That took him a while.

I insulted you because you invited me to and I found it so hard to resist, but actually, I just said

OK, you’re a right winger who spends his time online defending racist liars who post inflammatory lies stirring up hatred and violence in my country and you won’t listen to reason and literally deny logic.

Which was all very factual. So no, you’re not claiming it isn’t true because I kept it so factual, I didn’t feel you needed any more insulting than the straight up facts about our conversation. But then I afterwards went for an insult for which the evidence wouldn’t stand up in court for here:

And I think I know why you’re spending the best part of a week online defending racist liars.

And here you go again with the invitation:

But yes go ahead and insult me, there’s not point in me denying it

(Because it’s true, of course), and because you find it so hard to follow really, really simple, millennia-old logic like “A is true. If A is true B is true. Hence B is true”, I’ll spell the conclusion out for you: you support racist liars online because you yourself are a racist liar.

You missed this bit:

you’re a right winger who spends his time online defending racist liars who post inflammatory lies stirring up hatred and violence in my country

And I think I know why you’re spending the best part of a week online defending racist liars.

But sure, just insult me instead

OK, you’re a right winger who spends his time online defending racist liars who post inflammatory lies stirring up hatred and violence in my country and you won’t listen to reason and literally deny logic.

Sigh. Iceblade, we’ve been over this, two days ago. You came up with excuses then and you’ll come up with excuses now. I attributed it initially to naivety, but I realise now it’s actually determination. It’s clear to me that you will strive to find any reason you can think of to defend this racist liar and her violence-suggesting tweet.

I see where you stand and I think I know why, and I can see I won’t ever convince you she did wrong. I give up.

You’re not prepared to change your mind, you’d rather contradict literally thousands of years of logical thinking. 2+2=3. Got it. I really really wasted my time talking to you.

I disagree with you. On almost every point. And your example includes no reference to violence. Don’t propose violence online, folks, you can go to jail. And I’m not sorry if you do.

No she wasn’t. She already unequivocally stated A.

My friend has a UK driver’s licence.

If she has a UK driver’s licence, she must be at least 17.

Now, can you honestly claim I’m sceptical about whether she has a driver’s licence or whether she’s over 16?

Please Google modus ponens before coming back again. She even used it in the classical form.

Their credibility and factual reporting metrics are off wry British newspapers in my experience. The bias seems not as far off on British papers if you take an American “centrist” point of view, but firstly, no, the bot isn’t up front about that perspective in its posts at all, and it’s not really up front about that perspective unless you count two or three clicks deep from one or other of the words in the footer. Secondly, the American Overton window is very far to the right on any international scale and the democratic party is pretty centrist or centre right by European standards. To be undecided between the batshit crazy loony alt right “alternative facts” authoritarian compulsive liar Trump and the Democrats isn’t a good basis for establishing the credibility of your bot or your website.

They criticise British newspapers for reporting the results of a survey about private renters’ opinions, on the basis that the survey should have compared their views with those in different housing situations and hence wasn’t factual, and then on their website they have news stories whose headlines baldly just say that Trump said a thing, and the thing, as usual, isn’t even close to true.

No, I don’t buy their credibility ratings, their factual reporting ratings and I have no reason to suppose that their bias ratings are correct for American sources partly because a bunch of people keep saying that it’s absurd that they claim that some source is left of centre, and most of the things it says about things I know about are incorrect and pretty much wholly in line with what a British Conservative would say.

I’m talking about what her tweet said and why it’s a crime in the UK. What did you think we were talking about?

Read the tweet. The logic goes A. If A then B. You’re struggling with deducing B from that? You’re forgetting that the rioters targeted asylum lawyers and hotels where asylum seekers are held. Where did the idea of last week’s violence against asylum seekers come from? It came from her tweet.

I don’t care what she says about what someone said in Southport. She was the one who posted the made up name for the child killer. She was the one who posted the made up claim about the killer being an asylum seeker, and she was the one who posted the made up conclusion of violence.

Her tweet itself is the incitement to violence. She’s the one who made the announcement online. That there is the crime.

Don’t do it, boys and girls. Don’t encourage people to violence on the Internet. It’s illegal in the UK. Your racist lies and support for violence aren’t welcome in Great Britain and we’ll very happily see you behind bars along with the far right nut jobs who heed your dog whistle. If this scares any of you personally, good. Not sorry. Don’t post support for violence on social media.

You have speculations but I have to provide external evidence? Weird disparity of expectations between you and people who disagree with you on social media.

First you blamed the politicians for scapegoating her, and when I pointed out that this was the police not the politicians and challenged you on that point, suddenly I was making a straw man argument? Unless you go back and edit what you wrote, everyone can see that you did make that claim. Now it’s the police who are at fault for the kids being killed and the riots happening? You’re sick.

