Author: Roger Pearse

There was a time when the police paid no attention to anything posted on the web.  In the United Kingdom, at least, that time is past.  Over the last few months I have seen a series of stories, where offline people have called for the police to arrest trolls.  Routinely, now, the police are acting.

This week we have been hearing about a certain Frank Zimmerman, a man of 60, who posted abuse of a Conservative MP, Louise Mensch, demanding that she stop using twitter or else: 

Zimmerman targeted Mensch following last summer’s riots when the MP suggested that sites such as Twitter ought to be closed down if the police thought it necessary. …

Addressing the Corby MP as the “slut of Twitter”, Zimmerman said: “We are Anonymous and we do not like rude cunts like you and your nouveau riche husband Peter Mensch. We are inside your computer, all your phones everywhere and inside your homes.

“So get off Twitter. We see you are still on Twitter. We have sent a camera crew to photograph you and your kids and we will post it over the net including Twitter, cuntface. You now have Sophie’s Choice: which kid is to go. One will. Count on it cunt. Have a nice day.”

Charming stuff, and doubtless anonymous, or so he thought: the police found otherwise.  The judge has said that “he could be imprisoned for up to six months”.

I have no opinions either way on Mrs Mensch.  The question is whether, in a free society, such speech should be punished by the courts. 

Zimmerman himself, of course, does NOT believe in free speech — his troll, of course, was composed to intimidate Louise Mensch from using Twitter.  Trolls engage in this kind of activity all the time, and Wikipedia trolls take great pleasure in getting rid of genuine contributors. 

The words are supposed to contain a death threat.  I admit that, in my innocence, the case would seem unproven.  The malice is unmistakable, of course; but I myself would have read that as a threat to post material about one of the children.  The jury found otherwise, of course.

It is old law that death threats are a criminal offence.  I admit that I see no reason to change this long-standing custom.  It is for this, certainly, that Zimmerman should be sentenced.

For the rest?  I’m not sure.

A troll is a vile creature.  His purpose is to injure others, usually from a position of anonymity.  He is no different, morally, from a man who visits a nightclub for the purpose of beating up some unsuspecting fellow who went there for a drink and a dance.  His methods are the misuse of modern communications to inflict pain, rather than his fists, but the pain is equally real, and the victim may well be even less able to defend himself, as many trolls, like bullies everywhere, blame the victim if he complains of assault. 

Law in the United Kingdom is increasingly unsympathetic to trolls.  Today I read of a legal first, where the victim has won a High Court action to force Facebook to reveal the identities of her tormentors.

Nicola Brookes, 45, was targeted by internet trolls after posting message of support for X-Factor contestant Frankie Cocozza

The mother, who doesn’t even watch X-Factor, wrote message supporting singer on his official Facebook page after her daughter showed her his page

Abusers created fake profile with her picture and posted sick messages to lure young girls

The single mother is the first person ever to bring a court case privately to track down those who abused her

She was forced to take action after police refused to intervene

Despite the abuse, Nicola is STILL on Facebook

Not being a Conservative MP, Nicola Brookes was obliged to undertake a private prosecution.  Sussex Police were unsure that any crime had been committed, and who can blame them?  The situation is indeed profoundly unclear.  But the victim certainly suffered injury.  This was internet violence; the false accusation designed to defame.

The action has all sorts of interesting consequences from a free speech point of view:

Ms Bains, a partner at Bains Cohen, the legal firm which is bringing the action, said: ‘The police do have the ability and the resources to find out who is responsible for this type of abuse.

‘The order that was granted from the High Court was called a Norwich Pharmacal Order which is a disclosure order compelling Facebook to give us whatever information they have.

‘We don’t know how useful that information is going to be until we have it.

‘It may turn out to be fake. If that’s the case, it will be the internet service providers (ISPs) who will be most useful to us because they will hold the bill-payers’ addresses and we will have to get a further order.’

None will blame Mrs Brookes.  But what we see here is that criminals — for these trolls are certainly criminals in their behaviour and attitudes, whether or not their actions are technically illegal — are forcing the state to create the means to regulate what appears online.  The state never had that power.  Soon it will.  The troll, as ever, is a curse on the web.

A BBC article states bluntly:

There are growing demands for action over internet “trolling”.

BBC presenter Richard Bacon states:

 I’ve spent three months immersed in the world of cyberbullying and internet “trolling”. Recently there has been a massive explosion of it. …

As I delved deeper, it turned out that the level of vitriol I was receiving was mild by comparison with what hundreds, probably thousands, of people around the UK are subjected to daily. Hourly.

