So. I go to Auschwitz on average twice a week.
I read a quote today that I wont post yet on a memorial.
Made me think.
The right have created an unter mensch, Immigrants on both sides of the Atlantic.
@Cobham-Saint, @pap, @saintbletch respond to imbecilic tweets on Twitter.
Yet they keep missing the fact that people AGREE with those tweets. I know people who love Trump
I dont think we should impact on our other political threads BUT the quote I saw today made me realise we are forgetting the past.
Experience is irrelevant so I’m a tour guide. Lessons are being ignored.
Perhaps time for a Sotonians thread to record non blowjo or Trumpism or Brexiting examples.
A LOT of people agree with Brexit Tory or the 49p dinner jerk.
We need to record those for the post Millenial generations’ recovery efforts.
So. No Hurricane Nukes. No Tommy dickhead quotes, let’s record the drivers here
I realise you’ve probably experienced some very emotional times in your trips.B
That said, I don’t see the evidence for the rise of the right you speak of in the United Kingdom.
The best case in point is probably UKIP. Once an electoral thorn in the side of the Conservatives, it is now polling at virtually 0%.
What changed from its heyday under Nigel Farage?
Well, whatever you think of him, and I’m certainly not a fan, Farage’s UKIP was never overtly racist. I’m on record, several times, saying that his domestic campaigning, especially at local level, was deplorable.
What happened afterward is that UKIP took a hardline stance on immigrants, not immigration, especially those following the Muslim faith which is odd because they are only indirectly related to the European Union.
It is, as a result, absolutely fucked, led by a succession of fucking fruit loops taking such a disastrous turn recently that it makes Paul Nuttall look like a moderate. At the same time, Farage’s new venture, nominally not sitting on the left nor right, has eaten UKIP’s lunch.
Not only do I not think lessons are being ignored. This country never fully took them onboard in the first place. It’s why the fascists got kicked to fuck in Cable Street in the 1930s, and why their modern day contemporaries travelling “mob-handed” to Liverpool can’t get any further than the Lime Street concourse.
Mate, you’re in a country that is going to be nationalist after being denied nationhood for so long, and visiting the site of some of the worst atrocities ever to have been committed on this planet. I can’t help thinking that weighs into your thinking. I don’t think it reflects reality in the UK, as the aforementioned electoral polls show.
UKIP no longer has a reason to exist. That’s why, to all intents and purposes, they dont; they were always essentially a single issue party, more like Goldsmith’s Referendum Party than anything else, and when the country voted to leave the EU their licence expired. The only people who don’t realise this are the people persisting in running UKIP as if it were still a viable concern, hence the prevalence of nutters in it’s tattered ranks.
(The Brexit Party is another kettle of fish, but will similarly become irrelevant once the decision to leave is finally enacted.)
I said the same thing after the referendum, that UKIP were no longer needed.
Two years later, the need for a specific political force was needed, UKIP were still around and ended up losing every seat in the European Parliament.
The point is that between the two choices, the UK shunned the racist and xenophobic choice.
Something remainers totally and utterly forget in their argument when discussing the referendum and also wanting another vote on it.
This Country doesn’t have a racist party or nothing compared to nearly every nation on the planet, this Country quite rightly doesn’t tolerate it (London and the liberal elite disagree but then again they always would) but if the vote was denied then they most certainly would and Labour would suffer the most.
It’s a good point, although I wasn’t looking to start another Brexit thread. UKIP’s dalliance with Robinson and increasingly mad leaders, and the consequent public rejection, was more the thing I was focusing on.
A long time ago, I read Jeremy Paxman’s The English. It’s a decent book, if written from a very middle class perspective (he references Brief Encounter throughout, hardly a tome of the proles).
He covered the applicability of the far right to the English, and gives a theory as to why it never took off here. Paraphrasing in my slightly less middle class way, he says that the quintessential quality of the English is that they don’t really give a fuck about being English.
We don’t pledge allegiance. We don’t bar new words from entering our language, and we don’t brainwash our kids like the French do.
Good points Pap but I was thinking a broader brush than just UKIP.
Yes I’ll keep an eye on the gang here, Austrua, Hungary but especially the US.
It’s a global trend. Let’s look for influencers and stuff was the idea
Through my contracting travels, I have spent time in digs with many Eastern European folk. Lovely on a one to one level, but understandably not very woke about democracy, understandably quite happy to have a national identity after being suppressed by the Soviets for so long.
Sadly mate, there is a very porous layer between nationalism and racism, which is not really something I can outright condemn people for, because they know no better.
I still worry about it though.
“Influencers”, eh?
“INFLUENCERS”???
Seems like it may be an issue.
Doing my Brexit Refugee/Uncle Phil Tours I am amazed at how many Americans Aussies and today, Northern Irish are seeing this too.
I don’t know why people aren’t seeing it.
the Problem seems to be that we have all been governed by centrist governments for a long time and some people seem to have decide that they don’t like what that means.
So you get Trump and Corbyn and Farage and the Italian bloke etc
These are all examples of people expressing their displeasure at the status quo
Haven’t we got a seperate thread for this?
And the Polish Nationalist Government
One rule for one and one for another? You sound like a liberal. If they’re racist and fascist they are exactly that.
Because centrist politics is seen as concession politics for the middle ground and majority.
Ummm, to be fair to @Intiniki there is not one mention of religion in that article and I don’t think she ever mentioned religion…
We’ve been moving further and further to the right for decades. We went past centre as soon as Thatcher walked through the door.
Corbyn. How does he fit in with the others?
You surely mean pfeffel.
The status quo has been right wing for decades and hopefully people are waking up to how it’s destroyed their and their children’s future.
Cente ground. Does anyone really still believe that obvious bollocks?
Not sure what that was about!