Thread by @rfhaviland

This coming Saturday 10th September, members of @euromovescot, of which I'm proud to be a member, will be heading to London to attend the #MarchForRejoin in London, along with other individuals and groups from across the UK. THREAD

In doing so, they will be exercising their democratic right to demonstrates, as citizens of a country that still likes to think of itself as a liberal democracy.

In seeking to strengthen relations with our EU neighbours, some by aspiring to rejoin, some by seeking initially just to improve the mood and rebuild damaged relations, they are seeking to put the UK back where, until 2016, it had sought to be - on good terms with its neighbours.

For this, remarkably, they have been labelled by David Walker, in @ScotExpress, as "anti-democratic" and "extremist".

https://twitter.com/BremainInSpain/status/1567485491510910977

That's right. They are "anti-democratic" and "extremist" for exercising their democratic right to campaign for a cause they believe in, at the centre of which is the desire to have cordial relations with our neighbours and allies.

You may well disagree with this. You may well think it's misjudged. It may even make you angry. But what it is not, under any sane description, is anti-democratic or extremist. Suggesting people shouldn't demonstrate is what is anti-democratic and extremist.

It's easy just to dismiss this as the rantings of a sensationalist newspaper that needs to sell copy in an era and to a readership where you have to sound more and more deranged to be able to do that.

But there's something going on here. Language, increasingly, is being used as a weapon - and a very effective one at that - to discredit entirely mainstream views.

It's what leads people who believe in pursuing a policy towards Europe consistent with the broad aims of every post-war UK government until Johnson's to be labelled "extremist"

It's what can make a regular contributor to @thecritic to label @FreefromTorture "communists" for the crime of complaining about Priti Patel's treatment of asylum seekers. (I'm not providing a link to the tweet because I've no interest in sparking pile-ons).

It's what led the UK's new Transport Secretary, back in 2012, to label as "fanatics" those scientists warning about the dangers of climate change.

https://twitter.com/carltonreid/status/1567444839951646720

It's what's led to the ridiculous, and ubiquitous, use of the word "woke" to dismiss everything and anything that's just a bit too progressive for people who can't be bothered, or are too cowardly, to say what they really think.

Recently, I wrote this piece for @WCountryVoices about the normalisation of the unacceptable, about how deeply immoral policies such as Rwanda, which disgrace the UK, have so rapidly become mainstream. westcountryvoices.co.uk/it-could-never…

There's another angle to it. The corollary of normalising the unacceptable is making the acceptable seem abnormal. Portraying moderates as extremists. Painting scientists as fanatics. Describing groups campaigning for asylum seekers' rights as communists.

All you need is the lexicon and techniques of propaganda and a willing group of the gullible ready to be made angry, to see the world in black and white, to seek an enemy on whom to blame their victimhood.

It's a fundamentally authoritarian world view. It's authoritarianism that threatens our freedoms. it's authoritarianism that puts our democracy in such danger. It's authoritarianism that opens the door to the unthinkable. Fight it. ENDS