Imagine you’re the parent of a child who has died in tragic circumstances and you’re reading a tribute site dedicated to their memory. Underneath the comments from friends and acquaintances, you stumble upon graphic, violent and sexual abuse from people writing under pretend names. People who their deceased child never even knew.

This sort of article is creating the climate for more official action.  A further BBC article links it to cyber-bullying — correctly — and mentions suicides of victims.  The link is real.  For internet sites such as Facebook and Wikipedia set out to be compelling; the troll takes advantage of this to keep pummelling his victim, knowing that he or she will keep coming back for another punch, like one addicted. 

On Wikipedia, indeed, searching for victims who have returned and adopted a new user name (and then banning them for “sock-puppeting”) is part of the sport for the trolls.  The jeering at those who are unable to stay away is sickening, when you realise what it must mean in terms of the victim’s pain and addiction.

I’ve been on the web since 1997.  It is certainly true that the web today is a much nastier place than it was.  The “trolling” that took place in usenet news groups back in those days was malicious too, but it did not have the nastiness that I see everywhere today.  I would agree that the last few years have seen a huge upsurge in this kind of thing.

Anonymity must take responsibility for much of this.  People post what they would never say in person, or under their own name.

Yet … there is a real risk that, in dealing with these scum, we will all lose something.  I have nothing against Mrs Mensch, but I don’t see any reason why — death threats aside — those who dislike her shouldn’t call her names.  Our politicians do not deserve overmuch respect, nor our journalists, and both are well-equipped with lawyers and policemen.  Few ordinary people could get much redress, if such abuse was delivered to our very faces. 

But we, the people, the taxpayer and voter, do deserve some respect, and the right of the people to abuse a politician is also a long-standing one.  It is not so very long ago that candidates in Scottish elections were accustomed to being spat at, during hustings, with the consequence that both candidates were likely to end the day covered in spittle.^[1] 

Anyone who has suffered at the hands of a troll will cheer as these individuals are brought, blinking, out into the light and sentenced.  Yet there is a risk that, in dealing with these vermin, all of our liberties will be compromised.  I do not much relish the idea that bloggers must think about policemen and libel actions in the way that newspapers must.  But where the line may be drawn I cannot say.

1. ^[1]Augustine Birrell refers to this charmless custom somewhere in his works, but I do not have a reference immediately to hand.↩

We used to talk about politics, back in the 70’s, at school.  And sometimes we didn’t agree.  Sometimes someone would say something outrageous.  And it might earn the commonplace response, “It’s a free country”, with the understood corollary that anyone might say what they thought.

It’s a saying that you never hear today.  Because in many countries the political establishment has quietly taken away the right to free speech.  An ever-lengthening list of causes and favoured groups may only be criticised by those willing to risk prosecution for “hate speech”, to be dragged through the courts and harassed endlessly. 

Often this process of intimidation has been carried out by so-called “human rights” bodies.  Usually they have selected as their victims men who are poor, isolated, with few resources.  The purpose is to create case law, not to uphold law, and who better to victimise as “haters” than people who can’t afford lawyers?

In Canada the blogger Ezra Levant was attacked by one such evil organisation, and harassed for almost two years, at enormous expense to himself.  But the attack was a mistake; for Levant was a well-connected man, a publisher, and well able to take care of himself.

Today I read in the National Post that justice has finally been done: the enabling legislation for these thought-crime prosecutions is being repealed:

For decades, Canadians had meekly submitted to a system of administrative law that potentially made de facto criminals out of anyone with politically incorrect views about women, gays, or racial and religious minority groups. All that was required was a complainant (often someone with professional ties to the CHRC itself) willing to sign his name to a piece of paper, claim he was offended, and then collect his cash winnings at the end of the process. The system was bogus and corrupt. But very few Canadians wanted to be seen as posturing against policies that were branded under the aegis of “human rights.”

On Wednesday, the federal Conservatives voted to repeal it on a largely party-line vote — by a margin of 153 to 136 — through a private member’s bill introduced by Alberta Conservative MP Brian Storseth. Following royal assent, and a one-year phase-in period, Section 13 will be history.  ….

Till the middle part of the last decade, the Canadian punditariat was dominated by professional columnists who were socially, ideologically, and sometimes professionally, beholden to the academics, politicians, and old-school activists (from Jewish groups, in particular) who’d championed the human-rights industry since its inception in the 1960s. But in the latter years of Liberal governance, a vigorous network of right-wing bloggers, led by Ezra Levant, began publicizing the worst abuses of human-rights mandarins, including the aforementioned Dean Steacy. In absolute numbers, the readership of their blogs was small at first. But their existence had the critical function of building up a sense of civil society among anti-speech-code activists, who gradually pulled the mainstream media along with them. In this sense, Mr. Levant deserves to be recognized as one of the most influential activists in modern Canadian history.

