Both the government and the Court of Appeal now treat protesters as terrorists and terrorists as protesters. It's hard to accept that a "Labour" government is imposing rightwing authoritarianism on the UK, but please read this column to see what's happening.+🧵 theguardian.com
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A massive shift is taking place here. Well-organised far-right terrorism is being treated as ordinary criminality, while conscience-driven protests against genocide are treated as terrorism. A highly conservative (and deeply weird and fantastical) Court of Appeal ruling embeds this shift. Even more disturbing is what happened at Woolwich Crown Court last week, where the Crown prosecutors chose not to try Palestine Action protesters as terrorists, as the jury would be unlikely to convict. They were convicted as ordinary criminals. But then the judge *sentenced* them as terrorists. Who knew that this could happen? I didn't. But it turns out that the Sentencing Act 2020 allows judges to send people down for crimes for which they have not been tried or convicted, with far longer sentences and far more draconian conditions than they would otherwise face. It gets worse - read on. What this means is that anyone involved in direct action protests could be sentenced as terrorists, whether or not they belong to a banned group and whether or not terrorism is *even mentioned at the trial*. Without informing the jury, the judge secretly marks the case as "terrorism connection". Then, when the defendants have been convicted of ordinary crimes and the jury's gone home, the judge decides to sentence them for something else entirely. Because it seems to me, when you come down to it old boy, that these revolting little people are really terrorists. Judge, jury and executioner. The government is actively encouraging this direction of travel, treating protesters' sincere motivation - hitherto regarded as a mitigating factor - as an *aggravating* factor, to prove that they are *terrorists*. Yet at the same time, it will neither name nor prosecute far-right terrorism. You may well ask yourself what the hell is going on. I do. But it becomes comprehensible only when you set aside the thought that this is a Labour government. If we saw this anywhere else, we'd know exactly what to call it. Rightwing authoritarianism. So why is Labour imposing it on the UK? What you have to understand is that for Starmer's team, the right is not the enemy. The left is. Its driving mission, from the moment Starmer took over, was to stamp out first the Labour left, then the wider left. It hates us, deeply and viscerally, with a passion never directed at the right. We might have thought we were getting woolly centrism when Labour replaced the Tories in 2024. Not a bit of it. This is a burning, holy crusade, a reconquista by people who emerged from the bitter sectarian wars within the party, and see any progressive policy as a concession to Corbynism. One more note. The media's near-silence on this astonishing legal shift is almost as disturbing as the issue itself. This vast change is covered in most outlets way down the bulletins, with almost no explanation or context. This is how democracy dies: not with a bang but a whimper. Thank you. The thread on one page: skywriter.blue
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