Part of Andy Burnham's appeal is his affected comfort with soft left politics. The opening fortnight of his premiership, the Downing Street speech, the care speech, the first address in the Commons, this is supposed to be the difference his leadership is making. And yet there is the same attacks on trans people. The same demonisation of asylum seekers, and fruitless boasting about the fall in Channel crossings. And this weekend we saw another one: political paralysis before a far right blockade/"protest" in Dover. The weakness of the government's response is so pitiful, you could be forgiven for thinking that Starmer wasn't turfed out a couple of months ago. Speaking in the Commons this afternoon, policing minister Sarah Jones "condemned" - and we should use that term advisedly - "intimidating and thuggish behaviour", lines lifted from Sunday night's Downing Street statement. There's "no excuse" for racists on the streets but, but ... "None of this is to minimise the valid concerns that law-abiding people have when they see vile criminal gangs exploiting the nation's generosity." Under questioning from Suella Braverman, she acknowledged that local people were "scared and angry" but not of far right squaddists running riot, but about small boats. This was completely different to the attitudes of fascist trouble-makers, she said, strongly implying that residents are fine to feel this way. In short, less a capitulation and more a regurgitation of Morgan McSweeney's drivel, the strategy that drove Starmer's premiership onto the rocks.
History tells us that expecting Labour to challenge the politics that has led to this shameful episode is too much. Even if the parliamentary party was overflowing with principled anti-racists, challenging the common sense Burnham's predecessor bedded down in British politics is too much like hard work. Refusing to scapegoat refugees, and pointing out how Britain's social problems are more deep rooted, more complex, and are ultimately located in systemic inequality and, therefore, class relationships is to invite the hounds of hell to the door. But even insipid liberal arguments of the "refugees welcome here" and "who's going to look after our pensioners?"-type are no-noes where this government is concerned. We're still in the moment of blokey politics, and Burnham is just about at the limits of showing a caring sensibility - doing so for outgroups, such as refugees, trans people, Palestinians, puts you beyond the pale of establishment politics. But more than that, Labour needs its scapegoats too. Bigging up undesirables and demonstrating one's efficacy by publicly doing them over is arguably the oldest strategy in politics. The incentive structure isn't there, and Labour rarely has the wherewithal to change the game anyway.
And this is where it will cause them problems. Far right thugs aren't about to change their politics if Burnham starts whistling an anti-fascist tune. Nor will the underlying dynamic change much if the police take more of an interest. 16 years of intermittent and inconsistent harassment by the authorities of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and his fascist street rabble hasn't done much to put them back in their box. But the perception of Burnham's lack of seriousness, of marrying every "condemnation" of the far right with legitimate concerns-ings will disperse the very fragile recovery Labour's base is undergoing. Just as it did for Starmer. And, because Labour is refusing to confront the far right politically, others will do. There is a long tradition of physical force anti-fascism in this country and, as widely acknowledged, it can take the credit for ensuring the far right were effectively suppressed in the 1980s and 1990s. We're not talking about No Nazis Here lollipops or anti-racist picnics in the park, but full bore violent confrontation. In the absence of anything else, and because the mainstream are actively feeding far right support, don't be surprised if this calls into being its counter. Just as fascist mobilisations in the 1930s and 1970s did. Is this what it will take to stop right wing extremism in its tracks, that elements of the left will reply with thuggish and intimidating behaviour of its own? That looks ever more likely as the mainstream keeps giving the far right a free pass.
29 comments:
There isn't going to be any movement of street thugs opposing the far right in the places where the far right are likely to show up.
Firstly, because where the far right are genuinely threatening on the street, it will tend to be places where they have lots of local support - handily being the same places where the government is trying to process asylum seekers, because that's where the far right agitators are now focused on whipping up fear. In places where they might genuinely be outmatched, they will not go without ensuring that they have police protection. In neutral places they will increasingly try to do the new trick which they managed in Dover; arriving with surprise and posturing like a paramilitary whilst being on their best behaviour.
Secondly, and ultimately much more importantly, because the far right are funded and assisted by an extensive menagerie of very well resourced foreign agents, including the present ruling clique of at least two nation states which are technically still our allies. Meanwhile, muscley and scrappy leftists have no such big ticket capital support networks at all. None, zero, nada.
