Almost 500 anti-genocide activists arrested as Starmer government moves to ban protests outright

Humanist Capitalism has to come out of the ashes
Unions, cooperatives, and unionized cooperatives no matter what
- Yes, I'm sure that when the Oil Manufacturers Cooperative murders climate activists and spreads propaganda to prevent the adoption of sustainable alternatives, humanity will be much better off...
  Capitalism in any form is unsustainable, any system that treats the world as fungible is. What we need is fundamental, structural change.
  We need a system that naturally incentivizes degrowth and makes the filling of power vacuums by corrupt, greedy, or opportunistic people or systems impossible.
  That's not capitalism, it's not syndicalism, it's not state communism. It's something in the realm of anarchocommunism. Societies that are prosperous because nobody in them is trying to screw people over: ones without capital accumulation or exertion of power, that are nevertheless resistant to power over them.
- Nah, Capitalism had its moment. It’s time for socialism now.
Oh boy, hyper capitalism, to go from we pay you to give us your soul- to you have to give us your soul and body or we flay your family is a natural step. This is hyper capitalism. Long ago you chose that corporations are human . It is not capitalism to not give humans food or rights. It is hyper capitalism. It is too much to give money to megacorp demonic entities that consume the earth to end our lives as a species, it is too much . It is not capitalism. Not the cute little communist opponent no it is HYPER capitalism, another beast an insane and psychotic beast

UK is a fascist regime. Well done!

Folks who get really up in their feelings about the Trump/Harris election seem to forget that Harris was taking campaign advice from this guy. It's so easy to forget how absolutely poisoned so-called "Liberal Democracy" has become with a broad strain of fascist tendency.
On the one hand, you've got a guy who is looking to literally lay siege to cities in the US that didn't vote for him. On the opposite side of the pond, they're doing mass-arrests of anyone with a "Please Stop Killing Brown People" bumper sticker. And in the middle, a sea of smug dipshits posting "You got what you voted for".
- Liberals will ALWAYS end up siding with the Fascists to try to suppress the Left. Happened in Germany in the 1930s, and the dumbass liberals eventually ended up lined up against the same walls the communists and socialists were lined up against. If you're a liberal today and defending this fascist suppression against Palestine Action: you're next.
- And then there's the Americans, for whom literally everything has to be about America in some way or another.
- What about the other 160 or so democracies? How they doin?
  Especially the proportional representation ones. FPTP is just a hint of democracy.
Always has been. See 1984, V for Vendetta, etc.
- You... you know those are fiction, r-right?
Real question:
Im going tongo tin foil haters a bit with the implication:
If you have a faist government why not just bring back the royal family as the leaders?
I get that facism is different than monarchism but many of the key distinctions aren't that significant imo, in that they both lean heavily towards autocracy and both Aggressively punish dissent.
Please shoot me.
- Sorry, in UK you get stabbed only.
- And how else would you describe mass imprisonment of pro-palestinian protesters? Furthermore: how is this fascist apologia not banned on .world?
UK is a fascist regime
It's really not.
https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-kingdom/freedom-world/2025
- 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.
- 2024
  They weren't declaring all protests illegal then, were they
- 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!
- They need to update it apparently, because I can't see those rights.

That's a funny looking labour government you got there UK.

How did you guys go from Corbyn to this? Is it so hard to have a labour party leader that doesn't back Israel or Russia?

Starmer is terrified of Reform. So he's taken the really smart stance of pulling Labour to the right to court a demographic that would never vote Labour anyway, and in the meantime utterly piss off his core base.
- This almost always fails and only ends up moving the country average to right and make extreme right seem more mild.
  Also I don't think right wing voters have that strong an opinion on Israel. This is more likely zionist lobbies pulling some of Starmer's strings.
- He's been do that for years. Hell labour advisors even managed get Kamala and the dnc to to harder right
- Yeah, it's very sad since I think people are more willing to vote Labour if they were just better. Now their voter base is more likely to stay at home instead of going to the voting booth. Weird move by Starmer since he was in the march against the Iraq war himself.
- It's so depressing. I remember the election that Ed Miliband lost, and how many of us were unsurprised that people found no appeal in Tory-lite as opposed to the regular Tories; Labour implicitly conceded to the Tories by affirming the idea that austerity was the only way to go. Now the same is happening with Reform.
  If Labour really wanted to challenge Reform, they'd challenge Reform's base assumptions. They'd argue, for example, that reducing immigration won't solve the housing crisis or NHS wait times, because those essential services are suffering from over a decade of chronic underinvestment. They don't need to fight on Reform's terms, because if they do, Labour will lose — again.
- Same story, different country
A campaign by Israeli-backed British Jewish groups of anti-semitism slanders against Corbyn (so extreme that at one point a Jewish Holocaust Survivor was deemed an anti-semite to get at Corbyn by association) toppled him down from Labour Party leadership, to be replaced by these types, who as soon as they got control of the Labour Party started purging it of people who had voiced Leftwing ideas and support for Corbyn.
Essentially Labour was emptied from the inside and its shell was filled with supporters of a foreign ethno-Fascist regime.
- This is a big part one party system of governments tend to fail.
  Also indicative of how multi party systems Can fail apparently.

