This is how totalitarianism happens; stealthily it creeps up on you and one day you realize whatever freedom you had is gone. From Martin Jay at strategic-culture.su:
Britain, a country which practically invented the tenets of free speech, is now the most repressive, backward country of the West.
Britain, a country which practically invented the tenets of free speech, is now the most repressive, backward country of the West which is ridiculed on a daily basis by the very same countries that it regaled for its human rights record. There are just too many cases to rattle off which have at least made the news – social media, at least – but the mother who had police officers come into her house while she was in the bath to arrest her for calling an ex-boyfriend a ‘faggot’ has shocked many, given that the boyfriend in question beat her up and the message was not even sent to him. Elizabeth Kinney escaped jail but received a sentence involving community service and a considerable fine. Kinney was just one of around 12,000 people each year in the UK who are arrested and charged for giving their views about a given subject which the state deems could hurt someone, or in the case of politics, if it simply challenges a narrative. This farce would appear to have gotten out of hand when the long arm of the law even arrested and questioned right-wing hack Katie Holmes, who, during a stand-up comedy routine called herself a “spazza” and was subsequently detained for hours by UK police for the “offence”.
Yet while Britain sinks to an all-time low with the state strangling its citizens right to express thoughts, or even think in the case of an anti-abortion activist who was arrested for having a quiet prayer in her head what is remarkable is the lack of hue and cry by the masses who are very well versed on history and what they believe their ancestors were fighting for in two world wars. Often older people, who are very lucid in their ideas about why the British don’t carry identity cards, unlike Europeans, will not really have a strong reaction to the wave of absurd and worrying arrests for those who wish to practice free speech, around 30 a day.
Perhaps what is more remarkable though is how the world is watching this every day and commenting on how Britain is literally crumbling. A recent interview by Tucker Carlson on Piers Morgan involved the American polemicist goading the British commentator to say a rude word during the interview, claiming that Morgan would probably be arrested at a later point for merely uttering the vulgar word.
More strikingly is the extraordinary hypocrisy as, given the UK now more or less a third world country and carries out its repression of human rights much as some might expect the regime in North Korea might, you would think the government would lie low on the international stage. For the comedy to be cranked up even one more level, the British government continues to deliver its incongruent moral tutelage to the old favourites it likes to chastise on human rights. Remarkably, Yvette Cooper, a British minister released a statement on the 15th of December calling for the Chinese government in Hong Kong to release Jimmy Lai for him to continue to express his views.
