Whatever one might think of “The Epic Tram Lady,” she was not arrested by British police for acting in an annoying and un-Lady-like fashion. She was arrested for thinking bad thoughts about London’s immigrant and non-White population. As I blogged the other day, “If any were in doubt of the true totalitarian nature of ‘Cool Britannia,’ let Epic Tram Lady stand as an example.”

Whatever one might think about David Duke—and, I’m sure, among AltRight readers, there is a spectrum of opinions—he was recently arrested in Germany for thinking bad thoughts about racial identity. And let’s not forget that the soft—and increasingly hard—totalitarians in the Western world make few distinctions regarding where exactly one stands on particular controversies within what is in their minds a monolithically evil “far Right."

Like Anders Behring Breivik with a side order of gratiutious profanity, but without the mass murder or the effete Nordic beauty and literary pretensions, Emma West, the "epic tram lady," has become an instant folk hero to many on the Right.

I do understand the appeal, in a way. Whenever anyone shows nerve, guts, and fortitude, putting himself in possible danger in order to express a deeply-held conviction, whether with words or with guns and bombs, there is something to admire. It becomes even more tempting to champion such a person if he fiercely espouses a cause that one favors, a cause that constantly gets defamed and ridiculed by smarmy elites. Immigration restrictionists and multicult-skeptics are naturally tired of the abuse, the ad hominem character assaults, the patently illiberal threats to our livelihood and freedom that continually issue forth from our supposedly "liberal" betters, who for all their talk of highfalutin talk of "tolerance" really want nothing more than to shut us up, imprison us, take away our jobs, and brand us with a scarlet "R" to cast us from polite society, into the outer darkness of perpetual sensitivity training, where there is great wailing and gnashing of teeth.

So of course it's appealing to see someone not afraid of being called a "racist," someone scrappy, unbowed, and unintimidated, as young Miss West shows herself to be during her hostile exchange with fellow London tram-goers in the now famous video circulating across the internets. Yet while I don't want to join the usual suspects in tarring and feathering this woman as some uniquely evil specimen of hateful hatred, I can't join the chorus of support for her, either.

My reason for refraining from praising West comes from a similar place as when I rebuked the Breivik-bots who hip-hip-hurrayed for his slaughter of teenage "cultural Marxists" at a youth camp in Norway this past summer. Revolt against the ruling regime must take the form of principled opposition, if it is to be worth its salt. What this woman did was not a "hate crime," or any sort of crime, but it still wasn't decent behavior. Indeed, she went off on a profane, unprovoked tirade against a bunch of people who weren't bothering her. And she did this with her child, a sweet-faced little boy, sitting on her lap and gazing with heartbreaking childish non-judgmental stoicism at his mum's brazen oafishness.

Nor, methinks, is the comparison to the legendary "epic beard man" terribly apt. The EBM was getting bullied and threatened by a drunken young lout, and he defended himself honorably, hilariously kicking the crap out of the little punk who apparently mistook him for a typically gutless White coward.

The dubiously named ETL, on the other hand, was plainly the aggressor in the tram. She was the equivalent of the Black thug on the Seattle bus in this scenario. The passengers who made retort were simply verbally defending themselves against her abuse. Of course, one can agree with Miss West's point, that this group of non-English people shouldn't ever have been allowed to settle in England, that mass immigration is out of control, that England's political elites are attempting to displace its native population with servile exotics in order to prop up their vile and corrupt power structure, that Great Britian is, as she puts it, "fuck-all"... without resorting to needless abuse of random immigrants who happen to be sitting around you on a subway train.

I'm sure that many Alt-Right readers will hold me guilty of snobbery for declining to back the not-so-epic tram lady on principle. But again, I don't object to Miss West for being an unlettered prole. Some of my best friends are unlettered proles. (Well, not really, but you see my larger rhetorical point.) Rather, I dislike the fact that she acted like a mean, bitchy tramp. Graceless behavior is hardly the staple of the working classes; we all succumb to it, on occasion. Yet we all must, and can, do better.

Canada is given short shrift by most Traditonalist and conservative writers. Yet despite the relatively small role Canada plays in the worldwide power nexus, it lends itself to interesting case studies for right-wing Western commentators should they learn to take this small but politically intriguing country seriously.

