To think there is some kind of weird push towards the far right?

It is that, but for me it can get tiresome after too much exposure. I find I need refreshing breaks from politics every so often. I'm currently on a break from the latest Trump news. It's always the same. He does something awful, says something crazy, rinse and repeat.

There’s also something in this about people who stay voting for whichever party anyway no matter how extreme they get (Far Right, Far Left) because of their “principles” tethering them to the party but not seeing the shifting policy creep.
Staying at the party too long when you should have left when the Furries arrived.

For now 👀

The current xenophobic rhetoric and distrust in institutions like the BBC reminds me of 1930s Germany. Although we do still have a free press and a democracy.

Agree. In a way even someone saying “I vote with my conscience or my principles” is highly emotional voting. Because you feel it in your body etc.
that feeling, that intense chemical reaction, can easily become a two minute hate.

I really hope people know their history well enough not to allow something like that to happen again.

An unfortunate combination of those who actually don’t, and those who do but have no compassion at all for others - and those who don’t but wouldn’t care if they did plus the newer uneducated and brainwashed group who either think it didn’t happen or have decided it was ok that it did.

I think this is the difference between ‘last time’ plus the billionaires have worked out how to reach the disenfranchised via social media and brainwash them into believing they have the same aims - which is the biggest con ever pulled off. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t terrifying.

It’s tactical to always exploit the weakness of the other side - the PR and spin machines should be always frothing on both sides - it’s grand theatre.

My thought is that once you reduce it all to intolerance + brainwashing, you avoid the harder question, why were so many people ready to be brainwashed in the first place?
I’ve had racist violence toward me along with SA. There has always been a reactionary element to the words said to me. Not reacting to anything I’ve done but reacting to what I represent. I’ve always been very interested in what creates that attitude of “Go home to your own country” etc
Sometimes the person would say years later they didn’t know why they said what they said to me. An example of this was someone who bullied me when we were children but who later became a great friend in our twenties. There was a lot of shame there they carried. I’ve always been more interested in why rather than just looking at the person as they are looking at me - at face value.

We have to start asking really hard questions. It’s just not as simple as bad vs good.

But that's voting based on emotion, feelings of resentment, which is an example of not thinking critically and a foolish thing to do.
What are "normal thoughts?" That's an odd phrase.

If I believed social and main stream media my country was also moving to the right, but our election this year the left party didn't just win, they picked up seats.

These are excellent points. I think that is true of many people, but there are those who have right wing attitudes and use the follies of the left as an excuse for them. It's interesting, because the fact that they need an excuse indicates they have some guilt about it. But yeah, much of the electorate votes as they do for emotional reasons and out of ignorance of the full platform they are voting for.

Do tell us all about it.

I’m also absolutely bloody sick to the back teeth of hearing ‘you need to start listening, we’re not being listened to’ - Reformers do nothing but talk, and it’s the same old over used buzzwords they have seen other people use online.

People have tried countless times to have respectful debate with them, tried to counter beliefs by showing credible evidence to counter arguments etc, but the staunch supporters WILL NOT listen, they don’t want to. It’s that simple. It’s nothing short of a cult and they have adopted those beliefs so strongly that it’s part of their identity. It’s in the exact same vain as conspiracy theorists. It makes them feel important and like they are putting a middle finger up to the ‘establishment’ (which, ironically, includes Nigel Farage, but as you were).

The only people whose minds anybody stands any chance of changing are those voters who are not completely convinced by reforms manipulative tactics yet. The rest are too far gone.

Reform are appealing to people who are, for example, feeling lost, hard done by, socially deprived and or lower educated and they wanting something to desperately cling on to so they can feel they belong to something different, feel relevant and heard and to make themselves feel better by taking their low self esteem out on immigrants. To let go of those beliefs would be admitting to themselves that they have been fooled, and they simply do not have the humility to admit that because that would trigger a deep seated sense of shame.

I keep hearing ‘If people keep calling us stupid, that’s how reform will get in’. All I have to say to that is if people vote for a party based on the fact that someone called them stupid, then the point proves itself!! It’s nothing but fragile egos having a tantrum like an emotionally immature child because ‘that mean person called me stupid, I’ll show them, I’ll make things worse for myself just so they can suffer with me! HA!’

Reform are showing people what they are and they still aren’t cottoning on. It’s really scary and blindingly obvious that things will get worse for everybody, but part of me thinks perhaps they need to get in for people to realise. ‘We’ll start hearing, I didn’t vote for this!’ Well, tough shit, Tony, deal with it, you prick.

We’ve tried reasoning and debating respectfully until we’re blue in the face. It doesn’t work, so I’m past caring about calling people stupid now. I’m tired. You get the government you deserve.

It shows you who really runs the country/world. A handful of uber wealthy plutocrats controlling the media, finance and politics. Look at Reform's main donors and ask yourself why.

People who want war so there is more defence spending.

People who want to break down the NHS so they can run an insurance backed system.

People who want you fearful and blaming immigrants, one another and "the left" when we don't even have a left wing government instead of the plutocrats hoovering up more of your money and doing fantastically well while everyone else is stuffed.

What they don't want is political stability. What they don't want is blocks of countries working together like the EU and being as powerful as them, and doing things like closing tax loopholes so they can't keep hiding their money.

What they don't want is the likes of you and me feeling prosperous, peaceful, well-informed, comfortable, our views heard a democracy.

If you think that it is unfortunate that every citizen gets a vote then you are unfortunately part of the problem. It is this sneering at people who can't 'critically think', that you are correct and they are just 'far right' that makes people who just think normal thoughts vote for someone else other than the status quo.

