You are allowed to say it. Unlike UK, you won’t be arrested. But you won’t be allowed in.
Besides, why would you want to come if you don’t like it here?
Besides, why would you want to come if you don’t like it here?
There's a difference between saying that you disagree with the way that a country is being run, and wanting to be violent or pursue criminal activity against that country or its people.
What you're missing is that the former should be legal in any democracy (and is in the UK), and the latter shouldn't be legal anywhere (and isn't in the UK).
You're claiming the UK lacks "freedom of speech" because it doesn't allow people to incite violence online, while saying the USA has free speech, despite it seemingly rejecting visitors for legal political speech.
I know which side of the pond I'd rather be on.
Voicing support for the group Palestine Action has been met with quite harsh responses in the UK, even though that group is arguably non-violent in that its criminal actions are directed towards property with the aim of slowing actual violence.
There are other similar developments in UK state policy.
That was my opinion. However one of them was alleged at a recent trial to have hit and injured a policewoman with a sledgehammer.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-obhMBSWi4c
BBC reporting:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1dzq41n4l9o
The accused person claims to have panicked due to how the police were interfering. If I understand the article correctly the cop was off work for three months due to the injury.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/12/the-filton-t...
Free speech means the country must tolerate what citizens say; it does not mean the country can't exercise its discretion over its borders to bar entry to foreigners who say things citizens don't like.
It's the basis of democracy, and a healthy democracy does not reject a visitor just because they criticized its government.
I understand your point, I just have a different theory of rights. Just because something is logically conistent doesn't mean I agree with the starting premises.
Personally, are any of your beliefs or statements things that could ban you for entry into the US? Because I have quite a few things that I have said on social media which would likely prevent my entry. It certainly doesn't make me feel like a "member of a body politic" when that body treats my beliefs as intrusive and foreign.
I view America as a hot cup of coffee, and the outside world as lukewarm day old coffee. I’m not worried about how hot or cold individual molecules inside America are—the average will work out. My concern is about dumping lukewarm coffee from the outside into the cup.
As a person looking for a cool drink of water, or who might be okay with drinking an iced coffee as the world burns, I am more concerned that the people I live around think that I should be prevented from drinking as I choose. And that's something that has happened here, often, historically, in other places, with many people.
So you can tell me that my concern isn't warranted; I get that all the time. It starts with "you're being hyperbolic" and ends with "well, we are glad they are gone because they weren't 'real people' anyhow."
The reality is that I'm not being hyperbolic in my concern.
Culture is not race. Children should be required to write that 100 times on a chalkboard. The third world is the way it is because of the culture of the people who built those societies. Nobody would be more thrilled than me if the only difference between Iowans and Bangladeshis was that we don’t need to spend money on sunscreen. (Except a little for my feet, which burn easily.) But that’s a fantasy world. It’s a fantasy that persists because most Americans have little personal contact with immigrants and can’t see how Bangladeshi mothers raise their children differently than Iowan mothers. Immigrants, meanwhile, actually have limited insight into the inner mechanics of Americans—they can see the results, the institutions, the rule of law, the order. But can’t see the inputs that lead to that. And obviously they have a vested interest in believing flattering falsehoods about what makes societies the way they are.
> I am more concerned that the people I live around think that I should be prevented from drinking as I choose.
You can drink as you choose. What I’m trying to avoid, because we’re all in this cup together, is drowning in the lukewarm coffee that my parents worked so hard to escape. We’re both trying to prevent the world from burning, we just disagree about where the fire is coming from.
Family, work, others in the group who enjoy it, the level of enjoyment might still be above the level of frustration, wanting to help, emergencies, etc. I could think of many reasons one would want to go to a country even though you disagree with ~50% the population + current leaders.
I've been in North Korea as an example, but I'd never claim to support the ideas and politics of their leader(s).
This lack of nuance is exactly one of the major flaws of American society, it's either team red or blue, in-group or out-group, black-and-white thinking is rather childish...
