The UK has an arch-conservative government at present. Australia just booted out its centre right government, and installed a centre left government. So even if you categorise Australia as "leftist" (which is correct at present), it is hardly authoritarian. I could take a piss on the Australian flag on the steps of Canberra and I'd guess I'd get arrested and given a good-behaviour acquittal by a magistrate for urinating in public, not for urinating on the flag. I'm not going to disappear in a jail. I've spent time in an authoritarian state - the PRC - and oddly I know the difference.
First off, I didn't think the resigning British prime minister Boris Johnson was particularly "conservative" or "right wing". If Boris Johnson were an American politician, I'd call him a RINO, Republican in name only, someone who acquiesces to the other side and doesn't defend conservatism or his conservative voters. Boris Johnson has for the most part been a disappointment. The only thing he did right (under pressure) was "Brexit", getting Britain out of the E.U. He was barely conservative, and under the Covid pandemic allowed a lot of authoritarian leftist intrusions on British citizens' freedoms. Like an American Democrat leader, he was completely hypocritical, and didn't even follow his own Covid restrictions. He was so right wing and powerfully authoritarian... he had to resign due to a lack of support.
You can hypothetically urinate in public or on an Australian flag (or British, or U.S. flag) because, like the Left in the U.S., the leftist ideology is targeting and demoralizing the actual patriots in the U.K. that flag is symbolic of, and its government and history, to pave the way for a new globalist world order, that will crush any patriots remaining. Cultural Marxist destruction of the existing order, to prepare the population for the new socialist indoctrination. The textbook definition of what Marxist insurrection does, whether as "Cultural Marxism" as the Frankfurt School developed the tactics in the 1930's, or "active measures" as termed by Soviet Russia's movement for a global Marxist revolution (i.e., Comintern) used to overthrow Western governments worldwide. By either insidious method, the goal is the same: Critical theory in various forms, to undermine the existing system.
And when you can't fully get the native population to bend to your will, you achieve a majority by importing a foreign electorate, massive immigration waves, who have no loyalty to the old order, and even a barely concealed racial hostility toward the native population, even as they accuse the natives of being racist.
The same that is occurring in nations throughout Europe, and to the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and New Zealand.
My point is that in the past, I considered Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Austria, Netherlands and other nations a potential refuge if things got politically bad in the United States. But as I thought I said clearly, these other nations are turning authoritarian or Bolshevik as fast or faster than the United States.
Right now I'd look at Sweden or Hungary or Poland as countries that have resisted the globalist authoritarian push better than others. Sweden has done better in resisting Covid mandates.
Poland and Hungary are more conservative, nationalist, and resistant to E.U. attempts to crush their national identity, attempts to overwhelm them with huge waves of third-world immigrants. You could look at Poland and say they're taking in millions of Ukrainians, but western Ukraine is essentially/historically Polish anyway. They are taking in refugees that are culturally like them.
Whereas Hungary is keeping out muslim immigrants, not admitting them, instantly deporting them.
I posted about five years ago about how Angela Merkel admitted that immigration to Germany over the last few decades has been a complete failure, That Turkish and other primarily muslim immigrants even 5 decades later are not assimilating, and are inflicting violence, crime, rapes, and islamic attacks on the native German population.
And Hungary is being reviled by other European nations as racist and nazi for not entering that suicide pact?
Regarding the Covid camps in Australia, that was widely reported about a year ago. But one Australian interviewed on the subject said that, in fairness, while the authoritarian leftist crazy politics are in effect in some southeastern left-leaning parts of Australia, you shouldn't judge the whole country by that, other areas such as Western Australia and Tasmania, are not as fanatical in their Covid containment measures.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-draconian-covid-policies-austrailia-the-united-stateshttps://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattv...mps-and-now-theyre-taking-booze-n2595615https://www.westernjournal.com/repo...utal-police-state-thanks-covid-fascists/In number 5 under that last Western Journal link, it cites a 47 year old guy who was arrested and put in a psych ward for just protesting and dissenting from Australia's Covid lockdown policies. These type of protests were happening in countries worldwide. But in Australia, I've seen several stories like this, where dissenters were imprisoned, not just to Covid-impaired.
