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Sometimes all you can do is paste the story

…and say, “This is where we are”. The BBC reports:

Woman guilty of ‘racist’ Snap Dogg rap lyric Instagram post

A teenager who posted rap lyrics which included racist language on Instagram has been found guilty of sending a grossly offensive message.

Chelsea Russell, 19, from Liverpool posted the lyric from Snap Dogg’s I’m Trippin’ to pay tribute to a boy who died in a road crash, a court heard.

Russell argued it was not offensive, but was handed a community order.

Prosecutors said her sentence was increased from a fine to a community order “as it was a hate crime”.

She was charged after Merseyside Police were anonymously sent a screenshot of her update.

Liverpool Justice Centre, sitting at Sefton Magistrates’ Court, heard Russell posted the lyrics to her account after the death of a 13-year-old in a road accident in 2017, the Crown Prosecution Service said.

The words Russell used on her account contained a racial label which some people find extremely offensive.

The screenshot was passed to hate crime unit PC Dominique Walker, who told the court the term was “grossly offensive” to her as a black woman and to the general community.

As in the Count Dankula case, all it takes is one member of the approved victim class to turn up in court and say they were offended. The fact that in this case the approved victim is also an approved witchfinder makes everything more convenient.

The Liverpool Echo reported that Russell’s defence had argued the usage of the word had changed over time and it had been used by superstar rapper Jay-Z “in front of thousands of people at the Glastonbury Festival”.

Prosecutor Angela Conlan said Russell’s defence also argued her profile “wasn’t public”, but it had been proved in court that anyone could access it and “see the offensive language”.

She said prosecutors also “sourced case law that showed that posting the profile on her account constituted sending it and making it public”.

Russell was found guilty of sending a grossly offensive message by a public communication.

She was given an eight-week community order, placed on an eight-week curfew and told to pay costs of £500 and an £85 victim surcharge.

43 comments to Sometimes all you can do is paste the story

  • Alisa

    Stop the world, I want to get off.

  • RAB

    Er, I just pulled the lyrics up. Apart from being abysmally written, is misogynistic and nasty, with the glorification of robbery and violence, where is the hate crime? Because it contains the word Nigga? I thought persons of colour were allowed the word in a post ironic self appreciating sort of way. Could Chelsea Russell be white by any chance ? and therefore not included in the out?

  • We need pushback, we need to demand people get thrown in jail not for what they say but from trying to stop other people saying things. The message the state sends is clear: if you are a radical Muslim or Gypsy or… (insert various here), you can say what you want because stopping you expressing yourself may cause you to react violently, unlike the majority of people who actually get prosecuted for expressing themselves. It is a lesson we all need to learn, just not the way the state wants us to.

  • bobby b

    “Off a whole gram of molly, and my bitch think I’m trippin’
    Now I’m clutchin’ on my forty, all I can think about is drillin’
    I hate fuck shit, slap a bitch n**ga, kill a snitch n**ga, rob a rich n**ga
    I think I’m trippin’, I think I’m trippin'”

    (Snap Dogg’s words, not mine. Screw you, Ms. Walker.)

    So this black woman “hate crime unit PC Dominique Walker” reads these lyrics, and what she finds objectionable is that the white teenage girl included Snap Dogg’s use of the word “Nigga”?

    She’s not finding “hate.” She’s staking out her racial territory. On your dime.

  • Clovis Sangrail

    One wonders about the competence of the defence. Why is it legal for Snap Dogg’s publishers to publish the lyrics in the UK but not legal …?

    One has no doubts about the malevolence of the police.

  • Clovis Sangrail

    @bobby b
    On your dime
    On our penny (if only it were just one)!

  • bobby b

    Perry de Havilland (London)
    April 19, 2018 at 6:25 pm

    “We need pushback . . .”

    Remember “Draw Mohammad Day”?

    You need a pushback based on that same idea. Maybe a “Say Bad Words On the Internet Day”.

  • pete

    How does PC Dominique Walker know what is offensive to the general community?

    I’m not offended by the lyric.

  • Paul Marks

    So if Mr “Snapp Dogg” comes to Britain and sings the “n word” will he be arrested? Or is it just white people who are not allowed to use this word?

    Liberty is seldom lost all at once – it is lost by stages. The 1965 Race Relations Act violated both Freedom of Association and Freedom of Speech – but in speech only in certain cases, this has been broadened step-by-step over the years and decades to the present situation of tyranny.

    Once the PRINCIPLE is lost, everything else is just a matter of time.

  • Mr Ed

    The words Russell used on her account contained a racial label which some people find extremely offensive.

    The screenshot was passed to hate crime unit PC Dominique Walker, who told the court the term was “grossly offensive” to her as a black woman and to the general community.

