A British blogger has been arrested at his home for sharing a meme saying “F–k Hamas.”
Pete North, 47, shared a video of police arriving at his home in Yorkshire late last Thursday and telling him he was being arrested because he “posted something on the internet” which someone from their hate crime team “didn’t appreciate.”
Even though his meme also said “f–k Palestine” and “f–k Islam,” the cops seemed most focused on him offending the terror group behind the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, North told the Telegraph.
“The officer in the interview said, ‘Well, firstly, let’s start with the meme. You posted a meme that said f—k Hamas,’” North claimed.
“I said, ‘yeah, I did post a meme that said f—k Hamas, because Hamas are a proscribed terrorist organisation internationally, including in Britain,” the blogger and writer recalled.
He said he told the officer, “‘Just so we’re on the same page, you do know who Hamas are?’”
“And he just … shook his head,” North continued, claiming the officer was just as clueless as when he asked if he knew about the horrors committed by Hamas on Oct. 7.
“He was totally oblivious,” he claimed. “If you’re going to arrest people for memes, you probably need to pay more attention to current affairs.”
The post, which King shared on X last month, featured a Palestinian flag with the words, “F—k Palestine. F—k Hamas. F—k Islam. Want to protest? F—k off to Muslim country and protest.”
North Yorkshire police confirmed in a statement that a man was arrested “on suspicion of publishing or distributing written material intended to stir up racial hatred.”
North was later released without charge after a lengthy interrogation and has since accused authorities of trying to “terrorize” people into being politically correct online.
“I feel quite strongly that what political cartoons and memes I post on social media is none of the police’s business,” he told the Telegraph.
“Nobody should be facing police inquiries for posting memes on Twitter,” North said.
“The whole point of this exercise is not to win convictions. It’s to terrorize people like me into thinking twice about posting spicy memes.”
His arrest is just the latest sparking outrage in the UK at police cracking down on people sharing their beliefs and even waving flags. Earlier this month an American cancer patient living in the UK accused British cops of questioning her over an allegedly “threatening” message she’d posted.
“Pete North’s ordeal is the latest in a long line of egregious violations of Britain’s free speech tradition” by the left-wing Labour government, Rupert Lowe, an independent Member of Parliament, told the Spectator.
“Free speech does not exist in Britain – it has been systematically undermined by successive governments, often in the name of ‘safety.’”
