The advent of ‘hate speech’ laws has had the effect of decimating the British culture of freedom of speech. This free speech culture took centuries to achieve at great cost to those who fought for it in the courts, from various soapboxes and on the battlefields of the world. The right to speak freely without any constraint except for making threats to murder or the incitement of violence was born in Britain but exported across the world, most notably to the United States where it influenced that nation’s First Amendment to their Constitution. But free speech is almost dead now in the UK and it is ‘hate speech’ laws and those who promote and use and abuse such laws that is killing this very important right.

I received a Press Release this morning that truly horrified me. It came from a man called Louis Duxbury who made negative comments about Islamic extremists and terrorists on a video whilst he was extremely upset about the fate of his girlfriend who he worried had been caught up in an Islamic terror attack in Westminster in 2017. He was arrested by anti-terror police because he said that Islamic extremists and terrorists should be ‘wiped out’, which although strong is a sentiment shared by many Britons, even by those who are more than able to tell the difference between a Muslim and the ideology of Islam and between an extremist Muslim and a moderate or secular Muslim. Mr Duxbury was dragged through the courts over a three year period, subjected to two trials, convicted at the second trial and now faces years of imprisonment for little more than words that ‘offended’ people.

It is interesting and indeed disturbing to compare how this case has been pursued and reported with how the Crown Prosecution Service, the left leaning Press and Islamic groups favourable to censorship have behaved over this case and how it has been reported, with other contentious and high profile cases. Firstly the Crown Prosecution Service seems to have gone hell for leather to get a conviction in this case and have thrown enormous amounts of resources at it.

They put far more resources into this case than they did into the case of a young mum from Tyneside who made an allegation that she was raped by ‘refugees’ from Syria and Iraq a few years back. In that case, despite there being claims of DNA evidence being available, the CPS along with Northumbria Police seemed to want to fall over themselves in their swiftness to abandon this case. For more details of this particular ‘refugee’ rape case see this link and this link.

This is the absolute clownworld state of the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales these days where a double standard prevails when it comes to Islam. Muslim clerics seem to have free reign to call for anti Jewish hatred or to attack the gay community verbally and in print, but nothing seems to be done about this, but make a negative comment about Islam or Muslims or even Islamic extremists and the law will come down on you like a ton of bricks.

Mr Duxbury’s Press Release reads as follows:

Convicted for criticising terrorism in the UK

On November 19^th 2019, a jury only took half an hour to convict me with ‘intent to incite religious hatred’ despite a black lawyer and both Asian and Muslim defence witnesses contesting both the accusations of having any such intent and being a racist. After a series of mistrials, hung juries and appeals by the Crown Prosecution to continue retrying charges in a 3-year long battle, they finally got the guilty verdict they desired.

In June 2017 on the day of the Westminster terrorist attack, I was unable to establish any contact with my former girlfriend who was in London and near West Minster celebrating her birthday when the attack took place. Fearing the worst and panicking after trying to call and text with no response for a full day, I turned to Facebook to express absolute devastation, and grief of having lost someone I loved. The video I made specifically stated that “they (the terrorists, supremacists and extremists) should be wiped from the face of the earth”.

This statement was twisted and distorted by the prosecution to mean all Muslims which would paradoxically include my Muslim and Asian friends who came to my defense. Little did I know, a student at the university where I was studying, was conspiring to maliciously use this lament against me. Later that month, on the 21st of June the counter-terrorism police-force raided my house and arrested me without charge, then released me after they were unable to find anything, they could charge me for.

The following year (2018) was filled with multiple trials, fraudulent and fabricated evidence, knowingly breaching article 3 and 6 of the Human Rights act all in effort to convict me through slander, name calling, labels and by dictating to me what my own thoughts, and intents were at the time. This was despite my own thoughts being clearly reiterated in the video showing grief and devastation for what happened. It was also despite witnesses of different ethnic backgrounds coming to the defence of my character and a black lawyer who volunteered to take my case.

It was the prosecution who stated “you cannot use freedom of speech as a defence and we do not have freedom of expression in this country” to a supporting jury who apathetically convicted me in less than half an hour.

The university took my arrest as grounds for confirmation of wrongdoing, supposedly justifying my dismissal from the sports medicine program I had spent two years pursuing. As the medical profession is a government job, I will likely never be able to work in that field as a convicted man. It was ironic that my friends who just so happened to be white, then distanced themselves from me, while my friends who were of different ethnicities passionately came to my defense.

I am facing many years behind bars for mere criticism of the state and terrorism in general as my character and life have been utterly destroyed with very little hope of being able to overturn this decision. They have tainted my past, will put my present behind bars, and taken my future away from me. Where is the justice in this?

Louis Duxbury

There seems to me to be no justice in how this case has been dealt with not from the beginning or to the current point. The police and the CPS seems to have put considerably more resources into this case than they do in cases of regular crime, you know the sort of violent and acquisitive crime that people really do want to see prosecuted. This is a ‘nothingburger’ of a case, it’s little more than angry words from a distressed person which have been taken out of context by others. Nobody but nobody should be facing imprisonment for something like this.

This looks to me to be very much an example of an intimidation prosecution, in other words there’s no real need to prosecute this person except in order to intimidate the rest of the general public into keeping quiet about both Islam and the problems of Islamic extremism. We should all be free to use the most strongest and powerful words to criticise terrorism and those ideologies that underpin and encourage terrorism whether that be Nazism, Communism or Islam or any other ideology that sees violence as a legitimate political tool.

I would urge Mr Duxbury to seek the funds and legal representation necessary to appeal against what seems to me to be an awful miscarriage of justice. He should also try to seek redress for the trampling of his rights by a Crown Prosecution Service that appears to have become completely infiltrated by Leftists and Islamic groups who want to shut down all and any criticism of Islam. Although the worst Director of Public Prosecutions in my memory, Alison Saunders, is now gone, her baleful influence remains in the CPS. Cases like this one show that the CPS needs a massive clear out of its politically motivated operatives too many of whom seemed to have gained influence and position under the watch of Ms Saunders. This case also highlights why ‘hate speech’ laws are both iniquitous and dangerous to fair and just practise in the criminal justice system in Britain today.

I would urge my readers to share this story far and wide and get this story the coverage that it deserves as it is unlikely that Mr Duxbury’s case is going to be reported fairly or accurately by the mainstream media. I would also urge readers to contribute to any fighting fund that Mr Duxbury may set up in order to appeal.

Addenda

Here’s the odious pro-censorship organisation Tell Mama behaving dishonestly and gloating over Mr Duxbury’s conviction

Sargon of Akkad criticising the behaviour of the Tell Mama organisation

https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2019/11/21/sargon-of-akkad-takes-aim-at-the-tell-mama-organisation/

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMyerGmnRJE&t=7s

My chat with the You Tuber Luke Reid on the subject of the injustice of ‘hate speech’ laws amongst other matters

https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2019/11/25/audio-a-chat-with-luke-reid-about-free-speech-and-the-iniquity-of-hate-crime-laws/