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”.

  • brachiosaurus@mander.xyz
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    Of the arrests, 488 were for holding up signs declaring, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”.

    what the fuck?

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    1. Isn’t this fucking idiot a human rights lawyer? People have a right to protest

    2. This is why I fucking left. Oh yeah, the tories are a shitshow. Oh look, their replacements are barely better.

  • samus12345@sh.itjust.works
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    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.

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      “I’m escaping to the one place that hasn’t been corrupted by capitalism…SPAAAAAYCE!”

      • samus12345@sh.itjust.works
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        Yeah, which means they should know better more than anyone else. There’s also the fact that the Nazis were inspired by Jim Crow, so Europe alone doesn’t get the blame.

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          I honestly believe the anti American sentiment from Europeans on the internet comes from them hoping the origin of racism and facism is connected more to America than Europe. European facism, racism, and sexism has done more damage than any other group on the face of the earth

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      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.

      • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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        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.

        • bastion@feddit.nl
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          rioting is not the answer. if you are going to take action, be careful and deliberate.

            • Agent641@lemmy.world
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              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.

              • bastion@feddit.nl
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                exactly.

                but everybody got their rocks off catharsis and the feeling was expressed - even though the reason for the feeling was never addressed.

            • bastion@feddit.nl
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              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.

      • luciferofastora@feddit.org
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        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.

      • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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        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.

      • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
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        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

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        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.

      • JigglySackles@lemmy.world
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        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.

          • JigglySackles@lemmy.world
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            And you in the UK are being told that you can’t tell the establishment “no” through peaceful protest.

          • bigfondue@lemmy.world
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            The leaders of the US and UK have more in common with each other than they do with their own people

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              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.

        • Michael@slrpnk.net
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          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.

            • Michael@slrpnk.net
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              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.

    • samus12345@sh.itjust.works
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      It would be poetic, the former colonies coming back to annex the fatherland. Too bad it’s because they’re all Nazis now.

    • atmorous@lemmy.world
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      Humanist Capitalism has to come out of the ashes

      Unions, cooperatives, and unionized cooperatives no matter what

      • Tiresia@slrpnk.net
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        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.

    • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
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      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

  • Null User Object@lemmy.world
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    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]

  • yucandu@lemmy.world
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    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?

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      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.

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        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.

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        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.

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        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.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      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.

      • krooklochurm@lemmy.ca
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        This is a big part one party system of governments tend to fail.

        Also indicative of how multi party systems Can fail apparently.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          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).

          • krooklochurm@lemmy.ca
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            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?

            • Niquarl@lemmy.ml
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              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

            • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              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)

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      Folks who get really up in their feelings about the Trump/Harris election seem to forget that Harris was taking campaign advice from this guy. It’s so easy to forget how absolutely poisoned so-called “Liberal Democracy” has become with a broad strain of fascist tendency.

      On the one hand, you’ve got a guy who is looking to literally lay siege to cities in the US that didn’t vote for him. On the opposite side of the pond, they’re doing mass-arrests of anyone with a “Please Stop Killing Brown People” bumper sticker. And in the middle, a sea of smug dipshits posting “You got what you voted for”.

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        Liberals will ALWAYS end up siding with the Fascists to try to suppress the Left. Happened in Germany in the 1930s, and the dumbass liberals eventually ended up lined up against the same walls the communists and socialists were lined up against. If you’re a liberal today and defending this fascist suppression against Palestine Action: you’re next.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          Happened in Germany in the 1930s

          Happened in the 1910s, even. Hence the old quip about Bernie Sanders killing Rosa Luxemburg.

          dumbass liberals eventually ended up lined up against the same walls the communists and socialists were lined up against

          Or marched out into the snows of Russia to seize more Lebensraum for the imperial core. Or just bombed to death in Dresden or Berlin when the front lines collapsed.

          If you’re a liberal today and defending this fascist suppression against Palestine Action: you’re next.

          The hard math of living in a fascist state is standing up and getting shot today or ducking and hiding in hopes you won’t get shot tomorrow.

