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by dmix 295 days ago
It does seem culturally popular in UK to have rules and government hoop jumping for every small thing, to the point it's become a tired meme on the internet. The backlash on this one was likely because it happened very quickly and very broadly across the internet at once. They should have slowly expanded the scope as most governments do and maybe the backlash would have been lower.
3 comments
felineflock 294 days ago
You seem to be describing the same "boiling frog" idea that Gramsci had of the "Long March through the Institutions", the takeover of a society without need to resort to violence, slowly occupying institutions (government departments, universities, arts, media, schools, corporations, etc) to decide the direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institu...

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parineum 294 days ago
I think most of the EU is like this but the UK seems to be either much more so or just much further along the path. Cultures around the world seem to have a kind of familiarity with some "default" type of governance and, in Europe, it seems like a tendency to defer to or obey "elites".
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jkaplowitz 294 days ago
> in Europe, it seems like a tendency to defer to or obey "elites".

This varies a lot by country. The French are still known for their protests, certainly not nearly as violent or disruptive in the modern day as their famous 18th-century revolution but very much quite impactful even so. And German trade unions use strikes very effectively to have a fair outcome in contract negotiations with employers.

Countries in the English-speaking world, certainly including the UK but also the US and Canada, seem a lot more deferential to elites in many ways than most of continental Europe.

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const_cast 294 days ago
The frog has been slowly boiled on online privacy and censorship for decades now. Make no mistake, this is not a swift move - it's a meticulous progression.

I mean, you tell someone 20 years ago that you have to use your real name on websites or provide a phone number and they would look at your like you're crazy. Now, we're demanding people upload real pictures of their real life ID to fuck around on the internet.

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