Hyper-Normalisation and the Criminalistion of Protest
The UK government is planning to clamp down even harder on peaceful protest against the genocide in Gaza. Given their support of the Israel — through the supply of weapons parts, troop training and intelligence — this is not exactly a surprise. It is, however, deeply concerning.
Then there is the failure of the UK’s corporate media to report on these crimes, whilst echoing the government’s genocide denial. We saw this week the word ‘illegal’ missing from headlines reporting the seizure of the Samud flotilla in international waters.
When the British government and media intentionally deny objective reality, trust in them drops ever lower. Watching elderly and disabled people being dragged into the back of police vans, for holding up a sign up in public, is becoming a weekly occurrence. How many more of us will realise the British establishment do not work in our best interests?
Further, this criminalisation of protest is pushing more and more people to break the law. And once you’ve broken one law, the process of questioning the legitimacy of any law is likely to follow.
The Online Safety Act came into law during this period of international horror. It has in effect pushed many into breaking the law, for example those seeking addiction, LGBTQI+ or sexual assault support groups. The restrictions this act imposes will only get worse over time as more of it comes into being. It’s entirely possible the UK will lose access to Wikipedia. Similarly, full access to YouTube, Netflix and similar services may become illegal. When people come up against such bad laws and break them, it’s again probable they’ll start to question other laws.
Then we have the proposal to create mandatory digital ID. It looks to be a uniquely unpopular idea and yet one it seems the UK government will force into law. It is entirely possible that millions will not obey this law. What then?
What happens when, potentially, most of the UK population is breaking the law? Can government even function at that point? Who else will question the legitimacy of the current form of UK governance, when the majority of the populace rejects their authority?
The UK is reportedly a democracy. I’ve never agreed with that definition. Now it seems there’s a large potential for many, many more people to see the British establishment for the undemocratic, repressive elite that it is, to realise that UK democracy is at best a sham.
In his book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, Alexei Yurchak writes about life during the last decades of the Soviet Union. Its eventual demise was seen as being both completely unexpected and completely unsurprising. Yurchak used the term hypernormalisation to describe how the state and its citizens alike lived in a pretence of a functioning society until the collapse.
As the UK government squirms on the skewer of late-stage capitalism’s climate emergency, housing crisis and genocide, while ignoring the disaster of Brexit, we all just try to get on with our lives — making necessary accommodations and breaking countless laws. Life in the UK is in the state of hypernormalisation. It is undoubtedly not the only country in such a state.
The potential for things to get much much worse is high and incredibly worrying. Governments all across the West are pushing towards fascism in order to continue the capitalist extraction of wealth. It’s hard to see how or when this state will end, because almost all of us have been trapped within it for our whole lives, in a system that has placed society within the economy. Yet throughout most of human history the economy was only ever part of society.
Not everything needs to have a monetary worth attached to it. The economy should only again be a part of society.
Our reality has been distorted so that society exists within the economy and we have been inoculated against seeing an alternative. That is our hypernormalisation. That’s what we need to end.
Dead right.
This sick society in the UK.
The sick world of capitalist globalisation.
When the means of communication could enable greater global communication and harmonisation, the monetising of everything by global corporate business and the governments that are in its pocket – with huge wealth going to only very few and the very biosphere we need for human survival now at risk – steals that very opportunity from potential global harmony and enables autocracy and fascism.
Today is day three of The Synagogue massacre where somebody drove a car into a pedestrian, killed him, then tried to get into a synagogue to do more harm. The perpetrator and another innocent bystander were then shot dead by the police. It has been the headline news on the BBC all of these three days and I also understand that our prime minister flew home from other business to discuss this “crisis” at a cobra meeting.
In the same time frame there was a flotilla, manned by UK citizens, and others, sailing, in international waters, toward Gaza with humanitarian aid that was intercepted by Israeli forces. All of the crews were arrested and imprisoned, and if reports are true, treated with contempt until some were deported. There has been little or no reporting on this breach of international law. Our government continues to facilitate the oppression of the Palestinians and now has the gall to call those that protest “Terrorists”.
The continuing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank is only sometimes reported, usually in relation to the decisions by the President of the US. and his plans for the future of those benighted pieces of land. Any news organisation with any merit would be crying out for justice for the Palestinians rather than treating them as an unfortunate tribe in the way of other people’s plans.
We really are living in the madhouse.
Ahhh! I get it now. These people are pro-terrorist sympathisers?
For a couple of weeks there I thought that wheelchairs had been made illegal.
@Wul, the Chariot Revolution?
Channel 4 Fact Check based on Israel’s import figures shows that Israel imported nearly £1,000,000 worth of Uk arms in first 9 months of 2025. This value is nearly double the value for previous 3 years. It may also go some way to explaining the proscription of Palestine Action a direct action group set up to stop import of UK arms to Israel.
