[mcjiggerlog]

There oddly seems to be a concerted effort online to paint the UK as some kind of failing police state recently. This narrative seems to have really taken off with some Americans, who now seem completely convinced that the UK government is some kind of totalitarian oppressor who are snatching people off the streets.

Meanwhile, Brits just look on at this narrative wondering what the hell they're talking about. Look, I'm against this legislation too, but if you actually live in the UK or even just consume mainstream British media, you'd soon realise that this narrative that's being pushed is a distortion that doesn't match day to day reality.

[nxm]

What is happening in Britain is people are being actually arrested for “offensive” speech, which is of course subjective, subject to abuse, and open to totalitarian oppression. This is why the First Amendment in the US constitution is so important

[KaiserPro]

> Britain is people are being actually arrested for “offensive” speech

This isn't actually new though. The difference is that they'd normally be nicked for breaching the peace, which is loosey goosey enough to be used for most things.

ASBOs are far more totalitarian as they can legally stop people from doing legal things. (ie stop a child playing in a park)

But to tackle your main point, Yes people are being arrested for offensive speech, but thats normally only part of the reason for arrest.

I can call my MP a massive <pejorative that gets the Americans all abother>, I cannot however cause a race riot, as that's not allowed under freedom of expression.

I also cannot give advice on pensions.

I cannot threaten the lives of people

I also cannot claim to be a policeman

etc.

The thing you must understand is that _most_ people (ie not columnists or former PMs) accept that there is a tradeoff between "free speech" and a pleasant society. Sure we did look at your first amendment and think "ooo thats probably nice" but then we have the human rights act that enforces freedom of expression. (which the same columnists/former ministers are decrying freedom of speech are looking to get rid of "because it protects immigrants")

The Online safety act is a mess, because ofcom have not issued proper guidance, and the draft bill was directed by someone who was borderline insane (nadine dorris)

Age assurance is not actually a problem, what is a problem is asking me to hand over personal details so some fly by night US startup who'll get hacked/sell my data to blackmailers.

forcing websites to have moderation policies is fine, not having a flexible approach for smaller sites is not fine.

The act is flawed, but its not _actually_ that different from how Network TV is moderated in the USA.

[nrawe]

I'm happy to be wrong, but I don't believe that's correct. There have been some people arrested for inciting violence via social media during the Southport riots.

There is also Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who has been remanded in custody for contempt of court for continuing to libel an immigrant even after his claims were proven to be false. And by contempt of court, he literally has produced a movie continuing to slander said immigrant for his own ends.

Another is Palestine Action being made a proscribed terror group. While lots of people, as evidenced by recent protests, see this as problematic, its not particularly different to other groups like environmental activists that commit criminal acts being proscribed and there are numerous examples UK/abroad of that. PA members at the direction of PA leadership have fallen into that category not because of their beliefs, but because of their actions – like breaking into Israeli-owned security research company with a van, and into an RAF base, in both cases committing vandalism and destruction of property.

Some people believe there is a problem, but there really isn't a legislative agenda against free speech.

[darrenf]

Arrests are up, but sentences are down — i.e. fewer convictions/criminal records

https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/select-communications-off...

> there are several reasons why an arrest may not result in a sentence, such as out-of-court resolutions, but said the “most common is “evidential difficulties””, specifically that the victim does not support taking further action.

As mentioned at the top of the above document, there was a debate in the Lords on 17th July on the topic where many of the participants were pretty scathing about the situation: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2025-07-17/debates/F807C...

The minister was naturally defensive towards the end, albeit they did say:

> Importantly, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing, at the request of the Home Secretary, are currently undertaking a review of how non-crime hate incidents are dealt with. We expect to see some information from the police on that. It is self-evidently important that some of those incidents help us gather intelligence on potential future crime, but, equally, we do not want the police to do things that waste their time and not focus on the type of crime that the noble Lord rightly mentioned in his introduction.

[crinkly]

The US constitution is only valuable if enforced, which is clearly not the case at the moment.

[matthewmacleod]

There are very significant concerns about the actions of the Westminster government recently no doubt – this is stupid legislation, and it compounds with other stupid legislation (see the recent arrests for supporting proscribed groups). Everyone should be protesting this nonsense.

That said, there is equally a clear and obvious effort to distort what is happening. And I don't think anybody should really be taking lessons about "totalitarian oppression" when current US government policy is to send gangs of masked thugs to round up brown people.

[lkramer]

Sure, but so are people in the US, despite the first amendment.

