London’s Metropolitan Police arrested another 492 people over the weekend after a protest Saturday in Trafalgar Square, as the Starmer government accelerated its crackdown on opposition to the Gaza genocide.
The entirely peaceful protest was held to oppose the proscription of Palestine Action. It was organised by Defend Our Juries and attended by over 1,000 people. Of the arrests, 488 were for holding up signs declaring, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”.
At what point are people going to riot?
Not rioting is better. Peaceful protest, and thousands getting locked up, is what creates the conditions that might enable real social change.
If that doesn’t work, then you have a proper riot (i.e. of the kind that isn’t bread and butter to the powers that be). Edit - lot of downvotes here. You need to read a bit of revolutionary theory. No doubt there are Americans downvoting, who of course don’t have a leg to stand on based on what they did with their exhorbitant ly privileged society./ YOu are showing your ignorance.
I disagree. We’re past the point where peaceful protests will create change. It’s abundantly obviously that those in charge do not care. And they also got it in their heads that AI makes us less necessary.
If leaders and executives won’t listen to reason, then it’s time to instil fear into them. Remind them there are so many more of us than them, and that their positions are a service to us, not a privilege or an entitlement.
rioting is not the answer. if you are going to take action, be careful and deliberate.
You can target something specific with a riot.
You can, but the rest of the mob won’t.
Angry rioters do fucked up shit. Watch LA 92. All that violence and anger turned in on itself, attacked the most vulnerable, weasled into racial divisions.
With a more organised direction for that energy, the city could have been paralyzed, rotten cops and the judges could have been run out of LA and real systemic change could have begun.
exactly.
but everybody got
their rocks offcatharsis and the feeling was expressed - even though the reason for the feeling was never addressed.
doubt
I mean sure you can use the chaos to try and get cover for something specific. But generally, people rioting are on-tilt and looking for easy targets that look like their oppressors. Then, everybody gets catharsis and the riot disappears.
It’s just lazy. but, better than nothing, i guess.
Peaceful protests are most effective when they’re backed by the threat of violence. It’s not the keg that forces concessions, it’s the fear of the powder within. The cops have no issue beating up defenseless victims in the name of “order”. Only when they’re at risk themselves do they think twice.
For that, the protests need to be large enough that escalation becomes an actual concern. Pre-gunpowder armies stacked their infantry deep, because more people behind you makes you bolder in face of the enemy before you. The larger the crowd, the more dangerous the potential rioters become.
Premature escalation might get the bold vanguard beaten and made examples of. Only when there’s enough support to keep the momentum going can riots effectively serve as an “or else” to the peaceful demands.
No doubt there are Americans downvoting
Not an american, you are still being silly. Also you sound american with all that rollover attitude to authority. They are outlawing peaceful protesting, the solution is not to keep doing the same thing but with more smugness.
And what do you do when everyone who would dare to do anything is locked up by peacefully protesting? You’re going to run out of bodies, before you realise you’re fucked.
Yeah you just don’t know what you are talking about.l
You’re entitled to your opinion, but you didn’t answer the question.
Peaceful only works when the people in power have a conscience and are willing to come to a peaceful resolution. When they want to eliminate your ability to tell them no, then rioting becomes the path forward.
We are in the UK, not the US.
And you in the UK are being told that you can’t tell the establishment “no” through peaceful protest.
The leaders of the US and UK have more in common with each other than they do with their own people
I agree.
Although in the UK there was some old graffiti that said ‘a nation of sheep, owned by wolves’.
I would say it is more ‘a nation of sheep, governed by wolves, owned by pigs. We’ve all heard of wolves in sheep’s clothing, well we have a lot of pigs in sheep’s clothing. And the wolves and the pigs interbreed freely, so we have all manner of porcine lupine combinations.’
Not quite as snappy my variation though.
Not American. You are wrong. We are lucky that many have more sense than cowardice because to do exactly what your opponent wants att any point in a rape is bordering malicious
If you could choose between justice and peace, which would you choose?
There can be no peace without justice.
Peace — not to be confused with passivity.
In a culture of peace, true justice could emerge; it would manifest as support of those who experience violence and rehabilitation of those that feel they need to turn to violence to get their way.
Justice and peace are usually not framed as concepts that exist in a vacuum which one chooses between, but rather as interdependent concepts.
I believe that when we choose violence and retribution over nonviolence and rehabilitation/restoration, our manifestation of justice reflects that.
Martin Luther King considered you his greatest barrier to racial and social justice.
MLK didn’t reject peace – he rejected complacency and false order. My belief in restorative justice and nonviolence is directly aligned with his legacy, not in opposition to it.
