Scotland’s Hate Crime Law: A Dystopian Descent into Snitch Culture

Scotland’s Free Speech Crisis: 7,000 “Thought Crimes” in a Week

As the jackbooted spectres of authoritarianism stalk the land under the sinister pretext of “protecting the vulnerable.” in the newly-minted dystopia that is Scotland, a bone-chilling surge of civic ratting has metastasised in the wake of the SNP’s odious “Hate Crime” legislation’s advent – over 7,000 online “crime reports” lodged by the police in the first week alone.

Let that abhorrent statistic sink in. In a supposed liberal democracy of the modern West, thousands of citizens have eagerly betrayed their neighbours, colleagues and kindred to the punitive arm of the state over perceived “offensive” speech transgressions – the mere articulation of words and ideas, however unpalatable to some. This is the unvarnished face of Orwellian groupthink, the omnipresent Panopticon incentivising societal self-censorship through fear of persecution for committing wrongspeak.

For what else can catalyse such frenzied mass-dilation of trivial thought crimes against amorphous “protected categories” beyond the institutionalisation of internalised oppression? When the subjective novelties of “causing offence” and “stirring up hatred” become legislated contraventions unto themselves, absent any material consequences or intent requirements, a nation has plunged headlong into the solipsistic void.

All these newly-minted “hate crime advisors” ascending to arbitrate the ever-multiplying ephemera of subjective umbrage represent nothing more than Offense Commissars for the secular theocracy stripping language of all vitality.

Indeed, the very delight with which Justice Minister Constance has received this tsunami of snitch reports exposes the rot. “It demonstrates the necessity of our legislation,” she gushes, unabashedly revelling in the petrified silence casting its pall over public discourse.

No one can get up much enthusiasm for a Government which puts you in jail if you open your mouth.

-George Orwell

Thoughtcrime in Scotland: The War on Uncomfortable Words 

The figures released by Police Scotland cover the period from 1 to 7 April.

A spokesperson for the force said it showed a “substantial increase in the number of online hate reports being received”.

“This significant demand continues to be managed within our contact centres and so far the impact on frontline policing – our ability to answer calls and respond to those who need our help in communities across Scotland – has been minimal.

“All complaints received are reviewed by officers, supported by dedicated hate crime advisers, and dealt with appropriately, whether that is being progressed for further assessment, or closed as they do not meet the criteria under the legislation.”

Race was the most common aggravating factor. It was cited in 120 of the recorded hate crimes, followed by sexual orientation in 42 cases and disability in 38 cases.

More than one “aggravator” can be applied to a hate crime, with Police Scotland reporting 250 in the first week of April for the 240 recorded crimes.

For the architects of such authoritarian codification, the ultimate promulgation of the citizen-censor remains the prime objective. Terrorise the speakers with capricious malignment, incentivise a society of grovelling supplicants flattering their jailors and censoring themselves to avoid legal obliteration.

Let none dare dismiss this dismantling of free expression safeguards as mere hyperbole or moral panic. It marks the most granular front in the longstanding war on linguistic authenticity fought by all bureaucratic elites throughout history.

It is the spontaneity, irreverence and counterculture of true unfettered speech that most imperils their monopoly on sanctioned hierarchies and social control mythologies. Better to gaslight the masses into conflating umbrage with tangible injury, manufacturing mass paranoia over phantasmic bigotries that must be ruthlessly excised lest the whole artifice of inequity collapse.

This tweet is intended very seriously. Please read and understand it.
Scottish law holds that anything on social media which can be read in Scotland is published in Scotland.
Clive Thomson was jailed for contempt of court for material he published in France. I have been…

— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) March 15, 2024

Make no mistake – this descent into civic self-censuring dystopia represents an existential jeopardy, not some fleeting overreaction. For when the very liberties that elevated our civilization from its primordial mire become anathematised as subversive heresy, darker ages of bondage and dogmatic suppression inevitably beckon.

If the Scottish subject today stands condemned for provoking secular Sin through unauthorised utterances, their doom is our harrowing harbinger of isolating cages yet to entrap us all absent heroic resistance. No citizen is truly liberated until the last dissident’s voice rings loud and unmolested across our public squares.

Yet more forebodingly, this McCarthyite campaign to legislate the very parameters of permissible speech itself bodes a far direr augury than simply the Caledonian territory’s descent into neo-Stasi groupthink. For make no mistake – the authoritarian impulses animating Holyrood’s draconian prohibitions against “causing offense” represent the vanguard offensive in a UK-wide war on expression now achieving critical mass.

Just as this Tartanista idée fixe to extirpate any whiff of subjective unpleasantness metastasised from the intersectional dogmas plaguing England’s decay, so too shall the juridical architecture codifying this Mission Creep inevitably infect the corridors of power at Westminster. This precedent psychosis, once embedded within the secure-bureaucratic Borg’s policy cortices, will inexorably contagion outward until the whole of Britain lies benighted by the very totalitarian penumbra currently constricting the Scots.

The pincer movement has already commenced – with each fleeting day witnessing new Whitehall trial balloons for comparable “hate speech” diktats stifling national discourse under the guise of “protecting the vulnerable.” It represents the cynical culmination of decades of assault upon free expression, of speech codes and compelled ideological fealties steadily escalating sociopolitical reality into an Orwellian Neverland of mandated silence and sanctioned truth.

Those who today foolishly dismiss the SNP’s Playtime Stasi as some regional affectation destined to dissipate are indulging naivete of fatal proportions. For without relentless civic counterattack, these diktats to criminalise opinions shall become our new normal — a cross to which each of us will ultimately find ourselves shackled and exsanguinated of voice by a puritanical clerisy.

Of course, with protests all but banned, our voices all but gone, we are left with only whispers of resistance.