Some oddly disturbing news out of Birmingham Crown Court in Birmingham, England reaches us this week. It deals with four people who received some fairly stiff jail time on a variety of offenses. The most interesting of the lot would have to be a young woman by the name of Alice Cutter, age 23. She, her boyfriend and two other associates were all sentenced to between 18 months and five years behind bars. Cutter almost seems harmless enough at first glance. She’s identified as a waitress who lives and works in nearby West Yorkshire. Oh, and she also once entered a beauty pageant, vying for the title of “Miss Hitler.” (NY Post)
A former Miss Hitler contestant from the UK who joked about gassing synagogues and using a Jew’s head as a soccer ball has been sentenced to prison along with her ex-partner for belonging to a terrorist group, according to reports.
Fuhrer femme fatale Alice Cutter, 23, and Mark Jones, 25, were convicted in March of belonging to the far-right group National Action, which was founded in 2013 and banned three years later after it celebrated the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, the BBC reported.
Cutter, 23, received a sentence of three years behind bars, while Jones, 25, was hit with a term of five and a half years during appearances at Birmingham Crown Court.
Look, I’m not going to try to paint some picture of Cutter as a sympathetic figure here. She was caught on camera yelling “Rot in hell!” after the murder of a Member of Parliament. She’s gone out on social media talking about gassing synagogues and abusing the corpses of dead Jews. She’s posed for pictures in front of a Nazi flag and attended rallies holding signs that read “Hitler was right.” Let’s not try to dance around the story here. The woman is a Nazi and she makes no bones about it. She doesn’t do anything to engender sympathy from the general public. The rest of her crew are also openly Nazi sympathizers and antisemites. It’s a toxic, hateful crowd.
With all of that having been said, let’s look at the charges they were all put away on. Cutter was convicted of belonging to a group called National Action, which generally shares all of the views I mentioned above. Her boyfriend was accused of belonging to the same group and voicing their disgusting principles. The other two men are described as neo-Nazi “diehards” Garry Jack, 24, and Connor Scothern, 19. They too were convicted of belonging to National Action and promoting its views.
In other words, all four of these people are being sent to prison for saying things. And for joining an organization. They are literally going to spend years behind bars for thought crimes.
I understand that these are probably some of the last people on Earth that most of us would have any sympathy for, but they do underscore one of the key differences between a truly free nation like the United States and our special relationship partners in Great Britain. In America, you are allowed to say pretty much anything you like provided it doesn’t cause actual violence or panic people in a crowded theater. And you’re legally allowed to join the KKK just as readily as the local chess club. That doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to accept or support your rhetoric and we’ll probably vilify you in the public square. But the government can’t throw you in a cell because of what you’re thinking or saying. (The exception comes with our so-called “hate crime” laws, but that’s a rant for another day.)
I’m not asking anyone to support these four people or start a Gofundme account on their behalf. They live in the UK and that’s just how the laws are over there. But if Cutter and her Nazi friends have anything positive to contribute to our ongoing social dialogue, they serve as a reminder that we need to value the God-given freedoms we enjoy here in the United States and protect them with our lives. It doesn’t take much of slip for an otherwise “benign” government like that of the UK to start throwing its weight around. And if these four can rot in jail for the things they said, what other thoughts could land you in jail in England? Food for thought.
