British man sentenced to 2 years in prison for posting stickers online

[Dan Druff]

Do you think free speech exists in the western world?

If you think that, you'd be wrong. The US is the only western country with true freedom of speech -- but that is quickly eroding, as well.

Samuel Melia is not a good guy. He's a white supremacist, admires Hitler, and holds antisemitic views. He's not someone I'd want as a friend, and I find a lot of his opinions to be extreme and vile.

But do I think he should be in prison? No. Simply holding extreme viewpoints should never be a reason to be imprisoned. Yet that's exactly what happened. Samuel Melia was sentenced to 2 years in prison in England, simply for posting "printable stickers" online with white supremacist slogans.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867


Melia posted various images on a Telegram group, meant to be printed as stickers and posted around the UK. Some members of the group did exactly that:






Melia was NOT charged with defacing any property with the stickers. He was simply charged with crimes related to creating the stickers and sharing them with others online.

He is required to serve a minimum of one full year behind bars, before possibly qualifying for the British version of parole.



Just in case you think the UK only arrests neo-Nazis for speech-related violations, recall that in 2019, a 38-year-old woman was arrested for referring to a trans woman as a man during an argument on Twitter.

There have been many other speech-related arrests in the UK.

Even Canada does not have true freedom of speech, which has allowed provinces like Quebec and Ontario to pass their own restrictive speech laws.

Most Democrats today would like to see people arrested and prosecuted for "hate speech".

The western world is slowly descending into fascism, where you are required to parrot the "acceptable" viewpoints, or else.

[limitles]

Do you think free speech exists in the western world?

If you think that, you'd be wrong. The US is the only western country with true freedom of speech -- but that is quickly eroding, as well.

Samuel Melia is not a good guy. He's a white supremacist, admires Hitler, and holds antisemitic views. He's not someone I'd want as a friend, and I find a lot of his opinions to be extreme and vile.

But do I think he should be in prison? No. Simply holding extreme viewpoints should never be a reason to be imprisoned. Yet that's exactly what happened. Samuel Melia was sentenced to 2 years in prison in England, simply for posting "printable stickers" online with white supremacist slogans.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867


Melia posted various images on a Telegram group, meant to be printed as stickers and posted around the UK. Some members of the group did exactly that:

Melia was NOT charged with defacing any property with the stickers. He was simply charged with crimes related to creating the stickers and sharing them with others online.

He is required to serve a minimum of one full year behind bars, before possibly qualifying for the British version of parole.



Just in case you think the UK only arrests neo-Nazis for speech-related violations, recall that in 2019, a 38-year-old woman was arrested for referring to a trans woman as a man during an argument on Twitter.

There have been many other speech-related arrests in the UK.

Even Canada does not have true freedom of speech, which has allowed provinces like Quebec and Ontario to pass their own restrictive speech laws.

Most Democrats today would like to see people arrested and prosecuted for "hate speech".

The western world is slowly descending into fascism, where you are required to parrot the "acceptable" viewpoints, or else.

No. The laws in place are to prevent people from spreading hatred. Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Spain quickly took control of the press of the day in move number one or two.

There must be a basis in fact for any message that is broadcast. Broadcasting anything without journalistic standards is very dangerous. There are ways of doing this blah, blah, blah but it's a verification process, Nowadays anyone with a dent in their skull can reach a multitude of people with no such verification process.

This law was not made for this man in particular but I hope you see the merit in it.

I don't know this for a fact but I'll bet twenty bucks this guy has received several warnings and has not complied.

The basic idea behind this and the penalties is you are potentially misinforming the general public. This guy can have meetings every-night spouting his hate/lies.
You can't do that on the biggest platform man has known. At least some countries realize
he has no proof that he can provide so hate is all he is spreading.

[limitles]

Americans cannot shut up about free speech. They actually believe they thought it all up and are better for.
Free speech is certainly comparable to publications run by dictatorships but no where does is say you can publish lies to the general public. Broadcasters began and still hold by regulations regarding broadcasting.

At lot of those regulations are no more in the U.S. Read up on it, it wasn't long ago and guess who was behind relaxing journalistic standards. The people who saw the dollar sign owning networks. The news and editorials
became blurred.

You're not as free as you think. Yell out what you want all day and then try that in a private place of business.
It's not total freedom.

