Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”
The empire on which the sun once never set, “this scepter’d isle” as Shakespeare dubbed it, “This other Eden, demi-paradise… This precious stone set in the silver sea… This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,” continues its tragic death spiral into dystopian decay.
In the latest case in point: the UK Telegraph reports that IT consultant Jon Richelieu-Booth was arrested by police in Britain after he posted a picture online of himself posing with a shotgun – while vacationing in the United States.
Richelieu-Booth, 50, said he was shocked by the “Orwellian” decision by West Yorkshire Police to prosecute him over his social media post on August 13th, which included a picture of himself on LinkedIn holding a shotgun while on a private homestead with friends during a holiday in Florida. The picture was attached to a lengthy, innocuous post about his day and work activities. There was nothing in the post that could be considered threatening.
And yet, as a West Yorkshire Police spokesman later said in a statement,
Police received a complaint of stalking involving serious alarm or distress, relating partly to social media posts, several of which included pictures of a male posing with a variety of firearms which the complainant took to be a threat.
How some internet rando could possibly have considered the picture to be a personal threat is unclear, but nevertheless, upon Richelieu-Booth’s return home, a police officer paid him a visit to warn him that concerns had been raised about the post.
“I was told to be careful what I say online and I need to understand how it makes people feel,” said a flabbergasted Richelieu-Booth, who offered to provide officers with proof that the picture of the firearm had been taken while he was in the U.S. The officers said that was not necessary – but then two officers returned to his home shortly after 10 p.m. on August 24 to arrest him on the allegation of possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence. The thought police seized his phone and computers, leaving him unable to work.
Richelieu-Booth was held overnight in a cell before being interviewed, then subsequently released on bail until late October. Police officers then visited his property three more times before he was re-arrested in October, allegedly for breaching his bail conditions – a charge that was later dropped.
The firearms and stalking allegations also were ultimately dropped, but Richelieu-Booth was then charged with a public order offence related to a different social media post “with intent to cause harassment/alarm or distress.” He told the media he is unclear as to which post he was being charged for, but in any case, that charge too was later dropped.
In the wake of this, Richelieu-Booth told reporters, “Anybody should be allowed to say anything they wish, as long as it’s not hateful.” That’s the European perspective; under America’s freer First Amendment, you can actually say something hateful as long as you’re not inciting violence. The UK also lacks a Second Amendment, of course, and one reason Richelieu-Booth was targeted for a harmless social media post may have been to punish him for daring to pose for a photo while enjoying America’s unique freedoms – in particular, the right to bear arms in self-defense against government tyranny.
Richelieu-Booth continued:
When did we go from a society where you can have a discussion with somebody and go, “You know what? I don’t like your opinion. I’m going to disagree with you, but I’m not going to tell you why, I’m going to call the police. When did we get so thin-skinned as a society?
This was a rhetorical question, but the answer is that we reached that point as a society when the totalitarian Left realized they could chill their political opponents’ freedom of speech by surveilling and weaponizing social media. This marked the birth of modern cancel culture.
Richelieu-Booth added, “I have not been able to sleep. I’ve lived in fear of a knock at my door for the last three months. I haven’t spoken to my neighbours for four months.” Without his phone and computers, the investigation “damaged my ability to run my business.”
“It was a massive overreach by the police,” he continued, in an understatement. “This is 1984 writ large.”
In response, “I will be filing a case against the police, I have been put through 13 weeks of hell and I will be seeking quite a lot of damages.”
He added: “I’ve always believed in truth and justice and stood up for the police and believed they are doing an important job of keeping order. Now I have no faith in the police.” Nor should he. Instead of solving or preventing actual robberies, murders, the Muslim grooming gang abuse of countless thousands of white British girls, and rampant migrant knife crime, the UK police have been shamefully reduced to making house calls to intimidate and/or imprison white Brits over anonymously reported tweets.
The West Yorkshire Police spokesman dismissed the force’s bullying of Jon Richelieu-Booth thusly: “Police investigated and charged a man with a public order offence but the case was then discontinued by the CPS.”
No apology, no admission of guilt, no sympathy extended to the victim of their abuse. That’s because the process is the punishment. That’s the totalitarian way, and it has become the new normal in the United Kingdom, where globalist elites strictly enforce a two-tier system of justice: one for the hordes of migrants whose openly antisemitic, anti-Western, Islamic supremacism is defended as “diversity” by such militant multiculturalists as Prime Minister Kier Starmer, and one for the white, working class, indigenous citizens whose righteous anger is smeared as hatred of the brown “other.” Those citizens can’t even enjoy a legal outing at the shooting range in a foreign country without being treated like a subversive threat in their own once-great nation – a country that is rapidly coming to resemble, as Jon Richelieu-Booth put it, “1984 writ large.”
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.