Of the arrests, 488 were for holding up signs declaring, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”.

what the fuck?

At what point are people going to riot?

Not rioting is better. Peaceful protest, and thousands getting locked up, is what creates the conditions that might enable real social change.
If that doesn't work, then you have a proper riot (i.e. of the kind that isn't bread and butter to the powers that be). Edit - lot of downvotes here. You need to read a bit of revolutionary theory. No doubt there are Americans downvoting, who of course don't have a leg to stand on based on what they did with their exhorbitant ly privileged society./ YOu are showing your ignorance.
- I disagree. We're past the point where peaceful protests will create change. It's abundantly obviously that those in charge do not care. And they also got it in their heads that AI makes us less necessary.
  If leaders and executives won't listen to reason, then it's time to instil fear into them. Remind them there are so many more of us than them, and that their positions are a service to us, not a privilege or an entitlement.
- Peaceful protests are most effective when they're backed by the threat of violence. It's not the keg that forces concessions, it's the fear of the powder within. The cops have no issue beating up defenseless victims in the name of "order". Only when they're at risk themselves do they think twice.
  For that, the protests need to be large enough that escalation becomes an actual concern. Pre-gunpowder armies stacked their infantry deep, because more people behind you makes you bolder in face of the enemy before you. The larger the crowd, the more dangerous the potential rioters become.
  Premature escalation might get the bold vanguard beaten and made examples of. Only when there's enough support to keep the momentum going can riots effectively serve as an "or else" to the peaceful demands.
- No doubt there are Americans downvoting
  Not an american, you are still being silly. Also you sound american with all that rollover attitude to authority. They are outlawing peaceful protesting, the solution is not to keep doing the same thing but with more smugness.
- And what do you do when everyone who would dare to do anything is locked up by peacefully protesting? You're going to run out of bodies, before you realise you're fucked.
- Not American. You are wrong. We are lucky that many have more sense than cowardice because to do exactly what your opponent wants att any point in a rape is bordering malicious
- Peaceful only works when the people in power have a conscience and are willing to come to a peaceful resolution. When they want to eliminate your ability to tell them no, then rioting becomes the path forward.
- If you could choose between justice and peace, which would you choose?

Isn't this fucking idiot a human rights lawyer? People have a right to protest
This is why I fucking left. Oh yeah, the tories are a shitshow. Oh look, their replacements are barely better.

Where's safe?
- Nowhere. I'm somewhere better at least. We went from a good left wing government to an acceptable center right one and back again.

As an American, it's super disheartening to read stories about European governments being fascist assholes as well. It's nice to imagine there's somewhere to go to escape it.

"I'm escaping to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism......SPAAAAAYCE!"
I mean Europe is the home of facism and literally spread it throughout the world
- Yeah, which means they should know better more than anyone else. There's also the fact that the Nazis were inspired by Jim Crow, so Europe alone doesn't get the blame.

There you go, Trump. There's your 51st state.

It would be poetic, the former colonies coming back to annex the fatherland. Too bad it's because they're all Nazis now.

This is so self defeating... Palestine Action should have never been declared a "terrorist organization" in the same category as Al Qaeda and Daesh. People see right through that and it causes a backlash. Nd the UK government doubling down on the backlash creates even more backlash. I mean anyone can see that at this point that the government has lost the political battle on this one and is just chugging through due to the sunk cost fallacy. This is only paving the way for the Right to do a comeback. Fucking centrist liberals man, god damn.

