The New York Times began an email I received overnight by saying:
Today, I'm talking to my colleague Damien Cave, who wrote a great piece about the global crackdown on free speech that now includes the United States. (Spoiler alert: Jimmy Kimmel is back. But free speech is not.)
The acknowledgement is appropriate. Trump has moved the US into the category of those states where fascism demands that free speech be curtailed so that the cult of the leader can be maintained. The First Amendment might still exist on paper, but the mainstream media channels will be self-censoring from now on: the end of free speech is nigh, and the New York Times knows and acknowledges it.
The same is happening here. Yesterday, the Labour Party members in conference voted to acknowledge that Israel is undertaking a genocide in Gaza. Luke Akehurst MP, one of the most vile people (in my opinion) to be elected to that office in a long time, roundly criticised it for doing so, rolling out the now ridicuous argument of it not recognising that the October 7 2023 attack had happoened, when that could never, whatever happened then, ever justify the actions of Israel that have followed since then.
Then Ed Miliband (who now looks skeletal) told Channel 4 News that he could not comment on this as he did not have the relevant legal experience to do so, lying plainly and straightforwardly when doing so, because this is not a legal issue: all that is required is to witness what is going on in plain sight.
And later in the evening, Keir Starmer announced that he was backing the Trump / Netanyahu peace plan for Gaza, about which Palestinians have not been consulted, and about which the only option presented to them is to agree, or Israel will be permitted to finish the job in Gaza.
By doing so, Starmer rewarded Israel for its genocide.
Doing so, he also ignored the rights of Palestinians and refused to acknowledge their right to statehood, which he claimed to have recognised only last week.
Instead, he supported its occupation and redevelopment by what will, in effect, be a Trump-directed property organisation, working with Israel to make a new resort destination where Palestinians now live, all for the benefit of the Israeli tourism industry.
As The Spectator notes in a mail this morning:
Under the plan, an international supervisory body – provisionally entitled the Board of Peace – would oversee an apolitical committee of Palestinians running Gaza day-to-day. The board would be chaired by President Trump and would include other international figures, most prominently one Sir Tony Blair. It would also call for an immediate ceasefire, the release of all remaining hostages in exchange for 2,000 Palestinian detainees, the withdrawal of the Israel Defence Forces from Gaza, and full disarmament of Hamas. The President cannot be faulted for his ambition.
I can assure you, he can be. As can Trump and Starmer. Both are lining up to support Zionist oppression.
And where is free speech in all this?
It was certainly not at the Labour Party conference, which, as usual, Starmer is ignoring.
And nor was it at the Trump / Netanyahu press conference, where the pair - both of whom should be heading for the Hague for what they are doing - refused to take questions. So much for press freedom.
Stand back from all of this, and you cannot help but think three things.
First, there is a globally backed fascist coup going on, with Netanyahu at its epicentre, Trump gleefully supporting it, and with Starmer cheering from the sidelines, all of them willingly supporting genocide (UK arms sales to Israel were at a record high in June this year, we also learned last night)
Second, there is nothing Jewish about this coup. I am certain of this, and comments from within Israel itself prove that. Just read what Hareetz has to say. It may be Zionist, and it may be fascist, but it has nothing to do with Jewishness. Instead, it is all about seizing the power to control. Recognising this means that criticising what is going on has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, which is, however, being cynically exploited by some to provide cover for what is happening.
Third, the coup is far from over. Just look at the now widespread belief that the Brit Card is likely to be provided by some form of joint venture between the far-right Tech Bro, Peter Thiel and Tony Blair's son Euan - which rumours may not be true of course, but which are widely circulating, noneetheless - and the feeling that some form of conspiracy is taking place is hard to resist. It is as if we are being occupied, taken over, manipulated and controlled without our consent and with the active connivance of our own government, which would appear to be being run for the benefit of absolutely anyone but us, and that there is nothing we can do about what is happening as all our freedoms begin to vanish before our eyes.
I have alway rejected conspiracy theories. They rarely serve a purpose. Except, this does not feel like a conspiracy anymore. It feels like reality. And it feels like it is happening, and happening now.
