UK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'
netpol.org198 points by robtherobber 2 days ago
198 points by robtherobber 2 days ago
There is probably a legitimate basis for some powers against actual foreign intelligence operations. But the proposals in the article defining "subversion" to include environmental activism, independence movements, or criticism of UK policy show how quickly these things expand beyond their original scope. The Terrorism Act was meant to exclude domestic activists but two decades later it has been used against protest groups
As is tradition. Put the tool in the toolbox, label it "it's for bad guys" to sell it to people, oh no, govt used it for something else, what a surprise.
And even if current government is 100% benevolent, just putting the tool in the toolbox means any subsequent govt, that might not be that, can use it.
> But the proposals in the article defining "subversion" to include environmental activism, independence movements, or criticism of UK policy show how quickly these things expand beyond their original scope.
Yes, but I wouldn't put "independence movements" in that list. Much as I'm relaxed about the Welsh and Scots' independence movements, for Northern Ireland to do whatever it wants including the current kicking-can-down-road approach, and for any future potential from the Cornish and London vague aspirations that nobody currently takes seriously…
… if I was a hostile foreign power, then I would absolutely support all of those campaigns. And more. (Independence for Langstone! :P)
So, you support the government labeling those movements as "subversion"? Your opinion isn't very clear here. If so, why are those movements so different, or are you supporting the government's move entirely, because of those cases?
Noticing that an issue has two opposing sides with good points doesn't mean I must pick a side to favour, nor even that I am competent to do so.
I'm in no position to weigh these things even in isolation, let alone against each other.
All I can do is say that I sympathise with everyone in the UK who wants independence from Westminster, and yet I would absolutely abuse the hell out of that kind of sentiment if I was a foreign agent trying to undermine the UK. Divide and conquor, very old technique.
It will never cease being funny to me how Eurocrats/Anglocrats pout their chests, proclaim proudly how "free" and "democratic" they are, and then proceed to implement a police state and surveillance regime which the DDR could only dream of. Sure you have "nothing to hide", and "intentions are good". Was that also true for every decade in European history? Will that also be true in 10 years? In 20 years?
>Eurocrats/Anglocrats pout their chests, proclaim proudly how "free" and "democratic" they are
That's weird, I've never met a single one since we don't even have a constitution to enshrine civil liberties.
Just listen to any politician talking about the "dictator" Trump while they arrest people over mean tweets.
oh politicians! Yeah fine I agree, but rest assured no member of the public labours under such delusion.
Things are bad, send help.
Europe has for a long time been the cradle of fascism. This type of behaviour should be seen as more of the same.
This is classic "think of the children" backdoors; whether in the legislation or enforcement or literal backdoors. Politicians know that no one is going to publicly come out and say a law to "protect" children shouldn't be passed.
It’s not just the use against protest groups but selective use of it, that makes this extra bad. From the article:
> The risk is magnified by the racist and colonial legacy of Britain’s intelligence and policing institutions, whereby ‘loyalties’ and ‘foreign influence’ are racially coded terms. It is clear who the state thinks may constitute an agent of ‘foreign power’. Hall acknowledges the risk of “putting certain nationalities under the spotlight or appearing to question their loyalties”, but this is brushed over by the alleged extraordinary threat of national security risk.
This type of abuse of powers is already becoming normalized in America. For example, Governor Abbott of Texas and other politicians from right-leaning states have explicitly condemned Sharia Law and Islam, and are taking various actions to marginalize those communities. The recent incident with an Afghan national has further radicalized the right.
I can see how Sharia Law has no place in a democratic constitutional republic, but Christianity shares many of the same issues as Islam in terms of supremacist tendencies. And many on the right have no issue openly claiming that America is a Christian nation, and advocate for puritanical integration of their religion into law. This gets no condemnation from the right, and I doubt they’ll use their powers to stop the push for theocracy.
> I can see how Sharia Law has no place in a democratic constitutional republic
If there is a sizable population of people who really want to live like this, then why not? Demographics should be politically represented, no?
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Most antifascist groups are not protest groups. Most of them are watchdogs. When a story about military groups (including police) making nazi salutes or getting nazi tattoos or praying in front a a picture of Hitler come out, 99% of the time it's an antifa group that contacted a journalist and provided them picture, dates and specifics about the story. If you want to arrest all antifascists, you will have to arrest half of the OSINT community, because they're the one who developed a lot of the tools.
In 2023, the number of people arrested for online comments: UK (12,183), Belarus (6,205), Germany (3,500), China (1,500).
How do people in the UK defend this? I consider myself a liberal and to defend this government is a level of hypocrisy so beyond the pale.
Am I being reactionary here? Are things actually not that bad in the UK?
As with all statistics, one has to first define where the data source is from.
In this case there is an news article for that (https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tommy-robinson-uk-speech-cla...).
To summarize the article, the data is highly unreliable and aren't comparable, nor is it normalized to the population. A person in UK can be charged under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 if they voice a death threat over the phone, while the Belarus case can be a person criticizing the government on twitter. It can also be a person in the UK who sent a unsolicited sexual image. As a legal analyze of Section 127 frames it, most thing it makes illegal is already illegal under other laws which makes it difficult to analyze the scope. A person who sends a death threat is breaking the law both by sending a death threat, but also by using (abusing) a telecom service for the purpose of sending a death threat. It is a bit of an catch all clause.
In the US it is currently very likely that every crime that involves money also involve wire fraud, unless people only use physical cash and never transfer them. They usually also involve tax fraud since illegal money is rarely declared. That makes statistics involving tax and wire fraud in the US a bit difficult to parse into meaningful data.
Given the election forecasts, people in the UK doesn't support at all the current government nor its policies. And the answer seems to be to suppress any criticism while waiting for the next election cycle.
Hmm. Ironically, the party most likely to abolish such laws is probably Reform.
Tories have done approximately nothing, Labour is an old mother lode of speech policing and the Greens with all their postmodern sensitivities plus deference to Islam don't look particularly promising as well.
Once upon a time, Lib Dems were strong on civic freedoms... but I can't remember them doing anything in this regard during the Cameron coalition government.
> but I can't remember them doing anything in this regard during the Cameron coalition government.
