There follows a guest post by Dr Niall McCrae contrasting yesterday’s ‘Kill the Bill’ demonstration with the anti-lockdown march of a week earlier.
A week is a long time in the politics of rallies. Yesterday a Kill the Bill march in London drew five thousand mostly young protestors against the proposed strengthening of police powers over protestors. A good cause was distorted by the divisive identity politics on display: Black Lives Matter banners, transgender flags and radical Marxist placards supplied by the Socialist Workers Party. On the preceding Saturday (April 24th) a gathering twenty or thirty times bigger marched from Hyde Park to Holborn Viaduct and back in a joyful expression of unity by ordinary people of every class and creed.
Whereas the Unite for Freedom rally was initially ignored by the BBC and other mainstream media, the Kill the Bill demo was widely reported. Furthermore, coverage of the latter was sympathetic, as most keenly expressed in the Guardian. The most we heard from the BBC on the anti-lockdown protest was by Marianna Spring, who tweeted disparaging remarks about conspiracy theorists with a ludicrous underestimate of the crowd.
The reporting blackout ended later, after videos emerged of the police involved in a fracas with a handful of protestors near Speakers Corner. A group of marchers were basking in the last rays of a glorious sunny day, listening to an impromptu gig. They were doing no harm, but a squad of police officers steamed in, presumably to confiscate the audio equipment and arrest the band. The revellers linked arms and the police retreated in a hail of derision and missiles. “Ten arrests at anti-lockdown protest” reported the Sunday Times.
The Kill the Bill protest produced considerably worse behaviour. For long stretches “ACAB” – all cops are bastards – was chanted, and other aggressive phrasing imported from BLM/Antifa riots in the USA. Although the protest was against police powers, the marchers want freedom of expression “for me but not for thee”. These are the puritanical offspring of our education system, who think that any contrary opinion is “hate speech”. Quite a contrast with the all-embracing ethos of a week earlier.
Most of the Kill the Bill marchers were masked, although there is no requirement to do so outdoors. As the Kill the Bill walkers began to wander off, the lonely figure of Piers Corbyn tried to bridge the yawning gap between anti-lockdown and anti-police protestors. Old Piers has been working behind the scenes to bring left-wing activists into the campaign against the Covid regime, collaborating with BLM leader Sasha Johnson in his Let London Live Party in the London Assembly election. However, to the Kill the Bill crowd he seemed a cantankerous old man, who had come to the wrong show. Few stayed to listen, and those who did frowned and looked at him condescendingly. In exasperation Corbyn berated people for wearing masks: “wake up, they’re f***ing playing you!” But the Kill the Bill protestors are happy to be muzzled. And they get a good press, unlike lockdown sceptics.
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“a Kill the Bill march in London drew five thousand mostly young protestors “
If this numbers assessment is true, then what I’ve previously said about the BLM sort of fakery holds good.
It really is a side-issue that is best ignored rather than something acting as an alternative wet knicker thing.
Just take the piss out of all those submissive mask-wearing Covidians pretending to be opposed to police over-reach and discrimination.
I suppose the obvious thing to also say is that this looks like a rather exclusive protest by ‘white privilege’.
There will be an awful lot of psychological counselling and de-programming required, once the scale of the lie and the levels of state-endorsed propaganda becomes apparent and undeniable, to the covid faithful.
The labour movement has thrown its support behind the various alphabet protests but resolutely refuses to acknowledge the significance of the anti-lockdown movement. It says everything about the present condition of the left – whilst it preoccupies itself with single-issue and identity-driven political positions, the broad masses are organising on a scale that the efforts of BLM, KTB, RTS and XR can’t compete with, and they are getting on just fine without the help of the trade unions, the left parties and groups and the Labour party. The Left has walked into a trap over the lockdown crisis. As a strategic error, it rivals the almost unanimous support the socialist parties of Europe gave for the war in 1914.
The left hasn’t walked into a trap, the left is doing just fine which is out on the streets and enduring persecution where it’s always been. All those who ‘identify’ as left but aren’t are the ones who’ve ‘fallen’ for exactly the sort of politics that suits them: fascism.
