1930s Germany has arrived in the UK

I don't think we can take anything for granted anymore. We seem to be a polarised society, I sway to the left as I get the impression most in here do. But can I ask.... does anyone else find themselves missing the calm old days when everyone seemed to be around the middle but slightly one way or the other politically, and the views / arguments in the pub would be as tame as economy vs public services. So many peoples politics seem to be extreme and about hating one group of people or another now, noone can accept each others points of view, your in one box or the other. It almost feels as if one group feeds the other bow and they make each other more powerfull. For every right wing nutter wanting off shore oil rigs to house asylum seekers begind bars, we seem to get someone equally as ridiculous popping up on the left (well.maybe not quite lol). Its scary though, I feel like each group gives power to the other and eventually it could all just meet at the same place if you catch my drift? Left and right being so on the extreme that we once again can barely tell the difference! I wonder where this will be when my children are 20 odd
 
I don't think we can take anything for granted anymore. We seem to be a polarised society, I sway to the left as I get the impression most in here do. But can I ask.... does anyone else find themselves missing the calm old days when everyone seemed to be around the middle but slightly one way or the other politically, and the views / arguments in the pub would be as tame as economy vs public services. So many peoples politics seem to be extreme and about hating one group of people or another now, noone can accept each others points of view, your in one box or the other. It almost feels as if one group feeds the other bow and they make each other more powerfull. For every right wing nutter wanting off shore oil rigs to house asylum seekers begind bars, we seem to get someone equally as ridiculous popping up on the left (well.maybe not quite lol). Its scary though, I feel like each group gives power to the other and eventually it could all just meet at the same place if you catch my drift? Left and right being so on the extreme that we once again can barely tell the difference! I wonder where this will be when my children are 20 odd
The issue is that "Creeping Fascism" doesnt mean there are nazi foot-fodder waiting in dark corners with the Swastika on their arm, or "Brown Shirts" tooled up and ready to go. Today`s creeping fascism wears suits - which legitimises populism - appealing to a perceived hegemony - using "otherism", nationalism, racism, chauvanism and jingoism as tools to divide and rule.
Where Goebbles used the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft [https://archives.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/reichs-rundfunk-gesellschaft] as a conduit for Nazi propaganda, today`s "Main-stream Media" (?) are the conduits for propaganda. The State has a vested interest in perpetuating the status quo and its proponents - by any and every means necessary.
For example: https://intpolicydigest.org/sanitising-censorship-the-twitter-ap-reuters-news-partnership/
 
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A peaceful albeit noisy protestor attracting 10+ police officers. That is not policing by consent. That's plain embarrassing. Any wonder the force has just been placed in special measures for a string of serious abject failures.

Andrea Leadsom complaining of his violent behaviour. I hope he sues her.

it's beginning to look a lot like fascism.

They impounded his small battery operated amp as well, B.E.

But don’t worry there’s a replacement being delivered tomorrow morning

49ED0043-1CA6-4A9F-A887-CB07425D619F.jpeg
 
I don't think we can take anything for granted anymore. We seem to be a polarised society, I sway to the left as I get the impression most in here do. But can I ask.... does anyone else find themselves missing the calm old days when everyone seemed to be around the middle but slightly one way or the other politically, and the views / arguments in the pub would be as tame as economy vs public services. So many peoples politics seem to be extreme and about hating one group of people or another now, noone can accept each others points of view, your in one box or the other. It almost feels as if one group feeds the other bow and they make each other more powerfull. For every right wing nutter wanting off shore oil rigs to house asylum seekers begind bars, we seem to get someone equally as ridiculous popping up on the left (well.maybe not quite lol). Its scary though, I feel like each group gives power to the other and eventually it could all just meet at the same place if you catch my drift? Left and right being so on the extreme that we once again can barely tell the difference! I wonder where this will be when my children are 20 odd
Have you seen the Social Dilemma on Netflix? It goes into this exact point.
 
I think the general point is that Nazism is only one "brand" of fascism so to speak. Yes, there are some parallels with the methods of control employed in the 30s in Germany but also others which span different authoritian regimes of the past. The ultimate thread running through all is the quest for total power, how that power is exercised and how dissent is quashed. Attacks on the media, freedom of protest and educational institutions are all methods which have previously been used (successfully) to strengthen a governing parties position.

As for where this ends, I'm not sure. Hopefully in a free and fair election where the incumbents are kicked into touch but I would be very surprised if it's as simple as that.
 
