“A spectre is haunting Eastern Europe: the spectre of what in the West is called dissent,” wrote Vaclav Havel in October 1978 in a seminal essay called “The Power of the Powerless”. Havel, then a courageous dissident in Communist Czechoslovakia, was paraphrasing Karl Marx. As a poet and playwright, he well understood the power of free speech under repressive regimes – and the fear it can induce in their rulers. He later served as president of a newly democratic state and never wavered in his commitment to liberty. What would he have thought of the government’s new crackdown on social media? Havel’s opening sentence definitely needs editing. The spectre of dissent no longer haunts Eastern Europe, but western democracies – especially Britain.

Compare Sweeney’s case with that of Gabriel Abdullah, 34, who physically threatened staff at a kosher shop with a knife

I spent almost thirty years reporting on post-Communist central and eastern Europe for several national newspapers. I saw how for many years after the change of system in 1989-1990 the societal reflexes of dictatorship still endured: a deep ingrained cynicism, the use of code-words to signal a set of allegiances, a distrust of those outside the family circle, a profound wariness about institutions. Citizens were right to be wary. The old regime’s flunkies and acolytes still lurked, reborn as democrats, spouting the new pieties as eagerly as they had once trumpeted the empty slogans of Marxist-Leninism.

Now after my return to London, I see that authoritarian impulses and reflexes are not confined to central Europe. Lockdown showed us that they are deeply engrained in British society and political culture, where a good part of the righteous centre and left longs for the crack of the (metaphorical) authoritarian whip and where snitches flourish. That same cohort now gleefully welcomes the government’s pursuit of its own citizens, for crimes committed not in the streets, but on social media.

For a few days earlier this month riots erupted in several towns and cities, some involving arson, assault and looting. A library, mosques and hotels were attacked in horrific acts of violence. Black and Asian people were targeted, the police assaulted. More than 1,000 people have been arrested. Those involved in violence have been rightly and swiftly punished in a fast-track judicial system. But so too have those who merely posted stupid or inflammatory comments.

Tyler Kay, a 26-year-old father of three, was sentenced to 38 months imprisonment after posting on X a call for attacks on asylum seekers’ hotels and admitting a charge of publishing material intended to stir up racial hatred. Kay, who had 127 followers, tagged his local police force in Northampton. This is not the work of a dangerous agitator. Or consider the case of Julie Sweeney, a wife and sole carer for her husband who had previously led a quiet, law-abiding life in Cheshire. Sweeney, 53, posted on a community Facebook group a call to “Blow up the mosques with the adults in it”. She later deleted the post, but admitted a charge of sending a communication threatening death or serious harm. Sentenced to 15 months in prison Sweeney said, “Thank you, your honour” as she was led away in tears.

Compare Sweeney’s case with that of Gabriel Abdullah, 34, who physically threatened staff at a kosher shop with a knife in London’s Golders Green in January demanding to know their views on Israel and Palestine. Abdullah pleaded guilty to affray and being in possession of a knife but walked free from court in June after being handed suspended sentences and ordered to undertake alcohol treatment. Or imagine if the authorities had taken a similarly-ruthless approach to the policing of the pro-Palestine and sometimes pro-Hamas rallies that repeatedly took over central London after October 7. Week after week the police watched meekly as crowds of demonstrators freely called for the destruction of the Jewish state, waved placards showing blood libels and openly intimidated Jewish people.

“Think before you post,” warned a recent post on X from the Crown Prosecution Service

At least nowadays citizen journalists using the new platforms can bring us up to date reports. There were no mobile telephones or online social media under Communism. All media was state-controlled. Dissent was manifested in jokes and illegally printed typewritten newsletters and leaflets, known as Samizdat. Britain is not a one-party state. But it is a state in the grip of an establishment consensus, whose gatekeepers are enraged by their steady loss of control.

It has been chilling to watch the steady procession of establishment handmaidens calling for ever more restrictions on X and other non-conformist media such as GB News. Yes, X sometimes hosts misinformation and inflammatory material. So does the BBC Arabic service, repeatedly and without any real consequence. And there are already laws in place to govern incitement  – as the spate of recent trials show. It seems X’s real sin is to provide unmediated footage of ongoing events, faster and more efficiently than the legacy media.

Meanwhile the state has drawn on the lessons it learnt in lockdown. “Think before you post,” warned a recent post on X from the Crown Prosecution Service. “Content that incites violence or hatred isn’t just harmful – it can be illegal”. “Can be” is correct. In May 2021 four men were arrested and charged after video footage showed several cars covered with Palestinian flags driving along Finchley Road in north-west London, where many Jewish people live. The men’s shouts, amplified through a loudspeaker, included: “Fuck the Jews, fuck the movement, fuck all of them” and “Fuck their mothers, fuck their daughters and show your support for Palestine”. Despite the footage, all charges were dropped by November 2022. The CPS said there was no realistic prospect of conviction.

For now at least, perhaps our best option is to savour an appreciation of the absurd. Vaclav Havel would doubtless have appreciated the case of Dimitrie Stoica, the unfortunate Romanian who posted a TikTok livestream to his 700 followers falsely claiming that he was being chased by far-right thugs during the recent riots. Stoica was arrested shortly after and claimed it was all a “joke”. Such a satire, in the tradition of the absurdist Romanian playwright Eugène Ionescu, swiftly brought him three months imprisonment. And maybe we should not blame Labour for everything. The crackdown has been building for years. Between 2009 and 2013, including three years of Conservative government, prosecutions involving social media sites increased by almost 800 per cent. That prompted a warning from the then Director of Public Prosecutions that too many investigations and court cases could “have a chilling effect on free speech”. Court-time should not be spent on cases, he said, “which people might think really would be better dealt with by a swift apology and removal of the offending tweet”. Indeed. Now that same official is prime minister, but under his direction precisely the opposite is happening.