You may remember recently that revelations came out where people who were identified as lockdown and mRNA vaccine skeptics and opponents were being monitored by the Army's 77th Brigade and the intelligence services.
Now with the new CONTEST 2023 Home Office strategy (PDF) that was announced yesterday, single men, under the umbrella term of involuntary celibates, are being monitored by the Government as potential threats to UK security. If you're someone who's on Tinder and getting dates every few minutes, you're probably not in the sights of the Government. But if you're not succeeding on dating apps, claim the single occupancy discount (on Council Tax for lone residents), view content from the likes of Andrew Tate, Pearl Davis, the manosphere including MGTOW, you are now being monitored as part of this new strategy on the grounds of security. The other obvious groups such as Islamic terrorism and the far-right are also being monitored in more limited numbers.
Listening to the debate on TalkTV last night, the host and panellists (one of which was Jess Phillips MP, who you may remember from Carl Benjamin's tweet to her) are very adamant on pushing this narrative.
And with the recent debanking that's happening in the UK, we know that anyone with a heightened risk to their name is going to have their account closed and refused service from everyone else. We know that having favourable views on Brexit, Russia, Novak Djokovic (on his anti-mRNA vaccine stance), women's and men's rights and the right wing plus being perceived as a racist puts you at risk, now your martial status and being perceived as sexist can potentially be added to that list.
I share your frustration because a lot of single men with no criminal violent tendency in their body are going to be caught up in this moral panic and in terms of surveillance, may not even be aware of it and would never consider themselves a criminal, never mind a perceived terror threat. Possibly many of them twenty years ago parroted the line of "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" with a smirk on their face believing they'll never be targeted because they are a law-abiding citizen.
Most individuals don't understand about the issues of single men because they find a partner in high school or in their early adult years and just assume everyone is the same and anything that does not adhere to that path in life is abnormal and a threat to social cohesion. So much so now that psychiatrists have noticed this trend and are using the Andrew Tate controversy to drum up new business from single men in order to make money from them to "deradicalise" them and get them back into the dating game. There is also the recent pushback against the manosphere, most recently Pearl Davis is at the forefront of this pushback.
My concern is that if this kicked off in America and Canada before reaching the UK, then this will only spread to other countries. Problem is, no-one will stand up for single men because the concept of being single for an extended period of time by choice or not outside of bachelor communities is one that carries a stigma, something to be fixed and something to be ashamed of. Which unfortunately means no-one will speak out to put their head above the parapet or defend them.