A right-wing British activist has just been handed a two-year prison sentence for “intending to stir up racial hatred” in the UK. His offense? Sharing stickers with anti-immigration mottos such as “We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066,” “Mass immigration is white genocide,” “Intolerance is a virtue” and “White Lives Matter.”
Sam Melia, a 34-year-old husband and father from Leeds, was accused of inciting racial hatred via an online collection he managed containing stickers people can download and use. He was also found guilty of encouraging “racially aggravated criminal damage” on the grounds that the sticker collection was part of numerous “stickering” incidents as group members accessed the stickers, downloaded them, and then stuck them in various locations throughout their neighborhoods.
Melia said that he simply wanted the stickers to “start a conversation” and did not think their use constituted criminal damage. In fact, he said in his trial that it never occurred to him that this was something that could land him in prison.
The judge on his case, Judge Tom Bayliss KC, said: "I am quite sure that your mindset is that of a racist and a white supremacist. You hold Nazi sympathies and you are an anti-Semite."
He told jurors that it did not matter if the slogans were true or legal and that they should rule only based on Melia's intent.
According to a post by his wife, Laura Towler, on Telegram, Bayliss could have chosen a sentence for him of anywhere from 2 to 6 years, and the judge gave him the minimum sentence because of “the lack of seriousness regarding the offence.” She said that although the judge could have suspended his sentence, he decided against it because he wanted the case to serve as “a deterrent to other people with the same beliefs.”
She also pointed out that the judge ignored Melia’s probation officer’s insistence that he did not pose a risk to the public and had no chance of reoffending. The probation officer recommended a community order, but the judge apparently disagreed.
Towler expressed dismay that the judge said her husband’s activism undermined efforts by the government to keep immigration under control.
“What efforts?! They are literally facilitating record breaking levels of legal and illegal immigration. Why should the public have to stay quiet and leave it up the incompetent government?”, she wrote.
Social media users outraged over ridiculous sentence
Political and social commentator Keith Woods posted his outrage over the sentence on X, writing: “What a travesty of justice. Across the West, we are ruled by anti-white regimes which won't even allow us to advocate for our people's safety and heritage in their own homelands.”
Woods noted that Melia’s wife is eight months pregnant, and he will be in prison when his second child is born. He also shared some slogans from the stickers Melia distributed, asking followers if they sound hateful. They include “Reject White Guilt”, “Stop Anti-White Rape Gangs”, “It’s ok to be White”, and “Love Your Nation”.
Other social media users looked into Judge Bayliss’s record, with one pointing out that he was the judge on a case in which a man who was caught with sexual images of a 3-year-old child avoided jail time. Elon Musk weighed in, replying with “!!” to a tweet about Melia’s sentence on X. On Reddit, even users who said that they disagreed with Melia’s views on immigration admitted that a prison sentence over the stickers is completely unreasonable.
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