This is sinister.
Thousands of football fans may have been secretly investigated by the Premier League‘s ‘Stasi spy agency’ for their political views, a free speech campaigner warned today.
Newcastle supporter Linzi Smith, 34, was the subject of a four-month investigation by a special unit set up to expose hate speech in the game after a series of posts about trans issues on X.
Their role is to manage a game where twenty-two blokes kick a ball about. It is not their role to spy on people. It is not their role to decide what opinions are okay and what opinions are not.
Newcastle began investigating Ms Smith after receiving a complaint.
The usual, of course. One person complained and instead of telling the complainant to do one and stop wasting their time, they went full scale MI5. Bear in mind that none of this occurred at the stadium, it was perfectly reasonable things said online outside of the football club’s jurisdiction. Smith expressed perfectly legal opinions. But because one petal was triggered, she was subjected to a Soviet style investigation and subsequently banned for wrongthink.
Ms Smith’s case has now been taken on by the Free Speech Union, whose director – Toby Young – warned many more fans may have been targeted with similar investigations.
Hopefully, like Smith, thousands will now flood these arseholes with subject access requests and the FSU rips them a new one.
He told MailOnline: ‘We think it’s possible that hundreds of fans, possibly thousands, are being monitored in a similar way by the Premier League’s intelligence unit.
That this organisation even has an intelligence unit is disturbing. They are set up to manage games. Nothing more. It is not their place to go around spying on wrong thinkers. Not only should this unit be shut down, everyone involved needs to pay a heavy, personal price for this, pour encourager les autres. Personally, I favour piano wire and lampposts, but your mileage may vary.
This kind of stuff is really sinister. I grew up thinking that the argument over the merits of free speech had been won. The principle that I disagree with what you are saying but I will defend to the death your right to say it has gone. A few years ago the enemies of free speech claimed to be in favour of free speech but. Now they don’t even pretend. It takes a special combination of stupidity ignorance and arrogance to be so confident in being right that anyone who disagrees with you has to be wrong by definition. Also what the hell is the football league doing getting involved in this stuff, talk about overreach. Of course it is too much to expect a boycott from football fans, people who complain about being “forced” to buy multiple expensive away kits.
I’ve often thought that League football, especially Premier League football, was a commercial operation intended to part supporters from their money. Maybe yes, maybe no.
But it makes me wonder if other commercial operations with an image to protect might also be running ‘intelligence units’ to investigate their customers. I guess we will only find out through reported activities or whistle-blowers (football joke).
As usual with the commies, the words they use to describe themselves are the opposite of what they really are (“intelligence unit).
This is something that I’ve noticed about people on the left more generally. In order to maintain their worldview they have to pretend that everything is something other than what it actually is. Hence illegal immigrants are asylum seekers. Other things that I’ve heard, competition doesn’t work, intelligence isn’t hereditary. If anyone’s life is in the toilet because of really poor life decisions it’s either capitalism that’s to blame or something about mental health. They seem to live in a kind of alternate reality.
These powers were designed to stop football hoolganism, a real misuse of them.
Indeed. Someone telling the truth outside of the club’s premises is hardly hooliganism. It’s a massive overreach. In fact even for hooliganism, it’s a massive overreach.