Tag: authoritarianism

A NEW THREAT TO HUMAN RIGHTS? Must be a Tuesday in Toryland

By Daviemoo

Protest is a fundamental right- Whether it’s to stand up against corn-drunk overlords in the feudal days, to gather a party and march on the palace in the days of absolute monarchy or to kneel in Millennium Square in Leeds in solidarity with the people of colour whose lives have been stunted by racism and racists, protest is in our blood, our bones, our DNA.
We use protest from the macro to the grandiose, every time we tell a boss they can’t treat the office poorly, every time we tell a stranger to stop behaving inappropriately- but it’s most contentious use is to speak out against those who wield power against us. Holding power and wielding power irresponsibly are not bedfellows, but in this dark and twisted timeline, somehow these two disparates have been conflated: a government who uses its power against you is not normal. A government should be in thrall to it’s people. The tories are not, Least of all Suella Braverman whose new bill poses the most open assault on British freedom in recent years. George Monbiot has done a masterful thread on Twitter, explaining the thorny new bill proposed by Suella Braverman.

PMQ’s today was, as always, an exercise in futility. From the opposition benches came questions of hole-filled economic policy, accusations of not being up to the job, frank concerns raised about people who will die in freezing rooms or alone with mental turmoil this winter- and from the tory benches, foolish rambling nonsense about rugby teams and “will the right honourable lady agree with me that…” which benefits nobody.
Tory, labour, SNP, Greens… it doesn’t matter the alignment of the person on those benches- to constituents facing the very real possibility of poverty these ridiculous questions do not matter. It is long since PMQs was of any real use to the people of this country. Now elected to stand before the dispatch box is the shambling corpse of a party once elected as fiscally competent until this prime minister hollowed out the British economy, or thought of as the party of law and order until the last prime minister broke fundamentally vital safety laws in office.

But one point not raised was the new legislation dragged from the dungeons by Suella Braverman.
Braverman’s public order bill is an authoritarian monstrosity, forcing those who have attended protests- even peaceful, planned protests- to submit to government tagging, monitoring and threatening custodial sentences for anyone who encourages others to protest online. Draconian is not the word- Suellenian is, because Suella Braverman is a step past draconian.
Under this bill any protest activity is essentially treated as extremism, including retrospectively. Protest in the last five years did you? Did you attend BLM protests? Pro EU marches? Strike action? Or on the converse side… anti lockdown marches… then you can be forced to wear an electronic tag like a shoplifting teen, forced to register your whereabouts and you are forbidden on penalty of prison from using the internet to speak about protesting. I abhorred the anti lockdown protesters, because I knew that they would spread the virus that took me to the floor, and make the entire ordeal of lockdowns and restrictions last longer- but they still had the right to do it as surely as I did over BLM or trans lives.
This bill takes a paring knife to the few dried strips of flesh left on the bone of English protest rights (it does, happily, not extend to devolved nations), meaning that English people would be fundamentally unable to speak out against this government- and why would this be? This is, after all, the government who has, since 2016, parroted the will of the people at every turn. If the will of the people was of concern to the conservatives, they would surely be happy about any way in which they can hear it? And of course, a government doing a successful job wouldn’t need to legislate against people speaking out against it. Imagine being so bad at governance that, instead of doing the things people want and need you to do, you just legally stop them from complaining.

But this isn’t the only gaping irony exposed by this new behemoth-bill.
it’s less than three weeks since Truss stood at the tory party conference, gesticulating into the glossy eyed audience as she exclaimed at her excitement over wanting to be “a small governance” government, who doesn’t care “what you do in your personal life”- one does not have to care if one legally restricts you from doing what you want. And foolishly, Truss supporters (however few) gulp down this nonsense as fact. This government cares deeply what you do in your personal life, if that in any way diverges from their bold vision of autonomous workers free of the thorny legislation that means you get time off, holidays, sick pay and protection from bosses who will force you to work without adequate protections, legislative or physical.
Truss promised bold restoration of tory party values- a simple task, as the tory party has no values left, all consigned to the pyre of anti EU gesticulation and empty flag waving. Today at PMQs she declared she is “a fighter, not a quitter” which ironically is the main problem people have with her- we want you to quit, just call an election first and consign your twelve years of mayhem to the dustbin heap on which it belongs. It won’t be long before anti protest legislation pales into irrelevance because so many people are sick of Truss, sick of Tories, that there aren’t enough police in the entire UK to prevent the uprising on the horizon. Like the star tattoos of the early 00s, I imagine in five years time we’ll all be comparing our DBS checks to show which version of ridiculous protest law we were slapped with, and anyone without a disclosure will be deemed quaint or disparaged as an enabler of these eternal shysters.