Does anyone remember them doing anything other than apologising for going against their election pledge about tuition fees and losing the electoral reform referendum?
Raising the tax thresholds was a Lib Dem policy.
They also stopped the introduction of compulsory id cards.
Yeah, that is the point. I would expect a party that gets into a government once in a blue moon to exploit that opportunity and show off that they can actually achieve something real. That wasn't the case.
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My actually-a-Communist former partner will take great exception to any description of the current UK politicians as "Marxist".
Well, except perhaps Jeremy Corbyn.
Look up our current PMs history.
Marxist definition: class struggle, abolition of capitalist property, collective ownership, systemic change.
Starmer’s record: social-democrat, pragmatic, incremental reforms, accepts market economy.
Why he's not Marxist: avoids ideological rigidity, no revolutionary agenda, shifted toward center-left, compromises for governance.
I suggest reading the Communist Manifesto, so you know what to argue against if nothing else. It's, y'know, free.
Good for you.
However many of us don't believe he has actually changed in his views since his days editing, and writing articles for Socialist Alternatives.
>Government plans new powers to label ... as ‘subversion’
As far as I can see is a lie the website has made up. None of their links include the word subversion. Subversion is not part of British law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subversion#United_Kingdom
Is there some reality to this or is the website just making stuff up to object to some things they dislike?
Six months ago five members of a group called Palestinian Action broke into an RAF base and spray painted two refueling planes involved in surveillance of Gaza. They were charged with a crime.
Then, mainly because of this, the group Palestinan Action was classified as a terrorist group. Since the thousands of people have been arrested in the UK for support of terrorism, for holding signs that say "I support Palestinian Action" and the like.
Why is it my earlier comment with so many upvotes got [flagged] ?
Is it because I mentioned the entity name?
Here is the comment:
"It’s ironic how the West has long championed democracy, demanded freedom of speech, and called for human rights from everyone. Only to suddenly adopt authoritarian, anti-free speech, anti-human rights, and anti-protest stances the moment free speech began to critique Israel.
It’s truly shameful to see such developments."
Dunno for sure, but I'd suggest that mentioning Israel when it's the UK doing it, it might possibly look a bit like shoe-horning in a capital-A-Agenda.
The UK doesn't really have much of a good history on the topic of listening to political dissent from within. The Sex Pistols comes to mind, and the Winter of Discontent, and the anti-Iraq-war march, and the Troubles, and police kettling a few decades back, and a bike safety protest a friend attended where a lot of people who couldn't hear a police order got arrested for not following that order, and there's a former partner of mine could give you a whole bunch of stories about protests you've probably never even heard of.
IMO, the UK's led by aristocrats who only mostly deign to play the game of democracy, but the leadership doesn't really seem to think naturally in those terms and is a lot more comfortable at white tie events.
but isn't it literally connected to foreign entities, with high probability to Israel-Palestine conflict, no?
I don't think so, I never got the impression that Israel is all that big a deal in the UK in either direction.
If they are, they're a lot more subtle about it than they are with regard to USA politics.
The fact that peaceful protesters against the Gaza genocide got labeled as terrorists should be sufficient evidence that the UK government still very much shares their bed with Israel.
Palestine Action were proscribed for a level of violence ("property damage" against the RAF, vandalised aircraft, which makes it sound worse than it is because it was spray paint in the engines) that had previously been considered acceptable.
But "peaceful"? A protest on 6 August 2024 resulted in a charge of grievous bodily harm after an activist allegedly struck a police officer with a sledgehammer, and a protest on 16 March 2025 resulted in three activists being charged with one count each of assault by beating.
I get why they're doing this, but if I'm going to call the Jan 6 thing in Washington DC "attempted coup" (which I do), I have to also say this is not "peaceful".
Wasn't that after that specific protest group broke into a military base and damaged military aircraft? Pretty sure that gets your group labeled no matter what 'banner' you do that sort of damage under.
Because there are huge protests in the UK at the moment for Palestine, which led them to "proscribe" the group Palestine Action. Then everyone (correctly) freaked out about civil liberties, and you can now see videos of grannies being arrested by the UK police for having an "i support Palestine Action" sign multiple times a week.
Religious conflict is old enough to gone through every kind of modern and non-modern ideology, including freedom of speech and humans rights. Why would the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which has been ongoing since late 19th century, be a major driver in west ideology?
It is not a suddenly adaptation of authoritarian, anti-free speech, anti-human rights. Die Gedanken sind frei demonstrates that people been fighting for freedom of speech since the middle ages.
I can give you many reasons, but I am afraid my comment will be flagged.
Some of them:
* Israel is losing support across the world, because now it can't control the narrative, before it was able, people thought journalism exist, now we see it doesn't, and we are witnessing 2 different narratives in the media vs social networks
* EU and US politicians took money from relevant lobby entities (or as we should call it: bribe)
Israel is losing support because Iran is so good at controlling the narrative. Basically all reporting from Gaza is effectively terrorist controlled. Simple test: every single example shown of someone starving was actually of a medical nature. Since they couldn't find an actual starving person to point a camera at why do you think any existed?
Because it was mentioned here that Israel needed to behave like the US in occupied Germany, I look up the numbers and while Israel was starving Palestinians Israel was providing more calories per person than the USA did for Germany.
BTW, the United Nations, which said it had food for the Palestinian to bring the calorie number up, is feeding the Sudan refugees 1/3 of the calories the USA provided to Germans after WW2, and much less than Israel supplied Gaza. But no one cares about the people the UN is starving (remember, the UN had extra calories and foods it begged to get into Gaza). No protests. No fundraisers.
Western elites are absolutely obsessed with Israel. You can see it by the way how every value goes out the window when they and/or Zionism is being criticized. Hysterical overreaction every time.
I think bloc voting & localised majoritarianism is Britain's biggest sleeper issue right now and for the next 20 years so it makes a lot of sense to combat using government powers, even id cards are an unfortunate necessity. However I draw the line on needing ev pay per mile tax.
Once the slippery slope to despotism has been entered, stopping it will get ever harder.
…and UK population plans to continue labelling policy makers as a bunch of gits.
Theres so many times I've written a comment, only to delete it on HN.