[Orko]

There's way worse cases. The UK is a legit tyranny.
Russia vs UK

[BetCheckBet]

I’ve always agreed free speech laws are important and admit usa has some of the best ones. Having horrible views should not be a crime. That being said I haven’t researched either of these cases. I’ve never been really comfortable with “hate crimes” because they are applied very unfairly and often for minor things like graffiti.

All that being said most Americans are hypocrites around this. Just look at how many support criminalizing burning the flag? They love free speech until in infringes on their own beliefs.

[Jayjami]

There's way worse cases. The UK is a legit tyranny.
Russia vs UK

You’re absolutely right about that one. In Russia, speaking your mind will get you killed!

[Dan Druff]

I’ve always agreed free speech laws are important and admit usa has some of the best ones. Having horrible views should not be a crime. That being said I haven’t researched either of these cases. I’ve never been really comfortable with “hate crimes” because they are applied very unfairly and often for minor things like graffiti.

All that being said most Americans are hypocrites around this. Just look at how many support criminalizing burning the flag? They love free speech until in infringes on their own beliefs.

Graffiti isn't the issue, when it comes to hate speech.

It's that "hate speech" cannot be well defined for legal standards, and can mean anything the government in power wants it to mean. Some felt saying that COVID came from a Chinese lab was hate speech. Some felt -- and still feel -- that opposition to modern gender ideology is hate speech. Some feel that pointing out the high violent crime statistics regarding black males is hate speech.

Hate speech is one of those things which sounds noble to fight, but once you think about it, the whole concept is actually a tool to thwart the expression of opposing viewpoints.

The flag burning thing is a much older debate, which goes back to before I was born. That one is a bit tougher, because it's not a form of ideological speech, but rather a symbolic action in direct opposition to the country. You can still preserve everyone's right to protest the government and speak out against it, while outlawing flag burning or defacing. I have mixed feelings about the right to flag burning. However, I have always been extremely against any kind of ideological censorship.

Today's left feels that they are smarter than the generations which came before us. They believe that "free speech except for hate speech and misinformation" is the way to go. They fail to understand that so-called "hate speech" and "misinformation" are side effects and in fact features of free speech, specifically to allow for the public challenging of the status quo. Some of that type of speech truly will be of no value, dishonest, and/or hateful, but some of it will also be useful and necessary to challenge the dominant (and often incorrect) viewpoints of the day. The last thing one should ever support should be the government deciding what you're allowed to say and not say. That's exactly how fascist societies rise.

Free speech is the antidote to fascism. In a free speech society, fascism cannot rise. The first step toward fascist rule involves the removal of free speech to "protect" the citizens.

We've seen such efforts over the last decade, and it only seems to be getting worse. When I oppose it, leftists scream, "Oh, so you want a society where people can just spout misinformation and hateful commentary, with no consequence?"

And my answer to that is...

[limitles]

I’ve always agreed free speech laws are important and admit usa has some of the best ones. Having horrible views should not be a crime. That being said I haven’t researched either of these cases. I’ve never been really comfortable with “hate crimes” because they are applied very unfairly and often for minor things like graffiti.

All that being said most Americans are hypocrites around this. Just look at how many support criminalizing burning the flag? They love free speech until in infringes on their own beliefs.

Graffiti isn't the issue, when it comes to hate speech.

It's that "hate speech" cannot be well defined for legal standards, and can mean anything the government in power wants it to mean. Some felt saying that COVID came from a Chinese lab was hate speech. Some felt -- and still feel -- that opposition to modern gender ideology is hate speech. Some feel that pointing out the high violent crime statistics regarding black males is hate speech.

Hate speech is one of those things which sounds noble to fight, but once you think about it, the whole concept is actually a tool to thwart the expression of opposing viewpoints.

The flag burning thing is a much older debate, which goes back to before I was born. That one is a bit tougher, because it's not a form of ideological speech, but rather a symbolic action in direct opposition to the country. You can still preserve everyone's right to protest the government and speak out against it, while outlawing flag burning or defacing. I have mixed feelings about the right to flag burning. However, I have always been extremely against any kind of ideological censorship.

Today's left feels that they are smarter than the generations which came before us. They believe that "free speech except for hate speech and misinformation" is the way to go. They fail to understand that so-called "hate speech" and "misinformation" are side effects and in fact features of free speech, specifically to allow for the public challenging of the status quo. Some of that type of speech truly will be of no value, dishonest, and/or hateful, but some of it will also be useful and necessary to challenge the dominant (and often incorrect) viewpoints of the day. The last thing one should ever support should be the government deciding what you're allowed to say and not say. That's exactly how fascist societies rise.

