London’s Metropolitan Police arrested another 492 people over the weekend after a protest Saturday in Trafalgar Square, as the Starmer government accelerated its crackdown on opposition to the Gaza genocide.
The entirely peaceful protest was held to oppose the proscription of Palestine Action. It was organised by Defend Our Juries and attended by over 1,000 people. Of the arrests, 488 were for holding up signs declaring, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”.
I can’t decide what’s more depressing.
A) The subject of the linked article, or
B) The fact that an article on World Socialist Web Site is linking to posts by Amnesty UK and Defend our Juries (three organizations that should all know better by now) on Xitter.
Jesus
At an absolute bare minimum, the last two should be cross posting everything to Mastodon, and the first should be linking to the Mastodon accounts whenever available.
Oh, look! Amnesty UK has a Mastodon account that they’re not fucking using, apparently never have.
[Edit: spelling]
Of the arrests, 488 were for holding up signs declaring, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”.
what the fuck?
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Isn’t this fucking idiot a human rights lawyer? People have a right to protest
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This is why I fucking left. Oh yeah, the tories are a shitshow. Oh look, their replacements are barely better.
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Kier Starmer is a genocide denying twat.
This will backfire.
We hope.
I just don’t think there is a single occurrence of it not backfiring
As an American, it’s super disheartening to read stories about European governments being fascist assholes as well. It’s nice to imagine there’s somewhere to go to escape it.
I mean Europe is the home of facism and literally spread it throughout the world
“I’m escaping to the one place that hasn’t been corrupted by capitalism…SPAAAAAYCE!”
And remember this is from the “left” party in the UK.
*arrested as Labour’s Party government moves to ban protests outright.
There you go, Trump. There’s your 51st state.
It would be poetic, the former colonies coming back to annex the fatherland. Too bad it’s because they’re all Nazis now.
At what point are people going to riot?
Not rioting is better. Peaceful protest, and thousands getting locked up, is what creates the conditions that might enable real social change.
If that doesn’t work, then you have a proper riot (i.e. of the kind that isn’t bread and butter to the powers that be). Edit - lot of downvotes here. You need to read a bit of revolutionary theory. No doubt there are Americans downvoting, who of course don’t have a leg to stand on based on what they did with their exhorbitant ly privileged society./ YOu are showing your ignorance.
No doubt there are Americans downvoting
Not an american, you are still being silly. Also you sound american with all that rollover attitude to authority. They are outlawing peaceful protesting, the solution is not to keep doing the same thing but with more smugness.
Not American. You are wrong. We are lucky that many have more sense than cowardice because to do exactly what your opponent wants att any point in a rape is bordering malicious
Peaceful protests are most effective when they’re backed by the threat of violence. It’s not the keg that forces concessions, it’s the fear of the powder within. The cops have no issue beating up defenseless victims in the name of “order”. Only when they’re at risk themselves do they think twice.
For that, the protests need to be large enough that escalation becomes an actual concern. Pre-gunpowder armies stacked their infantry deep, because more people behind you makes you bolder in face of the enemy before you. The larger the crowd, the more dangerous the potential rioters become.
Premature escalation might get the bold vanguard beaten and made examples of. Only when there’s enough support to keep the momentum going can riots effectively serve as an “or else” to the peaceful demands.
And what do you do when everyone who would dare to do anything is locked up by peacefully protesting? You’re going to run out of bodies, before you realise you’re fucked.
Yeah you just don’t know what you are talking about.l
You’re entitled to your opinion, but you didn’t answer the question.
I disagree. We’re past the point where peaceful protests will create change. It’s abundantly obviously that those in charge do not care. And they also got it in their heads that AI makes us less necessary.
If leaders and executives won’t listen to reason, then it’s time to instil fear into them. Remind them there are so many more of us than them, and that their positions are a service to us, not a privilege or an entitlement.
rioting is not the answer. if you are going to take action, be careful and deliberate.
You can target something specific with a riot.
You can, but the rest of the mob won’t.
Angry rioters do fucked up shit. Watch LA 92. All that violence and anger turned in on itself, attacked the most vulnerable, weasled into racial divisions.
With a more organised direction for that energy, the city could have been paralyzed, rotten cops and the judges could have been run out of LA and real systemic change could have begun.
exactly.
but everybody got
their rocks offcatharsis and the feeling was expressed - even though the reason for the feeling was never addressed.
doubt
I mean sure you can use the chaos to try and get cover for something specific. But generally, people rioting are on-tilt and looking for easy targets that look like their oppressors. Then, everybody gets catharsis and the riot disappears.