Not because of being afraid of government censorship, but because of the sheer futility of fighting peoples faith and outmoded ideas of how our market place of ideas works.
Counter speech, is NOT working. "the best ideas rise to the top" is untrue. We don't have an information economy, we have a content economy. Its the equivalent of the junk food era, just for content.
Governments around the world are going to enact speech controls. Voters are clamoring for it. Its going to eventually be a disaster.
I also do not think that there is going to be any effective opposition, if people keep showing up to battle lines drawn in the 90s and 2000s.
If you want a market place of ideas, you have to figure out how to ensure its a FAIR market place. Not a place where you pit regular folk against corporate PR teams, information teams, and behemoths of all kinds.
And for those holding out hope for decentralized solutions (Mastodon, Bluesky): These have a chance, but there is no solution to moderation labour and costs.
I think you be overestimating how great things were without a marketplace of ideas. "Perfect is the enemy of good" and all that. What is the better system you'd prefer if you limit yourself to real systems that have been tried out?
I have read some thoughtful and insightful comments online that really changed my opinion and outlook, and rarely acknowledged this to the author. You will never know what kind of impact you might have had!
Counter speech is an often weak and ineffective response. It's principle advantage is in being less bad than every other option.
> We don't have an information economy, we have a content economy.
We actually seem to have attention economy, that is the really valuable thing, not content. Mostly it's important what catches our attention first. This is also why counter speech does not work - it does not come first.
> If you want a market place of ideas, you have to figure out how to ensure its a FAIR market place.
Yes and that is obviously not possible at this time.
For the sake of my analogy, the issue I am focusing on is that we tend to think in terms of Information, when in reality (especially with GenAI) the fundamental unit of transaction is content. Information is content with a flag.
I found more traction shifting to thinking of content as the core unit of transaction, and attention the fuel burnt to consume content.
The UK is speedrunning the fight to combat totalitarianism by becoming totalitarian. Of course the crucial difference between the groups, for now, is who gets to be the authority.
It really does feel like a hopeless situation. In one camp the woolly liberals being fuzzy as ever thinking if only everyone could sing happily together everything will be great (again?), and on the other those wanting to open pandora's box of fascist delights, without any sight of quite what is inside before you get to the bottom, somehow believing nothing in there will turn on them in the process.
Remember remember the 5th of November
This comment has been marked as subversive; your social consensus alignment score has been corrected. Thank you!
People are already conditioned to swipe their loyalty cards at the end of the shopping. Requirement to swipe Digital ID for transaction to go through will be a next step.
Low social credit score? Oh you cannot have those ice creams. You said something bad about the party online? No oranges for you. Etc.
People should wholesale reject this.
So much for western "democracies". In the UK, protesting against the murders of children may get you jailed for 15 years, whilst in Canada, being a hitlerian criminal will get you a standing ovation from Parliament.
I can’t find any mainstream news source corroborating the claim that the government has imminent plans to introduce new legislation on the basis of the review mentioned in the article. If you google “hall independent review state threats”, nothing much turns up.
HN is becoming so partisan, it's starting to get on my nerves. The bill text is here[1]. It's extremely benign and the article linked, in fact, argues against it's own straw-man, found in another cited article[2]:
> Yet, another way to view ‘cumulative’ or repeated protests is as sustained public action for justice, solidarity and freedom.
So yes, if you interpret some random bill amendment in whatever way favors your side, you can argue against or for anything (the logical principle of explosion[3]). The problem is that some protests were actually quite disruptive and some people think we should curb this. This isn't some insane authoritarian anti-free-speech power-grab that the original article hints at.
It's sad to see folks lacking any kind of media literacy or critical eye. Also, the source itself is biased (it's a left-wing think tank), but that's a whole 'nother thing.
[1] https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3938/stages/20237/amendmen...
[2] https://netpol.org/2025/10/28/resist-new-laws-restricting-cu...
[3] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~dnp/frege/paradoxes-of-material-i...
> So yes, if you interpret some random bill amendment in whatever way favors your side,
That is how laws often get interpreted. It gives the decision to a police officer. Do you think the police officer will ever make a decision which does not favour their side?
Well in america we had some "disruptive protests" (e.g. rodney king race riots) which were fundamental drivers of fixing systemic injustices in racial equality.
In fact, perhaps most progress toward justice required "disruption," and that's a bargain price to pay.
There are two of more things driving the cumulative protest legislation push. The test will come when the first use it, and we find out which they want to use it against.
1. We have had various highly disruptive repeated "climate" protests (Just stop Oil, etc)
2. We have had over a year of "pro Palestinian" hate marches, more or less every weekend.
3. We have had repeated protests outside various hotels repurposed as hostels for housing illegal migrants.
Of these the latter is the most recent, least disruptive, but most embarrassing for the regime. The regime seems to be complicit with the second.
I suspect most folks expect this power to be used against '2', but I'd not be surprised if it was used against '3' instead.
The argument - and wholly plausible prediction being made - is that these changes lay the groundwork for a legal definition of ‘subversion’ that could prioritise ideology over conduct, providing the state with a broader arsenal to classify any political dissent as a security risk.
This is ALREADY in play with the proscribing of Palestine Action, and subsequent arrest of protestors on Terrorism charges. They are absolutely spot-on in their conclusion that, "These developments reveal a state increasingly concerned with defending its own legitimacy that is weaponising security itself to shield power from accountability."
The potted history of Shabana Mahmood is a grotesquely cynical exemplar of this relatively new phenomenon.
In 2014, a backbench Labour MP named Shabana Mahmood lay on the floor of her local Sainsbury’s in protest against the sale of products made in illegal Israeli settlements. A week later, she spoke to crowds at a Free Palestine protest in Hyde Park, of the “compassion and humanity expressed for the people of Gaza … from every race and every religion.”
Mahmood is now the UK Home Secretary, and gets to decide if the more than 2,000 people arrested for alleged support of Palestine Action – mostly for holding placards stating: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action” – will face criminal trial.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/nov/26/ban-on-pales...
But what changes specifically are we talking about? The amendment that dvt linked to doesn’t have to do with labeling dissenting movements as subversive. It’s still rather unclear to me which specific piece of pending legislation (if any!) the article is referring to.
