What made you look at the FBI and think “yeah, we need that”!!?
Let me remind everyone because the haze of chaos has made it easy to forget, January 6th was organized IN PUBLIC ON FACEBOOK and the FBI still completely failed to stop it.
There is no failing bigger than that, and that was before children’s book author Kash Patel took over.
Where the fuck do you get that idea? Because there are more cameras? Because that’s about the only thing more police state than giving every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a badge, a gun, and minimal oversight.
While I agree that the banning of any demonstration in support of Palestine Action is an authoritarian overreach by the UK, I dont think its as bad as masked paramilitary goons dragging people off without explanation and executing them them in broad daylight while members of the government stand up and say that said paramilitary goons have full legal immunity,
I’ve lived for decades in both countries, and can tell you with great confidence that it’s not at all as you claim.
Intrusive, aggressive encounters with pushy, power-mad authorities were orders of magnitude more common in the US than anything I’ve ever experienced in the UK, and discussions with British friends tell the same story.
Here’s the thing. The UK government passes draconian legislation, but they seldom or never actually use it. That’s due to a combination of organizational inertia (Can’t Be Arsed is a deep-seated cultural value), lack of resources, and a tendency of the judiciary not to tolerate overreach. So on paper, it looks like a totalitarian hellhole, but in practice, you’re left alone, and your chances of (for example) a lethal encounter with the police are on the order of one hundredth the odds in the US. In the UK, police have killed 88 people in various encounters: that’s the total SINCE 1990. In the US, figures are hard to come by since some states refuse to report on it and the Feds don’t force them, but independent numbers are in the 2000-2500 per year range. In 20 years in the UK, I’ve never been stopped by a police officer for any reason. The standard US cop pretexts (smelling weed, broken taillight, jaywalking, driving while black) are rarely used here, despite the law permitting evidence-free stop and search. And my wife and kids, who are visibly not ethnically English, have had similar experiences.
There are exceptions: the biggest ones right now are pro-Palestinian and environmentalist demonstrations, which are being dealt with in an unjustified and heavy-handed manner, especially in London. But in my city, sizeable pro-Palestinian demos went ahead with no police interference. There was also an anti-immigrant demo in our town center, with a rent-a-crowd of skinheads bused in. A counter-demo was quickly formed, at least five times as big, and the bovver boys left quickly without having caused any damage. The police behaved sensibly. I know, because I was in the counter-demo.
The big concern is what happens if Reform (the local fascist quasi-MAGA party of Putin stooges) gets in and tries to exercise those draconian powers more extensively. There are too few constraints in UK governance to prevent a takeover by totalitarians that gain a parliamentary majority. The US concept of checks and balances isn’t a thing here. But at the moment, that’s more a risk than a live issue.
No, I would say it is the “minimum evil” framing, as in at minimum they failed to stop it and that is already damning enough to disband the whole thing regardless of how much more evil the reality is.
UK are you high?
What made you look at the FBI and think “yeah, we need that”!!?
Let me remind everyone because the haze of chaos has made it easy to forget, January 6th was organized IN PUBLIC ON FACEBOOK and the FBI still completely failed to stop it.
There is no failing bigger than that, and that was before children’s book author Kash Patel took over.
yes this is real, I am sorry to say…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/07/trump-fbi-pick-kash-patel-childrens-books
I mean holy shit pick any other entity to compare yourself too, have some damn standards!
The UK has been more of a police state than the US for decades.
Where the fuck do you get that idea? Because there are more cameras? Because that’s about the only thing more police state than giving every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a badge, a gun, and minimal oversight.
That, and the whole Palestine Action thing. You don’t need guns or lack of oversight to be a police state.
While I agree that the banning of any demonstration in support of Palestine Action is an authoritarian overreach by the UK, I dont think its as bad as masked paramilitary goons dragging people off without explanation and executing them them in broad daylight while members of the government stand up and say that said paramilitary goons have full legal immunity,
The UK has problems, but are you seeing what’s going on in the US right now?
I’ve lived for decades in both countries, and can tell you with great confidence that it’s not at all as you claim.
Intrusive, aggressive encounters with pushy, power-mad authorities were orders of magnitude more common in the US than anything I’ve ever experienced in the UK, and discussions with British friends tell the same story.
Here’s the thing. The UK government passes draconian legislation, but they seldom or never actually use it. That’s due to a combination of organizational inertia (Can’t Be Arsed is a deep-seated cultural value), lack of resources, and a tendency of the judiciary not to tolerate overreach. So on paper, it looks like a totalitarian hellhole, but in practice, you’re left alone, and your chances of (for example) a lethal encounter with the police are on the order of one hundredth the odds in the US. In the UK, police have killed 88 people in various encounters: that’s the total SINCE 1990. In the US, figures are hard to come by since some states refuse to report on it and the Feds don’t force them, but independent numbers are in the 2000-2500 per year range. In 20 years in the UK, I’ve never been stopped by a police officer for any reason. The standard US cop pretexts (smelling weed, broken taillight, jaywalking, driving while black) are rarely used here, despite the law permitting evidence-free stop and search. And my wife and kids, who are visibly not ethnically English, have had similar experiences.
There are exceptions: the biggest ones right now are pro-Palestinian and environmentalist demonstrations, which are being dealt with in an unjustified and heavy-handed manner, especially in London. But in my city, sizeable pro-Palestinian demos went ahead with no police interference. There was also an anti-immigrant demo in our town center, with a rent-a-crowd of skinheads bused in. A counter-demo was quickly formed, at least five times as big, and the bovver boys left quickly without having caused any damage. The police behaved sensibly. I know, because I was in the counter-demo.
The big concern is what happens if Reform (the local fascist quasi-MAGA party of Putin stooges) gets in and tries to exercise those draconian powers more extensively. There are too few constraints in UK governance to prevent a takeover by totalitarians that gain a parliamentary majority. The US concept of checks and balances isn’t a thing here. But at the moment, that’s more a risk than a live issue.
which is saying a lot!
Is that actually true? Seems dubious right now.
🤔
Are we sure “failed to stop it” is the correct framing?
No, I would say it is the “minimum evil” framing, as in at minimum they failed to stop it and that is already damning enough to disband the whole thing regardless of how much more evil the reality is.
Fair
Wait, Kash Patel inserted himself into the story as the hero of his MAGA
children’s bookfanfiction? That’s pathetic.