The Principles of Tyranny

Tyranny is a phenomenon that operates by principles by which it can be recognized in its early emerging stages, and - if the people are vigilant, prepared, and committed to liberty - countered before it becomes entrenched. Jon Roland 

There is a story by HG Wells called "the Country of the Blind", in which a sighted man accidentally stumbles across a society of blind people. They treat him as sick because of his sight and (SPOILER HERE) the story ends with them putting his eyes out to make him 'healthy' like the rest of them.

In our sick society the people who see the truth through the rhetoric, who speak out against lies and injustice, who stand out from the herd, are the exceptions. Some of us might privately grumble, but most of us toe the line, don't ask questions and look the other way, hoping those in charge know what they're doing but in any case leaving the big decisions up to them. 

Even when we feel uneasy about the ethics or morality of what is being done in our name we tend to suppress our reservations  - we want a quiet life! 
It's dangerous to speak out. We've learned that challenging authority, or even standing out from the crowd, leads to punishment, bullying and ostracism.
Our families, our schooling and peers, our hierarchical workplace systems, all teach us to respect authority, to be obedient and to fit in, and those lessons are perpetually reinforced by the authorities, by propaganda and by the mainstream media.

A healthy society is one in which dissent can be voiced, questions raised and challenges made, freely and openly and without fear of retribution. The right to stand up and speak out should be the cornerstone of every democracy, but in England, as the rhetoric and policies of Labour, the Tories and the Lib-Dems become increasingly indistinguishable, opposition parties have ceased to offer any meaningful challenge. Ordinary members of the public have little chance of being heard, and as a result, speaking out against miscarriages of justice and abuses of power is largely left to grass roots activists, whistleblowers, investigative journalists and human rights lawyers, people like Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and Gareth Pierce.

Without such people there are few remaining checks and balances to restrain the powers that be who, after all, are fallible. The more our leaders silence dissenting voices, the more isolated they become and the narrower their perspective. Tunnel vision makes them paranoid and insecure. Resistant to sources of external influence and afraid of losing control, they become increasingly oppressive, defending their position by “the arbitrary and unrestrained exercise of power”.

This is the definition of tyranny.

The "war on terrorism" has become a war on civil liberties. We need people who refuse to be "blinded", who take risks and bear punishments in our name,   and are brave enough to stick their heads over the parapet to expose wrongdoing. These people are not "terrorists" . On the contrary, they are the “moral policemen” (and women) of a just and humane society, and to brand them as criminals is a perversion of the truth. 

Outlawing dissent is the action of a repressive and sick regime.  It is the blind cutting out the eyes of the sighted, and then who will be left to watch out for us?

Charwoman Miaow, 20th August 2013

 

 

 

 

 

First they came for the Immigrants

 

I am writing to express my disgust at the government’s “Hostile Environment” campaign and its divisive, scaremongering and scapegoating tactics, including the “Go Home” van campaign, the Home Office “anti-illegal workers” twitter campaign, the Home Office plan to force visitors from certain Asian and African countries to pay £3,000 to visit the UK, and the UK Border Agency stop and search campaign, as well as the plans for further curtailment of immigrant’s entitlements to education, healthcare and benefits.

The very concept of creating a hostile environment for immigrants is morally repugnant. Whether legal or illegal, economic migrant or asylum seeker, black, Asian, Jewish, whatever – immigrants face extremely tough challenges and deserve the respect and compassion of those of us lucky enough not to be in their shoes.

To claim that the “Hostile Environment” campaign is not racist is total rubbish. Threatening and stigmatising people of ethnic minority backgrounds in ethnically mixed areas by driving vans around with pictures of handcuffs and the message “Go home”, sending out border patrols to stop and search dark skinned “suspected illegal immigrants” at tube stations and tweeting pixellated photos of arrested individuals (without even mentioning that they are mere suspects) are strategies designed to portray non-white immigrants as undesirables and criminals and, by association, place all non-white people under suspicion and mistrust.

Using the label “illegal immigrants” is just a smokescreen.
Statements made by the government deliberately blur the distinctions between legal and illegal status and between economic migration and political asylum, fostering a general suspicion of immigrants whilst simultaneously denying their positive contributions to Britain's culture and economy.

The “illegal workers” campaign deliberately obfuscates the fact that not all illegal workers are immigrants, or non-white, feeding on the myth that hordes of immigrants are invading Britain, “stealing our jobs and ruining our economy”.

The government’s cynical manipulation of information casts immigrants – both legal and illegal - as undeserving spongers and, because it is impossible to tell an immigrant from a born and bred non-white Briton just by looking, threatens anyone with dark skin who comes across as “a bit foreign”.  The obvious and deliberate implied overall message, which lacks supporting evidence of any kind, is that Britain is being taken over by a mass influx of non-whites.

What evidence there is suggests that legal immigration is actually a boon for Britain, and that the numbers of illegal immigrants entering Britain are in fact quite low. In terms of being a drain on the economy, the “problem” of illegal immigration is of little significance compared to, for example, the tax avoidance of big business or the huge payouts given out under the Private Finance Initiative. Immigration as a “problem” is just a red herring, a handy way of distracting the populace from focussing on the real issues and the real culprits, and shifting the blame onto vulnerable and disenfranchised groups.

The “Hostile Environment” campaign uses heavy-handed and frightening tactics based on false and misleading statistics and calculated to stir up resentment and hostility towards non-whites. Whether or not it is simply a publicity stunt aimed at winning over UKIP voters is irrelevant. To send out this message using these kinds of tactics is an absolute disgrace to the British government.

Humanity has an unfortunate tendency to scapegoat and blame those perceived as outsiders. Hitler knew this and used it very effectively to gain power. That this government is prepared to feed into the nastiest and most shameful inclinations of the electorate and stoop to these rabble rousing propaganda techniques, reminiscent of those used by Goebbels in pre-Nazi Germany, sets an extremely dangerous precedent. Targeting minorities on the grounds of their ethnicity is racist, no matter how much the Conservatives deny it, and as such is but the first step on a very slippery slope, as doubtless all those at the top of the party are fully aware.

I haven’t voted for years, feeling utterly disenchanted with party politics and the lack of choice between the parties, but under these circumstances I urge everyone to vote against the Tories, if only because of the vicious racism and intolerance of this campaign of calculated and cynical evil.
 

Charwoman Miaow

4^th August 2013