House of Commons calls on Keir Starmer to condemn Donald Trump’s ‘interference’ in European politics
The US is engaging in “extreme rightwing tropes” with echoes of the 1930s and threatening “chilling” interference in European democracies, British MPs warned ministers on Thursday.
The House of Commons rounded on Donald Trump’s national security strategy, which stated that Europe was facing “civilisational erasure” and vowed to help the continent “correct its current trajectory and promote patriotic European parties”.
Matt Western, a Labour MP and chair of parliament’s joint committee on the UK government’s national security strategy, said: “The United States consensus that has led the western world since the second world war appears shattered.
I want more countries to start speaking up about the fascists and human rights violations in the US. It’s harder for Americans to ignore by immediately claiming partisan bias.
Even better, start refusing to do business with the economic giants and billionaires in the US, especially as the US continues to lose global influence. It hurts the rich assholes and they’re the ones who can (and do) pressure the gov to change on a far faster timeline than activism can achieve.
If you want to see how fast even the Dems will bend over the wealthy, look at the government shutdown. When it was all about taking away food and health care from the poor, then nobody can figure out a solution, but as soon as the airports started falling apart, and the corporations couldn’t move around the country, the whole thing is over in a couple of days.
Says the country that’ll arrest you for saying the wrong thing online. Lolz
British MPs can be right about this and wrong about other things. Duh.
I guess some people need to hear this: it’s actually possible for two things to be bad at the same time. Crazy right?
If you’re from the US and you think it’s better, then let me remind you that it’s not:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/07/juvenille-judges-cash-detention-centre
And if you think that’s too long ago, then maybe you’re not aware that AI surveillance tech is currently being used to monitor students in thousands of schools across the US. According to the AP, over 65% of alerts from the software are false alarms yet they still result in students being arrested and spending time in jail all because AI can’t understand the context of jokes.
So a few years ago, if you made fun of your vice principal online, a corrupt judge would throw you in juvenile detention and in 2025, if you crack some jokes with your friends online, AI sends the goon squad to arrest you.
So much freedom…
I guess if you’re a student in the US these days you need to have a dark sense of humor since you never know if your school will be the site of the next mass shooting.
Uhuh, let’s talk Brexit shall we?
Brexit illustrates the United Kingdom’s rightward political shift by emphasizing national sovereignty, border control, and resistance to supranational governance, even in defiance of elite institutional consensus. It also reflects a view of free speech as contestable and negotiable, with speech increasingly treated as something fought over within legal, political, and cultural power structures rather than as an unquestioned liberal absolute.
We know. We have to wait to see if we can take the Nazi’s away from the nuclear codes. With an election or if they are going to try undermining the elections. Then shit gets spicey.
Took you guys all year to notice?
Took you guys 8 years to notice. Then you relected him.
“a year”? Trump became president in 2016 though. Everything’s been shit since.
shouldve been noticable when brexit happened.
Trump has such a shitty TV show host vibe.
POT CALLS KETTLE BLACK MORE NEWS AT 6.
accusing them of failing to control immigration
Maybe stop flooding us with victims of your little wars and coups first?
Britain is a close second.
Oh, they finally noticed?
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They are not arresting people for social media. They aren’t monitoring citizens any more than most. Don’t get me wrong, the UK government is quite terrible. But comparing it to the US is a joke. We’re not involved in multiple daily ongoing constitutional crises
Also requiring facial recognition for porn?
Not requiring, just one of several awful options!
I wonder how quickly it’d remain as an option if all the exhibitionists got together and started unlocking it using their O-face.
little surprised that has been a thing yet. (maybe it has.)
Are they particular about the face you submit?
I dunno.
But i I remember seeing memes of using posing-tools for video games (so like you can get screenshots with really disturbing smiles.)
If by keeping losers who run their mouths with hate speech in check, then sure.
UK and Germany kind of felt the worst effects of fascism and so have less tolerance for intolerance. This doesn’t seem like a bad thing.
Don’t promote talking-points originating from far-right propaganda outlets. This isn’t when remotely the same as the blatantly unconstitutional Gestapo-like actions of ICE thugs going on in America. Friendly reminder this administration is actively trying to remove political satirist from television by leveraging their oversight of corporate mergers and the FCC. They succeeded with Colbert.
Don’t forget all the publicly-funded universities that caved to pressure on bogus claims of antisemitism with protesters exercising their first amendment rights. Hell, some when tried to stop protests of Israel itself.
The popularity of Nigel Farage is a bad omen. For sure there is a lot of xenophobia and exceptionalism in UK. Not too far from what we saw made fascism grow out of control in USA. But you are right, it is not nearly the insanity we see in USA. At least not yet.
