Hi, Australian leftie here.
I keep hearing from conservatives in my country that the UK are attacking freedom of speech.
From what I can tell, this is based on some people being arrested for hate speech. Which some conservatives seem to want to protect.
So my question to people in the UK – is this a fear for liberal/lefties at all?
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US conservative here and my 2 cents is it is. i think all speech should be free, good and bad and i say this as a minority who has faced slurs
but im also against our country censoring protests. if someone wants to protest for a terrorist organization then let them.. they will have to face their own consequences
just like i can’t be mad if i run down the street screaming homophobia and i go viral and can’t get a job
it’s on me to face the consequences
The UK has way more arrests for online “crimes” or “offensive” social media posts than does Russia.
Let that sink in, as the saying goes.
It is censorship, but all societies engage in some degree of censorship, including America, and thats fine. Banning CP is censorship but I would say a good kind of censorship. Not all societies agree on how far censorship should go. I prefer the American way, but I understand the European way. There is a red line of course that shouldn’t be crossed, free speech is a fundamental human right.
EDIT: I was wrong here as pointed out below the punishment was for a sustained campaign of harassment and not for the one isolated incident. Sorry about that.
English person here and I will provide a link to the story underneath so you know I’m not lying. I’ve become more concerned recently after a women was prosecuted for seeing she hoped somebody else got cancer. Now that is an abhorrent thing to say but unless you have the divine power to follow through I don’t see how it’s criminal or a threat.
https://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/25117637.walney-woman-sentenced-sending-menacing-message-tiktok/
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In order to have free speech you have to accept you will get offended. I tend to be just to the left of center, in my view free speech should be absolute. We are tredding on very dangerous territory when we censor what people can and cant say, that includes hate speech.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it“
I’m a US liberal and I think it’s crazy that this is happening. I do believe that’s actually happening.
I would rather live in a society where hateful people feel it’s safe to out themselves for what they are, than to live in a society where no one says an ill word but you know for certain some of them are hateful. Give people the freedom to stay away from unpleasant people
“Oi mate, you gotta loicense fer dat meme?”
A woman was recently arrested for writing a book that featured weird shit with a kid (it wasn’t the focus it was just a component and nothing you wouldn’t see in a Steven king novel) and while I think that’s weird and gross as hell to write about, I also find it genuinely frightening that people are being arrested arbitrarily for fiction
No
Maybe it is – and the UK justice system and govt is very cooked so it wouldn’t be crazy if it was the case – but every time I’ve seen an “example” when I look deeper or at better news sources the person being prosecuted was actually threatening someone or inciting violence, stochastic terror kinda shit so I take claims of the censorship with a big pinch of salt til I see evidence. If they are censoring people it’s a very uneven prosecution because unfortunately I hear from British neo Nazis and similar every day and I don’t even live there lol
Wasn’t this yesterday’s episode of Doctor Who?
I follow english soccer and there have been plenty of examples over the last 10 years of age groups ranging from middle teens teenagers to…60 is probably the oldest ive seen, being jailed locally over sending racist comments/death threats to certain players on social media. Sometimes its only racist, sometimes its only death threats, uncommon to be both.
I have zero sympathy for them and im happy somebody on that hell forsaken island cares about working towards world peace.
A lot of the stories are exaggerated and especially posts on the internet leave out important details that make the cases much less extreme than they first seem. But yes, the free speech laws in the UK are very strange…
No.
The uk has, like every western democracy, always censored its citizens.
For example, people are not allowed to distribute sexual images involving children. That’s censorship.
The question is: what is acceptable for the government to censor and what is not?
This is where the European convention on human rights comes in. It balances your right to express yourself against my right to be safe. And it does a mighty fine job of it.
Russia re-identified the UK as the biggest threat to its ambitions so is having another go at making sure it stays down. Why a lot of this happens. They don’t seem able to push it all back. It might take a more comprehensive and different approach. And probably external help
American here:
I don’t trust my government with the power to outlaw ideologies.
