I posted this in Twitter this afternoon, summarising a conversation I had today:
I think this is the choice that we as a society now face.
We know that Labour is refusing to tax wealth right now. In that case it is enabling fascism, in my opinion. This is what worries me about it, above all else.
Fascism is the enemy now. Events in the USA are making that clearer by the moment, and Labour are already indicating that they think that this is a matter about which they need have no opinion, as if the rise of fascism there is a matter of no concern to it, and is a matter about which we may not comment because of our ‘special relationship' with the US, which requires us to befriend the fascists when they get to power.
My sense that we are walking towards a precipice grows, almost by the minute.
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Couldn’t agree more Richard
The democratic party machine gave us Trump the first time round when they refused to endorse Bernie Sanders ahead of Hillary Clinton when all the polling said Clinton was going to get beaten and the only chance they had was Bernie who was polling up to 15pts ahead of trump and would likely have won by a mile.
The problem for the hierarchy of the democratic party machine was that Sanders was way too progressive and far too left wing for their donors, they knew if they endorsed him they would lose millions possibly hundreds of millions. So, better to lose with Hillary than win with Bernie and maybe win next time round.
It has been exactly the same story here in the UK
So we had Blair who tinkered around the edges of neolibralism and refused to reform the press or introduce a written constitution he was followed by Brown who was happy to bail out privately owned banks with approx £860 billion of corporate welfare from the public purse but would not lift every child out of poverty.
Brown could have demanded golden shares, seats on boards, percentages of profits but no nothing.
Can you imagine if he had bailed out one single trade union for a couple of million quid he would have been defenestrated.
Corbyn was far too left wing for the hierarchy in the Labour Party who undermined his leadership from the very start with Southbank diverting funds to Right wing MPs with safe seats whilst denying money to those with a fight on.
Right wing Labour MPs in the house tried to undermine him at every opportunity and even colluded in the antisemitic lies and smear campaign.
The Labour machine had clearly decided better another five years of the Tories than a genuine left wing alternative.
The establishment through their friends and relatives in the media be it broadcast or print went full on to stop the one thing they truly feared which was what Corbyn promised
…CHANGE!!!
Now we have Starmer and Reeves and Streeting who are so obviously going to fail to change the lives of the majority of people the UK they will be the midwives to Farage and his fascism.
So called centrists are always the pathway to power for fascists.
In weimar Germany it was the courts that failed they had a chance but flunked it and here we stand 85 years later and we are about to gift fascism another free hand.
I despair.
@patherepublican
An excellent summary
In Weimar it was the SPD who ordered the state assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Leibnitz, reportly outsourcing their dirty work to right wing militia murder gangs.
Imo, that treachery destroyed any possibilty of strong left alliances thereafter.
@patthepublican
You are very hard on Tony Blair. He DID use his massive majority and mandate for change to produce an entirely toothless ban on fox hunting. Which last time I noticed was operating as business as usual.
I want to shake so many on the left and say that we need a new democratic party. I cannot believe so many plough the same furrows without making an effort, outside of a few boroughs in London. Social Democratic Alliance or Demoncratic Socialist Alliance? Pissed-off Middle-Aged Dullards? Don’t care as long as we get on nationalising water and the privatised bits of the NHS.
My sense is Starmer and the other Labour leaders know exactly what they are doing. They are comfortable with the move to the Right. Starmer ,like Blair will risk war. His record on war is particularly shocking. Its not just Iraq. He was complicit in the bombing of Serbia having lied about tens of thousands of Kosovan Albanians being murdered. How many people remember Harold Pinter accusing Blair of war crimes? How any British Prime Minister can shake hands with one of the worst monsters of recorded history is beyond my comprehension. The same goes for Lammy. When he spoke about his distress at the suffering of relatives of the Israeli hostages , blamed Hamas but didn’t utter a word about the barbaric slaughter of Palestinians made me feel like vomiting. Inhuman.
Sadly, you too have a choice, Richard. Now that Musk has come out firmly in favour of Trump, can you justify continuing to use Twitter (now known as X)?
Yes
Because he is not Twitter. He is just its temporary owner.
