Many people hear my accent and guess that I’m American. When I say that I’m in fact Canadian-born they apologise. I always ask “why?” and tell them I like Americans as they’re just about the friendliest people on earth. In fact, I’ve long claimed the mantle of being the most pro-American law professor in Australia and Canada. The U.S. spends a huge chunk of its GDP protecting countries (like us and like most of Europe) that flat out refuse to spend even 2% of GDP defending themselves. However, for a long time now I’ve also pointed out that the U.S. justice system is woefully bad. Let me be clear. It seriously stinks. At the federal level some 98% of accused are convicted – a laughably embarrassing figure for any democracy. Almost all of those are convictions without trial where the Feds have basically threatened you with 500 years in jail or you cut a deal, plead guilty and take a tolerably low sentence. (And for all those who say “well, you should never plead guilty if you didn’t do it” I point out that they also cut deals with all sorts of others who have to testify against you and fighting the charges will bankrupt you and your family even if you win and only the uber brave can withstand this treatment.) Think of it this way. Given a choice between the Australian criminal justice systems (Canberra or Victoria) – with their patently flawed lack of commitment to the presumption of innocence and the cab rank rule – or being tried in the U.S. by the Feds, you’d have to be brain dead not to roll the dice in Canberra or Melbourne.
This has been a longstanding problem in the U.S., a criminal justice system that no Australian, Canadian or Brit would really recognise as a fair system. But in the last little while it’s been made worse by being politicised. Take the recent defamation case against the legendarily funny columnist Mark Steyn in Washington D.C. brought by the climate change alarmist Michael Mann – yes, the hockey stick guy who laughably claimed to be a Nobel laureate for years. This trial and verdict makes a mockery of the idea that any politically conservative person could get a remotely fair trial in Washington D.C. (where some 93% vote Democrat year in and year out). Mann and his lawyers (none paid for by Mann but by invisible wealthy types in the background) delayed their own case for over a decade to try to bankrupt Steyn who ended up representing himself. The case was so weak it should never have gone to the jury, not least because in U.S. defamation cases plaintiffs who are public figures (as Mann clearly is) have to prove actual malice – basically that Steyn when blasting the falsity of the hockey stick climate change catastrophism knew that he, Steyn, was lying; that Steyn subjectively knew what he was saying wasn’t true. But as Steyn pointed out at trial, he’s been saying the same thing about Mann’s hockey stick charade for over two decades and even wrote a book about it. No way that test is met. And, of course, Mann needs also to prove reputational damage. But given the clear benefits of being on the climate change gravy train he couldn’t call a single witness to allege any damage Mann ever suffered.
But this is D.C. The plaintiff’s lawyer in his closing argument asked the jury, regardless of everything else, to award exemplary damages to, in effect, silence these global warming sceptics. No judge in Australia or Canada – not even one appointed by Dan Andrews – would allow a lawyer to appeal for exemplary damages even though the legal requirements otherwise to win the case had not been met. It would have been a directed verdict for Steyn. But the jury came back and awarded Mann one dollar in actual damages (against Steyn and his co-defendant), a deadly verdict in jurisdictions with a costs rule and in effect a decision that Steyn was right. But then the jury also awarded Mann $1 million in exemplary damages – basically deciding that regardless of everything else Steyn is not free to speak about this issue and sending a clear message to anyone who wants to voice doubts about ‘end of the world climate scaremongering’. Of course if Steyn appeals it would be in the (non-federal) D.C. system with huge numbers of federal bureaucrats operating under regulatory climate change policies that create a near-perfect set-up to get dissidents. Good luck with that. Only the U.S. Supreme Court can save him and odds are it won’t touch it. So Steyn is probably bankrupted. Mann gets a big PR boost. And the legacy press (so yes, the ABC) will treat the verdict as something other than a bad joke. I’ll be blunt. This is a very sad outcome for Mark Steyn who is and has been a free speech warrior for decades and decades.
