UK: When is a crime not a crime?

Toby Young

On Monday, Suella Braverman [Home Secretary] published draft guidance designed to rein in the police habit of recording a ‘non-crime hate incident’ (NCHI) against a person’s name whenever someone accuses them of doing something politically incorrect. You may think I’m exaggerating, but in 2017 an NCHI was recorded against Amber Rudd, then the home secretary, after an Oxford professor complained about her references to ‘migrant workers’ in a Tory party conference speech. NCHIs can show up on an enhanced criminal record check even though, by definition, the person hasn’t committed a crime.

The concept first surfaced in guidance published by the College of Policing in 2014 and within five years 119,934 non-crime hate incidents had been recorded by 34 police forces in England and Wales, according to FoI requests submitted by the Telegraph. Nine police forces didn’t respond, but if we assume they were logging NCHIs on the same scale, it’s likely that more than a quarter of a million have been recorded to date. Little wonder the police won’t send anyone round to your house if you report a burglary. They’re too busy investigating people accused of wrongthink.

So this new guidance – in reality, a statutory code of practice that requires the approval of both houses of parliament – is long overdue. Free-speech campaigners like me have been lobbying Conservative home secretaries about NCHIs for years, not least because they’re used as a weapon by political activists and religious zealots to silence their critics. A carefully worded complaint accusing your antagonist of being motivated by ‘hostility’ towards you on the basis of a ‘protected’ characteristic, e.g. your race, religion or sexual orientation, will result in a summons to the local police station. But Suella, God bless her, is the first one to sit up and listen. She recognises that meting out this punishment to anyone who challenges woke dogma is having a chilling effect. ‘We need a common sense approach that better protects freedom of speech,’ she wrote in the Times.

The Home Secretary is able to introduce this new code of practice thanks to an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act secured by Lord Moylan and other peers last year, but what seems to have tipped her over the edge is the recording of NCHIs against the four boys at the centre of the imbroglio involving a slightly scuffed copy of the Quran at Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield three weeks ago. Even though the boy who brought the book into the school has a diagnosis of autism and the head-teacher said there was no malicious intent, a chief inspector for West Yorkshire Police proudly announced at the Jamia Masjid Swafia mosque, where a ‘community meeting’ had been convened, that the episode had been recorded as a ‘hate incident’. The terrifying thing about this is that ‘non crimes’, unlike crimes, aren’t automatically deleted from a person’s record when they reach 18.

Thankfully, schoolchildren will no longer have NCHIs recorded against their names when the new guidance comes into force. Paragraph 39 states: ‘If a report is made to the police about an incident that occurred in a school and does not amount to a crime, the appropriate police response would be to refer the matter to the school management team… An NCHI record should not be made on policing systems, and the personal data of the subject should not be recorded.’

One person who deserves some credit for this victory is Harry Miller, an ex-copper who got into trouble for tweeting a comic verse about trans women in 2019. When he was told an NCHI had been placed on his record, he took the College of Policing and Humberside Police to court. Had he lost, he would have faced an eye-watering bill for the other side’s costs, but luckily he won. The new guidance partly reflects this triumph, but he is worried some woke police officers will try to get round it by treating politically incorrect remarks as actual crimes, rather than NCHIs, and petitioning the CPS to prosecute.

That’s not all that fanciful. Last week, I was due to appear as an expert witness for a Christian street preacher called David McConnell who was appealing a conviction for causing harassment, alarm or distress. His crime? ‘Misgendering’ a trans woman. A judge at Leeds Crown Court overturned the conviction without needing to hear my evidence, but we can expect more such prosecutions in future once the use of NCHIs to shut people up has been curtailed. The Home Secretary should be congratulated for striking a blow in defence of free speech this week, but there’s more work to be done.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/when-is-a-crime-not-a-crime/

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Minorities Prefer Trump? Here’s Where Trump Gets Major GOP Primary Lead

By Manzanita Miller

Two recent polls could upset political assumptions about GOP primary voters going forward. While former President Trump maintains a double-digit lead over prospective GOP challenger Ron DeSantis in several national polls, Trump’s widest lead over DeSantis is with non-white voters. Trump also holds a substantial lead over DeSantis with lower-income voters who make under $50,000 a year and with younger voters under 50.

The average of two recent polls by CNN/SSRS and Quinnipiac University shows Trump’s lead over DeSantis widens substantially among non-white Republicans, who make up a larger share of low-income voters than whites do.

Trump is ahead of DeSantis by approximately 29 percentage points (55% to 26%) with voters of color but ahead by just one percentage point – and well within the margin of error – with white GOP primary voters.

