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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6200 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025

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Europeans are effortposting on X right now, centering around a reported $140 million fine apparently for how X changed the blue checkmark and restricted API access to researchers. But this comes at a time when Europeans are bearing down on Musk for not curating feeds based on the opinions of paid 'misinformation experts', an industry effectively invented post-2016 election.

It is a terrible look for Europe. They are falling behind China and the US economically while acting as the global regulators for industries they are no longer capable of building themselves. Their posture has become so hostile to business that Apple is now withholding major features from the European market. Jamie Dimon just sounded the alarm on how their hulking regulatory regime is dragging down their ability to innovate, warning that they’ve effectively driven investment out.

My impression of European bureaucrats in the last 24 hours is of a body staffed by a bunch of snooty has-beens. The economist Robin Brooks has been noting the deep hypocrisy here too: their moralizing doesn't match their actions on things like Ukraine, given they are still buying endless amounts of Russian oil via backchannels and refineries in places like India.

The free speech thing is really annoying too. I was actually surprised to see Trump hold back on this when meeting PM Starmer in Scotland. There is a real and serious difference in free speech between our nations. As an American, I can express myself without fear that some busybody will knock on my door.

It’s upsetting because while things might have been less turbulent under Harris, I’m truly glad that the attempt to codify a global regime of 'acceptable' online speech has met resistance. It’s odd to think that we nearly saw a unification of US/EU efforts on this front, importing their safetyism to our shores.

Europe is and always will be our friend, but they’re not on their game right now. The reactions aren't principled—they’re distasteful.

On AI use:

Having gone through this comment and others I don't think this needs to take any action.

No one here really wants to talk with an AI.

Using AI as a copy editor aka fixing grammar, spelling, and sentence clarity is not against the rules. But people will eventually notice and they won't like it. And they will likely call some of your original thoughts "AI slop", and you'll have little to dissuade them otherwise

I think most here would be fine with reading slightly worse grammar and spelling along with the certainly that they aren't reading AI stuff.

I think most here would be fine with reading slightly worse grammar and spelling along with the certainly that they aren't reading AI stuff.

Finally, my time has come!

Yeah, as an American resident dual citizen, this is pretty much my reaction. I'm not exactly gonna be upset if the administration snaps back at them.

My impression of European bureaucrats in the last 24 hours is of a body staffed by a bunch of snooty has-beens.

My experience from living in down town Stockholm is that they are rejects from all good institutions. The people at leading tech and finance firms are utterly incredible. Our political elite are often their dumb sisters. They don't work nearly as hard, they are substantially lower Iq, they are socially anxious, boring at parties and lack general education. It is women whose parents work in genuinely impressive jobs but have regressed to the mean that end up at these positions.

A big difference between the US and Europe is that politics is a lot less lucrative here. A PM at spotify will make far, far more money than a minister in the government and more than any government employee.

Much of the private sector elite consider the political elite to be utterly incompetent. However, the econmic elite tends to focus too much on economic issues and not see the overall decline of society.

The reactions aren't principled—they’re distasteful.

Hmm.

Not sure what to think of this account of this comment. There's definitely some AI used here, and that's bad, but it also seems that there is some sort of human touch involved. There are also other comments from this account with obvious AI usage.

There's something odd about the comment as well. What's with the namedrops of Jamie Dimon and Robin Brooks with absolutely no context or links. The entire comment is incoherent, which could easily be from a weak writer, but feels suspiciously like copypasta from ai here.

Something is also extreeeemely suspicious about how this user almost always uses contractions "it's" but somehow end up using the uncontradicted form here and there. It's (lol) unlikely for a writer not to use the same form across a short body of text written quickly. But also it's also a sign that the entire text isn't wholesale copied from ai.

Personally I think this poster has the right intentions overall and the mods just need to tell him to knock it off with the slop.

The entire comment is incoherent, which could easily be from a weak writer, but feels suspiciously like copypasta from ai here.

Yeah, it's got the elements of a comment that could make sense, but doesn't really cohere and has a few significant signals. I'm not opposed to someone touching up with AI or using it for a bit of analytical assistance, but this particular one doesn't really pass muster.

Hey it’s not slop right? Mods I openly admit having Gemini check my rough drafts and rewrite them (with light touches after to remove most of the ai hallmarks). I provide it a ChatGPT report on sources and current events to ensure the references are clear. I feel that this is a good way to clear up my thoughts, make them more organized and coherent, and provide higher quality than I would otherwise. I try to have it maintain my original tone where possible.

I don’t think I am outsourcing my thinking or perspective to AI but using it to improve my thinking. If I’m reprimanded for it, that’s fair. I feel I’m contributing good faith, honest arguments and will stop if told to do so.

I provide it a ChatGPT report on sources and current events to ensure the references are clear.

This is the part I like the least for the tiny bit that's worth. ChatGPT hallucinates sources fairly regularly. And setting that aside, you shouldn't write (or let an AI write on your behalf) as though you could safely assume everyone is familiar with the sources, especially when you yourself wouldn't have been if not for the AI.

I don’t think I am outsourcing my thinking or perspective to AI

If it's obvious to people reading your post that you used AI, then yes, you are.

I have no doubt there are other people using AI to help or generate their posts, but if you edit it enough that we can't tell, it might as well be yours. If we can tell, though, then I put you in the same category as a bot. There's a difference between using it as a spelling and grammar checker and using it to generate entire lines (like the telltale "It's not X-emdash-it's Y").

@cjet79 already decided not to ban you and remove your post. I might have decided differently.

I don’t think I am outsourcing my thinking or perspective to AI but using it to improve my thinking.

This is what they call a "cope" -- you're rephrasing the distasteful truth to something less accurate but more palatable. If an external actor "improves" your product in ways you couldn't have done yourself, you have in fact outsourced at least that part of your product.

Not a mod, but for what it's worth, I would rather read your slightly less coherent, less well-sourced, but fully organic comments rather than something passed through a slop machine. I thought your ideas were interesting enough on their own. The cons of being called out for slop outweigh any minor stylistic improvements you might gain.

Also Gemini 3 still does the em dash thing, obviously. I removed two of them but hey I’m only human (?)

Nice catch. I also thought that the use of "effortposting" in the first paragraph is strange (contextually it seems like the insinuation should be that Europeans are working themselves into a rage or similar). It would make sense if the prompt included something about "effortposts", and the expression just wound up weaselling itself into an LLM-generated response as tends to happen.

Ahahaha!