It's on the back of Jonathan Hall KC and Government Announcements in the recent past following the Palestine Action proscription - e.g. the UK Government recently saying it would amend sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 to further impose conditions on public protests and assemblies.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-police-powers-to-prot...
The changes to the law would allow police officers to consider the cumulative impact of protest when deciding whether or not they are lawful, meaning they could potentially re-route or totally shut down protest they believe could cause serious disruption to local communities.
The Netpol argument suggests that the upcoming annual review of national security legislation is likely to expand the protest-related clauses of the National Security Act in a similar fashion - providing the groundwork for a legal definition of ‘subversion’ that could prioritise ideology over conduct.
This seems to be mainly based on Hall’s ‘Independent Review of State Threats and Terrorism‘, published in May 2025, and his his recent review of the Sentencing Bill, published in late October 2025.
https://terrorismlegislationreviewer.independent.gov.uk/wp-c...
https://terrorismlegislationreviewer.independent.gov.uk/wp-c...
He has been sabre-rattling in the UK media since May in an effort to drum up support - whilst simutaneously playing up to the far-right agitators by supporting 'anti-woke' figureheads like Graham Linehan and his anti-trans agitation.
""I am thinking about the measures that may one day be needed to save democracy from itself. What do I mean? I am referring to counter-subversion"
https://news.sky.com/story/britain-may-have-to-resort-to-ant...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/21/jonathan-hall-kc...
This seems to confirm that the headline claim is based on little more than a hunch. At least, you haven’t pointed to any pending legislation or official government announcements relating to a new legal definition of ‘subversion’.
So HN is having an entire discussion on the basis of one journalist’s irresponsibly sloppy headline writing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You may think that the journalist’s hunch is justified in this case, but to report that the government is planning something, when that is merely a somewhat informed guess at what the government may eventually do, is just bad journalism.
Considering what is happening to the Palestine Action protestors right now in the UK, your waiving away of concerns is hard to read. Give an inch and they (current, or future governments) are given more scope to attempt to take a mile through interpretation or overreach.
- Broad discretionary powers
- Vague thresholds
- Pre-emptive justification
- Lack of neutral limits (time, geography, number of events)
- Expansion of police control over public assembly
Your post to waive away concerns as partisan or alarmist is either an intentionally bad act or, sorry, naive.
One of the problems with Palestine Action is the violent protests they have previously engaged in.
There is a trial in progress at the moment relating to an attack on Elbit Systems where one of the "protestors" seemed to attack a WPC with a sledgehammer. Apparently having caused serious harm to her spine.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79727zeqyvo
So the folks holding signs expressing their support for the group once it has been proscribed (I believe under the TA 2000) are somewhat ill advised.
If they disagree with the proscription, what they should probably be doing it assisting in the Judicial Review of that proscription which is currently ongoing. Certainly they should be waiting until after the review before expressing any support.
As even if the proscription is overturned, those who expressed support for what is currently viewed as a terrorist org may not have the personal consequences of their support undone.
You're conflating the actions of an individual with the goals and aims of the PA organisation. I'm certain their intent is not to harm people. You've described one incident where an individual got carried away with serious consequences for the victim and, likely, the alleged perpetrator.
Also, your reasoning is a little backward about the Judicial Review. I am 100% certain than one of the reasons the Judicial Review was granted at all was due to the strong support and the arrests of thousands of PA supporters.
Lastly, those who stepped up to get arrested did so in the full knowledge of the personal consequences they may face. They used their apparent right to protest to make all of the above happen. If they'd listened to you, nothing would have happened.
That would be a good example of the chilling consequences of the Authoritarian creep we're talking about in this thread.
Indeed. Really the last thing HN needs right now is another overheated, low information discussion about the UK. But for whatever reason UK-bashing seems to have caught the popular imagination in recent times. (There are plenty of negative things that can legitimately be said about the present state of the UK, to be clear, but this sort of low quality reporting shouldn’t be getting attention here.)
I wish they would label Russian and Chinese influence as subversion.
But knowing the UK, they'll probably use it to jail people who post mean things on twitter.
Gonna need a follow up on that one.
> was then interrogated over the picture and another photo of a house he shared on social media – which he told police he had never been to and was taken by someone else.
> The allegations about stalking and illegal possession of a firearm were dropped, but he was then charged with a public order offence for a different social media post.
Either the police is exaggerating, either this guy is exaggerating... or a little bit of both?
https://metro.co.uk/2025/11/29/british-man-arrested-posing-g...
"Mean tweets" and incitement to commit violence are mutually exclusive.
No they're not, and also, it's irrelevant to my point because I'm not talking about incitement to commit violence.
So you're saying a tweet inciting violence isn't mean.
He doesn't know what "mutually exclusive" means, he just heard someone say it.
Of course, combined with Digital ID that will track your movements and what you say, this is a logical next step to achieve total control of the population.
Funny that nobody mentions that these things are not actually coming from government, but were lobbied by asset managers and big corporations.
This is text book fascism (marriage of big corporations and government).
Nobody voted for this.
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
At least they’re attempting to do this through law. The Trump admin is just calling out death threats against the opposition.
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In your view, is it right to categorise PA alongside Al Quaida?
Given that the Palestine Action co-founder said just one day after the Oct 7 massacre: "When we hear the resistance, the Al-Aqsa flood, we must turn that flood into a tsunami of the whole world."
Yes.
Yes. They are both groups that only exist to commit violence against people to further their political aims. They may differ in how extreme they are, but the core of it is they are violent and we should have absolute zero tolerance against such groups.
I mean the opening statements of the KC for the accused perfectly refutes such nonsensical claims.
As Raza Husain KC told the court - “There are reasons of profound importance as to why, in the 32 executive orders that have been made adding organisations to proscribed lists, no direct action civil disobedience organisation appears...Such proscription is repugnant to the tradition of the common law and contrary to the European convention on human rights.”
“The Defendant has deployed this most repressive of regimes against PA, notwithstanding that, on her own evidence, only four out of hundreds of its actions are even capable of meeting the definition of serious property damage.”
“The decision to proscribe PA is an unprecedented and disproportionate interference with articles 9, 10 and 11 [freedom of thought, expression and protest].