When thousands of people took to the streets of London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool to protest against the police crime courts and sentencing bill the government studiously ignored it: I myself was at one protest in Leeds, flanked by police officers. “Do you actually want this” I asked of one, who simply stared ahead, ignoring me. “Do you want people to not even be able to stand here and say how they feel”. Nothing.
Now that bill is passed into law- protesting is functionally illegal without assent from the local police force. Think about that, in conjunction with the recently released report on the institutional failures of the Met to tackle its long raised issues with homo and transphobia, misogyny, violence in the ranks, the officers who protect each other from domestic abuse claims… We need to gain consent from those to whom consent means nothing in both bedroom and street, to protest against them. Protesters are being imprisoned for tearing down likenesses of our racist ancestors who used humans as cargos, because Braverman, who uses phrases like “tofu eating wokerati”, is fighting an ideological war of one.

Braverman is a step down from the bottom-basement step of Priti Patel. Her utter obsession with forcing conformance on Brits is madness. She claims to stand for free speech but is compelling people not to respect gender identity, she decries political correctness whilst demanding people speak the way she wants. She is not the last bastion of free speech, she is a desperate attempt to utterly destroy it. If you don’t speak like Braverman wants she hopes to criminalise you, and if you act in a way she disagrees with she will craft legislation so harsh that countries like China and Russia seem moderate in comparison.
Braverman is the burning ember of what is left from the tories desperate hoovering up of the cigarette ends of UKIP and other extremist parties, a useful puppet too stupid to understand contrition or politeness: her main issue with the phrase “politically correct” is that she’s never been correct once in her life, fondled by Johnson into the job of attorney general despite her lack of qualifications and legal nous. Lawyers and human rights experts alike went from rolling their eyes at her endless open mouthed nonsensical rambles like her anaemic defence of Johnson on question time to being slack jawed themselves at her appointment to Home Secretary. She is spectacularly hypocritical, a woman who shakes her fist at everything EU whilst benefitting from the Erasmus program she supported the scrapping of and someone who desperately refrains back to the idea that her way of living is freedom whilst she legislatively obliterates any other ways to be.

This law is the latest attempt from the tories to curtail any anger at their behaviour and it’s another inch on the rope around their necks: legislate away, Suella- when the dam breaks and the tsunami of frustration boils over, no amount of yellowed legal paper containing your photocopied signature will protect you from the reality of our displeasure with tory malfeasance.
But fight we must, against this. Braverman is convinced, in the face of an overwhelming amount of evidence, that she is correct. The British public must speak up and speak out against her, until her meek bleating is lost in the concerted cacophony of British people telling her in no uncertain terms that we have had enough of her, and of her party.

Until this time though, when finally we Brits come together as we must and take to the streets, I ask the readers of this blog to reach out to your MPs. Teenagers gluing themselves to roads or walls in protest of climate issues is less of a threat to our way of life than ever more condescending bills being thrust before the eyes of the unelected lords- I urge you to tell your MPs that you will in no way foster this bill being taken through to royal assent. And if your MP is a Labour MP I urge you to gain confirmation that labour will commit to reversing this, and all other degenerate protest laws the tories have put in place since their mind bending decision to back the dead end of brexit.

The UK is waking up to the tories and we will take back our country from this vile government. The only legislation I want to see is legislation that protects the people, by ensuring that this criminal cabal will never see power again.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

Britain is Authoritarian: we didn’t kill the bill & now democracy is dead

By Daviemoo

It’s been coming for a long time now, with klaxon warnings from scholars and activists all over the world. But today the United Kingdom truly embraced its role as an authoritarian state as the house of lords voted for the police, crime, courts and sentencing bill to effectively curtail our human right to protest. Those who endorse the bill will tell you that it is not stopping protest, only engendering co-operation with the police and asking that protests- mass gatherings of people- do not “disturb the peace”.
There is no peace, there is no, there is no democracy- in a country who throttles the voice of its citizens.

