The government is ramping up arrests of those with "extremist ideologies" in the latest wave of arrests. 

The crackdown includes those accused of misogynist views.

In my book, "The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage," I discuss how difficult it is to get a free people to give up freedoms. They have to be afraid, very afraid.

For that reason, governments tend to attack free speech during periods of public anger or fear.

That pattern is playing out, yet again, in the United Kingdom.

The recent anti-immigration riots have given officials a renewed opportunity to use anti-free speech laws to target those with opposing views.

For years, I have been writing about the decline of free speech in the United Kingdom and the steady stream of arrests.

A man was convicted for sending a tweet while drunk referring to dead soldiers.

Another was arrested for an anti-police t-shirt. 

Another was arrested for calling the Irish boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend a "leprechaun."

Yet another was arrested for singing "Kung Fu Fighting." 

A teenager was arrested for protesting outside of a Scientology center with a sign calling the religion a "cult."

Last year, Nicholas Brock, 52, was convicted of a thought crime in Maidenhead, Berkshire.

The neo-Nazi was given a four-year sentence for what the court called his "toxic ideology" based on the contents of the home he shared with his mother in Maidenhead, Berkshire.

While most of us find Brock's views repellent and hateful, they were confined to his head and his room.