Posters with the phrase “it’s okay to be white” have been posted in Basingstoke causing police to begin a hate crime investigation.
After the posters were spotted by residents on Thursday 4th November they were quickly removed and the police began their ongoing investigation. These posters have sparked outrage in the community with Basingstoke one resident Priya Brown saying ‘these are tactics used to divide deliberately by Neo-Nazi groups.’
These worrying posters were spotted minutes away from the town’s centre on Worting Road. They were posted on lamp posts outside of Bcot (Basingstoke school of technology); one of the town’s two colleges. The placement of the posters is a concern as if it is a neo nazi group responsible they are targeting the town’s children.
This is not the first sighting of these posters. It started in the USA whereby their definitions this would not be considered a criminal offence or a hate crime due to their constitutional right to freedom of speech and lax hate crime laws. However here in the UK, our law states any crime is a hate crime if the offender has demonstrated hostility or been motivated by hostility to anyone based on their race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity as stated by government websites.