It’s hard to know where to start with the bill which Priti Patel has fought so hard to implement and my problems with it. Firstly a Home Secretary who was forced to resign for attending unauthorised meetings with foreign powers making decisions on legalities seems a far stretch: secondly, legislation written by a woman who erroneously said the death penalty is effective even in spite of evidence it is not.
The met police have voiced their own displeasure of Patel’s draconian oversight of their duties- but the met hardly have room to comment on poor leadership, or indeed of behaviours beyond the pale, including current accusations of a cover-up around partygate.
Patel has long disparaged actual champions of what right wing figures like herself so often champion as free speech- she is yet to apologise for speaking out against “lefty lawyers” which led to a knife attack against legal experts who work for human rights campaigns. And here is the strongest evidence yet in the damning indictment in the public eye that Patel does not seek to defend free speech, only speech she condones: the effective strangulation of protest rights in the United Kingdom.

Many of those who will clap like seals for this bill have spent time in the press decrying the restrictive regimes of China or Russia- we have watched, agog, footage of Russian people being arrested under similar laws for holding up blank pieces of paper. Once this law passes, the people of China would technically have an easier time of protesting than Britain- because even one man protests can now be punished with a custodial sentence.

It appears that protest will only be acceptable if the local police assent to a demonstration- and protests can be dismantled, including using police violence and arrests for protests which “disturb the public” or people “find intimidating”: and this, we can fairly conclude, proves that every single person who voted for this bill has never had to protest for their own rights or the rights of those they love- that they do not understand the essence of protest is to foreshadow civil upheaval should the voices of those protesting not be heard in peace.

Additionally, those who do attend protests face arrest with custodial sentences lasting years- for protesting against what they see as unfair, undue or dangerous legislative or public moves by the UK government.

The highest irony in all of this comes in many different flavours: the indifferent silence of the anti lockdown protestors who proudly marched gormlessly around London propagating a virus that is still killing over 1000 people a week. The confused smiles of people vox popped in the streets who didn’t even know this was happening and are entitled enough to know they will never NEED the right to protest because they are unaware that their lot in life could be better should they simply rise up- or the ever increasing frustration of activists who have worked increasingly hard to highlight the undue, unfair- unnecessary bill in its entirety. The entire UK seems to have entered into some collective malaise, with only the enraged detritus of we few, the minorities working hard to retain their own rights and safety or the few politically savvy people who are aware of the appalling nature of this bill fighting against it.
Violence was, more than once, used against peaceful protestors in Bristol, London, Manchester who simply wanted to ensure we retain our human right- it is a human right- to protest: yet swathes of football fans wrecked town centres and businesses, broke into stadiums with seeming impunity from police- because in the United Kingdom now it is seen as more dangerous to stand peacefully with signs of protest than it is to throw security staff to the floor and barge, unchecked into a stadium to watch a sports game. During the BLM protests, police hovered at the edges of the protests, hands on batons threateningly as though those desperate to be heard about civil injustices caused by the police themselves would be as great of a danger as angry ignorant people desperate to protect statues over human life and liberty.

The United Kingdom will continue its decline under fascist-leaning leadership like Patel and Johnson, under the baleful glare of politicians like Dominic Raab who wish to scrap the human rights act, along with institutionally corrupt pillars of societal maintenance like the met or the media who hide their collaboration with anti trans screeds, allow lesbian rapists to suggest murdering trans people and who have set us on course to continue to see our rights, our quality of living and indeed out liberty continue to dissipate in favour of a society only extant to keep the rich in money as we squabble- now quietly in fear of upsetting the peace- for what little dignity the tories care to afford us.

Ultimately the passing of this bill into law is a mistake which will cost not only the British public greatly, but the authoritarians in chief.
When you functionally illegalise peaceful protest, you take that avenue away yes- but not the need for it. People still want to, need to, are forced to protest for their liberties and against their injustices. Making peaceful protest as harshly punishable as violent protest leaves those of us who need protest as an avenue to start to make decisions we did not need before: firstly, can we be heard outside of protesting – and if so, how?
Secondly if protesting is our only means of being heard and it is now as harshly punished to be heard peacefully as it is to be more radical, do we choose the peaceful option and face punishment- or do we choose violence knowing that it may be the only way to be heard? This isn’t a decision any activist wants to make and the idea of having to harness violence to enact public change is truly a move for the desperate- but is that not where we are now under a government who blanket refuses to listen to the will of the people they so often expound upon?

