Originally published at: London cop jailed over Nazi gang membership and "hand-drawn" child smut | Boing Boing
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22 years old is too young to be a cop, IMHO. Should be a part-time/probationer until at least 25. Go and get some life experience elsewhere first.
Thankfully they don’t allow immature little shits like this one out on our streets with guns as a matter of course here in the UK.
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Seems like this type has been trained since the age of 5
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On the one hand he seems like a dick, and certainly shouldn’t have a police uniform. On the other hand, 4 years for those (putative) crimes is pretty sinister.
Garbage Island doesn’t worship cops the same way the US does, but it’s still a lot harder for cops to get prosecuted and convicted than regular humans. I don’t think anyone should be thrilled that you can get four years just for having the wrong drawings and reading the wrong things.
The YARD has a Nazi problem, but not if you ask them…
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Why is it so many far-right goons also seem to be pinched for CP… Or maybe that is just confirmation bias on my part.
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They’re doing research, looking for clues leading to the deep state conspiracy. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
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It struck me that the things Hannam was convicted of would not likely have attracted charges in the U.S. Not far-right associations, possession of “terrorist” literature (Hannam possessed guides to knife fighting and mass-murderer Anders Breivik’s manifesto) or possession of drawings depicting sexualized children.
That last offense has led to charges against folks in the U.S. Which tracks, for me. America doesn’t have a problem with cops and white supremacist terrorists, but the moment they can wring their hands and performatively protect ‘the children’ from a pervert, without actually taking action to protect non-fictional youth from sexual violence and trafficking (especially if the predators are wealthy and conservative and buddies with a president), Americans will fall over themselves to do so.
This guy, and the drawings he had, are both disgusting. Though I’m given pause at the idea of a drawing of a crime being as illegal as the crime itself. And also wonder whether non-predators living with pedophilic and hebephilic tendencies might use such drawings the ways other folks with unrealizable or dangerous sexual proclivities might use art and fiction to fulfill their uncontrollable drives in a way that doesn’t harm real people.
I get being viscerally grossed out at the very existence of such images, in the same way I’m grossed out that ‘teen’ is consistently among the top-searched pornography terms. I don’t know if everyone who searches those terms poses a danger to real youth, though?
But visual culture does shape norms, so maybe the very existence of images (including mainstream advertising images) eroticizing youth does have a real harmful effect, like sexist and racist imagery does.
…and joining a Fascist hate group that is banned in the UK, & posting photos of yourself in a Nazi uniform with a Hitler mustache, & then lying about it all in order to join the police…?
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Well, but yeah, but those are just innocent mistakes that any young lad could make… /s
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Compared to how easy it is to get heavy weaponry in the US, having “guides to knife fighting” listed in his charges seems quaint. Not to minimize the other charges.
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I’m all for throwing someone out of the police for far right membership and maybe even charging him for lying on the application.
But if they think ‘possessing documents’ and drawings of fictional people is a good reason to imprison someone, that’s pretty horrible.
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Many would cheer the U.S. gutting the First amendment to allow jailing those who associate with the wrong sort and for owning incorrect literature.
Just to make it clear about what kind of people National Action are
It is still legal to be a neo-nazi chud in the UK, but National Action is a terrorist organisation.
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Though I’m given pause at the idea of a drawing of a crime being as illegal as the crime itself. And also wonder whether non-predators living with pedophilic and hebephilic tendencies might use such drawings the ways other folks with unrealizable or dangerous sexual proclivities might use art and fiction to fulfill their uncontrollable drives in a way that doesn’t harm real people.
That’s been the debate for years now, 20ish IIRC. On the one hand, there’s no demonstrable IRL victim (therefore you could argue it’s a “thought crime”). On the other, you could imagine it encouraging predatory behavior. I guess it’s not really been studied, so it’s hard to say objectively whether making it illegal is good or bad for society.
Any more so than owning a copy of Lolita?
This guy can fuck right off, but I’m also against jailing people for owning drawings or books of fictional people.
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My theory is that there’s something going on involving the power dynamic. These guys are into being in control.
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Well, which of those do you think merits the prison sentence?
Most of us would like Nazi groups to go away, so it’s easy to say “they should just be locked up”, and that’s why the notion of proscribed groups is such an easy sell for the UK’s reactionary population. But it’s not hard to see how this idea strongly resembles collective punishment, which has historically been such a favorite technique of British governments that the world had to define it as a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.
If the Terrorism Act 2000 was mainly used to lock up Nazis, perhaps we could all live with that. But to be clear, that is not what it was designed for or how it is used. This is a law that lets the state send you to prison for ten years for expressing an opinion in support of (say) Hamas. It might be used against Nazis on rare occasions, but the instrument itself is not far from something you’d see in the actual Third Reich.
It is a criminal offence to be a member of a proscribed terrorist organisation. He did much more than having some ‘wrong drawings’ and reading some ‘wrong things’. He was a proven member of this organisation (which I will not name - look at the links), which has openly avowed terrorist objectives.
Do read some of the links from the post. You might realise the difference between some ‘wrong things’ and blatantly terrorist things.
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A lot of American lefties get uncomfortable at even this as it starts to sound a bit like “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party” McCarthyism thoughtcrime policing.
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