From Retweets to Riot

Wherever you draw the lines on free speech, Lucy Conolly is a case study in self-radicalisation

The case of Lucy Connolly a rallying cry for the right and a lightning rod for public opinion. For many, it has become the most egregious example of the law getting involved with tweets. Debates have flared about sentencing, speech, and the state's role in policing opinion. It has also brought forthright interventions from senior Tory politicians, eager to exploit another culture war talking point.

Legal commentator David Allen Green has produced a helpful guide on what the law in this area is and how it applies to Connolly. This sidesteps, however, the debate about what the law ought to be – which is mostly what has raged in the right-wing press. Much of this debate has felt fairly partisan. True free-speech absolutists are rare. Most critics are selective, animated not by principle but by who is being punished. Plenty who are incensed by the Conolly trial would, I suspect, be far less animated about some other person inciting some other riot. Many of them probably cheered the police investigation of crap Irish rappers Kneecap. However, that's not argument I want to rehearse.

More interesting is the way in which Connolly serves as an example of the realities and risks of self-radicalisation. Whether or not you think saying something appalling should merit jail, something is striking about this otherwise ordinary-seeming, middle-aged woman who came to be posting bile to an audience of thousands. It highlights the dangers of the online world and the pathways it leads people down. The case also shows how, for all the discussion of teens and screens, it is perhaps their parents who are at greater risk of being warped by the internet.