From Elsewhere: Why do Britons wish to be anonymous when talking about politics?

There’s a lot of normies out there who have swallowed the line that if you’ve got nothing to hide then you’ve got nothing to fear. This might have been applicable when Britain was much more of a free society than it is today but it doesn’t apply today.

I recently discovered over at the Daily Sceptic site an account of someone who wants to speak about political issues but feels increasingly compelled to self-censor when speaking in their own name. He quite rightly praises the work of the Free Speech Union (FSU) but points out that the FSU cannot protect a Briton from being followed home or punched in the face or attacked in the street. We are now in a situation where people do not just fear cancellation or arrest but mobs of angry ideologues that the police will not protect British subjects from.

People are increasingly self-censoring out of fear and it is having dire results. People are biting their tongues when confronted with contested issues such as transgenderism, or the cult of diversity or even criticising religion or a whole host of other issues. This is not good for our society. People should be able to speak freely and debate and hold points of view that need to be displayed in the marketplace of ideas so that they can be debated and the good ideas taken up and the bad ideas rejected. We’ve seen what societies based on fear look like and some of us have lived in the shadow of them in the form of the Soviet Union as ideological opponents of our own societies.

Here’s part of what this person has said and I would advise people to go an read the original piece which can be found at the following URL https://dailysceptic.org/2026/07/22/why-im-writing-this-anonymously-and-what-that-says-about-free-speech-in-britain-today/

“Campaigners have logged tens of thousands of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ a year, the great majority of them originating from something someone posted online. And after events like the Southport riots, an entire category of people were branded ‘far-Right thugs’ as a matter of editorial habit. None of this needs to end in a prosecution for it to work. Its function is to make you flinch before you speak, not after. And it’s working: a YouGov poll found that 57% of Britons admit to sometimes holding back their views for fear of a negative reaction, and research published earlier this year found the same pattern setting in even among teenagers, with around one in five saying they hide their political opinions at school to avoid being ‘cancelled’. Self-censorship of this kind isn’t a fringe habit. It’s now closer to a majority experience.

Nothing dramatic has happened to me. Nobody has knocked on my door. I have not been arrested, cautioned or sacked. I have simply chosen, before any of that could happen, to leave my name off this piece. That is precisely the point. Fear doesn’t need to become reality to change behaviour. The anticipation of it is enough.

That’s the self-censorship no one puts a number on, and I think it’s doing more to shrink public debate than any single policy or piece of legislation. Its success isn’t measured by how many people it punishes, but by how many quietly change their behaviour hoping never to be punished at all.”

What this man has said is sad but true. It’s not just the censorship imposed on us that is the problem it’s the censorship we impose on ourselves out of fear.