Beware the Hate Monster!

By way of introduction, here is an excerpt from my latest Faith Watch column in the Freethinker:

Meanwhile, Scotland’s long-delayed and authoritarian Hate Crime Act will come into force on (appropriately) 1 April, with ‘non-crime hate incidents’ also being recorded. Thankfully, a Police Scotland video has resurfaced to put us all in our places. The narrator, in condescending faux chummy Scots, informs us that the ‘Hate Monster’ will grow within us every time we commit a hate crime. The criminal urge can just creep up on you, it seems: one moment you’re a bit peeved and ‘then, before ye know it, ye’ve committed a hate crime.’ A sound basis for prosecution…

Being Scottish, I have long had concerns about the Hate Crime Act. In 2022, I went so far as to say how shameful—and terrifying—it was. And this in one of the heartlands of the Enlightenment, no less! I can easily see how things I have written (including in this very Faith Watch), and things which have appeared in the Freethinker generally, might fall afoul of the Act or be seized upon by some offence-seeking enemy of free thought.

With Michael Gove and Humza Yousaf fighting for our freedoms, who needs tyrants? All I can say is that we at the Freethinker have no intention of being silenced.

If you have not had a chance to watch that weird Hate Monster video, please do so. It tells you everything you need to know about how the Scottish Government views those whom it governs. For reasons I have given at length before (and linked to above), I believe that the Hate Crime Act is one of the most foolish and dangerous pieces of legislation ever passed in Britain. Now that it is about to be properly enacted, years after its passage, there is little point in going over all those reasons again. But I do have a story to tell, a story that might even be instructive.

A good few years ago, long before the Hate Crime Act was even the dimmest of ideas in the exceedingly dim mind of Humza Yousaf, I was getting out of my car when I became aware of an argument between some of my neighbours. The car park was covered in snow, and two young men were down at their car (clearing the road, I think), but now they were bickering about something with an older, bald, moustachioed man who was standing just outside of his house on the inclined path leading up from the car park. Let’s call him Don, and let’s call the young men Jon and Tom.

I cannot remember what the dispute was about. Something to do with how Jon and Tom were shovelling the snow, probably. I just minded my own business and let them get on with it. Grabbing my bag from my car, I was about to head up the path to my house, when Don mockingly mimicked Jon before calling the pair a couple of poofs. I, now walking quietly up the path, thought—fuck that. Argue about the proper distribution of snow in the car park all you like, but do try to refrain from bigoted abuse while doing so… As I passed Don, I told him exactly what I thought of his outburst. That shut him up, and I continued on my way.

Later, I spoke with Jon and Tom (who were, indeed, a couple) and it seemed that old Don was something of an all-round bastard. Of course, they were hardly dispassionate sources, but I could well believe it. When Don tried to speak to me some time after, I told him where to go, informing him of my own membership in the poof fraternity as I did so. (I think his response was to argue that by using the word myself just then, it couldn’t really be so bad!) Poor Don—now there were three of us! ‘Might as well rename the place Poof Street,’ is a line I could well imagine him muttering in pure and terrible anguish at the thought.¹

I have a purpose in telling this story, and here it is: Jon and Tom mentioned reporting Don to the police for his bigotry. I remember even then feeling uncomfortable at the idea. Yes, Don was a bald bastard of a bully. Yes, he was a fatheaded old loser whose own wife had, in her embarrassment, tried to remonstrate with him for his use of the slur that day. Yes, he was the familiar type: the tiny-minded boor who thinks he’s the big man on the street. But—call the police? Over a word?

Equally, however, I was quietly thrilled at the prospect of seeing Don dealt with by the boys in blue. Wouldn’t it serve him right? A nice bit of vengeance, that’s what we need here…

I’m not sure what, if anything, I said in response to Jon and Tom’s suggestion. I don’t think anything ever came of it, anyway. But now it strikes me that this sort of thing might be taking up quite a lot of police time very soon. Vile as the hurling of slurs is, unless it amounts to a targeted campaign of harassment, I don’t see why the police should concern themselves with it. And do laws like the Hate Crime Act not appeal to our basest and pettiest instincts? Why, that annoying neighbour, I could land him in a lot of trouble with nothing more than a quick phone call… Even when someone is guilty of being a (bald) bigoted bastard of a bully, who exactly benefits from their arrest? Apart, of course, from the other hate monster—that primal desire for retribution at the back of our minds, the one that sets our blood a-thundering whenever we feel slighted.

The Hate Crime Act will not eradicate bigotry, and laws dealing with harassment and violence are already in place. So what will it do, except make us keep quiet, even on important matters of the day, lest we offend some snoop or snitch? What will it do but provide a legal channel through which we can indulge our worst instincts and make our fellow citizens miserable (or even more miserable than they already were)? Even when they are deserving of a bit of a (metaphorical) beating, as old Don certainly was, is it really just to have their names added to a state register (at best) or thrown into a cell (at worst)?

What a sad day it would be if those whom the law once persecuted, and who bravely resisted such injustice, should turn around and wield the law as a weapon in their turn. Worst of all, how pathetic! Can’t we fight our own battles any more?

Beware the Hate Monster, all right. It makes monkeys, and cowards, of us all.

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1. I should mention that I no longer live on the same street as Don, Jon, and Tom.