          Liberals made their bed back in 2009. We’re all just living in the aftermath.

        • Komodo Rodeo@lemmy.world
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          I’d argue that the Liberals are a little farther down the line. This administration isn’t finished bullying women, intellectuals, non-Caucasians and the queer community to death, they’re just getting started.

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        And then there’s the Americans, for whom literally everything has to be about America in some way or another.

        • Komodo Rodeo@lemmy.world
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          Have you seen their fiction? Even in sci-fi, they’re the center of the fucking universe. Galactic Space Empire HQ, located in NYC/LA/San Francisco of course.

          • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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            I mean… After the USSR fell, the US was the only major player in space for like 25 years, until China finally started to dabble the last few years.

            It’s not necessarily an ego stroke to extrapolate from that point.

            But also, the media is targeted at American viewers. Of course they’re going to use familiar cities.

            Do you also complain that doctor who, despite being able to travel anywhere in the both the universe AND time, lands in modern day UK so often?

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            All authors are like that. You write about what you know, that way you save yourself lots of research and mistakes.

          • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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            As opposed to British fiction where everything os centered around London? George Orwell thought London would be the center of the Anglo-American axis back in 1948 while the British Empire crumbled around him.

              • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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                Your point being? Do you think Orwell named the UK after a US air force call sign that wouldn’t be coined until after his death? I won’t be lectured on literature by someone who has the media comprehension of a middle schooler.

                • NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone
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                  Well, according to my middle school media comprehension the implication of the name “Airstrip One” is that the island of Great Britain acts as a bulwark against or potential invasion staging post to Eurasia, as it did in the Second World War. London is far from the Imperial Centre in that story, though there is no clear capital of Oceania and Ingsoc. Orwell’s pessimistic view of the UK’s future is as a province of the American Empire.

            • Komodo Rodeo@lemmy.world
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              Similar issue, yes. It’s said that you should write what you know, my point is more that Americans seem incapable of producing fiction where the lower 48 aren’t the nexus of the universe, not that the British weren’t also doing the same thing centuries earlier.

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                Aliens sure seem to visit London all the god damn time in Dr. Who. People write literature about the places and people they know. Why would an American write a book about aliens visiting Berlin?

                Also, how long ago do you think 1948 was? Because it wasn’t “centuries” ago. And the most prominent American sci-fi authors do not have their stories revolve around the US. The Foundation, Dune, Star Wars, and the Expanse were all written by American authors and only one of them has any characters from the USA

                • Coupable@lemmy.world
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                  1948 was before black people were given equal rights in the US, so as far as I am concerned it should have been centuries ago. Stop dick measuring with the previous garbage empire like their shortcomings somehow excuse your own.

                  edit:

                  Was it my support of civil rights or my pointing out how silly it is to compare yourself to a condemnable empire as a defense that made you mad?

      • yucandu@lemmy.world
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        What about the other 160 or so democracies? How they doin?

        Especially the proportional representation ones. FPTP is just a hint of democracy.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          What about the other 160 or so democracies?

          I’m not sure where you’re getting your numbers, but…

          In 2024, just 6.6% of the world population lived in “full democracies”, falling from 12.5% a decade ago. Overall, the vast majority of these countries are in Europe, with notable exceptions—such as Japan, Mauritius, and Costa Rica—across other global regions.

          I’m counting far less than 160.

          FPTP is just a hint of democracy.

          Sure. But then IRV still gave us NYC Eric Adams as mayor of New York. There’s more to democracy than the shape of your ballot.

          • BCBoy911@lemmy.ca
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            3 days ago

            Calling Japan a full democracy is a stretch. They’ve been ruled by one party for over half a century, and definitely not b/c they’re good at their jobs.

          • yucandu@lemmy.world
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            In 2024, just 6.6% of the world population lived in “full democracies”,

            I’m counting far less than 160.

            Sorry I didn’t make any claims as to what constitutes a “full” democracy, I was going with these guys who put it at about 167 “democracies”.

