Well, it's been another wild ride these last 24 hours on the Wild West Web, with my having attracted the attentions of a none-too-bright transgender shill (I came to the conclusion this latest one is transgender, since the fake name, "Anna Smith", sounds like the kind of name a man would come up with if he was told to pose as a woman on the internet - no offence and everything, men (I'm sure the men who read this blog would be far more creative), but doesn't it?).

Anyway, there was an issue raised by Andrew (as I shall now be calling said shill) that I briefly touched on in my piece yesterday, that I think deserves some further exploration, and that is the issue of protests.

As I (and Andrew) alluded to yesterday, I got in serious hot water about 18 months ago when I advised caution with attending some protests, as the risk of arrest was very significant, and - as I explained at the time and have reiterated several times since - being arrested is not trivial. If you're going to take that risk, you need to know exactly what you're getting yourself into and how to handle yourself with the police, and most people don't. If you've never been arrested (most people haven't), please do speak to someone who has, especially if their arrest occurred at a protest, and do your general due diligence around the subject, before attending any situation where arrest is a realistic risk.

When I cautioned about this last year, a large number of people reacted with absolute apoplectic fury, calling me all sorts, publicly threatening me, sending teams of their flying monkeys to attack me, and so on. One particularly deranged lunatic threatened to "sue me for defamation", despite the fact I had never once mentioned, or even alluded to, this individual by name (I actually didn't know, when I wrote my apparently incendiary piece, that she was involved in the protest in question). I wonder if she will now threaten to sue me again for calling her a deranged lunatic? (She is though.)

Sad thing was, friends of mine were actually really scared and worried for me that she would do this, and believed the threat was plausible. I had to gently reassure them that, no, spitting cobras on the internet cannot "sue for defamation" people they don't like for expressing an opinion that isn't theirs, and they know full well that they can't. This was just a cynical and baseless threat to shut me down, and to similarly scare into silence others who might have similar concerns, so please let me reassure you once again - I and you can express whatever controversial and unpopular opinions we like and people who don't agree cannot sue us. Have a look at some of the things I've said on this blog (openly accusing the government of genocide etc.). I haven't been sued or even ever had a legitimate threat of it (e.g., a lawyers' letter, rather than an internet tantrum).

All this begs the question, of course, of why my perfectly reasonable and legitimate concerns attracted such a vicious response? It's precisely because they WERE reasonable and legitimate, and were therefore exposing something underhand going on, that I got the response I got. I have no doubt that, in the subsequent months when restrictions likely return and protests begin to be coordinated again, the same thing will happen once more, so I wanted to address the issue now, in a period of relative calm, where protests are not happening, and so feelings are not running so high and so hopefully we can all be a bit more objective and calm and not threaten litigation, etc (what do you say, Andrew?).

I first want to talk about what protests actually are. I know there's been a feeling amongst many - and I agree - that protests are a great way to meet like-minded people, to socialise, and indeed to "raise one's vibration".

The thing is, though, so are non-protest social gatherings, meet-ups, and parties. So it's critical to understand that protests are not social gatherings, meet-ups or parties, they are very distinct and highly politicised events defined in a completely different way - and so people who are going to engage in them need to understand what they actually are.

Protesting the Covid restrictions, vaccine mandates, and so on, as part of a large group and in a public, high-profile, and organised way, is an intensely politicised and highly charged, potentially volatile situation. Just as ALL significant political protests throughout history have been. Please study the history of protests, and see how often violence, thuggery, arrests and worse happen. This is to be expected, as a political protest is people very publicly putting two fingers up to the state and so the state will obviously fight back, often literally and physically.

You may claim "but I am a peaceful protester". Sure, but that doesn't mean the agent provocateurs the establishment ALWAYS sends in in droves, or the ultra-violent military-trained thugs posing as police are. There's always a risk that large anti-establishment protests will get violent, even if the vast majority who attend are peaceful, and we saw that again and again with the Covid protests. Some utterly shocking and harrowing examples of serious police brutality at one particular London protest, and a friend of mine who attended - despite having been a serving Met police officer herself - came away disturbed and shaken to her core.

This is the risk you are taking if you attend a protest, and I am certainly not saying you shouldn't take that risk. I have attended large, potentially dangerous protests in the past, and may do so again in the future. But you need to know the risk you are taking and not be manipulated into action you don't fully understand by loud and over-represented voices who may have other agendas for wanting to push known state dissidents into the hands of the police.

The risks I have outlined above are risks you take at a protest even if the protest is completely legal and has passed through all the proper protocols to be arranged.

But what if it hasn't?

There were several protests in and around 2021 that were not fully legal, for several reasons. At one point, protests were only legal if the organisers agreed to adhere to - and ensure the attendees adhered to - "Covid control" measures, such as social distancing.

