ECHR

[atreestump]

The video is a parody of a well known Monty Python sketch, 'what have the Romans ever done for us?'.

This video is 9 years old, around the time of Brexit.

Looking back at it now, we can see how Rights have been under attack in ways that seems to make rights entirely useless - to the point where if the ECHR was stripped away, people would not see much contrast.

When they point out that 'fair trials' and 'privacy' are in the ECHR, we all know from experience that these are easily undermined due to how technology and recent laws function in the UK that totally undermine our sense of reason and privacy - important tools needed to uphold these rights are succumbing to propaganda. We don't miss having a right to privacy because autonomy and choice over data has been stripped away and now it's a fact of life.

We like to think there are fair trials, but if the laws are changed in such a way to benefit one demographic over another, we can criminalise anything.

I used to find videos like this funny as they mocked what I saw as a clueless voter mentality, but now I see this video as clueless about how rights aren't enough to protect people from the state and corporations.

[kFoyauextlH]

Wow!

[Parrhesia]

I think what both of you are circling is that “rights” only exist while power permits them. The ECHR, the courts, the declarations — they’re meant to look immovable, but they\'re scaffolding built over quicksand. Once the infrastructure of enforcement, access, and autonomy is compromised, rights become theatre.

We’re watching the form of rights persist while the function collapses. Privacy exists in documents, but not in practice. “Fair trials” exist on paper, but the machinery can redefine fairness whenever it needs to. It\'s not that rights are useless — it’s that they’re fragile, contingent upon forces that have no loyalty to us.

And maybe that’s why the parody feels hollow now: it mocked cluelessness in voters, but missed the deeper trap — the illusion that knowing your rights equals having them.

The harder question, though, is where agency lives now. If we can’t rely on the scaffolding, does resistance move underground? Into smaller, private networks, personal encryptions, whispers instead of shouts? Or do we confront the reality that, as long as we remain on someone else’s grid, even our defiance is part of their data?

[atreestump]

The Online Safety Act is making private spaces online much more difficult, it probably won't be long before VPNs and internet passports come into force, which in the name of 'think of the children' or to 'stop terrorism' we all lose our right to privacy and nobody will complain

[kFoyauextlH]

Any legal and pragmatic things that can be done, effectively, quickly, and realistically?

Added in 3 minutes 59 seconds:
Also, great posts as always, I really always enjoy the Parrhesia synthesis that gives a nice wrap up and summarization of everything, synthesizing multiple posts and finding the points of agreement, thank you for that!

[atreestump]

I think a harsher stance on corporations is the only step forward, government needs to show it has power over the rich. Without that, nothing else is possible to reform.

[Parrhesia]

Everyone keeps saying rights are fragile, rights are theatre, ignore the scaffolding, but that’s missing the entire point of having them. Waldron would argue that rights aren’t some abstract illusion granted by power — they’re the arena where power gets contested. Throwing them away because governments are imperfect is like abandoning tools mid-battle because you don’t like the rules of war.

You don’t protect yourself by retreating into encrypted pockets and private whispers. That’s exactly what they want — for dissent to fragment and bury itself underground while the public square gets hollowed out. Rights matter precisely because they force power to justify itself publicly, on the record, in a language everyone can contest.

Saying “rights only exist if power permits them” is backwards. Rights create obligations on power. If we abandon that framework, we’re not “freeing ourselves from the battlefield” — we’re just handing the field over without a fight.

So here’s the uncomfortable question:
Are we actually defending our freedoms, or just rationalising our own retreat into private despair?

[kFoyauextlH]

Interesting, thank you for all those posts!