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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think DH comment about Liz Truss could be final straw?

205 replies

IveGottaGetOutOfThisPlace · 20/10/2022 20:29

DH can be a bit of an idiot. Getting more right wing in his old age. Went through a stage of reading a load of nonsense online. Jordan Peterson etc.

News was on. And he just turned to me and said

"I've been reading some alternative theory behind all this. And I think it may well be the globalists who have forced Truss out"

When I asked who these globalists were, he just said

"The people in charge. Jeremy Hunt. Banks"

When I started to question it, I could feel it was gonna get into an argument v quickly so I just left to do the laundry

Things have been bad for a while. How batshit barmy is this comment? To me it feels totally crazy. I don't know if I can be with someone who feels so distant in the way he thinks the world works.

What do others think? Am I being ott to think this is some seriously worrying shit coming out his mouth?

OP posts:
bozzabollix · 21/10/2022 06:48

My gut feel is that the pandemic was such a shock to people that some can’t cope and are clutching at anything to try and find some certainty. It’s fear based.

Having said that I’m married to a very rational, intelligent medic, if he went down this rabbit hole I’d be incredibly intolerant because it’s against everything he’s ever been. It’d kind of break a contract between us if that makes sense, tbh it’d be so out of character I’d be incredibly worried.

Having said that there are a group of people at the top who seem to lack any kind of morality or empathy. What happened with Truss was suspicious in that shorting the pound did financially benefit her rich friends who could Hoover up the proceeds. But there’s nothing new in that, they are just a band of self interested greedy bastards who see the rest of us as so separate to them that our financial pain is an opportunity. There’s no conspiracy there, just naked greed and a them and us situation.

IveGottaGetOutOfThisPlace · 21/10/2022 06:58

For @Terftrain and others saying "ha ha...its OP who is the mad one having to ask for opinions about relationship on MN ha ha"

I mean...this whole website wouldn't exist if people didn't ask strangers relationship/parenting/everyday advice. I just wanted viewpoints on how others would would have responded to my DHs comment to get some perspective

OP posts:
IveGottaGetOutOfThisPlace · 21/10/2022 07:04

And yes I do agree that of course there are always other forces at play. Usually people making shed loads of money. That's always the case. It's not that I think politicians are all thinking of us people all the time

I just recoiled at his interpretation of globalists as some sort of coherent structured group of people who get together to both remove and promote certain people to advance their own agenda.

DH doesn't really understand what he's saying. He's just repeating YouTubers.

Also he's got some real hatred of Greta T which I find pretty gross.

He just talks about "patterns" and "agendas" a lot. I don't argue or talk to him because he gets so defensive so quickly

When we met he was a Labour voter. He now wouldn't vote at all. He's not a Tory. He's anti establishment I guess. Whatever the BBC say, he looks to say the opposite

OP posts:
Themsmedaps · 21/10/2022 07:25

I feel your pain. I'm going through the same. I don't recognize the man my "D"H has become. Everything is the fault of immigrants/George Soros/Globa

Coraline353 · 21/10/2022 07:27

I get it OP. My mum was a left leaning voter (not in UK) and now she's started defending Trump. The old her would have been horrified. And when I posted here for support I got attacked for being intolerant of a difference of opinion. I can have any difference of opinion but this stuff is different. She's totally changed what she believes and a lot of it is just nonsense.

PBSam · 21/10/2022 07:31

Jordan Peterson is neither a conspiracy theorist or right wing for that matter.

Discovereads · 21/10/2022 09:04

Well I’ve read up on what a globalist is. Yes, it has been used by far right nuts as a pejorative and code for “Jews in control of the world”

I've been reading some alternative theory behind all this. And I think it may well be the globalists who have forced Truss out

In the context of Liz Truss and the fact that your DH has never hinted at any anti-Semitic leanings, it is much more likely his use of the word “globalist” is referring to its actual meaning which is a person who is a neoliberalist in terms of market globalisation. Which Liz Truss attempted to follow but failed spectacularly with her clumsy mini-budget, calling their entire orthodoxy into question:

”Globalism has been seen as a pillar of a liberal international order along with democratic governance, open trade, and international institutions”
”Market globalism includes the ideology of neoliberalism. In some hands, the reduction of globalism to the single ideology of market globalism and neoliberalism has led to confusion.”
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalism

”Neoliberalism, the belief that free markets, low taxes and a state with little or no interest in equality will produce the best economic and social outcomes.”
“This confrontation between Downing Street’s neoliberal purists, still pushing for a few last victories, and the political, economic and even financial market forces massing against them, is making Tory politics a compelling and globally significant spectacle, at least as much as the party’s divisions. In Britain, arguably the first democracy where neoliberalism was tried, it is simultaneously ploughing onward and dying.”
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/14/liz-truss-neoliberalism-free-market-economics

Discovereads · 21/10/2022 09:20

I just recoiled at his interpretation of globalists as some sort of coherent structured group of people who get together to both remove and promote certain people to advance their own agenda.

Numerous news outlets have had opinion pieces saying among other things that within the Tory party is a neoliberal faction (again per above often neoliberal & globalist are used interchangeably to refer to the same viewpoint). (The Guardian one I quoted above.)

