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forum
The Reform Party and the UK’s lurch towards fascism
I posted an earlier version of this a while back - inspired to do update following THAT discussion about all things ULEZ.
The “manifesto”, in terms of transport, only mentions stopping HS2, but there’s plenty on the usual right-wing obsessions: Brexit, immigration, veterans and climate change. I had another look because I worry about the ongoing decline of the two main political parties.
If the Cons stay wedded to Brexit, then we will go into the next GE with all the widespread impoverishment Brexit has ushered in - not helped by Covid, Putin, etc. People generally vote according to their pockets. I don’t get Labour’s current position on Europe either, but let’s see how that evolves, and even the Cons may also evolve, or even pivot, but time is already running out for them.
Several roads now lead to the horrors of a further lurch to the right in this country. Let’s hope Labour get the GE landslide the polls are predicting - but we’re still at least a year out from the real campaigning beginning.
A cycling angle? With the Reform Party and its ilk, Facebook Steve and Nextdoor Dave attain real political influence. It’s not spelt out in the manifesto, but you can see where this is probably heading and what it is likely to mean for cycling. You can bet that this lot are very much "on the side of hard working drivers" etc.
As you all know, Dave’s going to “sort the traffic” and no doubt show them lazy planners how it’s done: Steve thinks the Council are corrupt, the police blinkered and is, if he can fit it in to his busy schedule he’s going to “teach them Lycra’s a thing or two.” It won’t concern him that his Mondeo is 3 months out of MoT or that Mrs Steve sometimes drives the kids in it uninsured.
As vulnerable road users, vulnerable people, we rely a great deal on the rule of law for protection. The rule of law means that we understand what the laws are, they are in general fair, and how they are applied and to whom is even-handed and consistent.
The fascist position is broadly the opposite - it’s all off-the-cuff to support today’s particular agenda - that’s why the Iain Duncan-Smith “happy to see ULEZ infra vandalised” comment is, as an example, so very worrying. In the Conservatives, here is a party happy to send signals to enable the mob to attack RNLI stations, beat up immigrants, shout at teachers, doctors etc.
This right-wing stuff works by allowing/enabling significant privileged groups to to think of themselves as the downtrodden underdog and here is a way to fight back. The pro Brexit campaign played on people’s ignorance, fears and prejudices exactly as this does.
It’s all about freedom, innit, less regulation, less tax burden, and damn the climate. There’s more polar bears now, so it’s fine. Let’s have open-cast coal mining, lithium mining and fracking. The section on climate change stumbles around like a Friday night drunk, trying to explain he wasn't being racist to the barman - a denier position emerges, unsurprisingly.
In places, the mask really slips: “We must keep divisive woke ideologies such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender ideology out of the classroom.” - to be honest, I don’t even know what those two are.
The standard enemies are put up - the civil service, the BBC. Amid all the thrust and parry, there’s nothing about making a better, more inclusive and cohesive world to live in; arts, sports and culture don’t feature in this barstool view of the world: a dullard’s grim vision.
Don’t be a member of the wrong sort of minority would be my advice, should any of this come to pass.
If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.
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377 comments
Stalemate - game drawn by constant repetition...
What a rubbish post.
Ssshhhhh now. The adults are talking.
Oh look who's back! Nice of you to say hello.
Hello.
Now shouldn't you be off getting your school uniform ready for your return to school? Or don't they wear uniform in first school anymore?
Haha - you call yourself an adult? If you are that mature, sort it out and maybe post sense, or at least stop showing yourself to be a fool every time you think you are "funny" by commenting on everything I do.
Oh, nice school cap but....sorry to break this to you, but the D is supposed to be showing at the front.
Man up
That's so funny. I see, Troll, you have changed your name again. Sad.
Now remember, the crayons go in your pencil case, not up your nose.
Critical Race Theory is mainly an investigation into how and why society has systemic racism built into it. It's a mix of history, sociology, pyschology, economics and politics.
As far as gender ideology goes, the more basic idea is to respect people and their choices. If someone wants to be referred to by a certain title or pronoun, then it's just common decency to try to abide by that and not deliberately insult them.
