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

[Checkcheckout]

I’m the first to admit that I am not the best informed - I prefer to keep my life stress free and simple as much as possible, and don’t have a TV, don’t read papers, and only listen to the radio when I’m driving (which is quite often). For my own mental health I prefer to live in my own little bubble.

But even with my limited exposure to media, I’ve noticed on Radio 2, both on the news and Jeremy Vine’s show, Reform are being given so much air time considering their paltry amount of MPs, the polls are being discussed regularly even though we’re years from an election. More than once listening to the radio I’ve thought the way they’re talking makes it sound like Reform winning the next election is a done deal, and thought to myself that this is how self fulfilling prophecies happen.

My algorithms on FB are seriously messed up. Despite having never been remotely interested in anything in the least bit right wing, all of a sudden I’m getting endless posts from knuckle dragging ‘patriot’ groups that I don’t even follow, with really horrendous and openly racist comments, thousands of them, which somehow FB are allowing to remain even though any kind of hate speech has always been censored on there. Why are these posts suddenly being allowed and pushed in my face?

Alongside this there seems to be a new story pretty much every day about the latest scandal involving Labour (again reported by the BBC), ok these things aren’t great although compared to the Tories’ rap list from their last spell in government, are fairly small fry really. It seems like there’s an active push for people to rebel away from the left just as the far right are gaining momentum.

Has anyone else noticed this or am I talking shite?

Have you thought about what has made people so disillusioned with the left that they are gravitating toward the right?

I’m no fan of Keir, but I can’t see that what he’s done in one year of being prime minister is any worse than the previous 14 years of the conservatives. He’s basically a Tory in a red tie, so it’s pretty much more of the same from what I can tell.

It goes on circles.

Are you old enough to remember the BNP gaining popularity around 2009?

Vaguely, but I don’t remember it being given so much air time, or overt racism becoming acceptable on social media.

Labour might be a bit wet, but have you forgotten that we’ve just had fifteen years of right wing government including the stupidity of Brexit, an idea cooked up by the right wing? Does it make sense to you that al the people who don’t like the results of fifteen years of the right wing now want to vote even more right wing to “fix” what the right wing parties did in the first place?

@Checkcheckout OP I am noticing the same with FB, the algorithm is giving me more and more US-style right-wing content. All the tech billionaires are supporting Trump now, so Musk, Zuckerberg et al are allowing a lot of Cambridge Analytica-style tweaking of their platforms.

100% this! This is precisely the question everyone should be asking. But I suspect they won't.

I understand what you mean and I feel a bit unsettled by it too HOWEVER you must understand what makes money in terns of media coverage. Outrage and division. What gets lots of news coverage isn't necessarily going to show you the whole picture. Just because some groups are loud and create a lot of controversy does not mean they are actually mainstream

Take this far right march for example... it looks massive, I think it had like 100k people attending which seems very scary. But in reality it's dwarfed by demonstrations against brexit, and even climate change marches.
There are lots of sensible moderate people out there. Especially in the uk.. it just doesn't sell copy!

That does make sense. I have some acquaintances who have been banging on for years about the ‘New World Order’ and I assumed they’re just tin foil hat wearing loons, but now I am starting to wonder. I just want to see videos of dogs and ponies on FB, not all the shite I am being exposed to. It’s a sudden and dramatic shift in my algorithms that’s for sure.

Margaret Thatchers rhetoric about there being no such thing as society? Mccarthy era propaganda making the us working class absolutely terrified of communism to the extent even mildly socialist policies are thought of as some kind of evil... ? And then that type of rhetoric seeping into the uk?

Yes, we are constantly nudged to be pitted against each other and see everything in black and white rather than debate and look into the grey areas. The trans "debate" was like this (still is in some quarters) where one side demonises the other for suggesting it's not that simple...not being allowed to bring it up for fear of being called biggotted - I know ppl who love the St George Cross are saying the same about being labelled racist... I think Russia is behind a lot of it as Putin funds both sides of any extremes because he wants to create chaos and distraction in the West. I know that sounds tin hat but it's got so much worse since social media and we now know he was paying Cambridge Analytica to get Brexit through 'psyops' on FB etc. It's not worth tuning in for but at the same time you feel it's passing you by if you don't pay attention. Then the shootings happen in America and you think it isn't going to get better.

Knowing it is happening is a start. Choosing what news to let in and being aware to always look at the grey and keep your mind open to change is probably the second most important.