No of course not, Al Qaeda is our great ally in Syria now, or some completely legit and organic offshoot of said group.
The sunsetting of a once great empire.
- I'm sure the people of India who starved think the British Empire was great.
  I'm sure the Irish really think the British Empire was great.
  I'm sure most of Asia and Africa think the British Empire was great.
  I'm sure the indigenous people of any land the British Empire conquered think the British Empire was great.
- I mean, it was never great in a good sense
- It's been twilight for quite some time now.

90% chance the mossad has a bunch of videos of Starmer and his cabinet diddling kids, or engaging in animality with pigs, whatever is the depravity du jour was in his heyday.

Meanwhile the nazis march against london with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon at the helm. 0 actual enforcement. The funniest part is Yaxley-Lennon was invited by an israeli minister to visit Israel...

Can you imagine travelling back to 1943 and telling people in the camps that their sacrifice would be the fertilizer of a new wave of the same ideological poison that deprived them of dignity and life. This is just heartbreaking... What's even the point of resisting anymore?

Friendly reminder indeed that Epstein was likely a Mossad asset and there are likely more like him.
- Source?
Resisting tyranny is how everything good in the world is possible. The way to have lives worth living is to defeat tyrants and their ideologies. We defeated the Nazis but not fascism. Now we have to defeat the ideological descendants of the Nazis.
If we don't defeat fascism, neoliberalism, and capitalism now the turn around time for the next fascist movement will be measured in years not decades. We have seen as much with the Biden administration. They failed to meaningfully hold Trump and MAGA to account for the insurrection or fundamentally fix the underling systemic issues that they are symptoms of and now we are living under fascist rule.
We don't have dignified lives or liberal democracies to go back to. The way to get something better is with socialist democracies where workers own corporations and the political process. Until then it's liberty or death. We benefited from a free democracy. If anyone is to enjoy that again we must resist now and until we are all free.
because...what other choice is there, let them win?

This will backfire.

We hope.
- I just don't think there is a single occurrence of it not backfiring

Keir Starmer is a cunt

nah. he lacks the warmth of a cunt.
- And depth

And remember this is from the "left" party in the UK.