I think this assumes voters are far more principled and policy-driven than they actually are. I wonder for how many, the shift to the right isn’t about discovering they suddenly like right-wing policies, but about feeling betrayed and insulted by the left. When people feel betrayed they take it personally and lash out, so I would say reactionary voting is more common than we think.

Betrayal cuts deeper than simple dislike.

So the move isn’t “I’ve realised sushi is great after all.” It’s more “I went to my favourite restaurant for years, they changed the menu, and now they sneer at me for not liking it. Fine, I’ll go eat somewhere else, even if the food isn’t good, at least I won’t be insulted.”

Also from my observations at least, many people simply do not know who they are voting for. I know people who vote Green because they think they stand for environment without realising the other aspects to them, who when they realise how much identity politic is being pushed by them have left in horror.

I come from a demographic that is directly affected by racism. I can see how the rise of the far right is backlash driven by the lack of self accountability of the left.

I also think there's an enormous gap for citizen led education - something trusted akin to MSE but for things like consumers of social media and the news. MSE is hugely trusted as led by someone with immense professional integrity.

Interestingly, there's a setting on Facebook where can ask it to remove or not show political content in your feed.

I'm not sure how many people are aware of this. I only discovered it by chance under the Feed settings. Generally FB has always been like this - you have to go in periodically and check settings like privacy to check and make sure everything is tickety boo. That's the advice I've always had or followed, not sure where I picked that up, possibly somewhere like MSE or another neutral information source.

Secondly once I did this, it didn't actually work initially. I still saw stuff about Charlie Kirk and his bereft widow that I had to actively click on hide . I think it worked after I did this. So is that a conspiracy among FB to incite the far right?

I no longer know - I actually increasingly think the far right and the far left are two sides of the same coin. Both are actually the opposite of progressive politics (and centre right or left are no longer progressive politics). Its a shame really as we had a chance at saving the world!

I read an interesting article in the Economist (Press Reader is my go to source due to the range of news I can read) about how the key lines of demarcation now in how people vote are actually age and education. I think that's true, I've long thought that age has wildly been ignored. Societies that give young people hope and opportunities do much better than ones that don't- covid ripped a chasm through young people's lives at a time when they are struggling. Employers can only do so much by increasing starting salaries. Banks can only do so much by making mortgages affordable.

The largest thing responsible for the increase in migration is actually student visas - where they then stay on for a mix of jobs. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see where that's headed - a much more ethnically diverse population by 2050, with a higher number of those being skilled workers. Edited to add - this second part has veered off topic and is based on a stats presentation I saw on You Tube from a Sky News presentation.

Which IMHO isn't going to go down at all well - different communication styles, different cultural nuances, much less tolerance of people with disabilities and mental health issues. Unless a political party starts being more progressive now.

@Checkcheckout I noticed for example that I was getting a lot of articles on my feed from “Evie magazine”, which at first looked like innocuous magazine articles from something like Red or whatever, but when I looked closely were actually US right-wing aligned (eg articles suggesting that you should “embrace your femininity” that turned out to be pushing tradwife content and so on). It turns out to be a US alt-right women’s magazine that publishes pseudoscience, US alt-right political ideas and so on. I’m a centre-left pro-European and there’s not really any obvious way that I would be “marketed” this stuff based on the rest of my feed or reading choices, so I have to conclude that my feed is being tweaked for a reason.

Now we can see how easily swayed people are by irrational ideas like Brexit and antivax conspiracies and so on, so I don’t have much faith that the average person is resisting subtle interference from social media psyops. Brexit was just the start — I think the coming wave of social media propaganda techniques will be like nothing seen before this.

What left? We've not had a left wing government since 1979.

I think the reason the media is talking so much about Reform is that right now they are polling at a level that would win them an election, and because bookies are predicting a Reform win.

And the Tories are nowhere to be seen. They aren't really acting as a strong opposition. Arguably Labour are treating Reform as the opposition in terms of how they are pitching their communications (not that they seem at all good at it.)

Labour and the Tories are failing, utterly, to speak to the population in a way that is effective. Even if Reform was only managing ok, it would have an advantage, and actually Farage is pretty clever in terms of being a media person, I think it's his real calling, not being a working politician.

If the Tories want coverage they need to DO something, the problem I suspect is they need to rebuild in a major way and they need new blood with some real talent. And if Labour wants more positive media attention they need to communicate some kind of a viable vision and KS needs to show some real leadership, which may mean not being a nice guy.

Yup. Utter lack of the ability to think critically.

👏👏👏
Exactly. They are not turning to the right because the left has let them down. It's an excuse. They don't want to believe it's because they have an authoritarian steak a mile wide and are terrified of immigrants of colour. You never see them bitching about, for example, white Ukrainian refugees, it's only the ones with a distinctly dusky hue they want kept out. We can all agree that immigration has to be carefully managed, but right wing demands for immigration control is a dog whistle.

Sadly that’s the level of political debate that exists in the UK now. We used to have, mainly, a centrist sort of politics that sometimes moved a little more to the left (Kinnock) or right (Thatcher) but that ultimately settled back to the middle. Those on the left were always a bit less intelligent but worthy, those on the right brighter but willing to compromise.

Then along came Blair and the introduction of spin, sound bites and the realisation you could say one thing and do another, and a Labour Party and an electorate that were too stupid to realise. Combine with that more and faster communication and more visibility, and views need to be more and more extreme to be noticed. Overlay with a bunch of sub standard power driven politicians, drawn into it for what they can get (because they don’t have skills useful in the real world) and we are where we are.

This government and Starmer will, I fear, be seen as the one that caused the collapse of consensus politics in the UK by their approach of just doing nothing but berate those that don’t agree with them. It’s student politics writ large. Theyhave an unwavering believe that they’re always right, but don’t have the intellect or ability to say why. They have no one with a vision or skills to communicate, never mind implement any plans.