People take part in a Stand Up to Racism protest in Epping, Essex, July 27, 2025
LEFT MPs Zarah Sultana and Diane Abbott and senior trade unionists will lead thousands of counterprotesters’s “far-right festival of hate” in London on Saturday.
A thousand people attended an online event to launch the Women Against the Far Right campaign on Thursday night, in the run-up to the march organised by Stand Up To Racism, with hundreds from the campaign set to join the march.
Ms Abbott, who is currently suspended from the Labour Party, said: “The far right are a menace to the whole of society.
“Their first targets, asylum-seekers and Muslims, are broadening to all migrants, black people and on to trade unionists, all religious minorities and anti-racists. They must be stopped.”
Ms Sultana said: “The far right are not welcome on our streets. We see through their lies.
“Their politics of hate and division make our communities weaker and women less safe.
“That’s why thousands of us are marching on Saturday — to show that fascists will be met with resistance wherever they spread their poison.”
Climate science denier Nigel Farage explains that it’s simple to blame asylum-seekers or Muslims for everything.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
TUC hits back at banking boss who suggested public-sector pay should be curbed because the economy falling
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TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said that while the government has “taken the right approach” by investing in public services and infrastructure, “the job of securing growth is far from over — and more support is needed to see that investment sustained in the long term.”
“That’s why it’s time for a grown-up conversation about taxing wealth and financial institutions,” he said.
“It’s only right that banks, gambling companies and the wealthiest in our society contribute their fair share to fund our schools, hospitals and local authorities.
“The government needs to ensure it can repair and rebuild our vital public services along with wider critical national infrastructure.”
Mr Nowak also called on the Bank of England to further Bank of England to “ease the pressure on household budgets and to make it more affordable for businesses to invest.”
HEAVY-HANDED: Cops arrest a peaceful protester at Parliament Square last weekend
The Met Police arrested a staggering 890 people, many elderly, disabled, and even blind in a single demonstration — all to back up the government’s unhinged campaign against non-violent civil disobedience at the behest of Israel, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE
THE iron fist of the British state is slamming down on those who dare to oppose genocide. In the whole year ending March 31 2025, according to the Home Office website, British police made a total of 232 arrests under the Terrorism Act 2000, a 12 per cent increase on the previous 12 months. The all-time record, according to the same page, for such arrests was 450 in 2018.
Last Saturday, the Metropolitan Police and other forces supporting them arrested at least 890 people at a single demonstration, on top of more than 500 a few weeks earlier. This is the largest mass arrest event by the Metropolitan Police in a decade.
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For supporting a group committed to direct action against British arms manufacturers supplying Israel, ordinary citizens now risk up to 14 years in prison. In the stroke of a pen, the right to protest was obliterated and peaceful dissenters branded as criminals.
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Today, British civil liberties are in the grip of a manufactured crisis. Peaceful citizens — ordinary people, including Jewish anti-genocide activists, pensioners, and scholars — have been redefined as terrorists. Even people in their 80s and 90s joined the civil resistance, proving the heart of popular opposition beats strong as ever. The state’s war is not just on Palestine — it’s on dissent, on assembly, on freedom itself.
It is my view that the real risk is not to national security, but to democracy. Step by step, the British Establishment is dismantling rights won through struggle and sacrifice. This is the opposite of democracy; this is naked authoritarianism. Silence is their weapon. The mass arrests, the legal bans, the kettling of peaceful protest — each tactic designed to intimidate, to silence, to fracture the solidarity needed to confront genocide and imperial complicity.
History is on the side of the people. From the anti-apartheid movement to the miners’ strike and beyond, popular resistance and dissent have always been met with repression — but never defeated.
Palestine Action joke that appeared in the UK satirical magazine ‘Private Eye’.Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide.Vote Labour for Genocide.
US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump stand together at the end of the US Army parade on June 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“Democracy faces a perfect storm of autocratic resurgence and acute uncertainty,” said Kevin Casas-Zamora of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.
A new report from a Swedish think tank warns that democracy is backsliding all across the world, led by the US under President Donald Trump.
The Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) on Wednesday published findings from its annual Global State of Democracy report that found democracy is declining in 94 countries around the world, representing 54% of all nations the think tank analyzed.
“Democracy faces a perfect storm of autocratic resurgence and acute uncertainty, due to massive social and economic changes,” Kevin Casas-Zamora, secretary-general of IDEA, toldThe Guardian. “To fight back, democracies need to protect key elements of democracy, like elections and the rule of law, but also profoundly reform government so that it delivers fairness, inclusion, and shared prosperity.”
The US has shown itself to be in a particularly precarious position, as IDEA ranked the country well behind several other nations that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in the categories of rights, representation, and the rule of law.
The report includes data only from 2024, before the start of Trump’s second term, but it makes note of further negative developments that have occurred since his return to power.
“The rule of law has come under intensified pressure under the second Trump administration in the USA,” IDEA writes. “Since Trump took office in January 2025, his administration has issued a series of executive orders attempting to overhaul key aspects of governance, including the day-to-day functioning of the federal civil service, the country’s migration and asylum systems, and the balance of power between federal and state-level governments.”
IDEA adds that the administration has at times “disregarded or circumvented” court rulings, which has led to concerns about the rule of law in the US crumbling even further.
“The degree to which the balance of powers is respected in the months and years to come will be a key determinant of whether Rule of Law indicators in the USA remain resilient or continue to deteriorate,” the report stated.
In a separate interview with German publication Deutsche Welle, Casas-Zamora explained why developments in the US are dangerous not just to American citizens, but citizens in democracies around the planet.
