UK Police Arrest Parents, Jail Them For Criticizing School Policies
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
As I listen in frustration to my liberal friends complain about encroaching authoritarianism in the United States and the danger of letting people express their opinions on X, I stand amazed at their admiration for allies in Europe, such as the UK or the European Union cracking down on people who aren't in lockstep with the ruling regimes.
It is a testament to the power of groupthink and the power of propaganda and gives us a window into how otherwise civilized societies descend into barbarous madness that results in crimes against humanity.
The analog isn't so much the rise of Nazism--that sprang up out of the humiliating defeat of World War I and the economic turmoil of the post-war and Great Depression years when social upheaval would be expected. Rather, we are witnessing something akin to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, in which a years-long campaign of propaganda created the conditions for a social contagion that sparked a wave of oppression .
Link to article: https://t.co/3iQ790Onn1
— Andrew Doyle (@andrewdoyle_com) March 28, 2025
When Maxie Allen complained to his daughter’s primary school about the recruitment process for a new head teacher, he hoped it would result in more openness and transparency.
Instead six uniformed officers from Hertfordshire police were sent to arrest Allen and his partner after the school objected to them sending numerous emails and to their criticisms including “disparaging” comments on a parents’ WhatsApp group.
Allen and Rosalind Levine were detained in front of their young daughter before being fingerprinted, searched and left in a police cell for eight hours. They were questioned on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property. After a five-week investigation, police concluded there should be no further action.
The couple had previously been banned from entering Cowley Hill Primary School, in Borehamwood, after questioning the appointment process for a head and “casting aspersions” on the chair of governors on WhatsApp.
They say they were blocked from attending the parents’ evening for their daughter Sascha, nine, and were not allowed to be in the audience for her Christmas performance. Crucially, even though Sascha suffers from epilepsy and is neurodivergent and registered disabled, the couple were unable to meet teachers to inform them how to administer medication and ask questions about her learning progress.
I expect this sort of behavior from the "revolutionary" left, but I am appalled when ordinary, decent, and "compassionate" liberals embrace these tactics or, at most, tut-tutt at what they see as excusable excesses of zeal in making society a kind and decent place.
"If only you complied with our demands!" "We are doing this out of love!"
Weirdly, movements like this do not spring out of authoritarianism--authoritarianism has much more limited goals--but out of idealistic totalitarian movements. Jeane Kirkpatrick captured the distinction in her seminal work " Dictatorship and Double Standards" back in the old Reagan days. Right-wing dictatorships have limited social goals--social order. Left-wing movements have totalitarian goals--a complete revolution of societal norms and thinking. One is practical, the other idealistic, and the idealistic ones are the more dangerous.
That's not an excuse to embrace dictatorships, but to put them in order when it comes to dangerousness and to help us make decisions when evaluating them. If you don't, you will wind up dumping support for the Shah of Iran because he oppressed his political enemies only to put in the Ayatollah, who oppressed everybody in his society and embraced terrorism to expand his power to the entire world.
If your choice is between the two, the Shah is infinitely better. The same can be said with supporting the South Korean dictators who led their country into freedom and democracy and the Kuomintang in Taiwan who did the same. Authoritarian regimes can evolve into democracies, as happened in every Western country, while totalitarian regimes aim to change human behavior, thinking, and values fundamentally.
“Nazis are not welcome in civil society”.
Thanks to panelists @HPluckrose @HeatherEHeying @JamesADamore and @MikeNayna @becomethesignal for filming.
For more, see @MikeNayna ’s outstanding documentary, The Reformers https://t.co/3s92HnIXQc
— Peter Boghossian (@peterboghossian) March 29, 2025
Britain and Europe, as a whole, are run by proto-totalitarians who see arresting parents, Christians, and any ordinary Britons for wrongthink as necessary to building an ideal society. Dissenters are enemies of the people, of the ideal order and must be disposed of or suppressed.