No-one’s in charge of capitalism. Not the WTO, not Blackrock, not Meta, not Standard & Poor, certainly not the US government. From the outset as a very specific kind of relation in the late 1500s it became power that wills itself. 21st century nihilism with its tiny fantasies of domination here and there is just where we are now. Only one thing can stop it (omnicide) but one thing can slow it down, and that’s recognising that no-one’s in charge, or ever will be. Then, after that, recognising that State politics, media corporations, and most economists are complicit with its autonomic force, even if that complicity is partly ignorant, partly expedient, partly despairing, partly visceral. But it’s not a heist, or a conspiracy against the people.
Nietzsche recognised rising nihilism as a pathology with a perverted choke-hold on the genetic force of creativity. Any glance towards the demagogues currently professing to champion political or economic freedom will confirm it.
Despite hyper-normalisation, late-Soviet UK is not going to collapse. There’s certainly not going to be a left-leaning revolution, or a right-wing coup via Reform. Only one weird thing can creatively destroy it, and that’s a Scottish refusal of its common-sense. The destruction of icons on its own is not the point but neither is living out a categorical ideal in the hope of better days. Under the aspect of capitalist eternity, power wills itself, no-one’s in charge, no-one’s coming to save us, and government by your inferiors is the accepted doctrine of predestination. Any creatively iconoclastic movement needs to be use power against itself, turn power into its own weakness. First place to start is the bullshit economics from media-politicians that’s jamming the signal.
Stopping now.
One of the better posts I have read in some time & very much along the lines I was thinking.
“Late-Soviet Britain” – not related to a certain A.Innes are you? As for the bullshit economics” Richard Murphy does a good job taking those apart.
For sure, Mike. In the social media cesspit I think Richard Murphy does a good job; ditto Profs Steve Keen, Steve Hall and Stephanie Kelton. Abby Innes is no relation but everyone should read her book, indeed.
The UK’s reserved power over the economy always meant it could always bring the smirk of condescension to Scottish politics. Folk would burn and cringe, and parish media-politicians would compound the advantage by piggybacking with little sniggers of their own. But that reserved power is very much a weakness. The UK is locked into economic humiliation and nothing can change it. Any strategy for creative destruction needs to recognise that no-one’s in charge of capitalism, and nothing can stop Scottish iconoclasts prising off the UK’s dead hand should they so choose.
Young Scot ID cards have been pretty essential for ages.
It is misleading to describe what has been outlawed as “peaceful protest” or “holding up a sign”. These are not illegal.
It is support for “Palestine Action”, who supported direct action, that it illegal.
Access to Bitchute (which already self-censored) is no longer permitted in the UK. Fortunately, under Trump and with the First Amendment in the USA, other channels of communication are still available.
Stephen – do you own a dictionary?
Illegal – in contravention of the law.
Peaceful- absence of violence
The law which the people in picture are protesting against is the proscription of Palestine Action which the UK government has deemed as an illegal act in itself. Interestingly similar protesters are rarely arrested in Scotland.
It is self evident from picture that the protest does not involve any violence- many of the protesters are too old and infirm to be violent.
It is entirely possible to peacefully protest and for the protest to be declared illegal by the law.
I think you need to go and read up about Mahatma Ghandi – who based his whole movement around non violent protests which were often in contravention of the laws of the time.
“It is entirely possible to peacefully protest and for the protest to be declared illegal by the law.”
That is precisely what I was trying to say. If I peacefully express support for a proscribed group – ISIS, IRA, INLA, National Action, Scottish Dawn or whatever – that is typically against the law. If I do so by holding a sign, or sitting down, it is misleading (though not wholly false) to say that I was arrested for sitting, or holding a sign. I believe this is called the fallacy of composition, or possibly division.
Encouraging law-breaking is against the law, though arguing for a change in the law is not. I appreciate that many people think the proscription should not have happened.
Gandhi didn’t speak in favour of the Indian National Army, for example.
Thanks for clarification. I would draw your attention to the fact that the police in Scotland have taken a much lighter touch to those peacefully protesting the proscription of Palestine Action. The UK government are using a hammer to crackdown on those opposing proscription which is both a waste of limited police resources and bringing the terrorism legislation into disrepute as they look as though they are using it for political purposes rather than public safety purposes.
@John, it is of course a very old playbook. Essentially the accusation is one of sedition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre#Political
Whatever Keir Starmer weirdly means by ‘un-British’ (I’m not convinced that the British Empire was founded on ‘respect for others’), presumably he believes right was on the side of the policers of peaceful protest and the imposers of draconian law.
The Gaza thing is turning into a support group for some hooligans in the UK.
And it is so snobby. Protesting about immigration in Falkirk is low class. Protesting about the right to invade air bases and vandalise planes because of a war in Asia is high class. Apparently the latter involves their dads telling them off according to their experience of life rather than a ton of bricks. Oh well, they have terrorist convictions through their own choice. Good luck finding a job for the next decade.
The largest group of people being arrested for showing support for Palestine Action are retirees probably because being arrested will not affect their employment prospects.
No one is saying that anti immigrant protesters should be banned even though we don’t agree with them. Many are questioning the humanity of people protesting outside hotels actually housing immigrants some of whom will be traumatised woman & children. This would be analogous to pro Palestinian supporters protesting outside their local synagogues which is not happening.
Apart from these factual inaccuracies the rest of your post are the usual mouse droppings. Eek eek!