            Sure. But then IRV still gave us

            IRV is just FPTP+. Like you say, it isn’t an electoral system so much as a ballot system.

            We studied it, in Canada, under the name “Alternative Vote”. It was the only one we could find that was worse than FPTP:

            https://www.ourcommons.ca/content/Committee/421/ERRE/Reports/RP8655791/errerp03/06-RPT-Chap4-e_files/image002.gif

            There’s a reason why politicians keep suggesting it, and it’s not for our benefit.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              Sorry I didn’t make any claims as to what constitutes a “full” democracy

              I’d settle for what defines “democracy” at all. I’ve seen folks claim El Salvador is a democracy while Nicaragua isn’t, entirely because the government of El Salvador is politically aligned with the US and the Nicaraguans are not.

              IRV is just FPTP+

              I don’t really care what flavor of election system you think is the right one. However you square it, you can have shit candidates win popular mandates. There is no system that’ll keep people you don’t like out of office, shy of a dictatorship that puts you in charge.

              There’s a reason why politicians keep suggesting it

              Suggesting it? Thirteen states have now banned ranked-choice voting as municipalities decide on whether to adopt it

              • krooklochurm@lemmy.ca
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                I met an Aussie in Thailand who claimed that ranked ballot elections are undemocratic, that recent Australian protests were not racist, that immigration was a huge problem in Australia, that Australians are not actually racist at all, and that recent Australian protests were about protesting Palestine, and not racist at all.

              • yucandu@lemmy.world
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                I don’t really care what flavor of election system you think is the right one.

                You’re against logic and reason?

                However you square it, you can have shit candidates win popular mandates. There is no system that’ll keep people you don’t like out of office, shy of a dictatorship that puts you in charge.

                I’m not interested in a system that will keep people I don’t like out of office. I’m interested in a system that represents the will of the people, rather than the will of a select rich and powerful few.

                If you’re willing to care, you might find one.

                Suggesting it? Thirteen states have now banned ranked-choice voting as municipalities decide on whether to adopt it

                I don’t see the problem here, like I said, it’s worse than FPTP.

    • krooklochurm@lemmy.ca
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      Real question:

      Im going tongo tin foil haters a bit with the implication:

      If you have a faist government why not just bring back the royal family as the leaders?

      I get that facism is different than monarchism but many of the key distinctions aren’t that significant imo, in that they both lean heavily towards autocracy and both Aggressively punish dissent.

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        https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-states/freedom-world/2025

        A country actively kidnapping people off the streets, removing due process and habeus corpus, deporting prisoners to random countries, building concentration camps, and deploying troops on the streets has a score of 84/100. Forgive me for not feeling particularly free with my score of 91.

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_House#Criticism

        Having a read of this I think it’s fair to say boiling down a nation’s “freedom” to a single number is a silly unacademic metric, before even getting into the likelihood of bias and manipulation.

        If it looks like a duck fascist, swims like a duck fascist, and quacks like a duck fascist, then it probably is a duck fascist. Regardless of what a likely bias think tank’s research may say.

        • FishFace@lemmy.world
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          They aren’t now, either. 2024 was after the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, too, which was the biggest restriction on the right to protest in a long time and would be more significant than the change being discussed.

          It’s a bit worrying that people are just taking this incorrect headline from a propaganda rag at face value.

            • FishFace@lemmy.world
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              What? Are you saying that all protests have already been declared illegal? Go ahead and cite this declaration you just made up. And also explain the hundreds of thousands of protesters who have not been arrested recently on various causes, from pro-Palestine marches to anti-immigration ones.

              If you haven’t gone nuts and don’t actually believe this thing that isn’t happening has already happened, then the arrests of people are irrelevant because they’re not part of proposed changes.

      • Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com
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        Oh, sorry, I didnt know the “Freedom Eagle Burger index” based off Washington DC said it’s not fascist. Well, pack up guys, nothing to see here!

  • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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    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.

    • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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      No of course not, Al Qaeda is our great ally in Syria now, or some completely legit and organic offshoot of said group.

      • Tiger666@lemmy.ca
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        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.