The left and the center-left embrace their "comply or else" attitude as a necessary stage in the evolution to a better society.
Liberals may see the tactics of the leftists as going a bit too far..."I don't approve of..." but they always add a "but..." Sure, the tactics are extreme, but the intention was idealistic. Their once-charming faith in the perfectibility of mankind is far more dangerous than the cynicism of moderates and conservatives who understand that the only thing more dangerous than a self-interested authoritarian is an idealist bent on fundamentally changing society and human norms.
These people saw COVID tyranny as a necessary, or at least understandable response to a crisis, while people like you and me were horrified that otherwise decent people were whipped up into a mob. A majority of Democrats expressed a desire to put the unvaccinated in camps, to let them die, to take away their children, and often chased the noncompliant around in stores to harangue them for the simple act of not wearing a totally useless mask.
Helicopters were dispatched to collect people sailing in the ocean or surfing, and the authorities filled skateboard parks with sand to prevent youths from engaging in sport.
It was for our own good. Wrongthink must be punished.
This is how we get to the point where parents are arrested for questioning decisions, for wrongthink, and for praying silently in their homes and on the streets.
To those who think, "It can't happen here," I say: It IS happening here and will get worse. We are already seeing mobs using Brownshirt tactics, police raids, censorship, and even violence being used against noncompliance. And many liberals shrug and are fine with that as long as the right people are targeted.
The left sees Luigi Mangione as a hero. Liberals "abhor" but "understand" the violence. They will not object until they are the object of the terror.
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Note for the confused: This is what actual authoritarianism looks like. Jail for criticizing government policy.
When you are free to attack the President, his advisors and his policies with no regard for truth while spreading baseless conspiracy theories, you aren't actually living in an authoritarian state.
Related comment I saw on GB generally. What a disaster:
I am 43 years old. I cannot recall a time in my life when I have been as depressed about the state of Britain and England —a country I love—as I am today. Here are 5 things that happened in the last week alone that point to the terrible future that awaits our once great country unless we urgently and radically change course.
1. In the political system, a group of MPs, many of whom preside over disadvantaged neighbourhoods here in Britain, decided to lobby instead for an airport in … Pakistan … to please their Muslim constituents, thereby continuing to usher in a dark and dangerous sectarianism into our politics that was further reflected this week in the election of “independent” local candidates campaigning not on issues central to Britain but … Palestine. We are heading, slowly but surely, toward a model of sectarian politics that looks more like Lebanon than Britain.
2. In the legal system, a remote, unelected, unaccountable and self-righteous ‘Sentencing Council’ refused a request from elected government ministers to change guidelines that will entrench a two-tier legal system, whereby people from racial, sexual and gender minorities will be treated more favourably than others when handing out prison sentences, thereby violating the principle that everybody in this country should be treated equally before the law
3. In the judicial system, police decided to arrest two parents whose only ‘offence’ was to complain about their local school in a WhatsApp group, with the Orwellian school and police authorities both prioritising the ‘emotional safety’ of a few fragile teachers over the need to uphold free speech and individual liberty in this country.
4. In the immigration system, meanwhile, we learned that 6,000 illegal migrants have now arrived on our shores on small boats in the first three months of this year, 40% up on last year, with crossings happening every day this past week, taking the total since 2018 to 157,000 illegal migrants who are costing struggling British taxpayers upwards of £7 BILLION a year. This isn’t only breaking our laws but is throwing full light on the total incompetence and inability of our politicians and the UK state to control our own borders, keep our own people safe, and maintain our status as a sovereign nation.
5. And in the economy, lastly, this week we learned that our hapless rulers in Westminster are now more interested in helping foreign nationals and illegal migrants than their own people, with a Spring Statement from the Chancellor confirming they are more focused on slashing welfare and support for British pensioners, workers, and farmers, who come from these islands and whose ancestors have contributed to these islands for centuries, than they are on slashing the BILLIONS these same British taxpayers are now being forced to spend subsidising foreigners, illegal migrants, foreign criminals, our broken asylum system, and foreign aid which is still being used to support the likes of eco-farms in Nepal, obese children in China, and LGBT campaigns overseas.