Israel is key to western imperialist ambitions in the Middle East. The relationship between zionists and the west is in the same “too big to fail” category that protected the criminal bankers who left so many destitute in 2008. For capitalism’s true believers, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
Historically, British Zionism has been fundamentally tied to English supremacism and antisemitism.
Essentially, Israel is the UK's "not quite final solution" to the "problem" of Jews living in Britain - a place to dump all the Jews so England can be more ethnically pure.
This is public information - see the history of Zionism in Britain on wikipedia. The lesson ethnonationalists took from the holocaust - with Hitler publicly bemoaning he had no place to dump Jews forcing him into his final solution - was that every ethnicity needed their own homeland.
The story is similar for USAmerican white supremacists and ethic supremacists across Europe. If Israel collapsed, millions of Jews would flee to Europe and the US, and that's terrible if you're an antisemite.
But for the past 80 years, publicly admitting you're doing it for antisemitic or even ethnic supremacist reasons has been a faux pas, so there has been a whole literary genre of dogwhistles and motivated reasoning, combined with weaponizing of the "antisemitic" label, resulting in an intentionally opaque mess of justifications.
So then, as icing on the cake, the observation that this is a mess has been brilliantly co-opted by the propagandists through antisemitic conspiracy theory: Don't look behind the curtain, look at the Jewish boogeyman projected onto the curtain.
And of course capitalism also plays into this, but the capitalist elite has always been quite generous towards their fellow elites. "Socialism for the rich" is not just a turn of phrase, a lot of billionaires lost good money in the 2008 financial crisis bailout.
Golden parachutes, positions for each other's nepo babies, charity balls for trophy wives' pet projects, etc. - Despite capitalism supposedly being about profit maximization, the elites don't eat their own. They will let their portfolio burn billions to help each other out. But who is the in-group?
Surprise - it's white supremacists again. It's Epstein, Trump, Musk, the Kochs, the Waltons, the Clintons, the Kennedys, the British royals, etc. Nonwhites can definitely get invited to the cookout - Obama, Oprah, Rothschilds, etc. - but they are always peripheral and more easily cast out.
It's not a cabal, it's a community. Trump was the village idiot but his talent for demagoguery made him the hero of the town. White supremacy isn't a nefarious grand scheme, it's just a common belief that affects their friendships, their worldview, and their choices. Multiculturalism was a fun idea that helped destroy unions but now that people are angry it's easiest to fall back on the people you know (if you know what I mean). Bailouts are helping friends through tough times.
And Israel? Israel is a lightning rod. Anti-elitism can be tainted with antisemitism, ethnic supremacy is legitimized by their existence as a supposed solution to antisemitism while criticism of it isn't directed at white supremacy, anti-imperialism can be externalized, Islamophobia is sustained to justify oil wars, the military-industrial guys have a nice playing ground, the news can always look away from coups and neocolonial violence elsewhere, etc.
So that's the world - a bunch of rich white guys using Jews as a scapegoat for their own fuckery. Same as the past 1800 years, really.
- 5000 years*
not tongo full tinfoil, but this is beyond just lobbying.
I'm assuming there's lots of blackmail involved
- The UK government's reaction is so extreme that Israel having proof of something like child sexual abuse commited top British Labour politicians in the current Government seems likely (remember that from just the tiny slice of info that came out, both Prince Andrew and Mandelson were involved with Epstein).
- The colonial mindstate is still alive simple as that
- Nah, it's the mental illness and catastrophic human problem of religion. These nutcases think their invisible sky daddy is commanding them to do it.
- You're not tongoing at all imo.
  And now that we're on the subject, has anybody ever been as far to go make to do look more like?
I don't even know if they do, this is possibly/probably just the government repeatedly and gleefully shooting itself in the foot.
Palestine protests themselves aren't criminalised (despite the title), what is however is criminalised is support of the Palestine Action group.
This is because they are a proscribed as a terrorist organisation, after a couple of their members snuck onto a military base and spray painted aircraft.
This is stupid in almost every way you can look at it, it criminalises people who are innocent of everything but carrying a sign or wearing a t-shirt, it makes the government look both cruel and inept and it has (as far as I can tell) been a huge boon to the credibility of Palestine Action resulting in more people joining or at least supporting them. And finally it (makes the government appear to/reveals the government does) support a nation enacting a genocide.
As for why; the aircraft were refusing tankers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A330_MRTT I assume this was done because of rumors that the RAF were refueling IDF planes bombing civilians but last I heard they use incompatible in flight fueling systems.
Various news articles suggest 7m of damage which seems a bit high for spray paint, my guess is that knowing that people with unknown intentions had unsupervised access to military aircraft they demanded the planes on be stripped and re built to check for other sabotage.
The UK terrorism laws are unfortunately defined very broadly and can apply in the case of serious damage to property, not just intent to cause death and injury https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/07/uk-palestine-action-ban-disturbing-misuse-uk-counter-terrorism-legislation
There was also some controversy in that PA were grouped in with organisations which meet the more common definition of terrorism https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/2/uk-lawmakers-vote-to-ban-palestine-action-as-terror-group
In short, it's just because of oil. And American interests, which is a longer way of saying oil. Israel is an American outpost in an oil-rich region and serves its purpose of keeping the other Arab countries weak, divided and corrupt by constantly dishing out violence, bribes and blackmail in every direction.
And yes, the UK is doing this in America's interests and not their own, because the UK is not a sovereign country. It is a colonized puppet state of the Americans and has been since at least Tony Blair.
- Haha what, please use occams here. It's hyper capitalism enforcing violence to cling to its embarrassing dependency on war. It doesn't matter about oil any more. The megacorps that are dependent on oil are adapting and becoming another form of demonic entity that have still full control over the astroturfing and distraction machinery, an important part of the global death chamber project

Fuck Tory Lite

What in the fascist UK fuck.

I can't decide what's more depressing.

A) The subject of the linked article, or

B) The fact that an article on World Socialist Web Site is linking to posts by Amnesty UK and Defend our Juries (three organizations that should all know better by now) on Xitter.

Jesus

At an absolute bare minimum, the last two should be cross posting everything to Mastodon, and the first should be linking to the Mastodon accounts whenever available.

Oh, look! Amnesty UK has a Mastodon account that they're not fucking using, apparently never have.

[Edit: spelling]

I don't support the UK crackdown on peaceful protesters, but this wsws.org is a de-facto Chinese propaganda medium. That's not a good source.

