This morning's poll:
Are the Tories now promoting fascism in the UK?
- Yes (94%, 1,160 Votes)
- I'm abstaining, but show me the results anyway (3%, 40 Votes)
- No (1%, 15 Votes)
- Don't be silly (1%, 14 Votes)
Total Voters: 1,229
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There is a clip doing the rounds, of the Yale history professor Timothy Snyder being interviewed by Channel 4 News in 2020, talking about some contemporary politicians reviving political tactics from the 1920s and 1930s.
He referred to a rhetorical tactic borrowed from “a notorious manual to propaganda, which was composed in a Munich prison at the beginning of 1924, which advises that what you should do in political propaganda is always find simple slogans, and repeat them over and over again, with the effect of dividing your listeners into us and them.”
I think that book was Mein Kampf.
Make America Great Again. Stop The Steal. Take Back Control. Stop The Boats.
In this context, it is somewhat alarming to see new UK television networks attempting to copy the one-sided and polarising form and content of Fox in the US.
Fascism is not necessary military uniforms and jackboots and roman salutes and toothbrush moustaches and book burnings and concentration camps, although it can include them. It comprises the populist tactics by which a group of authoritarian, nationalistic minded leaders (and their financial backers) mobilise “us” to co-opt or bypass the usual democratic checks and balances that protect minority rights and interests of “them”, and thereby undermine democracy and the rule of law.
Britain of the 2020s is not German of he 1930s. But if British politicians do not want to be compared to German politicians from the 1930s, they should not use similar rhetoric in a similar way to similar ends.
Agreed
No, but you can compare them with the Conservative Government of the 1930s. Think particularly of Sir Joseph Ball, first Director of Research of the Conservative Party and passionate Conservative; senior, mysterious and frankly sinister member of MI5; a close advisor to Chamberlain in the War (he bugged Churchill’s phone, ran an independent foreign policy outside the FO for the PM, tried to negotiate peace with Germany through Italy, edited the anti-Jewish paper ‘The Truth’, and hounded the only Jewish minister, Hore-Belisha out of office). That is what appears to be generally known. He burned his papers before his death in 1964 (the few that remain are in the Bodlian), there is no biography I know of (no surprise – nobody wants to go there; he is the big Conservative stone nobody wishes to turn over), and there is a lot more in British policy in which he had a hand (an ‘éminence grise’ who vanishes as soon as light falls on him). Even Churchill could not entirely be rid of him.
Nazi? Of course not. He is British…..
In the 1920s and possibly the 1930s there was actually a Tory sub-group including MPs called something like “Tories for Fascism”
More recently in the 1980s Young Tories thought it very smart to wear T-shirts proclaiming “Hang Nelson Mandela”
Mr Langston,
‘Tories for Fascism’ does not have the ring of 1930s verisimilitude; I stand to be corrected, but the language frankly seems more estuary-1980s to me. In the 1930s the names used by the influential Conservative-minded operations (a cut above the Mosley crew) included ‘the Anglo-German Fellowship’, or the ominously chilly ‘The Link’.
Richard, I remember suggesting this to you some 2/3 years ago. Unfortunately it is now coming true. Starmer is now offering no real opposition and I have not renewed my Labour Party membership and joined the Green Party. Labour seem to think the next GE is already secured but as a former leader of Labour once said a week is a long time in politics.
Starmer might be the biggest fascist enabler in UK politics right now
I stress, might be. But if he does not call this out now, and change the agenda then he will be.
Starmer is basically New Labour and we know how that ended.
There is an extract from Bernie Sanders new book in the i newspaper yesterday.
He explains the reasons for working class support for Trump. These could also explain support for Farage with of course blame for the EU in the UK’s case.
Starmer is totally uninspiring, his speech is delivered in a legalistic manner and his knowledge of economics is abysmal. Labour needs a leader who can inspire. As a Labour member I did not vote for Starmer, in fact I spoilt my ballot paper by inserting the name of Clive Lewis.
I have a copy
One day I might read it…
Clive would have been my choice
My view is that the Tories are using the science of fascism without labelling it as such.
But then again, you have to be fairly intelligent and not so full of hate in order to see it for what it is.
What certain modern political strategists feigning originality call ‘wedge strategies’ or ‘throwing a dead cat on the table’ are just re-labelled fascist tactics perfected in inter war fascist Italy and Germany.
Promoting fascism? Possibly. Implmenting imbecility – 100%. The correlation tories – imbeciles is almost perfect.
Rationale?
Since the final quarter of 2019, Britain has lost 408,000 people aged 16 to 64 from the workforce, according to the Office of National Statistics.
Question for the tory imbeciles: given Britain is on track to lose circa 0.5 million people from the workforce – how do they propose to replace them? Where will all the new nurses, doctors, etc etc etc etc come from…………the sound of dead silence from tory imbeciles is revealing
I notice that many asylum seekers are young (not all but a majority). Stripping away all humanity- at the very least they could be reagrded as an asset. That the tory imbeciles are incapable of even doing that (regarding them as a possible asset) tells you all you need to know about tory imbeciles – whilst simultaneously confirming that indeed facists are stupid. a venn diagram of tory – imbecile – facist – would have one circle and three words.
In a previous post – a commentator noted the Afghan refugee who became an A&E doctor – doubtless there are thousands of other examples.
