I’ll do a more detailed and fuller article on the political aftermath of the presumed Jihadist murder of Sir David Amess, but for the moment I wanted to wade into the issue of government diversionary tactics using an excellent thread on Twitter by the user ‘Barrister’s Horse’. One thing that has become apparent over the time since Sir David was brutally murdered is that the Government really does not want to talk about real and pressing problems, such as the problem posed by violent Islamic extremism.
One of the diversionary tactics that the government is using to avoid talking about the problems of Islam and Islamic extremism is to concentrate on a nothingburger subject that of anonymity on social media. Whilst like any other reasonable person I’m happy to condemn death threats aimed at MP’s and anybody else, especially if these threats are of a credible nature, I also have to say that the whining that the government is doing over anonymous social media is a displacement activity. It is obsessing over a side issue in order to not talk about serious problems, such as the 43,000 mostly Islamic extremists whom the security forces are having to monitor or the failures of the PREVENT programme or the hundreds of potential terrorists and extremists who make up the influx of illegal migrants crossing the English Channel daily.
I suspect that some those MP’s who are moaning and helping the government in displacing attention away from the more violent forms of Islam that exist and which afflict the UK are doing so because they don’t want to direct negative attention at Islam for reasons of their own. Others most likely are less enamoured of the idea of freedom of speech than they could be. Some MP’s are probably a bit miffed about getting criticism from British subjects about the actions of they and their parties and who are doing so anonymously. However one of the reasons that people are being anonymous when criticising the political classes is because if they gave their names in connection to a complaint or offered a salty toned opinion to MP’s about Islam, or immigration, or crime or the advance of the cult of trans, or some other controversial subject, then it’s likely that they, the complaining British subject that is, will get a visit from one of Britain’s PC PC Plods.
But I digress. The issue of internet anonymity is a diversion, a nothingburger, a castle made of strawberry jelly. We all know that sites like Twitter will readily hand over to the police IP addresses of anybody who ‘offends’ a member of a ‘protected group’ or who says something that a politician doesn’t like. If someone does something really and genuinely criminal – and I’m not talking about ‘hate speech’ guff ‘crimes’ here, I’m talking about real crimes, then they can be found via IP addresses, anonymity in this situation is a non-issue.
The murder of Sir David Amess is being mercilessly and extremely cynically exploited by the political classes to silence voices of dissent as well as divert the public’s attention away from a presumed Jihad murder. It is these issues that we need to keep in mind.
But back to the main meat and potatoes of this piece, the excellent thread by Barrister’s Horse. You can find the actual thread via this link and it makes for excellent reading, as do the supportive comments Barrister’s Horse is getting. Here’s the Threadripper display of the thread in question.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1450243739516014597.html
It may be a nothingburger, but as with Covid, is being cynically exploited as a diversion, to steal our liberties, our free speech and put us under permanent surveillance, plus actually putting us at risk from the online trolls, many who given the chance would act physically.
I used to belong to the Conservative party (27yrs) and served a term as a borough Councillor. I ditched them in 2012 after they massed me around one too many times, but mainly because they were no longer conservative.
It’s now reached a stage where unless there’s a conservative Independent, I no longer feel inclined to vote as whichever I vote for is shit.
I will be standing again, but as an Independent and my pledge to my residents is to serve them and be a damned nuisance to the local authority on their behalf.
Oh I agree that there are those in this government who want to exploit this for ends that are imcompatible with liberty. There are voices being raised from among those who suffered domestic violence about being too easily identified on social media which could end up with people being stalked by their exes. If this goes ahead then vulnerable people will be trusting the management of companies like Twitter with data that could get them killed. Not sure I would trust these companies with data like that. Also it will be circumvented either by VPNs or by enterprising individuals setting up platforms that don’t require ID. Gab for example thrived because moderation on other platforms got a bit too heavy handed. I can well imagine that this sort of scheme if the govt bring it in will cause a rush to places like gab, parler and Gttr. I use Gab not because I want to troll from a safe place although it’s handy knowing that Gab’s management have a policy of telling the British police to fuck off when approached about ‘speech crime’ matters, I use it because I want to speak freely and curate my own SM experience. Yes there’s a cost. My right to speak freely comes at the cost of having some serious nutjobs also being able to do the same. However although gab has a few fraggles who sincerely believes that there are Jews hiding under his bed controlling NASA to hide the fact that the earth is flat (yes there are nutters like that on there)and they are annoying, I can easily block them but more often than not mock them to buggery just for the LOLS.
While I in no way condone acts of violence I am not at all surprised today’s politicians are being targeted. I have never in a lifetime of interest in politics seen a more self serving, greedy, inept and out of touch house of commons. Deaths all over the place, public services in a terrible state, infrastructure falling to pieces, manifesto promises cynically broken, massive pay rises for MPs, taxes highest in a lifetime, prices up every time you go to the shops, massive rises in gas and electricity prices to name but a few things. Does anyone living in the real world wonder why politicians are hated by many?
The more out of touch the members of the House of Commons get the more the public will despise them. I thought tht the MP’s we got in the 80’s were too often arrogant and uncaring,but the current shower are worse.