Following medical advice, I’ve stopped reading or attempting to argue with the knuckle-dragging baboons who make up the UK’s extreme right. Therefore, I’ve managed to avoid blogger Lionheart, who posts insane lying paranoid bollocks about Teh Evil Muslim Threat.
Unfortunately, Mr Lionheart has received word from the police that he is being investigated on suspicion of incitement to racial hatred, and should report to a cop shop forthwith to discuss matters with Inspector Knacker.
This is about as strong a test of freedom of speech principles as you can imagine… on the one hand, Mr Lionheart is a bitter, twisted and deranged man who spreads poisonous lies about a minority group [*] – and indeed, a man who thinks that Muslims ought to be locked up for hate speech against non-Muslims. On the other hand, the guy is writing crap on a blog, not addressing a public meeting of violent loonies.
Overall, much as it would be gratifying to see the cunt locked up for a good long time [**], it probably behoves those of us who aren’t mad (irrespective of our political views) to oppose his arrest. After all, next time it could be someone who isn’t a poisonous evil bastard…
[via ; also]
Update: Dsquared in the comments makes the reasonable point that in general, making false accusations of paedophilia is treated by the police as a public order offence following the News of the World riots early this decade. Since Lionheart’s blog is devoted to pretending that the main threat to our children is in being gang-raped by dark deviant brown-skinned Islamists, this sounds like a reasonable point… Lesson: defame whatever group you like online, but don’t call them a bunch of nonces.
[*] There is a very strong similarity between the kind of “they’ll sell your children into sex slavery, murder them and make them into kebabs” mythology that has become popular among BNP fringes lately, and the mythology spread about the Jews in 1800s and 1900s continental Europe. I’m not saying the Muslims in modern Britain are in the same position – but I’m definitely saying I’d put a very large bet on knowing which political party Mr Lionheart would’ve supported if he’d been in Berlin in 1933…
[**] Mr Lionheart appears to believe that “This charge if found guilty carries a lengthy prison sentence, more than what most paedophiles and rapists receive“. The maximum sentence for incitement to racial hatred is seven years; the maximum sentence for rape (including sex with a child under 13) is life; the maximum sentence for sex with a child aged 13-15 is 14 years. This would appear to suggest that Mr Lionheart is a gibbering fuckwit; a conclusion hardly at odds with the rest of the evidence…