Police are always the first to throw in with the fascists because they are the fascists. You only need to look at how they treat climate protesters vs how they treat literal nazi protesters.

[–] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

Australia, or at least NSW, is a police state. You are getting filmed, tracked, your browsing history saved, your financial purchases archived, you need government ID regularly updated which requires entering your biometrics into a database.

You need to apply for permits to protest and they are routinely denied. Move along and non association orders are routinely employed to silence dissent, police extort cultural events for ludicrous fees, use dogs which have been demonstrated to not work as justification for routine searching of the public. We are already here.

This /is/ what living in a police state is. No it's not as bad as it could get but we are already there.