Following the disappointing England loss in the EURO 2020 competition, some fans thought to handle their upset by hurling despicable racial abuse at the players.
In the aftermath of these vile reactions, police arrested a 50-year-old man for a racist tweet that he allegedly sent to Marcus Rashford. The man, of course, claims that somebody had hacked his account. I will not focus here on the viability of his excuse but will instead turn my attention toward the criminalisation of opinions.
The fact that police can see fit to arrest a man based on a tweet astounds me. Here, we have a case that most people would agree is relatively clear-cut. One could argue that there is little ambiguity in this language, and we should punish a person who says something explicitly racist.
Here is where the lines blur, and we must recognise the vagueries of words. There can be no law so perfectly worded to be immune to perversion or reinterpretation. If this leaves us relying on the authority’s discretion, we lose a fundamental aspect of the rule of law. A citizen has a right to be held accountable to pre-existing, comprehensible, and known laws.
If you lack the imagination to see the problem with any attempt to punish “racist” speech on Twitter, let’s flesh this out. Most of the music I listen to every day could get me arrested if tweeted out of context. I couldn’t even say the names of some of my favourite songs like “My Nigga” or expand the acronym of the legendary NWA. How individuals address themselves in public would be banned. Unless we essentialise race, concretising it in law, just so that we can figure out who gets to type what words.
Slippery slope arguments are trite and overused. They can seem dramatic when used, but here we’re talking about giving incredible power to people who get to decide what one can post and what can land you in jail. I have no problem with Twitter managing its platform how it sees fit - if they wanted to ban the word “rabbit”, they have the right to do so. The police are a different matter entirely, and when discussing illegality, we must at least try to recognise the trade-offs.