In addition to Steyn the justice system has pretty clearly been weaponised in the U.S. against Trump and his former advisors. A Trump former adviser has been ordered to report to prison while former Attorney General Eric Holder (a Democrat) suffered no penalty for the same charge. Or think about the so-called claims about Trump instigating an insurrection. There is no charge to that effect of course but the current Washington D.C. charges require the special Trump prosecutor to prove mens rea – that Trump didn’t actually think he’d won in 2020 but proceeded anyway when, as with Steyn, the evidence seems overwhelming that Trump did believe he’d won (and that is enough for an acquittal whether anyone else believed that or not) – and to overcome a Presidential immunity defence. It is the latter defence that Trump just lost in the D.C. Circuit appeal court and will now appeal. But think about this. You have a criminal charge that is alleging nothing more nor less than a political crime. Americans have been inundated with all the information for a couple of years. The voters are well aware of both sides of this. It can be resolved in an election in 10 months where 160 million odd people will have their say, and let us know whether they think Trump’s conduct disqualifies him from being President. Or, in keeping with the way things are done in Pakistan, Thailand and a fair few other places, you can legalise the issue and have the current President try to put his main opponent in jail for the rest of his life. You just bring the case in D.C. Hand it over to a jury in a jurisdiction where well over 90% vote Democrat. And let 12 jurors decide for a country of 332 million Americans who can and can’t be President.
I don’t care how badly you hate Trump. This is an affront to democracy. It will demand reciprocal behaviour from Republicans in future. And it is risible to claim you have to take the man currently leading in every poll off the ballot to save democracy. As I said, the U.S. criminal justice system has stunk for ages. But under Biden the stench is now political too. (I leave discussion of the documents charges and the differential treatment of Trump and Biden for another day.)
James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article first appeared in Spectator Australia.
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No religion should be above criticism. It seems the pathetically wet cowards who run our Civil Service, Quangos, local authorities and public services would rather appease intolerant authoritarians who threaten violence and division than run the risk of having their snouts pulled from the trough of public expenditure.
That is not the explanation. It is not cowardice or oversight or mistakes thgat lead to this sort of thing but intent.
Which is why I mentioned snouts in troughs.
And I certainly don’t believe it’s an oversight or mistake. You only have to look at ideological oppression in the present and past to see that there are those who benefit economically from maintaining such ideologies and there are those who are scared of being ostracised.
Yes but Islam is not just a religion. It is a Political System as well. You must be free to criticise all Politics.
Nothing should be above criticism. Religious, political or otherwise.
And a legal system, as it defines Sharia
As one loudmouth school teacher union rep and Pakistani-British anti racist campaigner shouted at me “Islam is not a religion it is a way of life’.
“Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Faith, Communities and Resettlement”
1) Interesting title. It probably means PUSS for All faiths except Christianity, discriminating against Christians, Communities = non-white people, Resettlement = lots of immigration.
2) What the hell do we need this person for? Why is the government/state concerned with “Faith, Communities and Resettlement”? Why do we have to have state involvement in every aspect of our lives?
What the hell do we need this person for? Why is the government/state concerned with “Faith, Communities and Resettlement”? Why do we have to have state involvement in every aspect of our lives?
They enable the anti-whitists to carry out The Great Replacement.
Strange logic: coin a term – “islamophobia” – and only then seek to define it in order to legislate against it. It’s rather like deciding that plingeocide is a great evil and then struggling how on earth to eradicate what doesn’t actually mean anything.
Strange yet not strange. Keeping it vague allows you to use it as you see fit to attack your enemies
Some words come to mind—Surrender, Capitulation, Admit Defeat, Yield, Acquiesce. ———But why is there no Buddhaphobia, Hinduphobia, Shikphobia? How strange. Ony Islamophobia.
There is also antisemitism
But Jews don’t mind you criticising their religion, Muslims absolutely do. Jews don’t issue fatwas, preach about killing, conquering or enslaving all the non-believers, kill or imprison gays, kill apostates, kill you if you draw Jesus, there’s no Jewish version of waging jihad, and on and on it goes. We all know the drill by now. It’s only Islam that gets special treatment and allows no criticism of its ideology.
The “antisemitism” issue is complicated. It exists but it is also used to shut down debate.
I’d rather not have any of these special words
You can be a Jewish atheist. You can’t be a Muslim atheist.
And a large percentage of those sent to the gas chambers for being Jews weren’t practicing Jews. The fact they had Jewish heritage doomed them to their fate.
Sort of, yes. It’s complicated. My point was really about what conclusions we could draw from the existence of special words that are often used to shut down debate and what that tells you about the world we live in
If you are an atheist you re no longer Muslim or Catholic or Jewish.—-But actually “atheist” is a non word. You don’t need a word for someone who doesn’t support Arsenal, so why do we need a word for someone who isn’t religious?