But UK suffer the same democratic disease USA does, with a very flawed democracy.I think comparing a full fleshed surveillance police state like the UK with Germany isn‘t the most upright of arguments. The UK grands much fewer personal rights and is further down the fascist pipeline I‘d say.
What rights don’t Brits have?
If by keeping losers who run their mouths with hate speech in check, then sure.
Not how it works for either of them. How it actually works:
- UK Official Calls for Age Verification on VPNs to Prevent Porn Loophole
- Online porn showing choking to be made illegal, government says
- CHAT CONTROL 2.0 THROUGH THE BACK DOOR – Breyer warns: “The EU is playing us for fools – now they’re scanning our texts and banning teens!”
- German repression of political expression: live police suppressing pro-Palestinian protests as anti-semitic, raids & arrests over calling a politician pimmel, internet patrols penalizing vitriol, insults, & satirical images of politicians showing fake quotes
- UK repression of political expression: designate Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, arrest pro-Palestinian protesters, arrest someone over a social media post backing Palestine Action
Repressing fundamental rights such as free speech just facilitates backsliding to a repressive state.
The advocates of repressive policies are only mildly inconvenienced or continue undeterred underground. The German AfD isn’t struggling. Far-right parties like Reform UK keep going. So, they fail to keep anyone in check while also undermining basic freedoms: good fucking job?
You raise valid points and I’m certainly opposed to the notion of non-violent Pro-Palestinian protesters being labeled a terrorist organization (no differently than Antifa in the US, or the absurdity of stopping campus protesters against Israel). I am curious what people’s thoughts here on laws that seek to prohibit minors from using social media, and how that differs from ensuring loopholes are cut to prevent minors from seeing porn.
When I reacted to the other user’s comment, most of the rhetoric I was hearing was from disgruntled far-right extremists upset that islamophobes and various racist, sexist bigots were being held accountable on social media for hate speech, and even then the few instances they pointed to also basically dried up with either nothing or a proverbial slap on the wrist.
On the flip-side, if we step back and look at this, none of what has been mentioned is really some indication that UK is on the doorstep of V for Vendetta-like dystopia. Put another way, preventing children’s access to porn – whether agreed with or not – has kind of been a presumed given, and only recently did it seem like a bunch of politicians became aware that it wasn’t actually restricted in the first place or something…
On another note, when you cite, “penalizing vitriol, insults,” that article actually is in reference to combating Hate Speech and cyber-bullying in Germany, which is a bit different is it not? That is in reference to Intolerance to Intolerance, yeah? To that I mostly say good!
preventing children’s access to porn – whether agreed with or not – has kind of been a presumed given
That’s entirely up to the parent.
were being held accountable on social media for hate speech
Free speech answers that, too. Expressing an opinion we disapprove of isn’t an exception to free speech: for that we can express our condemnation.
Your hate speech rhetoric is a conceit built on the falsehood that simply hiding all the publicly visible indications of a problem solves the problem. Evidently, it’s not working & is readily exploited to abuse other rights. Censorship doesn’t change opinion: people are naturally free to think as they want & no force can compel them to change their mind.
To quote someone else, the open exchange of ideas is valuable & necessary to facilitate minds to willingly change. Not needing to be suspicious of everyone hiding what they really think out of fear is valuable. Censorship powers are very tempting to abuse and the consequences of their abuse are terrible, therefore they should be strictly limited. Believing in free speech can just be understanding this stuff and having a bias against shutting people up as a go-to solution.
none of what has been mentioned is really some indication that UK is on the doorstep of V for Vendetta-like dystopia
Restricting private access to information while raising risk of identity fraud & abusing the rights of protesters with loose definitions of terrorism isn’t heading to your cartoonish idea of a dystopia?
Maybe think back to history about oppressive institutions & how we overthrew them. What were those critical ideas underpinning the liberal institutions that replaced them? Oh right: fundamental human rights to liberty such as free speech & freedom of conscience.
in reference to combating Hate Speech and cyber-bullying in Germany, which is a bit different is it not?
Nope
In 2015, a meme posted on Facebook falsely implied that Renate Künast, a prominent German politician, had said that every German should learn Turkish.
Künast asked Meta to delete the false quotes attributed to her.
In a landmark case last year, a German court ruled Meta had to remove all fake quotes attributed to Künast. Meta is appealing.
and
Last year David Bendels, a journalist, published a doctored photograph of Nancy Faeser, Germany’s interior minister, appearing to hold a sign saying Ich hasse die Meinungsfreiheit or “I hate freedom of opinion”. (The original photo, a reference to victims of Nazi atrocities, is shown above.) Such images are a dime a dozen on social media. Yet Ms Faeser seemed determined to prove Mr Bendels right. She filed a criminal complaint, and earlier this month a court handed Mr Bendels a seven-month suspended prison sentence, a hefty fine and an order to apologise.
