You really couldn’t make this stuff up.
Rick Prior, the Chair of the Met Police Federation, recently gave an interview to GB News highlighting the fact that some police officers are reluctant to engage with members of ethnic minorities because they could be labelled as being ‘discriminatory’. Prior was then duly suspended by the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) for being discriminatory.
As a serving officer, I can tell you that the fear of suspension, or worse, if an interaction ‘goes wrong’ is all pervading. Aside from the obvious physical dangers, we know there are many activists and keyboard warriors out there who are just waiting to take some phone footage out of context and put it online, along with their mischievous interpretation of events. Also (and this is far worse), we know that police senior management will hang an officer out to dry if it means extricating themselves from any blame, regardless of context. They can then point to a ‘rogue officer’ rather than address any failings at a strategic level – of which there are many.
The Territorial Support Group (TSG) officers who were wrongfully dismissed following a stop and search incident involving athlete Bianca Williams is a case in point. They were dismissed for gross misconduct after a disciplinary hearing ruled they had lied about the reason to search the occupants of the car she and her husband were travelling in. The car had blacked out windows and initially made off when indicated to stop by the officers, in an area which was plagued by gang-related violence. If that car hadn’t have been stopped, the officers would not have been doing their job. But then they were sacked for it, and only reinstated by the Police Appeals Tribunal.
Rick Prior is a vocal supporter of these and other colleagues who are the victims of politically motivated misconduct procedures, and many colleagues are whispering that this could be one of the reasons for his suspension.
The understanding is that Mukund Krishna, the CEO of the PFEW, was responsible for suspending Prior. Krishna has never been a police officer and would have no idea of the dangers and fears which stalk the frontline copper. And it is us, the Federation members, who pay his undisclosed salary. A petition titled “Vote of No Confidence in the CEO of the Police Federation of England and Wales” has been launched. I have no doubt that many thousands will sign it, and rightly so.
The elite (and, by extension, senior police leaders) seem to think that the rank and file are always thinking in racial terms and that this governs each interaction with the public. This may have been the case when said senior leaders were young in service (and maybe they were the ones who were actually racist). But nothing could be further from the truth today. Indeed, it is the leadership’s condescending attitude to its PCs which reveals their own obsession with race.
Plus we need to acknowledge, in times such as these, that some members of the public are more than willing to racialise engagment with the police. And why wouldn’t they, with a culture that seems to view everything through the two-dimensional prism of identity? Of course, there is the added bonus that if they have done wrong, there’s a chance they could get away with it.
As officers, we can all remember occasions when something seemingly innocuous snowballed into something much more dangerous. The one that springs to mind with me is when I was very young in service (and very naïve). We were called to a seemingly run-of-the-mill road accident in north London. The occupant of one car was a white female and the occupants of the other car were young black men. It soon transpired that the car occupied by the black men had no insurance and no MOT. They were also extremely reluctant to provide any details or for us to take a closer look inside the car.
They became loudly aggressive which, as desired, brought many members of the community into the street. Despite not knowing anything of the circumstances, the crowd sided with the black men, no doubt because of their race. Everything quickly became much more chaotic, and this would have then provided the opportunity to dispense with anything illegal to possess, another useful tactic. There were initially only two of us attending this call and to be at the centre of this hostile crowd was absolutely terrifying. Eventually, we called for urgent assistance and back-up arrived, but to be at the heart of this was chilling, and could only have been worse for a single-crewed officer. Imagine, after all that, that you find you’re being suspended because you might have been racist? Rick Prior was entirely right to highlight officers’ reluctance to engage in such circumstances.
I guess this ridiculous turn of events shouldn’t really come as a surprise when you have senior leaders within the police and affiliated organisations who have been completely captured by woke ideology and live in fear of denunciation by the chattering classes. The difference with this case is that the Police Federation is meant to be the one body we can turn to when we become enmeshed in a controversy borne out of our superiors’ cowardice.
As long as I’ve been a copper, there has been a phrase in common usage among us: “the job’s f**ked”. This has been uttered whether something goes badly or well. But if the Police Federation doesn’t even allow its chairs to express concern for its officers, then it really is.
The author is a serving police officer.
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Powerful, and accurate.
Appealing the verdict on a case like this only proves Hopkins to be correct in his assessment. A legitimate court has decided on the evidence, but officials want to punish some more by the process, even if the result is the same.
That is mafia ideology at work, as seems to be happening across the Western court system.