Open democracy
”The story of the Free Enterprise Group (FEG) – the neo-Thatcherite Tory faction founded by Liz Truss in 2011 and closely associated with Tufton Street think tanks such as the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) – makes for satisfying schadenfreude. A decade after a gaggle of newly elected Tory MPs, among them Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, co-authored ‘Britannia Unchained’, which outlined the FEG’s vision for the country, the group’s internal politicking saw them slowly ascend to the head of the table.

Twelve long-time supporters of the FEG would occupy cabinet positions in Truss’s government, with Kwarteng, Therese Coffey and Nadhim Zahawi rewarded with some of the choice senior roles. The head of IEA’s public policy openly and gleefully boasted about dictating the political course. At last, it was time for them to realise the hyper-neoliberal Britain they’d dreamed about for so long, one which could boast of the bare minimum in taxation, regulation and public spending.”
www.opendemocracy.net/en/liz-truss-resignation-conservative-party-uk-worse-off-pound-cost-of-living/

Another Guardian piece:
”Truss’s politics have been shaped by organisations that call themselves thinktanks, but would be better described as lobbyists who refuse to reveal who funds them. Now she has brought them into the heart of government. Her senior special adviser, Ruth Porter, was communications director at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), an extreme neoliberal lobby group. An investigation by the democracy campaign Transparify listed the IEA as “highly opaque” about its funding sources. We know from a combination of leaks and US filings that it has a history of taking money from tobacco companies and since 1967 from the oil company BP, and has also received large disbursements from foundations funded by US billionaires, some of which have been among the major sponsors of climate science denial. When she worked at the IEA, Porter called for reducing housing benefit and child benefit, charging patients to use the NHS, cutting overseas aid and scrapping green funds.”
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/23/liz-truss-power-extreme-neoliberal-thinktanks

iNews
“Insiders were well aware the support package would drive free-marketeers to despair, including those inside the right-wing think-tanks that have long provided the intellectual ballast for Ms Truss’s ideology. But they insist the reality of politics meant they had no choice.“The neoliberal free-market solution of letting prices rip and stepping in with cash to support the poorest just wasn’t going to work,” a source involved in putting the package together told i. “But the key thing is only to do it once.””
inews.co.uk/news/politics/inside-story-liz-truss-first-week-prime-minister-neoliberal-1845927

Metro
”Liz Truss cannot be in any way severed from the ideology she represents,’ political commentator Emma Burnell tells Metro.co.uk. ‘She’s become the absolute pet for free market think tanks such as the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute, and their backing gave her some clout.’”

“So called “Trussonomics” which is based on an explicitly right-wing libertarian agenda of a smaller state and reduced taxation, is a form of neoliberalism,’ Associate Professor Steven McCabe, political economist at Birmingham City University explains. Dynamic enterprise is explicitly encouraged by the prospect of lower taxes so that capital is attracted to the UK. Equally crucial is entrepreneurs are allowed to work with fewer regulations and vastly reduced tax, so additional wealth created will ‘trickle down’ to those on lower incomes.’“

However, what got her ousted was going too far and not funding the cuts
“However, when Truss’s original chancellor – close political ally and friend Kwasi Kwarteng – announced these measures on 23 September, they went far further than initially thought.”
”The economic turmoil was due to Truss and Kwarteng’s plan announcing £45 billion of tax cuts, but not saying how these tax cuts were going to be funded.

‘Truss and Kwarteng left a massive gap between what the government was promising to spend, and what the government was promising to raise,’ Burnell explains. ‘It meant they were going to be borrowing a great deal of money.”
metro.co.uk/2022/10/20/liz-truss-resigns-where-did-it-all-go-wrong-for-the-prime-minister-17603562/

unsync · 21/10/2022 11:30

THisbackwithavengeance · 20/10/2022 20:44

So you'd consider leaving your DH over a random comment about a situation which effects neither of you personally?

I don't think he's the one who's batshit...

You think politics doesn't affect us?

RedWingBoots · 21/10/2022 11:40

When we met he was a Labour voter. He now wouldn't vote at all. He's not a Tory. He's anti establishment I guess. Whatever the BBC say, he looks to say the opposite

He must be very disturbed at the moment as I read left and right wing media, apart from opinion pieces they have been saying the same thing about Truss.

SunneRising · 22/10/2022 22:05

Oddly, the people I know, friends and colleagues, use the word in its normal sense, that of planning economic and foreign policy in the context of global events. And we're living through a very clear manifestation of the need for a global approach more than ever now.

You obviously know different people.

Hbh17 · 22/10/2022 22:15

Well, she was certainly severely damaged by the markets' reaction to the mini budget - might that be what OP's husband means?
In general, I think it's fine to have different political views in a relationship and it could actually make life a bit more interesting. The question for the OP is at what stage the "difference" becomes unacceptable, and she is the only one able to answer that.

DaydreamNation22 · 24/10/2022 07:24

JP is a clinical psychologist whose written best selling books, who admits that his biggest buyers are women not men. Men watch more of his online content. O/P writes posts on mumsnet and is not a clinical psychologist. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here okay...what even is your uninformed opinion?

