A UK Protest First
Saturday saw two rival protests take place in London - a "pro-Palestine" demonstration and the “Unite the Kingdom” march. While both gatherings are arguably rooted in competing forms of collectivism, not everyone attending Tommy Robinson’s march was a far-right thug, nor was everyone at the opposing demonstration a raging anti-semite - though you wouldn’t necessarily know it given the vitriol spewing from both sides across traditional and social media. The news here is not the protests themselves - which passed largely peacefully. History was in fact made by the fact that this Saturday saw the first time facial recognition surveillance was used by a British police force at a protest. These were also the first large-scale demonstrations to take place after the diktats of the Crime and Policing Bill came into force in April, which, amongst other restrictions, empowers police to enforce the removal of face coverings at protests. It is telling that the state wasted no time in ban...