The Privatisation of Totalitarianism

by Les May

MANCHESTER and Hong Kong are 6000 miles and 200 years apart.  The Peterloo Massacre took place at St Peter’s Field, Manchester on Monday 16 August 1819 when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. It took four Reform Acts, 1832, 1867, 1884 and 1918 before every man over the age of 21 had the right to vote to select who should enact the laws which governed him. The 1918 Act added about 5 million men to the 8 million previously entitled to vote.  Many, perhaps a majority, of the men who fought and died in the First World war did not have the right to vote.

Some women gained this right in 1918 but it took another ten years before all women over 21 could vote in Parliamentary elections.

In Hong Kong on Sunday, March 26, 2017, a committee dominated by a pro-Beijing elite chose Hong Kong's next leader Carrie Lam as the new Chief Executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region,  People's Republic of China.  She was ‘elected’ after she gained 777 of the votes of 1,194 Hong Kong notables and was regarded as Beijing’s favoured candidate.

China is a totalitarian state ruled by the Communist party which is run by a small elite. Beijing’s fear is that if a more democratic system of government is instituted in Hong Kong the people of mainland China will demand the same and the Communist party will lose control.

Being able to vote to select who will enact the laws under which you will live is an essential, but not sufficient attribute, of a democracy. The right to hold and express a different view to your fellow citizens is another essential requirement of democracy. This is the way we bring about change. Change is the one thing the Chinese Communist party leaders fear. In their eyes the status quo equals stability; change equals instability.

Not only is the right to hold and express a different view an essential component of democracy it is also necessary if we are to feel equal to our fellow citizens and to have any sense of personal autonomy. Totalitarianism is the total antithesis of this.

The men and women at St Peter’s field were there because they saw extension of the suffrage as a way of improving their material lot in life at a time when trade had slumped following the ending of the Napoleonic wars. The demonstrators in Hong Kong are not on the bread line, a fact which the apologists for the Chinese government who appear on news programmes make much of, they want to be able to choose lawmakers with views different from those of the Chinese communist party leadership, or not, as the case may be.

In Hong Kong as in the rest of China totalitarian conformity and the suppression of dissenting views is imposed by the state. That’s not the British way of doing things. Our totalitarianism has been privatised. In some circles and on some matters we are no longer allowed to hold and express a dissenting view.

Here are three examples. In July of this year I wrote a review of a booklet under the heading ‘Transsexuals vs Cocks in Frocks’*. Someone saw this and in a post on Facebook described it as ‘funny’ and went on to express broadly similar views. He happened to be a member of a self styled London based ‘anarchist’ group. This group, behaving more like good Marxists, had a produced a statement about so called ‘trans’ issues and everyone was expected to follow it. He resigned.

Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2015 to 2017 is the sort of Christian who believes that homosexual sex is ‘sinful’. When asked about his attitude to it he denied this. Later it emerged that he had done this only because he felt under pressure from his party to do so. Farron’s continued association with evangelical anti-gay-lobby groups was seen as a ‘lack of care’ to the LGBT community. I think this probably means that he declined to shield them from hearing views they did not like.

Farron eventually resigned saying ‘The consequences of the focus on my faith is that I have found myself torn between living as a faithful Christian and serving as a political leader’, but not before he had been subjected to false allegations by the former head of the LGBT+ Liberal Democrats, Chris Cooke, who made unsubstantiated complaints to the party about Farron's personal conduct when ‘drunk’, and later admitted that he ‘made up a story to cause trouble’.

What I find sad about both these cases is that neither of the people affected was prepared to take a stand on the right of individuals to hold and express a different point of view to that of their fellow citizens. Someone needs to remind the people who complained that freedom of expression applies to people you disagree with as well as those whose views coincide with yours. The alternative is the echo chamber of social media where you need only listen to views that coincide with your own.

The third example concerns the nature of the complaints of ‘anti-semitism’ made against the Labour party. There is a tendency amongst Labour supporters to view these as an attempt by some Jewish people to prevent criticism of the policies pursued by the state of Israel and an attempt to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn. But to those of us who believe that the right to hold and express a different view to our fellow citizens is essential requirement of democracy, it seems more sinister.

Many of the complaints seem to be about what people say or have said. An otherwise excellent 85 page report from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research with the title ‘Antisemitism in contemporary Great Britain: A study of attitudes towards Jews and Israel’ by L. Daniel Staetsky says on pages 63 and 64 ‘However, what Jews are exposed to far more frequently are people who hold, and from time to time may express, views that make Jews feel uncomfortable or offended. A person expressing such a view (e.g. ‘Jews think that they are better than other people’) may hold this view in isolation and may indeed hold a weak version of it, but when it is casually voiced in front of a Jewish individual, it can cause considerable upset and concern.’ (my emphasis)

Taken at its face value this means that one section of the population is demanding the right never to be offended and the right to tell us what we should think about them. This is a demand for exceptionalism.

In Hong Kong thousands of people are running the risk of provoking the Chinese communist party into ordering the Peoples Liberation Army (all despots like to claim they are acting in the name of ‘the People’ and setting them free) to clear the streets, in order to express their wish to select their own lawmakers. Let’s not betray them by handing control of what we think and what we say to any bunch of people who are afraid to hear views that differ from their own. Freedom is having the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. 

*   northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2019/07 › review-transsexuals-vs-cock...