In order for a protest to be legally arranged, the organisers had to submit a risk assessment to the council, explaining how they would adhere to these restrictions, and the council had to agree their controls were reasonable and that it was realistic to believe the organisers and attendees would adhere to them.

In what parallel universe is it remotely plausible that the council believed a protest arranged TO OPPOSE THE COVID RESTRICTIONS, would consist of people that would nevertheless adhere to them? Ridiculous. Not plausible at all. And the people who attended this protest did not have it clearly communicated to them that this was the requirement for the protest to remain within the law.

Now, again, I'm not saying people should not have attended that protest - the "laws" around it were utterly absurd, and I'm all for people breaking absurd laws, if - and it's a BIG if - they are fully aware they are doing that, and what the possible implications are. I am a very vigorous proponent of INFORMED consent (it's the name of my new resource) - but people were not being given this, not at that protest, nor at later ones that were outright completely illegal because, for a time, it was illegal in the UK to have a public gathering of more than two people.

Let's just be abundantly clear for all my dear detractors (hi again Andrew) that I am NOT saying people should have adhered to this law - I certainly didn't. I am saying people needed to know it was the law, so they understood they were breaking it and what the potential consequences could be.

If you attend a legal protest, you are still at significant risk of violence and arrest. But if you attend an illegal one, then of course that risk is exponentially higher. I was absolutely flabbergasted at the amount of bewitching disinformation surrounding these obvious facts whilst shady factions tried to herd known state dissidents into very public and high-profile illegal action - thereby seamlessly taking them from the civil system, into the criminal system, and I don't think it requires a great leap of logic to understand why it would be in the interests of the establishment to get people who oppose it criminalised. Yet when I attempted to explain this to people, I got labelled - amongst other things - "thick".

I actually had a lengthy and drawn out argument on Facebook with a woman who repeatedly insisted that if you declare to police at a protest that "I stand under common law", they cannot arrest you, and I, she informed me, was simply too lacking in intelligence to understand this.

Several days later, my household watched live footage of the protest in question where a group of men chanted at the police "we stand under common law". Needless to say, the police completely ignored them, charged into the crowd, and started waving batons around. There was violence and over 150 arrests.

And people were actually shocked by this. They actually believed the fatuous nonsense of self-proclaimed "common law experts" that you can chant some magic words and thug police renowned for violence, corruption, and with notoriously low IQs, will politely tip their hat and leave you alone.

For heaven's sake. Riot police in a protest situation are renowned for using brute force and making illegitimate, often rough, arrests, and there are no magic words to stop them doing this. If they decide they want to arrest you. they will, and while you can a raise a complaint afterwards (which is time-consuming and potentially expensive), there's no guarantee your complaint will be upheld - and even if it is, that doesn't mitigate the experience in the first place. There are no fail-safes to reliably stop state thugs doing what state thugs are trained and paid to do in a highly charged and dangerous protest situation (yes, protests are dangerous, by their very nature. That's the point).

So if that risk is unacceptable to you, the only way of entirely mitigating it is to not attend the protest. Knowing as I did that young mothers with small children were thinking of attending this protest, I advised against it. I said getting into those situations - violence and arrests - is not something vulnerable people with responsibilities should take lightly. Getting into a scuffle with the police and being banged up for the night in the cells is not the same threat to a fit young man, that it is, for example, to a breastfeeding mother, or an elderly pensioner, or any other more vulnerable person. And if you think riot police will "be gentle" with you because you're a woman or you're old - think again. The footage of the London protests made that starkly apparent.

Again, I am NOT saying this is a risk no woman or older person should take. Certainly they should be free to take that risk if (once again for those skulking at the back - is that you, Andrew?) they fully and comprehensively understand the risk they are taking.

If you attend a large anti-establishment protest, violence and assault is a risk, and so is arrest. To repeat, arrest is a risk even when the protest is legal (study the history of protests for many and various examples of this) but it's obviously much more of a risk when it's not. Arrest, as part of the justice system, is designed to act as a deterrent, to stop you doing the thing you were arrested for again. So it is not pleasant. By design. If you've never been arrested, please do some research into exactly what happens when you are, because I think you may be surprised. The first thing to know is that (contrary to more "gurus" advice), you do not need to cooperate with the police in any way for them to arrest you. They don't need your consent. They don't need your name. And once they have you, they can and will take a DNA sample from you by force, which will then remain on police file, even if you are not charged or subsequently acquitted.

Being myself a known state dissident, I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to be incarcerated by agents of the state, in state facilities, and have them forcibly penetrate my bodily cavities to extract and retain my DNA. This is a life experience I am vigorously keen to avoid for what I think are fairly obvious reasons.

