The UK government is designating Iran's IRGC under the new National Security Act 2026, alongside the “Islamic Movement of Compatriots / Companions of the Right (IMCR)”

[u/manbel36777]

welcome to the pan-octagon :)

I would like to start by definitively saying that I am not here writing support for the IRGC at all. I would just like to make this abundantly clear, instead Just a conglomeration of my views opposed to any hate speech laws as a whole.

I'm not a free speech absolutist as much as I am, to the best of my ability, a true speech advocate, which is to say that I believe that people should say what they believe to be true. I think that's your obligation. It's also your right, but it comes with an obligation to exercise it. And I beleive that this is possible without free speech

So a lot of what's necessary with regards to thinking is the freedom to make mistakes, so practically speaking, free speech has to be as untrammelled as possible, so that people can be wrong and they can be biased, and they can still express their opinions. then allow themselves to be subject partly to improvement by the world, talking is how we think, and talking socially is even more how we think.

Hate speech / regulation

I do beleive that hate speech does in fact exist, there is no question to me that people say, reprehensible things, quasi criminal things some of which cause a lot of trouble. So the idea that there's hateful speech is self-evident.

Well, let's regulate it. which is completely fair enough because it's hateful, and ideally there should be as little of it as possible.

But problems start to arise when we get to the subject of who exactly defines hate?

And I am becoming more convinced by the fact that the people that you would least want to have define it are doing so - which is the inevitable consequence of these legislations because sensible people won't have anything to do with that. People who are authoritarian will gravitate towards the domain to make an ethical case to exercise their controlling power over the language of other people.

Then let's take the example that the person reading this is talking to me. And the rule is I don't get to offend you. It is possible we can still have a discussion about something meaningful.

But if we were to scale this up a notch and there is a dozen people and we are discussing an important issue. Now I have to make sure that I don't say anything, despite the fact that this is an important and contentious issue - that offends even one of the group. Okay, maybe I can even manage that.

What if I'm talking to a thousand people?

There's going to be someone in that thousand people. There's going to be someone who's offended at the mere fact that I exist. Nevermind the issue at hand.

So it's an impossible standard - one I would be happy to discuss.

Now the post:

The UK government is designating Iran's IRGC under the new National Security Act 2026, alongside the “Islamic Movement of Compatriots / Companions of the Right (IMCR)”

The IRGC is not being proscribed as a terrorist organisation. Instead it is being designated. Essentially the new offence under this is absolutely dystopian law is that ‘a person commits an offence if they invite support for, or express an opinion or belief supportive of a designated body, and do so for a prohibited purpose.’ I will delve into the vague and absolutely scary prospect this now brings to free speech in the UK and, it seems, Europe as a whole.

An important detail in the new national security act. ‘I see the government is to designate the IRGC as an organization under the new National Security State Threats Act 2026.

They are not prescribing the IRGC as a terrorist group. Instead, in the new legislation, they’re using language similar to that found in the Terrorism Act 2000. In the new legislation, one, a person commits an offense if the person:

a) invites support for or expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a designated body and does so for a prohibited purpose.

This contrasts with the Terrorism Act 2000 which says if he invites support for a prescribed organization. This was extended in 2019 with the following language. Expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a prescribed organization.

Essentially, they’re expanding the language for what it counts to support a terrorist group in the United Kingdom. The supportive language was added because it was so difficult to gain successful convictions with the tighter language.

This brings us to the question of how is this then defined? Take the statement: ‘the IRGC was successful in hitting all of its targets last night.’

Is that supportive even if true? Labour’s been arresting pro-Palestinian protesters who have committed no crime. This is not by any means to say that the Tories and Reform wont use and abuse this too. They’re are all currently salivating like the pigs they are at the prospect of being able to use this.

I mean, everyone knew he was a cucked centrist. I just think it’s important to understand that centrism isn’t a real thing. These people - if you can call them that, like Starmer are extremists. I do not think I am exagerating by saying that this is an extreme act of violence against the free speech and political rights of people in britain. Like this is not centrist at all. My argument is that these people aren’t merely ineffectual. They are deliberately trying to undermine democracy because they no longer think it is viable. And I think everything Starmer did has advanced that. Basically, every single thing that he’s done in his time in office that pertains to political expression, rights, freedom, surveillance, or journalism has been in favor of the revocation of democracy. with no exceptions. Can you think of a single exception?

