First minister calls for end to vexatious reports after far-right agitators attempt to ‘overwhelm’ official systems
Neo-Nazi and far-right agitators are exploiting Scotland’s new hate crime law to make vexatious complaints en masse in an attempt to “overwhelm” police systems.
A prominent figure in England’s white nationalist movement is among those urging followers to spam Police Scotland with anonymous online reports, the *Observer *has found.
The leader of a far-right group – one of several fringe organisations being assessed by the UK government under its new extremism definition – promoted a private channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram that includes a “call to action” urging members to “mass report”.
Posts in the channel instruct members to log cases of supposed “anti-white” hate, which they say includes a statement on the police force’s website that “young men aged 18-30 are most likely to commit hate crime”.
There’s plenty of anti-police neo-nazis. Good luck trying to make sense of their ideological reasoning, but they exist nonetheless. This would also be advantageous for sympathetic police too. Gives them a reason to say “see, this tip line is bullshit. We don’t need to pay any mind to it”.
If they’re persistent enough the tip line may be shut down. We’ve seen it in the US with anti-trans snitching pages started by a few states. Progressives of various stripes flood these pages with bunk information to the point of breaking the site for a long enough time and the state caves, taking the page down. It’s a common and effective tactic, no wonder the fascists are using it too. Tactics aren’t sacred or necessarily specific to a given ideology. If it works for the left it may very well work for the right too
Excuse me, what the fuck??