Free speech is the antidote to fascism. In a free speech society, fascism cannot rise. The first step toward fascist rule involves the removal of free speech to "protect" the citizens.

We've seen such efforts over the last decade, and it only seems to be getting worse. When I oppose it, leftists scream, "Oh, so you want a society where people can just spout misinformation and hateful commentary, with no consequence?"

And my answer to that is...

Coming from a Jew this is somewhat unbelievable. Hate speech can and has been identified extensively.
The issue is the targeting of certain groups of people for the woes perceived by the author.

Stickers might get a small fine, stating on those stickers that particular groups of people are the cause of problems within a society is not true and potentially puts them in harms way

You know nothing of Fascism. One of the first efforts of a fascist group is to denounce as false, information gained from a myriad of processes. The original tactic was to physically restrict these sources of information

[Dan Druff]

Why is it unbelievable coming from a Jew?

If I support imprisoning those who say hateful things about the Jews, then I also have to support imprisoning those who said COVID came from a Wuhan lab, or those who say men can't be women.

After all, these are all regarded as "hate speech" by the left.

Therein lies the problem.

I actually have mixed feelings regarding the cancellation of certain pro-Hamas fanatics, where their identity was tracked down, workplace contacted, and usually fired from their jobs.

I don't feel that should be happening if someone is simply expressing their viewpoint, even if it's one I find offensive and strongly disagree with.

If it's someone preventing others' right to speech (like those tearing down the posters/flyers of missing Israeli children), that's a different story, because then it becomes a matter of exposing vandalism and speech suppression, and not just opposition speech you don't like.

If it's someone in an important public-facing position, such as a doctor, nurse, or a teacher, again I understand reporting to their workplace. You don't want people in these positions who have extreme hatred for certain demographics to whom they are going to be in charge of delivering important services. For example, I would feel very uncomfortable with a surgeon operating on me who openly hates Jews. But does it matter a whole lot if a back office worker somewhere hates Jews? Not really, and getting these people fired becomes a matter of thought policing.

[limitles]

Why is it unbelievable coming from a Jew?

If I support imprisoning those who say hateful things about the Jews, then I also have to support imprisoning those who said COVID came from a Wuhan lab, or those who say men can't be women.

After all, these are all regarded as "hate speech" by the left.

Therein lies the problem.

I actually have mixed feelings regarding the cancellation of certain pro-Hamas fanatics, where their identity was tracked down, workplace contacted, and usually fired from their jobs.

I don't feel that should be happening if someone is simply expressing their viewpoint, even if it's one I find offensive and strongly disagree with.

If it's someone preventing others' right to speech (like those tearing down the posters/flyers of missing Israeli children), that's a different story, because then it becomes a matter of exposing vandalism and speech suppression, and not just opposition speech you don't like.

If it's someone in an important public-facing position, such as a doctor, nurse, or a teacher, again I understand reporting to their workplace. You don't want people in these positions who have extreme hatred for certain demographics to whom they are going to be in charge of delivering important services. For example, I would feel very uncomfortable with a surgeon operating on me who openly hates Jews. But does it matter a whole lot if a back office worker somewhere hates Jews? Not really, and getting these people fired becomes a matter of thought policing.

The Jewish people of the 1940s were not just labeled as the problem they paid for it with they're lives

[Cerveza Fria]

Why is it unbelievable coming from a Jew?

If I support imprisoning those who say hateful things about the Jews, then I also have to support imprisoning those who said COVID came from a Wuhan lab, or those who say men can't be women.

After all, these are all regarded as "hate speech" by the left.

Therein lies the problem.

I actually have mixed feelings regarding the cancellation of certain pro-Hamas fanatics, where their identity was tracked down, workplace contacted, and usually fired from their jobs.

I don't feel that should be happening if someone is simply expressing their viewpoint, even if it's one I find offensive and strongly disagree with.

If it's someone preventing others' right to speech (like those tearing down the posters/flyers of missing Israeli children), that's a different story, because then it becomes a matter of exposing vandalism and speech suppression, and not just opposition speech you don't like.

If it's someone in an important public-facing position, such as a doctor, nurse, or a teacher, again I understand reporting to their workplace. You don't want people in these positions who have extreme hatred for certain demographics to whom they are going to be in charge of delivering important services. For example, I would feel very uncomfortable with a surgeon operating on me who openly hates Jews. But does it matter a whole lot if a back office worker somewhere hates Jews? Not really, and getting these people fired becomes a matter of thought policing.

