 PHOTO CREDIT: Gregor Fischer I re:publica 2013 Graham Linehan is an Irish sitcom producer and writer who lives in the UK. He also wrote a series of harsh tweets criticizing “trans activists” on X. “I am furious about what is happening to women in the UK and I despise trans activists because I think they are homophobic and misogynist,” Linehan wrote. He also posted this: “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.” How to characterize these tweets? Reactions range from “bigoted,” to “obscene,” to “kind of agree but over the top,” to “about time someone said that.” Left alone, Linehan’s posts would have floated past us down tweet river into oblivion. But the ever-vigilant UK government, oblivious to the Streisand Effect, enlarged these tweets to the size of the Hollywood Sign and pumped them full of bright, blazing neon. Now the whole online world has read them. This happened after Linehan returned from Arizona to London, only to be greeted at the airport like a suspect in a terrorist investigation. “The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting,” he wrote. “Not one, not two, five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets … I was arrested like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me and banned from speaking online – all because I made jokes that upset some psychotic crossdressers.” Offended? Many will be. But even if you judge the remarks to be radical, intemperate, or narrow-minded, it is still just speech. In our country, a comedian saying “punch him in the balls” would surely fall far short of the judicial doctrine of a “true threat” that would be actionable. Actual true threats by extremists preceded the July 7, 2005, terrorist bombings that killed 52 people and injured 800 in London. Confusing that with “punch him in the balls” degrades the meaning of actual violence. Many Britons outside of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government are as alarmed as most Americans. “Sending five officers to arrest a man for a tweet isn’t policing, it’s politics,” said Tory leader Kemi Badenoch. “It’s time this government told the police their job is to protect the public, not monitor social media for hurty words.” Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform party, said, “The Graham Linehan case is yet another example of the war on freedom in the UK … Free speech is under assault, and I am urging the USA to be vigilant.” Should we be vigilant? Warning Americans about the importation of these speech standards may, in the era of Trump at least, sound alarmist – “couldn’t happen here,” etc. But keep in mind that social media posts are global. The UK’s Online Safety Act, as with the European Union’s Digital Services Act, under which people can be officially investigated, arrested, and prosecuted, for merely insulting politicians, can also be used to deplatform Americans on U.S.-based social media under the laws’ broad definitions of “harmful” speech. It's almost enough to make you want to punch someone in the cojones. Comments are closed.
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