Eventually people are just going to ape the Ellellem style and it will be their own voice.

effortposting on x

I’ll believe it when I see it. Wait, no. We have rules against nutpicking, so I can’t exactly ask you to dig up an example.

Xitter is possibly the worst medium for estimating public sentiment. Even wild support might be real and representative, or it might be astroturf. Something as relatively subtle as “trust the experts” is only going to be harder to measure. How would one know that the people bitching about Musk are the same ones who have suddenly discovered a libertarian streak?

they’ve effectively driven investment out

they’re still buying endless amounts of Russian oil

importing their safetyism

Who? I think you’ll find that the subjects in each of these sentences are actually different people with different incentives. For example, did you know that neither Scotland nor the UK are actually in the EU?

For example, did you know that neither Scotland nor the UK are actually in the EU?

It's baffling why people on this site try to use UK as example of Europe anything when it comes to legislation given the entire legal system has very different traditions.

It’s more complicated than that. Partly because of the intellectual mixing on both sides, partly because successive UK governments have been importing European legal concepts and theory since the ‘90s.

See e.g. the Human Rights Act 1998, which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into UK law.

Americans have a tendency to be provincial at the best of times, but drawing a meaningful distinction on topics like speech and social media? And there are times the UK is still beholden to various agreements like the ECHR- it's not like the UK is radically disconnected from the EU, especially to an outsider, regardless of their "traditions."

What's baffling about it? Most European elites are on board for the same program. Particularly when it comes to free speech, they definitely do not see the UK as an aberration.

Who? I think you’ll find that the subjects in each of these sentences are actually different people with different incentives.

Every institution has different decision-makers in it, with various incentives, it's still completely normal to talk about the decision made by the institution as a whole.

For example, did you know that neither Scotland nor the UK are actually in the EU?

And? The EU is still importing Russian oil, pushing safetyism, and driving out investment. The only axis where they're not-quite-so-bad as the UK is freedom of speech, and it's probably just a question of waiting a few years. And the fine in question is actually being levied by the EU anyway.

That’s why it’s foolish to present UK policy in a screed against the EU.

I agree that institutions may be judged by their works. I don’t believe the OP is talking about a coherent institution. The consumers of Russian gas are probably not steretypical Brussels bureaucrats; the safetyists in government are not upset about fining Twitter; the people who are upset are largely separate from the Musk haters.

That’s why it’s foolish to present UK policy in a screed against the EU.

But the fine in question is EU policy? The bit about Scotland and Starmer was an aside at most?

The consumers of Russian gas are probably not steretypical Brussels bureaucrats

Did he say they're literally tanking their cars at Lukoil gas stations? The point is that they made the decisions that resulted in the EU buying lots of Russian gas/oil (part of why that chart you linked doesn't give the full story is that it's laundered through India, and other countries). This might be a necessity at the moment, but it's entirely a self-inflicted wound.

the safetyists in government are not upset about fining Twitter; the people who are upset are largely separate from the Musk haters.

Yes, the safetyists aren't upset at the fines, the safetyists want to fine Musk. That's the criticism.

For example, did you know that neither Scotland nor the UK are actually in the EU?

If anything the UK is considerably worse on speech than the EU, though yes in ways distinct from OP's conversation-starter with the EU-levied fine. The UK is still under the ECHR and probably another half-dozen or so overlapping agreements besides.

Quite. That’s why it’s a bad example of EU failures. Guilt by non-association.

Minus the association (eg ECHR)

I am not the biggest fan of European attitude towards free speech, but it's amusing to see how it just displays the ignorance of Americans to think that something has fundamentally changed in Europe in relation to the treatment of free speech when it has always been like this in Europe. Nowadays the issue is just that speech is increasingly online. I think it's far to criticize Europe, but I think most of the dunking coming from US actors are in terribly bad faith and nonsensical. You have the most brazenly corrupt president in the history of US and country full of non-White immigrants (with VP's wife being Indian for god's sake), and we get lectured for seemingly failing to be democratic and preserving our cultural identities. As far as European weak military goes, this is has been fully devised by US policy. I think dunking on economy is fine, but even there when Musk makes snide remarks about how EU should be dismantled in favor of sovereign nations, you know he is full of shit. EU is the best thing that could've happened to a business wanting to export into EU with the exception if you favor Putin-style cronyist regimes where single people can be paid off. I am self-critical of Europe as an European, but most of the criticism I'd take as fair if it came from a country like Japan, not US.

get lectured for seemingly failing to be democratic and preserving our cultural identities

A) If AfD wasn't facing bans and there weren't firewalls against anti-immigrant parties across most of the continent you could make this point without looking like a left-wing journalist.

B) it's highly disingenuous of you to fail to acknowledge the historic break in attitude to wholesale imports of aliens represented by the Trump administration. Prior to Trump, USG was a huge promoter of moving the 3rd world into the first.

a) Firewalls so hard that one of the most actual effective anti-immigrant parties is leftists? Also if you actually familiarized yourself with actual policy as of latest for whole of EU, illegal immigration in and refugee entries in particular has decreased significantly due to measures taken by current EU governments. Getting in legally isn't too easy of a feat either. b) What is this historic break represented by the administration? Crackdown on illegal immigration and putting a pause on some 4th world countries? Won't move a real needle on legal immigration.

Firewalls so hard that one of the most actual effective anti-immigrant parties is leftists?

Denmark is pretty much unique in Europe. It's the single place where social democrats didn't outright sell out their previous base. Germany has a firewall. France has a firewall too. If those two countries came to their senses, it'd be possible to start doing something about the millions of people who were told to leave but didn't leave.

Won't move a real needle on legal immigration.

You sure about that? 5 years back even debating whether H1B is desirable was totally beyond the Overton window. Now it's up for debate. You need to pray that US doesn't get wise, because if it reformed its immigration to be pre-1965 pattern, it could do to Europe what EU did to Bulgaria - drain most of the productive people away,

illegal immigration in and refugee entries in particular has decreased significantly due to measures taken by current EU governments

Look at that chart. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Asylum_applications_-_annual_statistics

Oh yeah, brutal efficiency. They got it back to half a million per year, wonderful. It was at 130k in 2008. They fucked it up and did the bare minimum - stopped fucking it up progressively more because they're all getting scared 'populists' will slaughter them in elections. Wake me up when per capita, EU is deporting as many undesirables as USA. Then I'll admit Trump admin admonishing its vassals about this is baseless.

b) What is this historic break represented by the administration? Crackdown on illegal immigration and putting a pause on some 4th world countries? Won't move a real needle on legal immigration.

