"Soon, we will make 'Prevent' a statutory duty for all public sector organisations. I want to see new banning orders for extremist groups that fall short of the existing laws relating to terrorism. I want to see new civil powers to target extremists who stay just within the law but still spread poisonous hatred. .......
It will aim to undermine and eliminate extremism in all its forms - neo-Nazism and other forms of extremism as well as Islamist extremism - and it will aim to build up society to identify extremism, confront it, challenge it and defeat it."
When Theresa May says confront and challenge she does not mean debating the issue. She means shutting down internet sites and banning their authors. (See for instance Prevent Strategy). On the Internet she means: "intervene in the virtual space to curtail illegal activities".
The obvious difficulty here is that, as May herself admits, she desires to ban speech that is within the law but which she finds objectionable.
The whole history of the struggle for freedom in the West, from the Magna Carta onwards, involves preventing the Government from having arbitrary control over our speech and ideas. Those in Government are often sociopaths and frequently psychopaths. They cannot be trusted with such great power over the people. This is the lesson of English history. Theresa May does not seem to have understood English history. If the political elite find they are threatened by another political group and they have this constitutional power to Prevent it then they will use that power. When Labour was in power it used the Terrorism Act just to stop heckling at its Party Conference.
Theresa May has answered one conundrum; how could the Italians or Germans or the Russians in the 1920s have just allowed the gradual but complete removal of political freedom? When I look around I find 60% of the population utterly indoctrinated in Western Materialist values. My compatriots have no understanding that materialism has no moral foundation, they have no comprehension that wishing to remove all racial difference is a form of racism, that perpetually invading other countries "in the national interest" is imperialism, no desire to defend free speech, etc... The population have quietly become Materialist fanatics with no understanding of philosophy or history and absolutely no doubt that they - "We" - are right. No doubt.
It must have been the same when the National Socialists and International Socialists (communists) rose to power in the last century: the population approved of what was happening. They just simply accepted it all, hook, line and sinker, they had no doubt. They were quiet fanatics. Once the People cannot even see the possibility that they could be wrong and approve of the Government quashing all opposition the Government can begin evil in earnest.
It is chilling to note that the tyrants of the 20th century used the fear of terrorism as the lever to prise the people away from freedom.
How can you stop this? Don't vote for the political elite. Don't vote at all if you can think of no alternative to Labour, Tory or Lib-Dem. Shake them out of their elite complacency. They believe that they and their parties are destined to govern and that your vote of support is certain whatever they do or say. Don't waste your vote on the political elite. This resistance will re-awaken the discussion of the philosophy and practice of politics in the same way as the Scots Referendum woke up the Scots.
If nothing is done then the quiet confidence of the majority in the political elite will slide us into disaster. We may, in future, blame the party that seizes emergency powers and never relinquishes them for depriving us of freedom but the true villains will be ourselves.
Comments