It is not politically correct to say Men can't become women. It's not politically correct to call them "Shemales" or "Chicks with Dicks". The proper term is "Men who talk to much".

[BCR]

I’ve always agreed free speech laws are important and admit usa has some of the best ones. Having horrible views should not be a crime. That being said I haven’t researched either of these cases. I’ve never been really comfortable with “hate crimes” because they are applied very unfairly and often for minor things like graffiti.

All that being said most Americans are hypocrites around this. Just look at how many support criminalizing burning the flag? They love free speech until in infringes on their own beliefs.

Graffiti isn't the issue, when it comes to hate speech.

It's that "hate speech" cannot be well defined for legal standards, and can mean anything the government in power wants it to mean. Some felt saying that COVID came from a Chinese lab was hate speech. Some felt -- and still feel -- that opposition to modern gender ideology is hate speech. Some feel that pointing out the high violent crime statistics regarding black males is hate speech.

Hate speech is one of those things which sounds noble to fight, but once you think about it, the whole concept is actually a tool to thwart the expression of opposing viewpoints.

The flag burning thing is a much older debate, which goes back to before I was born. That one is a bit tougher, because it's not a form of ideological speech, but rather a symbolic action in direct opposition to the country. You can still preserve everyone's right to protest the government and speak out against it, while outlawing flag burning or defacing. I have mixed feelings about the right to flag burning. However, I have always been extremely against any kind of ideological censorship.

Today's left feels that they are smarter than the generations which came before us. They believe that "free speech except for hate speech and misinformation" is the way to go. They fail to understand that so-called "hate speech" and "misinformation" are side effects and in fact features of free speech, specifically to allow for the public challenging of the status quo. Some of that type of speech truly will be of no value, dishonest, and/or hateful, but some of it will also be useful and necessary to challenge the dominant (and often incorrect) viewpoints of the day. The last thing one should ever support should be the government deciding what you're allowed to say and not say. That's exactly how fascist societies rise.

Free speech is the antidote to fascism. In a free speech society, fascism cannot rise. The first step toward fascist rule involves the removal of free speech to "protect" the citizens.

We've seen such efforts over the last decade, and it only seems to be getting worse. When I oppose it, leftists scream, "Oh, so you want a society where people can just spout misinformation and hateful commentary, with no consequence?"

And my answer to that is...

That seems really short-sighted. Our founders lived almost 300 years ago.

I agree with you on those posters assuming those were the only posters.

What about AI? It’s being increasingly used and it’s amazingly persuasive. People are sheep already.

I’m not talking only about Trump sending out AI images of him hugging on black people that are being proliferated, but what about the constant manufactured images of Jews killing Palestinians. That is being used with great success in swaying opinion of young people.

What about AI videos showing people healed by a certain product of some terrible malady that is going to easily fool our elderly population.

They fall for obvious scams already, let alone one where their eyes are lying to them.

I mean you’re allowed to yell fire in a theater if there is an actual fire.

You’re allowed to yell bomb in an airport if someone has a bomb strapped to them.

You’re going to jail for incitement otherwise.

Whether it’s for political purposes or to scam people, fraud is fraud.

For someone who values law and order, you’re now defending chaos and lawlessness and fraud.

It’s fine to have a contrary opinion and you should have the right to it. It’s fine to hate on a group of people. We’ve always had that right. But it’s always been based on words and posters of words.

What happens when the young people take over and proliferate fake images and videos constantly of Jews beheading children? Of white people killing black people? Of someone they view as an opponent molesting some kid?

That’s not science fiction. They could probably do it now. Some expert can probably tell it’s fake atm, but they won’t always.

I mean they are better at technology than we are. Free speech was based on speech. Words.

Protections put in place to protect consumers like truth in advertising isn’t broad enough to cover the rampant fraud. Those laws are hardly used now. You see a thousand fraudulent products advertised every day. What about when AI is cheap?

If you don’t have some baseline standards of requiring something to be reality based, you’re fucked.


And I get your issue with it. Right now, we’d have a bunch of people in power who would say it’s untruthful to state two parent homes are better for kids, that trans kids kill themselves at a much higher rate, or that black people kill more people than white people. All those things are obvious facts, yet they would find it hate speech.

