Manipulation of Thought
Current day comparison to Orwell's 1984 - Part 3
Part Two of my Curent day comparison to Orwell’s 1984 can be found here.
In Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty Four, unapproved thoughts, dissenting statements, or any act or statement of independence is thought crime which is monitored and prosecuted by the thought police. Those found to have politically unorthodox thoughts or beliefs, or doubts about The Party, their governance or political policies are taken to the Ministry of Love (MiniLuv) where the thought police break them with arduous conversation, moral and physical degradation, and eventually, torture.
Hate crime laws such as those contained within the online safety legislation deliberately make the law more punitive. They do this by reversing the normal application of mens rea - in that rather than well-intentioned motivations or at least the absence of bad intent being a reason to fully or partially exonerate the individual, with hate crime laws even the mere implication of bad intentions is sufficient justification for harsher punishment (Gilligan, 2017). This criminalisation of intent is the reason many characterise hate crime legislation as Orwellian thought crime laws (Gellman, 1992; Gilligan, 2017).
We could be forgiven for thinking our preoccupation with concepts like freedom of expression, thought and religion1 would actively prevent formation of Orwell’s thought police. However, changes enshrined in the online safety laws and the ongoing distortion of language and media are collectively and silently enabling them. While freedom of expression, the right to both hold your own opinions and to receive or impart information and ideas without interference from public authorities2 have all been enshrined in Human Rights legislation for several decades, the legislation discussed in this work and several recent events are either weakening, or have completely abrogated, these fundamental tenets. Each change has emboldened some police officers who support particular social causes or political narratives. This has resulted in temerarious inculpation of members of the public for embarrassingly minor slights and misunderstandings - what Orwell called thoughtcrime.
In July 2022 video showing three police officers arresting 51 year old army veteran Darren Brady was released on social media. In the video, the lead officer can be heard telling Brady that he was being arrested because someone has been caused anxiety based on your social media post (Terry, 2022). Brady was neither the creator nor the original poster of the meme image. He had simply clicked ‘retweet’ after seeing it in the feed of actor, broadcaster and agitator, Lawrence Fox. Others with significantly larger numbers of followers like Fox had also shared the meme. However, like Fox, they may have been capable of strenuously and publicly resisting, they may not have lived within this police officer’s jurisdiction, or the officer may simply have seen Brady as a soft target. Harry Miller, a former police officer, was present and tried to prevent Mr Brady’s arrest but was arrested himself. Miller asserts that the arresting officer showed a blatant disregard for the law, didn’t know what offence [Mr Brady] had committed, and arrested Brady for the utterly ridiculous charge of causing anxiety3 (Terry, 2022). Miller described the arresting officer as perpetrating the worlds worst shakedown by demanding that Brady pay £80 to attend an ‘educational course’ so that his charge could be downgraded from crime to non-crime. As a result of the nationwide negative publicity and pressure from the Crime Commissioner who questioned the proportionality and necessity of the arrest, Hampshire Constabulary eventually released Mr Brady without charge and cancelled their contract with the training supplier who had been supplying the proffered EDI/DEI course (Oliver, 2022; Wood, 2022). Miller also went on to win a Court of Appeal challenge over police guidance on hate crimes in December 2022, successfully arguing that the non-crime hate incident approach used by police generally, and Hampshire Constabulary in particular, unlawfully interfered with the right to freedom of expression (Terry, 2022).
