This is what happens when the working class are taken for granted, a reactionary vote thats festered for years, if the liberal elite actualy listened to legimate concerns of the majorty then none of these reactionary votes would be happening, power to the people regardless I say.
3 Likes
Originally posted by @Barry-Sanchez
This is what happens when the working class are taken for granted , a reactionary vote thats festered for years, if the liberal elite actualy listened to legimate concerns of the majorty then none of these reactionary votes would be happening, power to the people regardless I say.
A kick in the bollocks to the establishment is in the dna of the people but this didn’t have to be this way.
…that’s one view.
It’s also what happens when thick people feel afraid of what is happening to them and put the blame on anyone that is different.
Perhaps somewhere in the middle is the truth.
11 Likes
The blame could possibly lay with globalisation? People feel they don’t have control and that is sort of my point. I don’t know but what I do know is populist politics is the game in town and not accepting it won’t mean it isn’t happening.
1 Like
I’m not sure it’s that grand.
In most cases it just looks like the easily-led doing what they do best.
Its funny.
I was reading The Guardian comments earlier today and came across an interesting debate with a fairly smart, yet typical globalist who was essentially arguing that just as the left seeks to dismantle the privileges of wealth, socioeconomics and race - they also have a duty to dismantle geographical privileges afforded to people in first-world countries, who are still better off than the hundreds of millions of people born into the third world.
I give him a lot of credit for being honest and showing his hand, particularly as I think that there are a lot of people on the radical left who think that way (certainly plenty in the uni/recent graduate age group).
Only trouble? People in the working-class of Western countries ain’t gonna vote for it and indeed, will vote for whatever it takes to protect themselves from it.
Its going to be fascinating if Le Pen comes to power. We could be reaching a point where globalisation and the universal suffrage of Western democracies become completely incompatible.
Interesting times!
Surely she should change her name to La Stylo.
I’ve mentioned this loads before, but under most usual circumstances, Le Pen would already have some form of power beyond that of a party leader. Historically, the party has been victim to gerrymandering and the imposition of increased thresholds, all designed to keep it out of power. Rival parties have been prepared to go even further.
In the recent regional elections, the first round of voting signalled that FN could gain control of its first ever regions. Before the second round, all of the socialist candidates dropped out in order to give competing Republican candidates more of a chance. It worked, and Le Pen was denied power at regional level.
But, but, but. Look at what was required to keep them out. Boundary changes, rule changes, the complete abrogation of any left wing representation just to stop the far right from getting in. Maybe the present French establishment pulls out all the stops and foils them again, but they’re looking like an unstoppable force, and if they’re not that, you can definitely argue they’re stopping the normal course of politics from happening in France.
1 Like
The extreme left don’t complain then about a denial of democracy, as bad as the fascists and will only hurt harder in the long run with the reaction of the right, we learn nothing.
Just as a personal favour (which you can feel free to ignore), can we move away from downvoting people just because you disagree with their opinion?
Barry has three downvotes for his opening post and I honestly don’t know why.
1 Like
I always get them, water off a ducks back and really shows who the fascists are with their blind intolerance.
As I said, I’m not going to make anyone do anything; kudos to you for not complaining. The situation could continue as normal and it wouldn’t make too much of a difference.
bletch and I have said from the start that downvotes _should _be there to assist us in moderation. My opinion is that they should be used for unSotonian stuff (how McCarthyist of me!). That’s obviously a subjective assessment on an individual basis, but collectively, we kind of end up with the right result. If a post has a fuckload of downvotes, there’s a fair chance it’s unSotonian.
That’s why I had trouble working out the triple beef with your post. What do those downvotes mean? Is this an indication that the site doesn’t want to discuss the French national elections? I could just about understand people being miffed with the style or title, but I’m guessing. There’s little to go on afterwards.
I’ve never been interested in delving into the votes. We’ve had a couple of anomalies that we needed to investigate, but generally, we leave it alone. I haven’t known (or cared) who is downvoting whom. If I continue to see suspect voting patterns, I may have to look into it.
It won’t be for public consumption; just for moderation, so we know what’s _really _upsetting people. Right now, that’s diluted with simple disagreements that should be well-written ripostes. It makes moderation harder for us, and denies the site some potentially interesting content.
Pap it means more about them than me, I couldn’t care less, I never grass, delete or bitch, the irony is these tolerant people aren’t what they proclaim at all, again says more about them than me.
3 Likes
hahaha is their Prime Minister Bro really called The Pen? Those crazy frenchies. Who is in opposition? La Sword? hahaha. I have upvote Barry cos I didn’t know about all this.
Ah brilliant, more Nationalists preaching hate for anyone of a different creed or colour. It seems to be the way the world is going though, prey on the poor and stupid through fearmongering.
Aided and abetted by the spin doctors in the Conservative Party 
Now I agree with you, fucking tory cunts.
Don’t disagree, also happened during Brexit.
2 Likes
I’m afraid its a case of a drowning man clutching at the blade of a sword.
The American electoin was a case in point. Clinton and her supporters basically said that the low-skilled-but-well-paid jobs in the Midwest were ‘gone and never coming back’ with the added needle of saying that the American workers were lucky to have them in the first place and that they had no right to complain that they were disappearing.
Trump stomped in and said he’d whack tarriffs on companies moving jobs to Mexico.
A bunch of people were faced with the chance to gamble with nothing to lose - as Hillary was unable to make the case for how and why ‘your lives get better under me and worse under him’.
Same thing with Brexit really. There were a large number of people who never got an answer to the question ‘what does the EU do for me?’.
I don’t actually have too much of a problem with the 350m bus “promise”. A reminder.
Now perhaps if we were all ancient tribal animists, there would be a decent case for claiming that the nation was duped by this thoroughly jizzed on tissue of whoppers. We’re not. We’re cynical consumers that have spent decades being bombarded by hyperbolic commercial claims on all kinds of things, and we know how to analyse them. Many of us have learned from bitter and expensive experience.
So let’s put this into context. We’re not talking Ewoks and a floating Threepio, or a Clipper lighter being seen as some evidence of sorcery from the unen-lighter-nened. We’re talking about a message that many of Leave’s critic refer to as a lie. I think it’s a relatively complete message, especially in the context of cynical consumerism. We know the messages we get focus largely on the positives; it’s no coincidence that “where’s the catch?” is a thing we think or say when seeing a particularly pleasing proposition.
The only claim on that bus is that we send 350m to the EU each week. Everything else is a suggestion. It’s terse. It’s misleading, but was it so beyond the wit of a mature consumerist society to fill in the blanks? Especially in a contest where both sides were claimed of cooking the facts? It should have been obvious to anyone that’s ever had broadband that 350m is an “up to”. Equally, anyone that has ever spent money knows that you normally get something in return, and that we’re probably getting something for that dosh. Finally, who really believed that the minute we had 350m spare, Jeremy Hunt was going to funnel it into the very institution he’s seeking to destroy?
I’ve been pulled up on arguing semantics before, so I’m reluctant to do it here, but the rest aren’t promises or pledges. They’re suggestions, aspirational ones at that, which brings me to the overall point. The only way that the Leave bus claims are a lie is if you really believe what you want to believe, and if you’re in that camp, the Leave bus ain’t your problem.
2 Likes
Just because you were wise enough to know that we weren’t going to spend £350m on the NHS doesn’t mean everyone else was also as wise as you. Argue what you want about semantics, that statement is either a lie or deliberately obtuse and would have confused plenty of people. It’s simply not good enough to say after the event that everyone should have known what was meant by it.
1 Like