Meanwhile, Brits just look on at this narrative wondering what the hell they're talking about. Look, I'm against this legislation too, but if you actually live in the UK or even just consume mainstream British media, you'd soon realise that this narrative that's being pushed is a distortion that doesn't match day to day reality.
I guess if you get your attack in first you'll be able to go "we're not the fascists, you're the fascists."
None of that is to excuse the legislation, of course, which is not very good and will have a lot of poor consequences.
It could end up that way but we’re not there yet. If we do get there we tend to make the French look like amateur protestors (look up poll tax riots).
I’m less worried about a police state than a corporate dystopia. The attendee list at Trump’s inauguration would be far scarier to me than the OSA is.
That said, there is equally a clear and obvious effort to distort what is happening. And I don't think anybody should really be taking lessons about "totalitarian oppression" when current US government policy is to send gangs of masked thugs to round up brown people.
It's a bit hard to argue otherwise when the draconian arrests are well-documented by pretty much every single media outlet.
"Is it true that there is freedom of speech in the USSR, just like in the USA?"
"Yes. In the USA, you can stand in front of the White House in Washington, DC, and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished. Equally, you can also stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished."
In practically all countries a bunch of smart people got together in the 19th century to write a constitution but the British thought that they were above such petty concerns.
The censorship in the UK isn't that overt. There's no masked gangs grabbing people off the street, what there are is government "nudge" units, media talking heads and government-aligned media trying to push you toward points of view acceptable to the establishment. We're the world leaders in manufactured consensus.
There is also Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who has been remanded in custody for contempt of court for continuing to libel an immigrant even after his claims were proven to be false. And by contempt of court, he literally has produced a movie continuing to slander said immigrant for his own ends.
Another is Palestine Action being made a proscribed terror group. While lots of people, as evidenced by recent protests, see this as problematic, its not particularly different to other groups like environmental activists that commit criminal acts being proscribed and there are numerous examples UK/abroad of that. PA members at the direction of PA leadership have fallen into that category not because of their beliefs, but because of their actions – like breaking into Israeli-owned security research company with a van, and into an RAF base, in both cases committing vandalism and destruction of property.
Some people believe there is a problem, but there really isn't a legislative agenda against free speech.
https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/select-communications-off...
> there are several reasons why an arrest may not result in a sentence, such as out-of-court resolutions, but said the “most common is “evidential difficulties””, specifically that the victim does not support taking further action.
As mentioned at the top of the above document, there was a debate in the Lords on 17th July on the topic where many of the participants were pretty scathing about the situation: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2025-07-17/debates/F807C...
The minister was naturally defensive towards the end, albeit they did say:
> Importantly, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing, at the request of the Home Secretary, are currently undertaking a review of how non-crime hate incidents are dealt with. We expect to see some information from the police on that. It is self-evidently important that some of those incidents help us gather intelligence on potential future crime, but, equally, we do not want the police to do things that waste their time and not focus on the type of crime that the noble Lord rightly mentioned in his introduction.
Many (most?) western societies have a similar concept for civil and criminal law with common law jurisdictions, where precedent is used rather than an explicit, exhaustive legal code. Effectively, the UK's constitution is to written constitutions as common law is to civil law.
Very little odd about this btw. Those efforts are intentional and blatant, e.g. [0]. In that case, you can even see that the accounts listed in the article flaunt what they are, their first posts after the blackout are about Israel.
[0]: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/dozens-of-pro-indy-accounts-...
Each time i come there it's worse than previous trip, and your whole infrastructure feels oppressive. Constant reminders to be vigilant because something bad might happen(train and metro jingles come to mind) - implying a terrorist attack. Constant reminders that you're watched by cameras, while crime itself is rampant.
I come from Eastern Europe, yet visiting UK genuinely feels like visiting oppressive police state.
I am aware about your history(first The Troubles, then terrorist scare of 2000s, now domestic problems) but this is NOT the normal state for modern western country. Most likely perspective of Brits who have been living through this since ww2 is heavily culturally skewed, rather than then outside observer's one.
I personally think its a bit of a stretch and will likely be undone. However, to pretend they are simply peaceful protests being unfairly targeted is also incorrect.
What's more, they try to bully other people into lying about things to get their way. For example, I can't tell you many times I've read comments saying we'll never get anywhere if we insist on playing by the rules.
Playing by the rules here means things like being honest.
This isn't actually new though. The difference is that they'd normally be nicked for breaching the peace, which is loosey goosey enough to be used for most things.
ASBOs are far more totalitarian as they can legally stop people from doing legal things. (ie stop a child playing in a park)
But to tackle your main point, Yes people are being arrested for offensive speech, but thats normally only part of the reason for arrest.
I can call my MP a massive <pejorative that gets the Americans all abother>, I cannot however cause a race riot, as that's not allowed under freedom of expression.
