It’s long been a known fact that the United Kingdom’s dysfunctional legal system likes to punish thought criminals. That’s already problematic for those who value individual freedoms, but why stop at those who speak inside the borders of the U.K.?
In what might be the most deluded and grandiose threat yet made by a sitting British state official since riots have consumed the country over the past few weeks — which really is saying something, if you’ve been following — the chief of London’s Metropolitan Police warned those who Have Opinions™ on what’s happening in the U.K. and post them on social media, even if they’re abroad.
That includes, by the way, Elon Musk, who has posted extensively about the U.K.’s crackdown on free speech in the wake of the riots.
So, just to get you up to speed in case you haven’t been following this story: As The Wall Street Journal notes, on July 29, three girls between the ages of 6 and 9 were killed by a 17-year-old individual at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event. A day later, white residents began rioting in Southport, the Liverpool suburb where it happened.
Within days, white mobs rioted throughout England and the U.K., often facing non-white and far-left counter-protesters who made the violence worse and were rioters themselves. (The media, the police and British politicians all tended to de-emphasize this element, although it certainly didn’t take a lot of looking to uncover it if you were so inclined.)
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Initially, politicians thought this was mostly caused by disinformation and misinformation about the underage suspect, including reports that he was a foreign-born Muslim who had illegally immigrated to Britain aboard a boat.
Later, when they took the unprecedented step of releasing the boy’s information — revealing he was a Welsh-born youth of Rwandan parents and that there was no evidence the stabbing was “terror-related” — it turned out that the riots had less to do with the specifics of the crime than general discontent. In a paywalled article at the U.K. Spectator, commentator Douglas Murray does an admirable job of spelling out what the Biden administration might call the “root causes” of the resentment-turned-violence. (Spoiler alert: unfettered immigration encouraged by both sides of the U.K. political aisle and concomitant unemployment for native-born Britons.)
It wasn’t just that the British government wanted to crack down on the rioters, which is good, or that they seem to simply be focused on the white rioters whose cause could be considered right-wing in its general political bearing; even if this seemed selective, if that was a tack that managed to stop the mass violence in its tracks, it might still seem slightly (very slightly) defensible.
Rather, it’s the fact that Britain wants to crack down on thoughtcrime, particularly that expressed on social media. And, while everyone from U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer to the police who will presumably be doing the arresting has been notably vague about what this thoughtcrime might entail, one imagines everyone who points out the unpopular root causes of the violence will end up in their sights.
Is there any hope that Britain will return to its former glory?
Thus, we have Sir Mark Rowley, head of the Metropolitan Police, telling Sky News that he’s absolutely willing to extradite “keyboard warrior[s]” who run afoul of authorities.
“We will throw the full force of the law at people. And whether you’re in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you,” he said on Sky.
The reporter then asked about “the likes of Elon Musk” commenting and what he would do “when it comes to dealing with people who are whipping up this kind of behavior from behind the keyboard who may be in a different country?”
“Being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law. You can be guilty of offenses of incitement, of stirring up racial hatred, there are numerous terrorist offenses regarding the publishing of material,” he responded.
“All of those offenses are in play if people are provoking hatred and violence on the streets, and we will come after those individuals just as we will physically confront on the streets the thugs and the yobs who are taking — who are causing the problems for communities.”
Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley threatens to EXTRADITE and imprison American citizens over online posts.
He does not rule out Elon Musk. pic.twitter.com/AUJhEgTTtJ
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 9, 2024
This isn’t an idle threat for a number of reasons, especially concerning Musk. First, as previously stated, the X impresario and Tesla/SpaceX industry titan has been fairly vocal on his own platform about the way the U.K. is using the riots as a pretext to criminalize certain speech:
This is actually happening https://t.co/50NdFdlZfi
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 8, 2024
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 10, 2024
Support freedom of speech in the UK!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 9, 2024
Second, social media has been targeted with unusual zeal as a whipping boy in this case, and by politicians who have not shown the slightest inclination to defend personal freedom in the past.
Prime Minister Starmer, a hole in the air filled with vague progressive ideas that make Old Labour voters happy, has shown willingness to use new authoritarian techniques to root them out — specifically, those on social media, and particularly those in charge of it. When it came to the companies, he said that they were allowing “violent disorder” to be “whipped up online.”
Follow that line to its natural progression to Rowley’s threat to extradite those abroad, or arrest them if they set foot on U.K. soil, and you can see why Musk would make a tempting target.
Indeed, even attempting to get an extradition order for any great number of everyday Americans who spoke up about the proximal causes of the rioting and the sheer giddiness of public officials to opportunistically use the occasion for encroachment on freedom of speech and freedom from Big Brother-style governance would be impossible. Getting just one U.S. citizen extradited, though? That’s pretty easy, albeit not quite so easy when it’s one of the world’s richest men. Perhaps the struggle would be so high-profile, however, that it’d be worth the L for British officials; all the better to warn the world what happens when you cross the folks at Ingsoc.
However, to actually do it risks whipping up anti-British sentiment in a nation with a Second Amendment, 400 million guns, and a willingness — as demonstrated during the Revolutionary War — to sneak up on Brits and tear them to shreds on the battlefield as they slept on Christmas Eve. This probably won’t work out as they planned if they hope to get an extradition.
Nevertheless, one needn’t wonder what this means when speaking truth about other politically uncomfortable subjects for the left. It might not lead to any sort of extradition, but it’ll certainly lead to a hassle. This might be the first time you’ve ever heard a British official implicitly threaten Americans with a crime for what they say on American soil. It most certainly won’t be the last.