This ‘Left’ is unfortunately marginalised. There are also plenty of Socialists who are opposed to Woke i.d. politics, but they are marginalised too.
Of course. Unfortunately you do find a few here amidst the mostly intelligent posts who are here to bang their tattered drum of political prejudice that is so irrelevant to this debacle, and which tends to ignore the fact that the instigators here and in most of Europe has actually been right of centre governments.
The fact that this undermines the their mickey-mouse thesis, framed in pathetically outmoded terms, tends to pass them by.
The huge turn out last week worried them. A lot. An organic mass gathering of the people, using nothing more than grapevine in a lot of instances, to get out their message out. So now they’ve gone into overdrive with their little, masked, controlled puppets, and their fake protests. And that’s it – they only control that group. But they know millions know what’s really going on, and they see straight through these pretend protests. And the truth is getting out. I’ve seen people talking and reporting and sharing on last Saturday’s march, in Mexico, US, Canada, Australia, and else where. It’s going to get very interesting…
It’s true what you say. The fabulous edited highlights of the march produced by Oracle films has been shared widely, even appearing on the American Institute for Economic Research website. Just wait for the next one !
https://www.aier.org/article/the-anti-lockdown-movement-is-large-and-growing/
Am I alone in hoping that the complacent attitude of the press over these issues comes back and bites them hard.
They’re already getting bitten. One of theirs got beaten up by the police at the Bristol KTB protest.
LOL! The sheer irony of people protesting against a law that supresses protests while they are wearing masks? Hahahaha!
… but I’m not laughing at this mass lobotomy.
All I hear when I see the ‘Kill the Bill’ protestors is “baa”, “baa”…
The Ascent of Man
I see that there were big anti-lockdown protests in Canada this weekend – Lee Hurst jokingly alludes to the big anti-lockdown protest in London last week that was largely ignored by the UK msm.
A great film of the march that took place on the 24th April can be found on Oracle Films. It is 6 minutes long and perfectly captures the sheer size and good will of the vast crowd who marched. It truly was an example of strength and unity in action. Watching this wonderful demonstration it become clear why no honest reporting of the event made it to the MSN and why the police left it until the last minute, when the march was over and only a few hundred remained resting and socialising in the park before steaming in to the get the kind of photos they wanted.
ps. It might be necessary to sign on to Telegram to see the film.
Here it is…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TLHOjsuy7FY
Yesterdays roundup, ‘Covid March BBC has questions to answer’.
Yes, this is exactly what you would expect of the BBC. The corporation abandoned any pretence at impartial news reporting years ago and is now stuffed to the gunnels with political activists. The failure of the government to decriminalize non-payment of the licence fee is just another example of its sheer incompetence.
Right from the start of this over a year ago things just haven’t made sense: It’s not dangerous/it’s very dangerous and a disaster. Mutations are not a worry/mutations are the real danger. It’s not airborne/it’s airborne, you must not wear a mask/you must wear a mask. Loss of taste or smell is not a symptom/it’s a major symptom. Asymptomatic spread. Even from a few weeks in I was constantly thinking (as a mechanical engineer used to doing comparable investigations in engineering), why haven’t they done this simple bit of research/testing, haven’t they got an answer for that question yet, why did it take so long to do such a simple test/analysis etc. Why am I as complete amateur with no resources and just a few minutes a day analysing the data often apparently many weeks ahead of their experts. The continual silencing of alternative expert views even when some of them later turn out to be right. We seem to be making great progress towards treatments, then all of a sudden they don’t work and are dangerous or we need to do the proper time consuming trials to get approval contradicting the claim vaccines (that you can’t undo once done) are ok without finishing the trials but something that has had proper trials cannot be repurposed, work on treatments seems to be discouraged, the story goes very quiet. The constantly changing story since vaccine rollout. The absolute obsession with vaccines. Vaccine passports don’t seem to make sense if vaccines only halve transmission but the passport allows people to travel and mingle without the same precautions as the increasingly rare unvaccinated person. The rewriting of laws. The ignoring or misrepresentation of protests. Surely, even if you only got all your news from the BBC, if you’re paying attention shouldn’t you at the very least be thinking what happened to the days when they’d question things, something doesn’t quite add up.
and also compare the manchester united protest yesterday (Sunday) – a thousand or so supporters involved. Lead item on BBC 22.00 news. a 5 minute report.