Have you awoken from a coma perhaps? 5 years back, USG was all over George Floyd. Today, USG is officially angry at the government of South Africa for its wilful refusal to even pretend to care about the farm murders. Which, sure, aren't wholly ANC's fault but they deliberately made the situation worse.

Insane Civil Rights Act related judicial decisions are getting cancelled by supreme court. DoJ is suing businesses for discriminating against native Americans (by that I mean the sort of people who founded the US, not the tribesmen it conquered and grudgingly made citizens decades later). Overall, very positive and notable changes. Wake me up when EU stops kissing the ass of the 3rd world and starts deporting illegals the way it was done in 19th century - arrested, marched to the border under police guard and ejected.

Europeans since the invention of the internet: You silly Americans, why do you think you need that huge military now that the Cold War is over? I bet it's just to oppress oil countries. Here in Europe we enlightened souls prefer to spend our budgets on our social welfare systems.

Russia: (rolls over and farts menacingly)

Europeans:

As far as European weak military goes, this is has been fully devised by US policy.

Yeah remember when Trump went over there in his first term and asked them to hit their NATO spending obligations and they basically laughed in his face? I do.

Or when Obama and Bush told Europe the same about defense spending.

As far as European weak military goes, this is has been fully devised by US policy.

?????? Hasn't usa always asked europe to pay more money into nato and they always don't?

just displays the ignorance of Americans to think that something has fundamentally changed in Europe in relation to the treatment of free speech when it has always been like this in Europe.

Americans didn't give a shit when it was just european despots imprisoning their own people for memes. But now that they want to fuck with memes on American platforms, Americans are pissed.

?????? Hasn't usa always asked europe to pay more money into nato and they always don't?

Look at AUKUS (where the Americans and the UK undermined French submarine sales), or the recent Palantir contract in the UK (where the US undermined UK AI development). America wants cheaper, more easily defended vassals, not peers. Paying for a standing army (controlled by the Americans, natch) is expensive and doesn't really have any use except when the Russians are actually literally invading, which isn't really a concern for most of Europe at the moment since the rich nations who fund the thing are on the opposite side of the continent. Development is where the money, influence and power projection is, and the Americans guard it jealously.

None of which is to say that the Europeans don't also shoot them/ourselves in the foot by working hard to destroy their own industries and repel investment at all costs.

where the Americans and the UK undermined French submarine sales

As I understand it, the French submarine sale deal wound up being... pretty horrendous, cost-wise. Granted, AUKUS may also wind up being do, but the French deal was not exactly an amazing bargain for Australia.

I’ve heard different stories from different people. The French broadly say that the Australians kept changing their mind on the specs they wanted, the Aussies say the French were costing too much and taking too long. I haven’t done a deep dive myself.

My understanding is that AUKUS happened because the Americans and the UK decided to offer nuclear technology which is usually verboten, basically to split off Australia from France.

Is there a term where only one party is ever granted full moral agency, responsibility, and blame, while everyone else is treated as passive, contextual, or structurally determined. In the United States itself it's white men at the end of the agency chain, internationally it's the United States.

Privilege, in the woke sense?

Ultimately, the US is a big elephant in a small room. A single change in policy by the US can and has torpedoed entire sectors in foreign countries.

To take an extreme example, if you receive a letter from your landlord telling you that you are going to be evicted then in a sense your choosing to leave peacefully rather than squat or lay makeshift pit traps under the welcome mat is a moral choice. But only in a sense.

And a corollary, there will always be an excuse.

If you are uninterested in actually discussing the phenomenon, you may of course use any term for it that you please.

I don't know, it feels like something changed with respect to speech between 2010 and 2020. Like, people would look down on you for saying non-PC things loudly in public, but you didn't get arrested for it. And as for the VP's wife being Indian, for a while we had in the UK:

  • The Prime Minister of the UK
  • The Taoiseach of Ireland
  • The First Minister of Scotland
  • The mayors of almost all major English cities

All either Indian or Arab, at the same time.

I don't know, it feels like something changed with respect to speech between 2010 and 2020. Like, people would look down on you for saying non-PC things loudly in public, but you didn't get arrested for it.

The laws themselves aren't new, the enforcement has changed.

Before everyone was on the Internet, enforcement was hardly necessary. The media oligopoly was on board with it and self-censored. Any would-be politicians would need the de facto consent of the media to run a campaign. They didn't bother listening in on pub conversations to find people to arrest. Commoners had no reach anyway, so there's no real point going full Stasi. That left a handful of enforcement actions against a small-time publisher here, a politician who goes off script there, but that was it.

Nowadays people can find each other via the Internet, and there's a lot of discontented people who know there are more and can organize. It has removed the media's role as approval committee, and upended politics. So now in some places they suddenly find it worthwhile to arrest people at their house over tweets.

The early 2010s were a transition period, where the media lost their grip but the enforcement had not yet been stepped up.

I don't know, it feels like something changed with respect to speech between 2010 and 2020.

It is not only about free speech. During 1990s and early 2000s there was a huge discussion of how will the EU look like post Maastricht, labeled as Europe of Nations vs federal Europe - with the former being labeled as "eurosceptic" and latter as proeuropean of course. The eurosceptic side basically lost with 2007 Treaty of Lisbon. The new empowered EU beurocracy started churning regulation at breakneck speed - doubling the already burdensome regulation by 2024 so now majority of national laws are passes just to implement EU regulations. It now borders with comical, such as the latest EU Space Act which despite declining EU space programs boasts how it will bring about safe, sustainable and green space exploration or something silly like that. EU institutions and bureaucrats are unironically proud of EU being regulatory superpower, some of them really believe in how they are essential for regulating the whole world.

EU is basically a paradise for bureaucratic structures - the so called Deep State - with byzantine rules hiding responsibility behind layers and layers of structures and almost no real oversight. Just look at this simplified graph of EU institutions from wikipedia and keep in mind that each of this rectangles hides layers of equally byzantine rules of how they are constituted. I'd say that with EU institutions gaining more and more control, the whole thing is turning into something akin to ancient Chinese system of true bureaucracy or maybe something like late Soviet or post Deng and pre Xi system of collective leadership, where it was not dear leader, but party structures controlling the state.

No need to list examples of these Indian or Arab mayors in UK. It's just hypocritical to hear it from US and even current administration. If it came from Japan, sure.

As for feeling, possible, but not enough if you are critical. Mind you, haven't looked into data proper, but it wouldn't be damning to the change in free speech standards if the feeling coincides with clearly people communicating more in online spaces and issues that seemingly would have been censored anyway having become more prevalent.