Readers of Alternative Right will undoubtedly remember the controversy surrounding Anne Coulters prospective visit and speech to Canadian university students, where she was warned beforehand about a possible arrest should she say something that contravened “Canadian Speech Laws.” Unfortunately, a public admission that such “speech laws” exist did little to spark a debate on the nature of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Nor did it provide the impetus to question and/or analyze the nature and limitations of federal and provincial authority, or even the merits of free speech itself. In fact, the average Canadian seemed hardly bothered by the notion of a speech law, although they were perhaps aghast (momentarily) to learn that the Canadian project does not include an emphasis or focus on freedom.

However, if Canadians were to look closely, or at all, at their Charter of Rights and Freedom they would discover section 2(b), which explicitly designates freedom of expression and opinion as a right for all Canadians.

However, what has consistently remains glossed over by marginal right-wing commentators in Canada is the provision in Section 1 in the Charter which states,

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

The disconcerting aspect of such a proclamation is that the vagueness of “subject to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society” exposes Canadian “citizens” to arbitrary state rulings regarding what is and is not acceptable speech. The root of the problem lies in the definition of what is “reasonable” as this is a consideration whose contextual meaning also changes depending on the overarching goal of any, but in this case Canadian, society. Should one express a truth or even an opinion that sheds light on the dubious nature of the Canadian project, or exposes any inherent contradictions in it, one is liable to have his freedom of speech restricted regardless of the veracity of ones opinion, as long as this restriction is considered “reasonable.”

In other words, Canada has lawfully inscribed limits to any freedoms in the Charter if the restrictions of these freedoms are deemed justifiable in a “free” society. Personally, I choose to read the charter in this way:

Our self-proclaimed “free society” can and will restrict your freedoms if need be in order to better facilitate our social-engineering project. Even though what makes us a free society is that our society is composed of citizens who are free, if we restrict your freedoms, we are still a free society.

This of course begs the question—how free are we really?

From The Local (Berlin),

The party wanted to pay the channel 1.5 million kronor ($201,240) to run the ad. The half-minute advert shows a race in which an elderly woman with a walker is chased by a group of burqa-clad women pushing prams with a slogan promising to safeguard pension funding at the expense of immigration.

As an alarm-like sound plays in the background, a voiceover says, "All politics are about priorities - now you have a choice."

The clip promotes the Sweden Democrats' demand that, like other parties, pensioners' taxes be cut to the same levels of wage earners. However, they claim their plans would be funded by reducing immigration.

"We decided not to broadcast it," Gunnar Gidefeldt, communications director for TV4, told AFP.

Swedish law on freedom of expression prohibits messages that contain hate grounded on race and religion, said Gidefeldt.

"In this case, it is against religion," he said.

According to party press secretary Erik Almqvist, the ad does not violate Swedish law. The party has screened the clip for lawyers, who said that it does not break the law against inciting racial hatred.

"The conflict we see as a result of mass immigration is not related to the person's origin, but rather a conflict of values, as far as we can see," said Almqvist in reference to the burqa-clad women in the video.

TV4 CEO Jan Scherman disagreed.

"The film is contrary to the democracy clause in the Radio and Television Act and also against democracy clauses which the Sweden Democrats, among others, have adopted for the equality of all people, regardless of whether it is the European Convention or the UN Charter," he said.

"The film is also against the constitution act on freedom of speech that prohibits hate speech," Scherman added.

Is it a case of "hate speech" or "hate facts"? Milton Friedman noted that one can have a welfare state or one can have mass immigration, but one can't have both. Not exactly true. One can have both, though in such a case, group conflict becomes inevitable.    

Elizabeth Wright tells it like it is:

So, even the supposedly tough-minded talk show host Laura Schlessinger dissolves like putty when confronted with the noise of disapproval coming from the multicultural mob, for her use of the proscribed "Nigger" word. But what else could we expect on the heels of the black woman who telephoned the show, to get advice about her own "racist" white husband, his relatives and friends?

We've learned that even the take-no-prisoners Dr. Laura now accepts the notion that there is ONE word in the English language that is allowed to be spoken by members of only ONE group. Can we expect her to join with those insufferable whites who delight in telling of their disdain for the taboo word, and how they refuse to use it under any circumstances? "I won't even say it in private," they proudly prattle on, waiting for the pat of approval.

Dr. Laura might as well join in the campaign already underway to abolish the word "Nigger" from the lips of all non-blacks. Perhaps she will endorse a federal law to punish any non-black caught spewing it. This could sort of be an expansion of the New York City Council's Resolution of 2007, in which the public use of the word was symbolically "banned." Of course, this ban has meant nothing to those blacks who practice no restraint in their use of the prohibited term and are primarily responsible for extending its life, by keeping the epithet fresh in the popular lexicon.

