In the United Kingdom, someone who uttered supposedly right-wing speech might spend more time in prison than a person convicted of horrific crimes, even if the government has acknowledged the evidence supporting their statements. But just how bad is the speech environment? The two-tier discrepancies are visible at every level of the legal system.
Legal punishment first requires that the authorities choose to arrest an individual, which they are all too happy to do. As reported by the Telegraph, U.K. police make over 12,000 arrests a year — more than 30 a day — under the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and the Communications Act 2003. What types of evil speech are prosecuted under these policies? Billy Thompson was arrested after a civilian officer, acting as an intelligence researcher, snapped a screenshot of his online post; he was sentenced to prison for twelve weeks under the Communications Act 2003. Thompson had left a comment online that said, “filthy ba*****s” with the emojis of an ethnic person and a gun, in which Judge John Temperley suspected “a racial element to the messaging and the posting of these emojis” that had to be “viewed in the context of the current civil unrest.” This was a reference to the nationwide riots that followed the tragic day when teenager Axel Rudakubana stabbed three young girls to death during a dance class.
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