I am personally skeptical myself about there being that many ardent defenders of free speech in principle. I identify myself as a principled one (at least now), but time and time just shows that people are just interested in their version of free speech. These days it's even exemplified by US President himself.

No need to list examples of these Indian or Arab mayors in UK. It's just hypocritical to hear it from US and even current administration.

This is not just mayors. These are the leaders/president-equivalents of the UK, Scotland and Ireland: the most powerful people in the land.

What I am trying to say is that, if we were talking about alcoholism, then maybe Japan is teetotal and the US sometimes comes home drunk from parties, but the UK is an alcoholic drinking fortified beer at 9am. Is it hypocritical for the US to tell the UK they drink too much? Sort of. But it's still true.

Europe is and always will be our friend

Europe isn't a country and we've been enemies with most of Europe one time or another. We're friendly now because none of them have an economy or a military that supports their self-image as "first world nations". Their choices for international big brother are Russia and us, so they side with us, but they hate us for it. The US' ability to influence international politics and project military power is a thumb in the eye for nations who used to be able to do similar things.

They gave it all up for cradle-to-grave welfare, 20k average incomes, tens of millions of muslim migrants and a military capacity roughly equivalent to my family reunions. The nation that once gave the world the Rollo and Harald Hardrada now gives the world Greta Thunberg. A seafaring adventurer of a different sort, it must be said.

I mean to be fair Europe has both first world militaries(France) and first world economies(Netherlands, Denmark). Not in the same places, mind you. But still.

Europe isn't a country and we've been enemies with most of Europe one time or another. We're friendly now because none of them have an economy or a military that supports their self-image as "first world nations". Their choices for international big brother are Russia and us, so they side with us, but they hate us for it. The US' ability to influence international politics and project military power is a thumb in the eye for nations who used to be able to do similar things.

For what it's worth, this is all laughably incorrect in the case of France. Say what you will about the Frenchies (some of your second paragraph hits), but them pathologically always doing their own thing leaves them in a much better spot than the rest of the Euros.

Say whay you will about the French, but a Frenchman never apologizes for being French, and I greatly respect that about their culture.

pathologically always doing their own thing leaves them in a much better spot than the rest of the Euros.

Can you clarify? I'm not sure I see what you're gesturing at.

The French are pretty well known to value their independence highly, sometimes to their own detriment or at least that of their close friends.

There are countless examples for this:

  • military procurement: the French have always pretty much exclusively fielded their own military hardware. If you can even get them to consider cooperating with their alleys, they will usually nuke the entire project and then do it alone anyway. Never, ever, would they consider buying US aircraft or missiles. Annoyingly, this results in... decent hardware. Seriously, they spent comparatively little money - all of it domestically - and got a full nuclear triad (historically, today "only" sea and air), a blue water navy with expeditionary capabilities and carrier air wings, and an effective air force and army. This means not only do they not need a global Big Brother, they don't get bullied all that much.
  • the french decided that energy independence is important, and then just built 60 reactors. They have uranium only in their... colonies, so of course they just built a giant fuel rod reprocessing industry as a backup, invented at least half the relevant processes and then where done with energy for the next several decades.
  • less relevant now, but before SpaceX kicked everybody's teeth in, Ariane was an impressive system. Still is, in some niches. It's pretty much the embodiment of French refusal to fly on American or Russian rockets.
  • The French have slowly accepted that they're not quite a global superpower anymore, and I think this was a painful process. Still, they are notoriously bad at following their hegemon, i.e. the strong opposition to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and countless UN security council veto situations. They are also notoriously bad at keeping their finger out of Africa, and so far nobody important seems all that interested in stopping them.

Never, ever, would they consider buying US aircraft or missiles.

The French are flying US aircraft (E-2s) off of their aircraft carrier right now. (ETA: I think your post is directionally accurate, though.)

Oh wow, you are correct! They also fly the E-3, because apparently Airbus historically didn't have any AWACS in their portfolio? Maybe the western market is so small that it doesn't support two manufacturers (the French have 2 E-2s and 4 E-3s)? That must have been humiliating for them.

There are now lower-performance Western alternatives to the E-3 (and now the E-7), such as the Saab 340 (I think Embraer may also market one?) but that's not a carrier-based aircraft. The French Navy also used F-8 Crusaders until the end of 1999, so I suspect the French were willing to set aside their pride to simply buy a reliable off-the-shelf solution (carrier aviation is already hard enough.)

I wouldn't be super surprised if the French produced their own AWACs to replace the Sentry. I imagine the US had a bigger edge in airborne radar use and production during the Cold War than it does today, if only because the French now have a decent amount of experience operating them.

they will usually nuke the entire project and then do it alone anyway

FCAS cries out in pain

I blame the Germans - for trying that again. They should have gone to the French and told them "you do the jet, we do the tank. We only meet again when both are done, until then we trust each other not to fuck it up to badly - because we usually don't".

I blame the Germans -

So do the French! Lol

Europeans are effortposting on X right now, centering around a reported $140 million fine apparently for how X changed the blue checkmark and restricted API access to researchers. But this comes at a time when Europeans are bearing down on Musk for not curating feeds based on the opinions of paid 'misinformation experts', an industry effectively invented post-2016 election.

I would appreciate links here.

  1. The EU Omnibus I proposes to deregulate a bit, let's see where it goes.
  2. The Western European elite hasn't changed in ages, the same families control London, Milan etc. as 800 years ago. European class structure is roughly: super elites with assets, wealthy politicians gaining from their place in the apparatus, middle class bureaucrats (earning less than a McDonald's employee in the US), poor working class, lumpenproles (indigenous and foreign) including retirees which consume 1/3-1/2 of GDP (bribes to keep riots down). Politicians (in nearly all parties) don't understand how to drive economic growth besides by hiring more bureaucrats (but there's no tax base left for this.) In the US, it's been possible to work hard, even at McDonald's and invest everything and build enough wealth to retire early (although consumerist culture infects people away from this). In Europe, most remuneration comes in the form of mandatory expenses (like bureaucracy controlled retirement funds with below market returns or high taxes for social services). Everything functions better than the US, with less waste for transportation, healthcare, school etc. (similar to better results for far less GDP expenditure) places you can physically socialize in (because you don't have a long commute far from work and friends) etc. but it's rarely possible to do better or excel. Class mobility is almost impossible - certainly not creating generational wealth. The middle class is tiny, because big business is structurally encouraged and even amassing capital to start or receive a loan is difficult. (Hell, after 20 years the EU still lacks a common capital market..) And well, I made a few million working in Eastern Europe which would have been impossible in the West. All this is to say: The West European elites truly hate you and me and structurally tries to keep everyone down (high income and capital gains taxes retard capital accumulation, so generational wealth in Europe remains the only wealth around.) The US at least has competing elites, rising through entrepreneurship (vs. the bureaucrat happy establishment side).

