I have posted this thread on Twitter:
In 2016 I took my sons, then in their mid-teens, to Munich on holiday. We had a great time. And amongst the places we went to was Dachau. This was the first German concentration camp, located now, as then amongst suburban streets. .....
We had not been in the camp information centre for long when my elder son, having read about the first internees in the camp in 1933, suggested to me that ‘They would have put you in here Dad'.
It wasn't too hard to see how he reached that conclusion. The early internees were political opponents of the Nazis. Left wingers, priests, academics, trade unionists, writers. All of them might have been described as vilifiers of the Nazis. I would have been. My son was right.
In that context reports today that Rishi Sunak plans to deradicalise people who 'vilify' the UK through the Prevent programme are deeply worrying. When the Tories think they define what Britishness is, this is most especially the case.
I have noted that Sunak's campaign has insisted the policy would not see people critical of UK Government policy referred for deradicalisation. But, they would say that, wouldn't they? The fact that it even needed to be said makes clear just how unacceptable the idea is.
And evidence from the way in which they have treated those who have sought to appropriately represent the British role in slavery and the abuse implicit in our past history of empire is the clearest possible indication of how little their word can be relied on on such issues.
What we have here is a person saying that disagreement with Britain will require that the critic be re-educated. Just to contextualise, since I believe Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have the right to leave the Union I have no doubt that I fail this test.
And that is indicative of how pernicious this is. What we have is a supposedly mainstream politician suggesting it a crime to vilify Britain when many, quite reasonably, question its claim to even be a country.
Is there a threat in this proposal? I think so. I find it very deeply chilling. I think it indicates just how far down the road to fascism we are.
Be worried. Dachau is set in a nice Munich suburb. That's where fascism happens, right next door to people who no doubt thought it never could, or would.
Except it did. And it could very easily do so here too, especially when ideas like this can be discussed by candidates to be prime minister.
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Totally agree iwth you Richard – scary stuff happening right now, across the board.
Thank you.
And it will be sold as ‘doing the right thing’ and that anyone who disagrees with it ‘hates’ this country. The lamestream media will parrot it uncritically and the right-wing comics will bang the nationalistic drum about it taking on the ‘woke elite’ and other such rubbish.
Scary, indeed. Very, very, very scary.
Craig
Hello again Richard. Just last year (shortly after the jailing of Craig Murray), you and I had a friendly exchange in ‘Responses’ when I suggested that your published opinions might eventually lead to a similar unjust outcome. Back then, I think you underestimated how much real hatred your beliefs generate amongst fascists.
Call me paranoid, but ever since corresponding with Craig during his incarceration, I’ve been vaguely aware of being ‘on the radar’ of somebody sinister.
Slightly off topic I know, but Ron Culley has recently published another account of the probable assasination of Willie McRae by UK security services. Ron’s new book, ‘Firebrand’, builds on his earlier work ‘Who Shot Willie McRae?’. Back in the 1980’s, as a solicitor and SNP activist, Willie McRae sucessfully prevented dumping of nuclear waste in the Galloway hills.
I’ve yet to purchase ‘Firebrand’ but have read the intriguing synopsis by Gareth Wardell on his Grouse Beater blog. Hopefully my two sons are reading this reply to your blogpost… and will buy a copy for their dear old Dad.
Ron Arnott…..you really think your children might get you something you might actually want?
I agree with the sentiment expressed in the post but another way of looking at this is the desire for control because of fear – fear of being rumbled, of being found out.
I think that the Tories are hurtling toward that point.
This called to mind the Poem by Pastor Martin Neimoller:
First they Came
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
But remember, he was a Nazi sympathiser for a long time
Yes. Because, like most Protestants, he was a national conservative, seeking the nation’s revival. Like, I suggest, most Tory Party members and indeed Brexit and Tory (and “New” Labour) voters. He learned better – he was in Dachau by 1938. Have our proto-nazis learned better or will it take even longer for them to see the light – if they ever do? These are dangerous times indeed.
If they put you in the pokey you won’t be short of company: it’s going to need a very big jail indeed to house at least half the populations of Scotland and N Ireland and all the English and Welsh dissidents. Sunak’s proposal is an own-goal as silly and self-harmful as Truss’s short-lived proposal to downgrade public sector pay outside of London – unenforceable, deeply divisive and reveals how desperate and lacking in judgement they are. And these are the best leaders the Tories have?
Staggering, isn’t it?
Just about everybody who has been kicked out of the labour party will be on the list, not just Corbyn, and many of them are Jewish. Can’t keep count of the number of times I’ve been told if I don’t like it here why don’t I just leave, quite often because I stand up for refugees, and my mainland European daughters- in-law.
Russians will be welcomed with open arms, though. Johnson even wants to put another Russian friend of his in the Lords.
If I had no medical problems, I’d be on the streets, like I was in the 80s for the miners. As it is I just feel useless, sitting here writing this.
Keep writing…..
Well… we knew Sunak was out of touch, we just didn’t know by how much and in how many ways.
‘Good’ is a brilliant 1982 play written by British playwright Cecil Taylor. It tells the tale of a middle class academic who gradually dissembles their way from professor to camp commandant………… The play is specifically about the Holocaust, but but is also about what hapoens when the political climate is deliberately manipulated, as now,
to create harm.
The flip side of this of course is that there are many young people at serious risk of getting a criminal record, and I dont think anyone would argue that its in the interests of an under 18 year old to get involved in crime, but nothing gets done to help them.
An obvious example would be the young man convicted of killing PC Andrew Harper and the youth who killed a colleagues stepson. While the killings could not necessarily have been predicted their involvement in crime could have been.
Yet instead the call is to target those who take part in public debate.
That was quick. You’ve got a mention in LFF.
https://leftfootforward.org/2022/08/rishi-sunaks-plan-to-widen-definition-of-extremism-to-include-people-who-vilify-britain-slammed-as-attack-on-free-speech/
Thanks. Not aware of that.
But as over half a million read my tweet thread not wholly surprising……
Putting criticism of the views of the Tory party into the same category as terrorism is yet one more anti-democratic measure to control what is allowed to be publicly discussed in the UK.
I note that in Turkey, a country already ahead of us in this process, there is currently a dispute about their rate of inflation, with the official figures saying it is 80% and independent estimates saying it is nearer 180%.
What is the real rate of inflation in the UK?
Is it given by RPI, CPHI, CPI, or like MMT should we try and understand how the modern UK economy really works and introduce a new measurement of inflation that takes into account the Asset prices that for the last 12 years at least have been the cause of most inflation in this country.
Chilling indeed! It’s terrifying, especially when this is met with so little opposition. What next?
Anybody who has done a bit of linguistic philosophy would like to know what , :Rishi Sunak plans to deradicalise people who ‘vilify’ the UK, what vilify means Russian has something similar about Disrespecting
What about the non european population of britain who constantly call us whities institutional racist and the empire as wholly racist. Racism according to the diversity training for civil servants is anything you can imagine: conscious ,unconscious, systematic, institutional, a word , a gesture.
Vilify would go down the same route doubtless
Belated thanks for this post. Would just add that one has already seen vilification in action with the vilifying of “left-wing lawyers” who worked for refugee appeals, not to mention the issues over proroguing Parliament and soon. Very easy to go on to say that obstructing a lawfully elected government is a crime.