German here who lived in the UK for a while. Germany is also being accused by the US to not have free speech.
I think free speech is a misnomer. It implies you can shout your opinion in anyone’s face at whatever time and they have to listen.
In Britain it’s usually called freedom of expression, which I like so much better. Expression includes the way you dress etc. Also, you can only express yourself in ways that don’t stop other people from expressing themselves.
In Germany we call it freedom of opinion and that’s a guaranteed right in our constitution. You are allowed your own opinion, but there are limits on how you can express it. Like public holocaust denial is illegal, but if you expressed that opinion privately with your friends, that’s fine. Same goes for hate speech, only illegal if you do it publicly.
But let’s not forget that hateful conservatives who go on about free speech only want it for themselves. It’s a distraction tactic. Look at all the book banning in the US by those who shout the loudest about their free speech.
These parents had complaints about their daughters school, I have no idea if their complaints were reasonable or not, but the school sent the police after them for harassment and malicious communications.
Defenders of this will say the couple hasn’t yet been charged/prosecuted, but imo sending SIX (6) police officers to your house to detain you for posts in a WhatsApp group is at the very least, an intimidation tactic.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/29/parents-arrested-by-hertfordshire-police-for-complaining-about-daughters-school
Yes. And not everything that is being censored is harmful enough to warrant the reaction it is getting
I dunno, countries that have enacted anti hate speech laws seem to have produced healthy debate while the 1st Amendment lunatics seem to glory in talking about acts of horror with impunity. Real. Sick. Fucks.
Absolutely. Social media allows all sorts of hate now particularly racism and transphobia, homophobia. Yet LGBTQIA people get censored for existing so our accounts get locked from posting because of fascists reporting literally nothing.
No. You will find that anyone arrested for “free speech” was usually arrested for something else or usually have a long hiatory of harrassment or inciting violence and had been warned many times befre being arrested.
They recently had cops kick down the door of a church to arrest some quakers for the thought crime of maybe possibly going out to protest the Palestinian genocide. Yes, of course they’re suppressing free speech, and when you’re speaking out for human rights rather than against them, they bring the big guns.
We view free speech differently in Europe compared to the US. Here we limit hate speech to a larger extent, you can’t yell antisemitic things or say that all Muslims are animals, and you can’t make serious threats to other people, and as a business you can’t lie in advertising. The US doesn’t limit those things nearly as much. However in Europe we can for instance write a bad review of a bad restaurant without getting sued by the owner, we can complain about terrible working conditions, we can burn flags, we can protest and so on. In the US free speech, as most laws, seems to be more directed at allowing companies to exploit workers and consumers, while in the EU free speech is about protecting individuals from threats or hate, not about protecting profits.
Taking steps towards censoring my right to exist maybe… but the US is currently notably worse in this regard.
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No. The protection isn’t as strong as 1st amendment but the idea that people are being detained without a significant number of warnings is propaganda.
Farage has been blaming immigrants for things and making derogatory comments for many years and there’s no suggestion he’ll ever be arrested for them.
Are you asking Liberals or the British? They aren’t the same thing.
Go onto a political sub Reddit and say something vaguely supportive of a right wing policy or politician and see what happens to your karma /s
We have free speech, what we don’t have is freedom from consequences.
If you use your free speech to;
– incite criminal activity (happened on social media during the Southport riots)
– or to harass someone on social media (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0j8r8558yo)
– or breach laws relating to reporting on ongoing criminal cases in a way which may prejudice the judicial process (Tommy Robinson)
– or to defame another person (Joey Barton)
– or otherwise publish material that breaches another law
and end up getting prosecuted for it, you aren’t having your freedom of speech curtail, you are having your lack of rights to carry out crimes enforced.