The European elite has always despised you, and they barely even tolerate the Democrats. Trump is anathema to them. Musk, Trump, and the American right are clearly aligned with Europe's burgeoning counter-elite, so they're moving to punish that alliance.

I'm pretty sure they liked Obama.

They liked the direction that Bush -> Obama signaled, but there's this idea amongst European elite class that the US is so far right that the Democrats would still be considered a right-wing party in Europe.

Which is neither right nor wrong, the axis of left and right in America and Europe are not parallels. On economic policy for the most part Democrats still seem to consider having a functioning economy requires letting businesses operate without overly burdensome regulation, something which even "center-right" european parties often struggle with. Yes, sometimes Democrats will strangle some sectors with regulation, but the strangulation is the point and the regulation is the tool, there's full understanding of what will happen, whereas europeans appear unaware of the link between lack of competitiveness of their companies and the regulations they keep piling on them. But on some social policy, Democrats have pushed further left, for instance the previous status quo in the Roe v Wade era of abortion rights went much further than most European countries.

Okay what's your worst example of free speech under attack in the UK? I see claims like this posted to X a bunch but whenever I look into it the people are being so offensive to the point of derangement or they're co-mingled with violent threats or slander.

A lady got sentenced to probation and community service for calling her rapist a name in a private text conversation with her friend.

Is this what you're referring to? It says it happened in Germany so I'm not sure.

https://eutoday.net/german-woman-jailed-for-insulting-rapist/

  • A man posts a video on Facebook expressing his opinion that immigration to the UK is out of control, and that those migrating to the UK include "scumbags" and "psychopaths". Arrested and charged with inciting racial hatred.
  • Street preacher tried (and thankfully acquitted) for "religiously aggravated intentional harassment" after saying "We love the Jews" to a Muslim family.
  • Former footballer posts a tweet arguing that a certain black female football commentator was a diversity hire. Convicted for malicious communications.
  • Shopkeeper posts a sign in the window of his shop explaining that, owing to "scumbags" shoplifting, he has no choice but to keep valuable items in locked cabinets. The police instruct him to remove the "offensive" sign.
  • Man posts a meme depicting Pakistani men armed with knives arriving to the UK in boats, with the caption "coming to a town near you". Jailed for eight weeks.
  • A woman is volunteering at a street stall offering advice for ethnic-minority women trapped in abusive relationships. A street preacher approaches her and asks her her opinion on whether domestic violence is specifically encouraged by the Koran. Arrested.
  • A Jewish man carries aroud a placard mocking the recently deceased leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. Arrested.
  • Retired police officer tweets about a rise in antisemitism since the October 7 attacks in Israel. Arrested. In a real mask-off moment, the bodycam footage of his arrest features one of the arresting officers expressing alarm about the "very Brexit-y" books on his bookshelf.
  • The headteacher of a primary school retires, and the board of governors elect not to recruit a replacement, leaving the role vacant for several months. Parents of a pupil in the school (one of whom was on the board of governors last year) are exasperated by this, airing their grievances on a parents' WhatsApp group. The chair of governors objects to this and sends the parents a letter asking them to stop making disparaging comments on social media. Furious, the mother posts the letter on Facebook, venting her anger. Subsequently, the couple are arrested.
  • A list of people who've been arrested (and, in some cases, convicted) for doing things like praying outside abortion clinics or holding up signs reading "here to talk, if you want".

Just to illustrate that accusations of two-tier policing are entirely warranted, a 25-year-old influencer posted a video in which she called for the deaths of all conservatives. After being questioned by the police, she was not arrested.

A lot of these are genuinely shameful, and I'm not about to argue that the following one should actually be illegal, but this:

A woman is volunteering at a street stall offering advice for ethnic-minority women trapped in abusive relationships. A street preacher approaches her and asks her her opinion on whether domestic violence is specifically encouraged by the Koran. Arrested.

strikes me as exactly a case of what I assume @dr_analog meant by cases that are "offensive to the point of derangement" such that, even if you don't approve of the laws, it's hard to feel too bad for this particular victim. The linked article describing Steele's behavior as "polite questions" is ridiculous. In the first place, this was clearly a stunt, not some good-faith attempt to have an unprompted theological discussion with a stranger, as that blurb implies.

But more importantly, it was a mean-spirited and counter-productive stunt. If you're actually concerned about religiously-motivated domestic abuse in Muslim households, a woman currently engaged in an outreach effort whose whole purpose is to acknowledge and deal with the problem - and a volunteer, mind you, not a professional NGO grifter! - is the last person you should antagonize for the sake of drawing attention to yourself. If you've got balls, ask a Muslim preacher. At a push, ask a random woman in a niqab. But for fuck's sake, when someone actually tries to do something about the exact thing you're complaining about, don't put her on the spot in public in such a way that she must either obfuscate and come across as a hypocrite, or own up to an actively anti-Muslim stance. (Never mind that the latter might put her at genuine personal risk: it would instantly destroy her credibility with the very abused women from fundamentalist households that she's trying to coax into trusting her!)

So - Steele's stunt was stupid, cruel, and cowardly behavior. In a common-sense world the appropriate response would be a slap across the face that no one sensible would think of prosecuting as physical assault, but of course, in the age of TikTok ragebait, giving him "minority punches preacher who was just asking questions" as his claim to fame would just be giving him what he was after by other means. Is suing him in a court of law an appropriate substitute? No. But I sympathize enormously with the desire to punish this kind of heel behavior in some way and wipe that smug grin off the guy's face. As it stands, he wasn't charged with anything, just briefly detained, and I think that's probably a fitting level of inconvenience for the offense, societally speaking, though I wish it didn't have go through the justice system.

The fact that you think asking someone a question about Islamic attitudes to domestic violence — even as a "stunt" — warrants assault does not incline me to give much credence to your attitudes towards censorship. Frankly, the more I learn about your worldview, the more infuriating and alien I find it.

A doctor knowingly lying to the concerned parents of a trans-identifying child about the efficacy of "gender-affirming care" in preventing suicide? A-ok. Asking someone a question about Islamic attitudes to domestic violence? Grounds for assault.