It’s a bit different in Germany and that’s probably very difficult for an American to understand: The swastika is a prohibited symbol of a former national-socialist organisation and because of this, displaying it in public is generally an offence. They may usually be legally used if someone unfamiliar with a specific display can clearly identify the antifascist intent or in clearly antifascist satire. But only usually, ie, this is still for the courts to sort out. A higher court may well come to the conclusion that Hopkins’ use of it was neither of them and hence, was an offence. What he himself meant by that doesn’t matter at all, just what others might see in it.
Is Jon Garvey American? Why is the point you explain difficult for an American to understand?
Hopkins is an American. And this means he probably expects to be able to use swastikas for artistical expression. However, any public display of a swastika is illegal in Germany and there are just some fairly narrow customary exceptions for that.
I dunno – he doesn’t seem like a dummy and he has been there a while- I would bet he knows the law pretty well
Lawyers working for the government don’t seem think so. Granted, these are (public prosecutors) taking orders from seriously pissed off politicians and spending other people’s money, however, they wouldn’t be going to court when they weren’t convinced that they can make a case.
The official document on this¹ states that
Die Verwendung von unter §§ 86, 86a StGB fallenden Kennzeichen wird
überwiegend dann als nicht strafbar angesehen, wenn der unbefangene
Betrachter in der Art der Darstellung eine Ablehnung der NS-Ideologie
erkennen kann.
Public display of symbols prohibited by §86, 86a STGB is overwhelmingly regarded as legal when someone not familiar with the specific image in question can clearly recognize that its meant to communicate a rejection of NS ideology.
and then cautions that people who meant to express such a rejection have in the past been found guilty of infringement nevertheless. And there’s the second argument that this trivializes the Holocaust by likening the highly beneficial and completely benign just-a-mask to the Nazi armband.
It’s entirely uncertain how this will end in the courts and Hopkins has certainly aroused flaming hatred from left-/green-leaning circles in Germany. As Berlin is known to have a very active radical left scene, he should really be watching his back because these guys are violent
and don’t mind doing stuff like hammer attacks of gangs against “undesirables” in their own houses.
¹ https://www.verfassungsschutz.de/SharedDocs/publikationen/DE/rechtsextremismus/2022-02-rechtsextremismus-symbole-zeichen-organisationen.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=10
It’s possible he half expected this and decided to do it anyway, to make a point. I don’t know much about him but he seems pretty angry about stuff, angry enough to put himself in danger.
Not really. In another text, he specifically states that he means to stay away from beat up first, don’t ask questions later people like the police. And the German radical left is composed to such people.
Well that contradicts what he actually did- I mean even I know you’re not allowed to use those images
About time people challenged these anachronistic edicts. I have heard Neo-Nazis use the fact that they have no free speech to justify their existence.
I think they are a terrible idea, but judging by the reaction of my German relatives when I shared my concerns regarding the “covid” tyranny going down a bad path the edicts seem like an article of faith for some at least.
They were forcibly imposed for the purpose of denazification by the so-called allied powers after 1945. Which means that the congress-shall-make-no-law Americans took part in this.
I think that it was around 2008 that a waxwork of Hitler was attacked and his head torn off with the vandal shouting ‘no more wars’… I’m sure that waxwork had his uniform with the Swastika on his hat. Before the waxwork was vandalised, everyone was drawn to it, I suppose just like everyone likes a good Thriller.
Mr. Hopkins is well aware of the rules in Germany and why his actions did not transgress them. See his article https://cjhopkins.substack.com/p/the-1st-amendment-will-not-save-you in which he quotes verbatim sections 1, 2 and 3 of the relevant German law.
This lacks an argument why a swastika displayed in this particular way would either have been used (mistranslations corrected)
The correct § is also the next one (§86a — public display of symbols of unconstitutional or terrorist organizations) which just refers back to the list above. 1) is government propaganda which obviously doesn’t apply. 2) is use by government organisations or NGOs to “fight fascism” which certainly doesn’t apply, either. 3) obviously doesn’t apply as well. And neither does 4) as he wasn’t reporting about someone else’s use of a swastika, either current or historical.
This leaves political satire as the only possible legal excuse. In my opinion, that’s obviously what it is. But in the (likely) opinion of the government dingbats behind this, he called them Nazis in order to insult them gravely and shock-promote a product he wanted to sell while all they were doing was trying to protect the general public from an extremely dangerous disease (as declared by the WHO, different opinions on that principally not allowed in Germany).
“artistical” – Lol
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/artistical
This is a nice demonstration that even the most well-intentioned censorship laws always misfire in the end because the authorities will use them to silence people critical of themselves.