Thank you, I hope you’re right. But there’s also a lot of people who have previously been completely disengaged with politics who have suddenly found ‘their cause’. If these people who don’t generally ever vote turn out to vote in the next election, especially with the non-Reform vote being split so many ways and the FPTP system the way it is, we could be in trouble.

No one thought Brexit would happen.

No one thought Trump would get in.

Is every party that used to be right, far right now?

I completely agree, but unfortunately every adult citizen gets a vote, whether they’re capable of critical thinking or not.

No, I’d say the Tories are just your common, garden variety right still, although I’ve no idea what’s going on with them these days.

@FirstCuppais on the right track. This has been occurring for at least 15 years or more. It’s just becoming much more visible now. It’s my belief that the aim has been to create destabilisation in the Western world using existing pressure points such as religion, immigration and sex rights. To do this, they utilise troll bot farms to influence public opinion across multiple platforms. The primary countries behind this are Russia, China, Belarus, North Korea and possibly Iran.

Take this far right march for example... it looks massive, I think it had like 100k people attending which seems very scary. But in reality it's dwarfed by demonstrations against brexit, and even climate change marches.

This is very true.

You've made me think about an anti-austerity march in June 2015, organised in protest against Tory cuts just 44 days after Cameron won the election. The attendance of that was estimated at 250,000 by the organisers and anywhere from 70,000 to 150,000+ by others.

Oh, and I had a look at MN threads from that time. Takes me right back. A slew of the more rightwing posters trying to dissuade leftwing posters from attending the demos, saying the attendees opinions were unimportant, and insinuating that it was outrageous to protest after The Country Had Spoken via the election.

What those rightwing posters would have said about a foreign billionaire being beamed on to screens to support the anti-austerity demos and telling the UK violence was coming and we should overthrow our government, I shudder to think.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/20/tens-thousands-rally-uk-protest-against-austerity

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33210014

Have you thought about, for example, the stupidity of hating sushi because it makes you physically ill, but looking at it in a more favourable light because you ate an artichoke and didn't like it?

You won't turn to the right unless right wing policies appeal to you. If you truly hate their policies but the left doesn't offer a good alternative, you will hold your nose and vote for the least horrible option. So take responsibility for how you vote and what you choose to believe. Don't blame it on the doings of a supposedly monolithic left wing Boogeyman.
I hate a lot of the things the weirdo element of the left does, which is composed mostly of young people obsessed with identity politics and policing speech. I'm not going to abandon my principles because of those assholes, because they are sincerely held principles and I'm not giving assholes any power over my beliefs and choices.

My social media feed is full of this rhetoric. This ‘many won’t’ stuff is hilarious when all I seem to read is right wing people going on about how they’re so brave to talk about their views and how everyone should question why they have them. It’s deafening.

There’s no great mystery why they have these views. Intolerance fueled by social media brainwashing mostly. A lot of us can agree that there are things that could be managed more sensibly, immigration, for instance, but that’s not going to make the rest of us suddenly go ‘oh, you’re right! Let me become a raging selfish racist!’

Whilst I can understand certain media outlets coming out to bat for Farage, I can't understand the likes of the Guardian and the BBC overdoing Reform's coverage to the extent that they are. It's like the British media in its entirety is hellbent on us having a fascist government (and before any Reform supporter comes squawking at me, I didn't say "Nazi," I said "fascist" which is exactly what they are. You want to support it, own it, and stop pretending its anything other than what it is.)

Right-wing politics will always appeal to the rich and powerful as it allows them to do as they please rather than being held to account and they are the ones ultimately responsible for controlling the media. In addition, when people are having a difficult time they often swing to the right because of the lie that it’s poor people or brown people responsible for what’s gone wrong (or Jews in the case of Hitler) rather than seeing that those to blame are the rich and powerful who again are controlling the media and making themselves look good.
We do go through phases like this every so often but the current one is terrifying. Last Saturday’s march reminded me of the march intended to go through Cable Street in the 1930s. Sadly, last time we went through a swing to the right in Europe we ended up with Hitler coming to power. I really hope people know their history well enough not to allow something like that to happen again.

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.

Quite. The MSM is most definitely fueling the flames, including the so called impartial, licence payer funded Beeb. It’s impossible not to see this is clearly a top-down narrative that’s being fed to us.

👏👏👏
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.

Yup. Utter lack of the ability to think critically.

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.