Once-Great Britain a likely glimpse into Canada's future

The spirit of Chamberlain is alive and well under #TwoTierKeir crackdowns.

The first known citation of the idiomatic phrase “two wrongs don’t make a right” can be traced back to the 1780s, with a letter penned by one Benjamin Rush, a founding father and statesman.

Had Rush broken free of the shackles of accepted mortality, and lived into his 250s, he would have seen that warning ignored over, and over, and over again.

In the case of the greatly problematic but wholly expected chav/scouser anti-migrant and immigrant uprising of 2024, and the unprecedented slide into censorship and the rendition-ing of lower-to-middle-class white rioters, once-Great Britain finds itself more closely mired in an endless cycle of wrongs and rights, having likely left just the two behind sometime around the fire-bombing of Dresden.

And yet, the remarkable thing about the unfolding situation in the broader U.K., in all its former glory, is that being locked up for voicing your opinion online has become the rule, not the exception.

What’s truly changed is the expansion of those already-insane powers, through the ‘Online Safety Act,’ passed by the feckless and thoroughly defeated Tories, no less, and which surely sounds familiar to Canada’s ‘Online Harms Act’ which seeks the blanket, Starmer-esque powers that men like Trudeau have long dreamed of.

Why do all that work to violate the Charter, when we can just codify their lack of rights to begin with?

That new ‘Online Safety Act’ includes offences for “online violence” (not a thing, the internet isn’t real life), and a “false communications offence,” which means, quite literally, your aunt on Facebook can spend 12 months in the Tower of London for falling for AI that’s critical of the current regime. Heck, it could even be accurate. Because, after all, who gets to decide what is and isn’t false? Right, of course, the government.

“Certainly, incitement to violence, true threats and so on are crimes in every civilised society – even in America, where the First Amendment renders any censorship of speech and the press unconstitutional. But ‘incitement to hatred’ and ‘grossly offensive’ speech are different things entirely. One man’s hatred is another man’s passionately held moral conviction. Offence is always in the eye of the beholder. We all think we know hate or offence when we see it, but at the end of the day everyone will draw the line slightly differently. You’re then left with someone having to decide, and nowadays that means someone like Keir Starmer – a man who until about five minutes ago thought it is ‘not right’ to say that only women can have a cervix.”

Sound familiar again? It should. Bill C-63, the Liberals’ very own free speech cudgel, has been rightly and resoundingly criticized as being overly broad, ripe for weaponization and exploitation, and will surely be used to chill free speech — and even elections.

As the Canadian Consitution Foundation’s Christine Van Geyn points out, in a warning from May that’s even more prescient today:

“There should be real concerns that there will be big penalties under Trudeau’s new online harms law. The Overton window has shifted since 2007, and the definition of hatred, while theoretically narrow in scope, is inherently and unavoidably subjective. What the Canadian Human Rights Commission [once considered hate speech] could be viewed very differently by the government bureaucrats who staff the CHRC today.”

We all know two-tier policing when we see it. During the Freedom Convoy and years of Covid mandate protests, we watched as small business owners and parents who wanted their kids back in school were treated as second-class citizens, while approved riots and acts of societal defenestration were given the progressive government seal of approval.

In the case of life after October 7th, we can all see that on the outer limits of many Iran-backed and financed pro-Palestine (and/or Hamas) protests, there exists a radical, Islamist, full-blown endorsement of terror and violence that has yet to have *any* book thrown at it.

In London, this has become the norm.

In a city like Toronto, an increasingly concerned community has received a mayor in her skivvies before they’ve seen a single statement or effort in support.

Much like with the Freedom Convoy, we could listen to the millions feeling the squeeze under bureaucratic cowardice and opportunism in the face of daily hate and rising divisions on both sides, but the Starmers of the world, and those who share his lack of compunction, have no interest in that.

Which means the squeeze is still the point. It’s always been the point.

That means more radicalizing of the rabble, giving them 26 months (!) for gesticulating and shouting, while news crews are attacked by military-aged males of a more politically problematic persuasion, and then revelling in the crackdown and expansion of power gained from the problem you, the government, created in the first place.

“Imagine if the police and courts worked this fast when it came to actual violence, illegal immigration and r*pe gangs in the country. You wouldn’t have had a single riot. Government failure radicalized the people, and this will radicalize them further.”

And therein, continues to lie the point.

It’s no wonder, then, that the riots (and largely hand-waved counter-riots) will be used as a precursor for Labour to come after Elon Musk and X with all they’ve got.

If not for the popularity of #TwoTierKeir and independent sources, the global migrant crisis, brazenly unequal policing, and our collective Western entropy would have gone largely unseen; kept at bay by official state sources and formerly robust intelligence service backdoors into places like Twitter.

And so it should come as no surprise when the Trudeau Liberals, down to their last Hail Marys with limited time left on the clock, use EricCantonaFan32, his racism both real and state-inflamed, all of 3329 miles away, as a precursor to drive their very own Orwellian ‘Online Harms Act’ home.

Smart guy, that Orwell. Right about a lot of things: loathed left-wing authoritarian communism and right-wing fascism.

His Britain didn’t listen.

Will we?

Alexander Brown is a writer, comms director, and part-time politico. Of late, his work has appeared in the Toronto Sun and Western Standard. To receive new posts and support his work, become a free or paid subscriber.