WTF is happening to the UK?

[TheDecameron]

Indeed. Especially given history gives us so many blindingly clear warnings where the extremes of right-wing politics leads.

America recently had an actual coup attempt after a far-right president point blank refused to heed to established democratic/constitutional transitional process after substantively losing an election. Heavily armed white-supremacist militias are parading their arms openly on the streets, menacing minorities, even shooting up schools. Christian fundamentalists are targeting LGBTQ+ communities (as are the aforementioned fascist militias) and even trying to remove a woman’s right to choose what occurs in their own body. The whole 20th century civil rights movement is being erased.

In the UK we are now selecting refugees with a colour chart; welcoming the white ones, and sending the black or brown ones to concentration camps 4000 miles away in Rwanda. Our entirely rotten and corrupt oligarch-funded asset-stripping government has already removed much of our basic rights to protest and has already passed legislation to enable voter suppression and gerrymandering in what was already a hugely biased and stacked system.

We are where we are and people really need to wake the f*** up. The time right now is 1930s Germany. Call it what it is.

It’s the boiling frog model- the failure to notice until it’s too late. What on earth is normal about Johnson’s govt? Their lawless behaviour is without precedent in Britain, as Trump’s was in America and significant parts of society are endorsing it.

 

[Tony L]

To compare it to 1930’s Germany is a bit of a stretch.

Read a history book or two! Fascism didn’t suddenly appear in a puff of smoke, it was a gradual amping-up of an ideology and a divisive scapegoating rhetoric that sold national pride, security etc. This is all so well documented I’ve no idea how anyone can miss it. Our right-wing gutter tabloids are carbon copies of Der Stürmer, the attacks are all the same, and the Conservative government is actively driving it all.

 

[mandryka]

Read a history book or two. Fascism didn’t suddenly appear in a puff of smoke, it was a gradual amping-up of an ideology and a divisive scapegoating rhetoric that sold national pride, security etc. This is all so well documented I’ve no idea how anyone can miss it.

That’s true. But when you talk of 1930s Germany you evoke a particular model of fascism, a model most people agree is extremely abhorrent because of how it actually treated some of its citizens. It’s easy to think « oh, no one is restricting the rights of a specific group of citizens here - like Hitler did for Jews back then. »

Or are they?

 

[Woodface]

I hope you are right but people turning a blind eye thinking ’it couldn’t happen here’ are in effect enablers.

That’s a bit of a stretch, I am certainly not an enabler. Ultimately I’ve done my best to ensure my kids are brought up to respect others regardless of race or income.

I’ve never voted Tory in my life, I intend to use my vote wisely to ensure that they are booted out next time.

Lots is bad things are happening here, I don’t believe it’s akin to Germany in the 1930s & other countries have problems also.

I am not sure what else I can do personally, moaning on here probably won’t help.

 

[Woodface]

Read a history book or two. Fascism didn’t suddenly appear in a puff of smoke, it was a gradual amping-up of an ideology and a divisive scapegoating rhetoric that sold national pride, security etc. This is all so well documented I’ve no idea how anyone can miss it.

You are falling into the trap of assuming greater knowledge. I’ve read a lot of books, just finished an excellent one called ‘The Passenger’, you may find it interesting. I have a good understanding of how fascism happened in Germany & the subsequent aftermath postwar.

I don’t see a direct parallel to 1930s Germany, there are some worrying similarities but I feel it’s a bit of a stretch.

What are you doing that I am not? Not sure voting Lib Dem is the answer either

 

[TheDecameron]

Read a history book or two. Fascism didn’t suddenly appear in a puff of smoke, it was a gradual amping-up of an ideology and a divisive scapegoating rhetoric that sold national pride, security etc. This is all so well documented I’ve no idea how anyone can miss it.

Over a number of years the Nazi Party went from 2% in elections to taking power. The people weren’t going to be pushed around any more by enemies external and internal, it seems. Who’d ever have imagined immigrants would be abducted from Britain to detention camps in Rwanda…by the British government?

 

[mandryka]

Thanks @Seanm for the London Review of Books article, which I’ll read tonight and think about. Just browsing it, what it says about benefit legislation is interesting for the position I was starting to develop.

 

[Seanm]

That’s true. But when you talk of 1930s Germany you evoke a particular model of fascism, a model most people agree is extremely abhorrent because of how it actually treated some of its citizens. It’s easy to think « oh, no one is restricting the rights of a specific group of citizens here - like Hitler did for Jews back them. »

Or are they?

