The British government has prosecuted a man for writing anti-Semitic words on his Facebook page:

A teacher has been fined after pleading guilty to posting a pro-Hitler image on Facebook.
Mahmudul Choudhury, a 35-year-old father of two, admitted the racially-aggravated offence aimed at Jews.
He shared a photo of the former Nazi leader on Facebook, which had the words “Yes man, you were right. I could have killed all the Jews, but I left some of them to let you know why I was killing them. Share this picture to tell the truth a whole world”.
Accompanying the image, Choudhury wrote: “Yes, now we can see why.”
The teacher was reported to police by a Jewish student he taught who he had previously added as a friend on Facebook.

It should go without saying, but I shall say it anyway to forestall any misunderstandings to the contrary: Mahmudul Choudhury is a despicable human being, and his behavior is reprehensible. What he wrote was ugly. He should be shunned by all good people. Hopefully, he will suffer socially for his words.

But he should not be punished by the state for being an ass.

The Telegraph confirms that Choudhury “might face losing his job over the incident as he is still employed as a teacher.” Fair enough. Certain professions have codes of conduct, and Choudhury has no inherent right to be a teacher. If his employer does not wish to employ him any longer, that is its prerogative. Moreover, the Court told him, he may well be disliked from now on:

Lead magistrate Ms Muckell told Choudhury: “Obviously reading through this and the letters, you’re a well thought of person and this is going to put your standing down a lot.
“We know you have now given up Facebook, but social media can cause a lot of problems as you found out the hard way.

Again: That’s entirely reasonable. “Freedom of speech” does not mean “freedom from the consequences of speech.” It merely means that the state cannot punish individuals for saying nasty or offensive things. And yet:

Magistrates fined him £465 and ordered he pay £85 costs and a £47 victim surcharge.
. . .
“We have taken everything into consideration as what has been said and also that you pleaded guilty to this matter at the earliest opportunity.
“We are going to deal with this by way of a financial penalty.”

That’s a punishment. That’s retribution. That’s censorship. Somebody reported this man to the police, and the authorities took his money away from him in amercement. Even more worryingly, they did so in the name of the “victims” — as if this were a civil case. It gets tiresome having use the cliché, but have you ever heard anything more Orwellian than the notion of a “victim surcharge” that can be imposed as a sanction against those who speak out of turn?

The British have brought this upon themselves. They have failed to heed the words of John Stuart Mill and Thomas Jefferson, and they have empowered the state to decide which strings of words are offensive and which are not — an unavoidably subjective and inevitably capricious task. I often tell my audiences that it is not the government’s role to “distinguish legally between Hitler and Shakespeare.” This week, the British government did just that. For shame.