Britain’s far-left government has continued to pick a fight with one of the world’s wealthiest men, Elon Musk, who recently pointed out the country’s increasing despotism.
“The people of Britain have had enough of a tyrannical police state,” Musk wrote on X, quoting a post about a petition demanding fresh elections, which almost three million British citizens have signed. The roots of Britain’s recent transformation into an authoritarian state go much deeper than many realize.
Musk has been critical of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer over the two-tier policing in the United Kingdom following the mass stabbing of children by a migration-background teenager in Southport. Anti-immigration protestors were confronted by riot police and handed lengthy prison sentences for as little as shouting at police dogs. Conversely, violent Muslim counter-demonstrators ran riot after being allowed to “police themselves.”
But these problems are not new, nor unforeseeable. As noted by a number of authors, explained further in the 2018 book Enoch Was Right, the rise of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) following the Second World War was an early catalyst. These NGOs grew into a multi-billion dollar industry, eventually heaping pressure on government legislation, with the resulting changes reaching breakneck speed around the turn of the century.
THE BLAIR YEARS.
In the late 1990s and 2000s, Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Labour government passed legislation like the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, which expanded existing racial hatred laws to include incitement to “hatred” of religion. The Communications Act 2003, building on the earlier Malicious Communications Act, also expanded state power to prosecute people for simply causing offense—a trend that accelerated as social media expanded.
Also, under the Blair government, radical Islam replaced Irish nationalism as the main security threat to the country, particularly following the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005. Parallel to this was the emergence of the Islamophobia industry, with NGOs like Tell MAMA encouraging Britons to report “hate” against Muslims.
Such NGOs receive millions of pounds from the British taxpayer for this activism.
CONSERVATIVES IN NAME ONLY.
The Conservatives under former Prime Minister David Cameron did little to halt the expansion of hate crime and hate speech legislation. Cameron was a social liberal, legalizing gay marriage in 2013. He also began recording anti-Muslim hate incidents separately from other similar crimes in 2015.
NGOs continue to push for broadening hate crime legislation even more, with some advocating that gender expression should be covered under the legislation as well. Looming bans on so-called “conversion therapy”—including transgenders—even raises the prospect that parents and healthcare providers who refuse to affirm that children were “born in the wrong body” could face sanctions.
WAR ON CHRISTIANITY.
While Islam has attained a de facto-privileged status in Britain, Christianity has become a major target. Pro-life Christians, in particular, have been targeted. Christians holding vigils outside abortion clinics has been outlawed, with some being arrested for as little as standing alone praying silently in their hands in the general vicinity of abortionists.
Christians have also been arrested for simply quoting passages from the Bible or for making comments about Islam on the streets.
WAR ON WHITENESS.
White Britons, who are still the majority in almost all areas of the country—except for the capital of London and England’s second city of Birmingham—have also been targeted by both the Conservative and Labour governments. In the name of diversity, white Britons have been excluded from jobs or promotions as companies in the private and public sectors seek to diversify their workforces.
Even the Royal Air Force (RAF) has been caught prioritizing “diverse” candidates for positions above white British airmen and women. The RAF admitted to discriminating against white men unlawfully but faced no consequences for doing so.
WAR ON THE WORKING CLASS.
Many of Britain’s changes are a direct consequence of the unprecedented waves of mass immigration that began under Blair and only accelerated under the Conservatives from 2010 until Labour’s return to power this July.
The Conservatives allowed the influx partly out of deference to big business, hungry for cheap labor, and economists who insisted it would boost the economy. However, for Labour, mass immigration was a tool of social engineering, with Blair apparatchik Andrew Neather boasting in 2011 that the goal was “to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.”
Increasing restrictions on free speech in Britain is, to a great extent, an attempt to shut down the simmering social tensions fueled by the social shifts. White working-class Britons, who have seen their wages driven down and their prices driven up, have been particularly hard hit and now vote predominantly for right-wing parties—but ethnic minorities vote overwhelmingly for Labour, so their ability to influence the left by withholding their vote at the ballot box is significantly reduced.
Champions of working-class grievances, such as anti-grooming gang activist Tommy Robinson, have been aggressively targeted by the British state to prevent their grievances from being harnessed into a broader movement.
His recent, highly dubious imprisonment for contempt, after a previous, bogus prosecution failed, saw Musk raise questions on social media as well.
CONCLUSION.
Nations, especially the United States, would be wise to heed the warnings from Britons who experienced this all-too-rapid decline into socialist authoritarianism, often under the guise of the ‘Conservative Party.’
Much like America’s ‘RINOs,’ the Tory leadership was effectively captured by major corporate and NGO interest, paving the way for populist-nationalist parties and politicians such as Nigel Farage and others, who are now more popular than the recently elected Prime Minister.
Will Upton, Jack Montgomery, Chris Tomlinson, and Raheem Kassam contributed to this analysis.
The image was modified from a picture by Stuart Mitchell/IncMonocle and used with permission.