[te_chris]

Definitely not happening in the us too! Certainly no academic visas being cancelled.

[vidarh]

As someone who does live in the UK, and has for 25 years, while I too see the distortion you talk about, things have taken a distinct turn towards authoritarianism to the point that I watch what I write under my own name.

[hopelite]

The funnest part about that is you better make sure no matter what you write is also future proof against any and all whims of any other regime that may rule at any point in the future. But that is ultimately the point of any abusive and toxic system created by psychopathic, megalomaniac, malignant and grandiose narcissistic people and groups; they want to broken and shattered, never sure what may set the abuse off, until the day you remain beaten down and submissive to the demigods.

[jjgreen]

This country where 80-year old vicars are arrested for holding up a small piece of paper expressing support for a non-violent proscribed organisation? Everything is fine citizen, move along...

[crote]

> who now seem completely convinced that the UK government is some kind of totalitarian oppressor who are snatching people off the streets

It's a bit hard to argue otherwise when the draconian arrests are well-documented by pretty much every single media outlet.

[squidbeak]

Could you list some for the benefit of those of us who haven't seen any?

[exe34]

I think it's fair to say that the maggats will say whatever they need to achieve their aim, not what they believe to be true. They have the national guard deployed in their capital to stifle dissent by the same orange taint who said he wasn't allowed to do that when it was his people trying to stage a violent self-coup (and he has since pardoned those criminals).

What they want is a similar fascist group in the UK to do well in the next election - and freedom of speech is one of the easiest things to moan about when criminals are getting nabbed.

[Oarch]

Am British, don't agree with you in the slightest.

Our media is absurdly distorted itself. Sometimes it's more objective to look from the outside in.

[Xelbair]

Look, I've been visiting Britain as a tourist for years(since more than 10 years ago) - mostly to visit my friends who live there.

Each time i come there it's worse than previous trip, and your whole infrastructure feels oppressive. Constant reminders to be vigilant because something bad might happen(train and metro jingles come to mind) - implying a terrorist attack. Constant reminders that you're watched by cameras, while crime itself is rampant.

I come from Eastern Europe, yet visiting UK genuinely feels like visiting oppressive police state.

I am aware about your history(first The Troubles, then terrorist scare of 2000s, now domestic problems) but this is NOT the normal state for modern western country. Most likely perspective of Brits who have been living through this since ww2 is heavily culturally skewed, rather than then outside observer's one.

[gadders]

>> then terrorist scare of 2000s

The Ariana Grande concert bombing was only five years ago. You can see a list of those in the 2020's here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...

[nrawe]

As a Brit, I'd agree that it's not ideal.

However, the characterisation of terrorist scare in the 2000's, is somewhat off. Over the course of the last two decades, there have been numerous terrorist attacks, most notably 7/9, which have led to increased vigilance and securitisation.

So while travelling in Hungary, Croatia, or Italy over the last few years I've noted the difference, I also appreciate that each country is dealing with its own internal context that can be difficult to grasp from the outside.

Anyway, thank you for visiting our fair shores :)

[kristianc]

> Look, I'm against this legislation too, but if you actually live in the UK or even just consume mainstream British media, you'd soon realise that this narrative that's being pushed is a distortion that doesn't match day to day reality.

The censorship in the UK isn't that overt. There's no masked gangs grabbing people off the street, what there are is government "nudge" units, media talking heads and government-aligned media trying to push you toward points of view acceptable to the establishment. We're the world leaders in manufactured consensus.

[KaiserPro]

> government-aligned media

The telegraph and times are government aligned? so is GB news? Now thats a good joke.

I have actually met the media teams for a number of government departments (including during the drafting of the OSA) They are almost the living embodyment of "the thick of it" clever people trying to do good, surrounded by industrial grade cunts.

[closewith]

> The censorship in the UK isn't that overt.

Yes, it is.

> There's no masked gangs grabbing people off the street

The British Government is definitely not above masked kidnapping gangs and worse. The Glenanne Gang, MRF, etc.

[holoduke]

The problem in the UK is that politics are not in any way looking after its citizens. Its a group of elitists that serve large financial institutes. If you look at the UK now it really is much worse than lets say 30 years ago. Infrastructure is in a bad shape. Poverty is pretty visible. Loads of people living paycheck by paycheck. The mighty UK empire is gone.

[hgomersall]

TINA /s

[Yeul]

I'm not American and I find the English legal system hilarious.

