Illusion of choice.
Comment on Rule34 blocked the UK entirely rather than comply due to the new law.
skisnow@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
This is the second time in my life that Labour have gained power after a long Conservative tenure, only to dive straight into enacting policies that were more right-wing than their predecessors.
themurphy@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 19 hours ago
if i had a nickel for everytime a labour government came into power after a prolonged tory government and immediately started governing further right id have two nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice in a row
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
The OSA was brought in by the tories. Labour agree with it as well. Both of them are authoritarian bastards.
KumaSudosa@feddit.dk 23 hours ago
Don’t get me wrong, but why are matters of governmental surveillance and control inherently “right-wing” rather than a totalitarian policy not otherwise directly connected to wing politics? Extremists on both sides have a history of creating totalitarian, Big Brother states (which the UK is certainly headed towards).
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 hours ago
Big Brother states (which the UK is certainly headed towards)
When the Snowden Revelations came out, the UK had even more civil society surveillance than the US.
As a consequence of those revelations, in the US some of the surveillance was walked back, whilst in the UK the Government just passed a law that retroactively made the whole thing legal, issued a bunch of D-Notices (the UK system of Press Censorship) to shut up the Press, got the Editor of the newspaper that brought it out in the UK (The Guardian) kicked out, and the Press there never talked about it again.
Also, let’s not forget the UK has the biggest number of surveillance cameras per-capita in the World.
Oh, and they have special and separate Surveillance Tribunal (the Investigatory Powers Tribunal) were the lawyers for the side other than the State are not allowed to be present in certain sessions, see certain evidence or even get informed of the final judgement unless their side wins,
They have the most extreme regime of Civil Society Surveillance in Europe, and in the World are probably second only to the likes of North Korea and China.
Britain is well beyond merely “headed towards” Big Brother and has been for at least a decade.
Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 hours ago
Last i read, cameras in london outnumbered those in Beijing, so im not sure id even put them second place
skisnow@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
It’s not so much the control aspect as the anti-porn stance. It also comes in at the same time as a series of anti-trans moves from them.
floofloof@lemmy.ca 17 hours ago
In the case of Labour, the party’s politics these days are over to the right on any measure. Under Starmer they seem to have abandoned their left-wing roots.
wewbull@feddit.uk 1 day ago
It’s less of a left - right thing (that’s mainly economics). It paternalism Vs liberty thing. Labour have always had a very strong “we must protect the populace” theme to their policies. Conservatives have it too, but they want to do it in a different way.
Sadly it’s a really difficult thing to stand against. Who wants to be labelled the person accused of enabling paedophiles, when all you want is the right to private communication.
Darleys_Brew@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
To be honest I don’t think much of this is about catching or preventing paedos, and is just straight up authoritarianism.
wewbull@feddit.uk 1 day ago
You’re right. It’s not, but that’s what you’re labelled when you stand against it.
floofloof@lemmy.ca 17 hours ago
It’s important to continue standing against it nonetheless, and not be intimidated out of action.
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Image
Meme photo of two astronauts in space, one holding a gun to back of the other’s head. It is overlayed with the text “Always has been.”
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
To correct one thing, the left-right political spectrum is based on authority. It goes back to the French Revolution, in which the nobility - favoring top-down power hierarchies - literally occupied the right side of the assembly hall while the revolutionaries - favoring true equality and egality - sat on the left.
This cannot be separated into distinct domains since power is wealth and wealth is power. The political compass fallacy is, and always was, nothing more than rightist propaganda to muddy language and ideology in an effort to hold on to their wealth and power.
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 19 hours ago
Part of that is allowing labels to be so powerful. Someone doesn’t have to watch kiddie porn or molest children to be branded a pedophile, but when you have that label for someone, it’s implied that’s what they did. We saw this same shit during the Bush years with the “terrorism” label. We’re actually seeing it again with Luigi Mangione and people protesting at Tesla dealerships. People don’t care about reality if there’s simple branding that wipes critical thinking away.
aceshigh@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Paternalism vs liberty. Tell me more. I haven’t heard of this comparison before.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 hours ago
The full spectrum is really more like “authoritarian vs libertarian”. Political policy should really be split into two different spectrums. On one spectrum, you have financial policy. On the other, you have social policy. The two normally get lumped together because politicians campaign on both simultaneously. But in reality, they’re two separate policies. So the political spectrum should look less like a single left/right line, and more like an X/Y graph with individual points for each person’s ideology. Something more like this:
Image
On this graph, as you go farther left, the government has more ownership and provides more, (and individuals own less because the government provides more for their needs). As you go farther up the chart, social policy gets more authoritarian. So for example, something on the far right bottom corner would be the Cyberpunk 2077/The Outer Worlds end-stage capitalist where megacorps inevitably own everything and have their own private laws.
Once you separate the two policies into a graph (instead of just a left/right line) it becomes clear why “small government” doesn’t necessarily correspond to “fewer laws” when dealing with politicians.
floofloof@lemmy.ca 17 hours ago
I assume “Republican” on this diagram is not used in the contemporary American sense.
bungalowtill@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours ago
How did neo-liberalism make it to the left?
devfuuu@lemmy.world [bot] 19 hours ago
Around our local voting season there’s actually a online test to check which parties are more aligned with the person values and it puts things into a graph like this. It’s very useful
mobotsar@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
That’s a political compass, and it’s still missing several political axes.