{"id":51549,"date":"2026-07-31T08:02:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T08:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=51549"},"modified":"2026-07-31T08:02:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T08:02:27","slug":"think-our-basic-rights-are-safe-in-the-age-of-oligarchs-and-corporate-lobbying-think-again-george-monbiot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=51549","title":{"rendered":"Think our basic rights are safe? In the age of oligarchs and corporate lobbying, think again | George Monbiot"},"content":{"rendered":"

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N<\/span>o more resistance in the US. The era of human rights is over, and dissent is once more forbidden. This is what certain billionaires and their concierges want, and this is the model they\u2019re also seeking to project across the world. If we fail to resist, if our new prime minister is as weak and suggestible as the last one, this is what we will get. In fact, we are halfway there already.<\/p>\n

Why? Because successive governments in the UK have succumbed to a global campaign to cancel our fundamental freedoms, a campaign led by oligarchs and corporations, the media they own and the junktanks they fund. A campaign that has become definitional for the second Trump presidency.<\/p>\n

At a global summit convened by the US government earlier this month, the Trump administration officials Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller and Scott Bessent explained that they were redirecting counterterrorism efforts away from Islamic jihadism and towards \u201cthe political left\u201d. Most of the examples they cited to justify this shift were more than 30 years old. Several times they had to dig down to the 1970s to find a sufficiently menacing threat. You could hear the barrel being scraped.<\/p>\n

Without producing a shred of evidence, Rubio, the secretary of state, claimed that the Cuban government is \u201cinextricably linked to the far-left groups and movements across and beyond the west\u201d. The following week, his department sought to justify this claim with a report containing a long list of leftwing legislators, journalists and activists that attempted to link them to Cuba in ways that ranged from the tenuous to the hilarious. This is a well-honed tactic, used prolifically by the Nazis among others: they claimed dissenters, by definition, were part of an international communist conspiracy. They insisted, as Rubio did, that \u201cit is time to crush this evil for ever\u201d.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t the only crude reminder. Miller, Donald Trump\u2019s deputy chief of staff, maintained that when you see antifascist protests, \u201cnot one of the people that is demonstrating looks like a normal person. Not one looks normal. They\u2019re all deformed in some way \u2013 in their appearance, in their dress, in their mannerism \u2026 their outer appearance becomes a manifestation of their inner hatred.\u201d I\u2019m just surprised he didn\u2019t say \u201cuntermenschen<\/em>\u201d. The US government, by contrast, promotes \u201cnormal, healthy, ordered living\u201d.<\/p>\n

But what hit me even harder was Miller\u2019s attack on \u201cjury nullification\u201d: jurors acquitting people who, he said, were \u201cobviously guilty\u201d. Shutting down this possibility has been an aim of illiberal governments and conservative judges around the world. We saw it in the UK in the prosecution of Trudi Warner and others for holding signs that state an ancient principle in English law: \u201cJurors have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to their conscience.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/span>Rajiv Menon KC, who is facing prosecution for contempt of court.<\/span> Photograph: Garden Court Chambers<\/p>\n

We see it in the astonishing prosecution, being pursued at the moment, of Rajiv Menon KC, who reminded jurors of this right at the trial of the Palestine Action campaigners he was defending. He became, as a result, the first lawyer in English history to be charged with contempt of court for a closing speech. If convicted, he faces up to two years\u2019 imprisonment and will be struck off. Prosecuting lawyers for defending their dissident clients is more or less the definition of authoritarianism.<\/p>\n

We also saw it in the assault Keir Starmer launched on jury trials as a whole, greatly curtailing, without any coherent justification, our strongest defence against injustice.<\/p>\n

Starmer was a weak man, without a clear vision of his own, who was rolled by any powerful state or corporate lobby. He was no match for a well-funded and highly effective international campaign. A network of groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, funded by corporations and billionaires, has been producing \u201cmodel legislation\u201d. The groups test these laws in sympathetic jurisdictions. If they are found to work, they then press for their adoption elsewhere. The result is a sustained assault on our rights to protest, to political equality and to a habitable planet.<\/p>\n

The globalisation of this attack on our fundamental rights is a key conservative aim. As capital operates everywhere, so should its ability to crush our objections. The long series of vicious anti-protest laws in the UK is an outcome of sustained lobbying by junktanks, the media and other governments. The result is a country that now keeps hundreds of political prisoners, a country in which you can get six months in jail for marching slowly down the street.<\/p>\n

These oppressive laws have culminated \u2013 so far \u2013 in an act of parliament passed in April that enables the police to shut down any protest they deem to have a \u201ccumulative\u201d impact on the community. The only protests that have ever succeeded are those with a cumulative impact. Protest is acceptable as long as it\u2019s useless. Let the people have their say, but only if we can\u2019t hear them.<\/p>\n

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The new laws have been accompanied by that age-old trick, traditionally associated with fascist regimes, of smearing leftwing dissidents as terrorists. As the rights group Liberty has pointed out, the definition of terrorism here has greatly expanded, to incorporate tactics formerly regarded as civil protest. This is what enabled Starmer\u2019s government to ban Palestine Action.<\/p>\n

The judge who referred Menon for contempt, Mr Justice Johnson, was also the first \u2013 at the same trial \u2013 to use the extraordinary powers quietly inserted by the Conservatives into the Sentencing Act 2020. These enable someone tried for one crime to be sentenced for another. The four Palestine Action protesters were convicted of ordinary crimes. But, without informing the jury, Johnson marked the case as having a \u201cterrorist connection\u201d. He then sentenced them for terrorist offences, which means much more prison time.<\/p>\n

Already, his example has been followed by another judge: a different group of pro-Palestine protesters, who sprayed red paint and broke some windows of a branch of Barclays Bank, are about to be sentenced as terrorists, though neither they nor the jurors were told of this possibility during their trial for criminal damage. This means, of course, that they were unable to defend themselves against this far more serious charge.<\/p>\n

Nothing is safe from the billionaire assault on humanity. None of our rights, however ancient and familiar, are impregnable. Fight for them now or lose them, perhaps for ever.<\/p>\n