Growth of the far right (1 Viewer)

Interesting thread. I’ve come to the realisation that this is the main cause of my middle aged anxiety. Work, relationships, moving house, all seems insignificant to my concerns that the world is turning upside down and i can no longer rely on the safe bubble of suburban Liverpool or inner city London, both places where alt right and far right are nowhere to be seen. Social media and exposed them to me and now I can’t avoid them.

also, thanks for various world leaders and the rise of populism, it’s become trendy for liberal and centrist media to pick out every horrible little thing that these scumbags are doing and drop it into my news feed every day. It’s depressing. HuffPost, CNN, Independent et al were my ways of keeping up and now I just get sad reading them.

thank God for the BBC frankly. It might be bland and safe and tip toey but it’s the only neutral platform out there (and I won’t listen to people who say the BBC is biased. I’ve had that conversation on Facebook too many times).
 
I think all news outlets are going to be biased on some level by virtue of being staffed by human beings and/or privately educated politics grads from Oxbridge, but I think the BBC is sometimes hampered by its own desire to appear balanced - here's an expert in their field talking about something they have dedicated their life to researching, but we need someone to argue the other side, even if nobody with any credibility would do so... meh, Tom Harwood'll do it.
 
Last edited:
Gangsta Nancy Lam said:
but I think the BBC is sometimes hampered by its own desire to appear balanced
Click to expand...

Ding ding ding ding

Precisely right. I maintain that UKIP and Brexit and a whole heap of shit would never have got off the ground had they not felt the need to give Nigel Farage et al a regular platform to spout their shit. There are other factors of course, but the BBC need to take a lions share of blame.
 
Farage, Harwood and Grimes all have influence and platforms they’ve not earned and aren’t equipped for, precisely because they’re that one lunatic whose opinions are contrary enough to satisfy the need for balance.
 
All good points about the Beeb. They can’t do right for doing wrong. It’s more when people on the left say they are biased to the Tories and people on the right say the opposite - they can’t both be right? I think that says more about people who don’t like reading any media that doesn’t agree with everything they say, and that is also a bad sign of where we are in 2020. Not just the right but the socialist agenda as well. The only successful government is a centrist one. We can’t serve half a country. Obviously I lean quite the way left, but you can’t have a country without a mix of socialism and capitalism. Well you can, but it would be fucked.
 
I think we can include Farage in this. His current behaviour is beyond ridiculous.
 
Ag said:
I think we can include Farage in this. His current behaviour is beyond ridiculous.
Click to expand...
His trajectory is exactly what we knew it would be. He’s lost his cushy MEP job, he’s no Brexit to bullshit about... he’s just desperately flailing about in search of relevance. He’ll go down the same route as Hopkins and get himself totally deplatformed with his increasingly outrageous statements.

Leaving the EU was the absolute worst case scenario for him.
 
ButterTart said:
His trajectory is exactly what we knew it would be. He’s lost his cushy MEP job, he’s no Brexit to bullshit about... he’s just desperately flailing about in search of relevance. He’ll go down the same route as Hopkins and get himself totally deplatformed with his increasingly outrageous statements.

Leaving the EU was the absolute worst case scenario for him.
Click to expand...
Absolutely - these people are grifters, they're always looking for their next angle.
 
ButterTart said:
His trajectory is exactly what we knew it would be. He’s lost his cushy MEP job, he’s no Brexit to bullshit about... he’s just desperately flailing about in search of relevance. He’ll go down the same route as Hopkins and get himself totally deplatformed with his increasingly outrageous statements.

Leaving the EU was the absolute worst case scenario for him.
Click to expand...

Spot on, he'll defend into full racist soon enough and then lose any remaining credibility, bet he's more furious about us leaving the EU than an average remainer.
 
Regarding the BBC, I would argue that their position is not necessarily a left or right wing position as much as it is an ESTABLISHMENT one. Which is why there is so much confusion as to whether it leans left or right.

