A KEY figure in the English white nationalist movement is among agitators calling on their followers to overload Police Scotland with anonymous online reports, according to reports.
The far-right leader – who heads a group which is currently being assessed by the UK Government under its new extremism definition – promoted a private channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram that includes a “call to action” urging members to “mass report”.
According to The Observer, a group administer said to “overwhelm them [so that] they eventually give up the whole system”.
The posts encourage members to report incidents of “anti-white” hate.
READ MORE: Hate crime reports spike at Rangers-Celtic game 'did not materialise'
They claim an example of such hate includes a statement on Police Scotland’s website that states “young men aged 18-30 are most likely to commit hate crime”, with the channel administrator writing in a post that the “public targeting of a group deeply offended us and thus we will report it as a racially motivated hate crime”.
The Observer noted that messages have also been posted directing the group’s 284 members to mass report tweets from members of the public, including one from a former local councillor who said that those most impacted by hate crime were “people of colour, disabled people, LGBT+ people, because it’s probably happened to them”.
The administrator of the “hate crime reporting” group said the message was “offensive” and “singled out white men as evil”.
They added: “At the very least, we want to overwhelm them with reports to waste their time [so that] they eventually give up the whole system.”
It comes after a media furore broke out over the Scottish Government's Hate Crime Act becoming law, which saw both the First Minister and author JK Rowling (below) reported to the police over the law.
Legal experts have said that there has been significant misinformation surrounding the campaign which has impacted on its poor reception - drawing international criticism from the likes of Joe Rogan and Elon Musk.
Professor James Chalmers, regius professor of law at Glasgow University, was part of the review which spawned the Hate Crime Act – but said the legislation had been poorly communicated by Police Scotland.
READ MORE: Most Scots want Hate Crime Act scrapped, new poll finds
He said: “The public controversy around this is such that that emphasis at the same time on the importance of freedom of speech would’ve been useful.”
The Act contains “multiple” protections for freedom of speech, he said, but these have not been “emphasised” enough by the force in its publicity campaign leading up to it coming into force at the beginning of the month.
The allegations against Yousaf refer to a speech he made in the Scottish Parliament four years ago about a lack of racial diversity in positions of power in Scotland.
While the complaints against Rowling relate to her social media posts in which she refers to transgender women as men.
Police Scotland had already said that neither of the incidents met the threshold for being considered a hate crime.
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