As with any legal system applied by humans to other humans, we are occasionally going to get cases which constitute over reach of enforcement and use of police and judicial resources. In some cases this gets characterised as erosion of freedom of speech. That is entirely understandable when it pertains to something someone has said. Notably these claims tend to come from people who are close in social relationship to the person being prosecuted or sharing a similar viewpoint to them, although a few people claiming to be “free speech defenders” will also chime in. These claims are incorrect, the real issue is erosion of good policing and judicial process. As an aside, this is far more related 14 years of declining public spending and austerity creating pressures on the policing and judicial systems. (Ironic given the propensity of claims to come from right-wing and conservative quarters /opinion).
One reason we know this isn’t actually erosion of free speech is the freedom we have to call it an erosion of free speech. If rights of free speech really were being curtailed, there would a lot more interest in not letting people say this. Our responsibility in cases which we feel may constitute over reach isn’t to wail about erosion of free speech but to clearly and directly challenge authority over misapplication of the laws and application of laws which we feel no longer serve our best interests. I suspect the reason that doesn’t happen is because its much harder and requires a bit more intellectual effort. Not that people aren’t capable but they do tend to skew towards the lazy.
Another reason is that, if you wish to make the case, no matter how badly, that freedom of speech should protect any interest that anyone has in inciting criminality, harassing other people, prejudicing court cases, defaming people and so on, you really are free to do so. And anyone who disagrees with you is also entirely free to do so. The only caveat is that you don’t break a law while doing so, which is always entirely possible.
The far greater threat to freedom of speech, which rarely gets the attention it really deserves in this debate is the preservation of corporate and moneyed interests. If we aren’t breaking any laws, our speech can still be supressed by the actions of a handful of corporations who direct the primary mode of communication in the modern world and they mainly do so without reference to either public or governmental interests. A simple action from the likes of Google or Meta can sink your freely spoken things out of view, even of those that wish to see them. We’re also aware of the corporate appetites for super injunctions and strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP). By these mechanisms, freedom of speech is favoured to the highest bidder and that excludes most private individuals. We should all be very concerned about the inequity that can be perpetrated through money.
The issue isn’t so much with having laws against hate speech. It’s that some of the enforcement is seen as getting a bit zealous and taking an expansive view of what constitutes “hate speech”.
For those on the left, the main problem here is protests over the Israel/Gaza situation and what is legitimate criticism of Israel versus what is deemed as antisemitism passing itself off as “anti-Zionism”.
Yes. Try protesting for Palestine
Edit: Also, as an Australian, I assume you’re aware what the British government did to your compatriot, Julian Assange? That was literally classed as torture by the UN rapporteur
When King Prince Charles had his coronation a bunch of anti monarchists wanted to protest and we’re smart enough to know that the police can literally decide you are being disruptive and arrest you. So they coordinate with the police, ask where they can protest, what signs they can wave about, can they chant etc.
They do everything to limit their protest to the police’s criteria.
They were all arrested and shoved in a van anyway for being disruptive.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67022199
Expressing a left wing or liberal viewpoint is not a dangerous activity in the uk!
The communications act is very vague and badly written, it certainly could in theory prosecute people for all sorts of things.
In reality the courts and the police are only targeting things like death threats, harassment and really vile racist abuse that has had a lot of publicity (for example people abusing the black footballers who missed penalties for England).
There keeps being articles from places like Fox News claiming people have been stopped by the police for posting something anti abortion or saying they want guns etc but if you look into the cases it’s always way out of context in that they either said something else as well or the police just spoke to them because someone made an accusation of a criminal offence (which means the police have to inform the accused even if there’s no intention to prosecute or even warn the person).
Let me put it this way mate.
You don’t get to tell people on twitter to go and set peoples houses on fire, people then go and do it as a result, and not expect to be arrested.
You don’t get to “pray” to young women outside abortion clinics or hand them distressing photographs of a fetus when there are clear laws stating people aren’t allowed to be in protected spaces such as those.
