“Kneecap rapper charged with terrorism offence over alleged Hezbollah flag at London gig”, reports the Guardian:
Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, who performs with the Irish rap trio Kneecap, has been charged with a terrorism offence for allegedly displaying a flag in support of Hezbollah at a gig in London, police said.
The 27-year-old, of Belfast, was charged after an investigation by the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism command and is scheduled to appear at Westminster magistrates court on 18 June.
Kneecap, named after the IRA’s favourite type of mutilation, are a rap group who sing in the Irish language. They’ve had it all, the award winning biopic, the laudatory coverage in the Guardian, the visit from Jeremy Corbyn. And now they’ve had the visit from the counter-terrorism police.
In these cases I never know whether to wrap myself in the mantle of libertarian righteousness and defend even these terrorist fanboys – it was only a piece of patterned cloth, FFS – or to say with Ulysses S. Grant that “I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.”
The late Niall Kilmartin examined this dilemma in this post, “The equal oppression of the laws”. He gave a characteristically fair hearing to both sides, but concluded:
We will not lack for mind-broadening frenemies to defend even after tolerating ‘equality before the law’ arguments against the loudest “I can say it but you can’t” enforcers of the double-standard. The woker-than-thou of today love purging the woke of yesterday – they will supply.
Equality before the law is good in itself. Demanding equality of oppression before the law is a way to expose a dishonest process. Think carefully before judging it a betrayal of our war against the hate speech laws’ evil goal, rather than a way – that can be both honest in itself and effective – of waging it.
My take? If I were on that jury I’d vote to nullify by sticking to my not guilty, and I would not budge (assuming we have all the facts of course.) I could not in good conscience put a person in jail for what they said.
I certainly understand the argument, but it seems a better answer is more free speech here, namely to point out to those who call for bans on hate speech what it leads to, and have this example handy.
It was, however, lovely to hear the timeless wisdom of Niall again. Thanks for the reminder.
Problem is, they can, and once they realize that you will never insist that they apply their laws to themselves too, the laws and the instances of enforcement will get whackier and less just – see the U.K. – and you and I will end up broke and in jail while they take our jobs and our good names and our freedom.
And once they see that it works with impunity, I doubt they’ll start using less of it on us.
It all strikes me as pure passivism. Refusing to violate an imperfect principle by not reacting at all to a physical attack, just taking the one-sided damage so that we don’t hurt our image of ourself.
But we’ll feel righteous. Until we don’t.
I’m not sure enough to be saying you’re wrong and I’m right. If there’s a “right” answer, it probably lies between what we’re each saying. But I just can’t get comfortable with what I think you’re advocating.
Tricky.
Being visited by the anti-terrorism police is a badge of honour for these admittedly highly competent LARPers.
Their popularity will soar still further and the bbc will be wetting themselves in anticipation of sycophantic interviews and documentaries irrespective of whether or not they are permitted to participate at “Glasto” for the £300 a ticket Tarquins and Jocastas.
Expect to see “official” tea cosy face masks on sale to cover any legal costs.
The downside? A high profile trial before the likes of justice tan ikram will at worst result in a short community service order (see above re documentaries) thereby further reinforcing the impression of two tier justice.
Maybe that’s the intention all along?
What bobby b said.
They are not playing by the same rule book – they will use your moral compunctions to tie you up in knots.
Alinsky: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
The schoolyard rules apply here, not the hifalutin ones.
You don’t give the bully your sandwich. Ever.
Tit for tat is the only thing that deters these people – it has been proven by Gaming Theory and thousands of years of human history.
Here in Israel it has taken the more idealistic, fair-minded people of the center-Right several decades to discover that the Left really are not the lovers of humanity and democracy they pretend to be. I believe a similar awakening has given rise to the Trump era in the US.
This is especially true of the Religious Zionists in Israel, many of whom still crave the approval of an increasingly old and irrelevant Leftist establishment – and who mistakenly brought a religious “love thy neighbor” ethos to the political knife fights of the Oslo era…. They paid for their naivety – entire communities uprooted and impoverished, legal protests shut down, decorated soldiers shut out of higher echelons, leaders delegitimized. Only now have they started to wake up.
Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh…
That’s not a name, that’s line noise.
@bobby b
Problem is, they can, and once they realize that you will never insist that they apply their laws to themselves too, the laws and the instances of enforcement will get whackier and less just
The problem is that “they” are not on trial, it is one defendant against the Crown. This is why I framed it the way I did. I don’t know enough about this group to even know if they are part of “they”. The solution to this problem is in the realm of politics not in the realm of the courts, and the most this can do is serve as an example of injustice. I don’t need to tell you (though I might need to tell a few American judges) a court case is a dispute between two litigants not a political action for the whole country.
