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?

People are only allowed to care or have an opinion if it affects them in their everyday life?

This is where the government has let the rest of us down though, because it isn’t having intelligent conversations with anyone, because it doesn’t have a plan - or, one could argue, any intelligence.

Instead we have a series of ideologically driven ‘polices’ that don’t support a coherent plan. They have said they are pro growth, but have enacted policies to stifle it. They have said they want to build more houses, but have managed to create so much uncertainty that house building is at almost a post war low. They said that people’s standards of living would rise under Labour, but their policies have driven up the cost of food, and interest rates are higher than they would have been because there is global uncertainty about the governments ability to pay their own finance costs. They said energy costs would fall, but they have increased.

Gender recognition culture wars was started by labour with the gender recognition act and ‘gender reassignment’ as a PC in the Equality Act. The rest just follows from that. Do you think the Tories were somehow responsible for its promotion in America too over the same timespan?

There is a massive push towards the far right. Reform are given hugely disproportionate media coverage from all TV channels and pretty much all the papers apart from the Mirror and the Guardian fawn over Farage and their other MPs.

Keir Starmer is a huge disappointment and I'm surprised at how political inept he seems to be. Moving to the right, particularly on immigration, will lose them more left wing voters than the number of voters that have moved to the right to support Reform that he hopes to persuade to come back to Labour. He can't out-Farage Farage and he certainly shouldn't try to.

There seems to be an undercurrent of simmering political violence at the moment and it all feels quite scary.

Why do people suppose that a Reform government led by Nigel Farage who has already proven he talks crap would be any different??? It would be worse than what we’ve got now.

I’ve never voted Conservative, just making the observation they carried on in Blair’s footsteps. They did nothing Conservative. What did they actively seek to conserve?

This is true. But an actual right-wing party would have acted as an effective bulwark against it, not jumped squarely on the bandwagon.

Exactly.

This is a really accurate portrayal of the current state of British politics IMO.

The media wins elections, not politicians. It has been like this for many years now - at least since the Brexit referendum.

OP, can you change your algorithm back and click ‘not interested’ in any of these types of posts that pop up? I think we all need to get better at not letting extreme rhetoric in, from either side of the political spectrum. I personally would like to see a strong centrist option but we don’t have one at the moment, unfortunately.

I will tell you how.

My town has undocumented males who have illegally entered the country. I wasn't aware until reading about one of the residents jailed for raping a schoolgirl. I read her account, heartbreaking. I then looked in to it and uncovered the shocking fact that there were many incidents going on, locals intimidated by these men and scared to walk their own streets.

I've been to protests recently, chatted to people who came and asked "what brought you here?" They tell me their stories. None of these people racist, but baffled why these young males have been released into their community with no regard to safety of local people.

Our opposition, including representation from Unions and other left wing factions, is slickly organised and imports protesters from outside the area to shut us down and call us nazis, fascists, bigots etc over and over again. Our Council is firmly on the side of these men who are terrorising local girls and women. I do not understand why they are not held in secure accommodation whilst being processed. It will then protect local communities.

I googled ' why are people proud to be british' last night.

Overwhelmingly it was cultural diversity included everywhere, in every list. But that's suddenly not what some people are proud of any more.

In 2023 the daily mail had fish and chips in the number one spot by the way. I think the NHS was third.

I've also noticed that a lot of the imagery being used is related to war. A lot of the people involved are angry young men. I'm not sure how I feel about all that yet, but this is where I'm going when I wonder why people are so angry at the moment.
Previous posters are right, we've had very little that's bad come from the left, they've had very little control overall, so why are people suddenly so angry with them? Its illogical.

I have similar algorithms on Facebook. I don’t post on it - haven’t for years - and barely engage with anyone. I tend to use it for a local Facebook group for info. GB News comes up too.

Of course they were right wing - demonisation of immigrants, anti-eu, destruction of public services, tax-cuts for the rich, defence of known sexual predators....every single one of those are right wing positions.

Immigration increased under them because they manufactured it that way to create something to get people to focus on and distract from the continuing asset stripping of the country.

I'm GC and I don't understand why everything Trans is badged as left wing. Left wing support of trans people comes from a (misguided) place of wanting to be inclusive.

However, while some trans people have genuine body dysmorphia, many of them are just white, misogynistic men with a kink who think they are entitled to women's spaces - a very much right wing positions, as demonstrated by the only Trans MP being an ERG Tory!

