Neo-Nazis and far-right agitators are taking advantage of Scotland’s new hate crime law to make mass nuisance complaints in a bid to ‘overwhelm’ police systems.
A prominent figure in the white nationalist movement in England is among those urging followers to spam Police Scotland with anonymous online reports, the Observer has found.
The leader of a far-right group – one of several fringe organizations assessed by the UK government under the new extremism definition – promoted a private channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram with a ‘call to action’ urging members to ‘massively to report’. ”.
Posts on the channel instruct members to record incidents of so-called “anti-white” hate, including what they say is a statement on the police website that “young men between the ages of 18 and 30 are most likely to commit hate crimes.”
“We are deeply offended by this public attack on a group and we will therefore report it as a racially motivated hate crime,” the station operator wrote.
Posts have also been posted urging the group’s 284 members to mass report tweets from members of the public, including one from a former city councilor who said those most affected by hate crimes are “people of colour, disabled people, LGBT+ people are, because it probably happened to them.” The administrator of the hate crime reporting group said the message was “offensive” and “cast white men as evil.”
“At the very least, we want to overwhelm them with reports to waste their time [so that] in the end they gave up the whole system,” they wrote, adding that people could report without using their names and even if they did not live in Scotland.
The attempts by far-right actors to overwhelm Police Scotland come after a week in which the country’s new hate crime legislation came under fierce criticism. The law, which came into force on April 1, says a person commits an offense if they communicate material or behave in a way that a “reasonable person would consider threatening or offensive”, with the intention of inciting hatred stir up. on a list of protected characteristics.
This includes a person’s age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and variations in gender characteristics. It also includes a crime of inciting hatred on the basis of race, color or national origin, which was already illegal but is now part of the new law.
The Scottish Government says the law will provide greater protection for victims while protecting freedom of expression. But it has faced controversy for omitting sex from the list of protected characteristics it covers. Ministers say this is because a standalone bill to combat misogyny is in the making.
Critics also claim the law will stifle freedom of expression, with high-profile figures including JK Rowling, Joe Rogan and Elon Musk among those who have publicly attacked the law. After Holyrood minister Siobhian Brown said people “could be investigated” for misnaming someone online, Rowling challenged police to arrest her over tweets she posted describing transgender women as men. Police Scotland said the tweets were not criminal. Yesterday, Rowling posted a 700-word statement on
This weekend, Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf, the SNP leader, defended the legislation, telling the PA news agency that “deliberate misinformation” was being “spread by a number of bad actors”, falsely claiming it it was now a criminal offense to make “derogatory remarks” based on the characteristics covered by the law.
A government spokesperson added that the law has a “high threshold for criminality” and “will not prevent people from expressing controversial, challenging or offensive views”.
Yousaf also warned people against filing nasty complaints. Although official figures have not yet been released, Police Scotland reportedly received almost 4,000 reports in the first three days of the new law. Many are said to have denounced Yousaf himself over comments he made four years ago about a lack of non-white people in top jobs in Scotland.
The Prime Minister said he was not surprised by the deluge and that “when legislation is first introduced there can sometimes be a wave of nasty complaints”. But he said he was “very, very concerned” about how much would be made, adding that “people need to stop doing it because they are wasting valuable police resources and time”.
Police Scotland said it had seen a “substantial increase” in reporting since the law came into force, but this had not affected frontline police. It is believed it has hired additional staff and is having to pay them overtime to meet demand.
Related: Scotland’s new hate crime law: what does it cover and why is it controversial?
Imran Ahmed, from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said it was “extremely ironic” that the law was being “weaponized” by the same racist and misogynistic “bad actors” who led to its creation. He said the flood of complaints from far-right activists was evidence that the law had “failed to achieve its proper purpose” and that the Scottish Government had “sought to prosecute speech” rather than social media platforms.
“The problem is the spread of hate speech on social media and the ways in which these platforms take advantage of and give superpowers to every hate group out there,” he said.
Before the law came into force, the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents (ASPS) warned of its impact on police resources. Ch Supt Rob Hay, president of the ASPS, said in a letter to Holyrood’s justice committee that he was concerned the law would be “weaponized” by an “activist fringe” across the political spectrum, which would divert police resources can distract from more serious crimes.