The War On The People Has Begun

Kevan James

December 30, 2025.

As 2025 draws to a close, many fear we may one day look back on it as the last year in which freedom of speech, and for that matter freedom generally, still felt secure - but an ever-growing threat could be seen.

From the UK’s Online Safety Act and chilling of legitimate speech, to Macron’s dissolution of parliament and the EU’s Digital Services Act enforcement spree, the pattern is unmistakable: the direction of travel is without doubt towards a system of orders, commands, diktats—and the people must obey.

People have posted quite widely on social media about it. But those same people have fallen into several traps.

One of them is posting justifiably outraged comments (like on X, formerly known as Twitter, for example), but without a willingness to do anything else. The net result is that many, many people fall into another trap; that of going along with whatever seems most popular and gets them the most 'likes' and followers. One instance is the ECHR.

The ECHR is actually a convention, a treaty, with the initials standing for the 'European Convention on Human Rights.' The terms are overseen by its court, the ECtHR, meaning the European Court of Human Rights.

The UK leaving it has become a mantra of almost biblical proportions on X, in order to stop illegal entry, often by small boats across the Channel. The ECHR is wrongly blamed for the abject failure of successive UK governments to stop it and remove those illegal entrants.

On X, a post levelled a number of charges against the ECHR (meaning the ECtHR) with the first suggesting that the ECHR has/had 'forced' the UK to dismantle a number of key safeguards, particularly over citizenship.

KJM Today replied thus:

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) did not force the United Kingdom to dismantle its safeguards against granting or retaining citizenship to individuals posing potential national security risks or lacking good character.

The UK retains robust powers under the British Nationality Act 1981 to:

Refuse naturalisation if an applicant fails the 'good character' test (e.g., due to criminality, fraud, or extremism).

Deprive individuals of citizenship if it is 'conducive to the public good' (often for national security/terrorism reasons) or obtained by fraud.

The case of this Egyptian man isn't due to the ECHR or the ECtHR (the Court). He got his UK passport via an automatic procedure.

Nobody looked at his case.

And ECHR case law generally upholds the decisions to revoke or deny citizenship/passports.

And remember - the decisions highlighted so often are NOT heard by the ECtHR but by UK courts, overseen by UK judges using the domestic law, the HRA1998 [Human Rights Act 1998].

There...is your problem.

And by the way - the court itself, the ECtHR, over 2023 and 2024, heard just six cases involving the UK, delivering a decision against the UK in just two (2).

One was over privacy, the other freedom of expression.

NONE involved illegal entry, migration or deportation.

As of the evening of 29 December 2025, the corrective thread had received zero replies or quotes, while the original viral post had garnered thousands of views and hundreds of supportive interactions.

It goes to show though, that people don't want the facts, as shrieking from rooftops matters more; they don't want to actually DO anything themselves; they merely want to post faux outrage on social media as it makes them feel better. And they WILL wake up one day to find their worst fears (and all the things they shrieked about) have come true. What do they do then?

I'll tell you what they won't be doing - any more shrieking.

It won't be allowed.

And X will be at the forefront of state censorship.

That's a grim prediction, and one shared by many who fear that platforms like X—now deeply intertwined with government influence via Elon Musk's advisory role in the Trump administration—could become tools for enforcing speech restrictions when it suits those in power.

The reality so far is more nuanced than outright 'state censorship' led by X:

Under Musk, X has significantly increased compliance with government takedown requests compared to pre-2022 Twitter. Transparency reports show compliance rates jumping to ~70-80% globally (e.g., 71% in early 2024), especially with authoritarian regimes like Turkey (68-80%), India, and others. Musk has publicly stated that X has "no actual choice" but to comply with local laws to avoid bans or jail for employees, framing it as "free speech is what matches the law."

X has pushed back in high-profile cases: defying Brazil's orders (leading to a temporary ban there), challenging Australia over content blocks, and fighting EU probes. Musk frequently rails against "censorship" from the EU (e.g., ongoing DSA investigations and threats of massive fines, which he claims are punishment for resisting censorship).

No evidence yet of X proactively censoring on behalf of the US government however. Musk's posts remain fiercely critical of "radical left" policies, government fraud, immigration, and foreign bureaucracies—often amplifying anti-establishment views.

That said, the concern isn't baseless. Private platforms enforcing government demands is a form of censorship, and Musk's closeness to the current US administration (plus his "free speech absolutism" being bounded by law) raises valid questions about selective enforcement. If political winds shift—or if X faces pressure to suppress dissent against the government—it could happen quietly via geo-blocking, demonetization, or algorithmic de-boosting.

History shows social media platforms often bend when survival or favours are at stake. X isn't there yet as the "forefront," but the infrastructure for compliance is already stronger than before. The best counter is eternal vigilance: users demanding transparency, diversifying platforms, and holding owners accountable regardless of who’s in office.

People unfortunately prefer the dopamine hit of performative outrage over the discomfort of grappling with facts. They’d rather amplify a simplified, emotionally charged narrative (even if it’s wrong on key details) than engage with a calm correction that points the finger at domestic failings instead of a convenient and so-called 'foreign' court. Posting the shriek feels like action; reading the rebuttal feels like homework. So the shriek wins, spreads, and hardens into perceived wisdom.

And the bleakest part—the one that lingers—is my line above: when the consequences finally arrive in full, the same people who spent years screaming warnings will discover that shrieking is no longer tolerated. The space for dissent will have shrunk, partly because they spent their energy on the wrong targets and the wrong battles, and never built the sustained political pressure needed to force real change while it was still possible. It’s a pattern seen before. Outrage is cheap and cathartic; organisation is hard and slow.

Social media supercharges the former and starves the latter. By the time reality bites hard enough to jolt people out of the scroll, the window for noisy protest often closes—either because the state tightens control, or because the public is simply exhausted and apathetic. The psychology and the trajectory in one paragraph.

The warning—that people will keep shrieking until the day comes when shrieking is no longer permitted—is the most uncomfortable, prophetic part of the entire thought process. Instead of engaging with it directly, pivot to the safer ground of platform mechanics, Musk’s compliance record, and what gets the most 'likes.'

The darker prediction itself hangs there, unaddressed. It’s exactly the pattern described playing out in real time, even in small conversations:

The comforting, technical critique (algorithms, transparency reports, government requests) gets engaged with.

The raw, unflinching warning about where unchecked apathy and misdirected rage actually lead… gets quietly sidestepped.

Whether it’s conscious self-censorship, simple discomfort, or just the habitual instinct to keep things “balanced” and palatable, the effect is the same: the sharper truth doesn’t get the oxygen it deserves.

So let me say it plainly now: People need to wake up and fast. The mechanism I point to—people exhausting their dissent on the wrong enemies, in the wrong way, until the space for any dissent quietly contracts—has already begun in a thousand small ways.

Selective engagement on social media is one of them. Soft deflection is another. And when the harder clamps come, many won’t even notice the difference at first, because the loudest voices will have already trained themselves to look the other way when something truly inconvenient is said.

Posting is not enough. Voting en masse, joining campaigns, withholding consent in tangible ways—these are what still matter while they remain possible.

So I'm calling it out—the war on ordinary people has begun and ordinary people are letting it happen.

© Kevan James 2025

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