Kate Price and MPs agree: mocking the disabled is a hate crime (what isn’t?)
Should abusing the disabled be a crime? Katie Price thinks it should. The former glamour model has given evidence to the Commons Petitions Committee where she called for online abuse to be made a specific offence.
She wants social media to be policed. She wants new laws to ban vile words, punishing the berks and twats who abused her son Harvey’s disabilities. Harvey is partially blind, autistic and has the genetic disorder Prader-Willi syndrome. Anyone who mocks him for his illness deserves ridicule. Price says, “They know he hasn’t got a voice back and they mock him more… they find him an easy target.”
MPs on the Petitions Committee agree with Price. They want the government to give disabled people protection under hate crime laws.
“Social media is rife with horrendous, degrading and dehumanising comments about people with disabilities,” says Helen Jones, who chairs the committee. “The law on online abuse is not fit for purpose and it is truly shameful that disabled people have been forced off social media while their abusers face no consequences.”
But there are consequences. Laws exit if threats are made against the person. Hate crime is an attempt to outlaw offensive words. The Metropolitan Police website tells us what hate crime is: “A hate incident is any incident which the victim, or anyone else, thinks is based on someone’s prejudice towards them because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender. Not all hate incidents will amount to criminal offences, but it is equally important that these are reported and recorded by the police.” No crime committed. No matter. And shouldn’t we be free to hate? Doesn’t this sectoring of society into potential victims and likely abusers weaken us? And since when has censorship worked for the common good – don’t abhorrent viewpoints have the right to be said? How you better understand rival views if you ban their discussion?
Posted: 22nd, January 2019 | In: News Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