You wouldn’t get away with screaming “I’ve got a fucking bomb” or “I plan to kill the president of the United States with a sniper rifle I’ve planted near the White House entrance” in America, yet all they talk about is how great their free speech is.
It’s a load of shit mate.
I’d say so. There’s enough documented cases of means words being met with police and handcuffs that it’s not just a one off.
That being said, foreign adversary governments fund content creators who specifically focus on this kind of thing and make it seem like more of a problem than it really is. One content creator in particular, I’m like 95% sure is taking Russia money, whether they know it or not.
Britain is indeed censoring citizens, going as far as banning silent prayer. A literal thought crime. You don’t realize how bad it’s getting, and it’s a total Reddit moment when you have lefties in the comments trying to justify it.
Google Richard Medhurst. Or any other pro Palestine activist or journalist. They even arrested and censored Stephen Kapos, an actual holocaust survivor.
There was an example going around saying that a woman was arrested for praying in her thoughts, and how people are now going to be arrested for thinking. I think there was even a video going around of this lady being arrested, that she herself was only silently praying etc.
But in actuality she was in an exclusion zone outside an abortion clinic, this has been a protected zone since the 80’s /90’s and is enforceable by law so others can use the service without being harassed.
This is what she was ultimately arrested for and it wasn’t the first time she was arrested for the same thing, she knew exactly what she was doing. She could have just sat outside the protected zone if all she wanted to do was pray.
Conservatives often spout a lot of shit
The same is happening in Australia. Dude, your Covid lockdowns were textbook commie nonsense.
You hear about these stories but when you do dig a little deeper there’s always more to the story than they’re claiming
They’ll be like “i was arrested for sharing a limerick” when actually they’ve been repeatedly harassing somebody and telling somebody they don’t like like or they don’t believe they should have rights, made thinly veiled insults about them and then sent them a limerick including racial/homophobic/religious/ect slurs about them and they were taken to court.
It’s not different to litterally any other country, we just had a loop hole in our laws that meant a people could harass somebody publicly online for weeks and only get a slap on the wrist depending on what they said.
It’s weird, I need hearing that too. That people are arrested for swearing online, then they link article about people arrested for hate speech, those people aren’t being arrested for saying “my football team are fucking shit” they are being arrested for saying “all [race] should be fucking burnt alive”, the issue isn’t swearing. Racial hatred, antisemitism, disability slurs are why people are getting into trouble, and rightly so. We have freedom of speech but if you break a law you aren’t free from.the consequences. People deliberately confuse these things for the sake of internet points and creating moral panic where there isn’t on
https://www.cps.gov.uk/crime-info/hate-crime
Yes, absolutely. But not in the way the Conservatives give a fuck about.
We have an extremely broken libel law system that means if you criticise a wealthy person, you’re putting your house on the line. Even if you are correct, even if your criticism is valid, they can still ruin you.
Conservative darling JK Rowling is well known to be extremely litigious in suing critics for fairly minor slights and bullying apologies out of them. She gets praised for ‘free speech’ however for the fact that she is openly bigoted, which in the Conservative mind is the same as ‘free thinking’.
This in turn leads to a lot of self censorship – a lot of media articles are not being run about rich people due to this fear.
We also have extremely overzealous public order laws. Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 makes it a crime to use abusive words that any hypothetical person in earshot might find distressing.
This has been used for stuff as nonsensical as charging people for swearing whilst being assaulted, to calling the Israeli state genocidal. Strangely, the a far right protester with a loud hailer screaming that all trans people are pedophiles does not attract police action….it’s a terrible law giving police a lot of power.
This has been extended by various bits of legislation so we now have laws against your protest causing a nuisance.
In terms of online, if you’ve noticed reddit suddenly clamping down on anyone suggesting non violent direct action in the form of property damage, welcome to the UKs online safety act. We also have very broad laws that address online speech sometimes in worrying ways.
