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The Scottish Gestapo
Murray, Craig
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/08/the-scottish-gestapo/Year Published: 2023 Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX24930 If you are on the 'wrong' side in the culture wars, you will get prosecuted for an innocuous tweet or a remark in the street. If you are on the 'right' side, you can punch women in the face or parade a sign calling for the decapitation of those who disagree with you, and face no legal jeopardy. Abstract: - Excerpt: [John Stuart] Mill also argues that the effect of speech should be viewed in context. He gives the famous example that to argue that corn merchants are thieves who starve the poor is a perfectly legitimate expression of opinion. But to yell the same thing to a howling mob armed with torches outside a corn merchant’s house at midnight might be a different thing. This I think is useful guidance in the Harvie case. As I said, I don't really approve of calling people deviants, but to use it to a powerful politician in his pomp, surrounded by aides and police and giving a TV interview, is one thing. If a gang of big blokes were following a gay person at night down a dark street yelling 'deviant' at them, the situation and the perceived threat would be entirely different. ... In the SNP this obsession with identity politics has become institutionalised, part of the very fabric of the organisation itself. On the ruling body, the SNP National Executive, members elected by the entire membership are substantially outnumbered by members appointed by affiliated minority groups, sometimes with only a couple of hundred members. Any notion of selection on merit through the party’s democratic processes has been dispensed with entirely. All women shortlists, which were initiated on a firm promise they would be for one election only, have become permanent. Most pernicious of all, the effects of preference for disabled candidates -- self-declared as such -- gave some truly bizarre results. In possibly the worst of these, Emma Roddick received just 3% of the vote to be selected as the MSP candidate, but was promoted top of the list due to mental illness. There are many similar examples. Subject Headings |