UsForThem - “opaque lobbyists” with links to the far right?

[LacyEdge]

Prof Alice Roberts started an interesting Twitter thread discussing this, linking to Nafeez Ahmed’s article about U4T in Byline Times. Replies suggest UsForThem aren’t a concerned parents’ group at all and are linked with a far right funded group.

Well I never.

twitter.com/theAliceRoberts/status/1352993581414424576

They're new libertarian right.

Schools = childcare.

Childcare = workers working

Plus it's a big ideological coup: a wedge to push the door further open to force everyone into some weird denial-state that we can re-open everything = money.

It's insane.

But they really are right-wing libertarian 'swivel-eyed loons', as John Major termed them.

@Temptashun

Just what do people think the odds of dying from coronavirus are?

You've all gone mad, I tell you. I thought people would be fighting tooth and nail to get the kids back into school without damaging measures that the kids don't need.

Wanting to shove stuff up their noses regularly and covering up their breathing holes and stopping them from playing properly.

What's the matter with yu all?
You're monsters.

Exhibit A

Astroturfing.

They will cynically invoke children's mental health - but they don't care (they're not lobbying for more actual, real, qualified mental health provision).

They will cynically invoke learning inequalities between children - but they don't care because they're not lobbying for more funding to target inequality.

They will cynically invoke the pressures on parents working and trying to look after children/supervise learning - but they don't care, they're not lobbying for incentives for people to be able to take time off/isolate, support for businesses to close temporarily, or sanctions for employers forcing people to work in unsafe conditions.

No.

They really, really don't give a stuff about education.

It's about getting the workers working and everything open - and a libertarian approach to public health.

They are a wedge and a nightmare.

I pity anyone conned by this 'group'.

The ‘no affiliation’ posts defending them make me feel nauseous.

If money was so important to this group you’d think they could afford private

State school users aren’t typically focussed on money otherwise they’d choose better paying careers - not ones on that list

Childcare is often bandied about but again KW have it already.

I’m not particularly taken in by them I only see threads on here about them. Until today mentioned on news

I do wonder how stretched some of this is as sounds so far fetched

@Xenia

It is a matter of helping children and not destroying their lives for the sake of the old and sick. Lots of people want schools to reopen. I would rather my risk of death increased by 100x if we could remove the mandatory covid 19 rules and opened schools etc.

Well, you can crack on with that if you like, @Xenia, but no thanks, not on my account. I have NO wish to die at all, let alone unnecessarily.

Even worse, cat is that they will, and have used vulnerable children in abusive homes as a reason to get all children back to school, pinning the abuse those children suffer on those who think we need to manage infection levels in a pandemic.

Of course they are nowhere to be seen when cuts to social care are made.

Equally state schools = full of lefty lazy union members/ public employees
who will use any excuse in the book to avoid hard work.
Hence their love of academies which can receive support from private or corporate sponsors tory cronies and have alot more freedom to do what they want as far as employment terms and conditions, pay and transparency are concerned....

Marsha I am totally baffled. You have been on hundreds of threads with these astroturfers peddling their agenda. You’ve seen them being called out for it time and time again since the summer.

How can you have not noticed what their aims are and what they are doing?

You’ve been on their threads!

I don’t get the far right part

I feel like it’s an upside down world where state education has become something the far right care about

And now people saying it’s money

I find that part strange

@noblegiraffe

Marsha I am totally baffled. You have been on hundreds of threads with these astroturfers peddling their agenda. You’ve seen them being called out for it time and time again since the summer.

How can you have not noticed what their aims are and what they are doing?

You’ve been on their threads!

I don't get it either.

And poster saying don’t be taken in by their occupations - yoga teacher / paediatrician etc

Feels really conspiracy territory

If someone hadn’t listed the founders I might not have questioned it so much

Exhibit A

Astroturfing.

I can assure you that this is very much how I feel, but you tell yourself whatever you need to to feel better about what you're doing.
Dismissing everything as right wing or a conspiracy theory..., have you never really taken the chance to wonder why people think differently to you?
I do, all the time, but all I can think of for the current situation is that you just have no idea of the IRFs, and that you've been convinced by a very manipulative government campaign that covid is an automatic death sentence, and that you're a murderer for wanting to live normally.

I used to think that in Victorian times that parents must have just been so desperate for money, to send their kids to do dangerous jobs.
Now I think that it was just because it was culturally acceptable to do so.

People wanting testing, masks, and social distancing for children who are not affected by this virus have conformed to the new social cultural norms far too easily for my liking, and all for a disease with an IFR of 0.2% and an average age of death of 82.

Damn.

Lost a long post.

MarshaBradyO this is standard operating procedure for the libertarian Right.

It went into overdrive with the Tufton Street lot and the ERG around Brexit but it's been developing since the New Right in America in the 1980s.

It was supercharged by social media and easy data collection.

This is an extract from reaganland. by Rick Perlstein. He's spent several pages at this point, outlining how a small leadership cadre, with a very right-wing agenda, exploit 'front' organisations and set up a Warren of organisations, to give the illusion of a consensus and to obscure the fact pressure us actually coming from a small group.

plus Perlstein goes to some lengths to point out that the other aim is to obscure the actual agenda - which is a hard right economic libertarianism and not popular - under a welter of seemingly different, particular, less right-wing agendas.

Cat why would the people who have their names and occupations listed so clearly be ok with being a front?

(Long posts on a phone are the very devil. Please excuse all my typos.)

Marsha it’s not about state education. There’s a wider agenda.

@Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow

It’s bizarre that any alternative view is now considered “far right

Exactly. Call them 'right wing' and job done = instant hate

Although I personally think the Us4Them gang sound like nutcases

I think the fact that they are relatively speaking a group with far far less public support than a similar grass roots group demanding more safety measures in schools (see facebook group membership) but they have met directly with johnson on numerous occasions and now have the backing of an influential tory lobbyist and that of 17 tory mps. Maybe not far right but libertarian and part of the same thinking that sporned other groups like tax payers alliance etc.

Blessed if I know, Marsha.

Perhaps they're right-wing yoga teachers?

We had something similar in our local area recently. A transport group set up by some parents, in an unholy alliance with UKIP people and people fighting against the tyranny of our Mayor.

I guess they see a congruency of interest.

Did you see the spokeswoman on C4 today? When Jon Smow started questioning her on what a 'safe return' might be, it was 'hand sanitiser is fine'.

Most strange.

@Victoriacres

I think the fact that they are relatively speaking a group with far far less public support than a similar grass roots group demanding more safety measures in schools (see facebook group membership) but they have met directly with johnson on numerous occasions and now have the backing of an influential tory lobbyist and that of 17 tory mps. Maybe not far right but libertarian and part of the same thinking that sporned other groups like tax payers alliance etc.

This is the crucial thing.

Again, Perlstein outlines how various pre-existing groups, with an agenda useful to the New Right, were approached and given funding, media access, and - crucial this - lobbying access.

It's not a secret.

This is all documented.

And all these techniques are the ones we're seeing, all over again.

Welcome to Mumsnet, temptashun.

It’s a shame you don’t understand the impact of unmitigated covid transmission in schools on both children’s education and on the wider community.

@thecatfromjapan

It's a standard tactic of the New Right to find organisations and fund them, boost them, help run them

The Left do this too

@donquixotedelamancha

U4T are certainly idiots but Alice Roberts thinks everyone who disagrees with her is 'far right'. She is to Science what Owen Jones is to journalism.

This.