Sorry, but enough is enough. The people in power, the people who are presiding over these disastrous decisions, really need to start thinking about where all this is going, where all this is pushing us as a people and a nation. Because it’s increasingly clear, to me at least, that the eventual destination will be a very dangerous, dark and divided place indeed. There is a total lack of strong leadership in this country. We need to change course, now. We need to start putting the British people first, now. And we need to start radically reforming the entire political, legal, judicial and economic system, now. Because unless we do then we are all heading into very serious trouble
For all of America's issues, a look around the globe should convince anyone how lucky they are to be here.
Viktor Orban is one of Matthew Goodwin's heroes. With that, I have no more to say.
You mean similar to we see here in our own country? Trump and crew arresting students here legally for writing a school op ed in the college paper?
No need for parents in America to bother criticizing schools because Trump is shutting down the Department of Education. Who to complain to? Local schools?
No, local schools in most states are shutting down so rich parents can get a government handout by way of "vouchers" paid by local governments from everyone's tax dollars to send wealthy children to religious or private schools.
Let the UK do whatever. We can't do anything about that.
Meanwhile Trump is attacking our education system along with wealthy folks tearing down free public education, denying funds for preschool early education, tearing down public aid and financing for higher education, and literally cancelling funds to colleges Trump doesn't like.
We are far worse off now on the educational front than we have ever been. Come up with some solutions for America instead of using what some other country does. We have our own problems to solve.
Please direct me to the story depicting Trump arresting American students for writing op-eds.
arents in America to bother criticizing schools because Trump is shutting down the Department of Education. Who to complain to? Local schools?
What does that even mean? Yes, you criticize your local schools without being arrested, unlike England. What that has to do with the Dept of Education is beyond me.
schools in most states are shutting down so rich parents can get a government handout by way of "vouchers" paid by local governments from everyone's tax dollars to send wealthy children to religious or private schools.
Much as I know giving poor students access to better schools is one of the things progressives hate the most, your claims are neither accurate or relevant.
We are far worse off now on the educational front than we have ever been
Yes, the department of education and federally backed student loans have made a mess of our system.
ome up with some solutions for America instead of using what some other country does.
Odd that this is the seed you choose to make that point in. So many seeds involve using other countries to attack America and this never gets raised. I guess this isn't anti-American enough to pass muster.
I'm still trying to find anything that this school or constabulary have to do with "liberals". I found nothing about the school being "liberal" or the administration being "liberal" or even the parent complaints being about "liberal" policies or anything of the sort.
So, one should and in fact must conclude, that this author above is full of shit. He's whining like a little child that just pissed his pants about supposed liberals supporting our allies and the allies of western democracy while nary a word is said about the HUGE amount of disgusting treasonous support for Russia and other rightwing authoritarian governments and how they treat their citizens, all while desperately trying to find anything they can use as a weapon against liberals for daring to question the conservative status quo. What a bunch of sad loser hypocrites, but then that would be par for the course for rightwing religious conservatives.
[✘] ount of disgusting treasonous support for Russia
Please look up the word "treasonous" you aren't using it correctly.
apon against liberals for daring to question the conservative status quo.
Lol. Arresting people for speaking their minds is now "daring to question the conservative status quo" Orwellian isn't strong enough for this abuse of language.
sad loser hypocrites, but then that would be par for the course for rightwing religious conservatives.
Almost a full post without spittle flecked invective against the same old boogeymen. Almost.
The U.S. Constitution defines treason in Article III, Section 3, Clause 1, as " levying war against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort ,"
I often hear those in the MAGAverse praising Putin just like their Dear Leader does. And when Putin reads about or hears all of that praise coming from a certain group, mostly white nationalist rightwing religious conservatives, I've no doubt he feels aided and comforted. My comment stands.