> They aren’t being arrested for being anti-monarchy though.
> They are being arrested for being rude about it.
Got it. Arrested for poor taste.
Hard to see the justification for that in a democracy?
> They are being arrested for being rude about it.
Got it. Arrested for poor taste.
Hard to see the justification for that in a democracy?
People were arrested at Margaret Thatchers funeral for the same thing.
It’s not rocket science. You’re not allowed to do that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church#Laws_l...
Because that case doesn't strike down the state laws preventing protests in close proximity. It just ruled that the private citizen can't get lots of money for emotional distress caused by a protest.
Even in the US I would think protesting a funeral to be in extremely poor taste, no matter the target. What’s that Latin phrase about the recently dead?
Wait, what? Pretty sure dogs don't have the anatomical capability to do a nazi salute. At best they can just lift a leg up, but is that really a nazi salute?
Father Ted is Irish as in Republic of Ireland as in not UKoGB - we share a very, very strange border. Having said that, Father Ted was turned down by RTE for being too Irish and was eventually financed by the BBC! Thankfully it eventually aired because it is absolutely belting.
The cast and creators were Irish though.
If that falls under the rule you're describing, doesn't that render it impossible to protest a ceremony, as long as it happens after a funeral? It seems you're defining away the protest of hereditary succession as unacceptably rude?
The coronation is months away, he was protesting the ascension at the Queen's funeral procession. That does not avoid disparagement of the Queen.
I certainly don't think he should be arrested but he's clearly boneheaded. He'll have plenty of time to protest both the ascension and the coronation, of someone who is a much softer target that the Queen, especially considering she's just died.
PR own goal if ever there was one. Even Extinction Rebellion have had the good sense to postpone their demos. Is there anyone but the Western Baptist Church who thinks it's a good idea to protest at funerals?
They say if you support free speech you'll end up defending vile people, and it's true, he shouldn't be arrested, he should be allowed to say what he said, but he is vile and it was stupid.
Symon Hill was arrested for protesting at the regional proclamation in Oxford: https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/21275817.photo-gallery-pro...
Where did you get the impression that this was a funeral procession?
Which means it was still not a coronation, it also wasn't a funeral procession, I still think he's boneheaded but not as much as before or nearly as much as the ones in Edinburgh, and none of them should've been arrested (maybe perhaps the one that shouted at Prince Andrew, but definitely not the others).
"(1) A person is guilty of an offence if he/she:
(a) uses threatening (or abusive) words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or
(b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening (or abusive)"
It is worth noting that a long-running tradition in the UK is that if a policeman disagrees with a piece of legislation and the opportunity arises to challenge it favourably in court, he arrests somebody under the legislation in question in what may be favourable but reasonable circumstances (favourable to the defendant) in order to circumscribe the limitations of the act in question. As a consequence, in many ways, I therefore think that this may also be a challenge by police officers to the validity of the conservative government's latest legislation that aims to ban "disruptive" protests, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which was largely modified to deal with the (IMO effective) protests of the Insulate Britain campaign who recently brought major motorways to a crawl. It is a deeply divisive and very authoritarian bill, and would cover this situation. Specifically, it provides that:
"[...] police forces are allowed to place restrictions on protests they believe would otherwise constitute an existing offence of public nuisance, including imposing starting and finishing times and noise limits, and be able to consider actions by one individual as protests under provisions of the Act. Protestors disobeying such instructions from the police may be committing a criminal offence."
As recognised by the police, positing the possibility of transitioning to a republic (from a constitutional monarchy) is almost certainly a clear-cut case of a legitimate piece of protest, and so if someone _did_ protest accordingly _without_ being rude and disruptive I think this would be a perfect opportunity for the courts to throw out the charge.
Edit: Further bits of fun law – "public nuisance" is both a tort and a very old legal concept, recommended effectively for removal and updating from the criminal statutes by the Law Commission in 2015 [2]. It is described quite formally in many words (c.f. [2]) but more usefully defined by the fact that it
typically consists either of an environmental nuisance, such as carrying on
works producing excessive noise or smells, or of offensive or dangerous behaviour
in public, such as noisy parties and hanging from bridges.
It also includes obstructing the public highway, though now this is also a statutory offence.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police,_Crime,_Sentencing_and_...
[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Protests should be allowed, but it's not an absolute god given right - if you're being a dick, destroying public property, advocating violence or hate - then no, you shouldn't be allowed to protest. I know in America you let even neo nazis march your streets and boast how that's "freedom" but that's not freedom - that's blindly following certain ideology(freedom to do anything AT ALL costs) without any consideration as to what that does to your society.