On the one hand, most BBC higher ups are London-based and I imagine somewhat socially liberal which is why they do things like including MIXED RACE FAMILIES in tv shows and other things that winds up bigots in the provinces.

But then on the other hand, they do their best not to give the Government of the day TOO MUCH of a hard time because said Government ultimately holds a lot of power over the Beeb and their budget. They try particularly hard with the Tories because Conservatives are hostile to public service anything.

I imagine some of their pandering to the right wing in recent years is as much them trying to avoid accusations of elitism as they are accusations of being left wing (I think elites, completely removed as they are from the public, envision the average person on the street as a meatheaded racist).

I think the main thing to remember is that senior arts and media types, corporate shills and politicians of all colours are in many respects cut from the same cloth. A lot of them went to university together, if not SCHOOL. It is most visible when one of them to walks out of a job in one of these sectors and fall very quickly and comfortably into another.

The new Director General of the BBC went to Cambridge, then worked for PepsiCo, and was deputy chairman of a local Tory party before working for the Beeb. His predecessor literally sits in the House of Lords and when he leaves the BBC will become Chairman of the National Gallery.
 
Last edited:
I think the Beeb ultimately wants to KEEP THINGS AS THEY ARE.

They don’t even do balanced reporting on a lot of things for this reason. For example, their reporting on anything Royal takes it as given that the public absolutely love the inbred cunts.
 
Tetris-Rock said:
Regarding the BBC, I would argue that their position is not necessarily a left or right wing position as much as it is an ESTABLISHMENT one. Which is why there is so much confusion as to whether it leans left or right.

On the one hand, most BBC higher ups are London-based and I imagine somewhat socially liberal which is why they do things like including MIXED RACE FAMILIES in tv shows and other things that winds up bigots in the provinces.

But then on the other hand, they do their best not to give the Government of the day TOO MUCH of a hard time because said Government ultimately holds a lot of power over the Beeb and their budget. They try particularly hard with the Tories because Conservatives are hostile to public service anything.

I imagine some of their pandering to the right wing in recent years is as much them trying to avoid accusations of elitism as they are accusations of being left wing (I think elites, completely removed as they are from the public, envision the average person on the street as a meatheaded racist).

I think the main thing to remember is that senior arts and media types, corporate shills and politicians of all colours are in many respects cut from the same cloth. A lot of them went to university together, if not SCHOOL. It is most visible when one of them to walks out of a job in one of these sectors and fall very quickly and comfortably into another.

The new Director General of the BBC went to Cambridge, then worked for PepsiCo, and was deputy chairman of a local Tory party before working for the Beeb. His predecessor literally sits in the House of Lords and when he leaves the BBC will become Chairman of the National Gallery.
Click to expand...



All of this is spot on (and very clever - I love reading your political observations @Tetris-Rock )

Add on to that the simple fact that if it is neutral, or trying to be 'central', then the left naturally see that as a right-wing position and the right naturally see it as a left-wing position, because it is relative to their own politics. I think you're correct that they are neither right nor left, but representing 'establishment' in that way.
 
That @Tetris-Rock post is fab :disco:

Despite the BBC’s faults, I’m SO HAPPY we have it as a country. It’s an absolute fabric of modern British thinking - as a simple example, because Radio 1 has such a varied playlist (as opposed to genre-only US radio) Brits are exposed to SO MANY DIFFERENT TYPES of music from an early age, which I honestly think helps result in some of the AMAZING music that comes from the UK.

The current gunning for the BBC from the British right baffles me - the TV license is hardly EXTORTIONATE*, and if you don’t pay it are they REALLY going to throw you in prison:eyes:
That #DefundTheBBC is frequently trending on UK Twitter is such a warning of things to come I feel - the BBC is the new big bad EU bogeyman.

