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Liam H's avatar

Brilliant piece. Astonished we have allowed the term "anti-establishment" to be freely applied to pro-big business far right parties everywhere. The Guardian used it in the context of the AfD the other day, whose policies would do nothing but enrich the already rich.

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Adam Bienkov's avatar

Thank Liam, yes great point. It's been telling how even nominally left and liberal publications have accepted this warped framing as fact, rather than the confidence trick it so obviously is

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Den Howlett's avatar

The majority of people do not see Farage the way the commentariat does but they need reminding of Farage’s self serving agenda.

As I see it, that requires a concerted effort on the doorstep. But before that, Starmer has to solve the comms problem that isn’t going away. Right now it feels like we’re being treated to a masterclass from an MBA course majoring in advanced PowerPoint.

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Jane Gibbons's avatar

As someone that predicted this scenario the millisecond Muskrat bought Twitter I still become more horrified by the day in terms of how the MSM is literally whitewashing establishment Tufton St puppet Farage and his Neo Nazi riots in front of our faces

Sam Coates 3 day long grovelling eulogy over fellow public schoolboy and Reform deity Lissack and his targeted radicalisation of vulnerable young men was beyond sickening

Lissack openly promoted amplified and justified the Farage riots whilst joining Dan Wooten in spewing toxic libellous rhetoric about Starmer’s family

And it will get worse particularly with a mainstream MSM that is openly supporting feting and idolising Trump Musk and Farage over its own Government

Normalising Neo Nazi racism misogyny and nationalism as it goes

Goebbels/Bannon playbook Lie repetition, othering, creating false enemies and flooding the zone has been proved to work over and over throughout history

If nothing is done to stand up to and properly expose the entire toxic situation it’s almost guaranteed that Farage and RefCon will form the next Govt I fear

The silencing of Carole Cadwalladr for joining the dots a decade ago makes any hope feel futile

And the prospect of no Leveson2 or similar for the 21st century makes it even worse…

Absolutely terrifying times

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Graham Hewitt's avatar

I’m not sure they want to be part of the existing establishment. They want to create a new establishment of fascists, corporatists, kleptocrats and traitors and destroy democracy as we have known it. The existing establishment, however much we despised them, and even though many were (relatively small time) crooks as least paid some lip service to what we call democracy. Trump, Musk and their fellow billionaire fascists, along with pound shop Farage will use any means to achieve their ends. It’s why Musk spent billions on Twitter - to give him control of the dark propaganda-sphere.

But in the longer term what is most worrying for life on earth is that if there is no counter-revolution then global warming mitigation is dead and catastrophe is inevitable.

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Lizzy Price's avatar

I think the Times & our RW media bias is intent on making Farage mainstream. Last month Syed wrote (ridiculously) how the previous govts have all moved to the left, inc Truss .. but that his own politics hadn’t shifted at all. It’s a concerted effort to gaslight the population and shift the landscape to the right, in tune with Trump etc.

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