Crackdown on ‘offensive’ protests is progressivism and state power working in perfect union

With the queen now lying in state, the queue to see her stretching for six kilometres, and the funeral designated a public holiday, the British and Commonwealth monarchy has reasserted some of the occult powers that should attach to it — if you’re going to have a monarchy at all.

King Charles III — wow, I almost typed “Prince” — has done his bit to assert the royal prerogative by getting tetchy about pens not working and servants not putting papers in place. Was this a sign of how ham-fisted Charles might be at the king thing? Or a reassertion of older ways of being royal?

Has the royal family and the British establishment taken the opportunity to start a bit of a crackdown on the public and the media treating the whole thing as a bit of a joke? Many seemed disturbed and surprised when a young man was arrested for yelling (quite possibly truthful) abuse at Prince Andrew as he moved jowlingly down the Edinburgh Royal Mile. I can understand that. If you’re going to have an actual state funeral, you can’t really have people talking trash.

But the UK police then went on to arrest people simply holding up signs saying “Not my king”, and then hanging around people holding up blank sheets and pens on the chance that they might write something “offensive”. As was pointed out, this was identical to the behaviour of Russian police around Ukraine War protests. And in Australia that quasi-statutory police authority, the NRL, penalised Caitlin Moran for tweeting critical remarks about the monarchy.

Lord knows why anyone was surprised at the crackdown. It’s been decades since the Commonwealth has had a funeral this significant. The living body of the sovereign is the real form of the nation; it is only through its grace that we exist, as “subjects” not citizens. The living sovereign’s grace brings us into being, and the body of a dead one is the anchor of what we have been.

I’m not saying that’s a good thing, or that many of us agree with it. I’m saying, when you’ve got a monarchy, that’s simply how it is.

So one side of the crackdown is simply an expression of the state power that we know to always have been there — and also to be put into increasing use. Such crackdowns are occurring at the same time as governments begin to expand their authoritarian powers — in Australia, to enforce the lèse-majesté of extraction companies. State government laws making basic protest punishable with two-year prison sentences in forest areas (Victoria, Tasmania, NSW) or mining areas (Queensland) are just the start of a long war. Labor governments will lead it, using the excuse of jobs and union demand, to finally and fully abandon the civil liberties emphasis they have held since the 1960s, and to complete their passage to being authoritarian corporatist parties, constructing the defence of capital as the first line of defence of workers.

But these old-fashioned exercises of state power and the preservation of its unitary authority are buttressed and reinforced by the discourse coming from the other side, which is that of “offence” and “safety”. Had the queen died in, say, 1993, I suspect the police, with fewer cameras on them, would have administered a beating to anyone shouting smack during the actual procession — but would have left sign-holding protesters alone. Not out of any goodness of their heart, but simply because there was still a discourse of free speech in free public space that was dominant. What has made it possible for the police to, in a smooth, calm and therapeutic manner, round up any and all protests has been the notion of “offensiveness”, and that notion is all progressives’ own work.

Put simply, if “offensiveness” can be used to police public speech and public space, then what cause could be more worthy of such policing than an event that is deeply meaningful to many millions of people? If we are policed when we ask questions as to whether adults and adolescents who say they’re in the wrong body really are so, then how much more likely is speech about the body of the sovereign to be policed? The same goes for the notion of “safety” as it became expanded from actual physical safety to the idea of people being protected from speech and images that they would find “traumatic”. What were the cops doing but making this endless, endless funeral a “safe space”?

The Moran case was a fine example of how progressive discourses have made this crackdown possible. The NRLW player tweeted some royal-critical comments and was suspended for one match, with the NRL using the standard excuse — that for the duration of players’ contracts it owns their arse, and controls anything they do or say.

Howls of protest ensued, including the charges of racism, sexism, etc. But when seven players for the Manly Sea Eagles refused to play in “pride” jumpers because they contradicted their Christian beliefs, they were met with howls of abuse, people wanting them sacked, and disgusting racist condescension suggesting that as young Islander men their beliefs were simply the product of colonialism and should be paid no heed. By the same people now defending Moran (as she should be defended). The very same people!

Do they finally not get it? What will it take for people to get this, that you defend the rights of Moran by defending the rights of the Manly seven? The defence of your opponent’s free speech is forward defence of your own. In the court of wider public opinion, what matters most in free speech defence is consistency. What use is it talking about the oppression of a speaker on your side when you’ve already prepared the way for it through a discourse of “offence” and “safety”.

Surely now, one thinks, some of the thought leaders at the centre of progressivism will have a bit of a think about this, retrace their steps a bit? At the moment, too many of them — columnists, opinionators, Greens — have become a pack of progressive Pavlov’s dogs, purely responsive to stimulus, unable to formulate any clear thoughts about the deep structure of public space and freedom.

This was in evidence here a few weeks ago when your correspondent noted the possibility that a chain bakery would be putting up panopticon-lite anti-sexual harassment signs after a thought-bubble PR move by the CEO.

Such behavioural modifications signs don’t work, may make things worse through a well-studied oppositional “backlash” effect, and their main effect is general discipline, accustoming people to the idea that public space is a place to be instructed, ordered and controlled by disembodied forces. The article gained a lot pushback — some of it pretty nasty — from millennials, not all of them brokens, but I expected that, since many now see corporations or the state as the only agency of social change.

More interesting was the objection from a number of people I’ve known to be activists, often of decades standing, people who’ve been willing to go up against the police in civil disobedience again and again. Did they really believe they would have the same willingness to do so if we had come of political age in an era when every wall is telling you what to do? Were they so convinced of their individualism that they believed themselves to be immune? Could they not see that such discipline kitsch was Singaporeanisation — the creation of a docile and obedient population through relentless messaging? Have they not noticed that left-wing protest is fading away, aside from a brave hardcore — the Tarkine protests should be as big as the Franklin protests, so why aren’t they? — and that the only people who can field a team week after week for direct state confrontation and civil disobedience are the anti-vax right.

Two weeks after that event, a piece of anti-war street art in Melbourne was painted over by the artist after widespread protest, including from the suddenly-everywhere Ukrainian ambassador, because it was “offensive”. No voices were raised to say that, although the piece may have been naïve and jejune, offensiveness should not be a criteria for whether it stays up or not.

Thus was one discourse rolled over into another. So, too, for the queen’s last ride. When the time comes for us to go to war for the Chinese island of Taiwan, there may well be patriotic posters in all the bakeries.

The medium is the message, until the message is absolutely lethal. For God’s sake, start making some connections between these two discourses — because as you can see, the state sure as hell has.