Geeklawyer is glad that the ultra right wing extrem­ist British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Grif­fin was acquit­ted of charges of using words or behav­iour intended to stir up racial hatred. He is of the view that only speech which incites, or is gen­uinely imme­di­ately likely to do so, vio­lence & dis­crim­i­na­tion should be unlaw­ful. If hat­ing $(todays_unpopular_group) is law­ful, and even this gov­ern­ment is not propos­ing to make it ille­gal to hate Mus­lims, then incit­ing hatred should not be an offence either. Incit­ing vio­lence yes, incit­ing opin­ions no. Crim­i­nal­is­ing incite­ment because it makes it eas­ier to pre­vent vio­lence is not the answer since it has knock on effects on free speech.

Grif­fiths described Islam as a “wicked, vicious faith” and said Mus­lims were turn­ing Britain into a “multi-racial hell hole”. Co-defendant Mr Col­lett in turn said: “Let’s show these eth­nics the door in 2004.” Frankly some of the more big­oted and intol­er­ant native born Mus­lim extrem­ists deserve a lit­tle hatred con­tempt & dis­crim­i­na­tion. Those who, for exam­ple, tar­get gays free speech democ­racy, who pro­mot­ing exe­cu­tion and muti­la­tion as pun­ish­ment; and who most repel­lently and sick­en­ingly of all crit­i­cise the con­sump­tion of alco­hol, deserve a lit­tle hatred. Other aspects of Mus­lim cul­ture opin­ion deserve sup­port and many Mus­lims are rea­son­able fair and bal­anced peo­ple who don’t deserve the vil­i­fi­ca­tion and harass­ment inflicted on them by the BNP and also the gov­ern­ment and police.

Geeklawyer marches along­side those with the wis­dom to accept his view that the best cure for bad ideas are stronger com­pet­ing ideas.

Gor­don Brown is dis­play­ing wor­ry­ing symp­toms of cretinoc­ity caught, one imag­ines, from sit­ting in the Cab­i­net room with Tony Bliar for too long. He thinks that unrea­son­able juries acquit­ting those he dis­likes have erred and that the law should then be ‘adjusted’ to require juries to deliver the results he wishes. In one sense this is the purview of politi­cians — to set pol­icy, but when juries deliver clear and fre­quent ver­dicts politi­cians should count to 10 before reach­ing for a gim­mick.
This gov­ern­ment seems to see the cur­tail­ing of free speech that offends Mus­lims as rec­om­pense for an ille­gal war. And thereby to shore up their col­laps­ing vote in those com­mu­ni­ties. In other words a naked cyn­i­cal polit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion of their own inter­est: plus ca change.

(Geeklawyer realises at the last moment that this is a dupli­cate topic post­ing since Ruthie also com­ments on it — mor­ti­fy­ingly he also realises that they largely agree.)