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What does the arrest of more than 500 people in a protest supporting Palestine Action tell us about politics in the UK in 2025?
Their “crime” was simply holding signs saying they support opposition to the British arms trade with Israel — a trade that directly sustains what human rights organisations increasingly describe as collective punishment, apartheid, and potential genocide in Gaza. Their crime was not action, but expression.
Pause on that. You can now be arrested in Britain, not for what you’ve done, but for what you’ve said. Supporting opposition to genocide is grounds for police detention. What does that tell us about the state we live in?
The UK state — under both Conservative and Labour leadership — now treats opposition to militarism and racism as a bigger threat than militarism and racism itself. Isn’t that the definition of authoritarian drift? Or, as Simon Wren-Lewis raises on Mainly Macro: fascism?
Fascism: Semantics or Substance?
Critics will say “don’t be hysterical.” Fascism, they argue, requires a totalising state — Mussolini’s “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state.” They say Trump didn’t fit that definition when he stirred up Americans to violence after he was voted out of office in 2020; the UK doesn’t either — not yet.
But let’s apply Finchelstein’s definition: fascism is right-wing populism that uses violence for political ends and subverts democracy. Look at what’s happening:
-
Peaceful protest is criminalised.
-
Opposition to war crimes is reframed as extremism.
-
State violence (policing, surveillance, mass arrests) is normalised.
If fascism doesn’t always come jackboots-first, as George Carlin warned, it may come with a smile and a press release.
In 1968, when Enoch Powell delivered his Rivers of Blood speech, Conservative leader Edward Heath sacked him within a day. The Times branded the speech “evil.” The political class, scarred by World War II, drew a line.
Today? The same newspaper, under Rupert Murdoch, publishes alarmist headlines about immigrant “criminality” — headlines that collapse under statistical scrutiny but succeed in stirring resentment. Politicians echo the rhetoric rather than condemn it. Labour, terrified of Farage and Reform UK, mimics them.
Why the shift? Because the elite memory of fascism has faded. Heath’s generation lived through it. Today’s leaders have only a sanitised, Hollywood version.
Palestine Action as canaries in the coal mine
Palestine Action’s target is Elbit Systems, the Israeli arms giant. Its UK factories produce components for drones used in Gaza. Blocking those facilities is direct action against complicity in civilian deaths that has involved property damage, but no humans have been harmed.
The arrests under discussion were not for committing any illegal actions — they were for expressing support for Palestine Action’s opposition to the arms trade.
This is a crucial distinction. The state is not neutral. It is not balancing “protest rights” with “business rights.” Instead, it is siding decisively with corporate interests — in this case, arms manufacturers profiting from violence — over citizens exercising free expression.
This is one of the 14 classic signs of fascism, as identified by Umberto Eco and Laurence Britt: the government prioritises business and corporate power over individual rights. When the state actively defends capital against conscience, democracy is hollowed out.
In fact, the UK’s government is ticking multiple boxes:
-
Support for corporate power over individuals – the state defends arms firms’ profits over citizen rights.
-
Criminalising dissent – peaceful expression is punished.
-
Scapegoating or targeting marginalised groups – selective enforcement against activists.
-
Control of the media – the corporate press amplifies narratives favouring power.
-
Obsession with law and order to suppress opposition – public order laws are weaponised.
The list could continue: fear-mongering, nationalism, militarism, and privileging elites over ordinary citizens are all visible here.
The test case is clear: Palestine Action protested Elbit Systems. Instead of protecting dissent, the UK criminalised support for this group’s opposition to war crimes. This is not neutral governance. It is state protection of capital against conscience.
Ask yourself: if opposing genocide gets you handcuffed, what does that mean about the government doing the handcuffing?
The financial and political stakes
Here are the numbers:
-
The UK approved £442 million in arms export licences to Israel between 2015 and 2022 (Campaign Against Arms Trade).
-
Elbit Systems UK holds MoD contracts worth more than £280 million for drones, surveillance, and battlefield systems.
-
The global defence sector is a £7 trillion monster — one of the few industries UK governments of any stripe are desperate to protect.
This isn’t about “law and order”. It’s about protecting profits. When defence contractors are threatened, governments act – for Israel, and for a politically and financially influential elite, including arms manufacturers, investors, and their lobbyists.
The public interest has nothing to do with it.
Economics: whose rules are these?
Critics argue: “Arms exports mean jobs and growth.” But consider the economic theories that are supposed to underpin their claims:
-
Neoliberalism assumes markets allocate resources efficiently. But arms rely on state subsidy, secrecy, and enforcement. This is corporate welfare at its extreme.
