Has UK Suppressed Free Speech via Bait-and-Switch? Are PR Folks OK with It?
Has the United Kingdom launched a tragic descent down a free-speech-suppression slippery slope, from which freedom-loving UK citizens may never recover?
If elected to the White House, would the Kamala Harris Administration seek to adopt similar “internet troll” incarceration powers in the US as Labour’s UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer now wields, with seeming impunity?
Should US tourists to the UK fear British incarceration for past social media postings, “likes,” and re-shares that now are being surveilled actively according to UK Government authorities?
These are fair questions, in the wake of the July 29 UK stabbing rampage that killed three girls, ages 6, 7, and 9, with 10 others – eight children and two adults – wounded.
Initial, widespread confusion about alleged suspect Axel Muganwa Rudakubana’s religion, ethnicity and/or nationality contributed to historic community protests and rioting across the UK. However, identity confusion certainly was not the only impetus for recent unrest.
After all, three innocent little girls are dead from stab wounds.
That’s a very ugly and harrowing statement to have to write, but that’s the visceral reality of the situation that’s been at hand since July 29 in the UK. It’s an ugly truth. But it’s still the truth.
As I wrote this week to several colleagues who are UK public relations industry leaders, I find it stunning that no UK news reports I’ve found on the July 29 stabbing tragedy have delved into whether the attack was potentially racially motivated.
For example, if a 17-year-old white male was arrested on charges of stabbing to death three young Black or Brown girls, wouldn’t it immediately and publicly be decried and investigated with urgency as a hate crime in the UK? I hope someone can tell me that indeed it would be, as well it should.
It’s almost like there is a gag order on even asking this question (and maybe there is, since the UK has embraced such a lockdown on open communication, it seems).
Bizarrely, a wide range of UK news outlets published the stabbing suspect’s photo dating back to when the suspect was a young child – a highly misleading and mis-informative image. When I first heard about the attack, I thought it indeed was committed by a young boy of maybe age 8 or 9, judging by the initial photos posted by reputable news outlets. Yet no one appears to be calling this out. (The suspect recently turned 18 years old, the age of majority in the UK, but it’s unclear if he will be tried as a child or as an adult.)
Other information voids contributing to UK unrest:
I’m unclear how the UK defines a “terror” attack legally (the July 29 attack was immediately declared not a “terror” incident… although, I keep trying to reconcile how one tells that to these murdered little girls’ parents and families, who are terrorized and traumatized for life). In the U.S., a racially motivated attack needn’t be “terrorism” to qualify as a “hate crime,” so I’m trying to research and understand the UK legal stance, because it seems relevant.
I am forced to ponder what questions UK journalists are asking, if any, on these and other germane points, given the facts and seeming dearth of reporting.
Public information voids these recent weeks clearly have contributed massively to the rioting. Even the judge in the case pointed out that fact, which led to his unmasking the identity of the arrested suspect.
It would seem these voids are largely the fault of UK Government via law enforcement and the court system and whatever rules – written or unwritten – they’re following. Perfectly logical questions remain persistently and stubbornly unanswered.
Given all this context, the full basis of public protesting is far more nuanced and complex than Prime Minister Starmer would have the world believe, in his oversimplifications by blaming protests as mere “far-right hatred.”
For example, I read with great interest a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Dominic Green some days ago. Mr. Green is a dual citizen of both the US and UK and a fellow of the Royal Historic Society, entitled, “What’s Behind the Violent U.K. Riots: England’s poor white communities are fed up with mass immigration and two-tier policing.” It’s worth a read, even if you don’t agree with Mr. Green’s observations about compelling facts.
By seeming decree, Mr. Starmer’s government has been arresting, hastily convicting and imprisoning citizens whom the UK Government deems an “internet troll.”
For background, in October 2023, the UK Government passed its Online Safety Act, which originally was billed as an arguably overdue set of consumer-protection measures, ostensibly aimed primarily to secure online child safety by holding social media platforms accountable for complying with clear, written rules, like age verifications.
However, after the bill was passed, the UK Government issued a press release in January 2024, suddenly announcing that “new offences” tied to “fake news” were being added to Online Safety Act enforcement, with individual social media users (citizens) in UK Government crosshairs of compliance, not social media companies alone.
The news release stated:
“A new false communications offence will bring internet trolls to justice by outlawing the intentional sending of false information that could cause ‘non-trivial psychological’ or physical harm to users online. This new offence will bolster the government’s strong commitment to clamping down on dangerous disinformation and election interference online.
“While much of the Online Safety Act’s protections are intended to hold tech companies and social media platforms to account for the content hosted on their sites, these new offences will apply directly to the individuals sending threatening or menacing messages and bring justice directly to them.”
The next logical questions include, of course, who gets labeled an “internet troll”?
Who possesses competent authority to decide such and via what criteria?
And how does “false information” get objectively verified as “false,” when the larger litmus test appears to be not quantifiable truth or falsehood, but instead, filtered lens of outrage and what gilded class of citizens can claim “offence” on “non-trivial” grounds – whatever that means — and have their grievances responded to posthaste by UK law enforcement or, alternately, summarily ignored?
In recent days, I’ve seen news reports that a “UK police commissioner threatens to extradite, jail US citizens over online posts.”
As a US citizen myself – and a moderate conservative – should I begin rethinking my travel plans to the UK?
Will I be apprehended by UK law enforcement when I land at Heathrow for that Babylon Bee joke that I re-shared on X last week, with its humorous jab taken at British expense?
How would Visit Britain — the UK Government’s tourist-development ministry – feel about lost tourism dollars due to an American consumer boycott, given that the US is usually the UK’s largest inbound travel market? While I’m not advocating for a boycott, it stands to reason that quite a few Americans will be off-put by UK speech-police threats, given that nearly half the US population identifies as right-of-center on politics.
That famous historic line from American Revolutionist Paul Revere of “The British are coming!” could soon be supplanted with a new moniker for the British, “The Americans are leaving!”
In a more friendly context, the UK is widely considered the United States’ closest and most important ally.
What is occurring now in the UK will likely have great relevance and ripple-effect globally, just as the George Floyd tragedy in the US impacted a wide range of international cultural and policy-making conversations in other nations, certainly including the UK.
If, for example, a potential Harris Administration and allied US Congress gets it in their heads next year to follow suit with our UK Government friends and adopt the same speech-suppression regs that the UK apparently codified via press release – with government employees going on television and literally threatening to hunt citizens and taxpayers down and incarcerate them for social media posts on subjective grounds and by partisan tastes – there will be a “civil war” in the US, and that’s not hyperbole, á la Musk.
It would be a very fragile peace to keep, as if it weren’t fragile enough already with pre-existing divisions.
As such, it’s my personal view that abrupt and obvious censorship maneuvers are an exceptionally concerning, if not dangerous and egregiously irresponsible, game that any government of a traditional “democracy” can play.
The global public relations professional community should begin discussing and analyzing these impacts, without fear of an open exchange.
At present, the silence is deafening.