I object to the characterization of what I advocated as "assault" - perhaps my reaching for the image of a slap was needlessly confusing. I refer to a slap of the old-fashioned kind that women could once give to men who behaved like cads - not as an act of violence intended to cause physical harm, but as the strongest available signal of public disapproval. Feel free to substitute your preferred kind of public finger-pointing to shame people who behave in horrid but non-illegal ways. Personally, so long as it is understood that the purpose of such a slap is not actually to knock anyone down, I rather wish we brought it back; I mean it very differently from the "punch Nazis" meme, for which I now realize it could easily have been confused. But that's a whole other conversation and not relevant here, so again, perhaps I shouldn't have gone there.

I also object, and more strongly, with continuing to characterize what Steele said as "asking someone a question", as if he had just asked for directions to the post office. He did not "ask the woman a question" in the sense of genuinely seeking information from her. What he did was either intended as a gotcha, or as intimidation - in other words it was bullying. Moreover, as I said, had she been incautious in her answer, it may have goaded her into a response that jeopardized her volunteer work, or even put her safety at risk - which Steele knew perfectly well. Now again. I do not believe that what Steele did should be a crime, any more than I think high school bullies should be clapped in irons unless they get too physical. But it was, to my way of thinking, incontestably bad behavior, and over-criminalization of bullying is not the same thing as criminalizing the earnest expression of political or religious opinions, let alone the criminalization of "asking polite questions".

A gotcha is not bullying.

Not in a private discussion. Where you disrupt a stranger's activities in public and put a gotcha to them to engineer a viral moment, yes, it is bullying.

I agree, but that leads us to the next question: do Muslims deserve to be bullied? That is, is the humiliation/ostracization of Muslims in Western societies an effective means towards generally desirable outcomes? (For the record, I think so, but preferably in a more limited sense.)

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This is the same kind of transparent nonsense as that stupid "sealion" comic, isn't it.

What "viral moment"? He wasn't filming anything. He politely asked one of his fellow citizens a rhetorical, non-personal question in a public place.

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strikes me as exactly a case of what I assume dr_analog meant by cases that are "offensive to the point of derangement" such that, even if you don't approve of the laws, it's hard to feel too bad for this particular victim

That's insane. "Offensive to the point of derangement" means insulting and harassing people, not "being mean-spirited" or "not actually being concerned about religiously-motivated domestic abuse", if this was the actual standard, you'd probably have to arrest the entirety of the BBC, possible the whole of the UK government.

I'm reminded of the highly insulting but hilarious British satirical puppet series "Spitting Image."

Again, I am coming at this from the perspective that asking someone trying to work among Muslims to answer a question like this in public is hostile behavior. He was in effect demanding that a woman he'd never met paint a target on her head. I think that's plenty offensive enough to make the man a deeply unsympathetic victim of unjust laws, even if the laws are unjust. It's not about what he believes, it's about his actions.

And as for "deranged" - where I think it tips over into derangement is the fact that he specifically did this to a woman volunteering to fight Muslim domestic abuse, i.e. the exact societal problem his stupid little stunt was intended to highlight. At the point when point-scoring for point-scoring's sake comes at the direct expense of actual furthering of the goals that points are nominally being scored for, I think you can start to talk about derangement.

I think your comment says more about the Muslim community than anything.

Well, yes. Just because I am very progressive for this website on a number of issues does not mean I am an automaton repeating the maximally woke point of view on every issue, and the dangers of Islamism, and illiberal customs perpetuated by Muslim communities more broadly, are among the things I take very seriously that the current progressive bloc is very bad at seeing for the massive problems they really are.

Well, the point is that free speech is important because it can be ugly while telling important truths. I agree the speaker in this context was not polite but he shined a light on the evils of Islam.

Again, I am coming at this from the perspective that asking someone trying to work among Muslims to answer a question like this in public is hostile behavior.

For a given (very expansive) definition of "hostile", sure. The problem is that no one, and I mean absolutely no one, is under any obligation to be non-"hostile" to others. This sort of behavior is completely normal. Media, including public media, do it all the goddamn time.

He was in effect demanding that a woman he'd never met paint a target on her head.

And as for "deranged" - where I think it tips over into derangement is the fact that he specifically did this to a woman volunteering to fight Muslim domestic abuse,

The only people who are being offensive or deranged in this situation are the ones that would target the woman. Under no circumstances is the person asking the question describable as such.

Thank you, I am now convinced free speech is under attack in the UK.

I'm glad I was able to persuade you.

British man visits some friends in the states, during which trip they invite him to try his hand at firing a gun. They take some photos of him holding assorted various firearms, in a fashion which highlights his inexperience. When he gets home, he posts some of these photos on LinkedIn with self-deprecating captions.

Arrested.

This one blew up recently during Tucker Carlson vs Pierce Morgan show: A UK woman who was battered by her boyfriend was sentenced for calling him a faggot in text message to her "friend" who reported her to police. The charge for texting the word faggot was "malicious communications offences". The boyfriend who obviously was not gay was not arrested. Pierce Morgan invited her to talk about it.

By the way, there are 12,000 arrest for online communication offenses a year in the UK. So there are plenty of examples.

From the Telegraph this morning:

A TEACHER was banned from working with children after telling a Muslim child that “Britain is still a Christian state”, The Telegraph can disclose.

The primary school teacher was referred to his local child protection board over comments made to the pupil at an inner-city primary school in London. A senior detective from the Met’s child abuse investigation team also became involved.

In this case, the teacher was suspended and subsequently sacked for an incident in which he allegedly admonished students for washing their feet in the sinks in the boys’ toilets. Police were also called in to investigate an alleged hate crime.

According to the child who made the complaint, the teacher told them the school was not a religious one but that there was an Islamic school a mile away if they wished to go there instead. He also told them: “Britain is still a Christian state” and pointed out that the King was head of the Church of England.

The teacher tried to explain to the year six class the importance of British values of tolerance. It was claimed he reminded the children that Islam remained a minority religion in the UK.

In his legal claim against the local authority, lawyers for the teacher pointed out the school was a non-faith school and that prayers had been informally banned from the playground – and by extension that included washing feet in the toilets – and confined to a prayer room set aside for the purpose.

But the school suspended the teacher in March last year and subsequently sacked him. A month later in April 2024, he was informed he was being referred to the local safeguarding board as well as to the Met. The police inquiry was subsequently dropped.

Is it an indictement that there was a policy inquiry, or reassuring that it was dropped? Pick your poison.

A man who was convicted and fined for setting a Koran on fire, while the man who attacked him with a knife while he was doing so only received a suspended sentence (the Koran-burning man's conviction was overturned on appeal).

Okay here's where I boiled over into rage.