Fairness. Kindness. Justice
These are the antitheses of fascism which is, mostly, about bullying, might is right, my fist (or bank account) is bigger than yours, I am more important than you cos my bank account is bigger (it usually all comes down to money – Musk Koch et al) ergo I know better.
Don’t like bullies. Never have. Fascism = bullies – the baton in lieu of discussion.
Watching part of the RNC on TV yesterday and their lies about helping the working class be able to afford food and houses again I have to wonder do they REALLY believe this when the Repubs are the party of big business, billionaires and shafting everyone else. How can they believe this? Are they given a little pill at the door? Notably white, overweight middle aged audience waving signs saying “make America wealthy again.’ Repugnant.
You would be surprised what some can believe when it’s in their interest to do so.
If you’re going to tell a lie, tell a big one and tell it often.
What fascism? We have just returned a Labour Govt with a landslide majority..
You are the problem. If you think people believe in this government you are seriously deluded. You are even more so if you think it will deliver for people in this country.
Might I recommend Chantal Mouffe for some background reading?
Her argument is that converging centrist parties of right and left, pursuing very similar agendas, based on the same underlying hegemonic doctrines, i.e. neoliberalism, merely open up large spaces for extremism, often emerging from vociferous populist leaders working grievances.
So there’s your open door for fascism.
Centrist authoritarianism then validates the processes. E.g. 3yr jail sentences for JSO activists.
Anyone expecting more than minor incremental change from an SKS government is urinating upwind.
See what I have just posted
I suspect Labour’s direction of travel can be seen by who they think fit to be in prison; criminals go free while protestors are to get lengthy sentences #JustStopOil
The US has a choice. If they choose poorly it will get messy for themselves (particularly for anyone who is not a rich white man) and for the rest of the world. There is a phrase attributed to Churchill (although he probably never said it) to the effect that “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”
The UK had a choice with the right wing populists in Reform. France had a choice with the RN. India recently turned to some extent away from the BJP. The Germans had a choice with the AfD. Italy made a choice. Poland and Brazil had their right wing government for years and then threw them out. Hungary, Turkey, Russia, etc still have their authoritarian nationalists in power. China is increasingly authoritarian and militaristic.
The world seems to be a much nastier and more unstable place than it has been for decades. With inexorable global warming, but he pressure is only going to increase year by year. There is a choice. We can pull together and address problems collectively. Or we can fracture into interest group and turn on “the other” (i.e each other).
One of the problems with UKIP/Brexit Party/Reform (three cheeks of the same arse, to use the vernacular), is that a substantial chunk of their voter base aren’t interested in facts, just emotion.
The original raison d’etre was to obtain Brexit and, when they did and it was the expected disaster, it was just because Brexit was ‘done wrong’. Few of them will admit they were sold a pup and are happily marching to the populist tune.
This is certainly opening up the way to fascism, but how do we deal with it? Improving the lot of the general populace is usually seen as the way to combat extremism, but we’ve got a substantial chunk of the electorate who would still see things as terrible in such a case because all the ‘wrong sort of people’ were in power.
I suspect it is much the same in mainland Europe, but the far-right there only have immigration to coalesce around, as Brexit has shown them what leaving the EU is likely to do. I’d hope this leaves them in a less bad place than us, not that this helps the UK!
I do fear for the future as I can’t see how it will be possible for left-leaning governments to overcome the well-funded disinformation networks operating on social media. Dark money from the likes of the loathsome Thiel, Elmo brazenly pushing outright propaganda (a real cheerleader for Putin) and destroying pretty much any proper internal regulation of the platform to allow numberless bots to push disinformation, Zuckerberg just happy to make as much money as possible, regardless of the consequences. And so on.
The media has been dominated by right-wing interests for decades, but it’s nothing compared to the reach of social media. The rise of conspiracy theories about Covid, vaccines and all sorts of other nonsense shown how difficult it is to counter this nonsense and it’s no coincidence that the likes of the Heritage foundation seem to be behind them all.
How will we get information about reality to these people when they are living in echo chambers, have no interest in reality and the people who own the platforms have an agenda which we can’t really combat?
Crikey, I’ve made myself depressed now.
Very interesting topic, thanks for posting.