“The only resistance I could put up was to make tea and drink it in front of them without offering them any.”<p>The most British thing I’ve read this year
"The women, aged between 18 and 38, were sitting in a circle eating hummus and bread sticks on Thursday evening as part of a “welcome meeting” for Youth Demand, which calls itself a non-violent protest group."<p>Eating hummus and bread sticks.
Europeans like to look down on the rise of fascism in the US but even a superficial analysis shows that the US is simply Europe in 5-10 years.<p>For the UK in particular, people may point to how Labor swept the elections last year but they'd be wrong to say that there was left-wing momentum in the UK or even that it was another example of people voting against incumbent governments. Neither is true.<p>All that happened in the UK is the right-wing vote got split between the Conservatives and the even more right-wing Reform party. That's it. Come next election, that won't be the case. At the current rate, Conservative/Reform will merge or ally and sweep in a landslide. Starmer actually got fewer votes than Corbyn did in his previous two elections by a substantial margin.<p>The UK Labor party is playing the same role as the US Democratic Party. That is, they make occasional meek noises about institutional norms but they really don't oppose fascism at all. In fact, both parties are way more concerned with the rise of leftism than they are with fascism.<p>We've seen this exact same scenario play out in France. You have grooming victim [1] Macron who has tried to occupy some mythical "center" with Le Pen's National Front, the brainchild of leaders of Vichy France, playing the role of fascist party. But in France there's actually some leftist opposition. And what does Macron do? Routinely side with the fascists to keep the leftists out of power.<p>In the US, the role of Gestapo is being played by ICE. They take their marching orders from the Canary Mission to black-bag people who simply opposed Israel's genocide. This is quite literally picking up political dissidents and putting them into concentration camps.<p>The UK, France and Germany are well on their way to the same fate.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/06/politics/emmanuel-macron-wife-marriage-france/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/06/politics/emmanuel-macron-wife...</a>
<p><pre><code> More than 20 uniformed police, some equipped with Tasers,
forced their way into the Westminster meeting house [of worship]
and arrested six people at the meeting
on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
[police] arrested five other people for the same offence on Friday
</code></pre>
Based on the given charge, Police had a feeling that some Quakers might be talking about being a public nuisance.<p>If we assume the best of the Met police, they first considered sending an officer over to talk to the Quakers and maybe offer some counsel.<p>And being the Met police and being faced with the potential of a non-violent resolution to a non-violent issue, the police instead opted for an approach that mirrors violent police raids.<p>That's if we assume the best of the Met police. They might not have ever considered a non-violent solution for Quakers.
Some more context <a href="https://x.com/youth_demand/status/1905635104057425922" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/youth_demand/status/1905635104057425922</a>
I mean, worth pointing out this group is pretty explicitly focused on conducting unlawful civil disobedience, and plenty of the members have previous convictions for doing just that. This is hardly the police just rounding up your local reading group.<p><a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/met-police-arrest-activists-quaker-meeting-shut-down-london-b1219641.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/met-police-arrest-act...</a>
The Quakers are fairly heavy politically invested, and most of them aren't even theists any more. There's no right of sanctuary in the UK, and if a group is sheltering criminals or providing them with premeses to plan criminal actions, it's damned right they should have their door busted in.