    It is only a news report, which makes me wary. BUT: Neither ‘some people’ nor an individual who seems to be acting as a professional offence-taker rather than an attested office holder sworn to uphold the law seem to me to meet the test that even the lamentable statute requires, an objective requirement to be grossly offensive.

    They are not even pretending to apply the law here. The only cure is a long Bill of Repeal and another of Attainder, albeit updated to impeachment and return of all gross salary ever paid from State funds.

  • Sam Duncan

    “As in the Count Dankula case, all it takes is one member of the approved victim class to turn up in court and say they were offended.”

    As far as I’m aware, the Dankula case didn’t have even that.

  • Nicholas (Unlicenced Joker) Gray

    We have a similar case here in Australia! Someone texted a Rugby Union player, Israel Falou, about his opinion of homosexuality. Falou believes strongly in his religion, and retexted that God will condemn gays to hell, unless they repent. His tone was factual, not gloating or sneering. Then everybody objected to his text! As though nobody has the right to dissent from PC opinions. So PC policing has reached us here in Australia. Is there no country where free speech is fully practiced?

  • Chip

    Is it a crime for white fans at his gig to sing along?

    If the mere presence of a series of letters – regardless of context – is illegal, does niggardly invite prosecution?

    How about NIGeria vs GERmany?

    I’m only half kidding. England is going down a dark path with a dismal end.

  • twinkletoes42069

    I imagine mild PC types might once have responded to the hypothetical – “so you can’t say nigger anymore?” – by saying that while the term was grossly offensive and has no place in civilised society, of course reasonable exceptions could be made, e.g., when quoting somebody else. This case puts the lie to that.

  • twinkletoes42069

    Also note that while the BBC is predictably unwilling to inform their readers as to the details of the incident, it’s perhaps now the case that they are unable to do so. If some chick can’t quote a rap song on Instagram, can a newspaper quote some chick quoting a rap song?

  • George Atkisson

    Chip,
    Here in the U.S. A college professor was fired for using the word niggardly, correctly and in context. A black student was severely triggered. Turns out that said student had never heard that word before and had no interest in learning its meaning and history. She was triggered and nothing else but the termination of the professor would satisfy the howling Twitter mob.

  • Dr Evil

    Repeating/copying and pasting song lyrics that are already publicly accessible is not a hate crime nor any kind of crime. If you are trying to gain economic benefit it is a breach of copyright. But that’s all it is. Frankly this hate crime nonsense has already got out of hand. The magistrate should simply have kicked this case out for the waste of time that it obviously was.

  • Stonyground

    Is it the associations with slavery that make this particular word so taboo? Because otherwise all it is is an insulting word to describe a person with dark skin. Being a bald guy can I get someone prosecuted for saying slaphead? If not why not?

  • Penseivat

    So if a black person wrote, “Kill a white bitch, kill a white snitch, kill someone white who’s rich.” then the fragrant PC Dominique Walker will hound them to the ends of the earth (or the end of her shift). A competent defence brief could have ended this farce at the first hearing, but would no doubt then be hounded by the professional offendotrons. By the way, who did win the ‘Draw Mohammed Day’ competition?

  • David

    hate crime unit PC Dominique Walker

    There is a Police Unit dedicated to hate crime? In the country that brought us Magna Carta, Simon de Montfort’s parliament and the modern idea of parliamentary democracy?

    You are screwed. I’m not sure we mightn’t be following you down here in Oz

  • terence patrick hewett

    Engineering is incremental and amongst all the shenanigans the UK’s first self-driving mainline train has made its maiden journey across London mostly unnoticed. Automation will make it possible to run 24 trains an hour on the Thameslink core section – click goes the ratchet.

  • bob sykes

    You should be ashamed of yourself for living in such a cesspool country. When are you going to clean up your dirty act and do something about it?

  • Northern Light

    You should be ashamed of yourself for living in such a cesspool country.

    Well you can fuck right off, you collectivist arsehole. Unless you have some magic wand to fix things, get stuffed. I’m involved in local politics & people like this collective blog highlight this crap to raise awareness, so seriously, sod off, some of us are pushing back. Do you live in some paradise? If not, then STFU.

  • Włodek P.

    Automation will make it possible to run 24 trains an hour on the Thameslink core section – click goes the ratchet.

    How is this not a good thing?

  • Albion's Blue Front Door

    The strange thing is that the ones who pursue prosecution in this sort of crime seriously belive that any guilty verdicts will make life better for us all, and thus hasten the ideal society. The likes of Ms Walker may well believe too we are being taught a lesson in behaviour and duly admonished we will never repeat such wretched errors again.