The Independent
It's a good source if it reports on the fascist behaviors of the UK government. With this trend, how long do you think western media will be able to report freely on this stuff?
this wsws.org is a de-facto Chinese propaganda medium.
How so?
- Not OP but I found this on wiki:
  The WSWS described the 2014 Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine as a coup backed by the United States and Germany in which the Ukrainian far-right coalition of organizations Right Sector and political party Svoboda would have played a "crucial role".[13] Furthermore, the WSWS criticized the coverage of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014 by the majority of German media outlets, describing it was one-sided and "anti-Russian propaganda". Thus, leading outlets such as Der Spiegel and Die Zeit would have been clamouring for military action against Russia and attacking the President of Russia Vladimir Putin, "who is portrayed as a new Hitler and an aggressor".[14]
  About the shootdown of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014, the WSWS stated that "Washington has presented not one shred of evidence that Flight MH17 was brought down by a missile either fired by the anti-Kiev forces or supplied by Moscow". Regarding the assassination of Boris Nemtsov in 2015, David North wrote for the WSWS that he was wondering if the United States was planning a coup to replace Putin with a "Western-friendly oligarch".[15] On February 22, 2022 the WSWS issued a statement opposing Putin's invasion of Ukraine, calling for the unity of Russian and Ukrainian workers against both Putin and NATO.[16]
  Is it so hard to find a socialist organisation that isn't just simple contrarians?
Isn't WSWS run by Trotskyists?

Kier Starmer is a genocide denying twat.

V for Vendetta is starting to look more like prophecy than fiction...

Reform UK will have a hard time catching up with Labour in the fascism League.

*arrested as Labour's Party government moves to ban protests outright.

United Kingdom - The only democracy in the Middle East

Wow. Fuck that.

I don't like the way this is being framed.

People aren't arrested for supporting Palestine.

They are arresting for praising Palestine Action, a UK organization that was banned after breaching into a Royal Airforce military base

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn81g4e0nlyo

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-military-jets-damaged-pro-palestinian-activists-royal-air-force-israel-gaza-us-war/

Spraying military aircraft with red paint isn't terrorism by any stretch of the imagination. Who does it terrorize? And supporting an organisation whose members sprayed fighter jets with paint isn't terrorism either. There's no justification for the UK government's use of anti-terrorist legislation against these protesters.
By contrast, supporting a regime that has been openly committing genocide for years and uses torture and murder to intimidate its opponents could well qualify as terrorism.
- People that were against terrorism legislation argued this until they were blue In the face and people people told them don't worry, the government is totally not going to abuse these powers.
- And runs political interference campaigns at the highest levels of its allies to gain unlimited support. We label other countries foreign actors waging hybrid warfare for a lot less. It's crazy.
So? I support Palestine Action and all actions they've taken to stop the UK's complicity in genocide. It's illegal to say this in the UK.
And arresting people for saying that is acceptable because...?
- hand on hip and wagging scolding finger "Oi mate, yous can't soiy that, it's prohibited language! You're noit allowed to suppoht a group declared terrohrist feh sproiy paintin' a jumbo jet!"
When Keir Starmer was a solicitor he defended people, successfully, for the same kind of thing. This isn’t terrorism, this is my government taking away our rights to protest.
People are ignoring their proscription to bring attention to the insanity of it and hope to force the government to back down. It’s mainly old people being arrested; including priests. I would do it myself but it’s hard when you’ve got work and being in jail would hinder that.
For what it’s worth I support Palestine Action.
- I mean. It's obviously working. Coward.
Amnesty International, Liberty, and the UN disagree with you.
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/uk-banning-palestine-action-disturbing-legal-overreach-uk-government-amnesty
https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/issue/governments-use-of-terrorism-powers-against-protest-groups-sets-concerning-precedent/
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/07/un-experts-urge-united-kingdom-not-misuse-terrorism-laws-against-protest
They should just start doing protests under the banner of Palestine Action 2 instead.
- "Palestine Mechanism"
- Palestinian electric boogaloo.
Who gets to declare that the distinction matters? Why do they get to do that?
How is this fascist nonsense not banned from .world is beyond me
LOL, they are violating their Freedom of Speech instead of violating their Freedom of Speech?
User name checks out
I don't like you.