In my opinion, the overriding characteristic of far-right politics is to designate an out-group as being a major cause of trouble to people/society/economics and to then de-humanise them and attempt to cause as many problems for them as possible. Obviously this is opposite to the purpose of human societies, where we should attempt to work together and help each other. It seems that the current major target in the UK are refugees that are being labelled as "illegal immigrants" and being denied appropriate channels to apply for asylum - hence the rise of "small boats" and the misery and deaths that go along with them.
Edit: Just seen this article on The Ganduria: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/01/home-office-defies-high-court-by-placing-100-asylum-seeker-children-in-hotels
It seems that deliberate cruelty is now a feature of our government and I blame everyone that voted for them.
Completely agree.
In my long and boring life, I have seen the following "outgroups" picked on by the Tories: Mods/Rockers, Punks, Miners/those who stood up for their workers rights, New Age Travellers, Single Mums, the unemployed/ benefit claimants etc etc etc.
Whereas, the actual cause of most of the issues in the UK currently are the policies of the Tory party and their supporters. For example, how many billions were stolen by their supporters during the worse of Covid (it is currently on the increase but you won't hear that on the BBC)? I think the answer is countless billions.
And as we need to remember, two songs which sums up how I feel about the Tories:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-yZIOrt02s&t=2s *
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apWE0puBAPY&t=1s
* Almost 40 years since the Battle of the Beanfield. Never forget, never forgive.
So the correct outgroup to demonise is Conservatives?
People like to put other people in outgroups, that's always been the case.
The left like to think that placing conservatives in an outgroup is somehow different. It isn't, it's the exact same phenomenon with the exact same ugly sentiment underlying it.
If it wasn't for 'group X' then life in this country would be so much better...
I know plenty of Conservatives (including former advisers to Cabinet Ministers) who despair at the current 'culture war' approach of this government.
You've missed the point there.
The Conservative Party, especially the far right version we have nowadays, have always been the very innest of in-groups. They're quintissentially The Establishment and, just latley, The New Aristocracy. They have far, far more power and influence than any other group in our society and have suborned many previously neutral institutions such as the BBC, the police and a whole host of other infrastructure services that used to be public services but are now private profit makers serving just a few.
The problem with what's often called "the right" but is actually better named as "the totalitarians" is that they love certitude, loyalty, a binary view of everything as black or white, good or bad, them or us, true or false, etc.. They are intolerant of anything not approved by their dogma, whatever it might be.
The dogmas are many and various but all have the aspect of intolerance with an associated avid desire to condemn and punish that which is different from the dogma specifications. They can be "left wing" as well as "right wing" although there are quite a few left wing political traditions (socialists) that are tolerant but not so many of the right that are so. (Certain kinds of benign monarchies, such as that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, are exceptions to the right>tight>totalitarian tendency).
*******
Those of us who prefer tolerance have this dilemma, identified by may political theorists and philosophers, as in Popper's "Paradox of tolerance":
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
If the tolerance-inclined tolerate totalitarians, tolerance as a political and social option disappears to be replaced by some totalitarian alternative: communist, fascist, theocracy, absolute monarchy, kleptocracy, military dictatorship or whatever.
Tighty righties inclined to condemn all who are not identical to themselves have to be resisted somehow. Give them enough power and any resistance to them becomes futile then impossible.
Tighty righties also need to grasp (although they really struggle with the notion) that opposition to, and criticism of, their often highly illogical and damaging dogmas is not intolerance but only opposition and criticism, a normal dialogue of any tolerant and open society in which a true politics (compromises arranged between competing and different interests) are arranged and ordered via resilient and dynamic shared institutions and infrastructures that are argued about and changed to adapt to new circumstances, as needed by the public at large - everyone, not just a tiny favoured class of new aristo businesses and shareholders.
It's the simple stuff of modern democratic politics. But not liked by dogmatic folk who crave Truth & Certainty about all things, to the point that they'll warp reality to get them, no matter how much damage they do.
