A British blogger says he was arrested in his own home after posting a meme online that read “F–k Hamas.”
Pete North, 47, shared a video showing police arriving at his Yorkshire residence late last Thursday. Officers informed him that he was being detained because he had “posted something on the internet” that a member of their hate crime team “didn’t appreciate.”
Although the meme also included the phrases “F–k Palestine” and “F–k Islam,” North said officers appeared most concerned about his post targeting Hamas, the terror group behind the October 7 attacks in Israel.
“The officer in the interview said, ‘Well, firstly, let’s start with the meme. You posted a meme that said f—k Hamas,’” North told the Telegraph. “I said, ‘Yes, I did, because Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization internationally, including here in Britain.’”
North said he even asked the officer if he knew who Hamas was or about the atrocities committed on October 7. “He was totally oblivious,” North claimed. “If you’re going to arrest people for memes, you probably need to pay more attention to current affairs.”
The meme, which North had shared on X, featured a Palestinian flag with the words: “F—k Palestine. F—k Hamas. F—k Islam. Want to protest? F—k off to a Muslim country and protest.”
North Yorkshire Police confirmed that a man had been arrested “on suspicion of publishing or distributing written material intended to stir up racial hatred.” He was later released without charges after what he described as a lengthy interrogation.
North has since accused the authorities of attempting to “terrorize” citizens into silence. “I feel quite strongly that what political cartoons and memes I post on social media is none of the police’s business,” he said. “Nobody should be facing police inquiries for posting memes on Twitter. The whole point of this exercise is not to win convictions. It’s to scare people into thinking twice before posting anything politically incorrect.”
His case has fueled growing outrage in the UK over police crackdowns on free expression. Earlier this month, an American cancer patient living in Britain said she too had been questioned by police about a supposedly “threatening” online post.
“Pete North’s ordeal is just the latest example of how Britain’s free speech tradition is being shredded,” 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.’”