Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael had some wise things to say about the riots that have plagued the country over the past two weeks.
He compared what happened here to the events of January 6 when MAGA types invaded the Capitol as some Republicans in Congress tried to steal the 2020 election from its rightful winner, Joe Biden.
Today the man who encouraged and stood to benefit from that political violence, if it had succeeded, is an even bet to be elected as President of the United States.
As the UK faces down our own wave of misinformation-fuelled rioting, albeit less directly targeted at our democratic institutions, we must learn the lesson from our American cousins – and refuse any attempt to normalise political violence.
He warned that we need to tackle the root causes of this violence:
In the short term, the problem may primarily be a matter of policing and the courts, but in the long term, we need political solutions to the issues thrown up by these riots. Violence and threats of violence cannot become normalised in the way that they increasingly have been in the United States.
He warned that we can’t assume that all our MPs would necessarily condemn the violence and challenged them to do so:
With prominent politicians in our own country – indeed even Conservative leadership candidates – endorsing Mr Trump, it should be clear that we cannot take the previous consensus against political violence and disinformation campaigns for granted.
He had a bleak warning if we fail to deal with this properly:
Whether it’s Tommy Robinson from his sun lounger in Cyprus or the increasingly deranged Elon Musk on X/Twitter, those who wish to push a narrative of inevitable civil conflict are not acting in good faith – and they are putting the stability of our democracy at risk.
The bedrock of liberal democracy is the belief that we resolve our differences in debate and at the ballot box, rather than through violence. Democracy, however, is only ever as strong as the people who uphold it. If we cannot face down political violence and those who would seek to normalise it, then America’s present may be our future before too long.
You can read the whole article here,
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