Well-intentioned censorship laws is somewhat of a contradiction in terms. Banning certain forms of expression, and I’d say this even includes a symbol that’s clearly and obviously linked to the worst crimes of the 20th century, only drives that expression underground where it’s harder to try and counter it with alternative opinions.
The possibly for the ban on displaying a swastika to be abused is immense. I’m surprised that so far no one who wants AFD banned has attended one of their rallies with a swastika to try and show AFFD is ‘fascist’.
The main German censorship law is “well-intentioned” because it’s officially meant to protect young people from being exposed to material that’s too dangerous for them due to lack of maturity.
As to attending an AfD (Alternative für Deutschland, going back to the government claims that resolving the so-called sovereign debt crisis required putting out the flames by dumping loads of German money onto them was the only available political option) with a swastika, that would be really effective way to get onself hurt and into an uncomfortable police cell quickly. The AfD goes to extreme lengths to demonstrate conformity with everything the system demands.
This obviously doesn’t help them but they (or rather, their security guys) will certainly terminate such a show mercilessly.
alo alo!
Spot on. Never forgive. Never forget. I trust he will win his appeal. God speed to CJ and may the true fascists burn in hell.
This past week, thousands of people have been out in the streets all over Germany protesting against fascism, chanting “never again is now”. Many of these people spent the past three years, 2020 to 2023, unquestioningly obeying orders, parroting official propaganda and demonising anyone who dared to question the Government’s unconstitutional and authoritarian actions during the so-called Covid pandemic. Many of these same people, those who support Palestinian rights, are now shocked that the new form of totalitarianism they helped usher into existence is being turned against them.
https://off-guardian.org/2024/02/07/the-resistible-rise-of-the-new-normal-reich/
And here is the response from C J Hopkins to the Appeal.
What an excellent example of the perfect truth bomb dressed up as a statement. 100% spot on that. What the hell is happening in Germany though? Basically, if you challenge the system and are in any way outspoken in your dissent ( especially if you have a large audience/following ) then you get labelled as a ”right wing extremist” and are deemed ‘Public Enemy Number One’ then they go full-on ‘Gestapo’ on your arse. What with Reiner Fuellmich and Prof Bhakdi, CJ is in good company. Another example of what they define as ”right wing extremist” here. Not that they’re feeling slightly threatened or anything…
”The youth wing of Germany’s populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has hit back after a court ruled that the country’s domestic intelligence service could spy on it as a “right-wing extremist” group.
The youth organisation, known as Junge Alternative (JA), said the “absurd” ruling was yet another undemocratic attempt by the country’s political elite to destroy the AfD, which is riding high in opinion polls.
The ruling by an administrative court in Cologne comes after the domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), last year classified the JA as a”gesichert rechtsextrem”—confirmed right-wing extremist—organisation. This allows for increased surveillance of the group and its members’ activities. The ruling was in effect a rejection of an injunction by the AfD and JA, which sought to remove the classification.
The court claimed JA propagates the exclusion of “ethnic foreigners” from society, “continues to engage in massive anti-foreigner, anti-Islam and anti-Muslim agitation,” and is acting against the “principles of democracy.” The court also accuses JA of equating modern Germany with dictatorial regimes, in particular the Nazi regime and the former Communist-ruled East Germany, something JA strongly denies.
As Joachim Kuhs, Member of the European Parliament for the AfD, told The European Conservative in a recent interview:
This panic mode is reflected in the fact that the aforementioned Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) recently placed its former chief, Hans-Georg Maaßen, under observation over, among other things, his alleged proximity to individuals in the ‘right-wing extremist’ scene.”
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/german-court-brands-afd-youth-wing-certified-right-wing-extremist/
I think the most accurate description of Germany today is that it is reverting to type.
A much better description would be: It’s the wet dream state of entities like the SPLC.
A well needed article, thank you.
“I hope that you will at least have the integrity to not pretend that you actually believe I am disseminating pro-Nazi propaganda, when you know very well that is not what I am doing.”
Integrity seems to be in short supply – almost non existent – amongst those in the world with authority. It’s as if a mind virus (the real virus) has swept over the planet, but I guess it’s what some German and Russian citizens would have understood in the 1930s before being hauled away: what totalitarianism looks like up close.
Completely amazes me how Germany is INCAPABLE of learning from its past.
I rarely comment on articles, but this man’s analysis is so on-the-money that I am compelled to register my wholehearted support for his powerful words.
Further comments would be welcomed
They know Mr Hopkins is correct ….. which is why their response is so punitive.