> Protests should be allowed
They are.
> destroying public property
Is illegal and you can be arrested for it.
> advocating violence or hate
Is illegal and you can be arrested for it.
You just can’t be arrested for “being rude”. You have to commit a crime.
Protesting does not mean you’re immune to prosecution for non-free-speech crimes. What happened with the BLM riots was simply governments deciding, for one reason or another, not to stop the crimes being committed.
> Is illegal and you can be arrested for it.
This is untrue. Immediate, direct, actionable threats are illegal, saying "I/we/you need to go hunt down and murder X now" can be construed as an actionable threat.
Extolling the virtues of murder and opining about how nice it would be if someone finally hunted down and killed X is legal free speech.
You can talk about how X needs to die all you want, but if you start making immediate, direct, actionable threats towards X, that crosses territory from free speech to illegal threats.
Various circuit courts have different tests for what constitutes a true threat versus legal free speech, some of which can be found here[1].
For example, here's the 2nd Circuit's opinion:
> a true threat is “on its face and in the circumstances in which it is made is so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate, and specific as to the person threatened, as to convey a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution.”
[1] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1025/true-threats
I generally like the right to protest, but i dont want 100% free for all.
What happens when the other side starts shooting at you? Do you think the guns still help you safely protest. For that matter, what use is a gun if someone from behind cover throws a molotov at your face?
The fact that all state power eventually comes down to men with guns.
>What happens when the other side starts shooting at you? Do you think the guns still help you safely protest.
You either get out of there or you shoot back, that's really not a hard question. And to your second question yes, especially if the other side is shooting or threatening to shoot. Safer if you have guns as well than only they have guns. And just look at Kyle Rittenhouse, he would have been dead if he hadn't been armed. The third person he shot straight up said that he would have shot Kyle if Kyle hadn't vaporized his bicep first.
>For that matter, what use is a gun if someone from behind cover throws a molotov at your face?
Once again it makes you safer, because they can't risk throwing molotovs at you from out in the open. Your being armed helps you control when and from where they could possibly attack you with molotovs or whatever.
My personal experience of backpacking around the world was replete with lectures from 25-year-old European women about the US's issues. They were of such poor quality that I mostly just smiled and shrugged it off, knowing that it'd be a waste of my vacation to try and explain to them the nuances of cultural difference. But I had the delightful catharsis of schooling a particularly-obnoxious British girl on her country's role as the primary contender for history's greatest supervillain (unsurprisingly, her grasp of history and politics was.... poor).
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voti...
Or how about how everyone knows the political affiliations of supreme court judges? In a normal country judges are apolitical.
There's a bunch of reasons why the US is considered a flawed democracy, with the score going down every year, in the Democracy Index.
If shitting in the street were legal would you complain when people passed a law to stop your bad behaviour?
This isn't a case of protestors being repeatedly ignored - the public discussion about the monarchy is unfolding in most media outlets right now and other forms of protest are still quite available.
Additionally, while I think this is extremely unhealthy mentally, there was a not insignificant proportion of Britain that felt they had a personal relationship with the queen even if they never met her for tea.
But in fairness to the police there seems to be a mass fervour at the moment and they may actually be doing the hecklers a service by taking them away for their own safety...
The word hurling in the context of insults or obscenities means vocalizing them in a very audible fashion. The article states that the woman at St Giles was not audibly protesting but rather holding a sign. Given that she was quietly expressing her opinion, tasteful or not, it seems she could have been quietly removed without being arrested.
>"In widely seen photos, a woman holding a sign reading "Abolish monarchy" and "F*** imperialism" was arrested on Sunday at St. Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh, where the queen's body is to lie at rest until Tuesday.
Further the object of their protest was the institution and neither the mourners or the deceased.
The other two people mentioned in the article who were vocal, were outside on public streets and not in a Church. The article states they were near parade barricades. Again the object of their protest was the institution and it was being done on public streets. Surely you are allowed to express your discontent about an institution on a public street. That's not rocket science.
>"And in London, a woman was led away by four uniformed officers on Monday after holding up a sign reading "Not my king" — which has become a trending hashtag — near Westminster Hall."
Again we have a woman who was holding up a sign on a public street "near Westminster Hall."
These tired strawmen need to stop. Anti-royalists are being arrested for expressing anti-royal views in inconvenient places, not "hurling obscenities at a funeral".
Is there some democracy somewhere which doesn't have a public nuisance/breaching the peace style law?
