Mad as a box of badgers

maddyone

The idea of creating files on people whose views we disagree with is truly frightening.
Putin’s Russia anyone?

People do that all the time. It's when the state does it that it's worrying. (Though, the state has always done it)

I am pro life and regularly support an organisation that defends this right. I vaguely remember a university banning a pro life organisation, I found that deeply worrying.

Sorry not pro life I am pro a womans right to make the choice and would always defend it. I am still horrified at the idea of pro life organisations being banned.

The security service has full access to NatCons as all the talks are available on YouTube- no special surveillance needed. I imagine that it’s fairly routine for some minion to keep track of what is happening online.

I know that people have files kept on them Maizie. Everyone will have a file kept about them at work for example. It’s when the state keeps files on people just for their views that it’s frightening. That’s why I mentioned Putin’s Russia.

Galaxy

Sorry not pro life I am pro a womans right to make the choice and would always defend it. I am still horrified at the idea of pro life organisations being banned.

Me too.
Although I think that sometimes their activities need to be managed by police because we cannot have women entering an abortion clinic being intimidated.

maddyone

I know that people have files kept on them Maizie. Everyone will have a file kept about them at work for example. It’s when the state keeps files on people just for their views that it’s frightening. That’s why I mentioned Putin’s Russia.

But the state has kept files on people 'just for their views' from at least the late 18th century, if not before. It's always been ready to swoop on anyone they consider to be a threat to the status quo.

It was silly of me to say that I worried about it when I know that it already happens. I should have said that the great worry is what use the state makes of that information as it has the potential to be used to suppress all dissent, as it has in other states, and enable a dictatorship.

This is why the extension of police powers promoted by our current government is disturbing, however much some citizens might approve of the way they are being used against people they dislike.

maddyone

Galaxy

Sorry not pro life I am pro a womans right to make the choice and would always defend it. I am still horrified at the idea of pro life organisations being banned.

Me too.
Although I think that sometimes their activities need to be managed by police because we cannot have women entering an abortion clinic being intimidated.

I agree.

I just wonder how one defines 'forcing ones views on others. We can agree on harassment of women at abortion clinics, but do we agree about people being arrested 'just in case'?

Do people have a right to be shielded from views they don't agree with?

No freedom of speech means having the right to be offended. So whilst people might find it uncomfortable to walk past people who disagree passionately with their actions, they have a right in the U.K. and all other civilised countries to express their views.

What they do not have a right to do is threaten people like the clinicians etc with violence and even their lives.

I think the abortion clinics thing is very difficult. I agree women cant be harassed when going for abortions, but I dont think I can disagree with a protest say over the road from a clinic. I support the right to protest the coronation, I cant just support protests that I agree with.

I think the women being browbeaten and told that they are killing their unborn babies are more that just "offended".

I suspect that might be classified as harrassment.

There are laws around protest around clinics, buffer zones as they are called, I to be honest dont know what I feel about them.

I didn't introduce the word 'offended'. I was going back to nanna8's comment : ^ It is when they force their opinions on others that there is a problem.^

A lot of people on the other thread about the arrests at the coronation said that the protestors had no right to spoil people's enjoyment of the event. So, I wondered how would they have 'spoiled people's enjoyment'. I could only assume that it would be because they might be offended or upset in some way by the protest.

Which led me to wondering if people really did think that being exposed to different views from theirs is a deprivation of a 'right'. And would the protests have been counted as 'forcing opinions on others'?

I've been reading Ian Dunt's 'How to be a Liberal' and he examines the way in which suppression of opposing views in the name of 'what people think', or 'the will of the people' has developed horrific tyrannies,(which can include killing large numbers of people) from the French Revolution through to Communist Russia, Nazi Germany, Trump's USA, and Orban's Hungary and wondering if tolerating, or even approving, the quashing of dissent could happen here, in the UK. The widening of police powers with regard to protests to cover poorly defined 'offences' , and government and media rhetoric over the past 7 years seem like like such a slippery slope.

But I also wonder how many people are willing to go along with it because they don't like what dissenters are saying or what they are doing. Are they in a majority or is acceptance of dissent still predominant in the population?

I'm not sure that GNet is a representative micrcosm of public opinion, but there are certainly some rather illiberal views expressed on here with quite a lot of agreement.

There’s an interesting article about the National Conservatives and their conference on Conservative Home.

conservativehome.com/2023/05/19/who-were-the-national-conservatives-talking-to/

This does kind of relate to my previous post. The author of the Con. Home piece questions whether the tories are neglecting to focus on voters. Research has shown that voters tend to be less right wing and more liberal than the tory lurch to the right might justify

e.g. willjennings.substack.com/p/despite-what-you-may-have-heard-the

But, are voters changing their stance in view of the determined tory assault on 'illegal immigrants', is the demonising of a section of society, the 'othering' of them, having an effect? It certainly works, or has worked, for leaders in other countries.

Maizie, yes, I thought it chimed with what you said. And it’s interesting that it’s coming from a Tory, who is himself a former MP.

I particularly liked the warning of

“To be sure, it [the conservative party] could decide that some voter priorities, such as the cost of living or the condition of public services, are a distraction from fixating on culture alone”

And I agree with Jennings that there’s some evidence to suggest the UK population is increasingly socially liberal; I’m hopeful many of us are economically so.

I’m reminded, really, of Christine de Pizan’s comments on church moralists, roughly summarised as ‘they only go on and on and on about how good women should behave because they know we don’t believe or obey them’.

It depends what you mean by socially liberal though, pretending that women and children dont experience considerable disadvantage if raising children on their own (and the sexism within it as it generally falls to women) or thinking that chanting sex work is work is progressive, many people think these positions are socially liberal but of course they arent.