I'm actually most impacted by your own anecdotes of the examples you list, from your own professional experiences and travels, or family members or clients. I'm an ironic case, because I believe very much in Second Amendment gun rights, but up until now I haven't felt a need to own a gun. But in the last few years, police protection doesn't offer the security it used to here in the U.S.
And I said roughly 20 years ago on these boards that if I owned a gun and was not carrying it, I would keep it locked in a safe at all times. For myself, I agree with that. But there are others who find that overly restrictive, and say if the gun is locked away, they could not access it quickly enough to defend their family from home invasion, or a store owner or clerk from an armed robber.
While I'm obviously strongly conservative and have antipathy toward the socialist-Marxist Left, it doesn't have to be a Leftist government in power to be authoritarian. Here in the U.S., many who are
not Marxist-Left still have their reasons for enabling the Left and not resisting a turn toward authoritarianism. Generally for exploiting both sides to enrich themselves, from lobbyists and other groups who reward them. Joe Biden is the prime example of that, but the U.S. establishment on both sides are basically all one in the same club. The Bushes, the Cheneys, the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bidens, the McConnells, the Pelosis. I increasingly think of them as the inhuman creatures you see with the right sunglasses in the movie
They Live.
A government doesn't have to be Leftist/Marxist to be authoritarian.
As in the example of the Patriot Act passed under George W. Bush that undermined U.S. Constitutional freedoms. I was naive at that time, with an attitude that since I haven't broken any laws I have nothing to hide. I understand now that if an authoritarian government doesn't like your politics, it can manufacture a crime just to get rid of you. (Just ask former Senator Ted Stevens, Scooter Libby, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, George Pappadapoulos, Gen Michael Flynn, Michael Caputo, Mark Cohen, Jerome Corsi, Rick Gates, and Carter Page, to name a few. Show me the man, and I'll give you the crime.)
And then a change of power to a decidedly leftist Barack Obama, but rather than repealing the Patriot Act, Obama actually expanded those authoritarian powers. This period was the first time I saw CIA and NSA whistleblowers coming forward to say unconstitutional expansions were running wild in U.S. government agencies, going way beyond even the Patriot Act.
Then there was Edward Snowden's exposures of the extent of federal surveillance.
Then Lois Lerner and the IRS authoritarian abuses.
And ultimately, weaponizing the FBI, DOJ and CIA to spy on and launch multiple coups against candidate Trump, President Trump, and former President Trump. And weaponized IN FAVOR OF Hillary Clinton.
And ongoing to present against Trump, and in favor of the Bidens.
So even across several changes from D to R and back again, neither side seems to want to give up these extra-Constitutional new powers and restore the balance to what it was. In the case of Republicans, I think they were complacent, and are now seeing the existential threat it has become. While the Democrats are preparing for guillotines and severed heads, and eagerly carrying them in effigy in protests nationwide.
Regarding the police you discuss in various countries, just as in the U.S., it depends where you are in that country. As I linked above, there are cases where police fired tear gas and rubber bullets and pounded batons on peaceful demonstrators, just because they voice dissent about Covid policy. Or locked a guy in a psych war just because he publicly dissented and protested Australia's Covid lockdown policy and vaccine mandates. I wouldn't call that restraint and non-authoritarian.
I wish I could find the commercial (I think from 2016) of the public service ad funded by the Australian government, that urged people to turn in their guns, and threatened prison sentences to those caught holding onto their guns, ending with visuals of naked men in a prison shower, implying if you don't turn in your guns you'll be incarcerated and raped. Youtube probably deleted it because it doesn't conform to their anti-gun ideology. But it got a lot of play on Fox News, and Greg Gutfeld in particular held it up for ridicule and scorn.
