After Finsbury Park the police attack free speech
The tally of people arrested after a man drove a van into a group of Muslim worshippers outside Finsbury Park Mosque is two. Darren Osborne has been arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of terrorism, attempted murder and murder. The second man is Richard Evans, aka the self-styled ‘Richard Gear Evans’, who when not making bad puns is allegedly posting vile messages on Facebook. Evans, reportedly the owner’s son of the hire firm whose vehicle was used in the attack, has been pinched for writing things.
“Glad I’m not running the van hire,” he allegedly wrote on Facebook. “The police wouldn’t like what my answer would be. It’s my dad’s company I don’t get involved it’s a shame they don’t hire out steam rollers or tanks could have done a tidy job then.”
Idiotic? Yes. Horrible? Yes. Illegal? Surely not. But it might well be because Evans has been arrested on suspicion of displaying threatening, abusive, insulting written material with intent that is likely to stir up racial hatred”. Did you read that and think: “I never thought about it before but now it makes perfect sense. Evans writes so persuasively and with such rare eloquence. I’m in. I’m going to hire a tank and murder innocent people. I think I’ll go and do it.”
The police think you might have read it and become radicalised. They’re not taking any chances.
Trouble is that the kind of person who doesn’t like Muslims will feel that their views have been martyred. They are unlikely to reconsider their monocular view when it’s outlawed. They will most likely feel repressed, right and aggrieved. Which makes us wonder what the point of nicking him is?
The case has echoes of the treatment dished out to Samina Malik, from Southall, west London. She was found guilty at the Old Bailey of owning terrorist manuals – or reading, as we like to call it (The Mujaheddin Poisoner’s Handbook, Encyclopaedia Jihad, How To Win In Hand To Hand Combat, and How To Make Bombsand Sniper Manual) . She called herself the Lyrical Terrorist “because it sounded cool”. In her work The Living Martyrs she wrote: “Let us make Jihad/ Move to the front line/ To chop chop head of kuffar swine“. A second poem was called How to Behead. “It’s not as messy or as hard as some may think/ It’s all about the flow of the wrist,” she rapped. For that Malik was sentenced to nine months in prison, suspended for 18 months. She appealed and won.
And it all leads to a key point about what it is to be human and be able to speak your mind, which vitally includes saying what you hate. Hate is active, angry and makes you do things. Most often it makes things better. If you hate Nazis, you fight them. If you hate the sound of nails down a blackboard, you invent projectors and marker pens. If you hate living in a poor country infested by corruption, you work hard to live in a better one and expose the rotten core.
Am I hateful for sticking up for hate? You hate that that I am, don’t you. You don’t? Oh, I see, you just want a quiet life of conformity and agreeing with whatever the latest law decrees. You don’t want to cause offence. Well, that’s fine so long as you never want to prove anything, challenge the status quo and win.
Richard Evans allegedly says hideous things. But what’s much worse that hate is to cut out tongues and let the nastiness fester unchallenged by reason.
Posted: 24th, June 2017 | In: News Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
