Met Police tell Jewish woman swastikas ‘might not’ be antisemitic (Metro news)
Fury as Met Police tell Jewish woman swastikas ‘might not’ be antisemitic
by Dude_Nightwing1212
Met Police tell Jewish woman swastikas ‘might not’ be antisemitic (Metro news)
Fury as Met Police tell Jewish woman swastikas ‘might not’ be antisemitic
by Dude_Nightwing1212
18 comments
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Met police are.. right. The context is important.
Usually it will be intended that way, but the symbol wasn’t aways and won’t always be nazi related.
Not sure I disagree. The officer said displaying a swastika isn’t an instantly arrestable offence and needs to be investigated, and that seems sensible.
Well they may have been drawing windows and run out of ink, did you ever think of that?
Typical two tier policing by the met police, so scared to be called Islamophobic that they won’t arrest people be blatantly nazi supporters. If the people waving the flag were your typical football hooligans I’m sure we would see the usual body armour and truncheons out in force…
So the headline is one quote from a 10 minute conversation, during which the officer identified an arrest had already been made and was happy to pursue other agitators with her assistance
>she then unfortunately left.
Really, what more could the cops do?
So… it’s complicated.
In the UK, displaying a swastika is not a crime. In Germany, displaying it is a crime, although fairly recently, allowance was made for displaying it in a defaced form where the context makes it clear that the person displaying the defaced symbol is mocking or otherwise denigrating fascism. However, we are not in Germany.
It is popularly believed that the Buddhist symbol has the limbs bent anticlockwise; and that the Nazi symbol has the limbs of the symbol bent clockwise. However, it is more complicated than that. Both versions have ancient roots across the entire Indo-European region.
That said, yeah, the usage in that march was obvious fascist nonsense, and that copper needs to give his head a wobble.
Technically correct, although in the circumstance described it’s highly likely, and as such one would hope it’s investigated.
I wish all of this foreign war shit would fuck off tbh. I don’t give a shit. My country, the one we’re in right now, has enough to deal with. If you’re upset about what’s going on over there, go join the various military groups and leave the rest of us in peace. We used to boot out religious nutjobs. Now we have to fucking tolerate it in the name of being progressive. Despite both religions being stuck in the fucking dark ages.
Of course displaying a swastika isn’t always anti-semitic or even a crime, it obviously depends on the context. I’m glad the police officer was confident enough to explain this incredibly simple concept to a member of the public (despite their ignorance and the backlash stating basic reality may have).
The clip seems to be people talking at cross purposes.
Yes, it is a plain fact that Swastikas are a Nazi symbol and generally speaking are antisemitc. And it is likely that it was being presented that way.
What the officer is being prevented from doing is explaining that to be guilty of an offence there are 3 elements that have to be made out;
1. The Offensive sign or gesture or words
2. In a Public Space
3. People present likely to be alarmed, harassed or distressed.
So when my wife’s friend marched out with a Nazi armband infront of 600 people she was not committing a Public Order offence because it was as an actor in a play that was very specifically anti-Nazi, so part 3 does not exist. So yes, there are contexts where a Swastika does not amount to a public order offence.
If a Police Officer arrested someone for having a Swastika and they rocked up to court and failed to establish that it was in a public place and there were people likely to be alarmed, harassed or distressed, then the offence is not made out and the person goes free.
What the officer cannot and should not do is promise to arrest someone on the basis of a sign he hasn’t seen. He needs to make sure there is enough evidence to back a reasonable suspicion of an offence requiring an arrest. If he promises an arrest and then arrives to find someone standing on a street corner holding my 1920 copy of The Jungle Book (which is a beautiful leather bound book engraved with Swastikas and Elephants), he can’t really arrest them can he?
Everyone in these comments tripping over themselves to *akshually* about it being a religious symbol, or not against the law to display the Nazi symbol is fucking embarrassing.
The context is that the symbol was being paraded a pro-Palestine march. It’s reasonable to assume it wasn’t a Hindu trying to incite good vibes.
Remember when the Met arrested someone for holding a “Hamas are terrorists” sign?
A swastika at a Palestine protest? Yeah that is anti semitic, who on earth is defending this
it’s very easy to tell the difference between the Hindu swastika and the one used by the Nazis there both very different.
Since the context is that a swastika is being displayed at a pro-hamas/anti-israel march then they should be making immediate arrests.
Hindu temple, Finnish air force, old beer bottle, anti-nazi symbols, Upminster Bridge station…
I don’t think that a poster with a swastika is inherently antisemitic. It really does depend on the context.
I am, however, suspicious of the intense desire to equate Israel with Nazi Germany. Israel has broken international law on multiple occasions, and we should condemn that. Israel has demonstrated a lack of concern about civilian casualties in Gaza, and that’s also abhorrent. But to equate Israel to Nazi Germany belies a staggering ignorance of the horrors of the holocaust. Both are bad, but they are simply not equivalent. It’s not even close.
I’m kinda perplexed that anybody could equate the two with a straight face. Surely only an utter moron would think that they’re remotely comparable. Perhaps naively, I don’t believe that these people are actually that stupid. I think they’re just pretending to be ignorant in order to make an edgy point.