New laws may make it easier to pursue far-right activist over alleged role in spreading disinformation
(I think they are here, because of our Constitution. However, it’d be good to see this sort of activity controlled, and people safer. -A)
Images of Tommy Robinson using his phone while sunbathing in Cyprus as a Rotherham hotel housing asylum seekers was set alight have prompted outrage among those long concerned about his ability to inspire far-right action, even from a distance.
Yet while he has long seemed able to operate with impunity, events may finally be catching up with the man who first rose to prominence in 2009 as the de facto leader of the now defunct English Defence League (EDL).
Far from being powerless to pursue Robinson, new legislation means the authorities may be able to move more easily against those who share damaging information online that they know to be untrue.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is already known to be among those who are being looked at by police for their alleged role in disseminating disinformation.
A former director of public prosecutions, Ken Macdonald KC, spelled out on Monday how he believed investigators would want to quickly identify individuals who are involved in “online organisation, online incitement and online conspiracies”.
“I think prosecutors will want to have a strategy to identify people who may have been involved in inciting and encouraging these events, and they will want to arrest them and build cases against them. These are, in one sense, the most important people,” Lord Macdonald told BBC Radio 4’s World at One.
While Robinson has been abroad since 28 July, when he fled the UK on the eve of a high court hearing over contempt of court proceedings, he has maintained a near constant commentary on events in the UK since the fatal stabbings of three young girls in Southport on 29 July, sharing claims that police have described as false.
While he has long been a prolific user of multiple social media platforms – benefiting in particular from the return of his X account after Elon Musk bought Twitter – going after him for his online output is not clear-cut.
The far right has moved online, where its voice is more dangerous than ever Read more
Dominic Grieve, a former attorney general for England and Wales, told the Guardian: “It is an offence to incite violence on the grounds of race, belief or sexual orientation, and there is incitement to hatred. But it’s a grey area between the right to criticise and incitement to hatred and is a very difficult area to police.
“Quite simply, that’s why it is possible for people to play around with that area. Either you clamp down on it, in which case legitimate freedom of speech gets eliminated and breeds undesirable problems of its own, or you live with it and challenge those views through debate.”
Recent changes in the law open up other possibilities. Since January, an amendment to the Online Safety Act 2023 allows for the prosecution of those who convey information that they know to be false and “if the person intended the message, or the information in it, to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience”.
Ashley Fairbrother, a senior prosecutor at the law firm Edmonds Marshall McMahon, said: “This now makes the circulation of damaging and false information online into an offence in its own right.” (snip-More)
Scottie's Playtime 
I make no apologies for this comment.
If anyone threatens the stability of a safety of a nation, then the government has not just a right but a duty to protect its people. The full weight of the machinery of the government agencies should be brough to bear, swiftly and to its the complete extent.
Those who are the source of the inflaming the situation should be treated as terrorists and punished as terrorists.
Those who take violence to the streets should expect to receive full sanctioned suppression of their activities taking place at the time.
The message should be sent out clear and concise ‘There will be no tolerance of Intolerance,’.
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I agree 100%. I think we in the US can find ways to write such laws, but I don’t know if the will to do that work-which would need to be very precise-is present in those who are in the positions to do that work.
sigh.
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It is a problem. We do have the tighter laws, some of which were put in place by the previous government, but in a Democracy with its checks and balances the administration of the laws has to be, as you say Ali, precise.
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Sort of how they write capital punishment laws to stay within constitutional guidelines, even though the SCOTUS decision that state execution is not constitutional! That burns me; such laws can be written and pass muster, but inciteful and harmful speech somehow cannot. It’s lack of will.
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It is a problem Ali.
We do have laws which cover incitement and hate, although it still seeps through from Right and from Left under coded and slithery ways. To aid their activities both sides feed on a steady diet of Hypocrisy.
In quieter times some will same from the comfort of their detached lives ‘This is the price we must pay for Democracy and Free Speech’.
They have never been on the end of a mob threatening to burn you out of home or spreading hate because you are on the wrong ethnic side.
The issue which dare not speak its name out loud in the USA is that a reactionary section of the White Community are too invested in positions of privilege and comfort and will not evolve, and want things to stay that way. They want to continue to rule the entire USA. If they were just to stay put in a Hamish sort of way and keep themselves to themselves things would be a measure easier.
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