It’s just lazy. but, better than nothing, i guess.
Peaceful only works when the people in power have a conscience and are willing to come to a peaceful resolution. When they want to eliminate your ability to tell them no, then rioting becomes the path forward.
We are in the UK, not the US.
And you in the UK are being told that you can’t tell the establishment “no” through peaceful protest.
The leaders of the US and UK have more in common with each other than they do with their own people
I agree.
Although in the UK there was some old graffiti that said ‘a nation of sheep, owned by wolves’.
I would say it is more ‘a nation of sheep, governed by wolves, owned by pigs. We’ve all heard of wolves in sheep’s clothing, well we have a lot of pigs in sheep’s clothing. And the wolves and the pigs interbreed freely, so we have all manner of porcine lupine combinations.’
Not quite as snappy my variation though.
If you could choose between justice and peace, which would you choose?
There can be no peace without justice.
Peace — not to be confused with passivity.
In a culture of peace, true justice could emerge; it would manifest as support of those who experience violence and rehabilitation of those that feel they need to turn to violence to get their way.
Justice and peace are usually not framed as concepts that exist in a vacuum which one chooses between, but rather as interdependent concepts.
I believe that when we choose violence and retribution over nonviolence and rehabilitation/restoration, our manifestation of justice reflects that.
Martin Luther King considered you his greatest barrier to racial and social justice.
MLK didn’t reject peace – he rejected complacency and false order. My belief in restorative justice and nonviolence is directly aligned with his legacy, not in opposition to it.
A culture of peace is proactive, inclusive, and cooperative. I am not the white moderate he spoke of.
Edit: Just still blown back from the notion that I’m somehow a white moderate for advocating for the same peaceful nonviolent action MLK was. Hit the books friend - you’re wrong and here are direct quotes to clarify the situation for those reading:
“And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? … It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”
I’m not concerned about tranquility and the status quo. I agree with MLK that a riot is the language of the unheard. Just like him I still advocate for nonviolent action, while not disowning anyone - especially the unheard.
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”
I’m not saying the latter statement, not even a little bit - not ever. I am an advocate of direct, nonviolent action and positive peace, as opposed to the negative peace MLK criticized. I’m not attached to false order and I value justice over it. I am deeply concerned about justice and humanity and I don’t advocate for moderate and ineffectual action that doesn’t affect the status quo.
Just because I chose peace and advocated for a culture of peace, doesn’t mean I’m ignoring the role of true justice creating true peace. There’s a lot of nuance here and the question was a trap to begin with. If I could go back in time, I would’ve answered peace and justice and just left it at that.
Neither at the cost of the other?
It’s a silly question.
Keir Starmer is a cunt
nah. he lacks the warmth of a cunt.
And depth
and he doesn’t seem as fun as a cunt.
Or as useful.
In the end, the problem stems from billionaires. They created the right wing propaganda machine that caused this far right authoritarian rise. They did it recklessly only to increase their own power. Billionaires can no longer exist. Capitalism is failing. We need a new path forward.
Oh boy, hyper capitalism, to go from we pay you to give us your soul- to you have to give us your soul and body or we flay your family is a natural step. This is hyper capitalism. Long ago you chose that corporations are human . It is not capitalism to not give humans food or rights. It is hyper capitalism. It is too much to give money to megacorp demonic entities that consume the earth to end our lives as a species, it is too much . It is not capitalism. Not the cute little communist opponent no it is HYPER capitalism, another beast an insane and psychotic beast
Humanist Capitalism has to come out of the ashes
Unions, cooperatives, and unionized cooperatives no matter what
Nah, Capitalism had its moment. It’s time for socialism now.
It’s not black and white. You can have parts of the industry capitalist and part of it socialist. I am all for housing reform, I wouldn’t mind paying more taxes if it meant that we are all gonna live a happier life. I probably wouldn’t want state owned means of production as we all know you can’t trust em that much.
I don’t think you know what socialism or capitalism are.
Capitalist and commerce are not synonyms.
Yes, I’m sure that when the Oil Manufacturers Cooperative murders climate activists and spreads propaganda to prevent the adoption of sustainable alternatives, humanity will be much better off…
Capitalism in any form is unsustainable, any system that treats the world as fungible is. What we need is fundamental, structural change.
We need a system that naturally incentivizes degrowth and makes the filling of power vacuums by corrupt, greedy, or opportunistic people or systems impossible.