Patel, Johnson, Raab- the tories continue to bind our hands and expect us to remain compliant but as our streams of expression for our displeasure evaporate before us the time is at hand to ask: if we can’t be heard peacefully, are our options truly as limited now as compliance, silence… or violence?

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

Is it too late to stop fascism?

By Daviemoo

It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it. The idea that our nation could give in to fascism. But that’s the insidious reality. We aren’t “giving in” to it- some Britons accept it, condone it, and think it’s a good thing because fascism, the politics of discord, division and elitism reinforces the bone deep conviction that to be British is to be superior, as surely as white supremacy is the conviction that skin colour is equivalent to superiority. Do you think the citizens of Germany in the 30’s thought things would escalate to their heights? Some knew, cried out, shook their fellow citizens with the dire need for action and were ignored- are we headed down the same political path as the literal Nazis?


It’s almost comically ridiculous to think of the UK as a fascist nation. A great many things lined up politically to allow Germany to slip into such horrific politics. And it’s only yesterday I was talking about totalitarianism- I know, which is it?

But when you stop to examine the state of affairs in the UK, the desperation with which I push my anti-tory agenda becomes clear.

People will tell you that “all politicians are the same- labour are as bad as the tories”. It’s nonsense, pushed by a gleeful tory party who thank people for endorsing the quiet humdrum that’s allowing creeping fascism to take hold.

Look at today- Johnson’s party is in deep trouble. A party at number 10 in December 2020- as we all followed the rules put in place to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Horrendous behaviour from selfish and disgusting individuals.

This must be punished- but to overlook the horrendous actions of the tory party outside of the headline grabbing bluster of their disregard for life is to miss the overarching theme of a government up to their necks in corruption, desperate to hide the stench and to extend their powers to being held beyond reproach.

Is fascism the right word?

Looking at policy implementation and general political output from the conservatives over the last 11 years, a slow burn into an explosion appears to have allowed this strange slip towards the far right.

Fascism relies on nationalism, firstly, and the weaponization of the Union Jack as a symbol of imagined freedoms. The aggressive push- not just for Brexit, but for a total severing and complete dissolution of the relationship between the UK and the EU- the spinning of EU officials as unelected officials muddling into UK business and stirring the pot instead of conglomerate sensibility and safeguarding. The sickening stories of migrant “incursions”, open glee or indifference to refugees drowning at sea, the mentality that any and all from outside are evil and coming to steal jobs, money, women, land. The idea that there is the “right” type of British- from gender identity as one of the most hotly debated and pointless (trans people will exist regardless of their access to clothes, toilets, prisons, healthcare…) tropes. The disregarding of our true history, linked intrinsically to colonialism and the slave trade in favour of the mealy mouthed notion that we just happened to be there. The embrace of a fictional history where Britain were always the heroes instead of a nation aggressively pushing it’s agenda. Nationalism is one of the key tenets of fascism and nationalism is as deeply rooted into British culture at the moment as it has ever been.

Look also to the fact that fascism opposes liberalism – explain to me why else this constant, laughable “war on woke” is being thrust to the front of every red topped newspaper, every magazine wrapped in salaciousness, every bottom drawer chat show.

Woke is simply defined as aware of social injustices involving systemic racism, but has swollen under the half lidded stare of those fed up of hearing about how their behaviour contributes to other people’s oppression at worst, unhappiness at best. And before I was referred to as a woke liberal on the daily, I was often called a marxist- often by people who, when I requested if they could define marxism, would hurl abuse and block me or, if in person, give me the look of someone recently concussed.

The press gag

Looking at accountability for the government also, we see concerted effort to expatriate them from the regular flow of accountability – firstly, open plans to prevent the government to be reported on negatively by the media, as seen in these headlines:

Sources: The Guardian, and Press Gazette

The curtailment of freedom of the press is an irony and embellishment at best- as seen in the footage of Allegra Stratton gleefully mocking the public with journos, the Christmas party at Downing St was already known in journalistic circles, kept in the dark until a time where the headline would be most salacious. Nevertheless, the freedom of the press to report on the government honestly and allow genuine public reaction has always been both vital, and increasingly distorted in the UK. The BBC, long reported as a paragon of journalistic integrity is now seen by many as state sponsored propaganda- on both sides of the political aisle. Many say this means it’s doing it’s job well. But when one side says “this is far right propagandism” (stories of trans people as sexual deviants, migrants as criminals and more), and the other side says “it’s not far right ENOUGH”, you begin to realise this is a misnomer- and intentional. The BBC’s funding comes from the government, so any implication that bias cannot apply to the BBC is wrong- especially under a government desperate to throttle press freedoms, and who has installed ex donors to highest office at the BBC.

