Tommy Robinson and Let Women Speak

[eatfigs]

I've only read about this on Twitter so there's a chance this is being taken out of context, but it looks like Let Women Speak were part of Tommy Robinson's rally in London this past weekend:

https://x.com/shularises/status/1797585248580186511

https://x.com/GappyTales/status/1797611080212205988

https://x.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1796931835823362392

This doesn't sit right with me at all. I've been to LWS events and thought I knew what they were about. I've argued against the guilt-by-association tactics that some activists use against LWS when male intruders have turned up to the events, like the neo-Nazis in Melbourne.

But here we see the opposite, LWS deliberately attending far-right fascist marches. This seems inexcusable to me.

OK. If you aren't defending populism then I assume my "black and white thinking" has annoyed you to the point you just want to prove me wrong.

I try hard not to put words in others mouths so represent my own views. If that comes across as black and white, I apologise.

My point is populism is dangerous and its worrying to see KJK openly advocating for it.

"The left" is as much a hive mind as "the right" is.

This insistence on paying attention to what Gordon brown said 14 years ago as why "the left" is a problem, while ignoring the divisive rhetoric from the likes of Braverman on "the right" doesn't appear balanced. It appears tribal.

I've never voted for Gordon Brown. I was a lib dem voter in those days. Gordon Brown is an irrelevance to me and probably many other voters you are tarring as "the left"

I try hard not to put words in others mouths

But you just did. You took the tweet of KJK and told everyone you think she’s supportive of the kind of bad populism you think is dangerous. What about different aspects of populism. Could she be talking about those?

Why do you think populism is worrying, and why do you think it arises in the first place?

Aren't these better, more fruitful questions which, in turn, might lead to better understanding of what is going on in the collective?

It has everything to do with conditions today. A lot of people turned against the Labour Party because they considered they were not listening to everyday people; of the sort who had always voted Labour. Under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown the Labour party became more about the metropolitan middle class elites than it did about the traditional working class.

This sort of snobbery also contributed to many people in disenfranchised communities voting for Brexit. Likewise Hillary Clinton with her " basket of deplorables". Gordon Brown was leader when the Labour party could be said to have cut its ties to its traditional base.

You go on about populism without any obvious sign that you understand what it is and why it arises. Nothing happens that is without a ripple effect.

Honestly if anyone is frightened of the rise of populism, and the right, I'd suggest the best approach isn't to demonise people and dismiss their views as facist. It's blindingly obvious. I think the temptation to virtue signal gets the better of some though.

Rather than just listening to selected sources you " trust" ( I'm assuming you only pick your sources based upon existing prejudices) there is nothing more worthwhile than educating yourself to think and be reflective. Saying that "what happened 14 years ago is irrelevent" to now, or that you "don't follow american politics" signals quite a shallow approach to developing your thinking, I suggest

Given you are in your 40s, and given the strength of your political feeling - you really ought to do better. You spend a lot of time dissing women who have far more depth and breadth of political knowledege and understanding than yourself.

Popular is not the same thing as Populist.

Having popular policies, listening to the population, championing the "common man" and even being a popular president can indeed all be good things (or bad, of course).

A good leader seeks to solve problems. A populist leader panders to preconceived assumptions about solutions. This may make them popular but is unlikely to solve the problems it claims to, or at least solve them in an ethical or sustainable way.

The more populist policies a leader (or movement) has and the more "Us or Them" their rhetoric is, the greater the concern should be. And of course the US has a deep seated fear of falling into dictatorship, hence the decision to encode the convention against more than two terms into law after FDR. (There's a really interesting Rest Is History episode about how the early US leaders saw government).

Why do you consider FDR populist rather than popular?

Why do you consider FDR populist rather than popular?

I don’t necessarily. But some do, it’s an opinion some have. He drew on populist ideas at times. Google throws up some articles. My point was more that “populism is definitely bad” is not clear cut.

Not me!

Not all LGB people believe in teaching gender ideology to kids at school, quite a lot don't.

Including the lady passing out the leaflets.

WHat logically follows from that is that the leaflets does not mean "LGB" people.

They mean people teaching gender ideology to kids in schools.

In general you seem quite ok with it in other threads, so it may be that your complaint here is disingenuous. No surprise there.

Well, I will defend populism. Populism is doing what the electorate wants e.g. amending the EA2010, repealing the Gender Recognition Act, reducing legal immigration (infrastructure is buckling and it allows British firms to avoid training people who are already here) and also illegal immigration and having, instead, family-friendly policies that do not demonize women who stay at home with their children rather than have a job and prioritizes educational outcomes for children over the parents' ability to have childcare so they can work, re-nationalization of utilities and some transport e.g. railways (and the Royal Mail - and also extending the universal service obligation to all mail/post delivery providers - the beloved neo-liberal 'level playing field'), fund the NHS properly - all of these are populist ideas, as is reducing the abortion limit to 22 weeks (God only knows why Labour things abortion up to the point of birth is popular because it isn't and is fraught with dangers including femicide, and forced abortions, a particular danger for ethnic minority women). How could anyone think they are necessarily right-wing? I am unashamedly populist, for I support all these things. I am a Bennite Socialist, so I would.

There will be times when the average person wants one thing and the dominant view amongst politicians is the opposite. This is where we are with much of the gender debate. In some situations the people will probably be right, and in others the more mainstream politicians will be.

People like KJK who stand up and shout that the political class have got an issue wrong will always be labelled populists, because it's a great way of knocking them back down and to inviting comparisons with various terrible figures from history. And it this situation it helps avoid them having to debate or respond to her actual points, because they're all a bit too scared to do that.

