An angry father wrote an email to the director of the kindergarten his child attends, saying he “refuses to tolerate multi-culture propaganda” because he noticed that in the kindergarten, children have a doll whose skin is not white. He said that if the nursery does not get rid of the doll, he will post photos on social media and make a negative ad about it.
Despite the parent’s reaction or his moral status, it is the court’s reaction, which dismissed the complaint against his prosecution, that is worth the attention. It is an expression of today’s policy that a parent should be punished for threatening public criticism.
The father’s behavior was certainly not clever. However, considering the legal context, he has not committed a crime. The question is, did he threaten anyone with a bomb, burning the nursery or at least throwing stones? Such threats could be considered illegitimate.
But none of those; the only threat was the threat of public criticism. They say that the pen is mightier than the sword, but everyone has to bear with criticism. If someone told me to “stop writing legal commentaries, or they will cruelly criticize them in public,” I would be a fool if I ran to call the police. It is my right to write comments, and it is a critic’s right to criticize them. They cannot forbid me, and I cannot forbid them; nor can I complain that they threaten me with criticism. This is part of my freedom as well as theirs.
Threatening someone with a bomb is forbidden because blowing something up is an illegitimate expression of disagreement. But a threat of criticism must be allowed. When we ban the threat of criticism, then we ban criticism as an allegedly illegitimate disagreement. We thus limit our freedom of criticism and our freedom of speech.
The acts of the father was not a crime, and the authorities´ approach to the “criminal threat of criticism of the multi-culturalism” was as shameful as writing such an email. One would like to call it a judicial error, but unfortunately, it was probably not a regrettable mistake, but an expression of current policy.
It will be interesting to see how the criminal law practice will further develop and whether it will be consistent.
