People are still quite rightly discussing the partial victory for freedom of speech achieved by Harry Miller aka Harry the Owl. Mr Miller, as many will recall, challenged the police about a visit he had by an officer to ‘check his thinking’ about a tweet criticising the gender ideology that he had sent.

Although Mr Miller one one part of his challenge in the High Court, the court did unfortunately conclude that the police were within the law to keep logs of non crime ‘hate incidents’ (which can be as ephemeral as someone complaining that the ‘offender’ ‘ looked at me in a funny way’). Mr Miller is I believe going to challenge this ruling at a higher court.

One of the places that the Harry the Owl case is being discussed is over at Orphans of Liberty and it is from there, or rather a below the line comment on this piece, that today’s Quote of the Day comes. The comment, by Twisted Root, sums up both the iniquity and inequity of ‘hate speech’ laws, but also takes aim at some of the more weaker and sometimes more sinister personalities that can use and abuse them. Twisted Root said:

With violent crime being against all forms of law the battleground is over psychological attack. It is about who can get away with denigrating who. Anyone wielding the hate crime weapon is the abuser – a psychological abuser. Their characteristics include; weak, bitter, cowardly, untrustworthy, low time preference, poor reasoning skills, disloyal, envious, and low self esteem often manifesting in poor personal hygiene. Optimal defensive strategy is to point, mock, laugh and exclude from your existence permanently.

I completely agree that we now have a situation where some groups can denigrate others but members of other groups cannot do the same. I also agree that many of those wielding the ‘hate speech’ or ‘hate crime’ weapons are abusers and we can find examples of this coming from both the Islamic community and the community of Trans activists. As someone who was once ‘on the Left’ although I eshsewed the revolutionary Left, I can certainly recognise the sort of character traits of the types of people who pushed and still push for ever more restricted ‘hate crime’ and ‘hate speech’ laws. They were weak and at the same time bullying, a nasty combination and looking back on it. Also, many of them did have the sort of poor reasoning skills that meant that they could not defend their ideas or their politics in any sort of open forum. For these types, censorship of words and ideas that they found and find uncomfortable and the silencing of opponents, is to them a way of ‘winning’ the argument.

I certainly agree that mockery of and laughter at the sort of psychological abuser who cannot defend their point of view logically, but instead relies on the legal chicanery of ‘hate crime’ law, is a one of the best ways to go. I find it morally and ethically intolerable that if someone calls me a bastard in a pub, it’s not a criminal offence, but if he calls me a ‘Jewish bastard’ then it is an offence. This is not treating people equally under the law, this is giving the members of one group greater privileges than another and is something that societies that aspire to be just, should not be doing.