So, can you see why the establishment and any infiltrators it might have sent into "the truth movement" would be highly incentivised to lure you into attending high-profile illegal events? You are an enemy of the state. The state doesn't want you out there doing valuable activism, it wants you silenced and potentially locked up, but it can't get you while you're still in the civil system, so it has to find a way to shunt you over to the criminal system - and that's why you're encouraged to attend large and well-publicised illegal protests, without knowing they are illegal (since as the law states, ignorance of the law is no defence for breaking it).

Obviously, I myself attended illegal events all the time in lockdown. Parties, gatherings, meet-ups - it was the most social time of my life. But I did not announce to the local authorities that I was doing this, nor make sure the police were fully informed in advance, which is precisely what was happening at the illegal protests.

I am all for disobeying unjust laws - but in a strategic, effective way that has the least negative consequences for the people disobeying them. I am also all for taking risks: but these must be carefully calculated risks (my publishing these articles under my real full name - take note, Andrew - is a definite risk, but I've considered all possible consequences and decided it is a risk worth taking). The point is that for any subversive action, we must be very clear on exactly what risk we are taking. We must go into situations with our eyes wide open and understand all the potential consequences. That is precisely the nature of informed consent, and anyone who opposes informed consent - whether it's for a vaccine or a protest - is not to be trusted.

What I see happening again and again with glossy establishment scams trying to trick people into action not in their interests, is that they always use very bold and urgent language, and this is a scammers' trick. They expertly manipulate your emotions with carefully selected and powerful language, to goad you into doing something quickly and without thinking it through.

That is why I attracted all the voluminous viciousness I did when I warned about the risks of the protests - as I was simply saying to people, stop and think. Don't be whipped up into an emotive frenzy ("we're sticking it to the man! Yeah! Power to the people!") without engaging in critical thought. This advice will always enrage scammers to the point of apoplexy, because stepping back, detaching from intense emotions, and actually thinking things through, is the death knell to all scams ("Don't Pay UK" uses these same tricks - charged emotive language and a sense of urgency, to get people to commit without thinking).

Anybody who puts any kind of pressure on you to do get involved with something very quickly, and before you've had the time to properly think about it and assess all the evidence, is potentially not to be trusted. And certainly, anyone who attacks others for engaging in critical thought and coming to their own view, is definitely not.

So as I'm sure restrictions and protests are due to make a return soon, if you are thinking of attending one (and as I say, I may do myself), please take the time to fully study and absorb what a protest really is, and the risks you are taking. Many people choose to be arrested as part of making a political stand, and that is absolutely fine - so long as you understand what you are getting yourself into. Talk to people who have been arrested (especially at protests), talk to people with police and judicial experience, and really understand what the implications are.

It's also worth addressing the perennial - and reasonable - challenge people often put to protestors: what does protesting actually achieve? What has it ever achieved? How many marched against Iraq etc... I can answer these questions myself as I have attended protests and found them valuable: they achieve a sense of camaraderie and forge important connections and bring attention to a cause. However, I'm under no illusions that they make any difference to the powers that be and their chosen courses of action. A protest is the people saying to the government "stop doing what you're doing", and the government just says "no" - and then the protestors have no further response (except subsequent protests), because a protest is really more symbolic than actually a vehicle of active change. It's making a public stand and making it clear you oppose something - and that's good and commendable - but it isn't something that ever actually galvanises real-world change (as, for instance, striking does).

Indeed, a protest could be seen as serving the state far more than those who oppose it, as it organises thousands of state dissidents into the same place at the same time (which the authorities and police know all about in advance), where cameras can gain facial recognition of them all, and state agents can go around arresting with impunity, therefore beginning to build a DNA profile of the resistance. We know from the Covid swabs that the establishment is VERY keen to build up a DNA profile of the populace, and as they couldn't get our DNA with the Covid swabs (which most of us refused), they may be strategically staging protests, so they can arrest people and get their DNA that way instead. Yes, the "controlled opposition" card is overplayed, but that doesn't mean it's not real - it is and all significant anti-establishment movements are always infiltrated by said establishment, so we must always be vigilant and discerning in who and what we trust.

Now, I understand all the above risks and still may choose to attend certain protests (if I'm completely confident they are being organised by legitimate people who are fully transparent and accountable). And I hope other people will be similarly discerning with their activism. I am not trying to "scare anyone off" going to protests, merely giving you the important information that you should absolutely have before making that decision (because that is what informed consent is), and that shady people and dubious organisations are very, very keen for you not to have,

Anyway, I'm counting on Andrew to disseminate my piece far and wide, because (s)he accused me yesterday of "protesting too much", but given I exercise critical thought and discernment with the protests I attend, I am sure Andrew will now assert I do not protest enough...