This is so well said.

I’m no fan of Labour this time around and I think Starmer is a weak man.

But even I am hoping they can turn things around. After hearing Musk addressing the Unite the Kingdom crowd by saying we ‘need to fight’ (no, talking is better than fighting) that we need an immediate dissolution of parliament and that all of us centrists need to be the ones to make it happen, I came to the conclusion that we are better off with as much stability as we can get.

I hope things will turn around in the next four years.

A lot of the posters commenting on the far right posts in Facebook also have very little posting history. Just 2 or 3 photos of a family or a lads night out. Im very sceptical that most of these are real people.

I think your last paragraph goes a long way to answering the question in your first.

I don’t see how it’s pointless when reform are literally all ex Tories jumping ship to save their career and stay relevant.

Just yesterday, yet another one defected to reform. They’re just going to be more of the same but ramp up the corruption and cruelty by 1000 and you’d be more accurate. Unless that‘s the appeal? Were the traditional conservatives not right wing enough for you?

"FirstCuppa · Today 01:31
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"
The problem is that the 'Trans debate' has not happened. Stonewall called for "no debate" and has tried to destroy women's rights since 2015. Most women don't understand the threat to their rights. Women can't go on the BBC and discuss it openly. It's only recently that some news outlets will allow the women's side to be heard at all!

Have you seen what they propose to do to education and health care plans for children with SEN?

That's not fixing destruction it's destroying education for the most vulnerable children.

Labour only got 20% of potential votes last time. The same number of votes as they got when they lost to the Tories in the previous election. They didn’t win by getting new voters, they won because people didn’t vote Tory or because the right wing vote was split. They never had the country with them but don’t care because of their huge majority in parliament. Their MPs will start to care a lot more as the next election draws nearer.

How many sexual assaults / muggings / assaults have been carried.out by white men in your area?

I would bet my mortgage it is more than have been commited by immigrants, but I doubt you would hear people say they are intimidated by white men!

Thanks for the links. I’m already aware of this and have been for a while.

I have also noticed my FB feed recently becoming littered with things that are miles off what would normally interest me and that doesn’t make sense in terms of my values and beliefs.

I checked all my settings but they were still as previously.

Earlier this year having read the bio of a woman who worked at FB, I decided I no longer wanted to allow FB to make money from my data so started to wind the account down. The recent algorithm changes prompted me to finally delete my account.

can’t say i’m missing it.

I am political, have been in an aware way since I left home at 18, and before that with things like an awareness that my mums objection to me playing with a neighbours daughter because she was black just didn’t make an logical sense, and I was only 5 at the time. I obeyed my mum because I was a timid kid but it made no sense at all.

I remember the racism of my older male relatives who’d fought in wars against, for example, the Japanese, due to things they’d experienced in the camps. Again I thought it illogical but I could at least see how they’d got to that.

what makes me scratch my head with the current racist mindset is that the people shouting the loudest often don’t actually know anyone from a different race/culture and just don’t mix outside their circles. I’m aware that this happens in other culture too in this country. I consider it a failure of govt policy, in much the same way as their failure of policy in regard to inwards migration from the Caribbean in the 50’s and 60’s.

it does make me sad how far Russian (and others) interference has dragged us in terms of identity politics.

I lived most of my 20’s and 30’s either on benefits or very low wages due to things outside my control and my memory was of supportive people from all races and cultures mixing (im
in London) and lifting each other up between all the shittyness of life when you’re financially struggling. I was also a single parent of a disabled child and saw the changes after 1997 in terms of support for things like escaping domestic violence. (It just wasn’t there prior to that. If you rung the police they wouldn’t get involved in ‘domestics).
from my age and demographic I should now apparently be right wing leaning.

thankfully I’ve had enough experience of life not to fall for extremes in any area of life.
my grandparents would be horrified to see history repeating itself this way but this time speeded up by sophisticated electronic interference.

Thanks for the thread OP. FWIW I agree.

"demonisation of immigrants" - but letting more in than any other party never has? Cameron wasn't anti EU, the referendum was intended to kill anti EU sentiment stone dead. And Labour unfortunately seem even more hell bent on protecting sexual predators. There is a gulf between rhetoric and reality. Which is deliberately cultivated to make people feel like they have a choice between red or blue. They don't, they're two shop fronts for the same company.