A culture of peace is proactive, inclusive, and cooperative. I am not the white moderate he spoke of.
Edit: Just still blown back from the notion that I’m somehow a white moderate for advocating for the same peaceful nonviolent action MLK was. Hit the books friend - you’re wrong and here are direct quotes to clarify the situation for those reading:
“And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? … It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”
I’m not concerned about tranquility and the status quo. I agree with MLK that a riot is the language of the unheard. Just like him I still advocate for nonviolent action, while not disowning anyone - especially the unheard.
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”
I’m not saying the latter statement, not even a little bit - not ever. I am an advocate of direct, nonviolent action and positive peace, as opposed to the negative peace MLK criticized. I’m not attached to false order and I value justice over it. I am deeply concerned about justice and humanity and I don’t advocate for moderate and ineffectual action that doesn’t affect the status quo.
Just because I chose peace and advocated for a culture of peace, doesn’t mean I’m ignoring the role of true justice creating true peace. There’s a lot of nuance here and the question was a trap to begin with. If I could go back in time, I would’ve answered peace and justice and just left it at that.
Neither at the cost of the other?
It’s a silly question.
This is so self defeating… Palestine Action should have never been declared a “terrorist organization” in the same category as Al Qaeda and Daesh. People see right through that and it causes a backlash. Nd the UK government doubling down on the backlash creates even more backlash. I mean anyone can see that at this point that the government has lost the political battle on this one and is just chugging through due to the sunk cost fallacy. This is only paving the way for the Right to do a comeback. Fucking centrist liberals man, god damn.
No of course not, Al Qaeda is our great ally in Syria now, or some completely legit and organic offshoot of said group.
The sunsetting of a once great empire.
I’m sure the people of India who starved think the British Empire was great.
I’m sure the Irish really think the British Empire was great.
I’m sure most of Asia and Africa think the British Empire was great.
I’m sure the indigenous people of any land the British Empire conquered think the British Empire was great.
I mean, it was never great in a good sense
It’s been twilight for quite some time now.
Of the arrests, 488 were for holding up signs declaring, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”.
what the fuck?
-
Isn’t this fucking idiot a human rights lawyer? People have a right to protest
-
This is why I fucking left. Oh yeah, the tories are a shitshow. Oh look, their replacements are barely better.
Where’s safe?
Nowhere. I’m somewhere better at least. We went from a good left wing government to an acceptable center right one and back again.
-
As an American, it’s super disheartening to read stories about European governments being fascist assholes as well. It’s nice to imagine there’s somewhere to go to escape it.
“I’m escaping to the one place that hasn’t been corrupted by capitalism…SPAAAAAYCE!”
I mean Europe is the home of facism and literally spread it throughout the world
Yeah, which means they should know better more than anyone else. There’s also the fact that the Nazis were inspired by Jim Crow, so Europe alone doesn’t get the blame.
I honestly believe the anti American sentiment from Europeans on the internet comes from them hoping the origin of racism and facism is connected more to America than Europe. European facism, racism, and sexism has done more damage than any other group on the face of the earth
Considering everything about America originated from England, it’s a real ouroboros type of situation.
There you go, Trump. There’s your 51st state.
It would be poetic, the former colonies coming back to annex the fatherland. Too bad it’s because they’re all Nazis now.
Keir Starmer is a cunt
nah. he lacks the warmth of a cunt.
And depth
and he doesn’t seem as fun as a cunt.
Or as useful.
This will backfire.
We hope.
I just don’t think there is a single occurrence of it not backfiring
And remember this is from the “left” party in the UK.
Fuck Tory Lite
I can’t decide what’s more depressing.
A) The subject of the linked article, or
B) The fact that an article on World Socialist Web Site is linking to posts by Amnesty UK and Defend our Juries (three organizations that should all know better by now) on Xitter.
Jesus
At an absolute bare minimum, the last two should be cross posting everything to Mastodon, and the first should be linking to the Mastodon accounts whenever available.
Oh, look! Amnesty UK has a Mastodon account that they’re not fucking using, apparently never have.
[Edit: spelling]
Kier Starmer is a genocide denying twat.
*arrested as Labour’s Party government moves to ban protests outright.
United Kingdom - The only democracy in the Middle East
UK is a fascist regime. Well done!
Real question:
Im going tongo tin foil haters a bit with the implication:
If you have a faist government why not just bring back the royal family as the leaders?
I get that facism is different than monarchism but many of the key distinctions aren’t that significant imo, in that they both lean heavily towards autocracy and both Aggressively punish dissent.
