CITY JOURNAL: The Times of London recently informed us that “the number of hate offences recorded by police jumped after the terror attack by Khalid Masood at Westminster in March last year.” The paper continued by noting that “incidents of hate crime went on rising in May and June after terrorists attacked the Manchester Arena and London Bridge.” One shudders to think about how many hate offenses would follow a really enormous terror attack.
What is a hate crime? The Times explains, “hate crime is defined as any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic. In fact, the expression of hatred—or perceived as such—now is itself a crime.”
As law, this is perfectly Kafkaesque, in that rumor and suspicion are granted the weight of truth. There is apparently no need for an objective correlative of a person’s perception. According to the Metropolitan Police, “evidence of the hate element is not a requirement. You do not need to personally perceive the incident to be hate related. It would be enough if another person, a witness or even a police officer thought that the incident was hate related.” We have regressed to the days before Elizabeth I’s famous declaration more than four centuries ago that she had no desire to make windows into men’s souls. Now everyone can do so, and his attempts, however inaccurate, fantastic, or self-interested, have legal force.
Needless to say, the personal characteristics that are specially protected are what one might call the usual suspects: race, religion, nationality, or sexual proclivity. However, according to the Times, the government has asked the Law Commission “to investigate whether crimes driven by hostility to men [as against women] and the elderly” should be considered “hate crime.” Hating the elderly is so much worse than merely preying on them, beating them, or stealing their belongings. MORE
I hate what’s happening to Britain.
The Left is rapidly making the West unlivable.
Police show up after a muslim attack to make sure no one commits the high crime of having a negative opinion.
Gee Wally iz that a muzloid flying carpet?
No Beave, it just looks that way due to all the Politically Correct cat shit that’s been swept under it for years!
As if I needed one more reason not to fly, not to visit shit hole UK ever again.
YIKES! Did I just commit a hate crime?
The Inquisition begins.
The white british scumbag cowards and drunks will never use this law themselves. They will never “perceive” that mozlems hate them and demand they be arrested. The British are scum.
Is it a hate crime if a group of middle eastern men groom, i.e. rape, young girls for years unimpeded by the authorities? Perhaps if the police spent a little more time policing the streets for actual crimes that, say kill people,there would be less ill thoughts.
Remember that great The Who album from the 70’s? It’s been renamed “Who Hates First”
If there is a “hate” crime there
must be “love” crime…. by BUTTHEADICUS logic.