Thinking Crime – Orwell nightmare becomes reality in the British Isles
In his 1984 novel, George Orwell warned against a society in which the same reasoning in a way incompatible with the organization line becomes a crime. Today, in Britain and Ireland, this grim imagination takes a real shape. Under the cloak of concern for “online security” and the fight against “talk of hate” is installed a surveillance and repression strategy that Orwell would admit immediately.
Statistics are frightening: British police make over 30 arrests a day for posts on social media. In fresh years, the number of detentions for online speaking has increased by nearly 58% – from 7.734 in 2019 to over 11,000 today. People are arrested for expressing opinions that were inactive within the average public debate.
The mechanics of totalitarian supervision works with absolute efficiency. After the riots in Southport in July 2024, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, like an officer of the Ministry of Truth, announced: “Whether you're in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from afar online, we'll get you.”
In the Oceania of Orwell no 1 could escape large Brother – in today's UK authorities openly endanger to extradite citizens of another countries for posts on social media.
Every dictatorship needs vague rules that can be interpreted freely against uncomfortable people. Communications Act of 2003 performs this function perfectly, prohibiting communication that is “dangerous or offensive and aims to harass, alarm or alarm someone”. In practice, any critical message can be considered “disturbing” to someone. It is an almost perfect embodiment of the Orwellian “thought of crime”.
Examples of persecution for speech are so absurd that they could have come from the pages of the fresh if they were not so frighteningly real. A 19-year-old Chelsea Russell was convicted of quoting a line from a rap song. Mark Meechan was fined £800 for a dog joke. A 55-year-old female was arrested for suggesting that the perpetrator of the attack might have been an immigrant. In each of these cases, the state violently enters the sphere of private speech, showing that no 1 is safe from its surveillance.
Ireland follows the same way towards totalitarianism, although it hides it under a good sounding name “Online safety Commissioner”. In Orwell State, the Ministry of Love dealt with torture, the Ministry of Peace waged wars, and the Ministry of fact fabricated lies.
In present-day Ireland, the safety Commissioner will control, censor and punish for illegality.
What we are observing is simply a classical example of totalitarianism, which no 1 dares even call totalitarianism. Its characteristic features are always: state worship, limiting individual freedom, eliminating opposition and surveillance of society. All these elements are present in fresh net control systems in the British Isles, though are sold under the slogan “protection against harmful content”.
The Irish Online Safety and Media Regulation Act empowers the State to control not only illegal content, but besides those which it arbitrarily considers to be “harmful”. In the Orwell style, the definition of “harminess” can be freely extended by the executive authority, without having to change the law itself. Communication Minister Richard Bruton, announcing the end of “the era of self-regulation”, sounded like a organization authoritative announcing a fresh phase of public control.
Orwell besides predicted a “new language” – a language designed to limit the ability to express uncomfortable thoughts. Today's euphemisms like “Online security”, “protection against harmful content” or “fight against misinformation” they execute precisely the same function – they mask censorship and repression under the appearance of concern for the public good.
The most disturbing is how rapidly Western societies, arrogant of their tradition of free speech, capitulate before fascism in a fresh package. Western civilization seems to stand on the brink of a fresh Dark Age – any government that arrests and binds its own citizens for expressing “inappropriate” opinions can no longer claim to be on the side of freedom.
Orwell's imagination was expected to be a warning, not a manual. Meanwhile, the governments of large Britain and Ireland seem to treat “ 1984” as a textbook. In a planet where police knock on the door for posts on social media, where citizens can be imprisoned for “insulting” tweets, and the state expands its power over all aspect of online communication, it is hard not to see the disturbing similarities to the darkest visions of totalitarianism.
The question that remains is no longer whether we will shortly live in Orwell dystopia, but how far we will let this fascist transformation to take place before we wake up and argue it. due to the fact that as Orwell wrote: “If you want a imagination of the future, imagine a shoe trampling on a human face – forever”.
Source:
https://theweek.com/law/when-is-an-offensive-social-media-post-a-crime
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_the_United_Kingdom
https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/free-speech-wobbles-uk
https://winslowlawyers.com/uk-man-arrested-for-malicious-communications
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2022-09-21/15
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/bills/bill/2022/6
https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2022/act/41/enacted/en/html
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government-in-ireland/irish-constitution-1/censorship
