Rent-a-Fascist

It seems to me that there's only trouble at these hotels housing asylum seekers when these bands of neo Nazis - sorry 'concerned citizens' - turn up pretending to be locals, whip up hatred and start riots.  Bearing in mind that there are far fewer of these rent-a-fascists than there are asylum seekers, then surely it would be easier to round them up and deport them.  Just a thought.  Anyway, in their latest 'victory' in Epping, their pretext for turning up and causing chaos was that one of the asylum seekers housed in the hotel is alleged to have molested a local child.  Alleged.  Not convicted.  But these idiots can never wait for justice to take its course, so instead come to town with a lynch mob, declaring that if one is an alleged nonce, then they must all be.  Now, if we were to follow that logic universally, then the next time a local kid is molested by a white working class pedo living on a local housing estate, the entire estate should be cleared out by a mob waving flaming torches and every house there burned to the ground.  But hey, it's all about protecting the children, isn't ?  Except that these bozos also oppose the Online Safety Act, which ostensibly has the same aim.  I mean, if it isn't OK for British kiddies to get felt up by foreigners then it must also be wrong for them to be exposed to online pornography.  Yeah, I know, I'm effectively comparing apples and pears in order to make a false equivalence.  But that's exactly how the right works, so why shouldn't we start using the same tricks?

The real reason, of course, why these right wing extremists are so opposed to the Online Safety Act has nothing to do with it being a threat to 'free speech', as Nigel Farage has been bellowing about.  No, that's just misdirection.  Patently so, as I'm afraid that I don't see how having to verify your age when looking at pornography in any way restricts anyone's right to express their opinions.  No, what they are really afraid of is that it restricts their ability to look at porn with complete anonymity.  They are afraid that their data might be leaked and they'll find themselves exposed as pervs who look at the most depraved smut imaginable.  But they can't come right out and say that.  I mean, Nigel Farage, for instance, can hardly say that he opposes the Act because he wants to retain his right to anonymity whilst getting his daily dose of extreme Nazi-themed porn, now can he?  Admitting that you enjoy watching big buttocked girls - with a large swastika tattooed on each cheek - getting thrashed by a guy dressed as an SS trooped from the waist up, but sporting suspenders and leather chaps from the waist down, isn't a good look for anyone who has ambitions of becoming Britain's first fascist prime minister.  Obviously, I'm not saying that Farage is an aficionado of such stuff, or even of any other type of porn: this is just a hypothetical example and I have no proof that he does any of this stuff.  But, you know, he might, mightn't he?  And if he did, he wouldn't to risk it becoming public knowledge, would he?  Look, I too think that the Online Safety Act is a misguided and very poorly framed piece of legislation, but at least I'm honest as to why I oppose it - it's requirement for age verification, or rather the methods employed to meet this requirement, represent a gross invasion of my privacy, not to mention the potential risk to private data.  But hey, just think of the children, for God's sake.