That was the headline on today's Daily Mirror, a paper that used to be considered at least a bit on the pink side, if not actually Left, yet now seems to be in competition with its rival
The Scum to see which can be more reactionary and hysterical, a competition which
The Scum will always win. The subhead was "3 TERROR SUSPECTS ON LOOSE" and the 'story' went on to describe them as "extremely dangerous", uncritically repeating the State line that:
"The threat to security is so grave that police took the unprecedented step of naming and picturing the men." (
Mirror Online, 24/5/07)
So, who are these "extremely dangerous" men? Convicted murderers who've escaped? Suspects charged with serious crime and awaiting court? If they're that "dangerous", how come they escaped, and from where?
It turns out that they were so "dangerous" that they were placed under house arrest under 'control orders' [1], which were what John "Big Bampot" Reid invented when the judiciary knocked back his plans to lock up anyone the State didn't like the look of, regardless of whether or not there's any evidence against them. They were so "dangerous" that the State, with all its surveillance resources, was unable to produce enough evidence against them to charge them with an offence. Yet, by dint of being put under house arrest, they've been found guilty by the State, and as importantly by the compliant and sycophantic Press - sewer, petit-bourgeois, and 'quality' - who just love a good manhunt. Their pics have been plastered over the front pages, and displayed on national TV (even Channel 4 News, FFS!), as if they were convicted and ruthless murderers or pedos (the only thing worse than a murderer these days) on the run, who present an immediate danger to Joe and Jane Punter.
This really is Orwellian territory, where citizens are exhorted to be "vigilant" and the full panoply of the State is brought to bear on the "other", these days usually dark-skinned and Muslim, to hunt them down as a matter of "national security" (a phrase used blithely by some State spokesgob on C4 News), even though, if they were such a feckin' threat to "national security" then they'd have been charged and locked up, not put under house arrest.
In reality the State and its actors knows full fucking well that people under "control orders" aren't any kind of serious danger, but by putting them under house arrest and demonising them in the media they handily circumvent all those awkward bleeding-heart lawyers and pinko judges asking awkward questions (like "where the fuck's the evidence that yer man's a terrorist?") in open court and sowing treasonable doubt in the public's mind as to the State's wisdom and omniscience. By using a control order, the State doesn't even have to gather enough evidence to charge suspects, and has the cheek to get away with this on the grounds that "intelligence sources" might be "compromised", a formulation accepted meekly by the Great British Public [TM] scared witless by "terror", and softened up by TV dramas like Spooks, and all the cop shows that flood our screens. A standard theme in all these programmes is that the cops and the spooks know damn well who the "bad guys" and "perps" are, but can't get enough evidence to take them to trial, the obvious corollary of which is State vigilantism. This is exactly what we have now, where the State can lock up anyone under the
NOAIDLFUATWOIKYHIJ law (
NAIDLYF for short) [2], renamed for the noughties as "anti-terrorism legislation" but operating in exactly the same way as NAIDLYF did in the previous century, then so demonise them as "terror suspects" that they're guilty before any evidence at all is produced to show their guilt. That this guilt is uncritically accepted by a supine, complicit media is evidenced in the manhunt that this latest "escape" has set off, and the demonisation of the "terror suspects" as "extremely dangerous" and "associates" of "known terrorists" is reminiscent of the 5-minute hate in Orwell's 1984.
Of course, this latest "escape" suits the Security State down to the ground, as with every rent-a-rant politician and reactionary tabloid calling for even tougher measures, it's easy for the SS to increase the severity of control orders, with indefinite detention (that's "internment", for those who remember the 70s) just a matter of time. Already Big Bampot has talked today of the UK "opting out" of European human rights legislation, a move that will be applauded by the barking Right media, and will remove the last feeble restraint on the SS.
"Fascism" is not a word I use lightly, and I've often bitterly criticised many on the Left who use it as a throwaway term to describe anything they don't like or that smacks of authoritarianism. Fascism is a very specific term describing a specific type of ideology, that combines xenophobia, extreme authoritarianism, extreme nationalism, and a socialism for "our people", which ideology masks the suppression of internal political opposition and the removal of restrictions on the actions of Big Capital. I've resisted using the word for the regime that's burgeoned since the defeat of the Miner's Strike back in '84 (thanks a fucking bundle, Nottinghamshire), but it's becoming difficult to avoid the growing similarities between what we face now, and what Italy faced in the 30s. We have a nation increasingly run by and for major capitalist corporations, with the State increasingly moving into a policing and security role, there to suppress current and future mass opposition to capitalism and the established political order. Legitimate means of expressing political opposition and of fighting capitalism - demonstrating, picketing, striking, haranguing, writing even - have one by one been either completely outlawed or so enfeebled as to be useless. Radical activists, secular and religious, are locked up without charge, or charged with "conspiracy" [3] and jailed for extraordinary terms, which not only puts them out of action but has the more important side-effect, for the State, of scaring far more people into shutting the fuck up for fear of the 4am knock on the door (or worse, as happened in Forest Gate).