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/nov/26/ban-on-pales...
I'm sure you'll also find that lawyers make statements in favour of hopelessly guilty murderers. That's what they are paid to do. Your "freedom of expression" does not include hitting people with sledgehammers and attacking and disabling national defence infrastructure. Of course, we should withdraw from the HRA precisely because it is perverted in this way by lawyers, but those bald statements do not in fact show that hitting people with sledgehammers is legitimate freedom of expression or protest, and it appears that committing such acts is the principle reason for PA to exist.
Won't somebody think of the fighter jets.
Curiously you left out the broken spine.
Of course the terrorist-excusers like to make out that it was just a bit of paint, what's the issue? It was 7 million pounds of damage (to be paid for out of our defence budget, so that's 7 million quid less to spend on other things) and put some of our key national defence infra out of commission for a period to boot.
But of course, that's ok - we should allow such groups to exist going around attacking people, crippling them and destroying national infrastructure to the tune of millions, its just free speech innit.
No sensible country in the world would allow such groups to exist.
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German here, which entity is that?
Someone else answered you and got flagged.
lol i doubt it i've been f5'ing this cause i'm curious but i genuinely don't know. Prince Andrew? Jeffrey Epstein? Israel? Palestine? Hamas? Saudi Arabia? Quatar? Trump? Tories? Reform Party? Gurkhas? Rape Gangs? (I can't think of anything more...)
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Your comment was flagged by community members, most likely for being flamebait, which is explicitly against the guidelines. The Israel/Palestine topic is discussed extensively on HN each time there is a major breaking story with significant new information. Dang and I have gone to great efforts to create space for these discussions and keep them as healthy as possible [1]. Some posts about the topic get flagged by some community members for being off-topic or likely to start flamewars, but this has nothing to do with 'silencing' any particular viewpoint. HN isn't the place for day-to-day political debate, regardless of the specific topic. That's been the consensus for many years.
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Where dang lives, it was about 4am when your comment was posted and about 11pm where I am. None of your comments had been seen by any moderators till now. They have been flagged by many community members, because they clearly breach the guidelines and the guidelines apply equally no matter the topic or side. Dang has gone to great efforts to allow the Israel/Palestine issue to be given exposure and extensive discussion here, on multiple notable occasions. Please stop posting inflammatory comments. It's been easily observable over the past 2+ years that we have no problem with this topic being discussed on HN, but the guidelines still apply to everyone. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It’s ironic how the West has long championed democracy, demanded freedom of speech, and called for human rights from everyone.
Only to suddenly adopt authoritarian, anti-free speech, anti-human rights, and anti-protest stances the moment free speech began to critique Israel.
It’s truly shameful to see such developments.
> Only to suddenly adopt authoritarian, anti-free speech, anti-human rights, and anti-protest stances the moment free speech began to critique Israel.
It's not sudden. The West's hate speech laws have been coming for ages. Anyone silly enough to put that much enforcement over speech into play cannot now complain that it's being used against people they like.
This US-centric take blatantly fails to address all of the problems, the right-wing ideologies, which have easily had a much greater impact on the rise of fascism across the world.
And to be clear, US liberalism is largely supportive of right-wing ideology, the US Democratic party would be considered a right-wing party in many other countries. So it's both parties who are to blame here, but the underlying authoritarian fascist current is decidedly right-wing politics
This was nothing to do with the US. I was actually thinking about the UK's laws when I wrote it.
I'm trying to talk ideas; your post is riddled with just identifying which team is the goodies and the baddies. I don't think there's much common ground to be had between discussing ideas vs tribalism.
They're all the baddies, at least in the US. You must have missed the part where I described both parties as contributing to authoritarian fascism.
It's ridiculous to accuse me of peddling tribalism when my post intentionally pushed back against the very tribalism coloring your original post.
Can we get back on topic?
> It's ridiculous to accuse me of peddling tribalism when my post intentionally pushed back against the very tribalism coloring your original post.
No it didn't. You said this has just appeared, when actually it's been happening for years.
Yes, you were thinking of the UK's laws, but from the perspective of the US Constitution. There's an implicit tribalism in your own post where you assume without contest that the US' definition of free speech is the only one that can possibly have merit.
> “…long championed democracy…”
Just occurred to me, before the free internet both dissemination of opinions and access was restricted. Now we have unprecedented access, and there are obvious strains and regression. Makes you wonder what we missed from the times before the internet.
To be sure, this legislation sounds draconian: “This expansive framing blurs the line between political dissent and subversive threat. Intent becomes a political judgement, inferred from beliefs, causes and associations rather than conduct.”
I agree. Although not sure how sustained or substantive that "championing" ever really was.
It's stretching all the way back to 2020. It isn't something new. It isn't just the government you need to be most worried about silencing you now, as other institutions wield equally great power.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
History, just like everything else in Nature, is cyclical.
I hate this quote as it is usually recited by those “weak men”.
I agree with the sentiment, I’d probably phrase it slightly more politely as “people who use this always seem to believe they are the ‘strong men’ and other are the weak”
And those that hate the quote are the “strong men”? Given the many complaints about it, instead of trying to read between the lines about history being proved time and time again to be cyclical, I wouldn’t be so sure.
The responses, ranging from political partisanship, ad hominem, to being offended by the choice of words, are certainly a sign of the times.
Notably, this quote makes actual historians cringe. But hey, if it sounds cool it must be the Truth!
It's a protofascist phrase, part of the problems we have is people adopting this worldview, that life has to be hard in order to create "good men". It's used to defend rightwing social darwinism.
If anything, history goes the other way around. Fascism ("strong men") comes from good times, as a reaction. They create authoritarianism and discrimination ("bad times"), which slowly liberalizes and equalizes (gives rise to "weak men"). This makes situation better until another fascist takeover.
How exactly did you get to the conclusion that fascism needs "strong men"? The current US regime has nothing but the weakest, most fearful men clutching to power. You really think that Trump's call to execute senator Kelly comes from a position of strength? Your current bad times came from a few decades of weak men letting their fear and hatred (and greed) guide their vote -- strong men had very little to do with it.
