Corporate lobbyists are demanding a ban on protest – and getting it. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 2nd February 2024 Why are peaceful protesters treated like terrorists, while actual terrorists (especially on the far right, and especially in the US) often remain unmolested by the law? Why, in the UK, can you now…

Why are peaceful protesters treated like terrorists, while actual terrorists (especially on the far right, and especially in the US) often remain unmolested by the law? Why, in the UK, can you now potentiallyreceive a longer sentence for “public nuisance” – non-violent civil disobedience – than for rape or manslaughter? Why are ordinary criminals being released early to make space in overcrowded prisons, only for the space to be refilled with political prisoners: people trying peacefully to defend the habitable planet?

There’s a simple explanation. It was clearly expressed by a former analyst at the US Department of Homeland Security. “You don’t have a bunch of companies coming forward saying: ‘I wish you’d do something about these rightwing extremists.’” The disproportionate policing of environmental protest, the new offences and extreme sentences, the campaigns of extrajudicial persecution by governments around the world are not, as politicians constantly assure us, designed to protect society. They’re a response to corporate lobbying.

  • FirstCircleOPEnglish
    9·
    9 months ago

    selection bias

    He’s not doing a formal study that requires random sampling. This is his blog - opinions & thoughts.

    He makes the claim that nothing is done about right-wing protesters

    I’ve read the article and I don’t see him making this claim anywhere. The closest I can see to it is one of his opening sentences where he writes “actual terrorists (especially on the far right, and especially in the US) often remain unmolested by the law”.

    One of his topics here is the disproportionate punishments handed out to left-wing protesters (esp. peaceful ones). He talks about what he calls “extrajudicial punishments” that don’t even require convictions to cause massive harm to the protester. The UK gov’t seems to be pioneering these techniques to dissuade and crush public left-wing protest, but if the techniques are successful it’s just a matter of time before they’re employed here in the US too.

    Ragebait? I guess, but given that the topics are legitimately rage-inducing, that’s to be expected. While right-wing domestic terrorists in the US continue to ramp-up their threats, and acts, of violence against those they dislike (including insufficiently MAGA-loving elected officials and judges ), with very few of them being caught and punished (never mind having their terrorist networks broken-up), following the UK recipe, we have (source):

    Protests against the proposed training center — dubbed “Cop City” by opponents — have been going on for more than two years. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr obtained a sweeping indictment in August, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to target the protesters and characterizing them as ”militant anarchists.”

    Demonstrators and civil rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have condemned the indictment and accused Carr, a Republican, of levying heavy-handed charges to try to silence a movement that has galvanized environmentalists and anti-police protesters across the country.