Folks who get really up in their feelings about the Trump/Harris election seem to forget that Harris was taking campaign advice from this guy. It’s so easy to forget how absolutely poisoned so-called “Liberal Democracy” has become with a broad strain of fascist tendency.
On the one hand, you’ve got a guy who is looking to literally lay siege to cities in the US that didn’t vote for him. On the opposite side of the pond, they’re doing mass-arrests of anyone with a “Please Stop Killing Brown People” bumper sticker. And in the middle, a sea of smug dipshits posting “You got what you voted for”.
Liberals will ALWAYS end up siding with the Fascists to try to suppress the Left. Happened in Germany in the 1930s, and the dumbass liberals eventually ended up lined up against the same walls the communists and socialists were lined up against. If you’re a liberal today and defending this fascist suppression against Palestine Action: you’re next.
Happened in Germany in the 1930s
Happened in the 1910s, even. Hence the old quip about Bernie Sanders killing Rosa Luxemburg.
dumbass liberals eventually ended up lined up against the same walls the communists and socialists were lined up against
Or marched out into the snows of Russia to seize more Lebensraum for the imperial core. Or just bombed to death in Dresden or Berlin when the front lines collapsed.
If you’re a liberal today and defending this fascist suppression against Palestine Action: you’re next.
The hard math of living in a fascist state is standing up and getting shot today or ducking and hiding in hopes you won’t get shot tomorrow.
Liberals made their bed back in 2009. We’re all just living in the aftermath.
I’d argue that the Liberals are a little farther down the line. This administration isn’t finished bullying women, intellectuals, non-Caucasians and the queer community to death, they’re just getting started.
And then there’s the Americans, for whom literally everything has to be about America in some way or another.
Have you seen their fiction? Even in sci-fi, they’re the center of the fucking universe. Galactic Space Empire HQ, located in NYC/LA/San Francisco of course.
I mean… After the USSR fell, the US was the only major player in space for like 25 years, until China finally started to dabble the last few years.
It’s not necessarily an ego stroke to extrapolate from that point.
But also, the media is targeted at American viewers. Of course they’re going to use familiar cities.
Do you also complain that doctor who, despite being able to travel anywhere in the both the universe AND time, lands in modern day UK so often?
I do find it offensive that every time the Doctor and companions land in the US, everyone is a gun-toting dumbass.
I mean, it’s accurate, but still offensive somehow!
All authors are like that. You write about what you know, that way you save yourself lots of research and mistakes.
As opposed to British fiction where everything os centered around London? George Orwell thought London would be the center of the Anglo-American axis back in 1948 while the British Empire crumbled around him.
What? He called it “Airstrip One”.
Your point being? Do you think Orwell named the UK after a US air force call sign that wouldn’t be coined until after his death? I won’t be lectured on literature by someone who has the media comprehension of a middle schooler.
Well, according to my middle school media comprehension the implication of the name “Airstrip One” is that the island of Great Britain acts as a bulwark against or potential invasion staging post to Eurasia, as it did in the Second World War. London is far from the Imperial Centre in that story, though there is no clear capital of Oceania and Ingsoc. Orwell’s pessimistic view of the UK’s future is as a province of the American Empire.
Similar issue, yes. It’s said that you should write what you know, my point is more that Americans seem incapable of producing fiction where the lower 48 aren’t the nexus of the universe, not that the British weren’t also doing the same thing centuries earlier.
Aliens sure seem to visit London all the god damn time in Dr. Who. People write literature about the places and people they know. Why would an American write a book about aliens visiting Berlin?
Also, how long ago do you think 1948 was? Because it wasn’t “centuries” ago. And the most prominent American sci-fi authors do not have their stories revolve around the US. The Foundation, Dune, Star Wars, and the Expanse were all written by American authors and only one of them has any characters from the USA
1948 was before black people were given equal rights in the US, so as far as I am concerned it should have been centuries ago. Stop dick measuring with the previous garbage empire like their shortcomings somehow excuse your own.
edit:
Was it my support of civil rights or my pointing out how silly it is to compare yourself to a condemnable empire as a defense that made you mad?
Americans own the world. Everyone else just lives in it.
That might have been true 40 years ago but those times are gone, you just haven’t realised it yet
What about the other 160 or so democracies? How they doin?
Especially the proportional representation ones. FPTP is just a hint of democracy.
What about the other 160 or so democracies?
I’m not sure where you’re getting your numbers, but…
In 2024, just 6.6% of the world population lived in “full democracies”, falling from 12.5% a decade ago. Overall, the vast majority of these countries are in Europe, with notable exceptions—such as Japan, Mauritius, and Costa Rica—across other global regions.
