Jordan Peterson and Diane Abbott were among the guests who joined David Dimbleby on this week’s Question Time
Canadian lecturer Jordan Peterson and shadow home secretary Diane Abbott clashed over whether hate speech should be prosecutable during BBC Question Time on Thursday night.
Asked whether it was right for member of the public to be prosecuted for “offensive speech”, after six people were arrested earlier in the week for burning an effigy of Grenfell Tower, Peterson claimed that police resources would be better directed to tackling social problems such as knife crime.
“Who is going to define hate?”
.@jordanbpeterson argues that the UK should be very careful when restricting freedom of speech. #bbcqt pic.twitter.com/h6hY3gdDvF— BBC Question Time (@bbcquestiontime) November 8, 2018
“One of the things I see happening in the UK as an outsider that is quite terrifying to me is there are increasing restrictions put on people’s ability to speak forthrightly,” he said.
“The consequence of that restriction and the criminalisation of what hypothetically constitutes offensive speech is going to be a a cure that’s so much worse than the disease that we can hardly imagine. It’s a dreadful thing to see that happening in the UK.”
Peterson, who works as a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, claimed that “people say things that are reprehensible all the time” but that did not mean it should be criminalised, unless what they said was an incitement to crime.
He added: “Other than that you should be very careful what you regulate as speech. Who is going to regulate it? who is going to define hate? That’s the real issue.”
The Canadian’s comments came after Abbott – who has previously said she receives threats of “rape and violence on a daily basis” online and to her constituency office – said the difference between abusive speech and abusive action “can be an artificial distinction”.
She added: “You might say ‘why is it wrong to be abusive about politicians and send them racist and sexist stuff online, it doesn’t matter all their threats will never happen’.
“But parliament saw one of our colleagues Joe Cox killed and that sort of action is not necessarily the consequence of abusive language, but it is related to abusive language.”
Later, responding directly to Peterson’s comments that regulating speech would be a mistake, she told him: “I’m not frightened of forthright speech. I’m quite a forthright speaker myself.
“But when you talk about who’s going to define hate, you want to see the letters and emails I see day after day, and tell me that’s not hate.”
Six people have now been arrested by police after being filmed laughing and shouting “Help me! Help me!” and “Jump out the window!” as they burnt a cardboard replica of Grenfell tower ahead of Bonfire night, with the police launching a manhunt for the suspects after the video was widely shared on social media.