What makes you say that? Granted, I'm just an outside observer trying to see what's going on, but since the majority isn't protesting as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem like the majority doesn't care too much currently. Probably most people are in a dire enough situation that they cannot afford to protest, and are busy enough trying to figure out how to re-organize their living situation.
What is your mental model of the median American citizen?
Seems most independent analysts highlight the large swaths of people unable to get basic necessities, just one example of many: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/in-every-corner-of-the-co...
> The nation’s affordability crisis has not spared middle-class families, one-third of which struggle to afford basic necessities such as food, housing, and child care.
> Across the 160 U.S. metro areas studied, at least 20% of middle-class earners cannot afford to live in that place, after adjusting for local income ranges and price variations.
When you don't know how to afford food for the week or pay the next rent, you're hardly interested in going out on the street and protest. Been there and done that, and politics, no matter how aggressive or "against you" it can feel, is really the last thing on your mind in those situations.
This is not a good description of the median American. Your article is about the income required to afford a "comfortable life," which is a vague target. You can get a concrete idea of what this target seems to mean by looking at the calculator they use: https://www.epi.org/resources/budget/.
For a 2 adult/2 child household in the Baltimore metro area, the calculator estimates you need a household income of $126,000 to meet this "comfortable life" benchmark. For a single person with no kids, the standard is $54,000 a year. It does not make sense to say that someone making $50,000 a year or a family making $100,000 a year in Baltimore (which is a cheap area) is "struggling." My sister-in-law's friend, a 20-something who works as a nanny, probably makes less than that and she has time and money to go out, travel, etc.
The basic error in this analysis is that it bakes in a number of assumptions about standard of living. It assumes that people with significantly below-median incomes (it defines middle class as the middle 60%, so someone at the 25th percentile is counted as middle class) can live alone in a median house, etc., send their kids to corporate daycares, etc. But people with below-median incomes live in below-median houses, they have roommates, they rely on family for childcare, etc. My sister-in-law's friend has roommates, which frees up a lot of money to go do stuff.
If you applied this standard to Europe, you would probably conclude that people are quite desperate there, though of course they are not. In Spain and Italy, half of adults 25-34 live with their parents. They probably couldn't afford to live by themselves in a median-priced apartment. But does that mean they're struggling and would have no time to protest?
A lot of it's that. Our GDP is inflated by bullshit like over-paying for healthcare to the tune of double-digit percentages of total GDP, among other things, so we're flat-out not as rich as we look on paper, as a country. Our social safety net is really bad, government retirement systems and disability are sub-par by OECD standards, and we may have as few as zero paid vacation days or ability to refuse a shift (without being fired for it).
Anyone under the top 20% or so in the US is struggling, or at least stressed out by knowing that one bad month can mess them up for years and years and ruin any long-term plans they had.
We're also a lot more spread out than most countries. It's a lot more expensive and time-consuming to go protest in DC when you live in, say, Colorado, than it is for someone in Marseilles to go attend a protest in Paris. So they go to some local protest with 50 people instead, or maybe to one in Denver with a couple thousand, and you never hear about it. And the protests don't get rowdy (they might get teargassed anyway, of course) because see above about the "one bad month" thing—an arrest without charges of a working adult can easily end up making their family homeless, because they lose their job and can't get another one fast enough (and it's much, much worse if even very low-level charges are filed, even if the charges don't stick or are dropped—our legal system is great at eating thousands of dollars for what ends up being nothing, besides further schedule disruption bringing further risk to employment)
Because Trump hasn't gotten prices to pre-Biden levels like he promised, not because of what he's doing at the border. Trump has a 49% approval rating on immigration, 50% on "returning America to its values," and 51% on "fighting crime in America's cities." https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/HHP... (page 9).
