Around the world the lights are going out, and not just for Christmas.
In Gaza, Israel is trying to wipe out a people and their territory. Genocide is happening in plain sight, and our government and Opposition sit on the sidelines.
In Argentina, the FT reports:
Patricia Bullrich, the security minister appointed by Argentina's new president Javier Milei, has announced sweeping plans to crack down on protests, setting up a potential clash with social groups that have pledged to oppose “shock therapy” economic reforms.
Bullrich's new security protocol includes plans to block demonstrators from holding disruptive road-blocking protests in Buenos Aires, impose fines and potential legal penalties on protesters and social movements, and to call up all four of Argentina's federal police forces to participate in the clearing of protests.
The plans sound remarkably similar to those of our government in the face of XR. Argentina has, however, a greater reputation for the use of force.
In Italy at the weekend, Rishi Sunak said that illegal migration threatens to "overwhelm" Europe and claimed that "enemies" could use immigration as a "weapon" to “deliberately driving people to our shores to try to destabilise our society". This is a fascist narrative.
And as Heather Cox Richardson reports in her newsletter ‘Letter from an American' this morning:
On Saturday, in Durham, New Hampshire, Trump echoed Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's attacks on immigrants, saying they are “poisoning the blood of our country”—although two of his three wives were immigrants—and quoted Russian president Vladimir Putin's attacks on American democracy. Trump went on to praise North Korean autocratic leader Kim Jong Un and align himself with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, the darling of the American right wing, who has destroyed Hungary's democracy and replaced it with a dictatorship.
Trump called Orbán “the man who can save the Western world.”
Is all this really a coincidence, or are the far-right working to destroy freedoms, people, and the hopes of billions whilst denying realities like climate change in a coordinated fashion where each of these leaders seeks to outdo the others in the scale of their attacks on freedom?
Nothing about any of this makes it feel to me that we have much to celebrate this Christmas when we are so far from seeing peace on earth, let alone goodwill to all people.
The only thing we can be sure of this Christmas is that the so-called libertarians are anything but that.
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A common factor may well be Steve Bannon and his European project started during Trump’s reign. He toured Europe and was entertained by Johnson and Orban (I think) as well as contacts in Denmark, Netherlands. The USA far-right is behind much of this, cosy with Putin.
Yes,the Bannon Trump Putin Playbook is reaching fever pitch and the well organised activity will continue for years to come.
Bannon is party of this global hijacking of political power by criminal oligarchs and unhinged autocrats. However, this movement started to be embedded here in Northern Ireland before Trump became a thing. A loose confederation of extreme white supremacists with either US Xtian fundamentalist connections or disillusioned ex Iraq/Afghanistan war veterans and their fellow travellers in loyalist gangs were being obviously groomed online with racist Replacement theory back in 2009.
Many in the DUP then openly became the local political cheerleaders for MAGA and Nigel Farage’s Brexit cartel.
I still wonder what the hell UK Intelligence Services were actually doing during this period here. Especially since even the dogs in the street know we still cannot throw a stone without hitting one of them or their ‘assets’.
Asleep at the wheel or complicit ?
Indeed. As Open Democracy never tire of pointing out, there are direct links between the far right of the Tory Party and some distinctly shady donors
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/new-brexit-minister-arms-industry-american-hard-right-and-e/
Or this, on how the Tory Party came to be manipulated by the ERG
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/a-corruption-of-conservatism-how-a-cartel-of-tory-mps-broke-british-politics/
And I don’t think for one moment that Liz Truss has the native wit to come up with the line that she was pedalling a fortnight or so ago that it’s “essential for conservatism” that Donald Trump wins the US presidential election, on her own. The links between the far-right in Europe, including the nutters promoting national conservatism (yes Rees-Mogg, that includes you, amongst others) and US money is becoming more widely documented and should be a major cause for concern.
Alongside American far right “christians” funding the anti abortion campaigns in this country.
