Derbyshire Constabulary police cars. Photo: Elliot Brown/Flickr

An English man who posted “extreme racist messages” on social media will serve three years in jail, police in Derbyshire, England announced on Tuesday.

According to a press release by the department, Samuel Doyle was flagged by counter-terrorism officials in 2020 after Community Security Trust (CST), an English nonprofit that provides counsel and security services to British Jews, reported to them his calling for genocide against Jews, speaking favorably of Adolf Hitler, and joking about murdering members of the gay community. For those actions, he received five charges — to which he pleaded guilty — for distributing or publishing written material to stir up racial hatred.

“Freedom of speech is an important part of our shared British values — and something that is enshrined in law,” Detective Inspector of Counter Terrorism Policing East Midlands Chris Brett said in a statement. “However, those freedoms are not without limit and it is clear that the views Samuel Doyle expressed online stepped well over the line into criminality.”

Brett added, “We have seen across the world how online posting of this nature has had serious real world outcomes — including, sadly, fatalities.”

Community Security Trust heralded Doyle’s jailing on Thursday, saying, “CST welcomes the conviction & imprisonment last week of Samuel Doyle on 5 counts of stirring up racial hatred, following a CST report to police in July 2020. This is the latest case of CST’s research contributing to a conviction for anti-Jewish hatred.”

Antisemitism was a major theme in the United Kingdom’s “national discourse” in 2021, according to a report CST published in December.

Titled “Antisemitic Discourse in Britain 2021,” it examined dozens of events in British society to demonstrate how discussions of antisemitism in media, politics, and campus activism intentionally and unintentionally affected the Jewish community, from students to political leaders.

On social media, antisemitism proliferated with the help of an “extensive global disinformation network” in Iran, while legacy media outlets such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) were accused of promoting antisemitism for reporting that Jewish victims of a hate crime incited it by uttering an anti-Muslim slur, a claim that was later debunked by two forensic reports. Later, Ofcom, a UK media watchdog determined that the BBC failed to be “duly accurate or duly impartial” in its reporting.

Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.