I wonder what moral acrobatics the Graun will turn to, to try to explain that what is needed is a "nice" way of enforcing the closure of society?
Aha. And here is the first clue: "All the ‘tough’ talk ignores who is always targeted in such crackdowns, and those who still need help."
Explore the racial dimensions, right?
Fake the racial grievance... Find the injustice...
And it starts exactly as predicted: asserting the necessity of the lockdown, and belittle the critics...
"Opportunistic media voices who made a habit of denying the *****necessity***** of restrictions and the severity of the pandemic are still here"
And there it is...
"There is a very modern tendency for issues to be understood in terms of caricatures", he says, after having explained that we, the BAD kind of lockdown sceptics don't really care about people on the receiving end of draconian legislation.
"To understand these things does not make you a lockdown sceptic. "
It does. He's just trying to differentiate between his virtue-signalling and bad people who don't differentiate between races because we're evil like that.
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The difference is one of estimations of the competences of governments vs. individuals, and to whom the benefit of the doubt goes to.
Hawks presuppose governments because they are the governments. Thus they are forced to belittle people and sceptics, and this becomes the debate.
There was a brief moment, back last March, where it looked like the PP would be abandoned, and that government competence would not be taken for granted. Instead, the government were bounced into promising "three weeks to flatten the curve". Here we are, ten months later.
It is not just closing someone's Twitter account. It is closing down democratically-appointed people's accounts, while seeking to impeach & prosecute them, depriving them of a platform from which to defend themselves, and moving to outlaw their broader movements. It *is* fascism.
You may want to split hairs about precise definitions, and of historical parallels and the pitfalls of drawing them. But fascism was never so clearly defined by its theoreticians, or since, by historians.
They will use the law, violence, and war to further their interests, against their opponents, against democracy and against their populations.
That makes the case, as far as I am concerned, and the rest is for the birds, so to speak.
"... British conservatives are still in power and still getting away with it. They will only change, if they ever change, when they receive their overdue punishment."
Do not underestimate anti-Trump hysteria. They have tasted blood. And they're not full.