Hate speech laws are being enforced in a “politically partial and inconsistent manner,” with authorities refusing to prosecute cases when they are directed against white people, according to research.
Head of Cultural Affairs at the Institute of Economic Affairs and the report’s author Marc Glendening, attributed the growth in “censorious incidents” to the emergence of a “Culture Control Left,” (CCL) who he claims has successfully weaponised concepts like “hate speech” and “har”’ to push legislation that “silences” their political opponents.
“Being accused of hate speech is the contemporary equivalent of being charged with blasphemy or seditious libel,” Mr. Glendening said.
Racist Statements Directed at White People
Mr. Glendening listed cases of “censorious phenomenon,” such as that of the gender critical feminist Marion Miller was charged under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 for one tweet singled out by police that showed a photo of a ribbon in the Suffragette colours.
But he claimed despite the rise in hate crime cases, they are only were being partially applied, and in some circumstances, police are refusing to seek prosecutions for similar cases directed at white people.
He said that the actions of the police and other public bodies in the cases described “share an underlying commitment to the assumptions of critical race theory.”
This, in particular, he said, appears to explain “their inconsistent treatment of equivalent cases is the view that racial discrimination is a practice peculiar to white people: that only ‘white supremacists’ can truly be racist in the sense relevant to the law.”
He added that when someone who is not white makes what seem like racist remarks, the theory reinterprets them as a “form of cultural resistance.”
He noted some high-profile examples where the police refused to pursue cases against white people.
CCL
What Mr. Glendening called the “Culture Control Left,” he accused of being “a sufficiently homogenous political phenomenon that deserves to be considered a political movement, one that has been gaining influence in recent years.”The report quoted that in 2020, Labour MP Nadia Whittome stated publicly that: “We must not fetishise “debate” as though debate is itself an innocuous, neutral act. … The very act of debate … is an effective rollback of assumed equality and a foot in the door for doubt and hatred.”
Mr. Glendening said that Ms. Whittome’s reasoning “reveals a striking abandonment of liberal values: the mere act of challenging her views in the spirit of civil debate is not something she thinks is politically desirable.”
He warned that censorship of some views “based on the alleged harm is incompatible with liberal democracy.”
“Britain’s liberal political culture presently faces a threat greater than any it has encountered since our country emerged as a representative democracy in the early 20th century,” he added.
The Epoch Times contacted Priyamvada Gopal, Nadia Whittome and Munroe Bergdorf for comment.
