Freedom of Speech - Man convicted for telling 'offensive' joke

[Winewinewinegin]

Ricky Gervais just tweeted it.

Apparently in Scotland. More on his twitter feed.

WTF? Seriously concerning on many levels.

Anyone know anything about this?

I just posted about this in the Britain First and Free Speech thread:

SunsetBeetch

So today a twitter and YouTube 'personality' "Count Dunkula" has been convicted for posting a 'grossly offensive' video. I'm on the fence with this one. It IS offensive. However, I note that David Baddiel has 'defended his right to be offensive'.

uk.news.yahoo.com/youtube-comedian-count-dankula-guilty-hate-speech-nazi-dog-video-145920581.html

Not sure of the facts here. According to twitter, this person had about 8 followers on you tube, and the complaint was made by someone in the police diversity department.

Is this true? Who brought the conviction? Why?

Why are people not chasing after people making the kind of comments inciting violence and intimidating women for that type of speech? There have been physical and intimidating incidents towards women from these groups.

What was the joke? Why this guy? What law did he break (Scottish I believe)?

I thought the point of the joke was to mock Nazis? What about it made it a convictable offense?

Just looked and he has 123k subscribers on YouTube.

He wanted to turn his girlfriend's pug into 'the least cute thing' he could think.of, so he taught it to do the nazi salute and filmed it.

The details on the charges are a bit vague at present. Something under the electronic communications act?

Outside court, Meechan said: “There has been a huge miscarriage of justice.

“I think it’s a very, very dark day in regards to freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

“The thing that was most worrying is that one of the primary things in any action that is to be considered is things like context and intent, and today context and intent were completely disregarded.

“For the system to actually disregard such things as that means that your actions no longer matter, they decide what your context and intent is.

“For any comedians in Britain, I would be very worried about making jokes in future because your context and intent behind them apparently don’t matter anymore."

I think the followers may have come after he was charged. The case brought publicity and millions of views I think? But not 100% sure.

I've just seen the video and I'm pretty shocked.

Not only has he taught the dog to salute but the command is "something Jews" (I'm deaf. Can't quite hear the something)

Considering the atrocities of the holocaust, I think they should clamp down on crap like this. Free speech is all well and good but not when it mocks stuff like this

"He wanted to turn his girlfriend's pug into 'the least cute thing' he could think.of, so he taught it to do the nazi salute and filmed it."

If this is true, this is absolute nonsense. Even in Germany jokes are made about this now.

So should all the women on gender critical threads be prosecuted, because we offend trans activists, soubriquet?

I think that we needs to say (collectively) that there are things which are not socially acceptable but "unacceptable" does not = illegal.

In general.

God no. But trans activists aren't being rounded up, tortured, gassed and practically deprived of their rights as human beings.

In fact they are denying people rights instead especially gay people in the fact they "must be trans not gay"

I agree there SpringHen

But they have a massive victim complex, Soubriquet and can twist anything to make them look like victims.

Doesn't make them victims

Comparing trans people to Jewish is absurd. I might be a bit more sensitive on the subject as the moment as I have just watched a documentary on it all so my views could be clouded a little but I still don't think it's acceptable

Maybe we should bring back etiquette.
That would separate "bad form" from the law.

It is just my opinion though I must say

But I don't like it when people joke about things like the twin towers and the Boxing Day tsunami.

My dad and his friends were terrible for jokes about stuff like this, knew it upset and annoyed me and delighted in telling jokes.

He wasn’t convicted for being offensive, he was convicted for inciting racial hatred. Bevause he said gas the Jews 23 times and published it for his young and impressionable fans to see. That incites and encourages them to similarly say gas the Jews, to consider antisemitism funny and to use antisemitic language.

Having personally witnessed someone yelling gas the k*kes (at the group I was in) I am pretty happy that this is recognised for how it legitimises harassment and antisemitism such as that. The holocaust is never a joke, but joking about the Holocaust should not nebesssrily be a crime - however the repetition, the emphasising of the idea that antisemitic language is funny in front of a young audience, the fact it was public and promoted are why it incited hatred.

My DBro jokes when he's nervous/sad/scared.

He's terrible at a funeral or in a crisis. If he was in a major catastrophy he would be the first one with the too soon inappropriate jokes cause thats how he deals with stuff.

He's no crimimal though.

To add, religion and ethnicity are protected categories, as is gender identity. However unless you’re inciting hatred and violence on that basis you will not be convicted. If you say ‘gas the [insert slur against transgender people]’ that would be potentially criminal however, but saying anything critical or anything which isn’t encouraging persecution and violence isn’t.

Soubriquet - did you know that a woman has been questioned under police caution - and may be prosecuted- simply for stating a fact about Susie Green (founder of Mermaids) - a fact that SH has frequently mentioned herself?

Free speech "unless it's offensive" is not free speech, because almost anything can offend someone. There needs to be a very strong presumption in favour of free speech, unless someone will genuinely be harmed by it. The example always used in the US is that you have free speech, but you can't shout 'Fire!' in a crowded theatre (unless there actually is one,obvs ) and cause a stampede.

Thats all well and good until people decide that deadnaming etc = inciting violence

See no violence actually needs to occur or nearly occur which is where it gets into dodgy territory

I definitely don't approve of the joke. I am strongly against anti-semitism, and this is one of the reasons I won't be voting labour any time soon.

I am however nervous of a precedent being set where law convicts someone for an (offensive) joke or statement that someone else considers offensive but hasn't been shown to link to actual acts in any way. Like PP have said, TRAs will and do argue that 'TERFs' criticising them contributes to rape and violence against them. That TERFs are worse than Nazis.

Why has this person been charged for this joke? What is the wider context? Why not go after, say, many of the people actually suggesting that violence against women is 'self defence' if you agree with them that is all over twitter and clearly not meant as a joke?

Free speech ‘unless it is offensive’ is not free speech.

This ‘joke’ was very offensive and I think he’s a twat, but him getting taken to court for saying it makes me go cold all over.

What is happening?!

I'm not saying trans people are anything like jewish people, Soubriquet it was you that made the comparison. I'm saying that TRAs are very good at painting themselves as victims (falsely, in a lot of cases) and what's to stop them calling the police on a few terfs?

I've just watched and the guy's more stupid than anything and the video gets boring very quickly (but I find that with most youtube videos, there's a lot of inane rubbish out there) Completely OTT criminalising it though