My question is, have we - like the States - already been occupied by a far-right government that reached office via the debased form of electoral system that too many in this country still call democratic, which government is now being run for the benefit of a very few far-right big businesses and no one else? The possibility that this could have already happened suddenly feels frighteningly real.
Poll
Loading ...Taking further action
If you want to write a letter to your MP on the issues raised in this blog post, there is a ChatGPT prompt to assist you in doing so, with full instructions, here.
One word of warning, though: please ensure you have the correct MP. ChatGPT can get it wrong.
Comments
When commenting, please take note of this blog's comment policy, which is available here. Contravening this policy will result in comments being deleted before or after initial publication at the editor's sole discretion and without explanation being required or offered.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
[…] post appears to be particularly relevant in light of another piece I have written this morning on the collapse of democracy, free speech, and the rise of the far […]
Once upon a time ‘Bakerstreetherald’ and subsequently David Powell published a stream of warnings about corporate takeover of the UK, and that the whole of the UK, land and law in particular, would be essentially privatised. Five years ago this seemed a bit conspiracy theory. Starmer was installed, as we now know, by a Zionist funded faction in Labour. The structure of the party, and almost all of the left, was demolished in a barrage of lies and fixes. Starmeroids were parachuted into seats vacated by locals who were suspended from standing. When you take it all in, including the last year, you can’t but help seeing a massive shift in governance towards the rich and the corporations, with the alternative presently being an overtly fascist Trumpist company posing as a party. This is no longer a democracy, but a right wing oligarchy.
It is my opinion that it is technology that is allowing the mask to slip from the ruling establishment, or to be more exact, making them less fearful of allowing the mask to slip. Democracy in this country, and the United States, has been more of a pressure cooker release valve. The two party systems allowed people the illusion of choice, and clearly divided them into easily identified groups. Whenever one party was out of favour, the rich could pivot to the other and know their needs would be met. Opinions could swayed, subverted and undermined by print media, and life could go on. There was no need for violence by the establishment to achieve their aims, and the rule of law prevailed, however one sided it may be. Now, the rise of the internet and big tech platforms have allowed ever greater levels of manipulation, and now it has reached the level where they believe that total control is achievable via technological means. We don’t know what Peter Thiel is offering, but we do know he doesn’t believe in democracy and is developing AI and surveilance tools on behalf of governments. We also know that China has created a stable surveilance state. If governments in the West are given the ability to digitally surveil and target individuals, to ruin their lives silently and without the need for overt violence, and the bad piblicity that comes with it, they will take it. In conclusion, I think that our governments feel that the negatives of implementing fascism can now be countered by total surveilance and control. The mask is off, and our political and economic elites feel emboldened to just let loose with the authoritarian instincts they have always held.
Only a complete clean out of the constitution would stop this – and roll it back. I have tried to suggest a Commission on the Constitution COTC – which would ban dark money from politics, insider contracts, bribery for honours, MP’s 2nd ‘jobs’, and also lay down minimum democratic standards for political parties so the Zionist factional coup within Labour could not have happened.
But how will we ever get such a thing? Absolutely no sign – although Polly Toynbee has now suggested Starmer could bring forward his ‘clean up politics’ promise. That must be a joke.
Typo: “too may” — I’m sure you meant ‘too many’.
I did
Spell check would not work on this one this morning – I am amazed there were so few typos
The argument for recognition of Palestine is 78 years old
Recognition includes self- determination but that has never been on the cards. It still isn’t.
We have consistently ignored justice in favour of war crimes.
Convicted fraudster Trump and indicted fraudster Netanyahu are defrauding and destroying a nation.
Starmer is a willing accomplice, complicit in their genocidal war crimes. Blair does the networking and collects the fees for himself and his family. I am reminded of a mobster lawyer. The genocide continues.
Richard, you are so sensible and you “never believe in conspiracy theories”.
Now one is coming true. Are you waking up yet?
It sounds like it.