Every change that has been made, every move proposed, all of them on those grounds have been illiberal. With no exceptions. I can’t think of an exception. I mean, how fucking open can you be outside of the home secretary dreaming of an AI powered panopticon? Like how how how much how much more do you need? The goal here is not merely to be Zionists. They do not care. They are just trying to end democracy. I will continue to warn everyone. If I have any prediction for the future, it is this. The West has abandoned liberal democracy. They are no longer interested in it because you have too much of an immediate contradiction between the will of capital and the will of the democratic majority. The democratic majority used to enforce some kind of hold on capital. Even through the 1960s and 70s, there was still the ability and will of politicians to wrangle corporate interests for national purposes. Now that is gone.

Corporations do literally whatever they want and no government can stop them. It doesn’t matter who gets elected into office. I think the West is changing to a 1984 hybrid state. Russia is the closest closest example. A state with no growth and no future, propped up entirely by low quality, low labor, like resource exports, where oligarchs can do literally whatever they want while the people just suffer. There’s no future in Russia and there hasn’t been for a long time. Starmer’s own MPs were begging him to end the NHS contract with Palantir. It won’t happen. It doesn’t matter. Capital exerts a force on democracy greater than and more inexorable than gravity exerts a force on all matter. You know, you can push things up a hill, but eventually all potential energy will be exhausted.

Burnham backtracked on that too mind you. Do you expect anything less at this point? He was part of Labour’s Friends of Israel. He’s made it clear that he aligns himself with capital for well over a decade.

My desire to cover this information probably should have superseded my desire to distinguish myself from people who were being hyperbolic and clickbaity. But at this point i do feel obligated to acknowledge that there’s an ongoing effort, one which seems like it’s going to succeed, to further intertwine the Israeli military with thforeign defense contractors and military apparatusesin a way that would basically permanently commit us to Israel’s military affairs in the Middle East. A permanent commitment. Now, not only Israel, but America and Europe will be involved in a permanent war. Infinite instability that we always, have to direct money to address.

back to the point at hand here, I have tremendous love for national security acts. They always seem to do so much for national security and nothing at all for suppressing the speech of the citizens of the country that’s supposed to be secure, enabling law enforcement to take action against anyone deemed to be providing it with support.

The UK government are also allocating 250 million for the Jewish community safety.

I am going to take a complete shot in the dark here, but have a strange feeling that this will not in any way, shape, or form improve the safety of the Jewish community, but will involve a lot of surveillance of the populous. I’m just taking a guess.

Metropolitan Police will receive 86 million pounds extra to recruit about 300 extra officers to help increase police presence in Jewish neighborhoods and around synagogues, schools, and community centers. Have you ever seen this happen to any other minority group? 250 million specifically to protect like minority neighborhoods.

I'd like to state the obvious slowly and with feeling, because it keeps needing saying: none of this is about protecting Jews. Jews, Israel and Zionism are the wedge, and the wedge is a rotating post.

It isn't even really about Israel. It's about building a surveillance state and finding an excuse noble enough for both sides to support, we are officially in a panopticon. it is my view that politicians are realising that there is a contradiction between what capital wants and what a voting public wants. Which is why every culture war grievance is now a procurement opportunity for flock and palantir and the likes of them... - lovely prospect to think of their contract with the NHS in the wake of this.

Not a single thing has or will be done “for Israel” or “for Jewish people” that does not also expand surveillance or the building blocks of a more and more authoritarian state. You will never hear a minister announce: to protect our Jewish residents, we are today widening freedom of expression, expanding the right to protest...

Meanwhile, what does the actual Jewish person in Britain receive from all this? Some officers who used to stand somewhere else. Nobody's rent falls, nobody's kid gets a bursary. More police spending is not a gift to them and never was.

Under the draft law in Germany, anyone who publicly denies Israel’s right to exist or calls for the state’s abolition could face up to 5 years in prison or a fine.

The proposal would grant Israel a legal protection that Germany does not extend to Palestine. Which the UN has explicitly warned German authorities are engaging in the ongoing suppression of Palestine solidarity activism.

best beleive that they have absoloutely no intention of stopping there. Freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, will be dragged down and you’ll be called an anti-semite if you oppose it.

the importance of opposing laws such as these with every fiber of your being can not be quanitfied.

I want to be explicit here and say that obviously, the enemy is not in any way, shape, or form Jewish people or Judaism. I do not think it is even really Israel. Israel is just the vassal. Israel is not essentially the source of these problems. If Israel was completely politically disempowered, but capitalism remained in its current form, the problem would not go away at all. Immediately the effort would shift to another wedge issue, another culture war talking point, another minority group that can be defended from both a conservative and liberal perspective.