So it is true that when the far right complain of censorship, what they mean is that bigoted hacks of professors have posters put up calling them arseholes or nepo babies don’t get cushy government jobs because their social media was them being a creepy sex pest (seriously, that’s why Toby Young created the ‘free speech union).
However if you’re a trans person saying ‘JK Rowling is fascist scum’ or hold up a sign at a protest saying ‘Abolish the State of Israel*’ you will find free speech is very much not present.
*I am aware that the IHRA definition says this is antisemitic. It is not. Jews who live in Israel should be allowed to keep living there. Jews have a right to self determination as does any other ethnic group. However the rotten Genocidal monster that is the Israeli state under Herzog and Netanyahu is as monstrous as any other state on earth. This statement is akin to ‘abolish the Kim Dynasty of North Korea’. Good luck arguing this point against a section 5 charge however.
The current story focuses on the recent riots sparked by the stabbing of those three girls in Southport.
Police were investigating and refusing to comment on an open investigation, the leader of our far right party came out instantly banging on about it being done by an illegal immigrant and the police silence was evidence of a cover up and we were entitled to answers and… And… And her manager to incite nationwide racist riots. (All not true, he was Brit born and bred and had some SERIOUS mental issues) (In order to try and wind said far right leader up and make sure they get attached to him in people’s minds some elements of media on the left now refer to them as the Farage riots.)
During these riots a woman tweeted out to the racist rioters the name, address, location of a hotel that was being used to house asylum seekers that were waiting for their asylum claims to be heard (last government had deliberately let the backlog grow so long as an electioneering point) and told the rioters basically to go get them. Which they did, they surrounded the hotel, blocked the doors, and tried to burn the hotel down.
New government not long taken over, led by a former head of our national prosecutors, understandably wanted to clamp down hard and fast on these riots so made sure the arrests and prosecutions happened quickly. She got prosecuted for something like incitement to murder.
The right wing press have tried to twist it into “she was prosecuted just for a mean tweet”, “funny how the immigrant who murdered 3 girls didn’t get the same level of punishment nor nearly as quick as the white British woman who just sent a tweet”, the phrase “two tier justice” really took hold because it rhymes with them new prime minister’s name (two tier Keir)…
The Trump government, whether just because they’re racist themselves and/or under instruction of the Heritage Foundation and/or Putin who are both hell bent on undermining Western democracy and stability, have tried to amplify the same message and put a “freedom of speech” twist on it to try and simplify the argument especially to an American audience for whom freedom of speech, 1st amendment is sacrosanct (ironically while doing their best to stifle same freedom at home)
Brit here and my answer is no.
Anytime you see someone “arrested for a social media post” it’s usually because it’s been part of extended harassment to someone, death threats, or inciting violence.
In the recent anti-migrant riots lots of people were “arrested for tweets” which makes a great headline in conservative news… Until you read the tweets which were encouraging rioters to go out and kill migrants.
The people arrested have literally been sending death threats and inciting people to attack others, including burning down a hotel whilst they locked people inside of it.
No one is getting arrested for calling out our government, or for simply childish name calling as the right makes that is what is happening.
It is a problem if it is used to silence a private citizen’s view of the current state of affairs in one’s country.
It should not be illegal to protest against mass immigration, for instance.
It should not be illegal to criticise the two tier governance of a populace.
It should not be illegal to report upon things that one sees, just because that might spread restlessness within the community. A spade is a spade regardless of big daddy’s position on said spade, and a private citizens right to espouse what they think must be protected. Hate speech restrictions and the like are necessary, but must be measured and specific.
TL;DR, one should have the right to polite complaint about whatsoever.
The example Vance gave was distance of protesters of 150m from an abortion clinic. In place for very real safety and intimidation reasons.
US under Trump needs to look at its own patch as it is veering down a path of only MAGA speech being free and everyone else being censored or prosecuted
Free speech is fine, but OFFENSIVE speech is an entirely different matter. Everyone has a right to not be offended.