That’s not capitalism, it’s not syndicalism, it’s not state communism. It’s something in the realm of anarchocommunism. Societies that are prosperous because nobody in them is trying to screw people over: ones without capital accumulation or exertion of power, that are nevertheless resistant to power over them.
That makes a lot of sense, have anything similar enough to that I can read up on?
Just read Marx and Lenin. They talk about all of this in depth.
This is so self defeating… Palestine Action should have never been declared a “terrorist organization” in the same category as Al Qaeda and Daesh. People see right through that and it causes a backlash. Nd the UK government doubling down on the backlash creates even more backlash. I mean anyone can see that at this point that the government has lost the political battle on this one and is just chugging through due to the sunk cost fallacy. This is only paving the way for the Right to do a comeback. Fucking centrist liberals man, god damn.
No of course not, Al Qaeda is our great ally in Syria now, or some completely legit and organic offshoot of said group.
The sunsetting of a once great empire.
I’m sure the people of India who starved think the British Empire was great.
I’m sure the Irish really think the British Empire was great.
I’m sure most of Asia and Africa think the British Empire was great.
I’m sure the indigenous people of any land the British Empire conquered think the British Empire was great.
I mean, it was never great in a good sense
It’s been twilight for quite some time now.
Why do Zionists have so much control outside of Israel?
What the fuck is wrong with the West? Don’t tell me /pol/ was right…
In short, it’s just because of oil. And American interests, which is a longer way of saying oil. Israel is an American outpost in an oil-rich region and serves its purpose of keeping the other Arab countries weak, divided and corrupt by constantly dishing out violence, bribes and blackmail in every direction.
And yes, the UK is doing this in America’s interests and not their own, because the UK is not a sovereign country. It is a colonized puppet state of the Americans and has been since at least Tony Blair.
Haha what, please use occams here. It’s hyper capitalism enforcing violence to cling to its embarrassing dependency on war. It doesn’t matter about oil any more. The megacorps that are dependent on oil are adapting and becoming another form of demonic entity that have still full control over the astroturfing and distraction machinery, an important part of the global death chamber project
Have you paid attention to whats coming out of western countries? They’ve doubled and tripled down on oil in America and Europe still has its pathetic addiction to Russian gas. Oil still rules west of the Urals, green energy transition is nowhere to be found. I’ve been hearing “Europe will wean itself off Russian gas this year” for over 3 years now, likely will not happen as long as Arab countries keep the price of oil at basement prices, at Israel’s gunpoint.
Historically, British Zionism has been fundamentally tied to English supremacism and antisemitism.
Essentially, Israel is the UK’s “not quite final solution” to the “problem” of Jews living in Britain - a place to dump all the Jews so England can be more ethnically pure.
This is public information - see the history of Zionism in Britain on wikipedia. The lesson ethnonationalists took from the holocaust - with Hitler publicly bemoaning he had no place to dump Jews forcing him into his final solution - was that every ethnicity needed their own homeland.
The story is similar for USAmerican white supremacists and ethic supremacists across Europe. If Israel collapsed, millions of Jews would flee to Europe and the US, and that’s terrible if you’re an antisemite.
But for the past 80 years, publicly admitting you’re doing it for antisemitic or even ethnic supremacist reasons has been a faux pas, so there has been a whole literary genre of dogwhistles and motivated reasoning, combined with weaponizing of the “antisemitic” label, resulting in an intentionally opaque mess of justifications.
So then, as icing on the cake, the observation that this is a mess has been brilliantly co-opted by the propagandists through antisemitic conspiracy theory: Don’t look behind the curtain, look at the Jewish boogeyman projected onto the curtain.
And of course capitalism also plays into this, but the capitalist elite has always been quite generous towards their fellow elites. “Socialism for the rich” is not just a turn of phrase, a lot of billionaires lost good money in the 2008 financial crisis bailout.
Golden parachutes, positions for each other’s nepo babies, charity balls for trophy wives’ pet projects, etc. - Despite capitalism supposedly being about profit maximization, the elites don’t eat their own. They will let their portfolio burn billions to help each other out. But who is the in-group?
Surprise - it’s white supremacists again. It’s Epstein, Trump, Musk, the Kochs, the Waltons, the Clintons, the Kennedys, the British royals, etc. Nonwhites can definitely get invited to the cookout - Obama, Oprah, Rothschilds, etc. - but they are always peripheral and more easily cast out.
It’s not a cabal, it’s a community. Trump was the village idiot but his talent for demagoguery made him the hero of the town. White supremacy isn’t a nefarious grand scheme, it’s just a common belief that affects their friendships, their worldview, and their choices. Multiculturalism was a fun idea that helped destroy unions but now that people are angry it’s easiest to fall back on the people you know (if you know what I mean). Bailouts are helping friends through tough times.