I think the general point is that Nazism is only one "brand" of fascism so to speak. Yes, there are some parallels with the methods of control employed in the 30s in Germany but also others which span different authoritian regimes of the past. The ultimate thread running through all is the quest for total power, how that power is exercised and how dissent is quashed. Attacks on the media, freedom of protest and educational institutions are all methods which have previously been used (successfully) to strengthen a governing parties position.

As for where this ends, I'm not sure. Hopefully in a free and fair election where the incumbents are kicked into touch but I would be very surprised if it's as simple as that.
Yes.
The rise of militarism and "the right" world-wide is no coincidence.
There are parallels with pre second World War: Italy, Japan, Germany, South America and the brutality of Colonialism - with its legacy of violence.
(y)
 
Irrespective of what you choose to call it, let's consider:

Ripping up Brexit, against (according to most legal experts) international law, and risking the Good Friday agreement to boot
Farming out refugees to a country we advise against travel to...then threatening to dispense with the ECHR to prevent pushback
Crime laws which mean peaceful protesters can be stopped from leaving their homes
Ignoring the convention of the HOC and ministerial code...then trying to remove any checks and balances that control their conduct
Lying with impunity, in both the House and across media
Threats to media outlets that don't peddle their narrative
Millions if not billions of pounds handed out to their friends, all from the public purse, often with nothing in return
Attempts to turn the public on itself (Union bashing, the war on woke etc etc)
Introducing voter ID...to repress the vote and address a problem that does not exist
Boundary rule changes to weight a system already heavily in their favour

You might not call it fascism. But you need to be concerned. If you are not, you're not really paying attention
 
Maybe they should hand out PA systems to everyone. Then there would be no audible public discourse at all, but it would be fair.
 
Bit by bit, inch by inch they push us towards the edge off the cliff - then you wake up one day looking over the edge at the rocky shore below and wonder how you got there ……… but you allowed it to happen
 
If you`ve time to do some reading.
Here are two books which frame the present in historical context:

Creeping Fascism: What It Is & How to Fight It​

By Neil Faulkner
View attachment 40607
[Courtesy of Amazon]

This book is about one simple idea: that the wave of racism and reaction sweeping the world is the modern form of fascism. New and updated version.
The 'Brexit' referendum in 2016, when just over half the British electorate voted to leave the European Union, was followed a year later by Donald Trump's election as US president, confirming a qualitative shift in global politics, a sudden lurch to the right, away from liberal democracy towards a police state enforcing nationalism, racism, and sexism.
Nothing has happened in the two years since Brexit and Trump's election to doubt that world politics is increasingly poisoned by 'creeping fascism'.
The ascendancy of politicians like Trump in the US, Marine Le Pen in France, Matteo Salvini in Italy, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and many more in other countries, cannot be explained as a passing phase of 'populism', and to do so minimises the acute dangers we face from the global rise of the far-right.
How can we stop this 'second wave' of fascism returning us to the darkest times? How do we prevent the history of the 1930s repeating itself in the early 21st century? How do we break fascism, before it breaks us, and open the road to an alternative future and a world transformed?

Available here >>>>


I recently found this thought-provoking bed-time reading:
View attachment 40608
Peter and Irma Petroff, authors of the title piece in this book, offer an eye-witness report on the terrible events of 1933. They tell of the defeat of the German labour movement and explain why the organisations of the German working class failed miserably to confront the enemy that threatened ― and was to carry out ― its destruction. As the danger of new authoritarians increases, these texts are once again required reading for people who wish to learn the grim lessons of that catastrophic defeat and who are determined not to allow history to repeat itself.

Available here>>>>> https://www.amazon.co.uk/1933-Warnings-History-Paul-FLEWERS/dp/0850367654
At the risk of been pedantic over half the electorate didn't vote to leave the EU
 
First they came.....

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.


Martin Niemöller


* Message to "ZZZZZZZZ" and your laughing emoji :love: in response to the above. I and others, will find your response repugnant in the extreme. To laugh at a man who spent years in German Death Camps is abhorrent! *

1656489114780.png

Martin Niemöller: "First they came for the socialists..."

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Lutheran pastor in Germany. He emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. He is perhaps best remembered for his postwar words, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out…”

1656489281083.png
 
The People’s Friend

You used to make us laugh,
unmade bedhead on the telly
hapless and jolly,
a lolly for a comb they said,
but no one’s laughing now.