Here are whites running from the accursed expression, while blacks fill New York City's air with it, and even sanctify the word. The gay website Queerty.com had fun by mocking the Council's ridiculous Resolution. Claiming that New York City was soon to be a "Nigger-free zone," the editor asked, "If the council's all about cleaning up people's politically incorrect potty mouths, where are the bans on spic, faggot, kike, chink and all those other nasties?"

Of course, those "other nasties" are generally terms well known to be spewed forth by blacks, more often than by members of any other group.

Most countries in Europe already have "word crime" laws, as part of their pernicious "hate crime" packages. Why not bring such innovation to these shores and join the Europeans? But, what am I thinking? All assaults on blacks (by non-blacks, of course) are first investigated to learn whether or not the "Nigger" word was hurled before the blows came. Then, thanks to "hate crime" statutes, the assaulter can be subject to extra penalties for the use of the term. Ooh, what he said! Since most assaults on blacks are perpetrated by fellow blacks, I wonder if there are any pre-assault verbiage investigations when the perp has an abundance of melanin. Want to guess?

By retreating on this issue of free speech, do whites really think that the cowardice they have displayed since the 1960s needs to be revealed any further? It is white cowardice that gave us those facets of that 1964 Civil Rights Act, that went over the top by stifling the movement for self-sufficiency and taking the wind out of the economic sails of blacks, while forcing whites to pick up the slack. It is white cowardice that made possible that outrageously unconstitutional Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. And how can we even keep count of the endless Affirmative Action and Quota laws around the land, that have undone any pretense at instilling fairness in society? All gifts of white cowardice.

Does Dr. Laura and her ilk really think the world needs any further evidence that whites are willing to submit to anything, but anything, to avoid offending black "sensitivities?" We get it. You will do anything, from overturning Articles in the Constitution, to denying free speech rights even to yourselves. We get it.

It is whites who fell to their knees in the 1960s, and have never gotten up. What fear of rioting and mayhem can do! And, even when a group declares, WE can do this, but YOU cannot, the whites' response isn't "That's what you think!" but, "Yes, Master, whatever you say." Dr. Laura confirms the three- to four-decade slide into docile obedience.

Read the rest here.

In the spirit of Richard's post on Mr. Newman, the evil 74 year-old pensioner who wants to kick the crooked MPs out of his government, there is another story in the news about an innocent Brit being arrested for violating PC boundaries. The story:

Dale McAlpine was charged with causing "harassment, alarm or distress" after a homosexual police community support officer (PCSO) overheard him reciting a number of "sins" referred to in the Bible, including blasphemy, drunkenness and same sex relationships.

The 42-year-old Baptist, who has preached Christianity in Wokington, Cumbria for years, said he did not mention homosexuality while delivering a sermon from the top of a stepladder, but admitted telling a passing shopper that he believed it went against the word of God.

During the exchange, he says he quietly listed homosexuality among a number of sins referred to in 1 Corinthians, including blasphemy, fornication, adultery and drunkenness.

After the woman walked away, she was approached by a PCSO who spoke with her briefly and then walked over to Mr McAlpine and told him a complaint had been made, and that he could be arrested for using racist or homophobic language.

The street preacher said he told the PCSO: "I am not homophobic but sometimes I do say that the Bible says homosexuality is a crime against the Creator".

He claims that the PCSO then said he was homosexual and identified himself as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender liaison officer for Cumbria police. Mr McAlpine replied: "It's still a sin."

The preacher then began a 20 minute sermon, in which he says he mentioned drunkenness and adultery, but not homosexuality. Three regular uniformed police officers arrived during the address, arrested Mr McAlpine and put him in the back of a police van.

At the station, he was told to empty his pockets and his mobile telephone, belt and shoes were confiscated. Police took fingerprints, a palm print, a retina scan and a DNA swab.

He was later interviewed, charged under Sections 5 (1) and (6) of the Public Order Act and released on bail on the condition that he did not preach in public.

Mr McAlpine pleaded not guilty at a preliminary hearing on Friday at Wokingham magistrates court and is now awaiting a trial date.

The Public Order Act, which outlaws the unreasonable use of abusive language likely to cause distress, has been used to arrest religious people in a number of similar cases.

Does anyone honestly think the results of the upcoming election will make any sort of difference in regards to the treatment of these crimes?