“Some of the things that we saw during the election at the end of last year and in the first few months of 2025 are fairly disturbing,” he said.
The first months of Trump’s term were characterized by his attempts to seize constitutional powers from Congress by impounding federal funds, challenging the judiciary’s right to rule against the administration’s actions, and blatantly disobeying court orders.
“Since what happens in the US has this ability to go global,” said Casas-Zamora, “this does not bode well for democracy globally.”
US President Donald Trump speaks about the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025. (Photo: WhiteHouse.gov)
With the suspect still at large and the motive unknown, the president “seized the moment of widespread mourning to spread more hatred and division.”
Despite the fact that the murderer of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk remained unidentified and still at large, President Donald Trump declared the “radical left” as “directly responsible” for the assassination in remarks from the White House on Wednesday night—comments that critics say shows Trump is more than willing to exploit the killing for his own purposes while sowing more, not less, political violence in the future.
In a video address from the Oval Office, Trump said that criticism of Kirk from the left was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
The president didn’t specify which opponents of Kirk he believed contributed to his killing; over the years the influencer, who frequently visited college campuses to debate students, clashed with and was criticized by supporters of abortion rights, gun control, and immigrants’ rights. But Trump said his administration would “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.”
Trump did not detail how the White House would determine what groups “contributed” to Kirk’s killing.
“Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives,” he asserted, though he did not mention any of the political violence—which is statistically more pervasive—on the political right.
Trump: "For years those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of… pic.twitter.com/dQwhTv52a9
The president was echoing sentiments expressed by far-right influencer Laura Loomer who has played a key role in shaping the Trump administration, lobbying for the hiring and removal of certain aides.
“It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, and prosecute every single leftist organization,” Loomer said Wednesday, even before Kirk was publicly pronounced dead. “We must shut these lunatic leftists down. Once and for all. The left is a national security threat.”
In a Thursday op-ed for Common Dreams, author and journalist Christopher D. Cook laments how “Kirk had barely been declared dead when President Trump hideously used his killing to falsely blame and attack the left.”
The president, writes Cook, “seized the moment of widespread mourning to spread more hatred and division, in a reckless, angry televised speech that hurled blame at the left despite not a scintilla of evidence about Kirk’s assassin or their politics.”
Trump named a number of victims of political violence in recent years, including US Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), who was shot in 2017 by a man who opposed the president; and Trump himself, who survived two assassination attempts last year.
The president did not mention the killing earlier this year of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, a Democrat. The suspect in Hortman’s killing was an evangelical Christian who strongly opposed abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) also asserted without any evidence that critics of the far-right agenda that Kirk embraced were to blame for his killing, specifically suggesting that her Democratic colleagues were implicated in the assassination.
“Democrats own what happened today,” she told reporters. “Some raging leftist lunatic put a bullet through his neck.”
Mace added that it was “ridiculous” to suggest that by her logic, Republican lawmakers “own” Hortman’s assassination.
The comments from Trump and Mace, wrote Cook, only show that these are “not the people who are going to lead us out of this ugly toxic pit” of political violence now pervasive in the United States.
At Zeteo, journalist Mehdi Hasan listed several other recent acts of political violence in which the suspected or confirmed perpetrators held right-wing ideologies, including the attempted assassination of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro earlier this year; the assault of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in 2022; and the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020.
“There is no equivalent or even similar list of Obama or Biden supporters who have carried out murders, attempted murders, or violent attacks against Republicans or conservatives in recent years,” wrote Hasan. “In fact, according to statistics compiled by the ADL’s Center on Extremism, 2024 was the third year in a row in which all of the extremist-related killings in the United States were carried out by… right-wingers.”
On the social media platform X, Texas Monthly senior writer Robert Downen pointed out that some far-right white supremacists had also “reviled” Kirk.
“I’m not speculating about the shooter,” said Downen. “I just have been stunned how quickly people have jumped with certainty to partisan conclusions. Because in extremism spaces, the Charlie Kirk Hater-to-Nazi pipeline is canon. It’s how we got a generation of antisemitic extremists.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was quick to rebuke the suggestion that Democrats or left-wing groups are to blame for the rise in politically motivated attacks or the emergence of violence as a commonplace, acceptable occurrence in American culture.
“Oh, please,” she said when a reporter asked her whether Democrats should tone down their rhetoric. “Why don’t you start with the president of the United States, and every ugly meme he has posted, and every ugly word.”
In a podcast put together Wednesday evening in the wake of Kirk’s assassination, journalist David Sirota said that “what we desperately need right now in this country are leaders who lower the temperature, leaders who will try to pull us back from the brink.”
Instead, Sirota warned, “we have a president right now who seems mostly interested in using the bully pulpit to actually bully people. Inflaming every cultural conflict he can stick his nose into—all for the cause of grabbing more power and money for himself and his family.”
In place of more anger, hatred, and calls for political retribution, Sirota told his audience he wanted to offer a different message.
“It’s a simple message whether you are a leftist, a liberal, a centrist, a conservative, or a MAGA fan,” said Sirota. “Your life has value and your political opponents’ lives have value too. You can hate your adversaries’ ideas, and you can fight hard for your cause, but the moment we stop seeing each other as human beings and we start concluding that violence is the answer, that’s the moment we let the soulless corporations, the ruthless authoritarians, and the sociopathic demagogues win.”
The “nihilism” and “greed” of too many, he added, “are creating the conditions for a civil war—one that we must all do our part to stop. Before it becomes unstoppable.”
People take part in a Stand Up to Racism protest in Epping, Essex, July 27, 2025