Finally, hateful words are still words. Has this generation forgotten how to handle words?
Only cowards fear words. You have freedom of speech: use it.
In your view then, should schooling, vaccinations, trans surgeries, social media access also be entirely up to the parent?
Second to that, the law doesn’t prohibit anyone from accessing these things outright; but rather ensuring that children don’t get access to these things absent of their parent’s approval — just as you indicate is your view here. Put another way, an adult parent could indeed log into pornhub on their behalf, no?
Free speech answers that, too. Expressing an opinion we disapprove of isn’t an exception to free speech: for that we can express our condemnation.
Yeah that’s all fine and dandy to free-speech hard-righty absolutists, conveniently enough, but no, that’s not my view; nor is it a representative of some V For vendetta authoritarianism to recognize objectively-wrong speech.
Tell me, do you or do you not subscribe to the “punch a nazi” notion of not being tolerant to intolerance?
Restricting private access to information while raising risk of identity fraud & abusing the rights of protesters with loose definitions of terrorism isn’t heading to your cartoonish idea of a dystopia?
As I had originally stated in my response, this would be a step towards that, yes, as I felt it was the most substantive point of your response to me; but not on the “doorstep”—as I had stated—itself. We will circle back to this following the Three High Court ruling in the coming weeks.
Far-right extremists want nothing more than free speech absolutism because it is convenient to their shallow tropes to dupe the masses; hence why far-right extremism is on the rise throughout the globe in the first place. So goes the adage, a lie travels half-way around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.
To reiterate, the source that you cited is not in reference to those cases, but specifically about hate speech and cyber-bullying — both clear problems that have aided in the rise of far-right extremism across the globe already. Put another way, we’ve had free speech absolutist social media and internet for decades, and we’ve only gone further rightward as a result. I’ll quote directly the source you cited in which I’m referring:
The application of Germany’s decades-old speech laws were strengthened after its darkest chapter, and then was accelerated online after an assassination of a politician, fueled by the internet, sent shockwaves through the country. In 2015, a video of a local politician named Walter Lübcke went viral after he defended then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s progressive immigration policy.
“People with a very right political world view, they started hating him on the internet. They started insulting him. They started to incite people to kill him. And that went on for about four years,” Meininghaus said.
This Stochastic terrorism threat is real, and in fact was utilized in Israel just the same when then-candidate Bibi engaged in the same stochastic rhetoric and inspired a radical to assassinate Yitzhak Rabin.
Defamation, Slander, Libel cases are common. Misattribution even under plagiarism is another aspect of commonly regulated speech. I don’t have much a problem with false quotes on high-profile figures not classified directly as comedy having some capacity for removal. This is how lies travel faster than truths around the world. Again, hardly a sign that UK is turning fascist.
So, what exactly IS your solution to inhibit the far-right except for moderate or left-wing governments to directly deal with said hate speech? (And no, I don’t consider Pro-Palestinian protesters hate speech of course; which is why this Court ruling is so pivotal).
Finally, hateful words are still words. Has this generation forgotten how to handle words?
It is extremely ironic one says this, considering the strict Hate Speech laws of Germany originated from their direct experience with propagating fascism at home in the 1930s, 1940s and learning through pain and suffering inflicted on others as well as themselves. Volksverhetzung was suspended conveniently enough during the Nazi era, and only post-war was it codified into law. So the question may be reversed: Have YOU forgotten the potency of these words, gone unchecked?
I’m not promoting anything? I was asking if the UK is doing that
And I’m simply answering that they’re really not, or at least not in the falsely-equivalent picture you painted with the US. USA is closer to Russia in terms of its fast-track to authoritarianism. UK? They’re engaging in what many here claim to support: no tolerance for intolerance.
“I Support Palestine Action” is not intolerance. Simply saying that publicly is an arrestable offense in the UK. They dropped from ‘Open’ to ‘Less Restrictive’ in the Global Expression Report, an outlier among the traditional Western countries. They’re not as bad as ‘roving bands of secret police’, but painting this as just a quest against intolerance is nonsense apologia.
But you kinda actually know they aren’t, is the point
I saw some news about it awhile back, and didn’t remember full details so was asking. Just going to delete the comment since its being taken the wrong way.
I’m just gonna start suing every media company for printing shit I said 10 years ago without my permission
British MPs extremely unobservant if they’ve only just noticed
Many are and have been active collaborators
Great catch there bud! If it weren’t for people like you, us Americans wouldn’t know for shit what is happening around us!