Peter Brimelow has discussed the expansion of speech codes to cover not just "hate speech" but "hate facts" -- that is, data that is objectively true, sometimes even deriving from government sources, but which might darken the public's outlook towards multiculturalism and thus must never be mentioned. Pointing out, for instance, that in America, blacks commit roughly 85 percent of interracial crime, which the New Century Foundation documented not too long ago, is certainly not allowed at the New York Times and would probably get most undergrads suspended.

"Hate facts" can be visual, too, as in you're not allowed to believe your lying eyes.

In Sweden, the press is regularly suppressing and altering pixelated crime photos in which the race of the alleged perpetrator is still discernible. Blurry images of brown and black faces are being digitally bleached in order to make criminals seem less African and Arab.    

The European blogger Cordelia For Lear writes,

The left who constantly claims race doesn't matter, doesn't seem to be consistent with their claims when they deliberately blur (pixel) the non-whites photos in the press whilst adding the photoshop effect of bleaching the skin, giving the reader the impression that the alleged Swedish criminal trully is a Swedish man, white male. The opposite of course occours whenever there's white Swedish men who has committed a crime. Then the individual will be overly exposed, name, real, uncensored photoes and it will be written about for days.

Why stop at making pixilated images of black and brown people seem white? Most people can guess a criminal's race by hearing the neighborhood in which the crime occurred. Why doesn't the Swedish press simply take the next logical step and start falsely reporting on a white-on-Arab crime wave sweeping Scandinavia.

Perhaps I shouldn't give them any ideas...

"... to wear an improper expression on your face ... was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called."

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Like many other public organizations in Britain, Rotherham Borough Council approves the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report's definition of a racist incident:

A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.

The Council urges staff to report such incidents, which, according to them, include not only physical assaults and verbal abuse but also "looks" and "offensive body language." Evidently, if you work for Rotherham Borough, your inadvertent facial expressions or body postures may be enough to get you fired, provided that somebody or other perceives them as racist.

Another public body operating a strict policy on facecrime is The Crown Prosecution Service, the government department responsible for prosecuting criminal cases across England and Wales, employing around 9,000 people. The CPS web page Dignity at Work includes "facial expressions" in its "[e]xamples of harassment on the grounds of ethnicity," for which employees can be disciplined or dismissed.

If by now you are glancing nervously in the mirror for telltale signs of supremacist bigotry, let me assure you that these notions are backed up by rigorous scientific research. In a study entitled "The Subtle Transmission of Race Bias via Televised Nonverbal Behavior," psychologists at Tufts University in Massachusetts looked at facial and bodily interactions between black and white characters on TV soaps and concluded, "nonverbal race bias is a typical pattern on scripted television shows." Needless to say, they considered only white actors' behaviours. And regrettably, they offered little or no evidence of the generalizability of their findings to real-life social situations.

The prevailing academic culture at Tufts, as at most all U.S. universities, is one of heaping ignominy on majority Americans whenever possible. But it goes without saying that the researchers of "Nonverbal Behavior," being entirely objective and politically neutral, would in no way have been influenced by Tufts' rampant, all-pervasive political correctness.

Under "hate speech" legislation currently in force in many European countries, and in Canada, a person can be arrested and locked up just for saying the wrong thing. How long will it be, I wonder, before "facecrime" and "bodycrime" laws are widely enacted, enabling Western governments to further browbeat their citizens by the legal enforcement of "positive," "inclusive" physical expressions and postures in inter-racial interactions?

I find myself ambivalent about an issue that perhaps should concern me more than it does. The FOX-news contributor and Republican controversialist Ann Coulter was kept from speaking at the University of Ottawa by protesting leftist students. She had been warned before her trip by the university's provost, Francois Houle, that "freedom of speech is defined differently in Canada from the way it is in your country." Houle was referring to the fact that Canada and especially the province of Ontario, where Coulter would be speaking, has a complicated speech and publication code criminalizing politically incorrect language. 

Richard Spencer seems as smitten with the tall blonde lady as was the late Sam Francis. I'm afraid I can't second their affections.

Whatever you want to say about Ann Coulter, I like her -- partly because she's funny but mostly because I've always sensed that she's more "one of us" than just about any other mainstream political commentator out there besides Pat Buchanan. I guess I agree with her campus detractors in that way.

Well, Ann was invited by some students at the University of Ottawa to speak on their campus and, as reported by Canada.com, before she embarked on her journey to the Great North, she received an email from the University vice-president and provost, Francois Houle, "warning her that freedom of speech is defined differently in Canada than in the U.S. and that she should take care not to step over the line." When she arrived, Leftist protestors made sure she never got the opportunity to violate any speech codes by protesting wildly and getting her appearance cancelled by the campus police.