I am part of a Facebook page called "Princess Diana - Keep Her Memory Alive (NO TROLLS ALLOWED)". It used to be a sincere appreciation page but it's been permanently taken over by trolls for ages.
One of the jokes on the page is mocking the sincerity of mawkish unironic boomer Diana love: "taken so soon, oh we do miss our di", etc. This has meme has morphed from "oh we love our di" to incorrectly spelt "oh yess we do luvvv ar di!!11".
They very obviously do it at night for a range of reasons: (a) less protesters at night, (b) more difficult to film police misconduct & (c) night-time is more disorientating/frightening for protesters being beaten up than in the day time.
Obviously I'm not trying to erase or downplay the authoritarian tendencies pre existent in UK politics but watching this I can't help but feel like we're entering frankly new territory.
My intervention in The Discourse™ on racist white gays is merely to say that the LGBT rights movement in the UK - and politicians that liberalised laws - has often been characterised by what I call "low stakes liberalism".
In other words they are willing to offer reforms & limitations on the state but only for the least contentious issues and for the least immiserated people in the LGBT community.
This essentially means: allowing the gays to get married & have sex at 16 but radio silence on gay people being deported, radio silence on lesbians in Yarls Wood, discomfort at standing in solidarity with trans people.
The British flag isn't fascist, true, it's colonial. But fascism & fascist signifiers very much are colonial.
The distinctions are very slight.
Oh and if we want to make direct comparisons - the strategy of the concentration camp, even the usage of barbed wire to enclose people in spaces, derives from the British empire.