Yes I’m not religious and don’t refer to myself as ”atheist” because I’m not a lover of labels, in fact, the obsession with sticking labels on people just so we can be categorized and neatly placed into boxes by people with ill intent and an obsession with control really, really irritates me.
Here we go again. Just as Islamaphobia is a made up word (not recognised by my spell checker, interestingly), antisemitism has also taken on a whole and incorrect, new meaning. The word correctly means opposition or hatred to all peoples of the area of the middle east including Jewish people, Arab people and all others who originated from that region. I am a full supporter of the State of Israel, but still don’t understand how a religion that includes peoples from the middle east, east Africa, central Europe and other places, who have such blatant differences in physical appearance can be defined as one race, just as Muslims cannot. Surely we do away with all references to hatred of people defined by religion and other fairy tales and focus on crushing hatred of all people, whatever their religion, race, sex, etc.
More concerned about Kafirphobia myself, the fear and loathing of unbelievers at the heart of Islam. See the comments made about them by Allah in his best seller “Quran” and the violently supremacist actions directed toward them by Mohammed (as detailed by his biographer ibn Ishaq).
I would not say muslims fear non-believers. At best they hold us in contempt but vary many believe the teachings and want us to convert or die.
Are we now redefining words (rhetorical question) to mean what we wish them to mean?
A Phobia is a fear of something, not a hatred of something, semantics matter, meaning matters.
They are obviously made up words anyway – homophobia (fear of sameness), transphobia (fear of opposites (?) – maybe Americans, as in transatlantic!), Islamophobia (fear of Islam)
A phobia can be both an irrational fear and an irrational hatred. The Greek root simply means fear (not necessarily irrational), but in Engish the word has had two senses since the 18th century. (Yes, I looked that one up!) Not surprising: the two emotions are deeply intertwined in the human psyche. But the latter sense is clearly meant here: the government is not proposing to make it an offence to be afraid of Islam.
I don’t think anyone has a problem understanding that homophia stands for “homosexualityphobia”, which is far too long to be practical (for English – maybe in German).
The obvious question is “why bother” and the clear answer is that the political elites want to pander to a certain religious secion of the community, in many cases for anticipated electoral benefit but in all cases because they really do not like the rest of us.
Exactly, why does Islam need a separate definition and law? Indeed is it not an act of inequality to have a separate law for Islam? Surely we should have just one law on religious freedom and recognition that applies equally to Christians, Jew, Pagans, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists etc. why does one group need a specific law?
Because Muslim MPs are firstly Muslims and only also MPs. It also foreshadows the future of Britain as another Muslim majority country because Muslims still do families with children instead of women working in office jobs and aimlessly screwing around to kill the time when they’re not, thankfully ‘protected’ from functioning biologically like other female animals do by The Pill.
Abstractly, I regret that. However, these sofa-sedentary sex lives and their male 30s-operators are – besides being a hell of a nuisance – a blind alley of evolution and will rightfully die out because of this.
There are certainly no laws against anti-German hatred or even just anti-foreigner hatred and there shouldn’t be any. Insofar this hatred manifests itself in form actual crimes, these are already – in theory, mind you, British police won’t prosecute British people for crimes against mere foreigners who are simply not particularly credible to begin with due to them being foreigners – supposed to be punished. So, why is a law against anti-Muslim hatred needed?
I think what makes the political left and Islam such bedfellows is simply their mutual desire for absolute power.
Even though on paper they have nothing in common (as communism is atheistic), they both have an insatiable need to control every aspect of people’s lives and establish a totalitarian system. Ultimately when it comes to methods of exercising power, the Great Caliphate wouldn’t look that different from North Korea.
But for me there seems to be an inherent feeling of insecurity both in Islam and leftism: they know that no reasonable human being would choose to live in their utopia and so they need to be permanently on the attack.
I guess my thoughts above would probably constitute to islamophobia if this new legislation was introduced, so there you go.
If an individual Muslim holds a particular view, based on Islamic principles, or otherwise, does that mean they will be seen as protected and criticism not permitted by law under any anti-Muslim definition? Just trying to understand any distinction with any Islamophobia definition. Why is the Equality Act not seen as sufficient?
Awarding state protection to any religion and its followers is an attack on those of us who regard ‘faith’ as an opiate and a licence for thought control. No freedoms to criticise these things mean yet another constraint on democracy. Yet more micromanagement by our serpentine socialists and bureuacrats.