Again, the pushing of the fight for trans equality – ridiculously framed as a “debate” – would you call it the “black rights debate?!”- is clear evidence that this manufactured culture war is being fed to blinkered people, desperate to assign their difficult lives to a physical, to a person, to a group- and trans people fit that bill, ironically, to a T. If you weigh in to the anti trans side you are an enabler of fascism, but this time it’s a different group in the crosshairs. If you genuinely believe a small group of people who identify AS WOMEN want to take away women’s rights or stop the use of the word woman you are both stuck in an echo chamber and hopelessly misdirected to fight against women you should be calling ally.

The public’s handcuffing

But it’s not just the press whose freedom to report honestly about the actions of the government has been throttled. We as individuals are seeing our rights removed, throttled, oppressed. When we, as a large group are dissatisfied with something, one of our most basic, fundamental, vital rights is to gather in numbers and stand in solidarity- so when the police, crime, courts and sentencing bill was introduced after the BLM protests, most of us knew it for what it was: not just a lazy attempt to stop the police from being held accountable for a poor job and seeping corruption (see the murder of Sarah Everard and the met’s predictably ludicrous response). It was a co-ordinated push to prevent the British public from uniting together under issues so vital that we co-ordinated to speak out against the government.
Notice the reaction to women gathered at a vigil for a fallen woman, murdered by a policeman- violence, cruelty, arrests. Notice the reaction to peaceful protests- police hitting sitting protesters with shields, batons, provoking a violent reaction to justify this legislation’s supposed urgency. And the British public endorsed it! Then suddenly up arises Insulate Britain, a group set on solidifying it’s uselessness with gestures designed to frustrate the public- not actually fix the problems it complained about- and magically this already insidious legislation is amended to prevent us from blocking roadways, ports, etc, etc with mandatory sentences and uncapped fines. Coincidence? Hardly. I don’t believe Insulate Britain are tory stooges, but I believe they were manipulated into thinking their mission would do anything but allow condoning of this disgusting government pushing restrictive policies.

Everyone else as “the other”

Even the refractive divisions amongst British politics viewed with a wider lens than tory trouble has allowed for fascism to bubble and boil under the surface- hyper right groups like the BNP, Britain First, Farage’s UKIP party- and indeed pundits like Farage, like Julia Hartley-Brewer, Katie Hopkins, Darren Grimes- all designed to package up another step, another step, another step to the right, further, further- and normalising it. Cheap slogans like “taking OUR country back”, “building back better” and every other ridiculous daubing you can think of, all designed to promote separatism and create the mythological “other” who wants to come here, steal our jobs, change our laws, kill our women folk. Take away the politely indignant bluster of these individuals and lay bear their deepest agenda- Britain First- The literal name of one of the fascist parties.

But putting Britain first isn’t a sin or a crime, it’s what should be a necessity for those of us, whether nascent Brits or not – working for the common good is not a sin or a crime, and framing it as such has created a wave of rage against… nothing. The memo that none of the angry supporters of these supposed revolutionaries gets: everyone wants to work for the common good- or do they?

Look back at these social commentariats- who among them pushed sacrifice for the common good of all Brits? Or did they all, to a man, spend the entire time telling you to be selfish? Throw off restrictions, look after your own needs, wants, requirements? That’s the true face of the nationalism they pushed, it’s not about inclusion of your own, it’s about exclusion of the other- now no longer presented as some mythical foreigner or trans woman- now the other is your fellow countryman, the sheep in the aisle with you wearing a mask.

Platformed to present outrageous- but not TOO outrageous views, always just enough to provoke reaction without backlash, we became numb to it. We allowed these shills to push the painkiller that let the government inject increasing fascism into the country.

Who is the other now? Is it the refugee clinging to a dinghy on the offchance they make it to shore, the trans woman working in the coffee shop, the fellow Brit who thinks brexit didn’t work out well? Is the other everyone? Or is it no one.

