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Comment by roenxi

6 hours ago

I mean, you bought up an example of a man being dragged off the streets of the UK for (1) trying to express support for playdough and (2) being suspected of undermining support for genocide.

I have relatives in the UK, right now. And after this conversation I'm now more concerned for them than I was this morning, and I can make some educated guesses about why ol' mate didn't want to talk to you about Pinochet, who Wikipedia suggests died 20 years ago. Sounds like something is going on in the UK right now.

I mean, seriously, I have left-wing family members who might be travelling to the UK this year. Is there some sort of guide to what political t-shirts will get them arrested?

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roenxi

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Nursie  6 hours ago

This feels disingenuous on your part now and is in fact exhibiting the exact problem brought up in the thread.

You’re not being asked to feel better about the UK! If you didn’t know about this stuff and you feel worse about the UK, good, you probably should!

But you are being asked to see a difference in degree between:

  Someone speaks out about human rights abuses and murder sanctioned by the state, and is arrested, then later released with an apology.

  Someone speaks out about human rights abuses and murder sanctioned by the state, and is arrested, their arrest is denied by the state and they turn up several years later in a mass grave.

You’re telling me those are the same thing?

> I mean, seriously, I have left-wing family members who might be travelling to the UK this year. Is there some sort of guide to what political t-shirts will get them arrested?

“Palestine Action” is currently a proscribed organisation. They are proscribed because some of them are alleged to have fucked with some fighter jets and done some other illegal direct action stuff.

So currently it’s illegal to show support for that specific group.

There are open court challenges to the whole situation, and many hundreds of people are awaiting trial for continuing to show support to the group after the proscription. The whole thing is a shitshow.

But you can (AFAICT) support Palestine and Palestinian people as much as you like, you’re just not allowed to wave “Palestine Action” flags or t-shirts around.