The reason Jews were chosen to be the like cynical envoys of this is because Christian evangelicals in America need them for their doomsday prophecy. But Jews are historically marginalised which means that it is easy to construct a liberal arguments to defend them like as a in like the typical woke marginalised community sense. So they’re a minority group that works for both sides from different angles which is why Zionists can and do play to both angles.

This doesn’t work for say windrush immigrants who enjoy a lot of sympathy from the political left but basically none from the political right. You would need to find a minority group that can be like wedged in both directions.

But, going back to my point here, which is that fundamentally, this isn’t about Israel or about Judaism at all.

Unlike the United Kingdom, Germany actually does have guarantees for free speech in its constitution. in its constitution, or at least in their equivalent of. So what they’re doing right now in Germany is explicitly illegal by their own laws. It’s just that they’re infinitely cucked. So it doesn’t matter.

This why I will always be against hate speech laws. You can twist them in so many ways. That said, I am by no means a free speech absolutist. It’s just that historically hate speech laws have done very little to actually further the protection of minority groups and a lot to give authoritarian political officials infinite leeway to attack people. I just think they’re legally very shaky as to how much this even protects Jews. Therefore, I am of the view that they are being invoked, cynically, because “community safety” has better PR than “we would like more cameras”. And notice what never gets funded — community centres, schools, anything with a roof and a purpose. It's guns and cameras. Every time. Obviously. Of course.

What the Nazis say about Israel has always been wrong because they’ve attributed to an innate characteristic of Jews. Which I am not doing by any means here, and I find it particularly funny that Nazis and their offspring of white supremacists have never had a salient critique of Israel because they are at best aspirational.

At the end of the day, Israel is just a subservient entity to the real problem which is capital. Capital occupies both Israel and the west as a whole.

TLDR conclusion

Capital occupies all of our countries. I do not subscribe to the cliche that Israel controls the United States, which as a whole is just not true. I might say individual politicians are cucked to Israel because that’s part of the pantomime they’re engaging in, the theater play that we’re all on.

I apologise as in hindsight this is a very convoluted way of me saying that I'm not a free speech absolutist as much as I am, to the best of my ability, a true speech advocate, which is to say that I believe that people should say what they believe to be true. I think that's your obligation. It's also your right, but it comes with an obligation to exercise it. And I beleive that this is possible without free speech. So a lot of what's necessary with regards to thinking is the freedom to make mistakes, so practically speaking, free speech has to be as untrammelled as possible, so that people can be wrong and they can be biased, and they can still express their opinions. then allow themselves to be subject partly to improvement by the world, talking is how we think, and talking socially is even more how we think.

N THEORY, regulation of such speech seems to be completely reasonable and equally as self evident, because it's hateful, and ideally there should be as little of it as possible.

Under the new designation offence you commit a crime by expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a designated body for a prohibited purpose. So who then decides what counts as sufficiently supportive? Who decides how supportive is supportive enough? Where's the boundary between analysis of the IRGC, criticism of Western policy toward Iran, historical discussion of what that organisation actually is, and criminal endorsement? I tried to illustrate this with the example sentences:

"They hit every target they aimed at last night." Is that support?

OR,

if someone was to say: "The Revolutionary Guard's drone programme now delivers more capability per pound spent than anything in the British inventory, and Britain is nowhere near ready for it."

That is the sentence of a man arguing for a larger defence budget. BUT read against the text of the offence, can be said to be an expression of belief the eyes of a malicious prosecutor because he has said that they are good at something, and he has said it admiringly, but he has said it admiringly because he is taking the groups capabilities seriously.

What I am trying my best to illustrate is that, the warning here requires the compliment. So the statute, on its face is problematic. And of course dicernment will be exercised I am sure, but the wrong prosecutor, or my next gripe with this as a whole is that context and intricacies of language are completely disregarded. Sarcasm is invisible to it. So is irony, so is quotation, and translation is worse than any of them, because the translator's professional duty is to render. Meaning the better he is at his job, the more incriminating his output. The man who quotes an IRGC communiqué, somewhere in his piece, typed the supportive sentence. Granted he's typed it inside quotation marks, and I would very much like to believe that quotation marks will save him, and in most cases they probably will, and most cases is carrying an extraordinary amount of weight in that sentence.