51% of the country, including 32% of democrats, support "us[ing] the National Guard and active-duty military to police American cities and stop crime and disorder." (Page 23)
A "vast majority"... where? On bluesky? In Europe? Cuz it sure as hell ain't here
Personally I wouldn’t bother though. We were considering a trip to Florida next year but decided on France instead due to the widespread xenophobia.
Freedom to not let people in with other opinions, and freedom to force your opinion onto other countries. Really great.
Yeah, that's more or less what it means to have a border.
> and freedom to force your opinion onto other countries. Really great.
They are free to reject it, as we have theirs. You should be happy USAID was shut down.
Half things people criticize the current administration for enforcing wouldn't fly in China either (and more), but the real and final blackpill is we really should be copying them in more ways than one.
And we don't even have things like hidden police officers stalking influencers that conveniently drop by to check on them when they show something problematic on stream. (See: Hasan's recent trip to China, where officers surrounded him to check his phone within 30 seconds of him showing a Xi Jinping meme to his stream)
I like plenty of folks in, for instance, Texas. I still think the government there is illegitimate in foundation and criminal in action.
- Jordan Parlour for Facebook posts that were deemed ‘hateful.’
- Bernadette Spofforth for a post with a “mild inaccuracy”
- Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine, after raising concerns in a private parents’ WhatsApp group about the hiring process of their daughter’s school
- Lucy Connolly, for a post calling for mass deportation and to set fire to hotels housing immigrants
- Norbert Gyurcsik, for having “extreme right wing music”
Germany, you too.
- Jon Richelieu-Booth was investigated for stalking and making threats. The gun photo was not part of the police investigation.
- Jordan Parlour was charged for suggesting attacking hotels housing asylum seekers.
- Bernadette Spofforth was investigated for distributing misinformation with the intent to incite violence.
- Lucy Connolly for exactly what you say, inciting violence
- Norbert Gyurcsik had and was selling terrorist materials. (Just because you pair something illegal in a melody doesn't change its content...)
(With the exception of Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine, which was an unlawful arrest and they were had restitution for it.)
A quick search suggests that the photo with the gun wasn't the sole cause of the arrest, given there were stalking allegations "involving serious alarm or distress" from someone he had a conflict with, where the gun was one part of what caused the complainint to (claim to) feel threatened. Police may well have overreacted due to the gun post, but your framing leaves out rather relevant details.
> - Jordan Parlour for Facebook posts that were deemed ‘hateful.’
Appears to have incited violence by advocating an attack on a hotel, something he pleaded guilty to.
> - Bernadette Spofforth for a post with a “mild inaccuracy”
Was arrested for posting a fake name for an attacker, but released and faced no further action.
Calling potentially putting a target on the back of someone innocent by connecting them to a violent crime a "mild inaccuracy" is at best wildly misleading.
> Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine
These people did get a wrongful arrest payout, but the claim was most certainly not just raising concerns in a private parent's WhatsApp group. The claims including harassment, and causing a nuisance on the school premises. The claim was still wrong, and the payout reflects that the police should not have been so quick to believe the allegations before making an arrest. But your claim is still hyperbole.
> - Lucy Connolly, for a post calling for mass deportation and to set fire to hotels housing immigrants
At least in this one you admitted the arrest was over incitement to violence.
> - Norbert Gyurcsik, for having “extreme right wing music”
No, for buying and distributing albums whose lyrics breach terrorism legislation and intended to incite racial hatred.
I have plenty of issues with UK terror legislation, which I believe is being abused to shut down legitimate speech at times, but framing this the way you did is again wildly misleading and hyperbolic.
But even if none of your claims were wildly misleading, none of them support your initial claim:
> You are allowed to say it. Unlike UK, you won’t be arrested. But you won’t be allowed in.
... about a comment referring to criticism of the government.
None of the cases above were relevant to that. Most of them are relating to classes of speech that are not protected in the US either.
Good ol "if you don't love it, leave it" argument. Nothing beats that!
The idea you'll be arrested for mere criticism of the government in the UK is utter nonsense.
... that you know of.