You keep making out that if I don’t have a dossier of evidence about her planning the riots that somehow that makes her innocent and you keep making these BS naive interpretations of her malicious lying racist riot-inducing tweet. OK Mr Evidence, where did the idea of the killer being an asylum seeker and that violence rightly would result come from? Because the police traced those ideas back to her and she doesn’t have a plausible source, and crucially, she was the one who made the riot-inducing announcement online. That’s the offence she’s charged with. The evidence is the tweet itself. That’s the crime right there.

It’s so implausible that the far right rioters targetting asylum lawyers and hotels where asylum seekers are kept is a result of anything other than the idea that she planted on the Internet.

You’re denying modus ponens, one of the most basic logical deductions, known for millenia, when you deliberately misinterpret her tweet as innocent and the question I have to ask is why the **** you’re supporting her and acting like her defence lawyer?

Don’t write your race hate on the internet and don’t invent a lie about child murders and call for violence. If the far right nut jobs heed your call, the police will correctly come for you.

Thankfully, I don’t live in a fucked up country where the legal apparatus can chase me down for other people misinterpreting my words.

I’m slightly alarmed but not really super surprised to find that you responded to this as if it were a personal attack against you rather than against her.

Just using my freedom of expression to share my concerns on the extent to which you appear to identify with the racist lying riot-inducing rich Internet troll.

This isn’t the usa and she doesn’t have the absolute right to say anything she likes, and if her tweet leads to rioting, she’s guilty of inciting violence. Where do you think the false idea that the child murderer was an asylum seeker and violence should happen as a result came from, and what makes you think you’re a better investigator than the British police?

It’s a paraphrase. Read the tweet, not as if you’re her defence lawyer, but ask yourself if a reasonable person would interpret it as a racist argument that violence was justified.

There’s a logical reasoning thing called modus ponens (it has a latin name because it’s not exactly new). It goes
A. If A then B.
Hence B.

That’s exactly how she called for all hell to break loose. You can’t claim that you didn’t mean B when you say “A. If A then B.” It’s just that A was false and “If A then B” was also false. Nevertheless, a lie-ridden far right call to violence over the murder of innocent children is what it was, and it was heeded by the far right nut jobs who rioted over the issue, targetting the immigration lawyers that had nothing to do with the deaths of the children until she posted the lie. She incited violence. Jail. Good riddance.

Keep your far right racist lying incitements to violence to yourselves, or you’ll end up in prison, fascists! You’re not welcome in the UK and you never have been. Thousands of ordinary people counter protested against hundreds of racist agitators. Good.

She made up a racist lie about a child killer and expressed that violence should result. People rioted. It’s called incitement to violence and it’s illegal in the UK. No one rioted over the couch nonsense, and no one called for violence over the couch fucking. It’s a bit different. Call a riot, go to jail. Your racist lying calls to violence aren’t welcome in the UK, rich racist nobody.

Is libel freedom of speech?

1. The police arrested her, not the politicians.
2. The Crown Prosecution Service prosecutes her and proves her guilt, not me.
3. The judge ensures the jury knows what the CPS need to demonstrate, not you.
4. The jury decides her guilt or innocence, not us.

You keep demanding proof of me and never proving anything at all that you claim.

If proof is important for internet debates, where’s your proof that she wasn’t anywhere near the start of this batch of far right violence? That’s a bold unsubstantiated claim that contradicts the police. Where’s your proof that the police falsely claimed that they traced online calls for violence following the child murders back to her? That’s an even bolder unsubstantiated claim. You claim she’s a political scapegoat. Where’s your proof that there was political interference in her arrest? That’s another bold unsubstantiated claim.

Incitement to violence is a crime in the UK. I’m not sure that you’re entirely clear on what incitement is. She’s subject to UK law. I hope she goes to prison for it. The more people know they can go to prison for this shit the less rioting we’ll have.

Don’t write your race hate on the internet and don’t invent a lie about child murders and call for violence. If the far right nut jobs heed your call, the police will correctly come for you.

Is it OK to go after Trump for inciting insurrection?

Is it OK to go after people for libel and slander?

If so, why is it OK to restrict speech for harming a reputation but not OK to restrict speech for causing violence?

It seems to me that the American line on free speech is really inconsistent.

The UK doesn’t have a written constitution. A principal is that no Parliament can bind its successor. The state can give itself whatever powers it likes. The conservatives gave it the power to prosecute people for protesting climate change and made it inadmissible evidence for them to explain the reasons for their protest, which rather goes against “I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” The people who went to prison for saying we’d better not kill the planet went uncommented by you, but this woman triggering a sequence of riots is where you draw the line?

No, in the UK there is no absolute and overriding right to say anything. If you incite violence, you can be sent to prison. Do you not have laws about libel? Is that not the state punishing people for speech? Why is it worse in the USA to say a nasty and untrue thing about a celebrity than to say a nasty and untrue thing that triggers riots? Is Trump OK to call for insurrection because it was only words? I think you may be overvaluing the freedom to cause problems with words and underestimating the extent to which you can get in trouble for it in America.

I’ve never heard a “Free speech absolutist” with good motives. I’m very much not one. The state stopping bad things from happening is a good thing, no?