PROTEST IS NOW A CRIME

“V for Vendetta” and Resisting the Establishment
I spoke with a bright young lady last night, who reminded me how good the film, “V for Vendetta” is. We discussed the fine line between terrorists and freedom fighters. We discussed the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the recent London Riots. It made me think about our attitude to protest and the establishment’s attitude to protest. In my subsequent research, I found some interesting recent articles:

"Police arrest 20 at London student protest" [Stuff, Nov 2011]
"An internet kill switch and cyberIDs for all" [Aardvark Aug 2011]
"Stop apologising for these louts" [Aardvark Aug 2011]

“V for Vendetta” is set in the UK (probably London), where a masked crusader fights a repressive government which clamps down on freedom and protest. Ironically today, the UK government wants to exert a similar repression. The UK government wants to use the recent London protests as an excuse to adopt a Kill Switch “to disable social networking sites and networks if they feel some unease rising within the ranks of the great unwashed” [Bruce Simpson]. Prime Minster Cameron must love this; for the publicity on his own self, for the restrictions he can exercise on one of the world’s most important democracies, and for the attempted controls (yet again!) he can impose on the internet. Look closer - this story is really three big-picture stories:

• How our so-called free democracies continually try to restrict our freedoms
• How our so-called free democracies continually try to control the internet
• How our so-called free democracies consider sporadic protesting a crime

Cameron might yet succeed in convincing the proles on all three counts. He might succeed, because the spin on the initial London protests has been whipped up into a frenzy which purports to rip apart the fabric of UK society. It won’t, of course, but Cameron is spinning it thusly. The reality is that western politicians of mainstream parties are hypocrites who simply want to exercise more controls on what little democracy and free speech we have left. Shame on you, our elected representatives. Are we now in such a place that protest – albeit angry protest – has now become a crime?

Protest is Bad and Naughty and Nasty
All too often, we tow the establishment line; “sporadic protest = riot”. I am not condoning the opportunistic thugs, looters and low-lives in London who have hijacked this protest. These idiots play into the hands of the establishment, and make the lives of The People even more restricted. In fact, these idiots kill our freedoms and kill our democracy. Read on - you'll see where I'm going with this. The riots were sparked off by a perceived huge wrong; a young black man shot dead by police. However, when protestors take to the street to express their anger, they're BAAAAAAAADDDD. The immediate government reaction to the protests was "They're activists, they're thugs, they're radicals, and they’re nasty."

Do you know, that's exactly what the establishment said about the UK Chartists (Google it!) in the 19th Century? We have since adopted all points but one of the Chartists' 6-point charter, as the building blocks for our modern democracy. Sadly, this is where the Occupy Movement will fail utterly; it does not have the specific, listed aims that the Chartists did. By the way, the Chartists leaders were all imprisoned for between 16 months to 21 years. Before they were imprisoned, I might add, they formulated our contemporary democracy which has since been perverted and abused by career politicians. These are the political parasites who now govern us – victims of power abuse who have not grown up. Read Alice Miller’s “Drama of Being a Child”

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_drama_of_being_a_child.html?id=lG9xQgAACAAJ

I digress a little. Bear with me, I’m getting there.

Even the peaceful Occupy Movement protests are considered a threat – otherwise they wouldn’t be resisted. The Occupy Movement directly challenges the establishment, rather than the indirect threat of the London Riots. Splendidly, their adamantly peaceful nature is frustrating the establishment’s attempts to quash them. Thankfully, the Occupy Movement isn’t giving the ammunition that the London Riots did. However, the machinations of the US, UK and even NZ governments are trolling through the various laws to try to end the Occupy occupations. Let’s face it; in the UK, the police and government can do just about anything under the auspices of the Breach of the Peace, National Security or Disorderly Conduct laws. And I’ll elaborate on the limitations on our freedoms from the so-called War on Terror, later.