The battle against human-rights speech codes is far from won: The worst cases of censorship, such as the muzzling of Christians who proselytize texts that contain anti-gay themes, occur at the provincial level. Yet the tide clearly has turned: The Canadian Human Rights Commission received only three hate speech complaints since 2009, two of which were dismissed. And at the provincial level, bureaucrats know that any censorious verdict they deliver instantly will be pounced upon by Mr. Levant and his blogging allies (including some at this newspaper), and thereby become a lightning rod for legislative reform.

This is not the only straw in the wind.  In Britain opposition to a similarly evil piece of legislation has been crystallising in the last few months.  The Public Order Act of 1986 contains a section (section 5) which has allowed the police to arrest and “question” people for their opinions.

The Public Order Act rightly makes it a criminal offence to behave in a manner which is threatening, disorderly, abusive, or which constitutes harassment. However, section 5 of the Act also makes it an offence to use words which anyone within earshot might find ‘insulting’.

This is a step too far, and it has had troubling consequences.

When an Oxford University student out celebrating the end of his exams asked a policeman ‘Excuse me, do you realise your horse is gay?’ it should have been ignored as a daft comment. Instead police first tried to fine the student £80, then locked him up overnight and took him to court after he refused to pay. Eventually prosecutors dropped the case, having wasted plenty of taxpayers’ money in the process.

After a 16-year-old from Newcastle said ‘woof’ to a labrador within earshot of police officers, he was hauled in front of magistrates and fined £200, a decision later overturned by a jury.

City of London police charged a teenager under section 5 for demonstrating with a placard bearing the word ‘cult’ outside the Church of Scientology’s UK headquarters.

A street preacher armed with a placard proclaiming the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality was fined £700, a move condemned by world-renowned gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell as ‘an outrageous assault on civil liberties’.

These are just a few of the growing list of examples where the law against using ‘insulting’ language has led to heavy-handed action by police and prosecutors. It is not only distressing for the individuals concerned, it constitutes a threat to Britain’s tradition of free speech. …

So what should we do about it?

The solution is simple; the law needs to change. The word ‘insulting’ should be removed from section 5 of the Public Order Act. This would provide proportionate protection to individuals’ right to free speech, whilst continuing to protect people from threatening or abusive speech.

Support for amending section 5 comes from a large number of MPs and peers, along with groups as diverse as the Christian Institute and National Secular Society, and human rights organisations Liberty, Justice and The Peter Tatchell Foundation. MPs from all parties recently called for the Freedom Act (passed two weeks ago) to be amended to this effect, only to be thwarted when the amendment was not called.

The article does not say so, but the legislation has been used several times — I have no confidence that I would know of all occurrences — by gay rights activists to attack Christian street preachers.  The approach taken by these agents provocateurs has been to demand whether the preacher agrees with the bible that homosexuality is a sin, and, when he says he does, find a policeman and denounce the preacher under section 5.  The legislation is so vaguely worded — in order to allow the police freedom of action — that it can be used by all sorts of people, and has been.  I suspect that we owe this campaign in Britain to the Moslems who arranged for some gay rights activists to be arrested for “offending” the Moslems.  Once the biter is bit, he looks for ways to prevent it!

But it is good to see the tide starting to turn.  In 20 years people will marvel that such a stain came over the free world.  Well done Canada.

UPDATE: Journalist Mark Steyn, another victim of the thought police, also celebrates. 

You don’t generally get to pick your battles, and, if you’d asked me circa 2007 if I wanted to spend much of the next half-decade battling for the restoration of freedom of speech in Canada and elsewhere, I’d probably have decamped to the South Sandwich Islands. But then the Canadian Islamic Congress and their statist enablers in the “human rights” racket attempted to impose a de facto lifetime publication ban on me, and so I found myself conscripted to the cause.

It’s been a long, slow process, but the victories have been real. Section 13 of the Canadian “Human Rights” Code has as a practical matter been rendered unenforceable. It’s now about to be removed from the law formally. It passed its third reading in the House of Commons, which means it only requires a vote in the Senate and Royal Assent (yes, yes, calm down, Kevin Williamson et al), and it’s history.

But he points out that those who created this evil are not dead, as one of them pops up and demands the power to censor those he disagrees with.  Mark’s response is robust:

Clear off, you twerp. I don’t want the state to have a “mandate” to “educate” the citizenry about their thought-crimes. Even if I did not object on principle, one thing I’ve learned during this five-year campaign is that the statist hacks Canada’s official opposition is so eager to empower are, almost to a man, woman and pre-op transsexual, either too stupid or bullying to be entrusted with the task.