I’m counting far less than 160.
FPTP is just a hint of democracy.
Sure. But then IRV still gave us NYC Eric Adams as mayor of New York. There’s more to democracy than the shape of your ballot.
Calling Japan a full democracy is a stretch. They’ve been ruled by one party for over half a century, and definitely not b/c they’re good at their jobs.
In 2024, just 6.6% of the world population lived in “full democracies”,
I’m counting far less than 160.
Sorry I didn’t make any claims as to what constitutes a “full” democracy, I was going with these guys who put it at about 167 “democracies”.
Sure. But then IRV still gave us
IRV is just FPTP+. Like you say, it isn’t an electoral system so much as a ballot system.
We studied it, in Canada, under the name “Alternative Vote”. It was the only one we could find that was worse than FPTP:
There’s a reason why politicians keep suggesting it, and it’s not for our benefit.
Sorry I didn’t make any claims as to what constitutes a “full” democracy
I’d settle for what defines “democracy” at all. I’ve seen folks claim El Salvador is a democracy while Nicaragua isn’t, entirely because the government of El Salvador is politically aligned with the US and the Nicaraguans are not.
IRV is just FPTP+
I don’t really care what flavor of election system you think is the right one. However you square it, you can have shit candidates win popular mandates. There is no system that’ll keep people you don’t like out of office, shy of a dictatorship that puts you in charge.
There’s a reason why politicians keep suggesting it
Suggesting it? Thirteen states have now banned ranked-choice voting as municipalities decide on whether to adopt it
I met an Aussie in Thailand who claimed that ranked ballot elections are undemocratic, that recent Australian protests were not racist, that immigration was a huge problem in Australia, that Australians are not actually racist at all, and that recent Australian protests were about protesting Palestine, and not racist at all.
I don’t really care what flavor of election system you think is the right one.
You’re against logic and reason?
However you square it, you can have shit candidates win popular mandates. There is no system that’ll keep people you don’t like out of office, shy of a dictatorship that puts you in charge.
I’m not interested in a system that will keep people I don’t like out of office. I’m interested in a system that represents the will of the people, rather than the will of a select rich and powerful few.
If you’re willing to care, you might find one.
Suggesting it? Thirteen states have now banned ranked-choice voting as municipalities decide on whether to adopt it
I don’t see the problem here, like I said, it’s worse than FPTP.
Always has been. See 1984, V for Vendetta, etc.
You… you know those are fiction, r-right?
You know all fiction is based in reality, right? Authors write what they know.
Please shoot me.
Sorry, in UK you get stabbed only.
Yeah we are America lite and it’s harder to get guns.
UK is a fascist regime
It’s really not.
https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-kingdom/freedom-world/2025
https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-states/freedom-world/2025
A country actively kidnapping people off the streets, removing due process and habeus corpus, deporting prisoners to random countries, building concentration camps, and deploying troops on the streets has a score of 84/100. Forgive me for not feeling particularly free with my score of 91.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_House#Criticism
Having a read of this I think it’s fair to say boiling down a nation’s “freedom” to a single number is a silly unacademic metric, before even getting into the likelihood of bias and manipulation.
If it looks like a
duckfascist, swims like aduckfascist, and quacks like aduckfascist, then it probably is aduckfascist. Regardless of what a likely bias think tank’s research may say.Wow, what a clown propaganda machine.
2024
They weren’t declaring all protests illegal then, were they
They aren’t now, either. 2024 was after the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, too, which was the biggest restriction on the right to protest in a long time and would be more significant than the change being discussed.
It’s a bit worrying that people are just taking this incorrect headline from a propaganda rag at face value.
I’m sure the thousands of arrests are all made up, too, huh?
What? Are you saying that all protests have already been declared illegal? Go ahead and cite this declaration you just made up. And also explain the hundreds of thousands of protesters who have not been arrested recently on various causes, from pro-Palestine marches to anti-immigration ones.
If you haven’t gone nuts and don’t actually believe this thing that isn’t happening has already happened, then the arrests of people are irrelevant because they’re not part of proposed changes.
They need to update it apparently, because I can’t see those rights.
Oh, sorry, I didnt know the “Freedom Eagle Burger index” based off Washington DC said it’s not fascist. Well, pack up guys, nothing to see here!
And how else would you describe mass imprisonment of pro-palestinian protesters? Furthermore: how is this fascist apologia not banned on .world?
Too busy complaining about getting banned from .ml
how is this fascist apologia not banned on .world?
Man, MAGA sure hates free speech.
Zionist scum
Fascist.