We are truly fucked though if we don’t get it under control.

Right now we have a war among two cults. The MAGA cult and the far left cult. Both are incredibly damaging .

One is widely disseminating disinformation that is harmful to actual people. Will get them killed. Everything is fake.

The other is telling parents to make a choice between allowing their children to mutilate themselves and change genders or they will kill themselves, even though the suicide risk is much higher if they mutilate themselves.

If something sane in the middle that ignores political affiliation and is based on fact and reality based doesn’t emerge, we are leaving your son a hell of world with warring fucked up cults where both sides are shit.

In five years I’ve watched functioning adults go from Covid is fake, to the world is flat and a million other lunatic conspiracy theories being the consensus. I can’t believe what I hear now being discuses among adults who should know better. Your side is majority doomsday Christians conditioned to believe nonsense their entire lives.

I’ve watched it become politically incorrect to say fuck no, don’t let your 12 year old make a permanent decision that mutilates them because they are convinced they are a girl this month. You have an emerging cult who blames the worlds ills on white people and boomers.


I am all for protecting the loon who wants to argue Covid or AIDS aid is fake and make their argument. I’m all for protecting their shitty papers.

The same for some psychiatrist who wants to argue all of a sudden we have a bazillion kids born the wrong gender.

We have a long history of experts willing to sell their soul for a $. Every wealthy defendant has a doctor or forensic expert trying to explain why their blood is all over a crime scene has some other explanation.

Nonsense was easily sniffed out in a world before the internet.

We are moving beyond that though with AI.

Young people always are better at emerging tech. They are too dumb to even know what boomer means, but they know they hate them if they are white.

Wanting to die on the free speech hill rather than a reality based society means you are committed to joining one nonsense based cult over another. It becomes lord of the flies for anyone with common sense.

[NickyPipes]

They should have given him the death penalty

It’s unacceptable to post inappropriate stickers

[1marley1]

There's way worse cases. The UK is a legit tyranny.
Russia vs UK

[ftpjesus]

Do you think free speech exists in the western world?

If you think that, you'd be wrong. The US is the only western country with true freedom of speech -- but that is quickly eroding, as well.

Samuel Melia is not a good guy. He's a white supremacist, admires Hitler, and holds antisemitic views. He's not someone I'd want as a friend, and I find a lot of his opinions to be extreme and vile.

But do I think he should be in prison? No. Simply holding extreme viewpoints should never be a reason to be imprisoned. Yet that's exactly what happened. Samuel Melia was sentenced to 2 years in prison in England, simply for posting "printable stickers" online with white supremacist slogans.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867


Melia posted various images on a Telegram group, meant to be printed as stickers and posted around the UK. Some members of the group did exactly that:

Melia was NOT charged with defacing any property with the stickers. He was simply charged with crimes related to creating the stickers and sharing them with others online.

He is required to serve a minimum of one full year behind bars, before possibly qualifying for the British version of parole.



Just in case you think the UK only arrests neo-Nazis for speech-related violations, recall that in 2019, a 38-year-old woman was arrested for referring to a trans woman as a man during an argument on Twitter.

There have been many other speech-related arrests in the UK.

Even Canada does not have true freedom of speech, which has allowed provinces like Quebec and Ontario to pass their own restrictive speech laws.

Most Democrats today would like to see people arrested and prosecuted for "hate speech".

The western world is slowly descending into fascism, where you are required to parrot the "acceptable" viewpoints, or else.

No. The laws in place are to prevent people from spreading hatred. Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Spain quickly took control of the press of the day in move number one or two.

There must be a basis in fact for any message that is broadcast. Broadcasting anything without journalistic standards is very dangerous. There are ways of doing this blah, blah, blah but it's a verification process, Nowadays anyone with a dent in their skull can reach a multitude of people with no such verification process.

This law was not made for this man in particular but I hope you see the merit in it.

I don't know this for a fact but I'll bet twenty bucks this guy has received several warnings and has not complied.

The basic idea behind this and the penalties is you are potentially misinforming the general public. This guy can have meetings every-night spouting his hate/lies.
You can't do that on the biggest platform man has known. At least some countries realize
he has no proof that he can provide so hate is all he is spreading.

Just to correct your historical comparisons. Mussolini was the leader of Italy, and Franco was the leader in Spain (after the Spanish Civil War ended just prior to WWII) and ironic Franco survived all that BS until the mid 1973 ruling Spain as a borderline Fascist country.