Populists/populism can be left wing or right wing.

Well yes, obviously. I'm sure we can all think of examples of both. I'm not sure anyone is saying otherwise?

Plus also "left" and "right" are kind of meaningless anyway in this context - would an emerging populist firebrand championing traditional gender roles and a tax-the-elites economic policy be counted as left or right wing?

Agree with RebelliousCow and I tried to make a similar point earlier in the thread but didn't do it as well.

The left have refused to learn from the "bigoted woman" incident, the loss of the red wall, and the popularity of Trump. They ignore the concerns of the white working class and act as if Trump supporters and Brexit voters are sub human and their votes are not desirable. People, even Tommy Robinson supporters are not stupid and see this and it fuels the hostility against existing political elites and pushes people to extremes.

Cassie's posts on this thread are a prime example of the sort of elitist thinking that shuns people for wrongthink and encourages them towards populism/ extremism/ conspiracy theorists.

The left should engage with the disaffected and see what they can learn about their concerns, not Other them.

In the same way, if stalwart working class feminists like Aja And Lippy are going to a TR march, leftist feminists should be saying "Bloody hell these are the very sort of women we're supposed to exist to help. What are we doing so wrong that they might be drifting towards thinking they have more in common with TR than with us?", instead of saying "SHUN THE WITCHES".

I was responding to Grammarnut who wrote

“How could anyone think they are necessarily right-wing?”

just making it clear that populism =/= right wing.

The ins and outs of populism aren’t really the point. The point is that there are some people who believe “this person said this, ergo they mean this, this and this and are associated with this and are therefore bad people and so is anyone who might cross their path.”

The point is when so little critical thinking is given to the “ergo” part of that sentence, it descends into a ridiculous stretch where reasonable discussion and consideration of ideas go out the window.

It was me. I mentioned him. And it matters. Because the woman didn't 'bring up immigration' she said something bigoted. We shouldn't tiptoe around this.

That’s not what populism means. It’s not a policy programme. It means appealing to “the people” through selling a simplified story that real problems (eg poverty) are the fault of either a corrupt elite or a scapegoated marginalised group. Or both. So rather than offering real policy solutions they offer to ‘take down’ the elite and/or ‘cast out’ the scapegoated group. Trump is a populist because he sells a story of a corrupt elite (the deep state) and scapegoats groups which need to be cast out of the US (Mexicans and Muslims mainly). It’s conspiracy thinking as politics.

Populist is just another label to stick on people who you don't like.
I'm a democrat (once would have said democratic socialist).

Democracy is under threat. 2 democratically elected MPs have been murdered; Jo Cox by a fascist and Sir David Amess by Ali Harbi Ali, an Islamist. I'm concerned about both. Also remember Islamists got pretty cosy with Hitler.

Things are complex pretty much because people are.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bigotgate-gordon-brown-anniversary-gillian-duffy-transcript-full-read-1957274.html

Can' you tell us what qualifies as bigoted please?

That is one way to define populism, certainly. Many would say that current cost of living problems are caused by profiteering energy companies, and that they need taming - nationalisation would be a popular and also populist choice. Repealing the Gender Recognition Act would remove discrimination against a majority group (women 51%) by a minority group (some transpeople and their allies) who are causing problems for the majority group - popular and populist; certainly something the Tories have picked up on but not Labour. Trump has a point in the US in that policy is not driven by what is either needed or wanted by the population, but by the donors to campaigns, big pharma, the health industry, the arms industry, car industry etc - claiming that is the case is populist in your sense, but also true and its ending is popular, so in my sense is also populist. Brexit has been called a populist agenda - but most who voted Brexit (and I did because I am a Bennite Socialist and Tony Benn set out the arguments against the EEC/EC/EU in 1975) are called populists but the reasons for voting were mainly around sovereignty, which had been given by Parliament to the EU without the consent of the people e.g Maastricht should have gone to a referendum as should Lisbon (they did not because the government would have lost the referendum). Many voted to leave the EU because of its poor record on protecting union rights and workers' rights against businesses bringing in cheap labour to a country under the cloak of the 'right of establishment'. Others objected that EU immigration policy was racist in that it favoured white Europeans over people from the rest of the world. All are populist in your sense and mine.

From the transcript the only bit that mentions immigration, Prior to that the immediate topic was the dole

"GD: You can’t say anything about the immigrants because you’re saying that you’re... but all these eastern Europeans what are coming in, where are they flocking from?

GB: A million people have come from Europe but a million British people have gone into Europe. You do know that there’s a lot of British people staying in Europe as well. Look, come back to what were your initial principles: helping people – that’s what we’re in the business of doing. A decent health service, that’s really important, and education. Now these are the things that we have tried to do. We’re going to maintain the schools so that we can make sure that people have that chance to get on. We’re going to maintain the health service so that..."

and straight after students going to university and having to pay. Then some general chitchat and nice to meet you stuff

Then

Gordon Brown gets in car.
"GB: That was a disaster... should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that?
Aide: I don’t know, I didn’t see her.
GB: Sue [Nye]’s, I think. Just ridiculous.
Aide: Not sure that they’ll go with that one.
GB: They will go with that one.
Aide: What did she say?
GB: Everything, she was just a sort of bigoted woman who said she used to be Labour."

she brought up immigration along with many other subjects she may not have worded it perfectly but it was a valid question that many people at the time were asking. She didn't deserve the bigoted woman comment

She tweeted in favour of populism. Apropos of nothing.

I think populism is dangerous. And a pathway to far right fascism as per the 30s.

I'm completely failing to see how my thoughts are putting words in her mouth. What I said was clear.