As well as the demonisation and suppression of political opposition and trades unions, we have State-sponsored racism against refugees and immigrants, racism amplified to an obscene degree by the sewer and petit-bourgeois Press (every other Daily Express headline is about "asylum seekers" or "immigrants"), and the other day we had a government minister parrotting the BNP line that "British families" should be given priority over "immigrants" in housing [4]. Not long before that, the regime's spokesgobs, led by Big Bampot, had been pushing the line that immigrants should be denied housing, healthcare and benefits, regardless of need [5]. This is official endorsement of the 'charity begins at home' principle, or what be more accurately described as 'national socialism' - that is, socialism applied to a particular group, and denied to outsiders.
Then there's authoritarianism, another necessary characteristic of Fascism. There's no arguing that this country is more authoritarian than it has ever been, with literally millions of surveillance cameras on streets, in workplaces, and on the roads. The State can now, courtesy of licence plate reading software and cameras on every motorway and A-road in the nation, track any vehicle and know, in real time, where it is. Face recognition technology will very soon allow CCTV to track individuals, and if that fails there's 'gait recognition', where the cameras identify people by the way they walk (you couldn't make it up, could you?). Worse, Computing (a mag for 'IT professionals' like myself) recently reported [6] progress on software which would automatically lip-read via CCTV, so you will shortly no longer be able to speak freely in the street without the risk of being 'overheard' by Big Brother. We are far and away the most surveilled nation in Europe.
And finally, that other necessary ingredient for Fascism, nationalism. On a corporate level, the NuLabor regime is blind to ethnicity and country - as ever with Capital, money talks, regardless of the colour or origin of its owner. On a propaganda level, though, NuLabor has been increasingly promoting English nationalism, sometimes of the most crass and lachrymose kind (such as during international footie tournaments before Ingerlan have been knocked out), less frequently of the more 'inclusive' kind (remember the embarrassing "Cool Britannia" of the first Blair term?), sometimes of the 'intellectual' kind (anti-Scottishism dressed up by the chattering classes as "the West Lothian question"). Increasingly as the Scots and Welsh pull away from the UK before they get dragged down into the mire, and develop their own truly inclusive nationalisms, NuLabor has pushed English nationalism, and has adopted the Flag of St George as a legitimate emblem, claiming falsely that it's the "people's flag" these days and has been purged of all nasty Fascistic associations (a notion easily dispelled when you listen to the voices of those who sport the red-and-white most proudly) [7]. Although the regime's not pushed the idea of an English parliament, that's only a matter of time, with plenty of fringe groupings leading the way.
So there you have it - all the ingredients for Fascism and, unlike Italy and Spain and Germany in the 30s, fuck-all opposition to it. Hell, the Great British Public [TM] are so brainwashed, braindead, and scared witless by "terrorists", that they wouldn't know Fascism if it bit them on the arse. Organised, and unorganised, labour has been destroyed on the radical Left, and reduced to an ineffectual rump in the 'moderate' Left, so that's removed what is historically the main fighting force against Fascism, namely the working class. The class still exists, but in Ingerlan it's got the political consciousness of a lobotomised gnat and has zero idea of collective action (which has anyway been outlawed).
This country is becoming a scary place, and one which I'm not sure that it's safe to hang around in...
[1]
Wikipedia: Control Order[2] Thanks to Steve Bell
[3] A handy charge, as the Angry Brigade found to their cost, as the accused face sentences sometimes an order of magnitude greater than what they'd received for the actual offence they've "conspired" about. For instance, "conspiracy to cause criminal damage", as two peace activists were recently charged with (and pleasingly acquitted), carries a sentence of up to 10 years, some 9 year and 6 months greater than the actual offence of criminal damage. A conspiracy charge also effectively shifts the burden of proof on to the defendant to prove themselves innocent. The increasing use of conspiracy charges against activists is a worrying and dangerous escalation in political repression by the State.
[4] "
Call for migrant housing rethink", BBC News online, 21/5/07. Of course, in this context, "British families" aren't likely to be dark-skinned...
[5] "
Reid targets illegal immigrants", BBC News online, 7/3/07
[6] "Automated lip-reading to help tackle crime", Computing, 1/3/07
[7] Ranted about previously on a companion blog as "
Get your flags out for the lads".