How Protest is Used to Erode our Freedoms
So here’s the hypocrisy. Let’s remind ourselves of some populist activists whom the western establishment has applauded in recent years;

• The Berlin Wall scalers, who tore down the wall in a populist movement
• Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia and Lech Walesa of Poland - good, naive men who led a populist movement, and then ousted by said political parasites from their own country
• The students in Tiananmen Square who stood in front of tanks and died
• The Egyptian protesters who fought against Mubarak and died

These protesters, above, were applauded by the west because they didn’t involve or result in change in the west. Capitalist “democracies” resist social change to their own country, but love change in other countries as trade opportunities. This is why I cite our western governors are hypocrites. And so are those who ride on the wave of their hysteria over these protests. How many of our fundamental freedoms are chipped away when events like this are used by the establishment? In fact, some would say the western establishment loves events like this. It uses them as excuses to curtail our fundamental freedoms. Geogre Dubya Bush was the Master! Look at how the UK and USA has used this and “The War on Terror” to limit, monitor and control:

• Our freedom of association
• Our freedom of speech
• Our freedom of communication
• Our freedom of anonymity
• Our freedom of movement
• Our privacy

Defining the Establishment
Before I discuss the internet and social-media threat to the establishment, it’s worth me defining “The Establishment,” so I don’t get accused of using wide clichés. I’m very clear on exactly who makes up the establishment:

• Capitalist-led, business-orientated politicians. That’s pretty much the mainstream political parties in all our governments. They came to power as a result of the bankruptcy and failure of the monarchies, post-WWI.
• Business leaders. The ruling executive class whose corporations are threatened by disruption and social change. They’re the hypocrites who now reap the most rewards from business expansion in foreign markets undergoing radical social change – but can’t abide such change in their host countries.
• The Civil Service (police leaders, judiciary, reserve bankers) who are most threatened by radical change to their host country.

The civil service part of the establishment is an interesting one. Following the collapse of the European monarchies after WWI, they seamlessly switched allegiance from the collapsed monarchies to the capitalists who subsequently won the peace.

I’m often accused of being a communist. If the Leninist-Stalin model was communism, then you can keep it. AJP Taylor, the famous historian, noted that the “revolutionary” Bolsheviks used exactly the same civil service – same employees – that the Tsars used! Strange how little change actually occurred as a result of the 1917 Russian “Revolution.” One dictatorship was replaced by another. There was no real social change; poverty was retained, elitism was retained. Today, the internet offers radicals the real opportunity to facilitate and plan real change.

If communism means egalitarianism, limits on power, controls on greed, and political accountability, then I’m happy to have that lable.

The Threat of the Internet to the Establishment
So here’s my point. The establishment is truly threatened by the internet. In the crass words of Dubya, “They hate us because we’re free.” The internet allows enormous freedom of speech (hah - like this blog!), has few controls, and it changes so fast, the people who rule us find it threatening. Anything that can’t be controlled by the establishment is a threat – which is why so many of the freedoms I described are being eaten away. This is because those things that can’t be controlled might, God forbid, lead to change. Real change. Social change. Such true change, that is for the betterment of our society, is abhorred and feared by the establishment. Such change means that as we become more empowered, the power of the establishment becomes diluted. Or worse (gasp!), the members of the establishment have to pay more tax to pay for that change. This is the reason that the establishment continually tries to put controls on the internet. Up until now, the reason for controls has been to (quite rightly) curtail kiddy porn. When those controls don’t work, copyright infringement is the excuse for new, tighter controls on the internet. And now “potential riots” is the excuse to stem the paradigm shift of social networking and the freedom of information transfer inherent in the internet.

It doesn’t help that the establishment doesn’t truly understand the internet, which is why their attempts to control it are so clumsy. But wait. I hear the whores of the establishment screaming in my ears. “If you’re not committing a crime, then you’ve nothing to fear.” Fine. Have you read Orwell’s "1984"? The logical conclusion to this indolent thinking is that you then have no problem with government CCTV cameras in your house. You have no problem with CCTV cameras in your lounge and bedroom, with more government agents watching your every move. Your increased taxes would be paying for these agents. Well, such controls would surely eliminate every crime, wouldn’t they? And, you’ve nothing to fear from government cameras in your room, remember - because you’re not committing a crime.

Conclusion
Do you value our democracy? Do you enjoy the limits placed on our politicians? Do you enjoy universal suffrage? Do you want the government in your lounge? Read more about the “Chartists.” They’d be turning in their graves by now.

I’m afraid that the powers-that-be will succeed in their attempts to do adopt a kill switch, on the back of this right-wing hysteria, whipped up by the equally right-wing media. Time and again, the white middle classes roll over and take it up the jackseye, if anything threatens their mortgage-related comfortable living. We are ants. The powerful voice of the educated middle classes has been silenced by the mortgage tombs around their necks and the vain hope of promotion. Capitalism has enfeebled, virtually enslaved, the middle classes. The current form of our business-driven democracy dilutes our voice, and protest has become a crime. We are ants.