Glad some of these are being overturned on appeal, I guess? Still, yeah something's fucked in the UK.

Glad some of these are being overturned on appeal, I guess?

Yeah, though these reaching appeal is still 4 steps too far. They shouldn't have been 1. convicted, 2. charged, 3. investigated, 4. reported to the police.

I could see how maybe the police are idiots and leaving it up to them to try to interpret speech laws is a disaster. But the fact that convictions happen at all is batshit.

When are we going to start seeing this in British crime dramas? There's got to be a plot somewhere, in everything from Slow Horses to Down Cemetery Road to Law & Order: UK, where we see someone arrested for tweets as if the criminal drama it depicts is considered legitimate, and the audience on board.

A woman visited for a "non-crime hate incident" over an image of two police standing next to two men holding a flag of a major Pakistani political party, captioned "How Dare They"

An American in England told by police to apologize for an unspecified Facebook post

English blogger arrested for "Fuck Hamas" tweet

There's tons of these, to the point that the claim "whenever I look into it the people are being so offensive to the point of derangement or they're co-mingled with violent threats or slander." is just gaslighting.

There's tons of these, to the point that the claim "whenever I look into it the people are being so offensive to the point of derangement or they're co-mingled with violent threats or slander." is just gaslighting.

It was a genuine question. Not everyone has the time to exhaustively get to the bottom of every culture war claim.

This entire year for example I've seen reported /outrageous thing Trump did that violates democracy/ and then I spend an hour checking into it and find oh actually the thing he did was totally legal and I'm just so tired of this shit and now treat every claim as epistemically flimsy by default.

It was a genuine question. Not everyone has the time to exhaustively get to the bottom of every culture war claim.

Didn't you say that you actually looked into several of them, specifically related to the UK and free speech?

Yes. Just because I clicked on three random ones on X to look into doesn't mean I was able to exhaustively review the culture war claim "free speech is under attack in the UK".

The handful I randomly clicked on, the perpetrator seemed like he crossed multiple lines and the UK wasn't clearly crushing political speech.

Since it's being mentioned here, and because I trust TheMotte more than X, I thought I'd ask for the worst examples (and y'all delivered, thanks!)

English blogger arrested for "Fuck Hamas" tweet

All the more bizarre given that they were seriously considering prosecuting the hip-hop band Kneecap for yelling "Up Hamas" during one of their gigs.

I understand the logic that it's illegal to offer support to a proscribed terrorist organisation, even if I don't agree. But it's also illegal to criticise Hamas? Are you just supposed to pretend they don't exist, or something?

There’s the freedom to remain silent on Hamas.

What also hasn’t been ruled out is the freedom to make neutral statements about Hamas: “Hamas is one of the organizations of all time!”

Checkmate, smug freezepeach Americans.

A man who was convicted and fined for setting a Koran on fire, while the man who attacked him with a knife while he was doing so only received a suspended sentence

A German girl was jailed for ...defaming (cyberbulling?) a gang rapist whose sentence was entirely suspended. Similarly, in Oragen a stabber was acquitted because the victim said a racial slur.

An Old Town stabbing case ended in defeat for Multnomah County prosecutors once jurors learned the wounded man had been videoed uttering a racist slur in the struggle’s aftermath.

So the jury accepted that saying a slur can justifiably provoke aggression backwards in time? Incredible.

No. The defense's theory is that the wounded man was the aggressor; yelling the slurs afterwards was part of the evidence.

Transit cameras showed Edwards, a fixed-blade knife clasped at his side, approaching Howard from behind as he sat on a bench. The video has no sound, but Howard springs up and pushes Edwards as soon as he sees him. The duo scuffle against a wall for a brief moment, ending with Edwards stabbing Howard in the shoulder.

Edwards is the defendant, Howard is the man who was stabbed.

Note this wasn't "violent homeless guy attacking ordinary commuter", this was "two violent homeless guys get into a fight". So I can see there might be reasonable doubt, although based on the still in the article (I haven't seen the video) I think Edwards should have been convicted.

Similarly, in Oragen a stabber was acquitted because the victim said a racial slur.

Obviously this is outrageous, but I do think it's important to put jury nullification and infringements on free speech in different categories. It's not like the victim himself was prosecuted for saying a racial slur.

It's not like the victim himself was prosecuted for saying a racial slur.

In what way is "you can be justifiably stabbed for saying that" not an infringement of free speech? The only thing I can think of is that it might not be covered by the Second First Amendment of the US.

EDIT: off-by-one error

I hate to fall back on the "they're a private company, they can do what they want" argument, but there is an important distinction between the government arresting and prosecuting you because of something you said vs. a jury of your peers collectively deciding that something you said was so appalling that it retroactively exculpates the person who assaulted you.

The former is indicative of government overreach. The latter is indicative of ethical myopia and skewed priorities among political progressives. Both grave issues, but distinct ones. It's yet more evidence that Western progressives no longer see themselves as upholding the spirit of the First Amendment (even if they will grudgingly uphold it to the letter) — but then, we already knew that, they haven't even been pretending otherwise for a long time.

there is an important distinction between the government arresting and prosecuting you because of something you said vs. a jury of your peers collectively deciding that something you said was so appalling that it retroactively exculpates the person who assaulted you

No. There is not.

The entire Liberal political formula is based on this particular fiction (amongst others) but there is actually no difference at all. It's the same people, doing the same thing, with the same outcomes. What they call themselves is a trick.

And indeed Liberals know this because the main entity from which they sought to free themselves was not the state, but the Catholic Church. A more canonical "jury of your peers" you will not find in history.

That progressives have done away with any sort of true belief in the ideas of John Stuart Mill is a foregone conclusion at this point. They are Rawlsians first and Marxists second.

That progressives have done away with any sort of true belief in the ideas of John Stuart Mill is a foregone conclusion at this point.

I agree with you. But I will reiterate that there is a distinction between the government throwing you in jail because of something you said, and a jury of your peers electing not to convict someone for assaulting you because of something you said.

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Where do you see these claims, specifically, and what have you looked into?

We recently discussed the case of Graham Linehan, though my favorite example is some blokes getting arrested for arrenging trans flags to look like a swastika. The UK in particular is documentably so bad, that at this point the burden of proof is on you to show that they are being reasonable.

Here's one where a guy got threatened with a hate crime for asking a foreigner to speak english fluently.

The larger problem is that England in particular has always used suppression of speech (See 'D' Notices) liberally to keep the peace. This was culturally supported as traditionally the English have by and large enjoyed their peace and quiet. This vestigial cultural limb has now metastasized into something else entirely.

