She added: “For too long governments have failed to address the rise in extremism, both online and on our streets, and we’ve seen the number of young people radicalised online grow. Hateful incitement of all kinds fractures and frays the very fabric of our communities and our democracy.”
For free speech advocates, it is chilling to hear UK officials state that they have been too lax on free speech in the past and must now take censorship and arrests more aggressively.
The United Kingdom has a myriad of laws criminalizing speech with vague terms allowing for arbitrary enforcement. For example, Public Order Act 1986 prohibits any expressions of racial hatred, defined as hatred against a group of persons by reason of the group’s color, race, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins.
Section 18 of the Act specifically includes any speech that is “threatening, abusive, or insulting.” An arrest does not have to be based on a showing of intent to “stir up racial hatred,” but can merely be based on a charge that “having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.”
For those Americans who have remained silent during as this anti-free speech movement grows, you need only to look to the United Kingdom to see what this movement means for our “indispensable right.” That wave has now reached our shores and it will require each one of us to defend a right that defines us all.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster).