    The greater reality is those verdicts won merely underline the gaps in society; gaps which cannot be closed no matter what all the hectoring and propaganda and hasty legislation demands. Such ‘justice’ however only serves to widen what is increasingly a state of “us and them” even if all the Hate Crime Units can never see it.

  • Runcie Balspune

    What surprises me about both these instances is they seem to steamroller over one of the basic prerequisites of criminal law – intent (mens rea).

    I would suppose, that for someone to be guilty of a “hate crime” it needs to be shown that they intended to either subject the victim to “hate” or had full knowledge of the act being a hate crime, or perceived as being a hate crime, but did it anyway?

    I’m no lawyer, but can someone explain how this works in these cases, where is the “intent”, how would this have been proven in these cases?

  • terence patrick hewett

    @ Włodek P.

    I am an engineer: we do not do morality. The point I was making is that we as a profession are changing society for good or for evil and like the three little pigs who made the house out of straw: to mix my metaphors: society is scrabbling around trying to put the pin back in the grenade.

    Personally I find our society so corrupt and ignorant that anything will be an improvement.

  • pete

    Episodes like this demonstrate that western society is returning to its normal state where a minority can terrorise the majority into silence and obedience.

    The era of free speech has been very brief, but at least we had it for a while unlike most of the rest of the world.

  • terence patrick hewett

    Anyone with a modicum of scientific knowledge and sanity realises that the decision to import millions of low-skill migrants is a judgement of such madness as to be only explained by the wilder excesses of religious obsession: because these are the people whom engineers like me are putting out of work at a rate of knots (although we are now increasingly targeting middle class occupations). If I were to write an algorithm for societal destabilisation and violent conflict: this would be it.

    The fatalistic sense of inevitable national decline that we thought had been banished forever is creeping back.

    Westminster will not reform of its own accord since they no longer have the collective self-knowledge or intellect to effect this end: the only worlds which they understand are those of the 24 hour news cycle and the election cycle: one way or another they will have to be forced to change.

    It is the smallness of vision, the narrowness of intellect, the simple lack of courage and curiosity that shames us.

  • tph, seems to have got it correct, our Parliament seem to have neither wisdom or intellect, very true. They also lack any knowledge of our history and why we brought in the Common Law, it was to apprehend Criminals and look after the generally law abiding population. All that has now gone, the police state is upon us. Maybe our so called Legislators have taken to the Napoleonic style, guilty with out any appeal.

  • Chip

    Agreed. The combination of automation and import of low-skilled third worlders is a disaster, unless you’re a statist party positioning yourself for a permanent majority via statist voters.

    That’s why the Democrats don’t want a wall, and Blairites admitted as much.

    And yet nothing changes.

  • Snorri Godhi

    As Perry said:

    We need pushback

    …but i feel that Perry’s suggestion is just a mild slap on the wrist:

    we need to demand people get thrown in jail not for what they say but from trying to stop other people saying things.

    Some time ago, the French had an alternative to jail that shuld better concentrate the mind of the ruling class: the guillotine.

    But perhaps not even Britain or Sweden are at that stage … yet.
    The best option at this stage (in Britain: i do not see the need to bother about it over here, in fact i’d think it counter-productive here) might be a mixture of Gandhi and Alinsky:
    * never cooperate with the police;
    * do everything you can to hinder the police;
    * do everything you can to waste police time;
    * file complaints against the police whenever you can;
    * alert the police to speech crimes by members of the ruling class whenever you can — the ruling class including all politicians, public-sector workers (including the police), academics, and people in the media — except when said members are outspoken opponents of PC fascism in words+deeds.

    NB: this is only a first draft.

  • they seem to steamroller over one of the basic prerequisites of criminal law – intent (mens rea). (Runcie Balspune, April 20, 2018 at 1:06 pm)

    In part at least, that does indeed seem to be a possible interpretation of the very strange phrasing of Labour’s hate speech law, with which Theresa has always seemed so unpleasantly comfortable and uninterested in repealing.

    The Weimar republic’s hate speech laws – which resemble ours (and which worked out so well for them, as we all recall) – did (by explicit judicial interpretation) allow conviction even when it was uncontested that the speaker’s hearer(s) had treated him as a joke and no ‘hate’ whatever had been spread, but it is news to me if they went so far as to convict even when the speaker himself wholeheartedly shared that view. (Maybe they could have, but such cases were understandably buried under those where, especially with hindsight, one may assume intent.)

  • Sonny Wayze

    George A: There have been a bunch of similar incidents, but I don’t see a professorial firing.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%22niggardly%22

  • Penseivat

    After reading some of the comments posted above, I have decided to include the word ‘niggardly’ into conversations as often as I am able. What fun it would be if more people did the same.

  • Thailover

    And an 85 quid victim surcharge.