In August 2023 a female police officer drove an unwell autistic 16 year old girl home after midnight (Carr, 2023). On arriving at her home and seeing her mother, the girl cheerfully pointed out the female officer whose hair was cropped short and combed in a typically masculine side-part and exclaimed that the officer looked like her favourite grandmother who was, by virtue of being married to another woman, a lesbian. Children and teenagers with Autism Spectrum Disorders, especially those who are more high functioning that used to be diagnosed as Asperger’s, tend to have no social filter simply blurt out whatever comes to mind absent an ability to understand how their words might affect others (Mahoney, 2009). In spite of the fact that the mother informed her of her daughter’s condition several times, the female officer disregarded this and radio-called an emergency, requesting assistance in a manner that suggested she was under duress or feared for her safety. That call caused a further six police officers to arrive at and crowd the entrance hall of the house in support the aggrieved female officer as she proceeded initially to serve a ‘homophobic public order offence’ on the teenager. During this process the teenager can be heard crying as she hid under the stairs from the growing collection of uniformed police and the now ranting and aggressive female officer. The female officer can be seen in the video released by the girl’s mother on social media demanding for the girl’s arrest before participating loudly in dragging the girl kicking and screaming from her home and very publicly across her mother’s front yard in the dead of night (Carr, 2023). In video of a second incident and seemingly emboldened after getting away with the first, the same female officer can be seen as other officers passively stand by after a traffic stop in a public street, antagonising and then erratically pepper-spraying youths for little more than calling her or one of the large number of her police colleagues present a posh boy (Bullen, 2023; Woodland, 2023). West Yorkshire Constabulary have confirmed that the teenage girl was eventually released without charge, and that no further action will be taken against her (Cotterill et al, 2023). They also confirmed that a professional standards directorate investigation of the female officer’s behaviour was commenced after the second incident (Cotterill et al, 2023; Bullen, 2023).
Other similar incidents have recently occurred including:
· a police officer seen in a Twitter video giving a verbal warning and threatening to arrest to a British citizen for racism for possession of the English St George’s Cross flag as he walked to a London pub during a weekend of pro-Palestinian marches4. Media fact-checkers5 and senior police were quick to distract from this video and instead directed people to stories of the arrest of a completely different man, a 68 year old pensioner, who they allege was arrested not for being in possession of a Union Jack flag, but because he had said something officers deemed to be racist at the pro-Palestinian protesters (Mauro-Benady, 2023).
· a man was arrested in the early hours of the morning in front of his late-stage cancer suffering wife. In a video recorded by the wife police said they are arresting him for expressing his dissatisfaction at the number of Palestinian flags that recent immigrants had been raising on lampposts around his town’s High Street6.
· police who were happy to allow pro-Palestinian marchers to carry ISIS jihadist flags7 and to chant antisemitic slogans calling for the extermination of Jews in Israel (Hymas, 2023), were not happy for Jewish families to hold a candle-lighting vigil or put up posters of family members and friends who were still missing or unaccounted for after the October 2023 Hamas-initiated attacks in Israel because they felt it might offend pro-Palestinian Muslims in London8.
· two carloads of West Yorkshire police officers arrived at a 72 year old woman’s house to arrest or interrogate her, and eventually recorded a non-crime hate incident against her. Her alleged crime was to be observed four weeks earlier stopping to photograph a sticker she saw in the street that read ‘Keep Males out of Women-Only Spaces’. Officers gave the woman ‘a sermon’ and proceeded to spend more than half-an-hour interrogating her on her recreational camera use. The woman later described that she felt intimidated by the police’s oppressive attempt to gag any voice of dissent, even one she wasn’t responsible for9 (Alma, 2023).
Several incidents, including those involving the female officer, have occurred in the West Yorkshire Constabulary district that includes the city of Leeds. This area has become infamous for having the highest crime rate (127 crimes per 1000 residents) and unsolved crime statistics, and for being one of the most dangerous districts in the whole of the United Kingdom (Ames, 2023; Port, 2023). It is clear that our constabularies are rapidly descending towards becoming Orwell’s thought police. As this descent continues, we are seeing a shift of focus from preventing and solving crimes against property and persons, to persecution and prosecution of acts of thought crime. The recent online safety legislation’s focus on ill-defined harmful content and so-called hurty words can only serve to further fuel this transition.
Part Four of my Current Day Comparison to Orwell’s 1984 can be found here.
While the United States of America has enshrined freedom of speech as a human right in the First Amendment to their Constitution, in the United Kingdom this right is encapsulated as freedom of expression in the Human Rights Act 1998.
Human Rights Act 1998, Article 9: Freedom of Thought, Belief and Religion - provides for freedom of expression and the right to hold opinions and receive and impart information and ideas without interference by a public authority.
