Hate speech laws in the UK are a public menace, as I’ve written previously. Which is something those who cry “hate!” the loudest seem to appreciate only when they fall foul of them.
Consider this recent report from Channel 4 News on the uptick in hate crime prosecutions among ethnic minorities.
Marieha Hussain, a British teacher of Pakistani origin, lost her job after she was photographed at a march with a poster depicting prime minister Rishi Sunak and former home secretary Suella Braverman (both of Indian descent) as “coconuts” beneath palm trees.
The illustration, Hussain explained, was meant to convey: “Brown on the outside. White supremacist values on the inside.” Hussain is now being investigated by the police on suspicion of having committed a hate crime. “Coconuts is a political critique,” she told a Channel 4 presenter. “It’s about actions. Not about race.”
The real racists, she insists, are Braverman, who said that “grooming gangs were predominantly Pakistani men.” As well as Sunak for his complicity in “a genocide in Palestine” and his government’s Rwanda policy, which was a failed attempt to control illegal migration by sending asylum seekers to a third country for processing.
Of course, the lesson Hussain should have drawn from this episode is that once you start policing your enemies’ speech, there’s nothing to stop the same laws being used against you.