Hate crime has its own brand-new website courtesy of Her Majesty’s Government. On www.hatecrime.campaign.gov.uk we are told how the government has designated some cases of being rude to others as “not just offensive, but an offence”. Specifically, if the motivation for a crime is hostility or prejudice towards someone’s race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or disability it is a “hate crime”.
Hate crime laws are not new, in fact, some version of hate crime legislation has been around in the UK since the mid-80ies. But the website launch is part of a drive to hammer home what is one of the key political missions for Theresa May’s Conservative government. The aim is to help British citizens become better people by making them “understand that it is not right to target individuals based on their identity.” Civil society is simply not up to the task of streamlining the population into a politically correct uniform mass, so the government has taken it upon itself to force change upon the people.
According to the government:
“A hate crime can include verbal abuse, intimidation, threats, harassment, assault and damage to property.”
Apart from “verbal abuse”, these are acts which constitute crimes in most modern criminal codes, so what is different here isn’t really the definition of criminal acts but rather that the motivation can be an aggravating circumstance. If I punch you because you are a woman or a homosexual it is simply worse than if I punch you for no reason at all.
The government doesn’t stop at treating motivation as criminal aggravation, however. Even if no crime has occurred, the public is encouraged to report non-PC behaviour to the police, by way of a handy invention: the “hate incident”.
“A hate incident is behaviour which isn’t a crime but which is perceived by the victim, or anybody else, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on the 5 protected characteristics.”
The idea here is that even though what the perpetrator has done may not be against the law, their reasons for doing it could be, so happily it may be possible for the police to charge them with an offence anyway. This is how things escalate to where people are landed in front of a judge for things they have said or posted online, simply because someone was offended. It is also important to note that the target of the action doesn’t have to be offended, it is enough that an uninvolved bystander gets triggered by an offensive word. That way a few social justice zealots can land a lot of people with a penchant for edgy humour in trouble with the police – just ask Count Dankula.
The threat of being charged with a hate crime is set to change the way we interact with each other, by injecting fear of offence into our words and actions. Think before you speak, or you may get in trouble with the law. Police forces up and down the country are devoting significant resources to the task of dealing with “hate”, and a heavy advertising campaign accompany the launch of the government’s new website, which is simply a guide to what aspects of the right to free speech are no longer applicable to British citizens. What the government has forgotten is that free speech is only free if it is unqualified.