Most conspiracy theories are utter nonsense, from the harmless Area 51 stuff to the more insidious ones: blood libel, great replacement theory, and the QAnon rabbit hole. They don’t stand up to scrutiny, and the number of people involved would make it impossible for secrecy to remain intact. There are real conspiracies, however. Dark money in politics is well-documented, and right-wing groups are in communication around the world. They exchange tactics thought up in various think tanks. A talking point raised by a right-wing demagogue in one country will invariably turn up in another. Victor Orban visited Trump in Mar-a-lago before the election. Starmer met with Trump before the election. The conspiracy to push the world to the political Right, often the Far Right, is so well documented that it is barely that. A conspiracy is only a conspiracy until it is successful, just as a traitor is only a traitor until they are a king. The people behind the conspiracy don’t really need to hide it, as they feel that their success will define their past actions. They own the newspapers and the media; they can “flood the zone with shit”, they can accuse their opponents of the same thing, they can muddy the waters with the fantasy conspiracies. This is why the Left struggles. No one with money would back a left-wing government against their own interests. They wouldn’t choose to become less wealthy and powerful. There is no left-wing conspiracy because no one will pay for it.
I won’t surprise you with my answer which is in the affirmative. It’s why I don’t vote and why I see a fascist period now as inevitable.
I think the turning point for me was 2008 and all that. The world held its breath to see what would happen, but the huge backlash did not really happen. Capital held its nerve and has from that point I feel pressed home its advantage. Austerity is what we get as if it is our needs that caused the crisis. Corrupt governments everywhere have reinforced this. In fact, the question needs to be what have our oligarchs learnt from Vladimir Putin? I think that they have learnt too much. Katherine Belton and Tom Burgis have spoken; capitalism as we know has strong soviet tendencies.
Added to that, I think capital takes global warming very seriously indeed. It’s just that they see the coping with it as highly individualised – looking after themselves first rather than anything remotely collective in nature – to them it is sink or swim and grab as much as you can before it all goes down the toilet. Us included.
We’ve often reflected here about what needs to happen before there is some sort of epiphany and the oppressed do something about it, especially here in the West. I have only this to say on that:
The world we inhabit is distorted by debt fuelled materialism which offers some sort of ersatz stability. Recently, some of that stability has been punctured by reality – and the environment has the led the way (and a lot of war seems to take place at arms length and happens to ‘other people’). We’ve been living in a dream world of cars and real estate.
So, if events need to make us change course and wake up, unfortunately they will have to be on a scale or intensity that non of us can imagine – it’s going to have to be really, really bad in order to shake us out of capitalist induced stupor/contentment. And I think it will be.
This does not mean that we can’t talk about it etc. But Michael Hudson’s view of ‘elective oligarchy’? Well he hit the nail on the head, as he often does.
The coup is well underway. I found myself shouting at the tv last night when watching Ed Milliband being interviewed on Channel Four news and him spinning the line about genocide and its legal definition. His wife, Justine Thornton, is a High Court judge! I should know because when we were both members of the same chambers we co-wrote a number of articles and books. I cannot believe that the topic of the application of the legal definition of genocide to the horrors going on in Gaza has not cropped up once in conversations over their kitchen table!
Thank you.
Sorry for the second post but the recent New Statesman podcast on who funds the Tony Blair Institute makes chilling listening.
The low down?
Large amounts of donations in the tens of millions from Larry Ellison of Oracle. The podcast featured Peter Geoghegan and May Bulman. They show that his personal foundation had pledged to the TBI at least £257 million. The TBI now has over 900 staff and is working across at least 45 countries. No doubt they will be recruiting for their new Gaza ‘initiative’…….The podcast raises serious questions about who the TBI works for and for what purpose.
Deeply scary.
Thank you.
Larry Ellison and Tony Blair – a combination made in hell.
The UN decides there is a genocide taking place and Tump welcomes the leader of the responsible state. The Trump -Netanyahu plan may be welcomed by Starmer and others but I doubt it will be popular in the Middle East. Mustafa Bahgouti of the Palestinian Authority said Blair is not acceptable.
