Criminalizing speech in the UK

The Narrative™ police get more active every day.

In this case, the actual police. As in the Bobbies, as police in the UK are called.

Caroline Farrow, a noted critic of the transgender movement in the United Kingdom and ally of J.K. Rowling in the defense of biology, was arrested last week by the police in Guilford for being mean online to a trans activist who, by the way, was suing her for being mean, online. Help! Somebody online disagrees with me! Call the cops!

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Her arrest was related to her posting a photo of a letter informing her that she was being sued by the “victim” of her criticism.

The investigation stems primarily from a tweet the Farrow posted on July 26, which included a photo of a letter she had received notifying her of a legal action being brought against her by [Stephanie] Hayden over her continuing online harassment. Farrow’s post revealed Hayden’s full address, alongside a comment misgendering Hayden.

The jerk sued her, Farrow complained about it online posting a picture of the letter bitching at her, and worst of all misgendered the poor victim. For this she was accosted at home by the police who entered her home uninvited and arrested her in front of her children. Her autistic daughter had to surrender her iPad because it was part of the investigation into this woman’s being too mean for their taste. Farrow’s work computer was seized as well at another location.

Farrow posted a Twitter thread on the experience, the first tweet of which I post below. It is long so I encourage you to follow it on Twitter.

The Left media is over the moon, of course, because forcefully shutting up their critics is what they do. And these days the police are actively aligned with them. In their story about the incident Vice used the term “hate” in some form or another about 5 zillion times, and questioned aspects of the arrest that were clearly shown on video.

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The Sun has a much more sympathetic take, unsurprisingly, and describe the incident thusly:

A MUM who was arrested in front of her kids over “malicious” online posts has said cops should be out fighting “real crime” instead.

Caroline Farrow was cooking dinner for her five children and husband Robin when police hammered down her door.

Pictures show a cop preventing the 48-year-old Catholic media commentator from shutting her front door on Monday.

Another shows the mum, from Guildford, Surrey, being searched outside before she was taken into custody.

Mrs Farrow has been accused of posting malicious content harassing users on website Kiwi Farms amid a “Twitter spat about gender issues”, which she denies.

She was taken away in a police car in front of her kids and was left feeling “mortified”.

Mrs Farrow told the Mail: “My autistic daughter (12) was asking why they were taking her iPad.

“She got very upset because she listens to the Harry Potter books on it every night. It’s the only way she will sleep.

“My other two daughters had just returned from school and were aghast that police were in the house.

“My seven-year-old son sat on the stairs and heard it all. He was asking me, ‘What’s happening? Is that the police, mummy?'”.

 

There’s plenty more at the link, so be sure to read it all. Mark Steyn interviewed Farrow about the incident, and it is worth watching:

The Vice story indicated that the police had received an arson threat directed at the supposed victim of Farrow’s unapproved opinions–not from Farrow, but from some unspecified anonymous person. Yet the wording of the story is very odd and suspicious:

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But Farrow’s claims had real-world consequences. A day after her interview aired, Stephanie Hayden, a lawyer and trans activist who has been a target of Farrow’s harassment for years, received a phone call from the police telling her that there had been a credible threat of arson against her.

“I was contacted last night at quarter to 10 by the officer that’s dealing with the investigation,” Hayden told VICE News. “She told me that Surrey Police had received threats [and] one of those threats concerned arson. So the Detective Chief Inspector asked the officer to contact the Metropolitan Police here in London, to place a marker against my home address.”

Hayden said she asked for specifics about the threats but that the officer was “quite vague.” Surrey Police told VICE News on Friday morning that a threat had been made on Twitter in response to their tweet, and “as a precaution, we made the complainant aware and have put appropriate safeguarding measures in place.” The threatening tweet was reported to Twitter and subsequently deleted, the police added.

Uh, what? Think about this for about half a second: a person responded to the police to threaten arson against the trans activist? Who the hell does that, other than Jussie Smollett? If you were threatening to do something illegal would you inform the police instead of the person you are supposedly trying to intimidate?
And given the police’s hair trigger going after Farrow for something far less than threatening violence against somebody, where is the arrest of the Twitter terrorist? Hoax. Definite hoax. I challenge anybody to provide a different, rational explanation of this behavior.
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We are now at the point in civilizational decline that the police are arresting people for wrongthink, while vast portions of the media gang up on people for being bullies. Who are the real bullies here? The people who send the cops barging into a mothers’ home and arresting her in front of her kids for arguing that biology is real, or the person who states what was considered indisputably true until about 5 minutes ago?
Make no mistake, we are well on the path to doing the same thing here.

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