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If you were given the choice to live in Communist China or modern Britain, which would you choose?
Twenty years ago, this question would have been a no-brainer.
After all, one is a communist nation, famed for its human rights abuses, mass surveillance, and social credit system. The other, meanwhile, is the prosperous Western democracy that gave us the Magna Carta, from which came the very idea of rights like free speech.
Yet, if asked that question today, one would have to seriously consider which of the two would be worse.
While China is openly communist politically, they are generally pragmatic toward the market economy (albeit with strict government controls), as their rapid rise to near economic parity with the United States displays.
Britain, meanwhile, is officially a "free market." Yet, both the cultural zeitgeist and government policy are heavily Marxist, with the government increasingly involved in picking market winners and losers. What makes things worse in Britain is that the government routinely chooses things that leave their population worse for the choice.
While China seems to at least pretend to have the best interests of the "Middle Kingdom" at heart, in the UK the thin veneer of pretense has mostly worn through.
The recent protests in the UK had the side effect of putting this on full display.
The killing of three young girls and the critical injury of 10 other children and caregivers in Southport, England, sparked mass protests and riots from people concerned over ever-increasing rates of foreign migration and the ever-increasing rates of sexual violence and violent crime that accompanied them.
While increased migration has long been lauded as a necessity for economic growth in Western nations (a claim that has now been repeatedly debunked), it has brought increasing unrest. Crimes such as rape, child abuse, acid attacks, gang violence, knife crimes and, of course, terror attacks have increased dramatically.
These effects are a significant cause of concern for the British people, who have found themselves and their children as targets for often fetishistic and predatory behavior from new arrivals, many of whom originate from nations that lead the world in sexual violence against women and children.
Many concerned Britons have lived in the same areas, as have their families, for over a thousand years, and are finding their ancestral homes resembling the dangers of some of the worst areas of the third world (such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and Sudan) rather than the quaint countryside villages they once were.
Yet British elites continue to import these men in ever-increasing numbers.
Twenty years ago, the governments of the West would have vigorously decried Chinese-style dystopian surveillance. Tracking every move of a nation's people, and using that surveillance network to underpin a horrific social credit system wherein disagreement with the party line can mean complete cancellation from society, would have been considered a sickening display of Orwellian tyranny.
Yet in Britain today, that same network of surveillance and a growing social credit system acts in much the same way. The only real difference is the one in China is used to find the knife wielder, while in Britain it is used to silence the knife wielder's victim.
Konstantin Kisin, a well-known British pundit (himself an immigrant to the UK) made the astonishing announcement in 2022 – that between supposedly authoritarian Russia and the allegedly democratic UK, it is the UK that far outstrips Russia in the prosecution and imprisonment for wrong-think and posts on social media that go against the party line.
While Russia imprisoned 400 people (in 2022 numbers) over social media posts and 107 have been jailed in China since 2020 for the same crime, Britain's prosecution of thought-crimes dwarfs both combined with 3,300 people imprisoned.
The recent riots and protests have only made matters worse, with police and prosecutors stating they will begin to prosecute people for simply sharing or "retweeting" posts that the state deems "hateful" or "misinformation" or, in other words, "wrongthink"!
It is a bizarre moment when one can look at China's strict controls on what information their people can see and even more strict controls on what they can say or think, and see comparable policies enforced in Britain, and being pushed in every nation that was once considered a part of the "free world."
Our governments act like wardens and are quickly shaping our nations into giant prisons – where good behavior is rewarded with basic human rights (such as access to the public square, the ability to work, drive, have a bank account, etc.) and undesirable behavior is punished more harshly than actual violent crime.
A half-century of knowledge on human behavior and behavioral modification is being used to effectively break the spirit of their people. Their behavior in recent years, from their handling of covid to their handling of political opposition (attempting to cancel, and even outlaw, political parties and opinions they don't like), makes any honest onlooker wonder how exactly their idea of "democracy," the importance of which they so vehemently express, differs from a common dictatorship.
Yet, this is exactly what we are witnessing in the UK today: unfair punishments, the rewarding of evil (where rapists and machete murderers are released, but patriots protesting the murder of children are targeted with the full force of the law), and the two-tiered application of law are so severe that it would make Mao Zedong blush.
While the crushing of protestors at Tiananmen Square targeted those protesting for political freedoms that would have threatened the stability of the communist government, the protestors targeted in the UK are simply begging their government to end policies that are literally killing their children.
This begs the question, then, in which nation is it worse to be a citizen? China's authoritarianism is doubtless. But at least the citizen can expect the murderer and rapist to get a similar punishment to the political dissident.
However, in Britain, one cannot hold such expectations. The punishment for genuine evil depends heavily on whether the police and prosecutors will fear being called racist if they stop it. A child rapist may walk free if he can adequately express how the culture of his home nation finds no wrong in his behavior. A murderer with a machete can be released simply because there is no space in the prison for him, while space is freed up to house those who express displeasure over the government allowing the murderer in the country to begin with.
Race, culture and political preference then rule the law, rather than the opposite. And the full force of the state is brought to bear against any who find that concerning.
There is no question that America is heading in this same direction. If America were to make the deadly mistake of electing those representatives who already showed how little they care about the will of the people, even as they repeat propaganda about "democracy," it would mean a dramatic step in this direction.
Tim Walz, the Democrat candidate for Vice President, explicitly expressed his belief that the government should limit the First Amendment to ensure free speech is revoked in cases of "hate speech" and "misinformation." Of course, we know those vague buzzwords can and will be redefined to mean whatever the powers that be wish them to be.
Both the Democrat presidential and vice presidential candidates have expressed on multiple occasions just how little they care about free speech, free movement, the rights in the US Constitution, or the people of the nation they wish to lead.
Both have made clear that they intend to bring the United States – that last bastion of liberty – ever closer to the technocratic dystopian state of the UK.
And to this attempt, we must take to heart the words of Orwell when referring to the horrific future he foresaw – "don't let it happen!"
Editor's note: To learn how Christians and other conservatives can win back America, check out our book selection by clicking here.
Arthur is a former editor and consultant. Born in India to missionary parents, he spent his early career working in development for NGOs in Asia, Central America, and Africa.
Arthur has an educational background in history and psychology, with certifications from the University of Oxford and Leiden in the economics, politics, and ethics of mass migration and comparative theories in terrorism and counterterrorism. He is currently launching CivWest, a company focused on building capital to fund restorative projects and create resilient systems across the Western world.
Kamala Harris represents the most extreme left wing of a Democrat party already captured by anti-Christian, Marxist elements. Throughout the run-up to the election, Souls and Liberty will be sounding the alarm against her candidacy and arming you with the information you need to take action in the public square to stop the takeover of our republic, and even Western Civilization.
But this is very old news in the US, being jailed for thinking thoughts against atheists. I was jailed for reading the Bible aloud and that was over 30 years ago. My twin brother was locked up in a mental institution for the past 24 years for claims which the courts are prevented from disclosing to me since they keep the trials secret (sequestered is the term they use for secret court proceedings) and accusations against me which were false after we were both abused while intending to get asylum in Switzerland from a drug pushing, electroshocking, and extortion practicing psychiatrist in the U.S. The system rewards the abusers, maybe always has, maybe always will, at least till the …