Anyway, the quoted saying is not about any specific ideology, that's just your own projection. Here's the cycle reformulated without any specific ideology:
Hard times create strong men: hardship breeds discipline
Strong men create good times: discipline breeds prosperity
Good times create weak men: prosperity breeds complacency
weak men create hard times: complacency leads to hardship
"How exactly did you get to the conclusion that fascism needs "strong men"?"
Fascists (and protofascist advocates of social darwinism) do think that! Whether they actually are or not "strong men" (what does it even mean?) is immaterial to that saying.
I disagree with the saying. Even your formulation. Hardship doesn't breed discipline, and prosperity doesn't lead to complacency. There are many disciplined people who have good and prosperous life, and also, why is being disciplined more important than good life? It's authoritarian and backwards.
For example, being homeless (hardship) doesn't make one disciplined. Most likely, it will make one into an alcoholic.
Hardship is horrible and we should universally reject it.
The phrase is commonly used amongst conservatives, yes. Labelling it “proto fascist” is ridiculous.
People who forget the hard lessons their ancestors learned are doomed to repeat their mistakes.
Exactly! Its lucky we learned the lesson of WWII and invaded all those horrid dictators. Wait....
If there's one thing everyone can agree on, it's that Hitler really brought the good times for the people of Germany.
Cyclical, like my eyes rolling in my sockets every time I read this quote.
That is an extremely shallow phrase, usually quoted by people who have nothing to add except an appeal to "the good old times" when "men were men".
So is the idea that "history is cyclical". It's literally the bell curve meme, and you're in the middle x)
If this obnoxious and seemingly ubiquitous platitude were actually true, then torture would be a moral duty. Enforced poverty would be a moral duty. Governments would be obligated to regularly arrange mass starvations for their citizens.
I don't believe it. Personally, I think spiritual weakness and religious corruption are more likely culprits -- and not necessarily the type of spirituality or religion that you might be thinking of.
Either way, "good times" is a dangerous place to put the blame. It relieves us of responsibility for our own catastrophes (it was the good times' fault), and it makes us suspicious of prosperity and happiness.
Good times are not evil. We don't need to shun them, provided we keep strengthening the better angels of our nature.
As strongly as many of us are on a particular side, the latest battleground for and against material support for overseas belligerent fascism is just a lightning rod for a deeper struggle.
While most of the individual members of the state are just rallying around the flag, the core ideological group inside the state has the belief that the public must never be allowed to dictate the choice of geopolitical ingroup and outgroup. The repression they are enacting isn't about lsreaI per se, it's about the principle of the thing.
You truly believe this change is because of Israel?
This change? IMHO Yes.
It was coming anyway, and it could have been any event that triggered it. The right event at the right time?
But as others here mention, the powers that be are unhappy that the population isn't siding with their position. The government is fine with dissent against Russia because they are "the enemy" in the narrative.
Not to say there hasn’t been creeping authoritarianism, growing mass surveillance, etc. for the last few decades, but it has seemed that this one issue has stood out as utterly unique, especially in the UK in that there was basically bipartisan accord from those in power across all the mainstream political views, and the only “allowed” position from them was uncritical support for that country’s Government and their military actions.
At the same time, there seemed to be a much larger group of people in the normal population who disagreed with those in power than most other issues (when at least some representatives in a major party might roughly align with the people)
The uk has specifically banned support for Palestine Action so it's a reasonable conclusion
Didn't that group attack an RAF base?
Attack is a strong word for throwing a can of paint.
After the 2024 riots there were mass arrests and prosecution, but only talk about reviewing groups as to whether they should be proscribed.
Why does a member throwing a can of paint get you classed as a terrorist organisation, while organising riots that involve throwing molotov's and causing serious injury not?
Their initial statement the day of (or after) the action at the RAF base was something like:
"disabled aircraft using paint and crowbars"
> disabled aircraft using paint and crowbars
Is that "terror"?
Besides, why not prosecute them for their actions, why proscribe the organisation as a terrorist one, while at the same time ignoring groups who commit much more violent offenses (such as the one given) and concentrate on prosecuting "personal responsibility"?
Because if you stir up enough hate some will act on it. You can't hope to control stuff like this by personal responsibility.
I don't know what you are trying to say here.
Is that for or against the governments hypocritical position?
> why proscribe the organisation as a terrorist one, while at the same time ignoring groups who commit much more violent offenses
You seem to completely ignore this.
And violently sledgehammered a female police officer breaking her spine.
and that's terrorism, is it?
i just thought it was GBH, but i'll update my definition if you can cite your sources...
Given that the Palestine Action is a proscribed terrorist organisation under the Terrorism Act, and its co-founder said just one day after the Oct 7 massacre: “When we hear the resistance, the Al-Aqsa flood [Hamas' name for the massacre] we must turn that flood into a tsunami of the whole world.”
Yes.
Did it happen when people protested Russian invasion? No
Did it happen when people protested China for the treatment of Uyghurs? No
Did it happen when people speak up (no protests, yet) about UAE involvement in Sudan? No
I made my own conclusions based on these and other similar data points.
It's been going on for longer than that. Ask Graham Linehan.
Graham Linehan is an example of nothing other than how to tank your marriage, friendships, and any semblance of a professional career over a misguided moral crusade.
He was a well-known and liked figure in Ireland off the back of Father Ted, Black Books and the IT Crowd. He was a huge blogger and early presence on Twitter, with both him and his wife being public feminists and supporters.
He was also - and this is the important bit - a public advocate and supporter for the pro-choice position in our abortion referendum, which gave him some sense of intellectual and moral security in his heartfelt positions, as well as a huge fanbase.
Unfortunately some of his previous advocacies evolved into TERFs, and he with them. This then became a mono-crusade under the guise of standing up for the women in his life and women in general. Slowly but surely his fanbase, his professional connections, and society at large fell out of step with him.
https://metro.co.uk/2021/02/23/graham-linehan-joins-queer-wo...
As his antics became more extreme and problematic in their optics, his friends, his family, and his Wife begged him year after year to stop sabotaging his own existence before eventually having to leave him.
He's dug down so far at this point that he's being courted by Joe Rogan, which is probably the saddest bit of this entire story.
This recent interview piece is instructive: https://observer.co.uk/culture/interviews/article/graham-lin...
