Exclusive: The SNP is Pushing Hate Crime Laws to Target Political Rivals, Says Reclaim Candidate Leo Kearse

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - APRIL 29: Lawrence Fox, Reclaim party Mayor of London candidate, and L
Peter Summers/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart London ahead of Thursday’s elections in Scotland, Reclaim Party candidate and stand-up comedian Leo Kearse warned that the impending hate crime legislation will be used to target political rivals of the Scottish National Party (SNP).

The proposed Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill, which is being spearheaded by Scottish Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf, seeks to criminalise speech determined to fall under the non-specific “stirring up hatred” classification.

Kearse, who is challenging Mr Yousaf for his seat in the devolved Scottish parliament, told Breitbart London: “This hate crime bill is so vaguely worded that if I call someone a wanker, I’m technically stirring up hatred against autosexuals, which is a recognised sexuality now with its own flag and it means someone who is attracted to themselves and has sex with themselves.”

Kearse explained that “as a comedian, sometimes you cross the line, but you have to be allowed to crash the car to see how fast you can go and all the funniest stuff happens near that line.”

He said that he believes the leftist-separatist Scottish National Party is only pushing the hate crime legislation in order to give themselves more power, saying: “The SNP have a history of using woke issues to advance their agenda and destroy their enemies.”

“People never seem to realise that woke legislation, in fact, all legislation comes though under the guise of altruistic intentions, it’s only going to be used for the noblest of intentions and within six months it’s being used for completely different stuff.”

Responding to the SNP’s election pledge to introduce critical race theory-style ideology in Scottish schools, Kearse said: “If you’re going to have a hate crime bill that says every form of racism is evil and must be prosecuted and then your teaching a theory that everyone is racist… don’t we all have to go to jail?”

“And who’s going to be in charge of the jail, because they are racist as well,” he joked.

The Reclaim candidate said that he does not believe Scotland is a racist country, with the caveat that “the only bigotry or racism I see is from the Scottish Nationalists towards the English.”

He said that his political rival, Humza Yousaf in particular “seems to have a focus on white people as a negative trait, there’s that video of him going ‘white, white, white‘ criticising all these government officials for being white… it’s like Scotland is 96 per cent white, there’s going to be a lot of white people in positions of power cause there is just a lot of white people in Scotland.”

“There are certain segments of society that are ok to shit on, you even saw it with the grooming gangs, nobody stood up for those girls because they were the white underclass, so they were absolutely the bottom of the ladder in terms of privilege. So I think Humza criticising people that’s him using the current trend to advance his own position.”

Kearse, who has been working as a stand-up comedian for the past twelve years, said that he joined the Reclaim Party because identified with its leader Laurence Fox, who was cancelled from his acting career for espousing right of centre political beliefs.

The self-described “right-wing comedian” told Breitbart London that he has also faced cancel culture, saying that he has been blacklisted from many comedy clubs after someone in the industry “casually tweeted” that he is a racist because he is on the right politically.

He said that the tweet came in response to him calling for more working-class representation in comedy, noting the irony that the left is only interested in the diversity of skin colour and sexuality but not the diversity of political opinions.

“There’s no diversity rep out there looking to get more Brexit voters in the boardroom,” Kearse quipped, adding: “There are still sections of society that are looked down on and not seen as valid as people.”

He also highlighted that during a Reddit AMA on Tuesday an online user reported him for allegedly committing a hate crime during one of his stand-up sets.

“This is exactly why we don’t need this hate crime legislation, we don’t need to empower people like you to report comedy for hate speech, it’s ridiculous,” he said.

Kearse pointed to comedian Count Dankula, who was found guilty in 2018 by the Glasgow Sherrif Court committing the “hate crime” of filming his girlfriend’s dog doing a Nazi salute, as an example of the dangers of policing speech.

“I can understand that his joke was offensive but it was definitely a joke and it was definitely funny and the whole crux of the joke hangs on the fact that Nazis are horrible, the joke is that the pug dog is really sweet and it’s doing this terrible thing… if anything it reinforces the idea that Nazis are bad.”

Aside from the impending hate crime legislation, Kearse also lamented the state control of comedy already present in Scotland, noting that the ruling SNP government directly owns two of the top comedy clubs in the country.

“So no comedians criticise the SNP, somehow they have tricked everyone into thinking they’re not the government… they’ve been in power for fourteen years and they’ve tricked everyone into thinking they are some sort of opposition to Westminster,” he said.

“It’s like China but with worse food,” Kearse joked.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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