to think we're all being manipulated

[newbluesofa]

I'm going to get flamed by reform voters here, and I think it'll come off as thinking I'm smarter than everyone but I genuinely don't, which is why I'm so confused by this.

To me, it is incredibly obvious that we are being completely manipulated by politicians and the media. They want us to blame immigrants and people who claim benefits for their failing to run the country properly. And it's worked.

I don't think we should have unregulated immigration, there are issues that need to be addressed. But there's a difference between sensibly discussing immigration from an economic point, and the nasty hate and vitriol that's everywhere now. It is what they WANT. As long as we're fighting amongst ourselves, no one is looking up at the people with the real power and money.

One example, newspapers describing immigrants as 'fighting age men'. 'Fighting' is not an age. Young men could also be fit, healthy, and able to work and contribute. They say 'fighting age' to scaremonger and promote anti immigrant rhetoric, and it works as people parrot the line.

It's always been the way that the ruling class look for ways to keep the masses infighting. Honestly I lose respect at anyone that falls for it. I don't get how it isn't so obvious to others, how can you not see you're being played?

It’s not happening rn for those in the EU. If it was all the first entry countries would have all arrivals.

YANBU - What I find even more worrying is a consistent use of the term 'civil war' being echoed through particular platforms on social media. It's as though they are consistently sowing seeds of discord for a particular end.

Even US commentators are reporting on the upcoming British civil war and people are falling for it!!

Depends if they end up working for the NHS - plus if they are young and fit much less likely to use NHS while also paying tax to fund it.

They would be a burden when they get old if they stay - and start to need NHS services.

They'd likely have an adverse effect on other amenities like housing costs - as it's more people to house.

Huge gangs of foreign men hanging around. A few pointing at her children and whispering to each other. The last time she was in town she honestly thought one of them might grab one of her kids. Sounds crazy, I know. But she's not crazy, she's a very sensible middle aged woman.

To your OP. I mean yes, it's often a good idea to know which political leaning your source comes from as it were. Media 101.

Also splitting people into stupid and right, intelligent and left, leave = stupid, remain = intelligent, moral even, is really immature. I mean psychologically, it's very early - monsters under the bed anyone?

Of course the narrative is being manipulated. We’ve been in a period of a lack of political consensus since the early 2000s. This has created a power vacuum where all parties are trying to grab the upper hand.
What’s the quickest way to achieve a consensus? A war. A common enemy.
What other benefits are there of being at war?
Government can push through laws that may not otherwise be supported, they can spend money in a way that wouldn’t usually be supported and can say and do things that people would only permit in a crisis.
So, let’s have a war.
But actual wars are very costly and support tends to dwindle once young men and women start coming home in body bags.
So what do you do instead? You have a phoney war. The culture wars. The ‘we’ve lost control of our borders’ type war. You use the language of war ‘Stop the Boats’ ‘raise the flags’ ‘be a patriot’, ‘reclaim our sovereignty’ rename your department of defence the department for war.
But …
We are not at war. We are not being invaded. Modern British society is not ‘broken’

I genuinely fear that the general public will vote in the self-interested little dictators who are telling them these things with straight faces and then once things start getting worse will continue to swallow the line that we are at war, so you have to keep giving up your rights and eroding those of others in order to keep us in the powerful position that they’ve come to enjoy.

Yeah, I'm sure the 1000 men that arrive every day are all brain surgeons 🙄
Plus they can't work as they are not legal. So they take and take and take without ever giving back.

I used to live somewhere in England that had a huge foreign population. Let me tell you, they do not want to integrate with English "white trash", I have heard this MANY times.

I know nobody British who does not have at least one immigrant in their ancestry, though in some cases it's a few generations back.

My own most recent were a great-grandmother from Flanders on one side and a grandfather from Germany, whose family took refuge here, on the other. I set this against another branch of the family mentioned in church records in Yorkshire from thirteen-something, and feel that (in the 1960s phrase) "we are all foreign students!"

If Farage got his way and everyone had to go back to where their family came from, I have no idea where I would go, but Farage has the same problem, being descended from Huguenot refugees on one side and Germans getting away from the Franco-Prussian war on another.

Even US commentators are reporting on the upcoming British civil war and people are falling for it!!

I've seen some of that - does make me wonder about my view of other countires as well though

I did see an Australian guy commenting about commnets on one of his videos- he'd done something about a proposed spare room tax - they also have housing crisis - and number of USA commenators calling Australin decocarcy dead or demanding an uprising. He was like well it's a shit idea and yes we have other issues as well but FFS given what's happening in your country WTF.

This comment is a fascinating combination of wishful thinking and crazy.

Lately I'm not so sure. Every other newscast on BBC news over the past couple of weeks has been nothing but immigration and not in any positive way either.

Feeding directly to the DM demographic.

Remember when it was single mums who were the cause of everything wrong with society? Then "benefits scroungers"? Then ASBO teenagers?

Now with immigrants they've found something which has stuck.

Well it's the politicians (and these days 'influencers') that start it all, the media just report what is being said. You get who you vote for! And the fact that any idiot can get a million followers by spouting unsubstantiated garbage doesn't help.

We are not at war. We are not being invaded. Modern British society is not ‘broken’

365,000 undocumented males arriving every year isn't an invasion? From countries where women have no rights, and rape is hunky dory?

You might want to take your horse blinkers off.

The Notting Hill Riots against immigrants were in the 1950s! Nothing new under the sun.

They backed Tony Blair. The whole ‘it was the Sun what won it’ headline. They didn’t back Starmer though.

Before this set of immigrants it was black people and before that the Irish. There's always some immigrant community to blame for the woes of society.

Why ever not?

There are no countries where rape is hunkydory. It’s forbidden in Islam. A lot of the refugees are highly educated. The endless tropes around the idea of savage uneducated brown men coming here and raping our women are just plain racist.

Perfectly put.

Where the fuck did I saw they were - and why do you think the NHS only employs brain surgeons?

Plus they can't work as they are not legal. So they take and take and take without ever giving back.

Not all immigration is illegal soem is needed ti fill skill shortages - and when it is illegal at start some go through our processes and are found to have a valid claim they get legalised and do start to pay taxes.

I've also lived near immigrant populations in UK and have generallly found them hard working and not isolationists at all - though I image some may be.

Because they can find much more bigoted stuff to agree with online.

Mass immigration is a phrase straight out of the NF playbook. We are 69,500,000 in the UK and 1,097 asylum seekers arrived this week. How is that mass immigration at all? I appreciate it doesn’t include people arriving by legal routes, but seriously?

@AnonymousBleepthey did. Here’s the BBC headline 3rd July 2024

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1751vv0z7o.amp

It wasn’t as much of a big deal as for Tony Blair as their readership has probably fallen a fair bit since then.

Of course we are. We’re all being penned into fighting cages by being divided continuously. Left wing, right wing, patriot, sheeple, Covidiot, antivaxxer, woke, Terf, Boomer. There are so many labels for us now and we all have to be against everyone with a different label.