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You can criticise things, but if you are effective, or if you criticise the wrong thing, you risk jail, harassment, ostracisation, threats, campaigns of vilification and slander, etc. Your doctor visits and lawyer visits will be surveilled, your basic diplomatic rights violated. You can be tortured in public view.

Wikileaks' Julian Assange is perhaps the archetypal recent example, but there are others.

Westminster has undergone a violent authoritarian shift in recent decades. Stating that clearly is a prerequisite to beginning a fight for "democracy", as you put it.



Yes. Westminster has become more autoritarian.

But Julian Assange is not a good example, for many reasons. He didn't just criticise the government. He broke laws. Maybe for good reason.

Are there any examples in the UK of people being jailed for simply criticising the government? Excluding hate speech and civil disobedience?


> Excluding hate speech and civil disobedience?

Why would you exclude civil disobedience, one of the primary means by which you protest government?


Civil disobedience is illegal by definition. The point is to get arrested.




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