If you were on that jury would you really vote to convict a man of a speech crime? Or perhaps we should investigate first if he is part of the “they” and if so convict him?
It would be interesting to see Kneecap’s response to an orgy of rape, mutilation and murder at a festival they were playing at. And probably more entertaining than any of their off-key ranting.
But we’re all missing the big problem here… Simply how should one wear a tricolour balaclava with a keffiyeh this season?
In a normal world, on a normal day, no.
But if I lived in a country in which the progressive government had jailed more people for “right-wing speech” than Russia has jailed people for any speech offenses, yeah, I would. In a Southport minute.
These people are far past deserving the luxury of polite dissent.
Alinsky’s rule number 4 applies here. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules”
Ha! I see BenDavid got there before me.
@Longrider
Alinsky’s rule number 4 applies here. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules”
Fraser’s mum’s rule number 1: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
(Responders — don’t be dissin’ my mother 😉)
@bobby b
These people are far past deserving the luxury of polite dissent.
Which people? And who advocated politeness? There is a large space between polite dissent and unjust criminal conviction.
I have a slightly different answer than the one given by bobby, but i think the underlying logic is similar.
If i were on that jury, i would not care whether this particular “speech crime” deserves punishment or not. All what i’d care about is to provide a cruel and unusual disincentive to “the other side”, Mongol-style.
That is assuming that “the other side” has been convicting people for speech crimes in the recent past. If not, and if “my side” is in a secure position of power, then i would vote to acquit. (“My side” is also dangerous, if allowed too much power.) But neither of the above criteria apply to the UK today.
The people who belong to the tribe that has successfully pushed for speech restrictions, thinking they would only be applied to “those other people” (e.g., me.)
If someone in the pro-Palestinian crowd is being prosecuted for a “speech crime”, I generally assume that they are part of that other tribe, not mine. And then I will gleefully vote to convict them of the crime they invented specifically to shut me and mine up.
I do not believe that human-caused global warming is a catastrophic threat. And yet, I will laugh and point when a CAGW proponent gets on his private jet and flies somewhere.
I do so not because I believe that his jet travel will end snowfalls, but because hypocrisy in the making of public law ought to be ridiculed, and put back against those who do the legislating.
Same basic theory.
@bobby b
And then I will gleefully vote to convict them of the crime they invented specifically to shut me and mine up.
The guy on trial didn’t invent this law, even if he favors it. Though on this latter point I say: objection, assumes facts not in evidence.
And yet, I will laugh and point when a CAGW proponent gets on his private jet and flies somewhere.
Sure, me too. But there is a long road from laughter and mockery to criminal prosecution. The court of public opinion is, quite rightly, rather different than a court of criminal law.
Fraser Orr’s ‘don’t lets be nasty to the Leftists’ attitude is why we are where we are now. You don’t defeat evil by being nice. You get as evil as they are in order to defeat them. Then when you’ve won (hopefully) you can go back to being nice. Its why we bombed the sh*t out of Germany and Japan. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. Then be magnanimous in victory. Fraser Orr wants to be magnanimous in defeat, which is oxymoronic.
Jim:
See also General Sir Charles James Napier’s quote:
Incidentally, Fraser disagreed with me not so long ago (less than a year ago?), when i wrote that too many American libertarians do not appreciate that people respond to incentives.
But now he proves my point: He shows no concern about the incentives that his strategy would generate.
@Jim
Fraser Orr’s ‘don’t lets be nasty to the Leftists’ attitude is why we are where we are now.
I said no such thing. I said I would not participate in throwing someone in jail for expressing an opinion. If this is controversial, I don’t know what isn’t. And, as I have pointed at many times in this thread, there is a difference between this amorphous “they” you want to declare war on and this specific guy who is a singer who waved a flag. Politics is about the “they” court cases are about one individual litigant.
Its why we bombed the sh*t out of Germany and Japan.
If you think we are at the point of blowing things up and killing large numbers of innocent people to get your political point of view across I respectfully disagree. If you want to fix free speech in Britain the first thing you need to do is actually convince the British people that free speech is a good idea. It is the way it is because British people in notable plurality, want it that way. And if that is the case options open to you are convince them to change their mind or go somewhere else where you can live with people more aligned with your thinking. Forcing it down their throats with threats of violence is not something I can get on board with.
I have to disagree with this. Court cases – esp. crim court cases – are where the abstraction of politics plays out in real life. All connected and interwoven.
Politics is how a society thrashes out what its values are. The crim justice system is simply the making and enforcing of the myriad small rules that serve those settled-upon values. This is why a crim case is labeled “The State vs. bobby b.” Not the prosecutor’s name, not the victim’s name. The case is brought in the political system’s name.
There is no point to a crim justice system until society has decided what it values and what it abhors. Only then is there something to enforce.