If you think the current Conservative party are far right then you really need to pick up a history book and figure out what that phrase actually means.
You're tall! No, you're short!
All relative but yes by our "layman's definitions" not "far right" (yet - there's always time!).
I think the radical economic policies of Truss / Kwarteng and the "deport 'em" headline policy have likely triggered some pattern matching.
As usual however you've reminded me - we need more axes!
What about 3 this time?
You're missing the point.
When people put others into an out-group, it's because of who they are (e.g. black, gay, squirrel fancier etc.) or the situation they find themselves in (e.g. homeless, asylum seekers, pregnant teen etc). Our complaints about the Tories is because of what they do and what they have done.
There's certainly people who identify as Conservative and are aghast at how the government is behaving, but if you support the current government and their policies, then you are part of the problem.
I'm not missing the point. You are.
Throughout human history people have wanted an outgroup to hate. They have justified why they hate that outgroup in various different ways but ultimately it's the same desire to hate.
I'm sure you think your particular out groups are different and that your particular motivations are different.
They're not.
If they weren't so hell-bent on sleaze, cruelty and self-serving greed, then they wouldn't be so hated. It's precisely their destruction of so much of this country that has to be stopped. As soon as the Tories are out of power, there's not going to be any persistent campaign to hate them, though history will not be kind to their rampant abuse of power and environmental destruction.
To be honest, I'm sick of your lies when you attempt to justify the unjustifiable. How you can possibly think that persecution of refugees is any way comparable to people complaining about the morally unjustifiable cruelty of the rich, entitled Tories is beyond me.
It's beyond you because you don't want to admit that you are the same as the people who you hate.
Out groups haven't always been defined by unalterable characteristics. The Kulaks in the Soviet Union were an out group and were massacred. They were largely just ordinary people who happened to be 'bourgeois'. Communists and Socialists were an out group in McCarthy era America. Socialism/communism is a political choice. The persecution of both those groups was still wrong. What happened to the Kulaks was on a par with any cruelty meted out to any group.
As a fun little example of how similar you are to those that you really hate consider which unsavoury groups in history would have said the following about their chosen out group:
The point that you are deliberately ignoring is that the people in power are not being persecuted and they're certainly not having their children illegally locked up in hotels: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/01/home-office-defies-high-court-by-placing-100-asylum-seeker-children-in-hotels
You don't just reserve your ire for the people in power though.
You've claimed in this thread that anyone who supports the government is "part of the problem".
Every time an outgroup has been persecuted in history those doing the persecution have been able to justify it to themselves.
History's great crimes were enthusiastically cheered by people just like us, who justified the persecutions in the exact same way we justify our own hatred.
People who vote to keep them in power are definitely part of the problem as without them, the Tories wouldn't be in power. If they choose to vote differently, then they're not part of the problem - what possible issue do you have with that?
If someone goes around stabbing other people and I declare them to be a problem, but not when they stop stabbing other people, then it's nothing to do with me putting them in an out-group, but the fact that their stabbing is causing significant harm to others.
Similarly, hating Nazis for their atrocities is nothing like being a Nazi. Presumably you don't hate Nazis yourself and would be happy to be considered one of them as otherwise you'd be out-grouping them wouldn't you? Or do you concede that Nazi hate and hating Nazis are entirely different?
Keep justifying your hatred if you want.
The same arguments have been made multiple times before.
"The treatment they receive from us is hardly unjust. They have deserved it all."
What the blazes are you on about?
What treatment are you referring to?
Is it some imagined treatment that makes you into a victim?
That's not your quote but it's identical in tone to your quote from earlier in the thread.
So you're just making shit up then?
Simple question - do you think it's morally correct to hate/despise/discourage Nazis?
No, it's an historical quote from a figure I'm assuming you're not a fan of.
It has the exact same tone as your quote.
I think it's correct to condemn those who commit crimes directly.
How are you defining Nazi?
Should we hate/despise/discourage people who have willingly joined communist parties? Or should we chuckle at squirrels in communist attire?
Now you've done it...
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