It is only by convention that he doesn't, that will only last until you get a bad king/queen and thr right opportunity.
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law
Just get that fixed as well, that's not a great thing to have around.
Expressing your belief is an action. Speaking, writing, etc. are all actions. Belief without action doesn't exist
And yet at the same time one of the biggest movies in the cinema was a Nazi spoof comedy with jokes in far poorer taste. But the movie producers have money.
The rules are different for regular plebs, that's as simple as that. And the lesson is that everyone should know their place.
A random guy making a nazi salute for a joke and uploading it on youtube is more like documentary evidence of a crime, not an art form. There is a reason promoting nazi salutes is a crime in most of Europe, and it really doesn't matter he did it as a joke - it's simply not a laughing matter. Yes to American ears it might sound weird - that there is a topic that cannot even be joked about or you risk getting arrested. I don't really have a reply for that, other than the fact that it feels right to me, given the attrocities comitted by Nazis against our people - I think doing a nazi salute publicly(and I count uploading videos on youtube as "public"), even as a joke, is not acceptable at all.
Sure, this is a difference in norms (and law) that I'm intentionally taking for granted, and trying to further understand. If equally-applied, it's a little more comprehensible to me (eg Germany requiring massive game studios to censor Nazi symbolism in WW2 games).
But I have a much stronger revulsion reaction to the idea that the govt should be in the business of deciding whose expression is "actually" art, and inconsistently allowing well-connected creators latitude that nobodies aren't privy to. I don't doubt that there are many people find the Nazi pug funnier than the Father Ted joke (and vice versa); the idea that the latter is uniquely acceptable because a _British govt agency_ decided it was funny is astonishing to me.
Not what happened though.
The really funny thing is that poor pleb is branded a "fascist", while the powerful people who came after him are considered brave and valiant freedom fighters for doing so. I mean it would be funny if it wasn't terrifying and Orwellian.
I don't think anyone has this kind of mindset - at least I certainly don't. Anyone should be arrested for joking with nazi salutes, no matter if they are rich or poor. Not sure why you think that corporations get away with it - is there any corporation out there that uploads "joke" nazi salutes to youtube and gets away with it? If you mean films specifically, then films get approval of the British Film Comission which judges anything submited based on artistic merit. We can disagree with its rulings, but it's not like a corporation has "the right to do whatever it likes" as you put it. Quite the opposite in fact.
>>The really funny thing is that poor pleb is branded a "fascist"
I don't find this funny at all, glorifying nazi imagery(and yes, "joke" nazi salutes achieve exactly that) is no laughing matter.
>>while the powerful people who came after him are considered brave and valiant freedom fighters for doing so
You mean....the police?
I think people here just don't get it - making Nazi salutes even as a joke is not acceptable in European societies. The horrors of WW2 are still too fresh and the pain too great to allow it - we have made these laws to make sure that nazis don't come back, and anything associated with them is banned. You might think "well what sort of harm does a single youtube video do, the guy was clearly joking". And yeah, it's obvious to you and me - but to some, that will be a "funny" thing to repeat. After all, they are only joking, they don't mean it really, it's fine, right? No, it's not, and unfortunately it has to be stomped out as early as possible. Again, I understand that this might sound alien especially to American readers, but I don't have anything else to say on that matter, other that it feels like the right thing to do, given the topic.
Oh I think they do. They won't admit it when you put it like that of course, many probably don't even admit it to themselves because they simultaneously see themselves also as resistance fighters raging against powerful established interests, on behalf of the oppressed.
> I don't find this funny at all,
I wasn't talking about the content of the joke. I think nazi jokes can be pretty hilarious though, especially the ones where they do mock salutes. Perhaps you just have to appreciate a bit of good old British humor to feel that way, though.
> glorifying nazi imagery(and yes, "joke" nazi salutes achieve exactly that) is no laughing matter.
I believe you probably genuinely think a pug doing a salute is glorifying nazis, that nobody else could reasonably disagree, and that society needs to be protected from this and stamping it out by locking up commoners who dare to defy the state edicts.
> You mean....the police?
The police, the prosecutors, the judges, the legislators. Sure.
> I think people here just don't get it - making Nazi salutes even as a joke is not acceptable in European societies.
At least when it comes to the UK, I don't think so. The British are known for doing comedies of the war and nazis almost from the start. They have had a very long tradition of joking about nazis including mocking their salutes, as well as giving their rich and ruling class a double standard about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddWNMSUbcGI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb5zUG9UzFE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWjCkcAmzDc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWIyVRNAxCg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f--KSEkC8Ik
https://www.thenews.com.pk/assets/uploads/updates/2020-10-06...
