In Britain, mocking transgender ideology online, waving the British flag, or reading the Bible on a street corner is now enough to land you in prison – even as the British judicial system lets child rapists out of prison early and ignores a growing wave of violent migrant crime.
A recent viral story of an Irish comedian who was arrested earlier this month provides the latest shocking evidence of just how dystopian Britain has become – and how it may not even be safe for Americans to travel there anymore. Graham Linehan was arriving at London’s Heathrow airport on September 1 when he was apprehended by five armed police officers “on suspicion of inciting violence.”
Linehan, an Irish citizen who was returning from Arizona, had made jokes months earlier about transgenderism. “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act,” Linehan wrote. “Make a scene, call the cops, and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
The police put him in a jail cell, causing so much stress that his blood pressure spiked, according to Linehan.
Authorities say Linehan was in violation of Britain’s Online Safety Act, which makes it illegal for individuals to author or share posts that “incite violence” or are “grossly offensive.” Critics have long warned that the law opens the door to imprisoning anyone who questions left-wing dogma like gender ideology or mass migration.
Amid the backlash, British police have become defensive, claiming they are only enforcing a bad law. “London’s police chief has appealed for change, arguing that his officers are in an ‘impossible position’ as they try to navigate the evolving landscape of online free speech while enforcing existing laws that bar threats and incitement to violence,” CBS News reported.
Still, that has not stopped police across the country from regularly arresting people. “The police are making more than 30 arrests a day over offensive posts on social media and other platforms, according to the Free Speech Union and The Times. That works out to “about 12,000 arrests a year” for content deemed “grossly offensive” or “[of an] indecent, obscene or menacing character.”
Even more frighteningly, it’s not just British citizens who are subject to the law. Nigel Farage, leader of the conservative Reform UK party, warned lawmakers during a U.S. House hearing last week that “this could happen to any American man or woman that goes to Heathrow, that has said things online that the British government and British police don’t like.”
Linehan is hardly the only person to learn that free speech is dead in Britain. Just days after Linehan was arrested, another woman was arrested for waving the Union Jack in front of a hotel housing migrants. Last year, a Christian preacher was arrested for quietly displaying a Bible verse outside an abortion clinic. A year before that, British cops arrested another man for reading his Bible out loud during an LGBTQ+ “pride” event.
But while British authorities are ready to imprison thousands of citizens for publicly displaying their faith or criticizing transgender ideology, they have displayed an egregious level of leniency when it comes to child rapists and criminal migrants.
In May, for instance, a British court let “[s]ix key members of one of Britain’s worst grooming gangs,” out of prison early, GB News reported. “The gang terrorized young girls in Oxford between 1998 and 2005 by sexually abusing them – including rape – after plying them with drugs and alcohol,” and “subjected the vulnerable girls to threats and violence, made them have sex with other men and had the victims at their ‘mercy.’”
The vast majority of abusers were ethnically Pakistani, even if they were legally British citizens, while many of the victims were white British girls.
Migrants have clearly received the message that there will be only minimal punishments even for the most heinous crimes.
“Aron Hadsh, a 27-year-old Eritrean hotel migrant who illegally entered Britain via a small boat over the English Channel, was convicted of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old girl near Heathrow,” Breitbart reported in July. “Despite the judge finding that he continued to pose a ‘risk of serious harm to the public,’ the court only gave Hadsh a 14-month prison sentence, which he will avoid given the time he already spent in custody during the trial.”
In another shameful case, in February 2020, a parole board released Jamshed Javeed from prison earlier after he helped his younger brother join ISIS and become a suicide bomber, and then attempted to join ISIS himself. Javeed was imprisoned for just six years.
In August, Ayomide Famakinde, a 23-year-old Nigerian migrant, was spared jail time after violently sexually assaulting a random woman at a beach when a judge ruled that Famakinde had a “momentary aberration” and “very troubled background and difficult life.” No such leniency, of course, for native-born Brits who commit the crime of waving their own country’s flag at a protest.
Also last month, police tried to cover up that two Afghan nationals accused of heinous crimes were asylum seekers, because they thought it would “inflam[e] community tensions,” according to Breitbart.
“According to a report from the Mail on Sunday, Afghan national Ahmad Mulakhil, 23, was charged with allegedly raping the 12-year-old girl last month after entering the country illegally on a small boat across the English Channel,” Breitbart reported. “Meanwhile, fellow Afghan Mohammad Kabir, 23, was reportedly charged with kidnapping, strangulation, and aiding and abetting the rape of the same girl, who remains in specialist care.”
Illegal migrants across the country have committed hundreds of serious crimes, including sexual assault and robbery, according to The Daily Mail. This is likely an undercount, as the UK refuses to provide data on crime committed by migrants, so the news outlet had to estimate based on court records.
One reason the police know there is a massive migrant crime problem? Officials reportedly are giving presentations to asylum seekers, telling them they cannot “harass or abuse women,” according to The Telegraph.
The list of deranged criminals walking free today thanks to British courts goes on. But to Britain’s top national security officials, the real threat isn’t migrant crime – it’s conservatives who are warning about it.
“Right-wing extremists frequently exploit cases of alleged group-based sexual abuse to promote anti-Muslim sentiment as well as anti-government and anti-‘political correctness’ narratives,” former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper wrote in a memo in January, according to Breitbart.
Britain’s Home Secretary oversees national security issues in the country, similar to the Department of Homeland Security in the United States. The new Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, is of Pakistani heritage and will now notably be overseeing the Pakistani grooming gangs scandal.
For centuries, Britain has built a reputation for having one of the fairest and most objective systems of justice in the world – principles that carried across the Atlantic, where English common law remains the bedrock of the American legal system. Now, however, the British justice system has become a case study in the dangers of woke politics run amok.
Matt Lamb is a contributor for AMAC Newsline and an associate editor for The College Fix. He previously worked for Students for Life of America, Students for Life Action, and Turning Point USA. He previously interned for Open the Books. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Examiner, The Federalist, LifeSiteNews, Human Life Review, Headline USA, and other outlets. The opinions expressed are his own. Follow him @mattlamb22 on X.
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