Why Does the Right Only Care About Free Speech When It’s a White Woman?

The media’s selective sympathy exposes a deeper injustice: who we defend, who we forget, and why it always seems to depend on the colour of your skin or the party you vote for.

By Sean Ash

This week, much of the right-wing media has rushed to the defence of Lucy Connolly, the woman jailed for posting online that hotels housing asylum seekers should be set on fire. We are told she is a grieving mother. We are told she is being punished unfairly for “just a tweet.” Isabel Oakeshott of The Telegraph even claimed, “If foreign criminals and illegal immigrants can use the ECHR, a distressed mother should be able to.”

But she can. No one is stopping her from using the courts. The European Convention on Human Rights protects everyone equally. The problem is not her access to legal rights. The problem is the selective sympathy she receives compared to others.

Because if this is really about defending free speech, where is the same concern for Tyler Kay?

Where is the sympathy for Ayoub Nacir?

Where are the articles supporting Hamza Alam?

These men are all serving longer sentences than Lucy Connolly. All three were prosecuted for posting or sharing extreme content online. Yet none of them have been defended by the same politicians, journalists, or media outlets. None of them have been rebranded as victims of state overreach. In fact, their names have barely been mentioned at all.

Let’s look at the facts.

Tyler Kay reposted Lucy Connolly’s original tweet and added further inflammatory content. He used the hashtag “#standwithlucyconnolly.” He did not start the message, but he supported it. For this, he was sentenced to thirty-eight months in prison. That is seven months longer than Connolly herself.

Nobody is writing columns about how harsh that is. Nobody is saying he was emotionally vulnerable. Nobody is calling him a victim of censorship.

Then there is Ayoub Nacir. At just 21 years old, he was jailed for six years and nine months for sharing terrorist material online. His content was serious, yes, but he did not encourage a direct, real-time attack on people in Britain. Lucy Connolly did. She pointed to a specific group. She called for action. Yet her crime was framed as misguided grief. Nacir’s was framed as terror.

And then there is Hamza Alam. He was 22 when he posted antisemitic and pro-terrorist material on TikTok. His sentence was four years in prison, plus a year on licence. Alam’s content was rightly condemned. But again, it was not a direct instruction to set fire to buildings. He was labelled a terrorist and forgotten. There were no national discussions about whether he was just an angry young man. No headlines asking for leniency.

So why are these cases treated so differently?

Because Lucy Connolly fits a very specific image.

She is white.

She is a woman.

She is a grieving mother.

She is a Tory.

She is easy for the right to defend. They can cast her as the victim of a system gone mad. A martyr for the common citizen. A working mother punished for saying what others think.

But Kay, Nacir, and Alam do not fit that image. Kay is working-class. Nacir and Alam are Muslim. None of them are politically useful. And so, instead of sympathy, they are left behind.

Now here is the part that matters most. Lucy Connolly called for setting fire to buildings full of people. That is not a joke. That is not an opinion. That is a call to violence. It is the same thing that terrorism laws were designed to prevent. Yet she was not charged under terrorism legislation. She was charged with inciting racial hatred under the Public Order Act.

Nacir and Alam were charged under terrorism laws. Why? Because their posts were linked to ISIS or extremist groups. But is setting fire to migrants not a form of terror? Is calling for public violence not terrorism just because it comes from a different mouth?

That is the contradiction at the heart of this story.

It is not about what you say. It is about who you are when you say it.

Muslim men are treated as threats.

White women are treated as mistakes.

Tyler Kay is in prison longer than the woman he supported. But no one is asking for his release. No one is writing that he was misled. No one is protesting in his name.

What we are witnessing is not a defence of free speech. It is a defence of privilege.

It is the protection of a story where only certain people are allowed to be complex, emotional, or forgiven.

Everyone else is just criminal.

If you believe Connolly deserves justice, then so do Nacir, Alam, and Kay.

If you believe in free speech, then fight for it beyond the face of someone who looks like your neighbour.

And if you believe in equal justice, stop excusing hate speech because the speaker votes blue.

Because in the end, it is not just about tweets. It is about which lives are seen as worth defending. And right now, that list is far too short.