A September 2022 letter in response to an FOI request made to Hampshire Constabulary claims they were ‘making enquiries’ about an offence under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 - using a public network to cause offence, because the image was considered by the unnamed complainant to be ‘offensive’, and police reports about online content are ‘complex’ and ‘challenging’. https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/arrest_of_mr_darren_brady_and_th
London’s Metropolitan police incorrectly sought to claim the black flags being carried by pro-Palestinian marchers were not ISIS jihadist flags but were rather a prayer flag or declaration of faith in Islam. They did this in spite of numerous resources and academic texts such as Joby Warrick’s text ‘Black Flags: The rise of ISIS’ clearly showing that the particular black flags being used were in fact a call for jihad - or ‘holy war’.
Ames, D. (2023). Anger as 80 per cent of West Yorkshire burglaries go unsolved. The Telegraph. Last accessed: November 2, 2023. Sourced from: https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/23724758.anger-80-per-cent-west-yorkshire-burglaries-unsolved/
Port, S. (2023). The 10 Leeds neighbourhoods with the worst crime rates. Leeds Live. Last accessed: November 2, 2023. Sourced from: https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/news/leeds-news/10-leeds-neighbourhoods-worst-crime-26886104
Hymas, C. (2023). Police should have acted against pro-Hamas London protesters, MPs say. The Telegraph. Last accessed: November 2, 2023. Sourced from: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/15/police-israel-gaza-hamas-london-protesters-braverman/
Mauro-Benady, R. (2023). Met says man arrested with Union Flag at Palestine protest ‘shouted racist abuse at police and crowd’. My London. Last accessed: November 2, 2023. Sourced from: https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/met-police-arrested-union-flag-27912350
Cotterill, T., Branagan, M., & Lodge, M. (2023). Mother whose autistic daughter, 16, was dragged from home by police officers says girl is NOT homophobic as police confirm no further action. Daily Mail. Last accessed: November 3, 2023. Sourced from: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12396427/Lesbian-nana-arrest-police-autistic-exclusive.html
Bullen, J. (2023). Police officer called a ‘lesbian nana’ under investigation over pepper spray incident. The Telegraph. Last accessed: November 3, 2023. Sourced from: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/24/police-officer-investigation-lesbian-nana-leeds-rothwell/
Carr, S. (2023). Moment seven officers drag ‘autistic’ girl, 16, kicking and screaming from Leeds home for committing a ‘hate crime’ after she told female cop ‘you look like my lesbian nana’. Daily Mail. Last accessed: November 2, 2023. Sourced from: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12392871/Autistic-girl-16-arrested-dragged-screaming-home-Leeds-12-officers-saying-female-cop-looked-like-lesbian-nana.html
Woodland, D. (2023). “Well, well, well if it isn’t the original lesbian nana herself”. Daily Mail. Last accessed: November 3, 2023. Sourced from: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12665953/Police-officer-pepper-spraying-brawl-one-arrested-autistic-girl-watchdog.html
Wood, A. (2022). Police force scraps hate-crime awareness course after army veteran arrested for ‘causing anxiety’ over meme. GB News. Last accessed: November 1. 2023. Sourced from: https://www.gbnews.com/news/police-force-scraps-hate-crime-awareness-course-after-army-veteran-arrested-for-causing-anxiety-over-meme/350003
Terry, K. (2022). Moment army veteran is arrested ‘for causing anxiety’ after retweeting meme of swastika made out of pride flags as force is condemned by its own crime commissioner for the ‘proportionality and necessity’ of its response. Daily Mail. Last accessed: November 2, 2023. Sourced from: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11066477/Veteran-arrested-causing-anxiety-retweeting-meme-swastika-Pride-flags.html
Oliver, C. (2022). Brickbat: Causing Offence. Reason. Last accessed: November 2, 2023. Sourced from: https://reason.com/2022/08/10/brickbat-causing-offense/
Gellman, S. (1992). Hate crime laws are thought crime laws. Ann. Surv. Am. L., 509.
Gilligan, C. (2017). Northern Ireland and the crisis of anti-racism: Rethinking racism and sectarianism. In Northern Ireland and the crisis of anti-racism. Manchester University Press.
Always surprises me when people say things 'are getting' Orwellian.
We're already miles past what Orwell, Goebbels et al. could've dreamed of.
Excellent analysis thank you. Please keep thinking.