Minority GOP primary voters are also more likely than whites to say it is more important for their GOP primary pick to share their values. By a two-to one margin minority GOP primary voters say it is more important for their GOP primary pick to share their values than to be “capable of beating Joe Biden.” A full 80% of minority GOP primary voters also say that it is “essential” that whoever is nominated for president in 2024 restores the policies of the Trump Administration.

Lower income voters continue to be key Trump supporters, while higher income voters favor DeSantis in polls, but CNN’s data shows non-white Republicans are more likely to fall into the lower-income group.

For instance, Trump leads DeSantis by 22 points among voters earning less than $50,000, but trails DeSantis by 13 points with those earning $50,000 or more. However, 45% of non-white Republicans fall into the group earning less than $50,000 while just 28% of White Republicans do. Race and class are both converging to create a block of working-class voters that skews heavily pro-Trump.

Young voters also favor Trump while older voters favor DeSantis, something Americans for Limited Government Foundation (ALGF) pointed out two weeks ago. Trump leads DeSantis by 18 percentage points with voters under 50, but trails DeSantis by 9 points for voters 50 to 64.

The minority shift toward Trump is not new. Latinos in particular have seen a significant rise in Trump support in recent months, with YouGov survey data showing the share of Latinos who say Trump should run again is up 14 points since he left office going from 22% to 36% today. Meanwhile, just 28% of Latinos want a Biden re-run and a solid 57% say Biden should not run again.

Looking back at the 2020 election, Black and Hispanic voters saw substantial shifts toward the right. Although Latinos still favored Biden in the 2020 presidential election, Trump’s share of the Hispanic vote rose ten percentage points from 28% in 2016 to 38% in 2020.

Trump also netted 12% of Black Americans nationwide, up from 8% in 2016. His most substantial gain was among Black men, 18% of whom supported Trump in 2020 up from 13% in 2016. Though his share of the Black female vote was small, it doubled from 4% in 2016 to 8% in 2020.

Minority voters have still favored Democrats in recent elections, but non-college-educated minorities are beginning to move to the right much like non-college whites. According to exit polls, the Democratic Party’s share of the non-college minority vote dropped eleven points between 2008 and 2020.

While Biden did win non-college minorities by 46 points in 2020, Trump increased his share of their vote by six points between 2016 and 2020. In 2016, Trump won 20% of the non-college minority vote and in 2020 he won 26%.

Non-college minorities also moved eight points to the right between the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections. In the 2018 midterms Democrats won minorities without a college degree by 76% to 22%. In the 2022 midterms Democrats won this block by 68% to 28%.

The midterms also showed a substantial shift toward the right among non-white men between 2018 and 2022. Democrats lost 21 points with Latino men between the two most recent midterm elections, going from winning them by 29 points in 2018 to 8 points in 2022.

Democrats also lost 14 points with Latino women between 2018 and 2022. Democrats lost 11 points with Black men, who supported Democrats by 76 points in 2018 and 65 points in 2022. Black women supported Democrats by 7 points less last year as well.

While education is growing among minorities, minorities without a college degree make up a substantial share of the electorate. In the 2022 midterms, minorities without a degree made up nearly a fifth of the electorate (18%) while those with one made up just 9%.

As ALGF pointed out last month, early polling shows Trump leads DeSantis on issues central to Latino voters including economic issues and border security. By a greater than two-to-one margin, Americans say they trust Trump more than DeSantis to handle the economy, taxes and government spending, foreign policy, and immigration.

Polls also show younger voters, who are more likely to fall into lower-income profiles largely prefer Trump to DeSantis. Over half of voters eighteen to twenty-nine (51%) have a very or somewhat favorable view of Trump, while just 43% have a very or somewhat favorable view of DeSantis. Voters over 65 are the opposite, with 37% saying they have a very or somewhat favorable view of Trump while 42% say they have a favorable view of DeSantis.

In the Republican party, as well as in the Democrat party, class is becoming a more divisive variable than almost any other metric. Lower income and lower educated voters prefer the GOP regardless of race, and within the Republican Party these voters gravitate toward former President Trump’s populist platform over DeSantis’ more conventional GOP agenda.

https://dailytorch.com/2023/03/minorities-prefer-trump-heres-where-trump-gets-major-gop-primary-lead/

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A Genuine Heroine for Women’s History Month

Ever heard of Zoila Aguila, also known as “La Niña Del Escambray?” No?...And yet her story seems to check every box for a Woke feminist super-drama.

You mean to tell me that from the Mainstream Media (so abundant with “feminists”) you didn’t hear about this “Latina” girl who, when younger than Miley Cyrus, courageously took up arms as a guerrilla fighter against a murderous, terror-sponsoring (genuinely) Russia-colluding regime, was captured, horribly tortured in utterly dark, underground dungeons crawling with rats and roaches where she lost her baby and eventually her mind? She suffered 15 years as a political prisoner enduring horrible tortures, alongside the longest-suffering female political prisoners in modern history, in a locale absolutely infested with mainstream “news” bureaus and their intrepid “reporters” and correspondents. Finally she was released in a prisoner exchange and found refuge in the U.S.