The key thing in the U.K. is the distinction between citizen and non-citizen, and making that distinction a fragile one for certain groups of people. It’s very difficult, post-Nazism, to actually enshrine racial distinctions in a constitution: you need, say, a history like Israel’s. So other means have to be found.

 

[mandryka]

The key thing in the U.K. is the distinction between citizen and non-citizen, and making that distinction a fragile one for certain groups of people. It’s very difficult, post-Nazism, to actually enshrine racial distinctions in a constitution: you need, say, a history like Israel’s. So other means have to be found.

See above!

 

[Seanm]

Thanks @Seanm for the London Review of Books article, which I’ll read tonight and think about. Just browsing it, what it says about benefit legislation is interesting for the position I was starting to develop.

Welcome. I deleted my post because my point didn’t make any sense, reading it back. Essay link’s here in case anyone’s interested: it’s on the Home Office’s weaponisation of bureaucracy.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n09/william-davies/weaponising-paperwork

 

[Tony L]

That’s true. But when you talk of 1930s Germany you evoke a particular model of fascism, a model most people agree is extremely abhorrent because of how it actually treated some of its citizens. It’s easy to think « oh, no one is restricting the rights of a specific group of citizens here - like Hitler did for Jews back them. »

Or are they?

I view the USA and the UK as pretty much the same thing. Where America goes politically the UK is only a couple of years behind. They have already had a far-right coup attempt, there has been endless election gerrymandering etc, white supremacy and religious fascism is gaining huge ground and is not only an existential threat to the LGBTQ+ community but it is also seeking to set the whole women’s rights movement back by a century or so. A Taliban level of authoritarianism. That is before we even get to black civil rights, which if the right have their way is rapidly heading backwards to an authoritarian apartheid.

In the UK we thankfully lack the religious fundamentalism/terrorism, but a very similar racist, nationalist and xenophobic political culture exists right in the mainstream and has done since the Conservative Party so widely adopted popularist NF, UKIP and Daily Mail policy. This starting with the Nazi-styled ‘go home’ vans of Theresa May’s ‘Hostile Environment’, the illegal deportations and countless human rights violations of ‘Windrush’, the toxic attitude that led to the criminal negligence of Grenfell, the branding of civil rights judges and lawyers as ‘enemies of the people’ and has currently escalated to the point of colour-selecting fleeing refugees and deporting those of an unacceptable hue 4000 miles away to concentration camps in Rwanda. At every stage the rights of minorities are reduced, the right for decent people to protest, demand accountability or democratically oppose eroded.

It is what it is.

 

[mandryka]

I view the USA and the UK as pretty much the same thing. Where America goes politically the UK is only a couple of years behind. They have already had a far-right coup attempt, there has been endless election gerrymandering etc, white supremacy and religious fascism is gaining huge ground and is not only an existential threat to the LGBTQ+ community but it is also seeking to set the whole women’s rights movement back by a century or so. A Taliban level of authoritarianism. That is before we even get to black civil rights, which if the right have their way is rapidly heading backwards to an authoritarian apartheid.

In the UK we thankfully lack the religious fundamentalism/terrorism, but a very similar racist, nationalist and xenophobic political culture exists right in the mainstream and has done since the Conservative Party so widely adopted popularist NF, UKIP and Daily Mail policy. This starting with the Nazi-styled ‘go home’ vans of Theresa May’s ‘Hostile Environment’, the illegal deportations and countless human rights violations of ‘Windrush’, the toxic attitude that led to the criminal negligence of Grenfell, the branding of civil rights judges and lawyers as ‘enemies of the people’ and has currently escalated to the point of colour-selecting fleeing refugees and deporting those of an unacceptable hue 4000 miles away to concentration camps in Rwanda. At every stage the rights of minorities is reduced, the right for decent people to protest, demand accountability or democratically oppose eroded.

It is what it is.

There’s nothing here which I don’t agree with, and you have my respect for saying it so clearly and forcefully. I just think that when you compare what’s happening here now to 1930s Germany, you run the risk of being dismissed as overreacting, as, if I read him right, @Woodface did. But I want to think about that LRB article which Sean linked to.

 

[sean99]

Take a breath. Things are not as bad as the 80s & early 90s, massive endemic unemployment & high interest rates. Some perspective is required. We are poorly governed at present but this is still a great country where you can make a good life for yourself.
I really don’t understand how constantly slagging off the country you live in helps any. All countries have there problems & foibles. I do wish we had better weather though.
If we are honest it’s just privileged whinging.

Where I agree with you
- Brits complain too much, especially about the UK. (Though the tory government of the past 10 years have given them a lot to complain about.)
- Relative to much of the rest of the world the UK is still a good place to live (though becoming less so as time passes). Compared to peer countries, not so much.

