New song: "Section 12 (Do You Support the Resistance?)"

This Week with David Rovics

Keir Starmer's Thought Police have been raiding the homes of journalists and activists in the past few days, most recently arresting longtime organizer, journalist, and social media influencer Sarah Wilkinson, who I have known, admired, and collaborated with for many years.

Sarah and others are being charged with violating Section 12 of the Terrorism Act of 2000. This is a very easy law to break, and until now, is one that has generally gone unenforced. If you are perceived to have said or posted something in praise of a group that is resisting an illegal occupation or a genocidal slaughter, and if the group you have said something positive about is on the UK's proscribed list, such as Hamas or Hezbollah, then you have broken this terrorism law and you are subject to a potential prison sentence of 14 years.

In addition to an early-morning raid on her home with 12 uniformed and plainclothes officers and having this potential sentence hanging over her head, they have taken all of Sarah's electronics, and forbidden her from posting anything online.

What they are obviously doing here is applying this law in an extremely selective and very political way, and it's a law that shouldn't be on the books in the first place, in any remotely democratic society. They have chosen people like Sarah to target, because, unlike the millions of other people they could be targeting for posting exactly the same sorts of things that she has posted, she has a direct following of hundreds of thousands of people on X, and many more people within her activist networks who benefit greatly from her involvement with campaigns such as the Gaza Flotilla.

If the MI5 thinks I have enough of a following for them to arrest me next time I land at Heathrow, someone will probably let you know.