Zack Polanski and the guillotine

[Everanewbie]

AIBU to be sceptical that much will be done about Zack Polanski's tweet of an image of man wearing a t-shirt depicting a guillotine and the words "making plans for Nigel"?

Now I am not in favour of prosecuting people for words, and I don't want ZP sent to prison. But I would like to see this level of hate stop.

And I am finding the left to be extremely hypocritical with the violent rhetoric while simultaneously celebrating the arrest of Lucy Connelly and Graham Linehan?

I find Zia Yusuf (current chair of Reform) commenting on this at all - as he has - extremely hypocritical. Last year he liked a tweet that was both racist and anti-Semitic partly aimed at Robert Jenrick.

He then said it had been liked by a member of his team. At that time he wasn't chair and Jenrick did not accept his apology.

Since then Yusuf has been made chair, platformed on Question Time almost as much as Farage (who, odious as he is, could at least claim to be an elected MEP until 2024, whereas Yusuf is wholly unelected). Jenrick has obviously forgotten this slur on his wife's family since he jumped ship like a rat.

There have been Reform councillors posting that people should be shot (including Natalie Fleet MP) and Farage has publicly refused to condemn them. Hypocrites one and all.

And I don't particularly like Polanski.

No one wants to admit to still liking him because he has behaved like a knob on so many occasions.

Some will still vote for him though 🤷🏼‍♀️

If they are happy to vote for that infiltrated party, they can't have high standards. I'm not sure why they then expect it of others.

It's a song title. farage wasn't named. zP didn't post it , garage cropped the image taking off the tag so it looked as if zP had posted it originally. NF is an opportunist

Farage and reform don’t virtue signal. Farage and Reform don’t paint themselves as the good guys on the side of all that’s good kind inclusive and gentle.

Racism in Reform isn’t hypocrisy. And whether you like if or not there is a vast amount of racism in the world, so hearing it isn’t ever surprising.

what you see in the Zach t shirt and Heather Herbert isn’t political incorrectness. It’s psychopathology.

murderous psychopathology.

Says a lot about your standards. Why you think calling Farage rubbish gives you the moral high ground I don't know. You're acting dumb about a beheading. Nice.

Agree.

A despicable little toe rag.

👏 👏

As I pointed out earlier, saying “it’s just a song title” is entirely disingenuous. But you know that.

Taken from the BBC website:

Posting a screenshot on X, Reform UK leader Farage said: "If I was to post anything as inciteful then I would expect to be arrested, and so should Polanski."
Asked if he wanted to apologise to Farage, Polanski said: "Well, if I'd done it deliberately I'd be apologising but because this was a mistake I think the important thing is that I point out this was a mistake, that I also make sure that I condemn political violence, and also crucially I make a commitment to be better on social media."
Asked for a second time whether he would apologise, Polanski refused because he said Farage had cropped the image to make it look like he had posted it himself, which he said was "fundamentally dishonest" and only amplified the problem.
Saying he had received a death threat earlier on Tuesday, Polanski added: "The ramping up of the language to say 'this is incitement to murder me' feels like that's also putting me in a dangerous spot."
Given a third chance to apologise, Polanski doubled down and said: "You know as well as I do that as soon as I do that Nigel Farage would run all over social media saying he was correct about incitement to murder and this would all ramp up again.

Please show us all where the Tit-whisperer has apologised?

Why doesn’t ZP say “it was just a song title”? It’s such a clever rebuttal. I imagine because he is completely aware that it wouldn’t fly with most people, apart from causing a few lols from people who think violent threats to people they don’t like are funny.

‘ it’s just a song title ‘ is a weasly nine year old caught out at school.

people like heather herbert are normalising psychopathic speech to their followers, who are clearly very impressionable people. This t shirt, following what happened to Ann Widdecombe… this is incitement. These people know there are impressionable vulnerable people attending to their posts, just like Joshua Kelly. It’s criminal. It’s morally reprehensible. It’s dangerous.

ZP should gave apologised with gravity, that such a t shirt was within his party. But he doesn’t feel the gravitas, despite the murder of Anne Widdecome, despite the murder of Charlie Kirk, he doesn’t feel the gravity of the situation.

this tells you all you need to know about how unfit he is.

Again, it wasn’t a tag.

It was a collab post, and appears on the page in exactly the same way as if he posted it himself- essentially as ‘shared authors’ of a post.

At the very least, ZP needs to get a hold of his social media output, and needs to root out the culture of acceptance for this sort of thing from his party. The difference to me is that Reform don't pretend to be this cuddly, be kind, love everyone party. But the Greens do, so they need to hold themselves to a higher standard. Starting with its leaders; output with dealing with the prats who think that t-shirt is ok second.

I'm old and I've been observing UK politics for decades - and I'm not very party political - never found one which coincides with my views, so I've been a bit of a floating voter over the years.

I honestly think that 90% of our politicians are of poorer quality than they were in the 20th century. They just seem less inspiring, less statesman/woman-like, frankly, less educated and sophisticated than I expect politicians to be. And I'm not just hankering after Old Etonians - there have been some outstanding working class politicians in the past (won't list them - I'm trying to be concise and I'm not good at that!) who came up through the trades unions.

Why is this? Lower educational standards? Silly young things with PPE from Oxford and no life experience becoming Westminster research assistants and then standing for Parliament at age 26? I'm not even talking about corruption or scandals - I just mean they're uninspiring, have no big ideas and seem out of touch with the electorate. It all seems to have become even more London-Westiminster-centric than ever, somehow.

I blame social media for much of the problem. Look at this thread - these stupid people are always putting out an impulsive, mob-pleasing, over the top statement on social media before they've thought things through. And it seems to be calculated not to garner support, but to upset and alienate large parts of the population.

And on a deeper level - we've got to protect out public service broadcaster, the BBC. It might not be perfect (could moan about that) but it's far, far superior to Fox News or other dodgy channels. I think the US has Trump because they crushed their public service broadcaster and now US citizens get their news from biased and dumbed-down sources, often controlled by people like Trump. That whole country has been dumbed down and I fear it may be irreversible.

If we go the same way, we'll get the politicians we deserve too, whether that be Zack Polanski, Nigel Farage or worse...and there is worse, believe me.

What an unpleasant comment.

“People like you” indeed. You know nothing about me.

If you speak to people in real life the way you’re speaking to me here, I’d be surprised if you had any friends.

I have nothing more to say to you.

Well said. 👏👏👏

Jesus wept.
You came on here and attacked me on your first post on this thread and are acting like a victim now.

You're continuing to attack and can't answer any questions I asked eg how you knew about my friend's reaction.

You are genuinely vile.

This was your first post yet you're acting like I've come here to attack you 🤷🏻
Still waiting to hear on how you knew about my friend's reaction.

You know nothing about that poster either. Your reluctance to believe her shows your motive.

He hasn't allowed it. He Is It. He has found a party that would give him power and a voter base who would follow him into it (pro pal/trans activists) and has deliberately ridden on that wave to gain power and massage his enormous ego. He is the Greens Farage.

He is. Many of these people were causing problems for Labour before they defected to the Green Party (see also SNP in Scotland and the flow to the Greens there) and some were chucked out by Starmer’s administration for eg antisemitism.

I disagree. The chances of someone shooting a politician are infinity higher than Farage being murdered by guillotine. If anyone was
of a mind to take these 'suggestions' literally, the MP would be in far greater danger.
The far fetched nature of the Farage image is defence that its not intended as incitement as how would Polsnski suppose anyone would realistically do that?
This isn't a comment on the appropriateness of either, and I can't stand Polanski. However this is frankly the least of the issues I have with the man and I think its being overblown.