No one who actually reads more than the headlines thinks that.
I’m concerned about people being unfairly censored, so I usually read the article when stuff like this comes up, and so far, I’ve never found a case where someone has been “censored” without what they’ve been doing definitely qualifying for abuse or harassment.
Brit here.
You can say whatever you want. But threatening violence is illegal. So since hate speech often comes before violence, its seen as a threat.
You can strike up a conversation about anything you like with anyone you like, and they have the full freedom to respond however they like as long as there is no violence.
One of the most British things you can do is make fun of the government, all our comedians clown on them constantly on live TV.
Try saying to any of these people that Islam is right and watch how much they care about freedom of speech
Yes, I believe freedom of speech is being attacked but probably not for the same reasons as conservatives. A couple of reasons below:
Anti-protest legislation brought in by the last government (Police and Crime Bill) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56400751
Amnesty
There’s a bit of a rabbit hole you can go down of individuals associated with pro-Palestine protests being disproportionately targeted by police, and the police taking a much harsher stance against them compared to people attending other forms of protest. Double standards
Yes, when it comes to criticising the islamic religion the government seems to act very quickly to suppress the protestors. There have been a few cases where people wanted to burn the book that I shall not name and they got arrested swiftly, and charged with inciting islamophobia. Bare in mind that burning the bible is perfectly legal and it would not attract any charges.
A lot of people who aren’t from Britain or don’t live here seem really confident in answering this question…
I’m a classical liberal, and absolutely they’re cracking down on free speech. They’re literally arresting thousands of people for free speech, so I wouldn’t think it was really debatable. I hope the US trade deal pressure forces them to stop. V for Vendetta and 1984 were supposed to be works of fiction, but the UK is quickly becoming that authoritarian. I would never want to live there. They are charging their own citizens under terror laws for declining to provide their phone password while coming home. It’s crazy.
They are rebranding hate speech to be anything that could put immigrants/muslims in a bad light and then arresting people for saying something about it. It’s insane.
We can say whatever we want unless it causes harm or incites hatred. Surely that’s a good map for a functioning society?
There was an incident last year which people have taken out of content. People were doxxing migrants on social media and idiots were turning up with weapons. Others were inciting violence and organising riots via social media. A person recorded themselves getting arrested for this, and said the line ‘so you’re arresting me for a Facebook post…’ No, it’s the content of the Facebook post that you’re getting arrested for.
Look there’s enough people in the UK who spout Nazi and racist ideology, and they are getting away with it. You just can’t organise a lynch mob on Facebook. I don’t see an issue with that.
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The UK does have quite draconian laws regarding speech tbh
We have Section 127 of the Communications Act which prohibits transmitting anything that is “Grossly Offensive” or “Obscene” over the internet. Even if it’s in a private setting (like a private group chat) – the law doesn’t distinguish between private online communication and public online communication.
For in person communication we have the Public Order Act which prohibits any expression in public which prohibits using abusive words or behaviour, or displaying abusive words, if someone could theoretically be caused “harassment alarm or distress”. No-one actually needs to be caused any harassment, alarm, or distress, if theoretically someone could then it’s illegal.
In theory this is supposed to be balanced up against our right to free expression (not free speech) but this is left up to the judiciary, and generally they don’t seem to care much about it and prioritise enforcing legislation regulating speech over protecting free expression.
And then there’s the whole “non crime hate incidents” bollocks.
No. Although the far right gets a lot of free press while the left gets ignored. Even the traditionally left Labour Party is acting right wing now. So left wing view points get ignored a lot
Live in the UK. Not heard of any of this. Googled ‘hate speech arrests uk’ and after some noodling around, I could still only find stuff going back to 2024 when people were put in prison for inciting people to go burn down places where assylum seekers were living.