A perfect indication of what the bbc deem as newsworthy and what should be ignored
Unofficial media rule: a protest has to be moral-panic-worthy to be reported.
protesters who wear masks and hoodies do so for the simple reason they cannot be identified. Many BLM protesters are paid activists who travel around Europe. We know this because we who march peacefully see the same behaviour, clothes, hear the languages etc etc. There are some ANTIFA students who are well known to be on peaceful protests just to cause trouble.
Unfortunately the police have chosen to side with Government policy rather than the people whom they are paid to protect and who give their consent to be policed.
The days of policing by consent are nearly at an end. The police State is almost on us and those who will not accept this and wake up are those very people who will be the first to scream when the knock on the door at midnight comes
5000 organised Manchester United supporters certainly managed to outwit the authorities yesterday. They attacked on 3 different fronts, which is perhaps a way shutdown, freedom restriction protests need to go, makes the state’s restriction plans much more difficult.
It is now the tale of three protest. Front page of Telegraph today pictures the storm in a sporting teacup at Old Trafford and then has five pages on it in the sports section (and not a word about Hull City’s promotion to the Championhsip!) and they didn’t, if I recall correctly, mention the lockdown protests last weekend.
The masks say it all.
The Bill, if passed, will extend the covid-era totalitarianism into “peacetime” by letting police ban any protest they feel like banning, and lock-up anyone considered to have caused “disruption” (for example by making a noise or blocking a road). If you think this will be limited to use against whichever protesters you don’t like, then look at what’s happened with all the forerunners.
A lot of people, especially in poorer areas, are extremely alienated from the police. As Peter Hitchens has shown, the police degenerated into a paramilitary militia during the Blair years. They police to politicians’ or chief constables’ rules, not the law. There’s probably a few good ones – seeing one or two on here is evidence of this – but most of them were quite happy to terrorise people during lockdowns, and some had a total power-trip. The anger is strongest among young people because of aggressive and pointless policing at sites with lots of young people – beach and park parties, university halls etc.
The news coverage of the anti-lockdown protest was despicable – basically a media blackout. However, much of the media blacks-out all nonviolent protests. The BBC coverage of the Kill the Bill protests in Bristol have also been despicable. Firstly they only cover the protests if there’s something they can call “violence”. Second, they basically ran the police press release as news on the first “riot”, and didn’t cover police brutality until days later. People who were there say the police attacked the crowd and beat people who were doing a peaceful sit-in, before driving vans into the crowd and almost killing people (ever wonder why the vans were in harms’ way?) On the second event they reported a “riot” which never happened, basically the police beat up a crowd of peaceful protesters and the media called it a riot.
I agree with criticisms of compulsory masking, but I also think it’s quite sensible to wear masks on protests (whether or not the protest is illegal) in current near-totalitarian conditions. Nobody knows when police are going to attack a protest, make random snatch-squad arrests, or initiate clashes with sections of the crowd. Can you be absolutely sure you won’t hit back or “resist arrest” or yell something offensive at a cop, if they just broke your head open and they’re beating a woman next to you for no reason? Even if you can, they can still try to frame you for “violent disorder” because you were part of a crowd which fought back. If the Bill is passed this will extend to being able to charge you with “public nuisance” because the crowd you were part of was marching along a road and traffic couldn’t pass, or people were chanting and making noise – even if there was no violence, no property damage, just a protest. They also maintain huge databases and will add to these the details of what demos you’ve been seen on. Before you know it, you’re profiled as a domestic extremist and you’re getting singled out for wrongful arrests, home raids, searches, interrogations at the border, blacklisting, frame-ups, etc. This is all pretty standard for totalitarian regimes. The left is slightly ahead of the curve because they’ve been targeted in this way for 15 years now. But everyone else is going to have to catch up pretty quickly.