Fascism doesn't arrive in fancy dress...

[Batmanisaplaceinturkey]

"I sometimes fear that
people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress
worn by grotesques and monsters
as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis.

Fascism arrives as your friend.
It will restore your honour,
make you feel proud,
protect your house,
give you a job,
clean up the neighbourhood,
remind you of how great you once were,
clear out the venal and the corrupt,
remove anything you feel is unlike you...

It doesn't walk in saying,
"Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution."

By Michael Rosen

michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/fascism-i-sometimes-fear.html?m=1

@PandoraSox yes.

But does that mean that starmer has or has not appeased putin by seeming to agree it's a for gone conclusion that there will be a buffer, Ukraine will cede land and so on?

Presenting what as a done deal?

Starmer can't present anything as a done deal because he hasn't been invited to the table. Like the rest of Europe, including Ukraine. He is merely signalling to the US that the UK is ready to do its bit in the hope that it will buy him a bit of influence.

The right wing media are overstating the disagreement with Scholz. He is under huge political pressure at home because of the forthcoming elections, so he will be playing to a domestic audience. No big deal.

As for being pragmatic about Putin, I guess the allies thought they were being pragmatic about Hitler when they handed over a huge chunk of what was then Czechoslovakia. That didn't work out too well for them if I recall correctly.

Starmer has said that the UK is committed to Ukraine being on an "irreversible" path to joining NATO" which doesn't smack of appeasement to me?

But we shall see what happens in the coming days.

What makes you think he has agreed to any of that? He hasn't.

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves by offering our troops in a peace keeping buffer
Which assumes Ukraine will cede land and the deal is done?

On another thread, Starmer was accused of war-mongering. Now he is accused of being a Putin appeaser.

Why would a peace keeping buffer automatically assume that Ukraine will cede land?

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves the other option is to just go in all of us including the USA and take putin out?

@mes

Because it's assumed that is what the outcome will be 😂🤔

@Batmanisaplaceinturkey - thanks for posting that poem. I was going to google it having just read this -

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/17/the-new-world-order-is-exactly-what-it-looks-like-are-we-too-frozen-with-fear-to-name-it?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

The Tulsi Gabbard who doesn't believe Assad committed war crimes? Oh, right, the very same one.

I don't know how you can describe Starmer is extreme. Sensible, yes. Dull, maybe. Funny how rebuilding the public finances and services is disliked more than cutting taxes... You cannot reverse 14 years of Tory shit show in under a year.

The future is orange.

Nice to see that Rick from the Young Ones lives on.

I think Starmer is extreme in his own ideological way, and that will push us further right, probably to having Farage as our next PM.

Starmer is very unpopular, not sensible, perhaps dull.

Could you give an example of his extremism?

I posted on another thread yesterday that I am terrified at the thought of war spreading in Europe and us being part of it. But Starmer really has to support Ukraine, we all must.
Putin wanting Ukraine kept out of Nato was very much part of his original plan and here is his psycho mate Trump going along with it.
We cannot stand by.
World peace, or lack of it, is currently being determined by a reality tv sex offender, a murderer, an immoral version of Rainman who wants to breed his own race and a bloke who thinks women can only defined by having children.
Putin wants all of what he says belongs to Russia back. He won’t stop at Ukraine. Surely even the most naive person can see where this is heading? Does nobody know the history of WW2 these days?
Americans think themselves fireproof being such a huge country and many have no clue where Ukraine even is.
It seems some in the UK think we are fireproof because we are an island and because of an inflated sense of our place in the world from our colonial past.
Well despite Brexiteers thinking we could operate in glorious isolation and supremacy (look how well that turned out) we are not fucking fireproof and we have to be very much part of Europe for our safety and the safety of the world.
Wake up!
Or just go back to blaming immigrants for life not being like the good old days when we could choose how many bananas were in a bunch and could sell wine in pints.

(and just in case anyone is offended by my Rainman reference, I have autism myself so be offended by what is actually happening instead)

The fact is it's happening here too.

This is happening looking at Reform going upwards with each voting intention

It is very soon to lose support after a GE. Labour’s policies are shifting those voters right

What “right wing conference” was this?

I feel like there are no 'good guys', in the way there were 'good guys' during WWII. The anti-democrats seem to be in charge everywhere, unsurprisingly in Russia and China, but unexpectedly in America. It seems to me that Europe has relied on American military power and an American alliance based on common values for a long time, and the threat of American involvement has kept the peace. Now that American involvement cannot be relied on, we are in a completely different world. I don't want to think about what would happen if the war spreads across Europe. Being brutally honest, I don't think the combined European forces would be a match for Russia. If I were in charge, my priority would be trying to change that.

Saying that women can have a penis.
That we can’t say women have a cervix.

There are plenty of reasons why I (a lefty 🙄) dislike him and his politics, but anyone doubling down on gender ideology is instrumental in pushing a country to the right.

And his stance on not discussing the issue of immigration at high numbers whilst the country’s infrastructure crumbles.

Question it at all and you’re a racist.

Question the large scale ignoring of Pakistani rape gangs? Again, racist. He is doubling down on this rather than finding a way to solve the increasingly poor cross-cultural relationships in the country.

Honestly I’m a lefty at heart, but Starmer is doing more to make us a right wing country than Farage is!

It was the Munich Security Conference which makes it worse.

He spouted off disinformation whilst claiming the concept of disinformation is some sort of anti-free speech issue.

That's all stuff he said whilst the genderwoo nonsense was a high priority for the Tories too.

He has stated his current position clearly. People can change their minds.