Adding to my comment that the tories are both imbecilies and fascists. This is what the “right wing” in Finland are saying (election in one month btw):
“We want to reform the labor market, taxation and social security, and get tens of thousands of workers from other countries to Finland, as we have a lack of workers,” he said (ex Finance minster Orpo – head of the “National Coalition Party” which is on course to win the election.
Of course his policies in the UK would be regarded as to the left of Corbyn – but we will pass over the reality that “conservatives” in the EU look a bit like left-wing socialists that would never get elected in the UK. Some (many?) EU conservatives recognise the need for more people in the work force – UK tories don’t. & yes, the EU is swinging right on immigration – they may find they have to swallow it – if they want to keep the economic show on the road. I had some good friends that were/are CDU politicians (in the Lander) – in the Uk they would have been classed as slightly left-wing labour of the 1980s.
Hate to say this, Richard, but I think you should stop these polls. Having followed this blog for several years now, I don’t have to be a genius to know what the result will be and I don’t even bother to abstain.
They have doubled blog traffic this week
Why stop them?
Hi Richard,
I can’t be 100% sure but I think I’ve been able to vote twice in 2 of your polls, including this one.
You are allowed to in this one
If I may – I find it interesting that there is quite a big level of agreement on most topics – with a bit of nauance on others – but overall broad agreement. In turn I find it quite heartening that there is a good number of people who are “thinking what I’m thinking”. Who knows, perhaps the polls will give various politicos pause for thought (working on the bais that they can, think that is).
To be clear, polls are getting people onto the site and many more people are nagging
Traffic today will be the biggest this year – 13,000 and rising. Last year the average was 7,300.
If polls get people taking I am doing them.
I’ve always found Umberto Eco’s little check list handy. I think we can tick them all off now.
https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html
vampires do not cast a shadow
There’s plenty about Ball here; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Ball_(British_public_servant)
Ball was not a vampire
Not all fascists are vampires
Some are among us as we speak
Stands to reason, eh?
This is less than complete, or satisfactory as an account. No reference to Adrian Phillips, ‘Fighting Churchill, Appeasing Hitler’, (2019) who raises some new avenues, for example. More information is slowly leaking out; but Ball has been dead for almost sixty years and we still have an inadequate picture of his influence, or how he operated; or how the system functioned that allowed him to exploit it so effectively, for so long. He outlasted Churchill as a political operator who influenced British policy into the 1960s.
Adam Curtis started to join up links with “The Mafair Set” in which Tiny Rowlands “swam”. Doubtless Ball had his fingers in many pies – interestingly Slater and Walker both appear in the first 1 minute of the 1st prog. The wikipedia entry needs to include the label neo-fascist/Nazi-sympathiser.
As for Ball & MI5 – he demonstrated the usual level of fascist/tory competence by ending up with all the MI5 people in Dublin eliminated in one night during the Irish fight against the English (when he held an operational role in MI5). Forgery/the Zinoviev letter better reflecting his modus operandi (and competance). One can but speculate regarding his links to, for example, Ian Smith and the white supremacist headbangers in Rohdesia who set that country back 40 years..
Mr Parr,
Here is an example of the endless synaptic connections in the neurons of the State that Ball manged to create in his long career.
In 1990, with classic British respect for carefully timed precedent, two years after ‘Tiny’ Rowland had died, an early day motion (EDM) was put down in Parliament (signed by the Labour Peer Lord Campbell-Savours) on the matter of the supervision of takeovers of newspapers, which read as follows:
“That this House is increasingly of the view effective scrutiny of newspaper acquisitions may have been effectively avoided in the case of Mr Tiny Rowland taking control of The Observer by a failure on the part of MI6 to disclose the nature of its true relationship with Mr Rowland and to make its files on him available to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission; believes that the Rowland/Lonrho/MI6 links date from the chairmanship of Lonrho of Sir Joseph Ball, a former head of British intelligence; finds it of further interest that, after taking effective control of Lonrho in 1961, Mr Rowland had on his board Mr Nicholas Elliott, another senior MI6 officer and a man whose high level secret service activities warrant mention in Spycatcher; notes the suggestion that Mr Elliott was Mr Rowland’s formal link with MI6; is not therefore surprised to see Mr Rowland’s confirmation of 20th November 1975 that his file was so confidential that a Department of Trade and Industry Inspector was only permitted to view it if accompanied by two MI6 officers; believes that the Monopolies and Mergers Commission Observer inquiry was deficient; is disturbed by what may prove to be a close link between MI6 and an apparently independent newspaper with a radical tradition; and calls upon Mr Tiny Rowland to divest himself of control of The Observer”.
Is there a hint of a conspiracy theory emerging here?
After all, wasn’t it Winston Churchill who said in a radio broadcast in October 1939: “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key.” And we know how that turned out.
Or do we, even now?
What is your argument?
It was a bit ‘tongue in cheek’.
I’m not really into conspiracy theories, so the following judgements calls are intended seriously.
MI5/6 got rid of Wilson and with him the last vestige of any party supporting working people- which helped launch neoliberalism, whose end goal is an un-elected fascist state. Neoliberalism has already achieved this in what used to be the USSR and the CCP, and is well down the track in the USA. – In Britain’s case it was helped along by Russian financing of the Brexit movement, and is busy wrecking everywhere else around the planet.
Thanks for clarification