And Israel? Israel is a lightning rod. Anti-elitism can be tainted with antisemitism, ethnic supremacy is legitimized by their existence as a supposed solution to antisemitism while criticism of it isn’t directed at white supremacy, anti-imperialism can be externalized, Islamophobia is sustained to justify oil wars, the military-industrial guys have a nice playing ground, the news can always look away from coups and neocolonial violence elsewhere, etc.
So that’s the world - a bunch of rich white guys using Jews as a scapegoat for their own fuckery. Same as the past 1800 years, really.
5000 years*
Israel is key to western imperialist ambitions in the Middle East. The relationship between zionists and the west is in the same “too big to fail” category that protected the criminal bankers who left so many destitute in 2008. For capitalism’s true believers, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
I don’t even know if they do, this is possibly/probably just the government repeatedly and gleefully shooting itself in the foot.
Palestine protests themselves aren’t criminalised (despite the title), what is however is criminalised is support of the Palestine Action group.
This is because they are a proscribed as a terrorist organisation, after a couple of their members snuck onto a military base and spray painted aircraft.
This is stupid in almost every way you can look at it, it criminalises people who are innocent of everything but carrying a sign or wearing a t-shirt, it makes the government look both cruel and inept and it has (as far as I can tell) been a huge boon to the credibility of Palestine Action resulting in more people joining or at least supporting them. And finally it (makes the government appear to/reveals the government does) support a nation enacting a genocide.
As for why; the aircraft were refusing tankers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A330_MRTT I assume this was done because of rumors that the RAF were refueling IDF planes bombing civilians but last I heard they use incompatible in flight fueling systems.
Various news articles suggest 7m of damage which seems a bit high for spray paint, my guess is that knowing that people with unknown intentions had unsupervised access to military aircraft they demanded the planes on be stripped and re built to check for other sabotage.
The UK terrorism laws are unfortunately defined very broadly and can apply in the case of serious damage to property, not just intent to cause death and injury https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/07/uk-palestine-action-ban-disturbing-misuse-uk-counter-terrorism-legislation
There was also some controversy in that PA were grouped in with organisations which meet the more common definition of terrorism https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/2/uk-lawmakers-vote-to-ban-palestine-action-as-terror-group
not tongo full tinfoil, but this is beyond just lobbying.
I’m assuming there’s lots of blackmail involved
The UK government’s reaction is so extreme that Israel having proof of something like child sexual abuse commited top British Labour politicians in the current Government seems likely (remember that from just the tiny slice of info that came out, both Prince Andrew and Mandelson were involved with Epstein).
If UK government was being blackmailed like that the two countries would be enemies, UK intelligence is as powerful as israel.
yhea, because the UK is burning it’s democracy to serve a tiny ex colony of theirs.
makes no sense
Nah, it’s the mental illness and catastrophic human problem of religion. These nutcases think their invisible sky daddy is commanding them to do it.
I agree that is definitely a part of the problem. In the United States we see the evangelicals blindly and fiercely supporting Israel because they believe in the apocalypse. The zionists want to bring forth their messiah as well. Bibi believes he has been chosen to bring forth the messiah. A lot of issues here are stemming from and being justified by religion.
if you think the problem is religion instead of colonialism. then you drank too much propaganda
Uh huh, and that definitely isn’t driven by the mental rot of religion?
You’re not tongoing at all imo.
And now that we’re on the subject, has anybody ever been as far to go make to do look more like?
The colonial mindstate is still alive simple as that
That’s a funny looking labour government you got there UK.
How did you guys go from Corbyn to this? Is it so hard to have a labour party leader that doesn’t back Israel or Russia?
A campaign by Israeli-backed British Jewish groups of anti-semitism slanders against Corbyn (so extreme that at one point a Jewish Holocaust Survivor was deemed an anti-semite to get at Corbyn by association) toppled him down from Labour Party leadership, to be replaced by these types, who as soon as they got control of the Labour Party started purging it of people who had voiced Leftwing ideas and support for Corbyn.
Essentially Labour was emptied from the inside and its shell was filled with supporters of a foreign ethno-Fascist regime.
This is a big part one party system of governments tend to fail.
Also indicative of how multi party systems Can fail apparently.
