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”.

    • Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com
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      16 hours ago

      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!

      • FishFace@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        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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            3 hours ago

            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.

    • Zombie@feddit.uk
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      22 hours ago

      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.