Only 1 out of over 740,000 petitions has ever directly succeeded in changing government policy.
I believe, though I was young at the time, that the petition to not go to Iraq was the largest of it’s time. I believe that the peaceful protest against going to Iraq was also the largest of it’s time.
I should probably confirm those beliefs as they’re the foundation of my belief that petitions and peaceful protests are useless against the forces of capital. Capital was going to make big money going to Iraq, New Labour are a party of capital, we went to Iraq.
Have you seen most of the petitions? Between bloodthirsty gammons calling for public hangings to be brought back and people whose mates think they’re a legend calling on the government to legislate something frivolous or physically impossible, there’s a lot of rubbish there.
In the authoritarian playbook, one of the most important things is to continuously demonstrate to masses that they’re incapable of handling their own matters.
In case of petitions websites, I think they’re meant as an outlet for people to channel energy into so that they don’t have any left to organize politically for real change. People do intuitively understand this and largely stay away, leaving a few loons with time on their hands to repeatedly fill the platforms with garbage.
Ngl, public hangings might cool off public anger