I also cannot give advice on pensions.
I cannot threaten the lives of people
I also cannot claim to be a policeman
etc.
The thing you must understand is that _most_ people (ie not columnists or former PMs) accept that there is a tradeoff between "free speech" and a pleasant society. Sure we did look at your first amendment and think "ooo thats probably nice" but then we have the human rights act that enforces freedom of expression. (which the same columnists/former ministers are decrying freedom of speech are looking to get rid of "because it protects immigrants")
The Online safety act is a mess, because ofcom have not issued proper guidance, and the draft bill was directed by someone who was borderline insane (nadine dorris)
Age assurance is not actually a problem, what is a problem is asking me to hand over personal details so some fly by night US startup who'll get hacked/sell my data to blackmailers.
forcing websites to have moderation policies is fine, not having a flexible approach for smaller sites is not fine.
The act is flawed, but its not _actually_ that different from how Network TV is moderated in the USA.
However, the characterisation of terrorist scare in the 2000's, is somewhat off. Over the course of the last two decades, there have been numerous terrorist attacks, most notably 7/9, which have led to increased vigilance and securitisation.
So while travelling in Hungary, Croatia, or Italy over the last few years I've noted the difference, I also appreciate that each country is dealing with its own internal context that can be difficult to grasp from the outside.
Anyway, thank you for visiting our fair shores :)
Well that’s certainly a relief! People are only being _arrested_ for """offensive""" speech, not convicted!
I can't find any on [0] - do you have examples?
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proscribed-terror...
That wasn't a thing back then, not really
https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/v/object-453005/...
Arrested for "obstructing a policeman"
All of the suffragettes that were caught were normally caused with vandalism
And don't forget the 3-4 decades before that where terrorist attacks were just a fact of life in the UK.
Yes, it is.
> There's no masked gangs grabbing people off the street
The British Government is definitely not above masked kidnapping gangs and worse. The Glenanne Gang, MRF, etc.
The telegraph and times are government aligned? so is GB news? Now thats a good joke.
I have actually met the media teams for a number of government departments (including during the drafting of the OSA) They are almost the living embodyment of "the thick of it" clever people trying to do good, surrounded by industrial grade cunts.
What they want is a similar fascist group in the UK to do well in the next election - and freedom of speech is one of the easiest things to moan about when criminals are getting nabbed.
Most of which were performed by the British Government through police, military, and paramilitary forces against its own citizens.
Well, it's only really happening for people on the Right. If you're firmly within the left wing Overton Window (apart from perhaps Israel/Palestine), you don't have much to fear from Two Tier Kear.
No we don't. We have what is referred to as an "uncodified constitution".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncodified_constitution
It is a collection of laws and conventions, but there is nothing set up as an overarching set of rules to guide the country. If something were to happen that was deeply unpopular with what the majority of the country feels "makes us British", there is little we could do about it.
Successful court cases against the government have usually been because the government of the day forgot to pass the law that gave them the power to do whatever move they wanted to make. A constitution change is a much bigger deal.
Yes, but only on the right. The leader of Hope not Hate was not charged for his inflammatory tweets, and then you have this guy saying he hoped right wing protestors' throats would be cut being completely let off:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/15/suspended-labour...
The Ariana Grande concert bombing was only five years ago. You can see a list of those in the 2020's here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...
I guess what I mean is this: while I think the PA proscription is probably misjudged, it's not without its precedent.
We don't have the state mechanism. You could argue the four nations could serve a similar purpose, though there's a debate about how democratic that is when England makes up something like 85% of the UK population (and doesn't have its own legislature).
I go absolutely out of my way to avoid politics nowadays, which makes it all the more frustrating when this nonsense is shoved in my face by idiots on HackerNews or dimwits sitting next to me on the plane.
People do this kind of underhanded passive aggressive thing all the time, why would it not be the case for the British government to basically “neg” the VP that has on several occasions now dressed them and all the Europeans down and embarrassed them? I could very easily see this being the very kind of manipulative and passive aggressive thing that the British government would facilitate as a spit in the face of the guy who admonished them for their thought/speech control.
You seem to have a “police state” model in your mind that is akin to a North Korea and less what it will most likely be in the west, far more manipulative and sophisticated, as depicted in Orwell’s 1984.
A sign for a proscribed terrorist organisation, which its members are backed by a Russian plant (Fergie Chambers - now hiding in North Africa) and have damaged military aircraft, military facilities and attacked police officers with sledgehammer. Things that, in the US, you would have been shot for.
The protesters could have waved any other sign around in support for the cause without any problems, as hundreds more were doing, but not that specific organisation.
However the 500 people are at best naive victims of their own incompetence and being used as political pawns, not for the cause but instigators.
All this stuff is rather less black and white than it sounds.