-
Keynesianism notes that state investment in arms crowds out socially productive spending — schools, housing, green energy. Guns or butter? You can’t maximise both.
-
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) emphasises that the UK can create money; limits are resources, not revenue. Defence contracts are a political choice, not an economic necessity.
-
Monetarism frets about inflation, but even Milton Friedman conceded defence is an area where governments override markets.
The consensus is that propping up arms firms is political, not economically inevitable.
How can the UK government repair this damage?
Several ideas present themselves:
The government could immediately suspend UK arms exports to Israel, pending an independent war crimes investigation.
It could reinstate legal protections for protest, reversing authoritarian laws like the Public Order Act 2023 and Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.
More controversially, we could have nationalisation or public control of defence contractors, aligning operations with human rights obligations.
And we could re-frame security, defining investment in housing, energy independence, and diplomacy as foundations of stability.
Other countries have implemented similar measures:
-
Norway bans arms exports to states breaching humanitarian law.
-
South Africa faced global sanctions during apartheid, including on arms.
-
And in the UK in 1968, Harold Wilson’s government embargoed arms to Nigeria during the Biafra war.
These examples show that alternatives exist — the obstacle is political will, not feasibility.
There’s always an opposing view
Supporters of arms exports have their arguments. For example, they may say: “The rule of law must apply equally.” Sure – but corporations break international law daily and face no dawn raids. Protestors alone are punished.
Alternatively, if they say, “National security requires defence exports”: fuelling conflicts undermines security, creating refugee flows and radicalisation.
And then there’s the last refuge of the desperate – attacking the people, rather than the issue: “Palestine Action are extremists.” If civil disobedience against war crimes is extremism, so was the suffragette movement – as Yvette Cooper should recall.
The bigger picture
The Palestine Action arrests are symptomatic of a larger trend.
Britain is not Mussolini’s Italy — yet when peaceful opposition to racism, war, and profiteering is crushed, while elites embrace fear and division, the warning signs of fascism are all around.
From Rivers of Blood to this island of arrests, the question is no longer whether fascism could happen here. It’s whether the political and media elite are too compromised, timid, or complicit to stop it.
If opposing genocide is illegal, neutrality is impossible. You either side with the victims — or with the fascists.
Share this post:
From Rivers of Blood to an Island of Arrests: is the UK elite now fully fascist?
Share this post:
What does the arrest of more than 500 people in a protest supporting Palestine Action tell us about politics in the UK in 2025?
Their “crime” was simply holding signs saying they support opposition to the British arms trade with Israel — a trade that directly sustains what human rights organisations increasingly describe as collective punishment, apartheid, and potential genocide in Gaza. Their crime was not action, but expression.
Pause on that. You can now be arrested in Britain, not for what you’ve done, but for what you’ve said. Supporting opposition to genocide is grounds for police detention. What does that tell us about the state we live in?
The UK state — under both Conservative and Labour leadership — now treats opposition to militarism and racism as a bigger threat than militarism and racism itself. Isn’t that the definition of authoritarian drift? Or, as Simon Wren-Lewis raises on Mainly Macro: fascism?
Fascism: Semantics or Substance?
Critics will say “don’t be hysterical.” Fascism, they argue, requires a totalising state — Mussolini’s “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state.” They say Trump didn’t fit that definition when he stirred up Americans to violence after he was voted out of office in 2020; the UK doesn’t either — not yet.
But let’s apply Finchelstein’s definition: fascism is right-wing populism that uses violence for political ends and subverts democracy. Look at what’s happening:
Peaceful protest is criminalised.
Opposition to war crimes is reframed as extremism.
State violence (policing, surveillance, mass arrests) is normalised.
If fascism doesn’t always come jackboots-first, as George Carlin warned, it may come with a smile and a press release.
In 1968, when Enoch Powell delivered his Rivers of Blood speech, Conservative leader Edward Heath sacked him within a day. The Times branded the speech “evil.” The political class, scarred by World War II, drew a line.
Today? The same newspaper, under Rupert Murdoch, publishes alarmist headlines about immigrant “criminality” — headlines that collapse under statistical scrutiny but succeed in stirring resentment. Politicians echo the rhetoric rather than condemn it. Labour, terrified of Farage and Reform UK, mimics them.
Why the shift? Because the elite memory of fascism has faded. Heath’s generation lived through it. Today’s leaders have only a sanitised, Hollywood version.
