Hanging's too good for 'em

This rant addresses a particularly harmful group of people, the law and order monkeys or crypto-fascists as they have sometimes been called. These are the sort of people that although not in anyway courageous, would have been thrown out of the Gestapo for excessive cruelty.

You already know them, they say things like “If you commit the crime, you gotta do the time” (reply: If you need a rhyme, you are a crime) and defend the erosion of basic civil liberties, the cornerstone of a free and democratic society with the ill thought out “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”. This is of course a false dichotomy, people wish to hide many things that are not actually illegal and exposure of this material can be used to coerce them. Additionally the method whereby these things are found out can itself be an instrument of coercive terror, like 28 days detention without charge for terror suspects. Amazingly in 2005 an attempt was made by the then government to increase this to 90 days despite the fact that no terror suspects who were released under the then 14 day system were later incriminated by new evidence. There is no evidence that police ever needed longer than 14 days.

The more extreme law and order types are vocal in support of barbaric punishments like the cat o nine tails and the birch. The probability that this hate is just the outward expression of their vast irrational fears is totally lost on them.

Recently I was given to some sarcastic laughter when in response to a few car-jackings a PSNI officer (himself probably subjected to hundreds of calls from the irate monkeys) said that the PSNI planned “to hunt them down”. These are the sorts of people that if the government had dispatched Apache helicopter gunships and fired hellfire missiles at suspect cars would have cheered. The meaning of the word disproportionate like the meaning of most words eludes them. They tend to seek out others to do the dirty work associated with their towering authoritarian complex. These others in our society tend to be the PSNI or paramilitary organisations.

I’m sure you remember the Raul Moate case, where a simple manhunt turned into a media circus featuring a Tornado aircraft, rumours of SAS involvement and thousands of armed police, some with assault rifles. It looked like the sort of force you would assemble to invade a medium sized country, rather than one required to take in one man armed with a weapon with an effective range of 30 yards. This was a police force and possibly a country that had lost the run of itself.

Some of you may be thinking that I am just picking on an easy target here, people without much education and those who tend to be fearful.

That is not true, these people practice the politics of fear and are a real threat to democracy and liberty. They seek out emotive topics which allow them to bypass the reason centre of your mind with their shrill demands. They propagate suspicion and panic and so break down societal bonds of trust and neighbourliness. As a result this creates the vacuum in which crime takes place which of course enables their shrill chorus to begin all over again.

What can be done? Well, in personal terms don't give in to their panic-mongering, be skeptical, dismiss moral panics, and always be proportionate and reasonable. In political terms, remember these people are (perhaps unwitting) harbingers of totalitarianism and fascism.