*I mean for the majority of people, OBVIOUSLY this sort of blanket statement will not apply to everybody in the UK’s financial circumstances.
 
funky said:
All good points about the Beeb. They can’t do right for doing wrong. It’s more when people on the left say they are biased to the Tories and people on the right say the opposite - they can’t both be right? I think that says more about people who don’t like reading any media that doesn’t agree with everything they say, and that is also a bad sign of where we are in 2020. Not just the right but the socialist agenda as well. The only successful government is a centrist one. We can’t serve half a country. Obviously I lean quite the way left, but you can’t have a country without a mix of socialism and capitalism. Well you can, but it would be fucked.
Click to expand...

I want to wretch whenever I hear about the supposed value of centrism. Centrism has never achieved anything of note and is actually incredibly dangerous. This article sums it up far, far better than I ever could:

https://novaramedia.com/2019/12/11/...-ground-politics-isnt-moderate-its-dangerous/
 
Anything to say about the piece? I think it makes several very good points!
 
HeLikedTurner said:
I want to wretch whenever I hear about the supposed value of centrism. Centrism has never achieved anything of note and is actually incredibly dangerous. This article sums it up far, far better than I ever could:

https://novaramedia.com/2019/12/11/...-ground-politics-isnt-moderate-its-dangerous/
Click to expand...

Well that's one way of looking at it. Another way is that without centrism, you develop a division culture over time and views get more one-sided. Look at America. Hardly a shining beacon of politics.
 
funky said:
Well that's one way of looking at it. Another way is that without centrism, you develop a division culture over time and views get more one-sided. Look at America. Hardly a shining beacon of politics.
Click to expand...

I think it is helpful to between overall centrism and then centrism in any one given political culture. My feeling is that lot of people think they are the former when they are actually the latter.

Like, what is political centrism in a country where proper leftist politics have struggled for credibility for almost thirty years (and before anyone mentions Corbyn - the uphill struggle he faced proves rather than disproves my point imo.) I imagine there are a number of people see themselves as centrists and their views as somewhere between left and right when in reality their views are somewhere between Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet and Boris Johnson’s government.

So basically... David Cameron? :o
 
I don't see myself as a centrist though. I'm just more objective and less idealistic than many of my liberal friends. We can't control the minds of millions of people, especially when so many are ignorant and uneducated. I liked Corbyn. I didnt think he was a great leader, but he was a damn sight more viable than Boris. I voted for Corbyn. But I knew he would never ever get in. So, people just have to decide, would you rather Corbyn as the leader of the opposition or a centrist Labour leader who can defeat the Tories? All Labour's socialist movement over the past decade has done is made the Tories stronger. Absolutely nothing else. That might be disheartening, but it's also very very real.

The same applies to America.
 
I feel I should say that I wasn’t accusing you or anyone in the thread of being THAT particular brand of centrist. :disco:
 
Oh I know :disco: it just needs to be pointed out because otherwise it just sounds like I'm being CONTRARY. And I'm not (well, not right now.)
 
Also I'd say David Cameron is not socialist, conservative or centrist. He's an opportunist.

Or he was. Now he's nothing except Britain's biggest ever mistake.
 
I think the problem is conflating centrism with neutrality. Centrism is its own ideology, it isn't an exact balance of left-wing politics and right-wing politics. Cameron was considered to be a centrist politician by some, but his social liberalism clearly wasn't enough to mitigate economic austerity.

Most normal people aren't centrists, they're just non-ideological, which is an important difference. The Tories have been successful in portraying themselves as common sense politicians, whereas Labour under Corbyn seemed to be addicted to talking about how radical they were. The Novara piece omits this, even though Corbyn's spending proposals were a fairly standard European social-democratic platform, which they do mention.
 
I've been getting a little scared this morning reading about minority rights being rolled back in Utah and then about Project 2025 which I was very ignorant about.
 
This is why I can’t stand people on the left saying Trump and Biden are as bad as each other. What we know about Project 2025 lays bare that Trump’s plans are full blown authoritarian dictatorship.
 
  • Like
Reactions: RJN
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Back
Top Bottom