THE death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, known also by her Kurdish name Zhina Amini, while detained by the so-called morality police in Iran has kickstarted the most significant pushback against the state’s violent fundamentalism since 2009’s Green Revolution.

While women burn their hijabs in defiance, security forces open fire on protesters, playing the traditional role of escalating tensions that police and law enforcers often have when faced with disobedience.

The bravery on display from those who refuse to comply with the Iranian security forces is nothing short of incredible and I hope that change will follow, as it has when others have stood up to their own regressive governments and the state institutions that protect them.

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LGBT+ rights in the Western world owe much to New York’s Stonewall riots in 1969, and the less-remembered Compton’s Cafeteria riot that preceded it.

The Suffragettes’ bombing and arson campaign between 1912-14 led directly to the start of women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom. And the poll tax riots against the Conservative government in 1990 began the downfall of Thatcher’s regime. History shows that mass movements against regressive governments and despots are predominantly the only means of securing real change, in a way that “polite” protest never can.

Yet violence is never the first port of call. Time and again it is police escalation that remains the biggest contributor to how demonstrations evolve from protest to riot – and the police in the UK are no friends to those most impacted by the Conservative Party’s tax-cutting, billionaire-backing mini-Budget.

Some have described it as an act of economic vandalism, but Kwasi Kwarteng’s proposed tax cuts in England and Wales are so much worse than that. The most significant and far-reaching since the early 1970s, they are set to funnel even more wealth directly upwards to the 1%. Any gains for the poorest in Britain are marginal at best, and for key workers, such as teachers and nurses, the proposals actually represent an increase in income tax.

The toxic combination of scrapping the cap on bankers’ bonuses and promises to further curtail the power of trade unions has led to the kind of banker’s Budget that would give the bastard offspring of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan a gasping orgasm. With the UK Government’s prior legislation to effectively ban protest in place, the match is lit.

And if you thought Scotland won’t feel the heat from Liz Truss’s new government, think again. The resulting defunding and collapse of services that must follow a Budget with such a bent for the rich will have repercussions here.

Tory-backing newspapers are champing at the bit to have the Scottish Government follow suit, decrying Scotland as the highest-taxed nation in the UK while skipping over the benefits and services that come with a marginally more progressive tax system.

If the Tories have learned anything from the failed Boris Johnson experiment, it’s that they can get away with a lot more than they previously thought, and they have not wasted a moment before grasping that opportunity.

Hedge-fund managers made a killing in profit by betting against the pound ahead of the mini-Budget announcement. And with more tax cuts and extreme Tory policies to follow, you can bet the parasites are ready to make a whole lot more.

It’s a fire sale, where everything must go, and the consequences will be disastrous. Age Scotland has warned that the lack of real help from the Conservative government, which has prioritised the wealth of their friends over the needs of the poor, will mean more people dying this winter as a result of spiralling energy costs and the cost of living crisis.

Thankfully, the chancers in Downing Street already have a few scapegoats lined up, benefits claimants and transgender people among them. The culture war rhetoric to paper over the ideological cracks of this new government – which is the same as the old government – are already having frightening consequences.

A recent anti-trans event in Brighton saw emboldened fascist organisers standing side-by-side with gender critical activists in opposition to trans equality. We can expect the Conservatives’ faux culture war rhetoric to dominate the headlines as the dangerous inadequacies of Liz Truss and her government bear the fruit of their Budget.

However, the fact is that we won’t make it through two years of this.

This isn’t the time to listen to the kind of liberal who condemns direct action against an oppressive force while sporting a Suffragette tote bag or Stonewall badge, damning the pedigree of their own identity.

Action gets results, and hand-wringing over this issue will only make it harder to build back in the future. But worse, there will be no saving those already lost to us by then.

We wouldn’t sit in a burning building for two years in the hope that we’ll eventually have the chance to vote the fire out, yet that is what we are being asked to do.

When all other avenues are exhausted, the voiceless only have one option left.