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Comment by bertylicious | Hacker News Reader

You forgot to add a source for your claim that protestors called for the death of Rowling.

That isn't the part of the argument that needs a source - pretty much everyone who is anyone in the public sphere seems to have death threats made against them and threats of extreme violence are actually pretty common at protests. Guillotines at protests are a reasonably common fixture for example [0]. That is the reason the standard needs to be someone actually doing something before the police get involved - people say all sorts of threatening things in political contexts. It's pretty scary but it is better to tolerate it and let people get their emotions out into the open. They generally don't mean it.

[X] has has been subject to death threats at a protest is a pretty safe blind claim. Particularly for politicians, public figures, rich people, identifiable races and political groupings. Some yobbo will write something stupid on a placard and wave it around sooner or later.

[0] I searched for "guillotines at political protests" as a sanity check and straight away saw a "decapitate TERFs" placard. https://news.sky.com/story/scottish-politicians-and-jk-rowli...

Maybe so, but it's still important to callenge okeuro49's claims. Extremist takes like that give off an air of believability despite being unsubstantiated. Relying solely on the common sense of the readership leads to situations where extremist views simply drown out the rest. It should not be seen as acceptable to present a wilfully distorted view of the facts.

JK Rowling is famous, wealthy, a public figure and female. I guarantee you she has received death threats and the police have shrugged it off as not a credible problem.

Whether they are public or not is more of an academic detail, but given the level of hostility aimed at her it is a pretty safe bet that someone has somewhere whether or not it was reported on the internet. If someone wants to die on the hill of every claim being cited then fair enough, at least it is a principled hill. But this is like asking for a cite that US political debate got heated. Rowling has genuine anti-fans out there, I've seen totally spontaneous wild hate sessions break out against her in my wanderings through the internet. It'll have spilled out into real-world protest somewhere.

The original claim was that people were carrying placards at a recent protest in London calling for the death of JK Rowling. It’s not obvious that this has in fact happened, and it’s reasonable to ask for evidence of it.

Let me google that for you: https://celebrity.nine.com.au/latest/jk-rowling-slams-transg...

I'm just saying, I didn't even check before this comment. And who knew? bunch of death threats targeting Rowling with activists trying to make sure everyone can find her in meatspace in case the threat makes her quieten down. "Did she receive death threats" is really not the part of this to try and question. And if you want to make a point about did someone do it while at a protest - I mean yeah. Yeah they did. Maybe nobody bothered to record it, because that sort of thing is routine and boring.

If someone wants to attack the police response part that I have no idea about. Maybe they did respond and it was exemplary - that is the sort of thing that does need a source. But the death threats part is just another year as a public figure. There are a lot of death threats out there. And it'd spill over to placards.

EDIT And it turned out to be remarkably easy to find a citation, note the "decapitate TERFs" link 2 comments up. As expected. It's easy to tune out because in practice calling for the death of someone at a protest is in practice a pretty minor thing to do. Which TERFs do they want to decapitate if not Rowling? Is there fine print on the back of the sign that exempts her? Its Sky News so I I'll admit that is possible.

> if you want to make a point about did someone do it while at a protest

You make it sound pedantic. When drawing a parallel with the case of Lucy Connolly, the point is whether the behaviour incites hatred or violence.

Ok, so lots of sources that don’t show what was originally claimed (i.e. someone holding a placard at a recent protest in London calling for the death of JK Rowling).

I don’t know why it irks you so much that people would fact check this particular claim. I agree that it’s not central to the original poster’s overall point, but it’s not ok to invent facts just because your argument could probably get by without them.

https://x.com/helenlewis/status/1913857239691006057

Some photos of the placards, including "Bring back witch burning ... JK" and "The only good TERF is a ____ one" with an image of a person being executed by hanging.

The TERF one was posted earlier but obviously doesn’t mention JK Rowling. As to the other example, thanks for posting a source rather than just expressing annoyance that anyone would be asking for one. I think it takes some Yogi-level stretching to reach the conclusion that the person holding the JK placard is “calling for the death of JK Rowling”, but it’s at least in the right ballpark.

You are factually accurate. They probably just meant a warning immolation.

I expect the holder of that witch-burning placard is very much aware that "JK" will be taken to mean "JK Rowling". It's no coincidence.

That so many of these activists are holding signs which advocate the torture and murder of women who disagree with them says everything about their movement.

Oh sure I agree that JK refers to JK Rowling. I just mean that the sign is probably an ironic reference to The Witch Trials of JK Rowling rather than an actual proposal to burn JK Rowling at the stake. It’s in extremely bad taste and I don’t endorse it. However, I personally don’t regard it as a case of someone advocating for JK Rowling to be killed.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/22/trans-activists-...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14638683/Police-inv...

I haven't seen a single example of someone calling for death of JK Rowling specifically in any of those?

The only references to her I see is a sign saying "go shit on a pile of Harry Potter books" and people chanting "fuck JK Rowling".

It's an example of police ignoring death threats. It references Harry Potter, and JK Rowling is the most common target of the "TERF" epithet. In any case, it supports the claim that the UK police selectively enforce speech laws.

The original post said that people had placards “calling for the death of JK Rowling”. It may be that the poster’s overall point does not rely on this specific factual claim. But don’t try to muddy the waters around this: it’s a straightforward factual claim and people are right to ask if it can be sourced. So far it has not been.

If there was a protest where people had signs that said “death to <slur>” while screaming “fuck <member of group targeted by slur>”, and calls were made to defecate on that person’s art, would you say death threats were made about that person? Please take a moment to substitute various groups and people.

The legal system does not operate according to blanket statements. Police make a judgement of whether the death threat is credible. This depends on how specific the threat is and whether it occurs in the context of likely violence.

Ah so nobody called for the death of JK Rowling, but terfs in general, which she happens to be? A death threat by nonintrinsic affiliation if you will? Seems pretty stupid if you ask me.

Perhaps she could not make it her whole identity so that when people say "death to this specific type of bigotry", random people on the internet don't immediately make the logical leap to think people wish for her death specifically?

Hate speech laws are a very convenient tool for an authoritarian regime as their application is totally subjective. You could argue that saying "death to terfs" would mean only to end an ideology, but "death to Islam" would send you in prison as you are threatening muslims. In general, it's the same thing, but depending on the prevailing ideology, Police and courts can apply it selectively.

No, it's not the same thing at all, the same way saying "death to nazis" and "death to Germans" isn't the same thing. Being Muslim or a German is something you're generally born into because that's what your parents are, while the other two is something you actively choose to be a part of your identity as a full-grown adult.

A random dude you meet named Ahmed doesn't automatically translate into "he hates all non-Muslims", the same way a random dude named Hans doesn't automatically translate into "he hates all Jews".

On the other hand, openly affiliating yourself with terfs or nazis does automatically translate into you wanting some marginalised community to vanish or at the very least to make their existence more difficult than yours.

Following your thinking, given that no one is born muslim (it's a religion, apostasy exists), it's ok to say "death to muslims", just as it is ok to say "death to terfs"? If you tell me that the muslim religion isn't discriminatory, I'd like you to do some wikipedia reading about it first. You can start with the status of women, for instance.

The thumbnail might do in case you don’t want to watch the YT video :

https://youtu.be/8LO0I8v8EvE?si=y6numFgiqCYd-eLe

The placard carried by the individual* said “bring back witch burning… JK”.

* I don’t see calling for such a thing as a typical female trait, but then again these protestors did also desecrate a Suffragette memorial, so I expect their ideas are a little confused.

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