The ‘free speech’ issue for me here is the inordinate amount of airtime e.g. the BBC gives to Nigel Farage and Reform (the right wing party built on a foundation of grassroots nazis and fascists but Farage doesn’t say the really bad bits outloud).
There are some cases of overreach, but it’s fine mostly. We had slightly less freedom of speech than the US before Trump’s 2nd term. Now I would say we have significantly more freedom of speech.
Americans have been told that about the UK for a long time, I remember other young teenagers informing me (UK) about it on online videogames 20 years ago. Even now they seem to get some kind of “yeah, take that!” satisfaction every time a headline gets posted and it’s taken out of context.
“Bad old UK, the old enemy has fallen!”
Now you’ve got Russia pushing the same agenda as apparently we’re the cause of all their problems, and the Trump administration is joining in too with the name calling.
r/europe is an anti UK circlejerk most of the time, featuring posts like “here’s a map of where you can get arrested for ding dong ditching” and it’s just the UK. The reason is yes the police can ask you to stop of you do it repeatedly and are a nuisance, but most importantly they left out several other European countries where it’s actually illegal, but who cares when the disinformation is already out there?
You can’t really fight it because it’s already established that you’re the bad guy, you’ll come across as a nationalist or insecure or something and every sentence of misinformation requires a paragraph correcting it (which no one will read)
The UK has had laws against hate speech and incitement to violence for several decades, if not centuries. Nothing has changed. The only thing that is different is these rules are now being enforced for speech made through mediums like Twitter, which enables brain dead headlines like “arrested for a tweet” when what they were really arrested for was incitement to violence.
Just remember, next time you hear that someone was arrested “for a tweet” – no they weren’t.
The UK has always had lines which you can’t step over, hate speech is well defined but the law is contextual, what is defined as hate speech in an online rant may not be considered hate speech in a discussion between academics
Technically speaking, yes. Every successful and democratic country censors its citizens, because prohibiting distribution of child pornography, usage of hate speech, and spreading misinformation all count as censorship. Whether the government overreaches its censorship is another issue that I’m not knowledgeable enough to delve into.
Conservatives don’t want to protect ‘hate speech’ they want to protect their hate speech.
I don’t perceive this censorship. I’ve seen increased claims of it lately, I think it’s an attack on our slightly-left-wing government to go along with all the pro-Reform propaganda. Probably coming from Russia and the US, and any other foreign adversaries.
For the most part, the right is upset that when they say something stupid, it gets lampooned on satirical shows. It’s why the (still) Tory-appointee-run BBC has cut right back on satirical content. Which is dumb because satire goes after those in power and currently Labour are in power.
The main examples I can think of are:
An inexplicably popular far right woman beating thug who was trying to prejudice a trial (this is a stupid thing to do because if the defendent was found guilty, this is an easy appealable circumstance so if you want immigrants convicted and for convictions to stick, don’t do that).
A number of people who incited riots last year through social media and in particular who spread knowingly false information and helped coordinate the activities. Strangely they were prosecuted using the same laws and tactics used against the rioters in 2011 (when Keir Starmer was the DPP) but very few complaints about that from right wingers. Maybe because a lot of those convicted were non-white that time. Also maybe because of the cause – in 2011 the riots were triggered when police shot Mark Duggan, who they allege had been planning an attack and who had allegedly purchased a black market handgun. In 2024 the riots were because a disturbed black man had murdered children and been detained by police. The aforementioned thug from above along with others whipped their supporters into a frenzy, at which point the brave leader ran away to his villa in Spain.
There is a lot of talk about defining the boundary of hate speech because many politicians and media outlets like to walk up to the line and not cross it. Most of the discussion in the media is not really about rights, it’s about maintaining the ability to control those in the population without critical thinking skills. Far too much effort is going into that when really it affects very little about daily life. However the media controls the narrative and this is more important to the media than people starving, losing their homes, losing their healthcare, or dying.