This one's even a recent German comedy featuring Hitler himself doing a nazi salute!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUZi67BmY_M
So no I think you're wrong, it's revisionist to say that satirizing nazis including and mocking their salutes was some big offensive taboo.
I think the society needs to be protected from trivialization of Nazi gestures and symbology, not from pugs on youtube specifically. I know you are trying to reduce it to absolute absurdity so my argument can be easily dismissed, but I'm sure you can also see how it wouldn't be appropriate to have a short Tik Tok video of someone making a Nazi salute and then saying "it's just a joke, everyone relax". No one got hurt, they only did it for the views, but it still wouldn't be ok - not because we want to live in a society of oppresion and censorship, but because using a nazi salute as a joke in itself without any context(context like in all the examples you posted) is poor taste at best. Can we at least agree on that?
>> it's revisionist to say that satirizing nazis including and mocking their salutes was some big offensive taboo.
I also live in the UK, and I think we are arguing about two separate things. One is mocking nazis in art and media - there you are absolutely correct, there is a history there and it is generally allowed.
What I'm pointing out is that I don't believe European societies accept Nazi salutes as jokes pretty much anywhere outside of art/comedy/standup context. Go to a party in the UK and start marching with your hand raised up straight, if anyone complains say "it's a joke bro" - see how fast you get kicked out. My bet is very very very fast.
That's my entire feeling about this - that a random short YT clip of nazi salutes is the equivalent of that "it's a joke bro" mentality. It's not allowed not because we love oppression, it's not allowed because it trivializes something that has left such deep scars on our societies.
No, I don't agree with anything you said in that paragraph. As I said, the mindset is alien to me. My attitude is not one of subservience to the government and I don't look to the ruling class as my savior, protector, my better, wiser, or even inherently good.
And taste is entirely on the tongue of the beholder.
> I also live in the UK, and I think we are arguing about two separate things.
I don't think so. You said "making Nazi salutes even as a joke is not acceptable in European societies", which is wrong as I provided evidence for. nazi salutes as a joke is in fact acceptable even in Germany -- at least when it is the rich and powerful doing it. If you are revising your position now, don't paint it like we were just arguing past one another.
> What I'm pointing out is that I don't believe European societies accept Nazi salutes as jokes pretty much anywhere outside of art/comedy/standup context.
What you are also pointing out is that you believe it's okay for rich and powerful people and corporations to make said jokes and anoint themselves "deciders" about who may make jokes and who should be punished for making jokes.
Teaching a pug to do nazi salutes is a joke. Really. Handwringing about the raw horrors of the war or the threat of the reich rising again if this is allowed just isn't credible. It's the same fearmongering and denouncements and threats that the powerful have always used to silence the people and justify their oppression.
The nazis did not rise because Germans were permitted to make tasteless jokes. They rose because Germans were able to be convinced that their fellow citizens posed a grave threat to them, and that they needed the government to protect them and save their society by oppressing this menace.
You absolutely do, and spend several paragraphs justifying it, I'm terribly embarrassed on your behalf that I had to read that.
However, the UK is a kingdom in various important ways, and this was the funeral of the head of state and the head of the official state religion.
1. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2006-04-20-060420... - the government didn't directly step in in this case but the protestors were effectively silenced by way to crowds of decent folks with loud motorcycles.
Freedom of speech does not mean you are free to say anything you want wherever you want. I can't just walk into the Oval Office and start hurling obscenities at the President, and attempting to do so is likely to get me shot by the Secret Service.
For trespassing. This example has nothing to do with speech.
> Similar reports emerged Monday, including one case involving a man who was seen being forcibly removed from a parade barrier after shouting at the royal procession leading to the cathedral. He was reportedly heckling Prince Andrew.
This comparison just has nothing to do with speech at all. It’s categorically different. You’d get arrested for breaking into the Oval Office even if you remained silent the whole time.
Private funeral? Ok. State funeral that is essentially a big spectacle? Definitely not.
If that thief gets arrested, is it just because it is poor taste? No.
Same thing with hurling obscenities at a funeral.
If not, why did you respond with this to a question about is it morally right to protest at a funeral?
Is Putin coming?
In case I'm misunderstood, I don't feel strongly either way about the British royalty, but I'm OK with allowing a significant proportion of the population being left alone to get on with what ceremony they want to do, given that they want to do it.
Even more so if the public is the one paying for the funeral in the first place. You're definitely allowed to be rude at a funeral you're footing the bill for.