Political dissidents

[TalkingtoLangClegintheDark]

Listening to the news the other day, someone from UK Twitter was talking about the renewed demands to end anonymity for social media users, and saying that potentially endangers political dissidents.

I know she didn’t mean women like us, but it made me think - that’s what we are. Political dissidents. Here, in a western democracy, we do not have the freedom to say what we think, to hold opinions that run contrary to those approved by the government.

This is particularly the case in Scotland, of course, where their odious “hate crime” law is just repression disguised as protection for minorities. What is Marion Millar if not a political dissident? She is being persecuted and prosecuted for publicly expressing opinions that are currently not permissible according to Holyrood.

And of course we have it this side of the border too: Harry Miller, Graham Linehan, Posie, Maggie Nelson have all been spoken to by the police simply for holding views that are and certainly should be perfectly legal, but are being nonetheless criminalised by police forces across England. As far as we know, the police are still recording “hate incidents” against people’s names, without them ever having the chance to defend themselves.

And how many women are there all over the UK, and in other western democracies, who dare not use their real names on SM for fear of the repercussions, including potential criminal proceedings?

Surely this is the mark of an oppressive political regime - where those who dissent from the “approved” ideology of the day cannot freely express their own opinions? I’ve been struggling to put a name to where we are - this feeling of being circumscribed in what we are able to say in public, open discourse - for some time now: years, even - and I think this is actually it. We are dissidents against the ideology of genderism that has captured almost the entire Establishment in a shockingly, stunningly short space of time.

It would seem that our democracy is far more fragile, and closer to those authoritarian regimes that we more usually think of as producing dissidents, than we ever realised before.

@thinkingaboutLangCleg

I've been wondering at this for a while. Does the loss of freedom, or the collapse of a culture, often happen like this?

Not an invasion or civil war or a military coup. Just a quiet change in the air, unnoticeable at first but spreading steadily until, just at the point where people are starting to think "Something's going on", it's there all around you and you're too late.

No one wanted it, but now no one dares protest. And you've lost something essential, which you hadn't protected because you thought it was indestructible.

Excellent post.

Great thread OP and lots of thoughtful, knowledgeable posts and links. I've been thinking the same thing @thinkingaboutLangCleg but you have articulated it so perfectly.
I read a lot of Solzhenitsyn a long time ago and really ought to reread as I was too young to really understand the deeper messages.
I was interested to discover that DD's friend, half Russian, a very international highly educated family, had never heard of Solzhenitsyn. I gave her and several of the friends a copy of A Day in the Life if Ivan Denisovich which is a slim copy and a good introduction to life in the gulag.

Perhaps the life of Ai Weiwei is more current and relatable - I took DD to an exhibition at the Royal Academy (pr-Covid obv) which was really interesting and powerful. We had a great day out. So I might give her this for Christmas though I see it is £25 - will see if I can find a cheaper copy but then again it is probably a book that actually is worth a big investment.

www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/24/1000-years-of-joys-and-sorrows-by-ai-weiwei-review-a-life-of-dissent

Thanks, Andante. I think a lot of us feel the same, don’t we, staring at the king “in his new clothes”, seeing clearly that he is naked but not being allowed to say so. More and more of us are now daring to speak, but those that are heard are punished.

The longer it takes for enough people to realise what’s happened and protest, the more entrenched this severely enforced ideology becomes. So the more children have grown up believing it uncritically. Then they are the adults and in power.

The longer it takes for enough people to realise what’s happened and protest, the more entrenched this severely enforced ideology becomes.

Yes, and as language changes to queer the words sex, woman, transphobia, etc, it gets harder and harder to describe ourselves or our needs or to explain why we need the legal protections that have disappeared before anyone even realised.

Plus, as you say, women are publicly punished for even daring to speak about what's happening, and others are so terrified that the slightest inflection in tone might be detected as doubt that they over-egg their enthusiasm for gender ideology by demonstrating just how anti-woman they are, for their own safety. But you can't point that out because then you're patronising them and robbing them of their agency to be submissive if they want to be.

It's the same old patriarchy in turbo mode.

Thanks, Fanny. I’m staggered that your half-Russian friend’s family hadn’t heard of Solzhenitsyn. But it is frightening how quickly knowledge is lost.

I only heard of Solzhenitsyn because he was so famous after he won the Nobel prize in 1970. But we were encouraged at school and university, as well as at home, to read widely. Now most young people get most of their information through social media, which naturally focuses on current interests in fairly small areas.

I thought the huge uncontrolled Internet would mean more freedom of thought and knowledge and news etc. But as it turns out, how easy it is for vested interests to control the flow of information.

I heard someone (from the band Gomez, I think) on the radio last week talking about streaming music and saying the same - that since the advent of streaming, instead of people listening to more and more different types of music snd artists, the same songs and performers are listened to more and more everywhere.

The global internet seems to create a kind of snowball effect, where once an idea or form of expression reaches critical mass, it just gathers more and more momentum and becomes more and more “attractive” (in the magnetic sense), so more and more people are exposed to it and see it as what’s happening now, the Zeitgeist it’s important to be part of.

Which makes it very easy to popularise a thought and make it seem like the norm, in a relatively short space of time.

I came across a French article about Eddie Izzard/the LGBA the other day, and word for word, it could have been written for/by Pink News; exactly the same in tone and content. It was just really weird to read all the same garbage in French, to see the LGBA referred to as an “anti-trans pressure group”, as if that were a straightforward, neutral fact, by a French writer for a French speaking audience.

Weird and scary.

Great thread OP and lots of thoughtful, knowledgeable posts and links

Thanks Fanny, and a sincere thank you to everyone who has posted - a great many thoughtful, knowledgable posts indeed.

Isn't the Twitter kerfuffle about the BBC Cotton Ceiling piece playing out as living examples of everything we're discussing here?

Yes indeed. They don’t like it up ‘em, as whatsisname on Dads’ Army said.

What a joy that the piece was put out though! And the BBC actually doing has given me hope. It feels momentous. As if Pravda had run a piece critical of the politburo back in the day.

But I dread to think what state we would be in now if Labour had won the election. I don’t think Tim Davie would have been appointed to his position, for a start. And I think the whole of the UK would be very rapidly be going down the embryonic police state route favoured by the SNP.

It is weird, having grown up believing that the Conservatives were the baddies, to now discover the lefties are actually more dangerous, on an existential level, I suppose you’d call it. So many things about this are weird though!