Our media is absurdly distorted itself. Sometimes it's more objective to look from the outside in.
You have not addressed the fact that UK policing guidelines now have a third category of “legal but harmful” (which has resulted in real door knocks). This is subject to political outlook and therefore as “loosey goosey” as it gets.
In that circumstance they'd stay out of it and blame it on the citizens while trying to get favour with Vance some other way.
Spend a few months in Azerbaijan if you want to experience a police state. I have :)
There’s widespread recognition right up to the Lords that this is a shitty situation, dangerous/chilling, and a waste of police time. We all think it's nonsense, and it’s being called out for being nonsense in parliament. Literally no-one, AFAICT, thinks it’s a good thing that arrest numbers are rising for non-criminal speech.
TBH I would hope when the dust settles that more people will get in shit for wasting police time — either reporting non-crimes to the police, or not actually wanting any (further) action taken. Feels like in many cases the “victims” are just playing the system as it (rapidly) develops, to take an online beef offline, rather than totalitarianism. If it were totalitarianism they’d be locking folk up, or at least convicting them of something, but that’s where we came in — those numbers are falling.
It seems impossible to you that a government and its actors would e.g., not only allow, but even facilitate something like terrorist attacks specifically for the very purpose of making incremental, ratcheting moves towards an authoritarian system more palatable… for your safety of course.
It’s really not any different than how all abusers will incrementally test and press with various cycles of pressure and relief on their target of subjugation and abuse.
All the signs of manipulation, subjugation, and abuse are there in basically all western countries. Have you ever heard of Biderman’s chart of coercion[1]?
[1] https://www.strath.ac.uk/media/1newwebsite/departmentsubject...
It's not a Labour Party's action, the deadline was written into the act two years ago.
And this is also a key argument when people try to justify oppressive laws by appealing to their own good nature: Protecting speech and protecting agaisnt the government isn't always - or even usually - against protecting against the present, but protecting against every future potential government, and especially protecting against those who might be attracted by tools of oppression created in the present to seek power.
I'm quite free-spoken most places, and usually feel more constrained by not wanting to be too controversial for potential employers etc. when writing under my own name.
But the shift in the UK recently has been particularly troubling to a degree I haven't experienced first-hand before, and while it makes me more cautious about how it will be interpreted now, you're right:
It's scarier to consider how these tools will be abused in the future.
I'm not saying that this is happening in the UK now, but every piece of news I hear about it is less than great, to say the least.
The whole highest order issue in the whole west is that there is not only effectively zero responsibility, zero accountability, but also zero consequences.
The easiest to understand example of this may be how corporations can commit all manner of what are effectively crimes (i.e., it is what you would be charged with) and they not only do not have any effective consequences, the consequences usually instill the lesson that it is extremely profitable to commit the crimes and just pay the meaningless fine as a cost of business.
In most cases corporations even just account for it as an expense and add it to the cost and price they charge. So, for example, all the EU fines they so concisely levied over the last years against American tech companies like Microsoft and Google; they had been charging the various European governments and companies for a reserve to pay such expected fines.
It always baffles me that people do not understand the basic premise that organizations of people are not their own entities, especially when you don’t punish the individuals that make them up in the same way that individuals that are not in corporations are. Is quite literally a kind of new stratified system. Joe if ACME Corp can commit financial crimes and get away with it, but you can’t. He can even commit homicide through negligence with impunity, while you are thrown in jail for decades.
It really should be the other way around, if a corporation commits crimes, if you did or should have known about the crimes, you are collectively also held criminally liable just like a getaway driver of a bank robbery is.
Somehow we have not evolved past the point that the most powerful and responsible are the least accountable and have the least consequences for their actions.
I will just link instead of re-typing the same points: >>44711336
>>effectively facilitated by the British government through its actions and policies.
Nothing justifies blowing up teenage girls you deluded psychopath.
I'm sorry but the police always have had that. Again, ASBOs, public order offences, "please move along now", town dispersal orders.
Specifically ASBOs give the police the power to stop someone doing almost any action, the courts have deemed antisocial.
A good example of that is street preachers being stopped from using megaphones, which must have happened as early as ~2005
> which has resulted in real door knocks
from the OSA, I'm not aware of any cases yet?
> This is subject to political outlook and therefore as “loosey goosey” as it gets.
The law is always subject to political outlook. Even a constitution is no match for a concerted effort to undermine it. For example: article 124/125 of the 1936 USSR constitution allowed freedom of press, religion and the right to gather.
Look, unless we get someone extreme in power, and they are uniquely competent, they we are mostly safe. What will change that is the steady drip drip drip, of both economic hardship, and a willing medium to blame that on minorities.
So 2028 is around the time that jenrick will attempt to lock us all up.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/31/kent-police-20k-...