You mean the U.S. Mainstream Media didn’t inform you of how her brother and husband, fellow guerrilla fighters against Soviet commanded oppressors, were also captured by Soviet–armed and commanded storm-troopers on orders of the regime whose historic rationale was the destruction of the U.S.—and were murdered by firings squads, well within earshot of the “latina” freedom-fighter, as the murderers taunted her with laughs and jeers?

Well, gosh? Doesn’t this story—involving events just 90 miles from U.S. shores and subsequent legal U.S. resident—seem to have all the villains, heroes, drama and plot the Mainstream Media/Democrat/Hollywood/Publishing-Complex could ever DREAM of—for a smashing, human-interest story, documentary, movie, etc?

AH! But here’s the kicker, amigos: the latina freedom-fighter in question, Zoila Aguila, who passed away in Feb. of 2021 in Miami, fought against and was tortured horribly till insane by the regime co-founded by the Left’s premier poster boys—Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

Need I say more about the media blackout?

When the hacks who host and narrate programs on The History Channel, NPR, etc. call Che Guevara a "guerrilla fighter" they're quite correct, but unwittingly. After all, the term "Indian fighter" was used for cowboys who fought against Indians right? Well, did your history professor or The History Channel inform you that one of the bloodiest and longest guerrilla wars on this continent was fought - not by - but against Fidel Castro and Che, Guevara and mostly by campesinos (country folk)?

Didn't think so. Farm collectivization was no more voluntary in Cuba than in the Ukraine. And Cuba's Kulaks had guns, a few at first anyway. Had these rebels gotten a fraction of the aid the Afghan Mujahideen got, the Viet Cong got — indeed that George Washington's rebels got from the French — had these Cuban rebels gotten any help, some bandits named Fidel Castro and Che Guevara would probably merit less Wikipedia space today than Pancho Villa.

But JFK's Missile Crisis "solution" pledged to Castro and his Soviet sponsors that the U.S. pull the rug out from under Cuba's in-house freedom fighters. Raul Castro himself admitted that at the time of the Missile Crisis his troops and their Soviet advisors were up against 179 different "bands of bandits" as he labeled the thousands of Cuban anti-Communist rebels then battling savagely and virtually alone in Cuba's countryside, with small arms shipments from their compatriots in south Florida as their only lifeline.

Kennedy's shameful surrender to Khrushchev which “solved” the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis cut this lifeline. The Cuban freedom-fighters working from South Florida were suddenly rounded up for "violating U.S. Neutrality laws." The Coast Guard in Florida got 12 new boats and seven new planes to make sure Castro and his Soviet patrons remained utterly unmolested as they consolidated Stalinism 90 miles from U.S. shores. Think about it: here's the U.S. Coast Guard and Border Patrol working 'round the clock arresting Hispanics in the U.S. who are desperate to return to their native country.

Zoila Aguila was prominent among these lonely and virtually-unknown Cuban freedom-fighters. On the other hand the utterly bogus battles of the utterly bogus guerrillas (the Castro brothers and Che Guevara) had been trumpeted to high heavens by the U.S. media. And this relentless propagandizing was highly appreciated:

“Much more valuable than rural recruits for our Cuban guerrilla force were American media recruits to export our propaganda,” snickered Ernesto “Che” Guevara in his diaries.

This ferocious guerrilla war, waged 90 miles from America's shores, might have taken place on the planet Pluto for all you'll read about it in the MSM and all you'll learn about it from those illustrious Ivy League academics. To get an idea of the odds faced by those betrayed rural rebels, the desperation of their battle and the damage they wrought, you might revisit Tony Montana during the last 15 minutes of "Scarface."

Che had a very bloody (and typically cowardly) hand in this slaughter, one of the major anti-insurgency wars on this continent. Many of these anti-communist guerrillas were executed on the spot upon capture, a Che specialty. "We fought with the fury of cornered beasts," is how one of the lucky few who escaped described this desperate freedom fight against the Soviet occupation of Cuba through their proxies Fidel and Che.

In 1956 when Che linked up with Fidel, Raul, and their Cuban chums in Mexico City, one of them (now in exile) recalls Che railing against the Hungarian freedom-fighters as "Fascists!" and cheering their extermination by Soviet tanks.

In 1962 Che got a chance to do more than cheer from the sidelines. He had a hand in the following: "Cuban militia units commanded by Russian officers employed flame-throwers to burn the palm-thatched cottages in the Escambray countryside. The peasant occupants were accused of feeding the counterrevolutionaries and bandits." At one point in 1962, one of every 17 Cubans was a political prisoner. Fidel himself admits that they faced 179 bands of "counter-revolutionaries" and "bandits."