Every drug prosecution stems from a societal political decision – here, a democratic decision – that drugs are bad. As that political value changes, so does the crim justice system’s treatment of drug use.
The powers in our society have politically decided that my speech is bad. Charging me criminally with wrongspeak is simply the expression of that political decision. My insistence that that law be enforced fairly is a political fight.
@bobbyb, right, and in the system you so eloquently describe has as a final guard against tyranny: a jury who has absolute discretion to ignore that law if it is unjust, and there isn’t a damn thing the judge or the prosecutor can do about it. Me? Were I on that jury I’d be standing up and saying the state may not put a man in jail for his opinion, even an opinion I find repugnant. I think Voltaire had something to say about that. My voice maybe very limited in reach, just as my vote is, but I’m still going to do it anyway.
“I said no such thing. I said I would not participate in throwing someone in jail for expressing an opinion. ”
But your political opponents would throw you in jail in an instant for the same ‘offence’. So unless you hold them (and I include idiots like the Kneecap bloke in ‘them’) to the same standards they are holding you to, then you are guaranteed to lose the political argument. Its only when the Leftists are worried that something inflammatory they say may end them up in court that they might suddenly be converted to the merits of free speech. Note how the Left in the US suddenly became free speech advocates when Trump deported that student who was involved in anti-semitic agitation at Columbia.
” If you want to fix free speech in Britain the first thing you need to do is actually convince the British people that free speech is a good idea. ”
No, the British people don’t come into it. The British people can be convinced of all manner of political ideas, but unless those in power give them those things, they won’t get them (see Brexit, ending mass immigration, ending Net Zero, etc etc). And by and large the Left is in power in the UK, and the only way we will get proper free speech codified here is if we make life so difficult for those people in power that they decide to give in. And idiots like Mr Kneecap are the collateral damage that will be required to win that war. Just as its wrong for Lucy Connolly to be in jail, it is necessary for it to be wrong for some Lefty types to be jailed for things they’ve said too. When the numbers of Left and Right jailed for their speech are more equal you may find your arguments in favour of free speech suddenly gain more traction across the political spectrum.
@Jim
But your political opponents would throw you in jail in an instant for the same ‘offence’.
I live near Chicago. There are neighborhoods where, were I to enter, I would get the crap beaten out of me for being white. Would it be OK, therefore, for my mostly white neighborhood to put together groups to beat up any black kids that came here? After all, shouldn’t we make “them” live by the same justice standards that “they” are meting out? Or is it unfair to punish some young black kid for the sins of his peers?
There goes the American libertarian again, hoping that people respond to rational argument, rather than to incentives!
This is a strawman argument. It would not be OK, because beating up a black kid in your neighborhood does not change the incentives for other black kids while they are in black neighborhoods.
The same logic does not apply to the case in the OP.
@Fraser Orr: thats totally different. You’re suggesting breaking the law I’m suggesting upholding it. The reason Mr Kneecap is getting prosecuted is because of the laws we have here in the UK, so the responsibility for his conviction (should such occur, I’m dubious that he will be found guilty) is purely on those who enacted those laws, not me. I don’t agree with them any more than you do, but allowing them to be selectively applied is wrong. Apply them to everyone, then everyone might suddenly consider they’re in favour of free speech again. Allowing them to be selectively applied while you campaign to get free speech implemented is utterly wrong. Its the law of the land and as such should apply to everyone, or no one (ie be repealed).
@Snorri Godhi
There goes the American libertarian again, hoping that people respond to rational argument, rather than to incentives!
I never said you had to convince them by argument, but I certainly can’t accept that using violence to force your views on someone else is acceptable. I find it surprising that that has to even be said. And let’s be clear, throwing someone in jail for a non crime like expressing an opinion is just state sanctioned violence.
Jim makes a very good point. You need to strongly incentivise the enemy by making them equally vulnerable before progress can be made.
@Perry de Havilland (Prague)
Jim makes a very good point. You need to strongly incentivise the enemy by making them equally vulnerable before progress can be made.
Has “Kneecap” been involved in getting people put in jail for expressing their opinion? If not, in what respect, in regards to the subject we are talking about, is he the enemy? FFS, I find it hard to believe I am having this conversation. I doubt I’d much like Mr. Kneecap, or agree with many of his opinions. But whatever happened to “I might hate what you say but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it”?
Whoever said that, was an imbecile.
Not sure it was Voltaire, but i never thought much of Voltaire anyway.
@Snorri Godhi
“I might hate what you say but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it”?
Whoever said that, was an imbecile.
Well with that assessment of one of the core values of western civilization I think we will call it a wrap.
I can live with a left-wing government (Starmer) oppressing different left-wingers (Kneecap). I don’t have to like it , and it may offend some abstract values I may in a perfect world wish were followed. But in this fallen world it is so low down on my concerns that I can live with it.
