Humza Yousaf: Scotland’s Hate Monster

(Photograph: Scottish Government, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Anyone even vaguely familiar with Scotland will know the values she traditionally embodies: stoicism, courage (as the mellifluous reeds of the bagpipes attest in Scotland the Brave), and of course the hard-earned ‘Freedom’ won from the bastard English, immortalised by William Wallace’s silver screen reincarnation, Mel Gibson. What Hollywood giveth Holyrood taketh away however, and how ironic that it’s the SNP – a party which claims to stand for independence, that is now criminalising independence of thought. 

Thanks to the Hate Monster, Sesame Street reject Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Act came into effect this Monday; an Act which claims to “provide protection from hate and prejudice without stifling individual expression”. In order to achieve this miracle sleight of hand, the Act creates a new crime of “stirring up hatred” relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex.

‘Stirring up hatred’ has been illegal since 1986 in terms of race, colour, nationality and ethnicity, however the Hate Crime Act involves some subtle and controversial distinctions. First and foremost, the bar has been considerably lowered in terms of the new ‘hate crime’, whereby merely “insulting” behaviour will merit an investigation, and the prosecution need only prove stirring up hatred was “likely” rather than “intended”. Given that the only guarantee for any 21st century speech is that someone somewhere will be offended by it, this is an unworkable definition.

More worrying still (at least in terms of free speech) is the repeated use of the term “reasonable”. It is now the responsibility of the defendant to show that their words were ‘reasonable’ (good luck with that in court), alongside the likelihood of a prosecution hinging on a “reasonable assumption from others” that you were ‘threatening and abusive’. Is it just me, or is this chronically open to abuse? The worst aspect is that the Act even criminalises comments made in the privacy of one’s home – how many Scots are likely to find Alexa snitching on them of an evening, after a wee nip too many?

Naturally Yousaf has pooh-poohed any criticism of the Act, with the cliché “Unless your behaviour is threatening, or abusive, and intends to stir up hatred, then you have nothing to worry about.”

But Humza is wrong, or lying – Scots genuinely do have something to worry about. Any law which prioritises identity groups over one another instead of working equally, is a bad law. As an example, ‘transgender identity’ is of course in pride of place, whereas biological sex is not even mentioned. From a practical point of view, this suggests that women who object to men invading their private spaces are in violation of the law: a law which carries a maximum penalty of seven years – that’s longer than the average rape sentence the chicks with dicks might once have faced.

No new progressive law is complete without first taking a cudgel to the white working-class, and the Hate Crime and Public Order Act is no exception. Here is Police Scotland’s outrageously patronising and anti-white ‘Don’t Feed Hate’ campaign, which is still live on their website:

The Hate Monster represents that feeling some people get when they are frustrated and angry and take it out on others, because they feel like they need to show they are better than them. In other words, they commit a hate crime.

We know that young men aged 18-30 are most likely to commit hate crime, particularly those from socially excluded communities who are heavily influenced by their peers.

They may have deep-rooted feelings of being socially and economically disadvantaged, combined with ideas about white-male entitlement.

Committing hate crime is strongly linked to a range of risk factors including economic deprivation, adverse childhood experiences, substance abuse and under-employment. Those who grow up in abusive environments can become addicted to conflict.

That’s right: “young men aged 18-30…with ideas about white-male entitlement”, or alternatively the worst performing educational demographic, the group most derided by society, and the group ignored by everyone from recruiters to the Old Bill. In Yousaf’s Scotland, not only do these people have no rights – their inferior treatment is blamed upon them. And should they bear any grudges, that’s tantamount to ‘hate’.

I remember when ‘hate’ was just an emotion, and you could get worked up by things that bothered you – a bit like the Hate Monster himself:

Is it mere coincidence that this law came out on April 1^st, and that the most hateful politician in the British Isles is the one peddling it? By any sense of fair play, Yousaf as well as Police Scotland ought to be investigating themselves for ‘stirring up hatred’ against the white working-class. Many other citizens appear to have come to the same conclusion, because Police Scotland received more than 3,000 complaints in the first 24 hours of the law – Yousaf among the primary ‘hate criminals’ reported.

Of course, Yousaf doesn’t care about trans’ rights any more than he cares about women’s rights – what’s really going on here is the protection of Islam and a blasphemy law via the backdoor. Humza has form in this department, a man to whom any criticism of either himself or his religion is that meaningless canard, ‘Islamophobia’. The Tories are ‘riddled with Islamophobia’ according to Yousaf; criticism of funds sent to Gaza was similarly ‘Islamophobic’. Islamophobia in Scotland was ‘getting worse’ back in 2018, but at least that’s better than 2015 when it was ‘worse than ever’. None of that was quite as bad as the ‘Islamophobic graffiti’ which showed up conveniently outside Yousaf’s house however, the day the new law came into effect. What were the odds?

The Scots need to fight this hateful law like William Wallace once did (although of course, he never faced anything nearly as frightening as hate speech). Thankfully the windbag authorities have piped down temporarily after J. K. Rowling famously called their bluff – but we aren’t all billionaires with 14million Twitter followers to our name, and I imagine the general public will be less inclined to test their strength in future.

As an aside, while it has long been true that the police have essentially given up on actual crime (something they freely admit), they are committed to logging all ‘hate incidents’ even where no crime is committed. My advice then to any wannabe criminals would be to move north of the border sharpish – you’ll have a field day, provided you keep your mugging, stabbing and raping free from any unnecessary ‘insults’.

Frank Haviland is the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West, and writes a Substack here.

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