This man trained his girlfriend’s dog to give a Nazi salute to some offensive phrases as a joke. Shared it with a few friends on social media.
It was then leaked and the offensive joke that went viral and got 3 million views on YouTube.
Then because of the criminal case for hate speech the EDL (English Defence League) were able to bandwagon on the news cycle and spread some real hate.
So the law meant to prevent hate speech instead platformed a hate group and spread the original joke further to the point where it probably did cause offence. Because if you don’t know the person making the joke, you don’t know what they intend.
All because a Scottish judge was allowed and chose to ignore all context around the actual content.
It is a bad law.
I’m not one of the “can’t say anything these days” crowd, and in general I think there can be limitations on speech that have a positive affect on society.
But the law in Scotland specifically is absolutely trash in stating absolutes about speech when speech is always subjective and always surrounded by context.