Where I don't agree with you
- It's different to the 80s/90s now. Unemployment is not so high as back then, but under-employment is arguably worse - people working one or more jobs who can still not afford basics. The cost of living is way higher now than in the 1990s, largely due to the broken housing market.
- This too - might not pass. With the worst government in living memory the 2024 election is still a toss up, and >40% of the population think it's OK to ship brown asylum seekers to Rwanda. If the Tories win again in 2024, which is not out of the question, the future will be very grim
- UK weather is not bad at all. When we lived in England Brits would tell my (American wife) how bad UK weather is and how it's so much better in America, and she'd reply that UK weather can be rather gloomy, but it's rarely fatal (unlike much of the US with the tremendous heat, cold, humidity, wildfires, tornadoes and hurricanes.

 

[sean99]

That's gone now. Reagan was too mainstream. In today's GOP he'd be a RINO.

Indeed. The GOP of today venerates ..... Trump and Putin.

 

[Yank]

That’s true. But when you talk of 1930s Germany you evoke a particular model of fascism, a model most people agree is extremely abhorrent because of how it actually treated some of its citizens. It’s easy to think « oh, no one is restricting the rights of a specific group of citizens here - like Hitler did for Jews back then. »

Or are they?

Fascism does not necessarily require pogrom and conquest. Franco was a Fascist too.

 

[Yank]

Indeed. The GOP of today venerates ..... Trump and Putin.

I think it's possible the GOP is starting to move to the right of Trump. Trump first and foremost is a grifter seeking approval and personal gain. Extreme ideology is just a convenient means to his personal goals. The likes of DeSantis, Cruz, Greene or Gaetz are capable of going beyond that since they are primarily political animals and true believers.

 

[Nick_G]

I think it's possible the GOP is starting to move to the right of Trump. Trump first and foremost is a grifter seeking approval and personal gain. Extreme ideology is just a convenient means to his personal goals. The likes of DeSantis, Cruz, Greene or Gaetz are capable of going beyond that since they are primarily political animals and true believers.

We all thought that GOP stood for Grand Old Party. But not anymore. Now it's the Gestapo Ordnung Partei...

 

[Tony L]

I think it's possible the GOP is starting to move to the right of Trump. Trump first and foremost is a grifter seeking approval and personal gain. Extreme ideology is just a convenient means to his personal goals. The likes of DeSantis, Cruz, Greene or Gaetz are capable of going beyond that since they are primarily political animals and true believers.

I suspect the GOO will split with anyone decent leaving, or a real purge will take place, both happened here with Johnson. Brexit cleaned all the decent Tories out one way or another. All long gone.

Trump has been saying some totally deranged stuff of late, e.g. that if returned to power he will pardon all Jan 6th terrorists, plus he has in no way distanced himself from the ‘Proud Boys’ leaks that they would have murdered Pence and Pelosi had they got to them. The gallows erected outside were no joke, and Trump is perfectly happy to have these people on side. They are literally the SS (which similarly started as a voluntary militia). That the rest of the GOP beyond say Liz Cheney, who is doing a great job with the hearings, and Pence who did the right thing on the day, seem happy to go along with this fascism is truly scary. DeSantis, Cruz, Green, Boebert etc are utter monsters. Terrifying people. Either truly evil, or too cowardly to denounce true evil when it is right in front of them. Exactly what happened in Germany.

 

[mandryka]

Fascism does not necessarily require pogrom and conquest. Franco was a Fascist too.

Absolutely. There is no dispute that there are similarities between the way we are heading in the UK and very authoritarian, fascist, ideas.

 

[Yank]

I suspect the GOO will split with anyone decent leaving, or a real purge will take place, both happened here with Johnson. Brexit cleaned all the decent Tories out one way or another. All long gone.

Trump has been saying some totally deranged stuff of late, e.g. that if returned to power he will pardon all Jan 6th terrorists, plus he has in no way distanced himself from the ‘Proud Boys’ leaks that they would have murdered Pence and Pelosi had they got to them. The gallows erected outside were no joke, and Trump is perfectly happy to have these people on side. They are literally the SS (which similarly started as a voluntary militia). That the rest of the GOP beyond say Liz Cheney, who is doing a great job with the hearings, and Pence who did the right thing on the day, seem happy to go along with this fascism is truly scary. DeSantis, Cruz, Green, Boebert etc are utter monsters. Terrifying people. Either truly evil, or too cowardly to denounce true evil when it is right in front of them. Exactly what happened in Germany.

And 6 Jan was their Beer Hall Putsch.