Is 4chan the perfect Pirate Bay poster child to justify wider UK site-blocking?

I genuinely do not understand where how the idea of building a total surveillance police state, where all speech is monitored, can even as much as seriously be considered by an allegedly pro-democracy, pro-human rights government, much less make it into law.

Also:

Step 1: Build mass surveillance to prevent the 'bad guys' from coming into political power (its ok, we're the good guys).

Step 2: Your political opponents capitalize on your genuinely horrific overreach, and legitimize themselves in the eyes of the public as fighting against tyranny (unfortunately for you they do have a point). They promise to dismantle the system if coming to power.

Step 3: They get elected.

Step 4: They don't dismantle the system, now the people you planned to use the system against are using it against you.

Sounds brilliant, lets do this.

Simple. The UK is not a pro democracy, pro human rights state.

It might be uncomfortable to admit this, but if your government is a police state that's pretty much mutually exclusive with being a pro human rights state.

Yeah this applies to nearly all of Europe IMO. Recent events show that the American Bill of Rights is definitely not a panacea, but at least there's some legal standing to push back against Orwellian measure like those put in place by the UK or the EU.

Given the current situation in the US, it's a huge cautionary tale for how not to do democracy. To non-ironically hold it up as an example at this point of time is truly amazing. No, the rest of us don't want current US style dictatorship in our countries.

While the EU certainly has its issues, its protection of democracy is still one of the best in the world. Democracy is something we need to keep working towards. There is not one simple set of rules that will keep it healthy, at least as far as recently history shows.

Could you describe with specific examples what qualifies the USA today as a "dictatorship"?

Executive orders to ban something explicitly deemed legal under the constitution by the supreme court? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/25/trump-flag-b...

A better example might be the treatment of whistleblowers?

Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning were both pursued aggressively during the Obama administration. Next, please. I can go all day

Obama also engaged in dictatorial policy... Just because two people have done it does not make it "not dictatorial".

Or, using logical constructs - "A therefore B" is not made invalid by "C therefore B".

But it's obvious when people say "dictatorship" or "fascism" today in the USA it is just a dog whistle for not liking Trump. Nobody called Obama a fascist for how Chelsea Manning was treated.

It's absolutely not the case. The US is an empire with increasingly dictatorial power centralized in the executive. Clinton increased prison populations and increased police power. Bush increased executive power during his post 9-11 presidency. Obama regularly enforced U.S. policy at the end of a drone strike and shut down U.S. domestic agitation. Biden increased police funding and continued to sell surplus military equipment to cops. He also shut down a workers strike. Trump is a symptom of a general slide towards dictatorial policy. If it wasn't him this time it would have been one of the next 5 presidents from either policy.

Trump is doing some fucked up shit, but he doesn't get to be able to do that without decades of groundwork from both sides of the aisle.

Okay here's a secret that you probably won't hear other than in some books that are hard to find.

The youth desire a strong executive. They don't yet understand why it can be a bad thing, because they have little experience with people having power over them that aren't their parents or teachers.

The middle aged desire a strong legislative branch, the most fair branch of government. They have enough life experience to understand why. They are not quite old enough to be set in their ways just yet.

The elderly desire a strong judicial branch. Judges are almost always old, and biased towards the opinions of the elderly, left or right.

There is nothing wrong with a strong executive. It is just completely at odds with those who still control the vast majority of the money and power, and of course, mainstream media: the Boomers. JFK, Great Society, these are marked by a desire for a strong executive. Ironic, of course.

A strong executive can stop them, and the Boomers have never been told 'no' in their entire lives. Really truly, everybody was young in the 1960's. They warped society to their will, just like the people in every baby boom in history. You misinterpret their tantrum as something substantive.

I'm old (50s), I don't want a strong any of those. I especially, however, don't want a strong executive because I don't think decision making should be strongly centralized.

I'm a syndicalist anarchist, who believes communities should be primarily bottoms up driven, democratic, and cooperative. I argue we don't need any of those branches to be strong.