Archive: https://archive.ph/fOuAh
Starmer announced a new police unit to deal with "violent disorder". While the main focus has been on the rioting over the last couple of days, lesser known measures that have been introduced include:
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Mass surveillance including monitoring and facial recognition of all individuals to target anyone through special measures that could include banning of freedom of movement, freezing bank accounts and criminal behaviour orders imposed on anyone who is expected to dissent. Everyone will be subject to movement restrictions.
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Targeting of the "far-right" in a political and media sphere. Farage was singled out by the media. Martin Daubney who presents for GB News has been arrested.
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A legal request to shut down and remove all "speculation" or speech that could be deemed incitement or shutting down telecom networks in areas where people are protesting or trouble has broken out.
All police forces and the Government will implement these measures with immediate effect.
The problem lies in what mass protest symbolizes and threatens. And let's be clear, the actual power behind a mass protest is the threat of violence. The idea is that a bunch of people show up, not yet doing violence, but the leaders are supposed to fear that they might and try to negotiate now rather than let it go to the next step. If mass protests were simply supposed to be a demonstration that a lot of people think something, they wouldn't have been necessary in the first place since the leaders already know what their own populations think and want. They just don't care. Things get to the level of mass protests because they're already ignoring what the people want, and the protest is supposed to show them that they had better start paying attention or else.
And therein lies the problem. The right has been demonstrating for decades now that we're not actually willing to go to the next step. The left has our number. They know that we have a line that we will step right up to and scream and shout and stomp our feet by the hundreds, but we won't step over it. It completely takes the teeth out of mass protesting. The left's response to our protesting is "let them drive around and wave flags and scream and shout, what are they actually gonna do?" We are an angry snarling bulldog on a 10 ft chain. The left is fully aware that all they have to do is walk 11 ft away and absolutely nothing will ever happen.
Notably, especially in Britain, they bend over the moment certain groups want anything. Mostly Peaceful Protests filled with Mostly Peaceful stabbings and slashings and burnings. There's far less of them than there are actual peaceful protesters of any number of different stripes who get the jackboot on their throats, but since those ones go "okay, not even myself, but someone who looks vaguely like me has been mildly sassed, guess it's time to kill fifty people!" instead of coming down on those ones with the hammer of god, there is only acquiescence. Which to be seems VERY backwards, we should be rewarding the ones who do so peacefully and harming/discouraging harshly the ones who don't, but that is how Britain do things. And Canada. And the USA, too.
We need a cultural shift to a more civilized society, but... That's a BIG ask, apparently. "Be peaceful to the peaceful, harmful to the harmful", is an ideology that just isn't catching on.