Is nostalgia one of the factors for the rise in Reform?

[Fkouncingflump]

Since 2020 there seems to have been an increase in people’s interest in nostalgia - hundreds of Facebook groups, tik tok accounts, old tv shows and music regaining popularity etc. it’s understandable - looking back it’s easy to feel sad for what felt like more simple and happy times, especially as we get older and start to lose friends and family as well as with dealing with what feels like just quite a hostile and shit environment we now live in post Covid.
A trend I have started to notice in the last few weeks is people commenting on how “white” the throwback pictures and videos were, even from the 90s, which now seems to trigger a train of thought in commenters that somehow increased immigration is a factor in why “then” was nicer than “now” and therefore that’s why they will be voting Reform.

just curious if anyone thinks the nostalgia trend coupled with social media usage is playing its part in the popularity rise in reform?

Jeez, it's like Brexit all over again isn't it

No. It’s a realisation that the population are lied to constantly by politicians and the media, and people can see that the country is on a downward spiral. We’re only the ‘6th/7th largest economy’ by GDP, which is apparently propped up by mass immigration. However the country is about 27/28th best on other measures apparently.

People aren’t stupid and, even if they don’t know the details, they know that Labour and the Tories are dodging issues and not being straight with them.

Reform is openly saying this country is in trouble. People respond to that because they know it to be true.

If the other parties were honest about our situation, which is the first step to working out a real solution, and then had got even part way down the path of finding one, Reform would never have got a foothold.

It’s not nostalgia. It’s looking to the future and being able to see just how far our star (existence of rights, international power, culture and way of life) could fall.

Not really, people have realised that no other party will even attempt to address the issue of mass migration, hence the rapid growth of support across all age groups.

Yes, I think you're right. I'm on X and there's definitely an increase on my timeline of videos from the 80's and before. They're generally of a sunny day, either at the beach, park or town centre with people strolling around eating ice creams and children playing. Hardly any traffic on the roads, other than buses, and everywhere looks clean. I would think that if you lived here during that time, there must be some nostalgia and a desire to turn the clock back.

It was nicer 'then' than now. I don't like what this country has become.

I don’t think so

Reform is more to do with factors that France and Italy etc are also seeing wrt votes

The nostalgia memes were everywhere in the Brexit campaign too. There's an obvious appeal to presenting a sentimental, rose-tinted view of the past that hits people emotionally and that's really effective. And that lure of yearning for imagined better days can absolutely be manipulated into a conviction that there is someone to blame (immigrants/people of colour) and if we could just get rid of them everything would be better again. The Tories always picked a scapegoat - single mothers, people on benefits, disabled people and immigrants - to distract from their wider failings and shift the blame.

Reform don't actually seem to have a strategy on immigration, just a stance. They don't like it - but they don't have a plan to fix it, just like Vote Leave campaigned on an anti-immigration platform and won a Brexit that increased immigration to higher levels than ever before. It's all false promises, fuelled by very ugly undercurrents.

The nostalgia stuff also fits nicely with the Reform views of women's rights - the 'good old days' when a woman's place was in the kitchen.

Thank you - you have eloquently summarised it far better than I.

When things are shit, which I think we can all agree they are, the past is always greener. That's a natural human reaction.

When money is scarce, people want to find a single culprit (this time it's immigration). Another unfortunate human reaction.

It is simplistic, but iit is cyclic in history. This is what was going on in people's minds in 1930s Germany. We should be able to see what's happening and predict what's coming. But we are not. Because, you guessed it, man is the only animal that trips twice on the same stone - or whatever the actual wording of the saying is.

Personally, I think the real problem is that there is a lack of political will to address the really big issues. And people sense that.

@Lalalacrosse , so well put; thank you.

This is true!

If peoples quality of life improved, some of the issues with the NHS & public services fixed, peoples wages increased relatively to the COL crisis ten the REFORM Vote would just naturally fade away! There wouldn't' be the need to look for someone to blame

Obviously that's a big IF

“Be careful, when a democracy is sick, fascism comes to its bedside, but it is not to inquire about its health.”

The nostalgia posts aren't new (google 'Proper Binmen', popularised on Facebook around 2019)

I notice it in TV as well - one of the best examples is the enormous promotion of 90s TV shows, eg FRIENDS. All the re-runs, all the merchandise across every high street shop. The marketers know there's a market to create a faux-nineties nosalgia for people who never even lived then.

I think a lot of it is a subconscious resistance to the Tech Age, smartphones, lack of digital privacy, algorithms that shape personalities.

Ironic really that it's big tech and social media enabling the spread of it all!

To be clear I'm not going to vote for Reform, but they're all over TwiX at the moment and I think this woman sums up their appeal to so many pp at the moment.
twitter.com/Reform_Walsall/status/1807750775063334983?s=19

Great quote @TheDarkMonarch. Got goosebumps reading that.

Who said it/wrote it?

Chillingly true.

Not round here. They’re popular because of the many issues with the Home Office using hotels in the area to house hundreds of asylum seekers.

When politicians get very rich, have their own personal agendas, forget they are here to improve the country for ALL of us, then you get the situation we have today. The basics are being neglected, crime is off the scale and sadly often not reported, education struggling, health struggling, water poisoned, social mobility harder than ever, housing is controlled by developers who have sufficient land banked for years without needing more, child poverty a crime all of its own.... Nobody is listening and worse, nobody seems to really care imo. I have no idea who to vote for, which is possibly the first time ever!

@Alltheyearround - Albert Camus

So she lists all the things she hates that she says is broken - but then says she doesn’t want to pay any more tax. Do reform also have a magic money tree?

I've noticed these accounts too. All they do is churn out these images of happy people enjoying leisure time in the 1970s which seem innocuous enough on the face of it but when you go to the comments they are all about how great it was back in the old days when there were no immigrants, at which point you clock that the happy people are all white.

Mainstream parties have decided not to help the ordinary person in the UK and beyond... Cost of living? we all have to go without, rising taxes? we pay them, immigration? we have to deal with it, roads? smash up our cars, healthcare? years on waiting lists.

Meanwhile the rich get richer and their wealth can bypass our shockingly poor public services, ie the UK's 70th richest man only has a fortune of £2.5billion.....up £400m from last year.

If anyone can make a convincing case why Sunak can earn £2m last year but should only pay 23% tax on that, i'd like to hear it!!
Any of us will pay 40% on earnings above £50k p.a and lose child benefit.

How is that fair????

So people turn to parties that promise to do things differently, of course its all a Con, Reform just want power.

But their support, like across Europe, is down to the traditional parties failing to govern for the masses.

Where are the big ideas? the new schemes to improve our lives? all lacking from LD's, Lab and especially the Tories.

You dont lose child benefit after £50K anymore.