In practically all countries a bunch of smart people got together in the 19th century to write a constitution but the British thought that they were above such petty concerns.

[omnicognate]

Profound legal analysis there. The United States' experiences with its written constitution don't give me any reason to think one would be a good idea in the UK.

[rmccue]

The UK has a constitution, it's just not written in a single place.

Many (most?) western societies have a similar concept for civil and criminal law with common law jurisdictions, where precedent is used rather than an explicit, exhaustive legal code. Effectively, the UK's constitution is to written constitutions as common law is to civil law.

[dgroshev]

It's not even internally consistent, although propaganda rarely needs to be consistent. The UK government is somehow both entirely powerless (can't do anything about crime at all), and exceptionally powerful (tightly policing the speech and thoughts of 70 million people).

Very little odd about this btw. Those efforts are intentional and blatant, e.g. [0]. In that case, you can even see that the accounts listed in the article flaunt what they are, their first posts after the blackout are about Israel.

[0]: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/dozens-of-pro-indy-accounts-...

[DecoySalamander]

This isn't necessarily contradictory. A government can choose not to prosecute certain crimes, such as property crimes targeting lower classes or crimes committed by certain social groups, while cracking down on what it perceives as a threat to its power.

I'm not saying that this is happening in the UK now, but every piece of news I hear about it is less than great, to say the least.

[redeyedtreefrog]

Yup entirely this. The biggest sign of this is Tommy Robinson, who has blatantly committed outrageous cases of stalking, harassment, and contempt of court, for which he has been convicted. But because his schtick is complaining about Muslims he is then treated as a hero of the US right, gets invited on right-wing talk shows and gets bigged up by Elon Musk. I recently had a guy sit next to me on a plane bring him up as supposed proof of the UK being an authoritarian state.

I go absolutely out of my way to avoid politics nowadays, which makes it all the more frustrating when this nonsense is shoved in my face by idiots on HackerNews or dimwits sitting next to me on the plane.

[gadders]

>> some kind of totalitarian oppressor

Well, it's only really happening for people on the Right. If you're firmly within the left wing Overton Window (apart from perhaps Israel/Palestine), you don't have much to fear from Two Tier Kear.

[crinkly]

If it was a police state, JD Vance wouldn’t be getting it on his holiday here from protesters and video vans driving around and being refused service in a pub.

It could end up that way but we’re not there yet. If we do get there we tend to make the French look like amateur protestors (look up poll tax riots).

I’m less worried about a police state than a corporate dystopia. The attendee list at Trump’s inauguration would be far scarier to me than the OSA is.

[GeoAtreides]

If it WASN'T a police state, 500 people wouldn't have been arrested for holding up a sign.

[throwaway97202]

>If it was a police state, JD Vance wouldn’t be getting it on his holiday here from protesters and video vans driving around and being refused service in a pub.

"Is it true that there is freedom of speech in the USSR, just like in the USA?"

"Yes. In the USA, you can stand in front of the White House in Washington, DC, and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished. Equally, you can also stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished."

[runsWphotons]

A politician disliked by the state facing criticism doesn't mean anything. What matters is when people say something the state doesn't approve of.

[hopelite]

That is a very simple perspective. Nothing about the current British government would preclude being underhanded and manipulative, i.e., making sure that not only the current US government, but the next system’s candidate is made to feel discomfort and displeasure in order to manipulate.

People do this kind of underhanded passive aggressive thing all the time, why would it not be the case for the British government to basically “neg” the VP that has on several occasions now dressed them and all the Europeans down and embarrassed them? I could very easily see this being the very kind of manipulative and passive aggressive thing that the British government would facilitate as a spit in the face of the guy who admonished them for their thought/speech control.

You seem to have a “police state” model in your mind that is akin to a North Korea and less what it will most likely be in the west, far more manipulative and sophisticated, as depicted in Orwell’s 1984.

[summerdown2]

I suspect it's projection as a defense, because a number of Brits do see the US as some sort of failing police state that's snatching people off the streets.

I guess if you get your attack in first you'll be able to go "we're not the fascists, you're the fascists."

None of that is to excuse the legislation, of course, which is not very good and will have a lot of poor consequences.

[ants_everywhere]

it's become fashionable for people to just lie about things in order to shock the audience into their point of view.

What's more, they try to bully other people into lying about things to get their way. For example, I can't tell you many times I've read comments saying we'll never get anywhere if we insist on playing by the rules.

Playing by the rules here means things like being honest.