Notice the close link between far right and attacks on women’s access to abortion and desire to return to their historic role of breeding, and returning to their kitchens so they can look after their man.
Trump has to say this to ‘base” so they will keep sending him $30.00 per week so he can pay his legal bills as he throws money at every effort to stay out of jail. Trump does not believe in anything. His mind does not work that way. Trump only believes in self-preservation and self-enrichment.
Steve Bannon, on the other hand, DOES believe all this sh*t as he sees it as a way to protect his white privilege at the expense of anyone and anything that gets in his way.
At some level, I think, almost everybody knows that climate-ecological breakdown is coming unless we radically change our lifestyles and economies.
There are really only 2 rational responses to this. One is the left/green response: make the necessary changes. The other is the extreme right response: assert draconian control so the wealthy and privileged can continue their over-consumption regardless of what happens to the rest of us, or the environment.
What’s irrational now is political centrism: things are not too bad, radical change is risky, best to tinker a bit to see if we can make just a little progress…
This is I think particularly clear in the UK. where the Tory Party has no choice but to continue its rightward drift. This is for 2 reasons. The first is simple politics: if it had not adopted UKIP’s agenda, and much of its membership, it would have been electorally destroyed by the stripping out of it’s right-wing constituency – and this has not changed. One faltering step on its rightward path and ReformUK splits its vote.
But the second reason is much more important: there are simply no centre-right solutions to the current polycrisis. Do we really expect that, despite the evidence that it has failed utterly, the Tories will abandon privatisation and start advocating re-nationalisation of water, energy, etc? Or the massive increases in public spending, and taxation, needed to actually fix every public service? Or ultimately, the fundamental changes to our lifestyles and economies needed to avert climate/ecological breakdown?
There is simply nothing in centre-right, or indeed centre-left thinking that is adequate to these challenges – and I think many people know this too, hence the willingness of voters to move away from the centre – which takes us back to the Tories’ lack of any option other than to keep going further right…
Nothing to disagree with here from anyone.
Libertarianism is nothing but a strategic approach by wealth and those who tell us that they are ordained by destiny (or God) to make sure that they are in charge.
It is fascism for the ‘aspirational’ society.
Israel now finds its most enthusiastic support coming from the far-Right in other countries. It reflects the politics of their own government and a shared Islamophobia. They seem to have forgotten that the very worst of anti Semitism has its roots in the far Right and it has not gone away. Like Orban. This will not end well.
This evening Matt Frei on Ch4 news was interviewing an Israeli government spokesman. The latest news of churches and hospitals being shelled. A grandmother and child being shot by an Israeli sniper. The usual.
The response of the Israeli spokesman was to suggest that this was like the Blood Libel held against Jews. Just lies and antisemitism. Shockingly offensive and a profound abuse of both antiSemitism and the Holocaust. I stopped believing anything said by Israeli government spokespersons a while back but this hit a new low.
Israel has become a rogue state. It has gone from apartheid to terror and genocide and needs to be treated accordingly. At the same time, those in the Jewish community who have campaigned for years against the behaviour of their governments need maximum support. Anti Semitism, along with Islamophobia, anti-Palestinianand any other form of racism is never justified. And there is no pecking order in racism.
I saw that interview. It was shocking. I agree with your comments.
If you feel strongly about racism in any form including anti-Semitism, then there is something profoundly upsetting to hear someone hide behind anti-Semitism and the Holocaust as some warped justification for their own racism and extraordinary brutality.
The main thing I feel this Christmas is grief and mourning . Grief and mourning for ideals I thought Europe had, for a belief that the world had learnt never again after the horrors of the Nazis industrial killings and terror. The horror of the industrial killings of Palestinians by Israeli’s with the financial support and implicit agreement of the US and Europe has shocked me near to tears of sorrow for those cruelly
terrorised people.. I am going to try and enjoy Christmas with my family but have low expectations for a happy new year. I hope I am wrong.