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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   892 thread views

Transnational Thursday for September 4, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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You may be familiar with Graham Linehan, an Irish TV writer best known for co-creating Ireland's single most beloved sitcom Father Ted and also for creating two other well-regarded sitcoms, Black Books and The IT Crowd. In recent years he's pivoted away from TV towards political activism and has become well-known for his aggressive opposition to transactivism, about which his ceaseless pontifications on Twitter earned him a ban (which was reversed following the Musk buyout). By his own admission his obsessive dedication to this cause has cost him professional opportunities, his marriage, and left him financially destitute. I believe his gender-critical Substack is now his primary source of income.

On Monday he returned to the UK from the states to find five armed police officers waiting for him over three tweets he'd posted to X in April. He understandably found the experience so stressful that he was taken to hospital because of his elevated blood pressure. Certain of the officers who interviewed him alluded to the ongoing Sandie Peggie* case in what struck him as sympathetic terms, suggesting they thought they were wasting their time by arresting him.

For two of the offending tweets, no reasonable person could argue that any kind of criminal offense had been committed: the first depicts a photo of a trans protest which he describes as "a photo you can smell", while the second consists of Linehan asserting he hates trans activists because they're homophobic and misogynistic. For the third, one could in theory argue that it constitutes incitement to violence:

If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.

But let's be honest: trans activists using Twitter to urge their allies to assault TERFs (however broadly defined) is as common as dirt. Have any of them been arrested for so doing? Have they fuck. Funnily enough, even various Labour figures (such as health secretary Wes Streeting) are acknowledging they went too far in this instance, as has the Met Police chief.

From the Irish perspective, I find the hypocrisy appalling. The Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap were charged in the UK for, among other things, urging attendees to their gigs to go out and "murder their local MP". Just about everyone I've spoke to thinks this was an outrageous infringement on their freedom of expression and a sign of how hostile the UK has become to same: after all, no reasonable person could interpret their statement as intended literally. But all of the people who were up in arms about Kneecap's being charged with a criminal offense are crowing over Linehan's arrest and calling him a "drama queen" for complaining about his elevated blood pressure. Look at this thread over on /r/ireland, for which the comments were initially set to "approved users only" owing to "far-right brigading" (read: don't interrupt the circlejerk) and have since been locked.

I'm reminded of something I saw in response to the Sydney Sweeney jeans/genes ad. If people keep abusing the "Nazi" epithet to the point that being attracted to slim, pretty blondes with big tits makes one a "Nazi", eventually people are just going to shrug their shoulders and say "guess I'm a Nazi so". By the same token, if objecting to the presence of male sex pests** in women's changing rooms, or thinking that someone shouldn't be arrested for expressing gender-critical opinions makes one "far-right" - eventually I'll simply have no choice but to say that's what I am.

*A nurse in Scotland nurse who objected to the presence of a trans-identified male doctor in the female changing rooms of the hospital where she worked, for which she was subjected to an 18-month internal investigation.

**I'm emphatically not asserting that all trans women/trans-identified males are sex pests, but I don't think it's open to debate anymore that short-sighted self-ID legislation enables sex pests.

For the third, one could in theory argue that it constitutes incitement to violence

Volokh Conspiracy on this topic

I don't know whether this is indeed punishable under English law; I have a hard enough time keeping track of the law of one country. But someone asked me whether this would be punishable even under US law, so I thought I'd post about it.

The incitement exception to the First Amendment wouldn't apply here. Consider Hess v. Indiana. The Tweet likewise appears to be, "at worst, nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time", and it wasn't "intended to produce, and likely to produce, imminent disorder".

US law has also, since Brandenburg and Hess, recognized a solicitation exception. (The leading cases are US v. Williams and US v. Hansen.) I think that, under that exception, a Tweet saying "You should punch trans activist Pat Jones in the balls if you ever come across him" would likely be solicitation even in the absence of imminence (at least so long as Tweet is reasonably understood as serious rather than a joke or hyperbole). But here the advocacy appears not to target any particular person.

I also don't think this would be punishable under the "true threats" exception to the First Amendment. See Counterman v. Colorado and US v. Bagdasarian.

Ken White says that the Tweet is "within shouting distance of prosecutable in the US". Maybe; it's hard to know for sure. But if the question is whether, under modern First Amendment precedents, the Tweet would have been constitutionally protected in US courts, I think the answer is yes.

Ken White says that the Tweet is "within shouting distance of prosecutable in the US". Maybe

Yes, please tell me how all the talk of "punching nazis" was fine, but a joke about kicking trans women in the balls is dangerously close to prosecutable.

That's easy. When those bad people do it, it's bad, when our good people do it, it's not bad. Nazis are bad, so punching them is laudable. Trans people in women's bathrooms are good, so punching them is genocide. It's easy!

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