By David Webb
03/28/2012
Recently in the UK, Fabrice Muamba, a Congolese playing for the Bolton Wanderers professional soccer team, collapsed after a heart attack. He has received medical attention and now looks likely to survive. But the incident has developed into further evidence of Britain’s emerging police state and its determination to suppress even trivial verbal resistance to the abolition of the historic nations of the British Isles through immigration policy.
Get this: A 21 year-old student called Liam Stacey has just been sentenced to prison for 56 days for “inciting racial hatred” — actually just for writing “laughing out loud” [LOL] on a social media website after reading of the collapse of the Congolese player (see Pictured: Student 'troll' who posted 'racially offensive' tweet about Muamba just hours after player suffered heart attack and Liam Stacey gets 56 days in jail for tweeting. When race becomes an issue, all sense goes out of the window, By Ed West, Telegraph, March 27, 2012). Stacey was dragged into further argument on the Internet. But his comments, while intemperate in tone (see video), did not seem to amount to an attempt to incite hatred in others. Additionally, he now seems set to be expelled from his university.
I personally don’t see the need to cheer anyone’s physical collapse. Any of us could suffer unexpected heart seizures. As you get older, you start to realise you are not immortal, and so to sympathise with other people’s health problems. No decent person could therefore be impressed by Twitter comments applauding someone’s ill-health.
On the other hand, it happens all the time — look at American leftists’ recent reaction to Dick Cheney’s heart transplant. Is anyone going to be imprisoned for that?
And, by the same token, in a free society, prosecution for trivial remarks is even more disturbing.
Astoundingly, The U.K. Daily Mail reports
Police forces throughout the UK regularly take action against those who use Twitter to express racially offensive remarks. The practice is so common that none feel the need to issue a public statement indicating it has happened. [Man arrested for making 'racially offensive' Twitter comments following Fabrice Muamba’s collapse, By David Gerges, March 18, 2012]
The background to Stacey’s prosecution: a recent series of prosecutions of English people for racial comments made on public transport, surreptitiously captured by cell phone. This was the case of Emma West, who laid into immigration in a foul-mouthed rant on the London Underground.
Stacey laid himself open to prosecution by publishing his comments on Twitter — but the wider reality is that English people are having to censor themselves in case sly individuals choose to capture their comments and post them on the Internet, thereby provoking a campaign for their prosecution.
It is quite clear that members of the ethnic minorities in Britain have greater latitude for freedom of speech. One man of South Asian origin, Azar Ahmed, is currently being prosecuted for celebrating the death of British soldiers in Afghanistan in a Facebook posting (Pictured: Teenager accused of making 'grossly offensive' comments on Facebook about six hero soldiers killed in Afghanistan bomb attack, Daily Mail, March 20, 2012)
But unsurprisingly, the racially-aggravated public order charge against Ahmed has been dropped. He is now merely charged with making a “grossly offensive” post — the contents of which can be viewed here.
I predict Ahmed will be treated more leniently than Stacey — just as South Asian demonstrators who burnt poppies at an Armistice Day rally while calling for British soldiers to “burn in hell” were fined only £50 (Man guilty of burning poppies at Armistice Day protest, BBC, March 7, 2011).
The multicultural invasion inevitably leads to friction and uncharitable comments. But these comments must be seen as an inchoate reaction to Britons’ dispossession.
“Inchoate” is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “imperfectly formed or formulated”. Racially offensive postings are not the most productive kind of reaction to mass immigration. Nevertheless, they are a reaction to immigration and the official promotion of multiculturalism.
Of course, there shouldn’t be any Congolese players playing for the Bolton Wanderers. In fact, there is no reason why Fabrice Muamba should be in Britain at all. England is a long way from the Congo — and it never ruled the Congo (some Leftists claim colonial rule is the reason why immigration takes place today). Muamba’s father arrived in 1994 to seek asylum. I cannot see this as anything other than economic migration.
I personally believe there is no valid reason to hate people solely on the grounds of their colour or racial background–although I would also argue that such hatred is routine and often officially approved of in the UK where the objects of such hatred are English.
But, all the same, those who do feel inclined to such hatred are merely reacting inchoately to English dispossession — a process in which we English are the aggrieved party. In a free society, hatred is an emotion that, short of violence, may be legitimately expressed.
Needless to say, the English liberals who have connived at our dispossession are the ones on whom English nationalists should be focusing — not the individual members of the ethnic minorities who have taken advantage of our stupidity.
Nevertheless, it is undeniable that immigration and multiculturalism have done a serious wrong to Liam Stacey and his countrymen, while Fabrice Muamba is not the victim of any serious wrong at all.
Expression of pleasure at Muamba’s collapse is unsavoury and unpleasant, but trivial. In contrast, the denial of liberty to English people is a very serious assault on our national identity and inalienable rights.
Apparently, Muamba is a naturalised British citizen. But that does not make him British — for the same reason that I, an Englishman of English/Irish origin, am not Chinese. And a decision by the Chinese government to give me a Chinese passport would not make me Chinese.
I hope Muamba continues to recover from his heart attack. But his health problems and status as a soccer player do not change the fact that our government is attempting to dispossess the English nation entirely of their homeland.
In England, we don’t have a written constitution. We don’t have the right to free speech in the same way as Americans. Or, to put it another way, our right to free speech is not recognised in law.
Of course, we may have to accept that if we argue for our own right to free speech, we will have to accept the offensive comments of minorities that occasionally cross the line and attract official attention too.
But I still don’t see any need for the police to monitor social-media sites. [Twitter racism: how the law is taking on the 'Twacists', by Owen Bowcott and Katy Roberts, guardian.co.uk, March 27, 2012] Why are they not out patrolling streets and apprehending villains?
I am sick of hearing how the British police take public money designed to be used to prevent crime, and then use it in the furtherance of a political agenda — making them, as John O’Sullivan once observed, “the paramilitary wing of the Guardian” — all too much like to the totalitarian Britain that George Orwell envisaged in 1984.
At least it can’t happen in the U.S.
Right?
David Webb studied Chinese and Russian at Leeds University, where he was involved in Marxist politics. He has since become a conservative writer, contributing to The Salisbury Review and Right Now!, and more recently contributing extensively to the Libertarian Alliance blog.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.