    Sure, as soon as your totalitarian pathetic excuse for a government can manage to find a goddamned victim!!!

    Why aren’t the Brits storming the steps of parliament with a 5 million strong mob/protest against this insane fascism? The police ADMIT not doing their jobs against REAL criminals whilst they go after mean tweets by 16yr olds. Have the people all turned into inured cows?

  • Thailover

    “Raise awareness”.

    Awareness isn’t an action plan, bub.

  • Why aren’t the Brits storming the steps of parliament with a 5 million strong mob/protest against this insane fascism? (Thailover, April 22, 2018 at 4:41 am)

    It’s a good question – which, very sadly, may have some ‘good’ – i.e. necessary to consider – answers.

    One obvious thought is that maybe most Brits don’t read samizdata – or even the Daily Mail, though thank God many do at least read the latter. You don’t think the BBC even mentioned this story in their top list of the day.

    Another obvious thought is that maybe most Brits don’t live near Parliament. Maybe the mayor of London does. Maybe someone who voted for him could whistle up at short notice a rent-a-mob of intellectuals who think free speech an obstacle to their plans and/or recent arrivals from countries with no free speech tradition who have either not assimilated or have assimilated all too well to the intellectuals’ viewpoint.

    (Of course, the rent-a-mob would not number 5 million, or even as many as the beeb claimed it did, but that leads to my next point.)

    A third thought is that no march of a million people has ever occurred in London in my lifetime – or so I believe. The professional liars who ran the stop-the-war march over Iraq claimed two million and the beeb always said “more than a million”, “a miliion and a half”, etc., but I believe it is beyond reasonable doubt that the true number was 800,000 or less. Next behind that was the third countryside march at 400,000, itself the largest march in my lifetime till stop-the-war sadly beat them.

    A fourth thought is that people who live off the state have a lot of free time for marching. People who work so they have something left over after paying taxes to the state have less free time. The countryside march had signs “Only half of us are here. The other half are back home looking after the animals.” The stop-the-war crowd were not in a position to make that claim – but claimed trebled their true numbers so the beeb could double them yet look restrained.

    Finally, the state is badly run but well organised. Organisation is important to pressuring the chattering class into doing something it does not want to do. We won Brexit, but then Gove messed up the associated plan to pull the Tories nearer sanity (I remain convinced that the party leadership vote would have seen the Brexit slate win if he’d only held it together) while Farage very understandably took the opportunity to resign at a high point but without anointing a successor – though perhaps he could hardly have foreseen just what a mess UKIP would make of replacing him. Thus we are in a poor way organisationally here in the UK.

  • Mr Ed

    The victim surcharge is a stautory scam from New Labour to fund ‘support groups’ for victims of crime and it applies to victimless crimes like speeding as well as those where there is a victim. Only if there is no penalty does it not apply. It is for England and Wales only.

    It is contrary to Dr Bonham’s case, all fines belong to the King, and it is so vile that a parent who was the victim of an assault by a minor child has been held to be liable to pay it from the case in which the child was convicted of assaulting its parent!

  • Mr Ed

    Count Dunkula has been fined £800 ($1,117) for his crime. The Sheriff said, amongst other things:

    “The evidence before this court was that the video was viewed as grossly offensive within Jewish communities in Scotland and that such material tended to normalise anti-Semitic attitudes and provoke further unpleasant anti-Semitic messages and as such, this video using menacing language, led to great concern.

    The fact that you claim in the video, and elsewhere, that the video was intended only to annoy your girlfriend and as a joke and that you did not intend to be racist is of little assistance to you.
    “A joke can be grossly offensive. A racist joke or a grossly offensive video does not lose its racist or grossly offensive quality merely because the maker asserts he only wanted to get a laugh.”

  • A Scots lawyer I discussed the matter with recently suggested that “offensive language” is now being treated as a ‘strict liability’ offence (at least de facto, perhaps de jure – if one can make that distinction for legal rulings). I’ll let the lawyer-trained on this blog give their opinions of the colloquial and/or formal relevance and/or accuracy of that conjecture.

    I gather the Scottish executive (that lets on to be a government) devotes some 80% of its prosecutorial resources to politically-correct crimes, of which hate speech is the chief, with correspondingly little left over for murder, assault and burglary. The natz are enforcing their political priorities strictly.

  • lucklucky

    Enjoy the tyrannical, uncultured, barbarian England. People are state property.

    https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2018/04/23/uk-judge-rejects-last-ditch-appeal-by-parents-to-save-terminally-ill-23-month-old-pope-tweets-support/

    It seems Rome must invade it again at least to save one of their newly adopted citizens.

  • Julie near Chicago

    This counts as pure evil. How DARE they !!!!!

    (assuming the facts are as reported).