Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

I am not an ordinary person

This is what I've learned from surveying the aftermath of the Twitter Joke Trial: I am not an ordinary person. Because, according to Judge Jacqueline Davies, any ordinary person would see Paul Chambers's tweet as menacing. Well, I don't. I see it as a joke. I thought anyone would see it as a joke. I was wrong. I'm not ordinary. Judge Jacqueline Davies, who apparently is ordinary - or can tap into the consciousness of ordinary people to see what they might think - doesn't see it as a joke. Nor did those who investigated the supposed crime, nor those who decided there was a case to answer, nor those who convicted in the first place. All of them are ordinary. I am not, because I think they are all absurdly, astonishingly wrong.

We people who see jokes as jokes, who recognise sarcasm, irony, hyperbole and subtexts, have been left reeling by the bizarre way in which the law has dealt with this matter. Yes, there are terrorists in this country, and yes, people have tried to blow up airports, and yes, we should take such matters seriously; but some ordinary cove sending a tweet, which is a joke, about blowing up an airport, is not a crime. At least, it shouldn't be a crime. Apparently it is. Apparently that means I'm not ordinary, because I don't think it is menacing to make a joke. Apparently, because I get the joke, I don't get it.

People advocate violence in a jokey way all the time - I'm sure we can all think of examples from popular culture or our own lives. Stephen Morrissey said he wanted to burn down a disco. Malcolm McLaren wanted to set light to hippies. Bill Hicks told his audience to hunt down and kill Billy Ray Cyrus. (And look, he was right. We'd have been spared the horrors of Miley Cyrus - though also that cameo in Mulholland Drive...swings and roundabouts.) I once joined a Facebook group whose name was inspired by that skit, called "Let's hunt down and kill Richard Littlejohn". Should I be arrested? Should I worry about a knock on the door? (Should I be worried at the dismay of people who are upset that I didn't, in fact, hunt down and kill Richard Littlejohn?) Is every joke about any act of violence off the table now?

Gareth Compton, a sad little man who said he hoped Yasmin Alibhai-Brown would be stoned to death, knows this all too well. He's an idiot, we know that. Is he a criminal? I don't think so. I don't think it should be a crime to wish harm on another person; that's just an unpleasant but fairly normal side to human nature. I know I wish harm against people I dislike all the time. (I'd probably wish harm against Gareth Compton, if I thought he was anything other than the human equivalent of a puny spoonful of weak porridge.) He's just an insignificant skidmark, hardly worth troubling the scorers. And yet, this twit has ended up getting in trouble. And now the most awful thing of all: I feel like I have to defend him, the dreadful man.

True enough, there was a whiff of something else about the comments, a scent perhaps of sneering at a Muslim by invoking an image of extremism, but no more to it than that, no direct threat of violence or incitement for someone else to genuinely commit a crime. It's the simple wishing of harm against another person. You might say that's coarse or uncivilised, but I don't think it's criminal. If someone hoped I fell under a bus, or got stoned to death, or died in a freak yachting accident, or whatever, I wouldn't be too cheerful, but I don't think I'd go to the cops about it, unless that person had threatened me personally.

If you strip all words of the nuances with which they are imbued, if you say "the words are the words, and mean only literally what they say if you add them all up and remove all the context", then you might end up thinking all sorts of things are incitements to violence or criminal acts. What then? Are we all going to be hauled up for the jokes we've made, the times we could have murdered a curry, the times we could have killed someone who tailgated us on the motorway? Twitter is a snapshot of how people are thinking and feeling at a particular moment. One tweet does not represent the entirety of their intent; and even if it did, the tweet that Paul Chambers sent still wouldn't be a crime. It is not a crime. It just isn't, it shouldn't be, and it should never have been.

The question comes where you draw the line. It's a dangerous heritage of the New Labour years and the War on Terror that thought crimes are so readily accepted as being true crimes that we can convict someone of a criminal offence for writing bad poetry and calling herself the 'lyrical terrorist' even though she wasn't a terrorist at all (though thankfully in that instance sense did prevail at the appeal). We've seen people arrested and convicted for what they have read - though again, some were freed on appeal. We've seen groups like Islam4UK closed down and disbanded. We've seen people subjected to control orders, not for crimes they have committed, but because they're thought to be criminals. And we've let it all happen. We are as responsible for the Twitter Joke Trial outcome as the judge who oversaw the appeal.

If you think something, it doesn't matter whether you do it or not; that is the way we work in our climate of fear; that is the way the state exerts its power over its citizens. Even a thought is a crime. Even a joke is a crime. We are all criminals now, and it is all our fault for letting this crazy situation come about.

See also:

Martin Robbins - The war on irony

The Ed Techie - A Conspiracy of Sentiment

Septicisle - This joke isn't funny any more

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