Palestine Action as canaries in the coal mine
Palestine Action’s target is Elbit Systems, the Israeli arms giant. Its UK factories produce components for drones used in Gaza. Blocking those facilities is direct action against complicity in civilian deaths that has involved property damage, but no humans have been harmed.
The arrests under discussion were not for committing any illegal actions — they were for expressing support for Palestine Action’s opposition to the arms trade.
This is a crucial distinction. The state is not neutral. It is not balancing “protest rights” with “business rights.” Instead, it is siding decisively with corporate interests — in this case, arms manufacturers profiting from violence — over citizens exercising free expression.
This is one of the 14 classic signs of fascism, as identified by Umberto Eco and Laurence Britt: the government prioritises business and corporate power over individual rights. When the state actively defends capital against conscience, democracy is hollowed out.
In fact, the UK’s government is ticking multiple boxes:
Support for corporate power over individuals – the state defends arms firms’ profits over citizen rights.
Criminalising dissent – peaceful expression is punished.
Scapegoating or targeting marginalised groups – selective enforcement against activists.
Control of the media – the corporate press amplifies narratives favouring power.
Obsession with law and order to suppress opposition – public order laws are weaponised.
The list could continue: fear-mongering, nationalism, militarism, and privileging elites over ordinary citizens are all visible here.
The test case is clear: Palestine Action protested Elbit Systems. Instead of protecting dissent, the UK criminalised support for this group’s opposition to war crimes. This is not neutral governance. It is state protection of capital against conscience.
Ask yourself: if opposing genocide gets you handcuffed, what does that mean about the government doing the handcuffing?
The financial and political stakes
Here are the numbers:
The UK approved £442 million in arms export licences to Israel between 2015 and 2022 (Campaign Against Arms Trade).
Elbit Systems UK holds MoD contracts worth more than £280 million for drones, surveillance, and battlefield systems.
The global defence sector is a £7 trillion monster — one of the few industries UK governments of any stripe are desperate to protect.
This isn’t about “law and order”. It’s about protecting profits. When defence contractors are threatened, governments act – for Israel, and for a politically and financially influential elite, including arms manufacturers, investors, and their lobbyists.
The public interest has nothing to do with it.
Economics: whose rules are these?
Critics argue: “Arms exports mean jobs and growth.” But consider the economic theories that are supposed to underpin their claims:
Neoliberalism assumes markets allocate resources efficiently. But arms rely on state subsidy, secrecy, and enforcement. This is corporate welfare at its extreme.
Keynesianism notes that state investment in arms crowds out socially productive spending — schools, housing, green energy. Guns or butter? You can’t maximise both.
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) emphasises that the UK can create money; limits are resources, not revenue. Defence contracts are a political choice, not an economic necessity.
Monetarism frets about inflation, but even Milton Friedman conceded defence is an area where governments override markets.
The consensus is that propping up arms firms is political, not economically inevitable.
How can the UK government repair this damage?
Several ideas present themselves:
The government could immediately suspend UK arms exports to Israel, pending an independent war crimes investigation.
It could reinstate legal protections for protest, reversing authoritarian laws like the Public Order Act 2023 and Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.
More controversially, we could have nationalisation or public control of defence contractors, aligning operations with human rights obligations.
And we could re-frame security, defining investment in housing, energy independence, and diplomacy as foundations of stability.
Other countries have implemented similar measures:
Norway bans arms exports to states breaching humanitarian law.
South Africa faced global sanctions during apartheid, including on arms.
And in the UK in 1968, Harold Wilson’s government embargoed arms to Nigeria during the Biafra war.
These examples show that alternatives exist — the obstacle is political will, not feasibility.
There’s always an opposing view
Supporters of arms exports have their arguments. For example, they may say: “The rule of law must apply equally.” Sure – but corporations break international law daily and face no dawn raids. Protestors alone are punished.
Alternatively, if they say, “National security requires defence exports”: fuelling conflicts undermines security, creating refugee flows and radicalisation.
And then there’s the last refuge of the desperate – attacking the people, rather than the issue: “Palestine Action are extremists.” If civil disobedience against war crimes is extremism, so was the suffragette movement – as Yvette Cooper should recall.
The bigger picture
The Palestine Action arrests are symptomatic of a larger trend.
Britain is not Mussolini’s Italy — yet when peaceful opposition to racism, war, and profiteering is crushed, while elites embrace fear and division, the warning signs of fascism are all around.
From Rivers of Blood to this island of arrests, the question is no longer whether fascism could happen here. It’s whether the political and media elite are too compromised, timid, or complicit to stop it.
If opposing genocide is illegal, neutrality is impossible. You either side with the victims — or with the fascists.
Share this post:
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