Power Duopolies, such as those found in countries with First Past The Post systems, suffer from similar problems as the Power Monopolies in one party systems, such as how there is a path to power which is entirelly unaccountable to voters, of just taking over one of the Power Duopoly parties from the inside and then let the normal back-and-forth of the duopoly system - since people only ever have 2 options, naturaly the power goes back an forth as people vote for the “lesser” evil that then turns into the “greater” evil so they vote for the other “lesser” evil - bring that party back to power.
Funilly enough, in the UK that seems to have been done to both of the Power Duopoly parties, first to the Tories during the Leave Referendum and after that to the Labour Party when Israel joined with the Liberals (and I don’t mean the LibDem Party, I mean Blairites) and even the Tories to overthrow Corbyn (who was openly a defender of the rights of Palestinians) and replaced him with the Liberals who then proceeded to make sure there was nobody left-of-center in that party.
If you look at the US, you see the very same phenomenon transforming the Republicans from a Conservative Party to a Fascist one, as well as how the Democrats have be thoroughly taken over by those serving the interests of Israel and of Billionaires.
I think that the less rigged a country’s voting system is for “stability” (read: for making sure only the same handful of big parties has power and they seldom have to do it as part of a cohalition) the more robust it is to this kind of taking over of a large party as an unaccountable way to get power, mainly because more parties have to be taken over and people will migrate more easilly way from a party when it stops representing them (there is no such thing as tactically voting for the “lesser” evil in a Proportional Vote system).
Great points.
My comment wasn’t in reference to FTPT specifically, though I suppose the UK uses FPTP in voting for party leadership?
And im guessing this doesn’t happen so much in other countries that don’t use FPTP?
Every party HS a different system. The conservatives have their MPs select two candidates in multiple rounds of voting to put in front of all their members.
Labour has a system where a candidate needs to have a minimum support from their MPs too but it’s still an election from labour members and supporters. They rank their candidates I believe
In my own experience, if all the voting systems rigged to benefit size, there is a broader phenomenon of larger parties existing which which are usually in power (though often in cohalitions) and which attract the kind of people with no scruples who go into politics to become wealthy from selling access to power (i.e. the corrupt).
However in the two other countries I lived in beyond the UK, one of which had Proportional Vote and the other Multi-representative Electoral Circles (so, not as bad as FPTP, but still Mathematically rigged), I have not seen a case of the larger parties being obviously taken over as means to get to power like I saw in the UK, though I’ve seen smaller parties being created and/or supported by foreign money and then eating up some of the vote of the large parties.
Certainly were I am now - Portugal, which has Multi-representative Electoral Circles - of the two new Far-Right parties which were created not that long ago, one of which for sure got money from the Fascists in Brasil and the other also likely had funding from abroad (the campaign phamplets and other materials in their very first elections were both far too expensive for a small party and using the kind of design and slogan style one finds in International Marketing campaigns in huge contrast with other small parties), probably American (they’re an ultra-neoliberal party created a couple of years after Steven Bannon came to Europe with money he openly said was to fund far-right parties), though there I don’t know for certain. Both of those parties are taking votes away from the large rightwing party but also partialy from all the way into the leftwing (the more Fascist of the two is even picking traditional working class votes that used to go into a Communist Party)
Starmer is terrified of Reform. So he’s taken the really smart stance of pulling Labour to the right to court a demographic that would never vote Labour anyway, and in the meantime utterly piss off his core base.
It’s so depressing. I remember the election that Ed Miliband lost, and how many of us were unsurprised that people found no appeal in Tory-lite as opposed to the regular Tories; Labour implicitly conceded to the Tories by affirming the idea that austerity was the only way to go. Now the same is happening with Reform.
If Labour really wanted to challenge Reform, they’d challenge Reform’s base assumptions. They’d argue, for example, that reducing immigration won’t solve the housing crisis or NHS wait times, because those essential services are suffering from over a decade of chronic underinvestment. They don’t need to fight on Reform’s terms, because if they do, Labour will lose — again.
Yeah, it’s very sad since I think people are more willing to vote Labour if they were just better. Now their voter base is more likely to stay at home instead of going to the voting booth. Weird move by Starmer since he was in the march against the Iraq war himself.
This almost always fails and only ends up moving the country average to right and make extreme right seem more mild.
Also I don’t think right wing voters have that strong an opinion on Israel. This is more likely zionist lobbies pulling some of Starmer’s strings.
Controlled opposition, doing what the fascist sociopath pedophile oligarchs paid them to do.
He’s been do that for years. Hell labour advisors even managed get Kamala and the dnc to to harder right
Same story, different country
Same shit, different assholes.