In slang to “kneecap” someone is to break their kneecaps (normally by shooting them there) so they are crippled, and in pain, for the rest of their life.
The odd thing is that if someone were to “kneecap” the members of this musical group they, the musicians of the group, would complain and feel hard-done-by.
They think “kneecapping” other people is funny – but they would not like it done to them.
By the way…
Fraser Orr is correct about the sentiment of “I despise what you say – but I will defend, to the death, your right to say it”.
Snorri Godhi is quite wrong to say this is “imbecile” – it is the central principle of Freedom of Speech.
It appears I was mistaken when I thought that Snorri Godhi was inconsistent – that there was a contradiction between his opposition to philosophical freedom (free will – moral agency, personhood) and his support for civil liberties – such as Freedom of Speech, because (it turns out) that he does not support Freedom of Speech. So Snorri is NOT inconsistent.
Someone who believes in “Freedom of Speech” only for speech they agree with, does NOT support Freedom of Speech.
Such a person is using the word “freedom” wrongly – as was done, for example, in the speech opening the Canadian Parliament.
Canada has censorship of opinions – it is NOT “free”. And “True North” is a dissident news outlet in Canada which the government (and its friends the corporations) is working to get rid of – as they are “Rebel News” (the other dissident news outlet in Canada).
Canada is not “strong” either – but that is a different discussion.
You can be a firm believer in free speech, and still insist that, when someone (over your objection) passes a law restricting speech, they must apply it to themselves as well as to you.
I can aspire to non-violence and still shoot you to stop you from attacking me.
Fraser:
You call that a core principle of West.Civ? Man, you don’t even know what West.Civ is about!
I would defend MY freedom of speech to the death … but not my own death. THAT is what i call the Pagan concept of liberty.
I might defend other people’s freedom of speech to the death, but never my own death; and not every other people. Not twits like Kneecap.
I am not a twit like Voltaire.
A strange statement from someone who wrote:
—-
So you think it unacceptable that a shopkeeper uses violence to prevent shoplifting. And i am being charitable here, i am assuming that, when you say “using violence” you really meant “initiating violence”; because, unlike Putin or Hamas, shoplifters do not actually initiate violence; unless you stretch the definition of “violence”.
Thinking again about it, the problem with this statement is that i see Fraser and his ilk as only nominal defenders of the ‘core value’ of freedom of speech, while objectively they are enablers of censorship. Fraser has done a poor job in arguing that that is not the case.
bobby b – such laws are very rarely employed against the left, for example the Kennedy Administration (and that is more than 50 years ago now – in a supposedly more conservative age) abused and persecuted (sorry “investigated” and “audited”) many conservative groups, but only one leftist group – “Fair Play For Cuba”, and it is now known that this investigation was just a sop to the right, in order to justify what the government (even back then) considered to be really important – hitting conservative groups.
Saying “these laws should apply to the left as well” is pointless – because they hardly ever will be applied to both sides. Might as well make a stand and oppose these laws – root and branch.
Snorri – the “enablers of censorship” are the people who support censorship.
Groups such as “Kneecapped” are created by the pro terrorist education system and media in Northern Ireland (and, to a lesser extent, the Republic of Ireland).
Even the First Minister of Northern Ireland is Sinn Fein IRA now – thanks to the squalid betrayal that we are all supposed to celebrate as the “Belfast Agreement” or even the “Good Friday Agreement” – crawling to the IRA (and other terrorist groups) is supposed to be a holy thing now.
And these groups in Ireland (north and south) have loved Islamic terrorist groups for many years – it is pointless to educate people in the “exploitation and oppression narrative” and then arrest them for waving the flag of such a group.
My half brother Tony Marks spent his life as an academic teaching people this Marxist exploitation and oppression narrative – with the full support of stupid governments (of all political parties) who used taxpayer money to pay him for teaching people to believe lies and be utterly vicious in their behaviour.
As our late father put it – “you do not plant the bombs or fire the bullets yourself – you get other people to do the risky work”.
To those who still do not understand….
The exploitation and oppression narrative (supported by both London and Dublin – and the international community) is the same for Ireland and the Middle East – and it has long been easy to find the flags of Islamic terrorist groups in such areas of Ireland (north and south).
It is a bit late to complain about the flag choices of these idiots now.
Paul Marks:
Not necessarily.
Take Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, for instance. Let’s call him Liam OOhA, for short.
I don’t know whether he supports censorship, but let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that he does. (Which, i would argue, should be the default assumption.)
Liam OOhA is, objectively speaking, not an enabler of censorship. In fact, he is a “disabler” of censorship — as long as American-style libertarians allow the full force of the Law to be applied to him in this case.
It follows that the American-style libertarians who support Liam OOhA are enablers of censorship.