Nationality as status

Furthering nationalist agendas, let’s look at the removal of foreign people’s ability to move and settle in the UK without specific reasoning a la the visa system. This gives British nationality a “status” of attainment- an attainment that could only be revoked in the minds of foolish people who believed your deep ancestry instead of location creates nationality. We’ve all seen the radio clip of David Lammy being told he’s not a “proper” Briton because he’s not white by an ignorant caller on LBC. That’s not a rare mindset- it’s common. People who are born here but born with dark skin are seen as “tolerated” Britons- disgusting as that mindset is, it’s frighteningly prevalent. And those, like the doctors who work for the agency I work for, who attain citizenship through hard work do a damn sight more to be able to call themselves Britons than those of us who simply were born here- and yet their citizenship is seen as not real by those who think it’s a status, instead of an accident of birth or a transactional relationship. And now, to add credence to this flawed view, Patel creates legislation to strip citizenship of those she and her fellows do not agree “should be” British. Nationality is a flawed and foolish concept.

The nationality and borders bill further separates those from abroad from us- another nationalist pandering legislation.

Legislation tabled by the tories recently has been so fascistic as to create terror in the eyes of those who understand the implications.

If the government creates legislation which contravenes human rights, judges can rule against it, forcing the legislation to be reviewed until it does not do so. But not only do we have a Justice Minister in Raab who wants to repeal the human rights act and “create their own”, we have a government actively pushing legislation which would allow them to overturn, overlook or outright ignore the rulings of judges in cases of judicial malfeasance. Any rulings would therefore become advisory and would allow the culpability of the government for transgressions against law, land and the public to continue unabated.

This is quite literally one of the steps that the Nazis took before the beginning of World War 2- the unbinding of judiciary scrutiny from government action.

This unshackling of the government is a terrifying move to allow a government we cannot trust to access their full potential in authoritarianism. They must be stopped from instituting this bill.

Brexit’s “benefits” only benefit the far right

The rise of nationalism came when the EU was cast in the light of legislative oppressors, meddlers and more towards the UK, infringers of a sovereignty we already had.

The severing of oversight from a larger body who could sanction or impose legislative challenges of members is, was and would always be the goal for a government aware that they could seize and maintain power so long as they stirred the issues aforementioned. The cataclysm of brexit came in legislation – with the damnation of the NI protocol as a hinderance and the reason brexit has caused issues, and with the in your face horrors of very real goods, medicine and food shortages. But the true damage was the breaking of long placed bonds on a corrupt government now free to ramp up their power- at the expense of a populace battered by fighting for union and fighting against a virus. Our resilience has been worn out, fighting figmentary culture wars and this exhaustion has allowed this horrific situation to sweep forth.

Equally brexit benefited the rich- and we all know which side of the bench the rich usually sit. Relocation of businesses and evasion of scrutiny of taxation and ill gotten gains is a core tenet of this current tory government. Let those subject to the law be damned in the face of those above it- the law of the EU, the law of the land, and the laws of the time.

The overt denial of systemic racism from a report claiming contributions from experts who didn’t even know they were being consulted and the almost immediate drafting and imlementation of legislation criminalising aiding “immigrants”- note, not refugees, plus the regularly falsely pushed line – pushed in fact, on the 6th December by Scott Benton on the news, that you can be an “illegal” immigrant (again- refugee) has allowed the British public’s most dense subset to imbibe an automatically negative perception of anyone who challenges their rigorously structured fiction of “the unwashed dangerous foreigner”.

The strangulation of the unheard voter

I’ve written a piece on my blog before about voter disenfranchisement- I urge you to read this piece, as the dangers of creating difficulty in votership are impossible to understate. Mandating voter ID will, intrinsically, affect the voting eligibility of the poorest in society. Passing legislation to remove ID documents from voters is a terrifying step towards fascistic restrictions on votership- if the cornerstone of democracy is the allowance to partake, then any efforts to restrict access to this even under the guise of “preventing fraud” is the dismantling of a democratic right. And please remember the 2019 election resulted in less than 50 accusations of voter fraud and six proven cases- out of tens of millions of voters.

The throttling of votership, especially working class voters, only ever benefits a party who does not wish to be challenged by the people who need their help the most. I urge you to read my post on voter disenfranchisement.

Conclusion…?

Ultimately, I am terrified that we are past the threshold, through the looking glass. We have borne so much under a party so clearly bent on self preservation that they have resorted to actual fascist implementation of policy.

The question now is two fold and simply: What next? And what else?