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UK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'

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Re: UK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'

#81
post #52

It’s ironic how the West has long championed democracy, demanded freedom of speech, and called for human rights from everyone. Only to suddenly adopt authoritarian, anti-free speech, anti-human rights, and anti-protest stances the moment free speech began to critique Israel. It’s truly shameful to see such developments.

It's been going on for longer than that. Ask Graham Linehan.

Graham Linehan is an example of nothing other than how to tank your marriage, friendships, and any semblance of a professional career over a misguided moral crusade.

He was a well-known and liked figure in Ireland off the back of Father Ted, Black Books and the IT Crowd. He was a huge blogger and early presence on Twitter, with both him and his wife being public feminists and supporters.

He was also - and this is the important bit - a public advocate and supporter for the pro-choice position in our abortion referendum, which gave him some sense of intellectual and moral security in his heartfelt positions, as well as a huge fanbase.

Unfortunately some of his previous advocacies evolved into TERFs, and he with them. This then became a mono-crusade under the guise of standing up for the women in his life and women in general. Slowly but surely his fanbase, his professional connections, and society at large fell out of step with him.

https://metro.co.uk/2021/02/23/graham-linehan-joins-queer-wo...

As his antics became more extreme and problematic in their optics, his friends, his family, and his Wife begged him year after year to stop sabotaging his own existence before eventually having to leave him.

He's dug down so far at this point that he's being courted by Joe Rogan, which is probably the saddest bit of this entire story.

Re: UK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'

#82

It’s ironic how the West has long championed democracy, demanded freedom of speech, and called for human rights from everyone. Only to suddenly adopt authoritarian, anti-free speech, anti-human rights, and anti-protest stances the moment free speech began to critique Israel. It’s truly shameful to see such developments.

Critiquing Israel as well as any political or religious entity or set of beliefs should be allowed, or there will be problems. This is basically the Paradox of Tolerance coupled with the fact that intolerance itself seems to be a viral meme if left unchecked.

I still can't believe the UK has arrested people based on their social media posts. Why are people standing for that, over there? (I'm a US citizen.) Meanwhile, one could make direct quotes from the Quran or Hadith and you'd likely remain unchallenged because religion gets a free pass from reasonable critique for some illogical reason. Appeasement will eventually lead to fear...

Re: UK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'

#83

It’s ironic how the West has long championed democracy, demanded freedom of speech, and called for human rights from everyone. Only to suddenly adopt authoritarian, anti-free speech, anti-human rights, and anti-protest stances the moment free speech began to critique Israel. It’s truly shameful to see such developments.

In Ireland opposition to the ongoing Genocide in Palestine is a wholly secular and humanitarian concern, divorced entirely from any correlation with race, religion, ethos or creed - despite agitators attempts to label it to the contrary. We are, however, unique in Western Europe in this regard - but it is not a mono-culture and the reasons are very contextual. While Germany is not an advocate of genocide in any sense…

I'd love to know wht this excellent post is getting downvoted, though I suspect I know the answer.

Re: UK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'

#84
post #4

It’s ironic how the West has long championed democracy, demanded freedom of speech, and called for human rights from everyone. Only to suddenly adopt authoritarian, anti-free speech, anti-human rights, and anti-protest stances the moment free speech began to critique Israel. It’s truly shameful to see such developments.

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” History, just like everything else in Nature, is cyclical.

If there's one thing everyone can agree on, it's that Hitler really brought the good times for the people of Germany.

Re: UK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'

#86
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been going on for longer than that. Ask Graham Linehan.

Graham Linehan is an example of nothing other than how to tank your marriage, friendships, and any semblance of a professional career over a misguided moral crusade. He was a well-known and liked figure in Ireland off the back of Father Ted, Black Books and the IT Crowd. He was a huge blogger and early presence on Twitter, with both him and his wife being public feminists and supporters. He was also - and this is the…

This recent interview piece is instructive: https://observer.co.uk/culture/interviews/article/graham-lin...

The interviewer is clearly sympathetic to Mr Linehan and their personal views are not opposed.

But nonetheless they end up thinking "I tried to understand why I couldn’t get through, why the piece I’d wanted to write for years would be a failure" - because the guy is an obsessive, unwell crank, that's all. It is a sad story.

Re: UK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'

#87
post #85

[flagged]

Won't somebody think of the fighter jets.

Curiously you left out the broken spine.

Of course the terrorist-excusers like to make out that it was just a bit of paint, what's the issue? It was 7 million pounds of damage (to be paid for out of our defence budget, so that's 7 million quid less to spend on other things) and put some of our key national defence infra out of commission for a period to boot.

But of course, that's ok - we should allow such groups to exist going around attacking people, crippling them and destroying national infrastructure to the tune of millions, its just free speech innit.

No sensible country in the world would allow such groups to exist.

Re: UK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just asked AI what the thousands of arrests for social media posts so far are for and it didn't say anti-semetic content. It said it's largely targeted at anti-immigrant, gender-critical, and being mean to politicians comments. Israel is the "woke right" line these days though, and something the "woke left" and "woke right" can both agree on hating.

> I just asked AI Please stop doing this. If someone wants to read LLM-generated hooey of some variety, they can submit a prompt somewhere and read the resulting text themselves.

Well I could do a web search and read all the thousands of articles about social media censorship in Britian and write an essay on it with grammar errors, or I could go on here and blame Israel like the OP, because that's just what I'm feeling today and I saw a bunch of stuff while TikTok doomscrolling yesterday that made me believe that. You'd say the articles I quoted that didn't say Israel were not from reliable sources, and absolutely nobody's mind would be changed. I'll trust AI to be more objective about doing the research. However, I did write the comment myself. I mean I would go back and edit it and put in random no-no words for AI, just to prove that, but I'd get flagged.

Re: UK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'

#89
post #8

[flagged]

[flagged]

Where dang lives, it was about 4am when your comment was posted and about 11pm where I am. None of your comments had been seen by any moderators till now. They have been flagged by many community members, because they clearly breach the guidelines and the guidelines apply equally no matter the topic or side. Dang has gone to great efforts to allow the Israel/Palestine issue to be given exposure and extensive discussion here, on multiple notable occasions. Please stop posting inflammatory comments. It's been easily observable over the past 2+ years that we have no problem with this topic being discussed on HN, but the guidelines still apply to everyone. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: UK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'

#90
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been going on for longer than that. Ask Graham Linehan.

Graham Linehan is an example of nothing other than how to tank your marriage, friendships, and any semblance of a professional career over a misguided moral crusade. He was a well-known and liked figure in Ireland off the back of Father Ted, Black Books and the IT Crowd. He was a huge blogger and early presence on Twitter, with both him and his wife being public feminists and supporters. He was also - and this is the…

[flagged]
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