yeah the new bill - while some of it I agree with (a right to protest isn't a right to riot, and some people think it is!) I agree that it's very rich.
But I just hate comparing the two at all because it's different worlds. We're so, so lucky, we take it for granted. Not because our government(s) are amazing, but because we do not live under a rule of a de-facto dictatorship.
Apologies for going off-topic, but it's this kind of mentality that really drives me insane.
I don’t disagree with your assessment that we are "so so lucky", but it’d be wise to acknowledge that this doesn’t come from the benevolence of central government who kindly decide to not be oppressive, but rather those who came before us who fought incredibly hard for the rights and privileges from which we all now benefit.
These benefits are not remotely guaranteed, despite us all growing up and existing within a prosperous, liberal post-war context. As Tony Benn once famously said, “there’s no final victory, and there’s no final defeat”. So whilst it was hyperbolic to say that ‘we will soon become like Russia’ because we "don’t live under a rule of a de-facto dictatorship", the reality is that there has been a clear shift towards the employment of more authoritarian policies over recent years.
Examples - the nationality and borders bill allowing the state to remove citizenship without notice will give the state even greater powers. Elsewhere in the western world, Trudeau’s freezing bank accounts of citizens who go against the government. Macron is forcing through a policing bill of his own which will allow CRS and Gendarmerie to act with even greater impunity. Regardless of the merits of each case, it’s naive at best (and downright negligent at worst) to turn a blind eye to these sorts of things which point to a slow but sustained shift towards authoritarianism.
Not only have narratives dating back to the 1980s persisted (where state power triumphed over collectivism) and the subsequently enacted laws (Trade Union bills etc.) dented civil liberties, but a more nefarious ambivalence has seemingly gripped the country, with people treating this current bill with almost total apathy. To clarify, rioting has
never been covered in anybody’s unwritten constitutional rights - thus we already have more than sufficient legislation to prosecute such crimes. However, setting defined, pre-agreed times (and decibel levels!) to a protest merely reduces your democratic right to a performative farce - what we witnessed in Moscow and St. Petersburg would by this logic be deemed illegal in the UK, with a prison sentence up to 10 years.
fr24.com