YABU and sound entirely ungrateful.
If that is a divorcing offense maybe you dont deserve a husband.

IveGottaGetOutOfThisPlace · 24/10/2022 07:30

@DaydreamNation22 Grateful for what? A husband?

Too funny!

OP posts:
BeethovenNinth · 24/10/2022 07:31

Many people take a similar stance to your DH. That Liz Truss as forced out. Even Laura Kuennsberg asked if ‘markets’ are now controlling government.

you sound a bit naive OP.

would you honestly leave your DH for questioning the mainstream?

Redebs · 24/10/2022 07:40

The Jordan Peterson thing is worrying. Seriously.

IveGottaGetOutOfThisPlace · 24/10/2022 07:40

LT put forward a reckless, uncosted budget without any of the normal due process and diligence. The markets reacted because of the instability such economic measures could cause. The markets are not one bloke with a button somewhere saying "yes" or "no". They are simply reacting to what's going on, as they always have done. I'm all for a debate with my DH but his belief is that there are "globalists" conspiring against us all to keep us in line is bullshit and one that he can't defend or explain.

I'm not naive.

YouTubers are not questioning the mainstream.

I would leave my DH for his desire to watch paranoid white blokes on the internet tell him that LT, DT are all misunderstood and victims of mainstream media. And then get defensive and angry when I question him

OP posts:
RedHelenB · 24/10/2022 07:45

FreddyHG · 20/10/2022 20:39

But the world is run by globalists. i actually have a lot of sympathy for his viewpoint. She threatened to upset the status quo and tried to save herself with that arch establishment figure of Jeremy Hunt. A lot of big corporations like BlackRock have borrowed lots of money at very low interest rates to buy up assets like property. She threatened their interests.

She gave all the " globalists" tax breaks too. If anyone can't see how economically stupid her mini budget was then they don't deserve to have the vote. For the IMF to come out against it says it all.
If your husband can't see Truss was only forced out by her rashness and the sTory party desperate to cling on to power OP, then I'd have to make it a no talk politics someday the very least.

RedHelenB · 24/10/2022 07:49

BeethovenNinth · 24/10/2022 07:31

Many people take a similar stance to your DH. That Liz Truss as forced out. Even Laura Kuennsberg asked if ‘markets’ are now controlling government.

you sound a bit naive OP.

would you honestly leave your DH for questioning the mainstream?

We live in a capitalist society, of course markets influence. No need for wild conspiracy theories.

BankseyVest · 24/10/2022 07:50

My ex dh was like this, one of the many reasons I left. The last few years we were together I refused to discuss politics or anything remotely connected to it because it would annoy the shit out of me and result in an argument. It was primarily because he'd read something, could be on the bbc website or some crack pot conspiracy website and, as far as he was concerned, he'd deem it gospel. He'd not have the intelligence to question what he was reading or check any facts, he agreed with it, therefore it was right. He talk to me, I'd ask him why he thought that, or ask questions to find out why it was true and he'd never be able to answer me. Sometimes I'd play devils advocate to have a discussion and it would end up with him getting annoyed at me. Drove me insane as her then get aggressive to back up his argument

Redebs · 24/10/2022 07:57

DaydreamNation22 · 24/10/2022 07:24

JP is a clinical psychologist whose written best selling books, who admits that his biggest buyers are women not men. Men watch more of his online content. O/P writes posts on mumsnet and is not a clinical psychologist. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here okay...what even is your uninformed opinion?

YABU and sound entirely ungrateful.
If that is a divorcing offense maybe you dont deserve a husband.

Mr Peterson is a dangerous narcissist with serious mental health and addiction issues.
He appeals to the lowest, most base audience factors and is given an inflated media presence accordingly.
The damage this man is currently causing in society is tragic.

JaNaJanice · 24/10/2022 07:58

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beastlyslumber · 24/10/2022 08:31

Can't you just agree to disagree? Surely each of you are entitled to your opinions. Just avoid the subject of politics when it comes up.

And honestly, you should be pleased if your DH is listening to Jordan Peterson. He talks a lot about men's role in marriage, how they need to take responsibility, how to improve communication with their wives etc. Maybe you should watch some of his talks together and figure out how you can use some of these sound principles to strengthen your marriage.

beastlyslumber · 24/10/2022 08:35

Redebs · 24/10/2022 07:57

Mr Peterson is a dangerous narcissist with serious mental health and addiction issues.
He appeals to the lowest, most base audience factors and is given an inflated media presence accordingly.
The damage this man is currently causing in society is tragic.

He appeals to me because of his psychological insights, his work on mythology, his spiritual interests, and the fact that he has a clear, positive message for young people, especially young men.

What is base or low about any of that? Please explain.

As for him being 'given' a media platform - I think you'll find that he is a writer and podcaster who has become popular while being censored and decried by mainstream media. He hasn't been given a platform at all. He's earned a platform by talking about things that people care about.

JaNaJanice · 24/10/2022 08:54

This reply has been deleted

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