The great Hate Crime Hoax - Douglas Murray

[CadburysTastesVileNow]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7617669/The-great-hate-crime-HOAX.html

(Mail link - but they have commissioned the article)

I've seen that logic elsewhere - that (in the case of Stuart Waiton's writing ) racism was reportedly on the increase but what is, in fact, increasing is people's keenness to characterize normal behaviour as racist.

Eg shouting racial slurs at a footballer.

I work with people of religious and ethnic minorities and people I work with will tell me they perceive an increase in people who seem to feel comfortable with making racist or intolerant comments towards them.

The people I work with are generally not keen at all to report this to the police.

So if anything there's more harassment happening than is currently reported.

However this article conflates hate incidents (or perceived hate incidents) like the 'you can't be in my porn because you have an appendage usually associated with men' incident mentioned, with actual hate crime.

I'm not sure if the law conflates these in England and Wales. Apologies if it does

A hate crime is behaviour amounting to criminal conduct which has a hate element. Eg assault or battery or vandalism where the motive is clearly unpleasant sentiment against a group

I think it's important to be able to record that but I think you can do that without policing thought or speech.

You can now use apps to report your hate crimes.

I would say I think things are getting worse across the board. More intolerant. I think identity politics doesn't help actually

Recognising structural oppression = good

Endorsing the idea you have a right not to be offended = bad

Imo anyway

I don't really think the concept of 'hate crimes' is useful.

I do think there is a place for recording the motivations behind crimes (actual crimes not incidents) so if there is an increase in homophobic or racially motivated assaults for example, we are in a position to address that but the measurement needs to be objective, not 'in the eyes of the beholder'.

Motivation has always mattered in criminal justice so I don't want to see the baby thrown out with the bath water, but public trust also matters and it has got to a point where vast swathes of the public simply don't believe these figures are objectively true. That's a dangerous place to be in and of itself.

There was critical coverage of tellmama a few years ago in that regard.
The idea was they were possibly inflating or misrepresenting hate crime reported to them.

www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/05/islamophobic-hate-crime-getting-worse

This seems like relatively balanced coverage of the discussion at the time.

It's interesting to me to see how the police were playing things down, whereas now 6 years on with a different group of victims in mind, the police are really quite impassioned to the point they could be accused of abandoning rational thought. Just a bit too credulous

There shouldn't even be a crime category called 'hate crime'. It's emotive rather than functional. The nature of the crime should be what counts, not the type of person against whom it is committed.

The boundaries of what constitute a hate crime are ever widening, hence the increase in the number of supposed incidents.

It is an interesting article that highlights some of the problems with the whole concept.

Everything from the firebombing of a mosque (a serious crime that could but thankfully didn't leave dozens dead) to online abuse is lumped together and counted as equal in terms of counting numbers of 'hate crimes and incidents'.

There is also a similar conflation of disliking an ideology, Islam in this case, with 'hating' the people who adhere to it that we see with so called 'transphobia'. For the record I strongly dislike Islam, I strongly dislike all religions, that doesn't mean I hate muslims any more than I hate my Catholic best friend. I just don't agree with these ideologies.

I think some crimes can be committed online.
If you have reason to believe the person could act on eg a death threat, I think that is a crime AFAIK.

It could potentially cause as much alarm as a fire bomb

Not any damage to property or life and limb but distress all the same.

Some of the things said to Diane Abbott are horrendous.

However me saying on here to anonymous user names 'I think x thing about y people' isn't targeted at anyone who would have any reason to believe I would actually harm them.

Opinions aren't harmful in and of themselves.

I don't think so anyway.

@SuperLoudPoppingAction I may have misunderstood your post, but are you using “shouting racial slurs at a footballer” as a normal behaviour that people characterise as racist? Because that’s how your posts reads. It very much is NOT a normal behaviour and should not be tolerated.

Um no. Was quoting an article by Stuart waiton.
Was talking about the logic in the article linked by op - minimizing the seriousness of actual racism by saying if it was serious people would have reported it just as much in the past.

I will link - give me a sec - my day job is training on these kinds of issues and helping people to understand how to report hate crime.
And I take language as seriously as physical violence.

www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/dundee/1003805/racism-claims-as-abertay-lecturer-and-brexit-party-candidate-says-black-footballers-should-ignore-abuse/

In general I think football in particular is a sphere in which there has been a great deal of work done to challenge that kind of abuse.

Can you see the bit where he's minimizing it though? In a similar vein to the article linked in the op.

I mean he does it so he gets invited back to say another controversial thing presumably. Which is possibly a way of supplementing his income.

I think it serves to normalize verbal abuse though and while I'm generally in favour of academic freedom, I don't think it's a helpful thing for a lecturer to say.

SuperLoudPoppingAction

I'm not saying online abuse can't cross the boundary into criminal activity but when recording 'hate crimes and incidents' depends purely on the individuals perception it is impossible to know whether online abuse amounts to death threats alongside clear indications of knowing who you are and where you live or whether it amounts to comments along the lines of 'Mohammed was a paedophile' which many find offensive but are not in my view criminal in any way.

This conflation of actual crimes with 'saying things I take offense to' is why the general public have no confidence in hate crime figures. People have seen far too many cases where the hate is nothing more than 'opinion I disagree with'.

I think I broadly agree.

I do think perception has a part to play

I got told I didn't look like a lesbian last week. I would not trust the person who said it to be able to judge whether harassment or assault I experienced was based on my being a lesbian.

I supported a woman who had Pakistani and Scottish heritage. She reported a crime with a hate element to the police and was told she 'looked white'. She had been at work with a name badge with a name like for eg Aisha or Safa that most people would not associate with a white Scottish person. She judged from that and the language used by the perpetrator that it had a hate element.
I believe her tbh.

There's something about being from a mainstream group that can mean you are a bit insensitive to these kinds of observations from a marginalized group.

Which is why I think perception should play a part.

But, again, I think that applies to actual crimes rather than people being offended by an opinion. Or a boundary.

Accusations of hate crime can also be used to deflect from individual behaviour. Remember the response of the NSPCC when rubber wanking man's behaviour was widely condemned. All the complainers were branded homophobic, it neatly took away from rubber man's behaviour.
Also same org different person. Those that were critical of Monroe's drive to get children to contact Monroe in secret. All the criticism was condemned as transphobic.
This definitely doesn't mean that I think all hate crimes are so called hate crimes. It's just the definition can be used with bad intentions

What I would find interesting is whether the police questioned anyone who had objected to Mr Latex.
Whether it was actually recorded as a hate incident or whether it was members of the public (including the nspcc spokesperson ) talking nonsense that didnt go anywhere.

www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/should-violence-against-women-in-uk-be-seen-as-hate-crime/

Don't know if there are any MNers around who went to feminism in London 2010.
This summarizes one of the panels and has some quite good pros and cons (and is also by Julia Long)

I don't think it was recorded as a hate incident as I haven't seen any suggestion it was reported to the police by either those objecting to rubber fetish wanking man or those defending him.

Another problem I have with the whole concept thinking about it is linking hate crimes only to a specific group of characteristics, not even all the protected characteristics of the Equality Act, but more narrowly.

If a particular group are targeted but don't fall into one of these categories we are not keeping a record of motivation that would allow us to address the issue, which in my view we should be. I am just as concerned if people are being victimised for being goths, being old, speaking with an Irish accent, supporting the wrong football team or whatever as I am if they are being victimised for being black or gay.

Of course, he's a (very successful) right wing polemicist. but the whole question of crimes committed versus crimes reported is a hoary old social science chestnut. There's always a genuine gap, that waxes and wanes according to various factors. He's just spinning it for his own purposes.