The development to watch may be the Macron/European and Saudi Arabian talks which could try to bypass the US solution. The Arab states are in no mood to cooperate with Isreal and they know when push comes to shove the US will back Israel -IMO mainly for domestic reasons.
It would be nice to feel that we were on the right side of history.
Netanyahu makes Putin look like Mother Theresa. The impact of the Israel lobby globally is enormous …
An excellent book written by Sheldon Wolin a Princeton Philospher – “Democracy Incorporated – Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism” – describes the USA and UK perrfectly:
“Democracy is struggling in America–by now this statement is almost cliche. But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms “inverted totalitarianism”? Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive–and where elites are eager to keep them that way. At best the nation has become a “managed democracy” where the public is shepherded, not sovereign. At worst it is a place where corporate power no longer answers to state controls. Wolin makes clear that today’s America is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, yet he warns that unchecked economic power risks verging on total power and has its own unnerving pathologies. Wolin examines the myths and mythmaking that justify today’s politics, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, and the perverse attractions of an endless war on terror. He argues passionately that democracy’s best hope lies in citizens themselves learning anew to exercise power at the local level. Democracy Incorporated is one of the most worrying diagnoses of America’s political ills to emerge in decades. It is sure to be a lightning rod for political debate for years to come. In a new preface, Wolin describes how the Obama administration, despite promises of change, has left the underlying dynamics of managed democracy intact.”
Much to agree with
It is apparent that many of the major powers are heading towards fascism, whether they realise it themselves or not.
In the 1930s, when several countries went full fascist, there was enough of the rest of the world who were able to oppose and defeat them.
My question now is, are there enough sufficiently powerful countries left to oppose our nascent new fascist states, or is the whole world going to fall to this change in the end?
Paul
It could be argued that the coup began with the election of New Labour under Tony Blair and his adoption of many of Thatcher’s policies.
Before that, Milton Friedman’s Chicago School of Economics started the ball rolling.
All of Starmer’s policies support corporatism, profits before people. The coup is complete.
Recommended reading: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2008) by Naomi Klein
https://amzn.eu/d/gQRcC3h
Chris Hedges recent post on Substack is a frightening read and highlights the descent into fascism in the US: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/trumps-war-on-america?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share
Thanks
A blog may follow.
I was shocked to read the 20 point peace agreement put out by Netanyahu and Trump. It reads as if Trump jotted it down over breakfast , there is no indication that anyone seriously thought out any of the points. To agree with it is to agree with anything Israel might come up with and the presence of Blair and the awful Jared Kushner just makes the whole thing even more sinister. The Palestinians who have survived desperately need peace before winter finally kills them all off, but to agree to this peace means they will be even worse off than they were before. Where is the global community, so fond of hugging their humanitarian impulses to shout down this false agreement meant only to make Hamas look intransigent if they refuse.
The ‘Netanyahu / Trump’ deal is an Imperialist agenda through and through.. nothing more, nothing less. A total abuse of power aimed at cornering Palestinians and legitimising their destruction. This is NOT a peace agreement. It would have to involve the concerned party, the Palestinians, and it should be negotiated fully, with other concerned parties in the region, step-by-step, after a ceasefire is implemented, humanitarian relief allowed into Gaza. Yes, the hostages should be released, so should Palestinians prisoners, but clearly the Israeli government (and Trump) are offering NO guarantee as what comes next. This is hollow. I won’t even comment on Blair’s proposed involvement!!! I cannot see how Hamas will be able to agree to this and so it will be convenient to blame all the killings and destruction on the Palestinians again. It is a despicable, sickening game of persecution…. Netanyahu should have been arrested (!!) and brought to trial for Genocide, not allowed to set up this manipulative game with Trump. So yes, a “Coup” has already taken place in this world….. we are already in the sick of it all.
The problem is, the centrist right and the centrist left are all in this together, curtailing free speech, survellance everywhere, id cards, systematic control of everything.
The labour government can now tell blatant lies without recourse, looks like we need a revolution or risk being pawns submitting to the elite….
Where is this centrist left you are taklking about? If you think Labour is left of centre you are profoundly mistaken.