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Comment by nashashmi | Hacker News Reader

More and more we see the relationship with authoritarianism (police) and tyranny (those in power) out in the open. We see this with the protests in Germany for Gaza. We see this in Britain with freedom of speech taken away from Palestine supporters. And we see this shamelessly occurring from the Trump world.

I used to balk at those who were too worried at growing government power, but this is a wake up call. Protections have to be in place for the vast majority of people, even if it does allow a few criminals to get away.

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Germany has had far right problems with its police and military for a while, unfortunately

- https://www.dw.com/en/german-armed-forces-bundeswehr-elite-u...

- https://www.dw.com/en/germany-far-right-extremism-bundeswehr...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_German_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat... (look at the list of members)

I'm a little bit less cynical about it; most police still live with the assumption that all of our allies are trustworthy. If the US says there is a credible threat, they rather exercise caution, and remove the threat.

It's just that the US cannot be trusted anymore, and this will probably be the moment that Belgian police will stop taking US intel as fact.

> Protections have to be in place for the vast majority of people...

And how do those protections work when the current administration doesn't even respect the law, and no one will enforce it against them?

In a 6-3 Supreme Court decision..

The power is already curtailed if there's no one to enforce court rulings. An appropriate court says X, the administration just ignores it. How do you get enforcement when law enforcement at every level is willing to answer only to the Executive in Chief?

I think it's far worse - the military en masse broke their promise to uphold the constitution and instead supported Trump and Hegseth, including committing war crimes and deploying into USA cities. Not to mention going to war (twice) without authority.

If USA becomes a constitutional democracy again will you expel all those who failed to uphold the constitution? Essentially the whole military except those who quit.

Surely you can't move forward without removing honours and pensions, and imprisoning, all those in the chain of command who ordered firing on civilian sailors/shipwrecked combatants (take your pick which), for a single example.

How can you inoculate against these things happening again?

We see this in Britain with freedom of speech taken away from Palestine supporters.

Palestine supporters or "Palestine supporters"? Your freedom of speech ends when you sabotage military bases.

Quite a leap to bring Gaza and Palestine into a discussion about the US ambassor in Belgium.

Only if you’re not following along.

The link is police abusing their allowed powers to silence free speech and protest.

> The link is police abusing their allowed powers to silence free speech and protest.

If you'd actually read the post you'd know that its about the the US ambassador being an asshole and the Belgian police doing their job (quickly removing a supposed 'active threat' from an event - because that's the only information they had - they later realized their mistake and that the 'active threat' was just a journalist asking inconvenient questions - but at that point the damage was done and the journalist wasn't let back into the event.

> because that's the information they had

That has always been and will always be the excuse for these kind of rights violations by the police. "Oh it's just what we were told, sorry".

And yes, it's worth bringing up e.g. Palestine or climate activists being beaten, arrested etc. in this context, because it's where the limits and tolerances for this kind of behavior are being tested.

Police, at least in Germany, always justify their transgressions with arguments like: "well we had to beat up these demonstrators because they were engaging in criminal behavior", the "criminal behavior" being "chanting a slogan they don't like" or "carrying an umbrella" (I kid you not).

TLDR: If we continue to allow law enforcement to justify their actions with "well that's just what I was told", we are in for a very bad time, because, it turns out, anything can be justified this way.

> they later realised their mistake

Here’s the very problem. The police acting immediately to suppress a supposed threat (even “active” ones, whatever that means) which allows them to silence protest or even inconvenient questions to a public servant…

… and we’re splitting hairs here, but it also allows the police to be manipulated by said public servants to get the protest silenced on their behalf.

The police in this case should have quickly realised the individuals were journalists, posed no real threat (no weapons, explosives, chemicals on their persons) and let them go about their business.

I agree that the police could probably have acted more 'flexible' in the first few seconds before removing the journalist from the event. The other somewhat weird fact is that they showed up in 'cilivian' outfits instead of in uniform.

Yet still the *main* problem is the ambassador lying about that person being an active threat.

E.g. what if that information would have been correct? All hell would break lose if the police wouldn't take such a call serious and the supposed 'threat' would be real and people killed, from that perspective they seemed to have reacted quite civilized and calm.

If the events happened as reported, the ambassador should at the very least be summoned and grilled by the Belgian government.

If Authority being manipulated by tyrants is the theme here, then the reference to the protests and Belgium is apt.

It logically supports the claim "More and more we see the relationship with authoritarianism and tyranny out in the open."

It's a shame someone is so sensitive to a subject that it can't even be used as additional support of another argument.

Well most of the discussions could very easily end up making parallels to nazis since we see similar situations all around us over and over, hence Godwin's law. its generally considered a poor performance though and better arguments are expected.

Palestine is so divisive it should have its own 'law' - both sides are abhorable, both sides are shielded by fanatics who don't want to hear any criticism of their side, despite there being plenty of official evidence with photos, videos, wiki articles and so on.

No it could not end up making parallels to nazis. Nazis were a century before. That incident is now moot. We are dealing with a new fascism in the 21st century. And we are seeing this fascism both in Belgium with the Trump celebrations, in Europe with their crackdown on protests, and in the US with ICE activities.

And even if "both sides" are abhorable, only one side is in power of influence. And this is how they behave with that power.

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