The interviewer is clearly sympathetic to Mr Linehan and their personal views are not opposed.
But nonetheless they end up thinking "I tried to understand why I couldn’t get through, why the piece I’d wanted to write for years would be a failure" - because the guy is an obsessive, unwell crank, that's all. It is a sad story.
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The UK Supreme Court ruling went out of its way to say that it wasn't vindicating any such position, saying:
It is not the role of the court to adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex, nor is it to define the meaning of the word “woman” other than when it is used in the provisions of the EA 2010. It has a more limited role which does not involve making policy. The principal question which the court addresses on this appeal is the meaning of the words which Parliament has used in the EA 2010 in legislating to protect women and members of the trans community against discrimination. Our task is to see if those words can bear a coherent and predictable meaning within the EA 2010 consistently with the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (“the GRA 2004”). (Para 2)
The court also concluded that a biological sex interpretation would not have the effect of disadvantaging or removing protections from trans people. This is because, in addition to protection based on the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, they would also be protected from discrimination based on being perceived as or associated with a sex which differed from their biological sex (paras 249-261).
Unfortunately, it was taken as vindication of the anti-trans position by all public commentators regardless of the commentators themselves were pro or anti.
That's because the Supreme Court's job is statutory interpretation, not making political statements. But given that it's such a politically divisive topic, I think it's clear they felt the need to remind readers of the FWS judgment that it's about the former and not the latter, and that it should be considered in this framing.
That it also happens to be a major and very welcome win for women's rights is orthogonal to the intentions of the UKSC.
ghoulish troll man refuses to shut up, gets told to eff off.
in other news, water makes things wet.
This Xennial cannot help but notice the zeitgeist mirrors the emotional abstract of the Reagan 80s.
See Roger and Me, Michael Moore's first film. Economic downturn, workers facing uncertainty as the already opulent thrive.
Coincidentally GenXers that would have come of age at the time are middle managers and decision makers in corporate land.
CEO that jacked up Epipen prices. Insurance CEO that got got. Musk and Thiel. The original emo Smashing Pumpkins generation that grew up in a cocaine fueled era of news full of desperation and despair. Easy for them to tolerate and accept then as their brains nursed on it.
Good luck getting them to feel bad: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/style/gen-x-generation-di...
Indeed, but historical nuance bears remembering here. The UK has been authoritarian for much of its history: the monarchy; sentencing to prison thousands of miles away to be slave labor for colony building for stealing a loaf of bread.
Even while Europe is "Pan Western" it's still heavily differentiated. As [REDACTED TO PREVENT REFLEXT DOWNVOTES] says, "US is the central pillar of Western civilization." This is true in the sense that it embodies values closest to the Western ideal.
This is one of those conversations that in 2025 entering will get you on a GB border control blacklist, so I'm going to shut up now.
Critiquing Israel as well as any political or religious entity or set of beliefs should be allowed, or there will be problems. This is basically the Paradox of Tolerance coupled with the fact that intolerance itself seems to be a viral meme if left unchecked.
I still can't believe the UK has arrested people based on their social media posts. Why are people standing for that, over there? (I'm a US citizen.) Meanwhile, one could make direct quotes from the Quran or Hadith and you'd likely remain unchallenged because religion gets a free pass from reasonable critique for some illogical reason. Appeasement will eventually lead to fear...
I can't tell or not, but are you aware that the US has deported/arrested thousands of people for their social media posts?
These are very different situations.
In the US it is typically that someone on a visa has supported a terrorist group or advocated for violence.
In the UK it is rather that a British citizen is visited by the police because someone else has stated they find a piece of content offensive.
In almost no cases has someone supported a terrorist group or advocated for violence. They're literally just taking lists provided by Israeli extremists and deporting them.
Looks like a typical too good to be true funnel to get most people on board and then rug pull. Bait and switch, only executed on longer timeframe
> It’s ironic how the West has long championed democracy, demanded freedom of speech, and called for human rights from everyone.
What's really remarkable is how completely the illusion that this is what they were doing lasted in those countries. Some authority somewhere is cursing letting plebs on the Internet for destroying this.
Ask a latin american and see if they think that's what has been going on.
Honestly, if you are able to, get out while you still can. For too long we’ve been on this slippery path and no government has any incentive to step off it.
People speak as though Farage would be any different but fail to acknowledge that he is as much a grifter as any of the others running, if not more so.
Maybe the Greens would provide some change but, at this point, they’re no more than a protest vote which is why I personally stopped my membership.
The fact that consecutive governments all used phrases like ‘all pulling our weight’ in reference to the cost of living crisis while taking pay rises for themselves should say it all but, sadly, people are too busy chasing headlines and internet points to extrapolate and assess a situation logically.
The UK and its allies will very much be on the wrong side of history should humanity live to see the next century through.
And go where? The US is in pretty bad shape and sinking. Europe can be a bit better or much worse depending on your background. Is there any solid alternative?
You’re right in that there is no one place which will solve all of one’s problems. There is an entire continent across the channel which will at least permit you to easily travel through, and settle in, a decent number of countries with very little effort.
While it’s not a silver bullet by any means, being able to freely move between, and experience, multiple cultures outweighs the melancholy we have back in Blighty.
We, in the UK, are constantly told how great we have it in terms of healthcare and welfare. The reality is the opposite. Our healthcare is barely fit for purpose. Our welfare system fails to help those who need it the most.
The one thing I have noticed more than anything else during my travels is that we, in the UK, have resigned our ourselves to a mentality of hopeless acceptance of the status quo. We tend to shrug it off with reductive statements such as ‘well, X has Y problem’ as if that justifies the swathe of issues which should not be present in a country which has tried to position itself on the world stage as a vestibule for decency and morality over the past century.
Nowhere is _perfect_, but many places are _better_.
i would be able to do that, had a bunch of old farts not voted in a referendum that didn't affect them because they all died of covid
In Ireland opposition to the ongoing Genocide in Palestine is a wholly secular and humanitarian concern, divorced entirely from any correlation with race, religion, ethos or creed - despite agitators attempts to label it to the contrary. We are, however, unique in Western Europe in this regard - but it is not a mono-culture and the reasons are very contextual.
