the original text from the source is in italics whereas this blog’s comments are in plain text.

Douglas Murray said:

If you were a police officer what would you rather do: sit in the cold outside the house of a known extremist all day, or sit behind a desk with a cup of tea and scrolling through Twitter?

In May, just after the second of four Islamist terrorist attacks in the UK so far this year, British intelligence officials apparently identified 23,000 known extremists in the country. Of these, around 3,000 are believed to pose a present threat and are under investigation or active monitoring. The other 20,000 are categorised as posing a “residual risk”. Due to the strain on resources, those 20,000 are not under constant observation.

This is a subject which, since the terrorist attack in May, has caused some agonising among the British public, not least because of the identities of the attackers. Khalid Masood, the Westminster Bridge and Parliament assailant, for instance, as well as Salman Abedi (the young man of Libyan heritage who carried out a suicide bombing outside a concert in Manchester) had both been on the radar of the British authorities — both had been in the pool of people considered “former subjects of interest” but not an immediate threat. If the authorities had sufficient resources to follow everyone of interest, perhaps they would have been under observation at the time they were planning their attacks. Perhaps, also, a number of people killed in those attacks would still be alive.

The public, though, can be forgiving on these matters. They recognise that resources are not endless, that judgements have to be made and that departments have to choose where to allocate their budgets.

These choices are another reason why the public may judge dimly last week’s announcement from the Home Office. Last week, Britain’s Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced the creation of a new national police hub to crack down on hate-crime and “trolling” online. The unit — which will apparently be run by specialist officers — will assess complaints and work out whether they amount to a crime or not. They will also recommend removing material from online platforms if they — at the official hate-crime hub — deem such material “hateful”.

I agree with Mr Murray that it looks bad that there is not the will or the resources to monitor or deal with the very large number of Islamists who wish to murder us but there is plenty of will and money to police people’s opinions about various subjects. The Home Office’s ‘hate crime’ hub is a wasteful and sinister entity that will only benefit those with particular political and theological agendas. I suspect that it will be exploited in order to settle personal scores or to further crack down on people expressing peacefully their disgust at what has been done to Britain, often in the name of ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism’.

Mr Murraythen commented on the difficulty of pinning down empirically exactly what constitutes ‘hate’.

The problem is that “hate” is an ill-defined thing. What is hateful to one person may not be hateful to another. What is hateful in one context may not be hateful in another. Might there one day be people who will claim to find material “hateful” when it is in fact merely material containing opinions with which they do not agree?

I concur with what Mr Murray says here. What is hateful to me for instance may not be hateful to others. To use the law to enforce one opinion, which is what the Home Office’s ‘hate crime hub’ will probably try to do is, to give an analogy, as vicious and oppressive as force feeding bacon to a vegan.

Mr Murray continued:

Consider furthermore what might happen if someone — anyone — were to go along with the official line that Islamism is a major problem but differed with the official view — which is that this Islamism has no connection with the peaceable and popular religion of Islam. What if they expressed this concern or thought? It is not inconceivable that somebody one day might? How then will the authorities view this? Is it hate? Can things that are hateful also be true? And if so, which do we prioritise: “hateful” facts or “hate-less” lies?

Alert to such criticisms, the relevant authorities have stressed that freedom of speech will still exist within in the UK. And the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for hate crime, assistant chief constable Mark Hamilton, has said: “We recognise and will uphold the right to free speech even where it causes offence — but this does not extend to inciting hatred or threatening people.”

In 2015-2016, a total of 62,518 hate crimes were recorded by forces in England and Wales. The Crown Prosecution Service says that it completed 15,442 hate crime prosecutions during that year. All of which happened at the same time as Khalid Masood, Salman Abedi and 20,000 other “known extremists” were allowed to walk free. And so the priorities of the authorities and the priorities of the public would appear to be dividing: a fact that can only have negative consequences — whether they are “hateful” or not.

The whole premise of ‘hate crimes’ and especially ‘hate speech’ create classes of people who are advantaged by the legal process and is the antithesis of what an equal and equitable justice system should be about. It’s madness that for example someone who punches me in the face could get an increased punishment if I falsely claimed that I was attacked for being Jewish yet a similar enhancement would not be given if such a claim by the victim was not made. ‘Hate crime’ and ‘hate speech’ laws take a considerable degree of fairness out of the justice system and treats people differently according to what particular group they belong to. It’s a regressive step for a justice system that previously had evolved into one that treated people equally and only convicted on solid evidence rather than a person’s individual perception of feelings.

Mr Murray is correct to draw attention to the fact that too much resource and time is being spent on chasing the phantom of ‘hate crimes’ and far too little is being put where it is truly needed which is in the monitoring and prosecution of vicious Islamic terrorists or potential terrorists. We need to ask ourselves what is more important, the man or woman who says something ‘racist’ or unpleasant on social media, or the thousands of Islamic extremists who are even as I write this piece, plotting to kill us or kill our children? Most sensible people would say that dealing with the nation’s Islam related problems should be the priority not those who merely gob off or chuck a bit of bacon at a mosque.

Britain is afflicted by a remote political clique and a cadre of police officers who are lazy and politically bent towards one particular ideology, the ideology of multiculturalism and we the people deserve much better than that. We deserve and require politicians who will do what is required to keep us safe and police officers who know the difference between opinions and genuine crimes.

Link

Link to full Douglas Murray article from the Gatestone Institute website

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11207/britain-hate-crime-hub