Mass murder was the order in Cuba's countryside. It was the only way to decimate so many rebels. These country folk went after the Reds with a ferocity that saw Fidel and Che running to their Soviet sugar daddies and tugging their pants in panic. That commie bit about how "a guerrilla swims in the sea which is the people, etc." fit Cuba's anti-Fidel and Che rebellion to a T. So in a relocation and concentration campaign that shamed anything the Brits did to the Boers, the gallant Communists ripped thousands of Cubans from their ancestral homes and herded them into concentration camps on the opposite side of Cuba.

One of these Cuban redneck wives (Zoila Aguila) refused to be relocated. After her husband, sons, and a few nephews were murdered by the Gallant Che and his Soviet-armed and led minions, she grabbed a tommy gun herself, rammed in a clip and took to the hills. She became a rebel herself. Cubans knew her as La Niña Del Escambray.

For a year she ran rings around the Communist armies sweeping the hills in her pursuit. Finally in 1964 she ran out of ammo and supplies and the communist storm-trooper rounded her up. All this was totally ignored by the foreign media.

On the other hand, Zoila Aguila’s torturers got no end of adulatory coverage from media “feminists.”

https://townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2023/03/18/a-genuine-heroine-for-womens-history-month-n2620825

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The DiAngelo/Dilbert Double Standard

See if you can spot the difference in these quotes.

Quote #1:

If nearly half of all blacks are not OK with white people … that’s a hate group. And I don’t want anything to do with them. And based on how things are going, the best advice I could give to white people is to get the hell away from black people. Just get the f*** away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. ‘Cause there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.

Quote #2:

I’m a big believer in affinity space and affinity work, and I think people of color need to get away from white people and have some community with each other. And I’ll let that go and maybe see if anyone else wants to pick it up.

The first quote was spoken by Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoon. Just under a month ago, Adams made these remarks in response to a Rasmussen poll that questioned black people about the phrase, “It’s okay to be white.” Of the black respondents who answered, 53% agree, 26% disagree, and 21% are not sure.

What Adams said even in the context of this poll is still racism. As political pundit Ben Shapiro said at the time: “What Scott Adams said was racist. And here’s the thing: if you substituted the word 'white’ for ‘black’ in his rant, you would immediately be given a top editorial post at the New York Times.”

This is really quite prescient of Shapiro because on March 20, the Left gifted us Quote #2. This, however, isn’t top billing for The New York Times. In fact, there is a distinct mainstream media silence, which is telling in and of itself.

This second quote reverses the races but delivers the same racist messaging. Who, pray tell, was the architect of this atrocity? The reigning queen of the book White Fragility herself, Robin DiAngelo. She phrased it more “nicely,” dubbing this segregation “affinity space,” but really it is the same racism that got Adams canceled.

DiAngelo, however, probably will be applauded for her “wondrous insight” because she is one of the people “doing the work” to open all of our plebeian eyes to the racism inherent in our whiteness and in the institutions built up by white people.

In those comments, both Adams and DiAngelo displayed a worldview that separates people by their races. The big difference is that such racism is what made DiAngelo rich and famous.

As our Nate Jackson said when he wrote about the original Adams infraction, “Here’s a fundamental truth that 100% of Americans should agree with: It’s okay to be whatever color your skin actually is.” You can’t change your skin color any more than you can change your biology. God made us exactly who we are supposed to be. Using race as one more tool to divide us is inherently anti-human as well as morally repugnant.

Conservative pundits were quick to pick up on this double standard. Allie Beth Stuckey observed: “When Robin DiAngelo says it, it’s inspirational and she gets paid $20k. When Scott Adams says it, it’s racist and he loses his job.”

Christopher Rufo, who has the video of DiAngelo uttering her “affinity space” quote, had two things to say: “Robin DiAngelo sounds like an old line segregationist,” and “It’s amazing that, for an entire year, the libs scrambled to find their moral voice and settled on Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, who turned out to be two of the greatest midwits of our time.”

Dave Rubin responded to Rufo’s post with the question, “Isn’t this what they cancelled @ScottAdamsSays for?” To which Scott Adams interjected, “You’re not supposed to notice.”

As was mentioned earlier in the piece, this DiAngelo soundbite has gotten radio silence from all of mainstream media. When Adams said his bit about white people staying away from black people, that was in The New York Times for days.

Perhaps the mainstream media is hoping we all are sufficiently distracted by the potential indictment of Donald Trump or perhaps the Russia/China meeting in Moscow to notice.

Either way, this is an egregious double standard.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/95895-the-diangelo-slash-dilbert-double-standard-2023-03-22

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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