The rot started with the fat cats
who rode the gravy train.
We never did meet them,
nor hear their foreign tongues
but we read all about them
everyday in the papers,
you even mentioned them yourself;
funny straight banana stories
we used to think were true
we found out too late
were made up by you.
But we loved you still.
We’d have followed you to Hell
and to test ourselves, we did.

You and your shrieking bores
led the doorstep applause.
Top lips powdered white
you broke your own laws
and made it illegal
to gather in the street
while debauched, indiscreet
you deported the hungry,
the ravaged and war-torn
and somehow managed
to keep us on board.

It was only the others,
the rampant troublemakers,
the loud angry shouters
who needed the stamp
of a big steel boot
to keep them in line.

We looked happily away,
we snoozing sunbathers
in a high summer of unknowing,
fingers in ears,
blissful and dozing.

It was always the others,
the lazy, the shady,
the too bloody clever
for their own f**king good.
We clapped as you took away
their poncey degrees.
My name’s Tarquin
and I’m no longer reading English.

But then Tarquin never was
because it turned out
it was Tarquin who owned us.

But allofasudden we saw it was us
who couldn’t read English anymore
and neither could our children
as the handle took their fingernails
at the slamming of the door.

Our voices remain bold
but our houses are cold
and we haven’t the will
to rob our own kids
to pay the heating bill.

And you, the people’s friend
have now stopped pretending to care.
You said you’d leave
if it weren’t for the war –
and there’s always one somewhere.
 
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The People’s Friend

You used to make us laugh,
unmade bedhead on the telly
hapless and jolly,
a lolly for a comb they said,
but no one’s laughing now.

The rot started with the fat cats
who rode the gravy train.
We never did meet them,
nor hear their foreign tongues
but we read all about them
everyday in the papers,
you even mentioned them yourself;
funny straight banana stories
we used to think were true
we found out too late
were made up by you.
But we loved you still.
We’d have followed you to Hell
and to test ourselves, we did.

You and your shrieking bores
led the doorstep applause.
Top lips powdered white
you broke your own laws
and made it illegal
to gather in the street
while debauched, indiscreet
you deported the hungry,
the ravaged and war-torn
and somehow managed
to keep us on board.

It was only the others,
the rampant troublemakers,
the loud angry shouters
who needed the stamp
of a big steel boot
to keep them in line.

We looked happily away,
we snoozing sunbathers
in a high summer of unknowing,
fingers in ears,
blissful and dozing.

It was always the others,
the lazy, the shady,
the too bloody clever
for their own f**king good.
We clapped as you took away
their poncey degrees.
My name’s Tarquin
and I’m no longer reading English.

But then Tarquin never was
because it turned out
it was Tarquin who owned us.

But allofasudden we saw it was us
who couldn’t read English anymore
and neither could our children
as the handle took our fingernails
at the slamming of the door.

Our voices remain bold
but our houses are cold
and we haven’t the will
to rob our own kids
to pay the heating bill.

And you, the people’s friend
have now stopped pretending to care.
You said you’d leave
if it weren’t for the war –
and there’s always one somewhere.
That's just wonderful
 
* Message to "ZZZZZZZZ" and your laughing emoji :love: in response to the above. I and others, will find your response repugnant in the extreme. To laugh at a man who spent years in German Death Camps is abhorrent! *

View attachment 40625

Martin Niemöller: "First they came for the socialists..."

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Lutheran pastor in Germany. He emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. He is perhaps best remembered for his postwar words, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out…”

View attachment 40626
I simply assumed it was a 'love' emoji because I loved the comment. THIS :love: when you hover over it say's 'love' not laughing.

If I wanted to laugh at it I would have used the laughing emoji :ROFLMAO: But I didn't.

I find you repsonse 'repugnant in the extreme'
Actually tbh I don't. You just happen to be one of the posters whose opinions I care very little about.
:love:
 
If people want to see fascism at work look at Spain 1936 -1976.

There are no safe protests, there are no free elections, people are imprisoned for their beliefs, there would be no Mick Lynch, certain books are banned. The Catholic Church dominanted many lives. There is no Equalities Act.

Extreme States tend to be established very quickly, blink and you miss it. Fear for your life keeps people in line.

The closest to me we came to me to a form of fascism in the UK was probably Northern Ireland in the 1950s and 60s. The Roman Catholic/Republican were much kept in their place by the RUC that restarted to instant violence whn they felt the Catholics were getting out of their place. It was possible to legally vote 6 times if you owned 6 properties. There was extreme segregation in many parts of the workforce.
 
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