Yeah, you're right. It's totally fair to compare how the EU treats its people to how Iran is treating its people right now. Good job. :-/

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breppp 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

it's a very weird kind of propaganda I see a lot of lately.

Everything is the same and comparable never mind how hyperbolic. Doubt it? be showered with cherry picked micro facts that on the surface are similar.

This rests on the fact that in order to establish a big picture you have to take small facts and agree on the big picture, and that leap from small and verifiable to large and analytic is the place you can inject faith and emotion

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Nursie 3 hours ago | parent [-]

This seems to happen a lot.

The UK is doing some shitty stuff and a man was arrested for wearing a “Plasticine Action” t-shirt a few weeks ago, “Palestine Action” being a proscribed group in the UK, and showing support being an offence. When the mistake was realised he was released after a few hours with an apology.

These things are objectively terrible, shouldn’t be happening. The UK government is under popular and legal pressure to un-proscribe the group as hundreds (thousands?) have been arrested and charged.

But it is not the same as someone being ‘disappeared’ in South American dictatorships, where they would be taken and denied process for years if not killed outright. Yet people here drew that comparison. He was arrested for inconvenient speech! It’s the same! And then I came under fire for defending the actions of the UK, having done nothing of the sort.

It’s really weird to watch.

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roenxi 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The people complaining probably live in the UK or are related to it somehow. Then it would make sense that they are more worried about authoritarianism in the UK rather than in South America.

And even if the man was wearing a proper "Palestine Action" shirt that'd still be pretty concerning. It is an insane stretch to say that wearing a shirt represents a matter for police action. How far the world has moved on from when the UK could be considered a forward-thinking bastion of liberalism.

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Nursie 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The people complaining were American AFAICT and weren’t worried by either, they were just drawing hyperbolic equivalences between suppression of speech and state orchestrated mass kidnapping and murder.

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roenxi an hour ago | parent [-]

If we're talking about the Palestine Action shirt, Israel is defending against accusations [0] that they are genocidal. The police action of the UK seems like it could be pretty easily construed as suppression of speech in support of state orchestrated mass kidnapping and murder on a concerning scale.

Whatever is happening in SA might be as bad, I suppose, but I don't speak Spanish or have any family connection there so I'm not going to look it up. Although if they're genocidal then they should stop too, should that need to be said.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa's_genocide_case_a...

	▲	Nursie 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The example given was of a man in a “Plasticine Action” t-shirt, with the poster saying how that man was “disappeared” by the British state when he was briefly arrested and released. If you’re not aware of the history of people being disappeared by states such as Chile under Pinochet, or more broadly what it means for a state to disappear someone, that’s kinda on you. Either way these are not equivalent actions. Yes, it’s suppression of free speech in a chilling manner. I hate it. No, it’s not the same as suppressing that speech by taking someone and holding them in a secret prison for years and/or killing them.

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ajsnigrutin 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I live in EU and I oppose internet cenorship, privacy invasion and many other bad things the governments have been doing for years now.

I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there, neither does anyone else commenting here it seems... but many of us do live in EU, and are bothered by EU doing the same thing as iran, even if it's on a smaller scale (for now). You can't support censorship at home and then act outraged when someone else just implements more of it... even though some do, as long as the censored things are the things they personally don't like.

To be fair, i'm more worried about UK, since it's a "test ground" to see how things work before the bad thing are implemented elsewhere, but either way, in my small country we have a saying, that "people should first sweep infront of their own doorways", and yeah, EU and our censorship is my doorway in this case.

TLDR: if we're bothered by internet censorship, we should first stop at 'at home'.

	▲	Flatterer3544 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If not for EU there would already be multiple states with privacy invasive systems seen in UK.. We are close of getting there and they keep on trying, but so far the blocking states are enough as majority. Sure EU has some fkn horrible sides to it, such as the anonymous vote to get big stuff through when a majority should be enough as democracy depicts, but currently 2 states out of all EU states can block the big decisions...