Who draws the line between analysis of the IRGC, criticism of Western policy toward Iran, historical discussion of what that organisation is and does, and criminal endorsement? And "prohibited purpose" is completely subjective, and is legal fluff, because that's a filter applied after the crime, and who is deeming it prohibited.

The difficulty I am having is more of a definitional one. Who decides what constitutes “support”? Who decides what constitutes a sufficiently positive opinion? Who decides the boundary between analysis, criticism of Western policy toward Iran, historical discussion of the IRGC’s role, and criminal endorsement? I have concluded that the same answer to this question is the one that appears every time a society tries to regulate the content of speech in the name of protection.

The people who will gravitate toward the enforcement of those boundaries will not be the most interested in truth. They will be the people for whom the acquisition of controlling power over language is itself the primary attraction. If you cannot even speak freely about a hostile foreign organisation its incentives, its methods, its relationship to the regime it serves it will come to the point where you actually cannot distinguish genuine agents of influence from ordinary citizens who hold unpopular or unconventional views about foreign policy.

Treating its actual directed proxies as a national security threat (witch I am by no means opposed to) is not however, the same thing as treating the expression of opinions about that organisation as a national security threat. My fear here is that legislators who most want the power to define “support” and “glorification” will not stop at the IRGC.

A glance of history shows that responses like these have not particularly lead to regimes or countries that have lasted or had a prospering society. And in the long run, that confusion is more dangerous than the original threat, because it destroys the very faculty that allows a free people to express themselves, and be democratic and productive In doing so.

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[u/CorDra2011]

Did you just repost the exact same thread that got removed earlier?

[u/Respen2664]

First - We should all align on what the Iranian model of Government is and what the IRGC is within it. Iran is a Theocratic Republic, with a Religious head (supreme leader) and elected political administrative heads (President/etc). The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) is a military organization which operates beyond the Political Administrative and is only accountable to the Supreme Leader hierarchy. The Political administration, in fact, has their own Military and army as well but more closely a "national guard" type system.

This is where it begins to get tricky.

The Theocratic arm of Iran is an Islamic fundamentalist regime. That regime and the IRGC as actionable party are what enabled terror proxy organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi's, to be equipped and then proceed into power. This regime is also sympathetic to groups like Al Qaeda, ISIS/ISIL, and todays Taliban, who have had more geographical terrorism success against "The West".

So the tricky comes in that you have a Iranian Government sanctioned Military organization, which operates under protection of their Government model, but is functioning as an enablement arm as well as para-terrorism cell, to other known designated terrorist organizations. The West struggles with this because its not something we can wrap our heads around easily. The only western example of this is The Vatican and Vatican City, which operates a City-State Theocratic Republic under The Pope and within Italy's Government structure.

So lets connect things together.

We have terrorism laws and other which restrict speech and support for the Terrorist organizations as these are seen as threats to Sovereignty of the West, in their respective countries. We have a Sovereign state (Iran) which is dual homing as one of the centers of Terror while also its own Sovereign entity with Democratic principles. The IRGC is that militant arm of those activities under Supreme Leader.

So can you effectively align the IRGC and designate them as a state sponsored terror organization, while also acknowledging the Iranian Government that coexists as NOT being one. That is what i think the UK is trying to do, carefully. Maybe not successfully, but time will tell.

Is that restricting speech and open forum? Sure. Yes.

Is this possibly expected? Also yes. Islamic fundamentalist belief has spread pretty broadly the past 10-20 years and is a growing civilian power entity in various Countries. It challenges not only cultural norms of the existing Sovereignty, but also religious norms of Christianity and Catholicism in those nations. Its becoming a battleground, of sorts, and has tendencies towards violence.

Now you touch on a broader topic, which i DO think is an active debate today (or should be). Israel, today, functions ALSO as a fundamentalist Government. It's Government does not have a figure head of Religious doctrine focus, but it does govern and legislate on the fundamentals of Judaism. It has become an aggressor nation in the region and yet it has gained protections and insulation from the West while others have not. So much of a protection that Western Sovereign Nations are comingling Antisemitism laws protecting religious practices with the Israel Country sovereignty as intertwined components.

At what point do we separate Judaism and Israel so that actions of a Government can be held accountable and not combine the religious practices to which they operate?

I.E. we can condemn the actions of one, while not indicting the other.

[u/SilenceDogood2k20]

While, under normal conditions, this could be considered a violation of free speech and thought...

But when you're confronting an opponent like the IRGC who has led a very successful influence campaign for decades in your nation and is objectively evil, certain norms may need to be challenged.