(Actual News Article—>) They arrested an 84 year old minister because she was protesting the genocide in gaza. Is this seriously what humanity has come to?
[Her statement] resulted in their arrests under section 12 of the Terrorism Act, punishable with up to 14 years’ imprisonment.
I have an idea for peace, I call it the One-State Solution. Just Palestine.
And remember cops will always say shit like “I don’t make the law, I just enforce it” when doing these terrible things like this.
But when their cop buddy beats the shit of their wife suddenly they can selectively enforce the law
It can, and will, get worse
The UK is a shithole country. Orwell helped make his 1984 wet dream come to life there.
I think you’ll need to justify your Orwell comment. Both Animal Farm and 1984 were works against authoritarianism of any form, and he even fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War.
1984 is basically ‘what if the stuff we do to the poor / colonised every other day happens to us instead’. Orwell was a colonial officer, so he probably had first-hand experience.
He was an informant for the “good guys” government. He was a bastard.
I LOVE 1984 (and We, and Brave New World and others like it) but I fucking hate that guy as a person.
Just watched a 84 year old woman get arrested for calmly speaking her viewpoints in public. If that isn’t thoughtcrime then idk wtf is.
Interesting that the article you link actually makes Orwell seem sympathetic.
This motherfucker put his life on the line fighting fascism in Catalonia and saw what became of people under Soviet-dominated communism. He decided the oppression of capitalist democracy was less than the oppression of communist totalatarianism and acted accordingly.
I guess if you’re a tankie, this is unacceptable.
Nope not a tankie at all and actually quite anti communist. Try again.
But if you don’t see the parallels of acting like thoughtcontrol and hyper surveillance is the epitome of evil and doing the same kind of hyper surveillance and thought control back but just for the government you agree with is wrong then idk what to tell you.
Providing info for a secret British Foreign Office propaganda unit with a list of 38 individuals he suspected of being secret communists or Soviet sympathizers is not the actions a person who cares about thought control would do. Also he suspected is another huge point to this.
And its interesting you would point out that he thought being under the flavor of brutal controlling government the UK was offering was going to be better on a post of an 84 year old woman being arrested on the street corner in the UK (same government he fed names to) for daring to say her thoughts out loud on the actions if said government participating in a genocide. Thoughts that didn’t align with the Ministry oops I meant Monarchy.
Come on now…
The fact that you think that article which says he fed information to a propaganda unit that he THOUGHT was sympathizing with the enemy to be targeted by that government highlights a lack of critical thinking on your part in my opinion. That’s the shit communist countries do with secret police. Why is it ok if its a European country?
I read Homage to Catalonia and I can’t bring myself to shit on Orwell without understanding his perspective.
And, yes, compartively, life in the domestic UK was better than in the USSR. Where would you rather be living in 1947? 1957? 1967? 1977?
life in the domestic UK was better than in the USSR
And what about life in the British colonies? The problem with people like Orwell is that they’re only concerned with oppression when it affects people like them.
Abslutely! I specified “domestic UK” for that very reason.
Was Orwell engaging in anti-communist activity in colonies? would be my next question.
There’s a lot of propaganda around Orwell in an effort to discredit him purely because he threatened the USSR party elite’s power, and it persists to this day because those same writings threaten the party elites of the PRC.
Orwell opposed authoritarianism in all of its forms, including Soviet style “communism”. He witnessed first hand what that supposed “communism” was. He spent an awfully long time thinking about totalitarianism, both from the perspective of the British Empire and of the Soviet Union. The man was committed to a sanatorium when he handed over his list. Which he handed over to a socialist Labour government, whilst fearing the rise of authoritarian “communism”. And not long after living through his second world war, against the very same fascist forces he’d been fighting against in Spain.
He was anti-communist in as much as Emma Goldman or Alexander Berkman or Nestor Makhno or any leftist with a fucking brain was.
Orwell has done more for leftism than I doubt you or I ever will. Both through his widely read writings and his on the ground, life on the line, physical direct action. He could have lived a comfortable life of an English gentleman, but he didn’t because he cared about more than his own comfort.
The hatred over the list only comes from tankies because he outed the very thing they support. Either you’re a tankie or unfortunately misinformed via propaganda.
This is more V for Vendetta
My own 48 years of lived experience in the UK is not remotely like that. Honestly, the hate train for the UK makes me wonder if my own pre-conceptions about life in the US, formed through the British media and platforms like this, is as way off the mark as you guys genuinely are in regard to what it’s actually like living here.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that most of our governments from Thatcher onwards have been various of flavours of dreadful, but from my perspective the US political landscape is the rock bottom-end to a path we’re essentially locked into as the billionaire backed psueodo-facist parties gain increasing foothold.
Video doesn’t actually show her being arrested, just cops bothering her.