> Look, unless we get someone extreme in power, and they are uniquely competent, they we are mostly safe. What will change that is the steady drip drip drip, of both economic hardship, and a willing medium to blame that on minorities. So 2028 is around the time that jenrick will attempt to lock us all up.
Sigh, I was half expecting drivel like that.
> Sigh, I was half expecting drivel like that.
Look I have been railing against this shit for _years_ the Public Order Act 2023 is the latest in a looooong line of laws that have actually and practically curtailed our rights to protest.
I have organise, I have petitioned, I have shouted and screamed, and yet here we are. I have given up.
I look over at the states and just have to hope that it reeks enough that it puts people off the badenoch/jenrick/farage wank fest.
Sadly with the underfunding of courts, and the move to bench trials, means that we are probably fucked, no recourse unless you're rich
I'll say this: history, certainly British history, shows that bad actors are real and that power is simultaneously unavoidable, useful, and deeply dangerous, particularly for those who seek it out. I'm certainly not oblivious to that or "lack the sophistication" to see that the world is complex.
However, for all its ills, I'd rather live here, now, than anywhere else at any other time in history and I think there's better things ahead if we can stop see those who have different viewpoints as inferior, or as enemies, and find some common ground. I'd certainly rather be here than in Gaza, Iran, Russia, Belarus, Afganistan, China, etc.
Maybe I'll be proved wrong, but given the same outrage flew during the Snoopers Charter debacle and we are all still here and talking, maybe "they" are not out to get us all.
This is why there is zero accountability in the West. Because as soon as we say "hey, policy had some hand in this", people like yourself come out of the woodwork with language such as this to shut the conversation down.
Believe it or not, Terrorism IS a policy issue. If you have bad policy, then you are partially responsible when terrorism happens!
Even natural disasters are a policy issue. For example, here in Texas we had a flood where a lot of people, including young girls, drowned.
This is the type of thing that gets affected when you, say, cut budgets for weather and climate surveillance services. But when you point this out, braindead republicans will say "wowww so you're politicizing the death of little girls? Shame on you!"
But it is political, because everything is political, because politics is literally how modern humans structure their society. It's not team sports. If you cut money for thing X, things that rely on thing X will die, and that includes humans.
The reason people want to shut this coversation down over and over again is because they don't want to be accountable. They voted for something, knowing deep down it's bad and it's gonna lead to some people dying, and they feel immense shame for this. So, they would prefer to simply pretend the issue does not exist, then to have some accountability.
You see, they vote for policies for their direct consequences, but then they don't want to be responsible for those consequences either. That's not possible, those two don't compute together.
I can somewhat agree with the sentiment of "rather live here...", even though in many ways it seems likely we are very much on the tail end of an experience that would evoke such sympathies.
One of those challenges that many have today, largely because they very much have been conditioned, trained if you like, to not see those who do them ill, those who harm them as evil, or even enemies; setting aside "inferiority" as that is an unrelated matter.
It is a rather odd condition that has befallen what appears to be all of the western world for reasons that are too deep to go into right now, suffice it to say that they resemble the very kinds of sentiments and perspectives that one expects of any "spoiled" population, be it the Beautiful Ones of Calhoun's mouse population experiment, or the detachment captured in the "Then let them eat brioche (usually mistranslates as cake)". It is the same kind of ill that is befalling our societies all over the western world as the "democracies" have become not only non-responsive to the very people who are presumed represented by those they vote for, but in most cases they have even become not just hostile to their own populations, but they have become actively aggressive towards and against their own populations, which by any measure and standard would qualify such a person as an enemy.
So what do you do with that, when you objectively have enemies (from the latin inimicus, an anti-friend), but you and many if not most people are conditioned to oppose seeing the enemy, seeing the harm, presuming that the proverbial foreign horde streaming through the front gates may in fact not want peace and to live in harmony with you from imaginary endless resources?
It invariably causes conflict due to the waning diligence and order wrought. They are very likely not out to "get you" or us in a manner that is common in the public imagination, which is partially the their tactic and the commoners challenge. People are conditioned with movies to imagine that "get us" would entail all the sort of sudden and compounded actions that one can fit into a formulaic Hollywood format, when in fact they "get us" on such a long trajectory, plans devised by men long gone, maintained, adjusted, and kept on course by men multiples or ages.
The designs against major civilizations are rarely happenstance any more than anything today happens without it being acted upon, whether with intended or unintended outcomes. It is what the multitude does not have a perspective for, that basically nothing in their lives is actually their doing any more than a child is the master of their life.
The challenge is also to see, recognize, and accept the disguised trap prior to entering it, but surely before it snaps shut with fatal effects.
Hence the hollywood code, and all that sort of stuff.
The US really loved censorship, but just not in overt ways. Sure you could publish anything, but it'd never get syndicated by radio, newpaper, TV or cinema.