Two men jailed for social media posts that stirred up far-right violence | Hacker News Reader

Two men jailed for social media posts that stirred up far-right violence

theguardian.com

17 pointsbloopernova14 comments

For context, here are the Crown Prosecution Service press releases for the two convictions:

https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/man-convicted-intending-stir... https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/man-convicted-intending-stir...

And here is the law setting up out the offense for which they were convicted:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/part/III

Note that although this law was enacted in 1986, it is a consolidation of earlier offenses that ultimately date back to the 1960s.

Wow, the court system moves fast in the UK.

On the other hand, this dude made it easy for it to do so:

> Kay used his own name and profile picture on his account, while advising others on “staying anon” and saying he had “watched enough CSI programmes” and would “categorically not be arrested”. He also tagged Northamptonshire police force in one of his posts.

> Wow, the court system moves fast in the UK.

According to this article: "...is not because they are being given priority, but because more resources have been made available to deal with them."

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/uk-riots-prison-sentences-latest-1...

Part of the strategy is to reduce further distrubances by making real the consequences.

UK: "People who threw stones, hurled racist abuse and pushed a burning wheelie bin at police also sent to prison"

(note, this quote is about other people who were sent to prison, not the instigators mentioned in the title)

These two were jailed for posts. Others were jailed for your quote above. That quote above is not about these two. So they sent these guys in for online threats and taunts. If we took that approach in the US, 1/10 of twitter/X would be in jail. or at least a large portion of students on either side of the middle eastern conflict.

This was a clear-cut case of inciting imminent lawless action (setting fire to hotels), not just online taunts. It would be just as illegal in the US.

If this was the totality of the tweets: https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/crime/northampton-ma... then I think that would be protected speech in the US. There is no specific incitement or threat. In fact the first tweet seems to be along the line of: "if you did criminal act X then I would not care". There is also a reference to another tweet where it is claimed he says it was 100% the plan. Maybe this along with the original tweet would be a problem but its very difficult to make a judgement without seeing all the tweets. But there is a reason why the US has a very high hurdle for incitement because a lot of political speech which should not be considered incitement could be by a bad faith interpreter. For example people were making tweets saying 'Biden should order Seal team 6 to kill Trump'. If you applied your same logic purely on incitement grounds then surely these people should be criminally convicted as well. However, in this particular UK case the conviction doesn't seem to be based on incitement to a crime but rather inciting racial hatred was a component. I think in US law you might get tougher penalties for inciting criminal actions that involve racial hatred but it's not a crime in itself. The CPS seem to be claiming he was found guilty of "publishing material intending to stir up racial hatred".

> people were making tweets saying 'Biden should order Seal team 6 to kill Trump'

Such tweets were not "likely" to produce imminent lawless action, or even plausibly intended to do so. That's ultimately why they're regarded as protected speech. The case of someone inciting people to set hotels on fire in an ongoing riot is going to be quite different.

Good point, I'll change that comment.

The criteria in the US is: "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action"[1]

It seems clear that the posts would be unlawful even in the US.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

I think you'd have trouble prosecuting this in the US. Lots of people say awful things on X/Twitter. Mostly they are outbursts, or seeking some form of social credit. Just look at what people say about political candidates in the US. If you say something totally outrageous toward a political candidate, you may get a visit from the SS, but rarely, rarely, unless they have materiel or other immediate intent are they prosecuted/jailed. IIRC, Greenday, a few days after an attempted assassination on a presidential candidate held out a mask acting as a severed head. Previous to that we had comedians with severed heads of prominent politicians.

I think we're pretty liberal about these things in the US.

Remember the BLM riots where they set fire to automobiles and government buildings, etc? Those were actual acts of violence but few were jailed.

> Lots of people say awful things on X/Twitter.

The standard in the U.S. is not just saying something "awful" or "outrageous" in some vague and subjective sense, it's issuing a true threat or incitement of imminent lawless action. Ultimately that's going to be quite rare in the U.S. - perhaps precisely because other sorts of rude "outbursts" are legally okay, and because Twitter/X will issue bans for threatening or inciting violence. In the UK, the line is a lot less clear than that and people have been heavily sanctioned even for merely "offensive" online speech.

Supposedly they want to extradite Americans too. I doubt that's going anywhere.

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