While Germany is not an advocate of genocide in any sense, it is a major arms exporter to Israel and has also barely been re-admitted into the human race as a result of their egregious human rights violations and war crimes in the previous century. This over-erring on the side of caution for their previous victims can thus be explained, if not excused.
The UK, however, have distinguished themselves instead by trying to prosecute Irish Rappers for Terrorism, and proscribing Palestine Action a terrorist organisation - putting it alongside Al Qaeda and ISIS, and making support of the group a criminal offense punishable by up to 14 years in prison. It seems that to protect democracy under the current newspeak you have to arrest Placard wielding Pensioners.
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/united-kingdom/uk-arresting-pe...
British police have made over 1,300 arrests using terrorism legislation at Palestine Action protests this summer — five times more than the total number of arrests for terrorism-related activity in the U.K. in all of 2024. From a retired British colonel to a Catholic priest, half of the 532 people arrested in the Parliament Square protest alone were 60 or older.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/16...
Those participating in anything akin to the Coal Miner's Strikes of the 80s under Thatcher would no doubt find themselves charged with 'domestic terrorism' and put on no-fly lists alongside other societally chilling measures. In short, this is to distract from the economic black-hole they find themselves in post-Brexit, with incitement to hatred spurred on by paid agitators like Tommy Robinson who is in turn backed by Elon Musk/Russia, or Nathan Gill the former MEP who was jailed for accepting around £40,000 in bribes from a Russian-linked individual to support pro-Russian politicians.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/world/europe/uk-far-right...
France has its own particularly xenophobic issues - but they are focused on Islamic migration from North Africa as a follow-on from France's appalling history of Colonial abuse in the region. Thus the French far-right, typified historically by their anti-semitism, end up as uneasy bedfellows and proxy Zionists by virtue of Marine Le Pen's stance since kicking her father out of their far-right party over his persistent refutation of the Holocaust.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/world/europe/france-jews-...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/06/marine-le-pens...
Our colonial legacy in Ireland, as the oppressed, however, grants us a special insight and advocacy for those in analogous circumstances - be it historically re: refusing to handle goods from Apartheid South Africa, or contemporarily with our Occupied Territories Bill (or whatever watered down version passes American MNC muster).
https://mandate.ie/2024/07/the-day-10-workers-changed-the-wo...
You mean the Ireland that wanted to redefine "genocide" so they could call the war genocide? Thus the government that knew it was not genocide.
Sorry, but war in urban areas is extremely ugly. That does not make it genocide.
As for apartheid South Africa--look at the reality. Their revolution was jumping from the frying pan to the fire. Just because the new oppressors were of the same skin color doesn't make them not oppressors.
Nice try.
In December 2024 Amnesty International denounced it as a Genocide, leading to Israel’s foreign ministry defaming the London-based group as a “deplorable and fanatical organisation”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/05/amnesty-intern...
Two prominent Israeli Humanitarian Organisations - B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel - identified it as Genocide in July 2025. Dr Guy Shalev, executive director of PHRI, said: "Silence in the face of genocide is not an option. We want to stress: confronting genocide is not only the responsibility of legal and political institutions. Confronting it demands urgent action from the global health community."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c776xkvz6vno
In September 2025, the world's leading association of genocide scholars, which includes a number of Holocaust experts (IAGS), has declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and that Israel's conduct meets the legal definition as laid out in the UN convention on genocide.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cde3eyzdr63o
In September 2025, the independent international commission of inquiry set up by the UN also concluded that “genocide is occurring in Gaza”. Legal analysis accused Israel of committing genocide in four out of five categories as defined by 1948 convention and cited ‘Direct evidence of genocidal intent’, saying that its offensive there has been waged “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/16/un-commission-...
Pretty telling that you couldn't resist doing apartheid apologia and Zionism in the same comment.
I'd love to know wht this excellent post is getting downvoted, though I suspect I know the answer.
It started before that. The powers that be in western European countries can no longer deliver prosperity or security to their citizens, so must instead use force and repression to cling on to power.
The Wikipedia page on the Swing Riots of 1830 is a great example of how it goes.
Link to proper source https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/ageofrevolution/riots/the-swing-rio...
It can he argued that they only delivered prosperity to European countries by using force and repression elsewhere in the world.
Many European countries got rich without colonization (e.g the Baltic States before WW2, or Austria-Hungary).
Moreover, economic studies show that the profitability was discutable - in the case of France it was a net loss due to the massive infrastructure costs and the subsidies for non-competitive industries.
It can be, but that would be wrong.
In 1096AD, while the Mayans were plunging daggers into their sacrifices' chests, England was busy opening Oxford University. What sort of fool would think that somehow all the engineering and scientific advance that would allow England to reach around the world and establish an empire could possibly have been caused by that empire?
This seems unlikely as support for conspiracy theories about Israel (eg the genocide hoax) are common in the UK including among the ruling classes, e.g. the police and the BBC.
The people being visited by police for creating content that other people say they find offensive are generally anti-immigration or anti gender ideology rather than anti-Israel.
I just asked AI what the thousands of arrests for social media posts so far are for and it didn't say anti-semetic content. It said it's largely targeted at anti-immigrant, gender-critical, and being mean to politicians comments. Israel is the "woke right" line these days though, and something the "woke left" and "woke right" can both agree on hating.
> I just asked AI
Please stop doing this. If someone wants to read LLM-generated hooey of some variety, they can submit a prompt somewhere and read the resulting text themselves.
Well I could do a web search and read all the thousands of articles about social media censorship in Britian and write an essay on it with grammar errors, or I could go on here and blame Israel like the OP, because that's just what I'm feeling today and I saw a bunch of stuff while TikTok doomscrolling yesterday that made me believe that. You'd say the articles I quoted that didn't say Israel were not from reliable sources, and absolutely nobody's mind would be changed. I'll trust AI to be more objective about doing the research. However, I did write the comment myself. I mean I would go back and edit it and put in random no-no words for AI, just to prove that, but I'd get flagged.
Not less than 30 years ago, the British government took away firearms from her citizens.
Now, the British government are arresting her citizens for "unapproved" social media posts done.
How quickly that their government are devolving.