I just don't think the UK govt has the funds to police itself correctly so it is using its traditional tool of suppression of communication instead of dealing with the root cause of ethnic tension and cultural instability.

To what extent is this applied fairly in England? E.g. if someone posts "death to the Jews" or "English people should all die in a fire," do they get Big Brother knocking on their door?

I prefer American speech norms, but if it's a matter of different cultural approaches to conflict and politeness, I don't object to it. Different folks, different strokes.

if someone posts "death to the Jews" or "English people should all die in a fire," do they get Big Brother knocking on their door?

You will have to clarify if the individual is a white Briton (in which case they will throw the book at him) or not.

These 'non-crime hate incident' investigations and other 'hate crime' investigations seem to be clearly directed at white heritage British and not at minorities. Its why there are claims of 'two tier policing'. There's plenty of YouTube clips out there comparing similar behavior between the majority/minorities and the differing official response.

I didn't see the need for American style free speech norms until I saw the path that the UK has chosen to go down. Other Western nations are struggling with how to respond with mass migration and multi-culturalism and suppression of the heritage majority seems to be cheap low hanging fruit for their governments.

To what extent is this applied fairly in England? E.g. if someone posts "death to the Jews" or "English people should all die in a fire," do they get Big Brother knocking on their door?

What do you think? They're still dragging their heels about the rape gang fiasco, you think they'd do anything approaching fairness regarding Muslim shitposting?

A quick search reveals several counterexamples, to say nothing of those with non-Muslim perpetrators, but I guess vibeposting is more satisfying.

Thanks for pulling in some actual counterexamples, that was interesting for me to learn. It's good to hear the opposite side of the story now and then.

I'm sorry how is that a counterexample to anything we've posted so far?

ThenElection's post seems to imply that "death to Jews", "English people should die in a fire" exist on the same vein of hate speech that would be opposing Muslim/Trans hate speech. I guess to some extent that makes sense because of Muslim/Jew enmity. But it's smuggling in too much to pretend the the fairness here on most people's mind is not white person, nationalistic person, straight person, conservative person, and not just that Jewish is treated as a protected class along with Muslim.

There are a couple different speech policy regimes that could exist in England, all consistent with "you're not allowed to criticize Muslims or migrants." I'm just trying to get a better sense of which one best describes England.

  1. Muslim supremacy: you can't criticize Muslims, but white people and especially Jews are fair game.

  2. Inter-ethnic protections: you aren't allowed to criticize people outside your ethnicity.

  3. Wokeness: depends on who, whom, and the particular ordering of the progressive stack. 1) is kind of a degenerate version of this.

  4. Universalism: no one is allowed to criticize anyone aggressively.

None of those are my preference, but 2) and somewhat 4) seem like defensible approaches. My guess is that 3) is closest to what's happening, but that's just based on Twitter vibes.

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Asking a question instead of making (plausible) assumptions. Some cultures do take being polite more seriously than child rape.

A woman was sentenced to 31 months imprisonment for making the following tweet in the aftermath of the Southport mass stabbing, where three children were murdered:

"Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******* for all I care... if that makes me racist so be it."

She regretted it and deleted it four hours later, but that didn't stop the UK bobbies from scooping her up to meet their quota for the month. While distasteful and based on erroneous information (the perpetrator was in fact a second-generation African migrant, not a recent arrival residing in a migrant hotel), this tweet would be perfectly legal in the US. Throwing housewives in prison for years, for getting a bit heated online after a terrorist attack, is absolutely insane. It's even more ludicrous when considering how the UK police claim they don't have the resources to investigate rapes, burglaries, and other actual crimes that actually impact citizens' day-to-day lives.

based on erroneous information (the perpetrator was in fact a second-generation African migrant, not a recent arrival residing in a migrant hotel)

Talk about misinformation. It doesn't matter he isn't fresh off the boat. He isn't english. So she was completely right. Send the refugees back, send the migrants back, and their progeny.

Second-gens are Schrodinger's Immigrants. If he commits a crime, he was born here and is as British as any Tom, Dick or Harry. If he obeys the law and pays taxes, he's an example of how immigrants enrich our society.

Both things can be true at once.

People (including Elon Musk, who can't be prosecuted, and Lucy Connolly, who quite properly was) called for arson, directed against actual, identifiable human beings who were Muslim asylum-seekers based on a crime committed by someone who was neither an asylum-seeker nor a Muslim.

Some of us think that, morally, facts matter when burning people out of their homes.

Legally, actual incitement has always been a free speech corner case, going back to John Stuart Mill's writing about when it is legitimate to say that corn-dealers are responsible for starvation. (He thinks this is fine under normal circumstances, but not if said directly to a riotous mob outside the home of an identifiable corn-dealer). The US tradition is deliberately overprotective of free speech in the corner cases to avoid chilling effects. "Grass is magenta, therefore you should burn down a hotel with people in it" is exactly the kind of speech you would prefer not to protect, but need to if you want as strong a free speech culture as the US is trying to produce.

Lucy Connolly did not call for arson. She said she wouldn't care if all the hotels were set on fire. That's quite a bit different from instructing a specific person to set a hotel on fire.

So to steelman the case, this is very similar to the Charlie Kirk situation; no one specifically told anyone in particular to assassinate him, but there is definitely an air of "won't someone rid me of this turbulent priest" around.

There are objections to this; like, for example, it matters whether it's a private citizen of no particular standing or following vs a public figure, it matters how specific the call to action is, etc. - but it's at least not completely unreasonable as a rule of thumb.

That being said, I absolutely believe that if a white man had gone on a stabbing spree through a Muslim community, and a Muslim woman had posted something like "Throw all those right-winged white **** in jail, hell, shoot them all in the streets, see if I care", nothing would've happened at all.

Well, people did lose jobs for tweets about the Kirk assassination (and we had like 5 blissful days of Kimmel being off the air), which isn't great from a free-speech perspective. But being sentenced to 2.5 years of prison goes way way WAY beyond that.

Perhaps she could have tried pleading innocent on this basis, she didn't though. Her tweet said 'Set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care', so I imagine lawyers could debate exactly where this falls on the spectrum with inciting statement at one end and expression of apathy at the other.

Whether or not her post was intended as a call to action would matter under US law, but the UK crime with which she was charged ('inciting racial hatred') has no such requirement.

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always will be our friend

That's definitely in doubt. Demographic forces will make them more friendly to third world shitholes in the Middle East and Africa, and economic forces may well push them away from the US and towards China or other potential up and comers (BRICS?).

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If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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