> Why on earth would you support arresting people for any speech, hate or otherwise?

Historical examples, including just about within living memory, where freedom of speech was used to gain the power to kill.

Can you define a clear line between free speech and call for murder?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...

I am very much pro free speech, but I do draw the line with implicit or explicit threats of violence. And this line is debatable, sure, but saying any words are just free speech? To escalate the example, Hitler giving the order to exterminate the jews was just free speech?

It's illegal to protest outside of abortion centers for very good reason, because it targets vulnerable women going through a difficult medical procedure. These people were arrested for protesting outside an abortion clinic. They can go and "pray in their heads" literally anywhere else in the entire country and they won't get arrested. They can even stage full on peaceful protests against abortion and they won't get arrested. They just can't do it next the actual clinics.

The first part of what you say is true. You can be arrested for what silent prayer with no outward sign - in other words for what was going in in your head. It is a thought crime. There are also arrests for reasonable free speech - for example holding up a placard offering to talk to women who were coerced into having an abortion.

The second part is nonsense. Anyone of any religion or none doing the same thing would be committing the same crime. It is perfectly legal to pray in the street except close to a place offering abortions.

This is what I mean by everywhere having an agenda. Because if you just read that Vice article you'll come away thinking he's a "Scottish comedian" who was just joking around to annoy his girlfriend. And after all, they're well known to like off color jokes, the Scottish. This is clearly unfair.

But if you dig a bit deeper, you'll find out that he soon after became a member of the far right UKIP party and was considering running for MEP. Also, his YouTube channel had over a million subscribers, of which his girlfriend was not one. So the reality is not that he's just a Scottish comedian, but rather he's also a far right political wannabe using his platform to spread anti-Semitic hate speech in the form of "jokes".

So perhaps "making anti-Semitic jokes for your girlfriend" should be treated differently than "making anti-Semitic jokes for your million YouTube followers"? At the very least, that is what happened here.

It's also important to note the context that there is a massive and growing online hate speech problem and has been for several decades now.

The arrest does seem to have radicalized this guy. But he's just one person, and he was popular enough to get support from a ton of famous people, and no doubt his million YouTube followers. I would need to see more data before I can form an well founded opinion on whether these arrests work or not. Perhaps they do work as a deterrent for the kinds of people that don't get Ricky Gervais publicly standing up for them.

"The flaw in your argument is that it assumes a clear and workable distinction between "a joke" and "obvious hate speech"

That is usually easy derived from the context and the cases I know of "missunderstanding a joke" was rather deliberate misinterpretation of the law to get someone out of line.

Your example seems like this as well.

Ah yes, that famous "joke" which evolves a Nazi salute after antisemitic phrases are said. I think Israel is undermining the Jewish cause with their current label-everything-we-dont-like-as-antisemitic rhetoric. But this "joke" is probably where the line should be drawn for actual antisemitic behaviour.

Whether the person was an antisemite or not, just don't go there. There is no reason to. As a joke between you and your girlfriend, maybe. But not broadcasting it to the whole world on Youtube.

I agree with you this is greatly exaggerated by the US right wing - along with much else about the UK.

However, there are serious issues with hate speech laws. They go a long way beyond preventing abuse - threatening behaviour and similar were illegal before hate speech laws were passed. What hate speech laws made illegal were things that were not illegal, bit views that were judged unpleasant. We also now have criminalisation of behaviour such as silent prayer, or offering help in the wrong place.

On top of that we have "non-crime hate incidents" where the police investigate and record people for doing things that are legal.

IMO it actually helps racist groups such as the BNP as they can hint to the worst of their supporters that they would like to say things that are more racist by the law prevents them, while at the same time not frightening off more moderate supporters by using extreme language.

Racists and xenophobes have a lot of gain from ambiguity. Not only not frightening off supporters from the ethnic majority by being too extreme, but also using bigotry between minorities. There are European immigrants who hate non-whites, there are Islamphobic Jews (a group the EDL works with), antisemitic Muslims and more.