As for the UK government, this rabbit in headlights paralysis and self-destructive weasel wording is baffling. Even though the spectre of far-right mobs and pseudo-paramilitaries ought to drive back to Labour some of the votes that it has lost, even if Burnham drops every other ball, looking this abjectly weak can't possibly be anything but a death knell for him or his government. What on earth are they playing at...? Is it perhaps the ongoing teeth of the prisons crisis, and the certainty that none of the far right thugs (unlike pensioners who are inside for holding Palestine Action placards) will be easy for the prison service to manage? Is it the equally constricting crisis in the justice system?
I don't support what the far-right is doing, but I think there are two significant issues that face the left confronting this.
Firstly, 'the refugees welcome here' virtue signalling clearly collapses on contact with reality. See numerous examples of supposedly progressive voices going volte face when it comes to dumping large volumes of mainly male asylum seekers from regressive cultures in their own patches. 'Welcome just as long as they're not near me'. Revealed preferences are a thing, and the public can see hypocrisy.
Secondly, the far-left's (and not so far-left) sympathy towards other regressive or authoritarian tendencies is a weakness. Whilst I genuinely believe most British people don't support the far-right they want to know that their leaders have their backs first and foremost. That they will put the best interests of the British public above outsider groups whose interests may be at odds with their own.
You can make a case for the root of Britain's problems in class relations, but I've yet to see an analysis of how the mass immigration of the last few decades and the related development of new (to the UK) forms of sectarianism, religious extremism and even tribalism is a positive development.
Keno, I have missed the many progressives turning against asylum speakers when it affects their patches. Can you direct me to the locations where it happened please.
Not sure where the left wing physical force will come from. The only football grouping that seems left wing is Celtic's Green Brigade who are disliked by the owners and perhaps Liverpool based Liverpool fans. Apart from that the organised trade unionists seem to be woman civil servants and local authority workers with some NHS staff bringing upi the rear.
And as you say we can have little hope of Andy Burnham-Backtrack doing anything to isloate the Black 100s. He is more likely to criticise the counter demonstarors. We face a situation where the radical right has the active and tacit support of 25-33% of the population which sees them as articulating their hopes and aspirations for society. They could choose the Greens or various left groups who put forward policies aimed at improving their lot but prefer to rally round the flag, racism and hatred of foreigners.
Kamo, we have faced mass immigration, sectarianism, religious extermism and tribalism in the past. You may have missed the history lesson that described and analysed the migration of the Irish to Britain between 1840- 1980 and brought with it a huge jump in Catholics in the UK, Orange Lodges and Knights of St Columba religious extremiism and Irish tribal neighbourhoods in many of our cities. In the present this does not seem to have been insurmountable and negative - look at the England football team with Rice, Foden, Gralish, Maguire.
As someone who was heavily involved for well over a decade in the Left's physical force aspect of the wider antifascist, anti racist , Rock Against Racism, ANL , multi-front campaigning against the National Front, and later , 1980's BNP , fascist revival, ie, the organised Left violence now derided by the Left as "squaddism", you are deluded , Phil, to suppose that today's Left could call upon the tough , almost entirely working class, street fighters, that did the job on the fascists then. The almost entirely middle class, identity politics-obsessed Left today, has lost that vital connection to the working class that almost entirely provided the tough foot soldiers for the street battles of Lewisham, Leicester, Wood Green, etc, and umpteen backstreet battles away from the public gaze. A grim reality, but too true I' m afraid. The Far Right rules the streets vis a vis todays Left.
Fortunately I expect the state itself to suppress this black garbed internet-summoned "flash mobbery", (Public Order Act to arrest them for uniform wearing for a start) as the UK state currently feels no threat whatsoever from a broken organised labour trade union movement, or the Left generally. The UK state simply has no need of fascist bully boys.
I find it hilarious that you are talking about the concept of 'mass immigration' as if it's a real thing and not simply a far-right dogwhistle.
The playback here largely seems to be to make up a nebulous concept (mass immigration), fail to define it in any real way, state that it's a bad thing with any evidence (which can't exist as it's a made up concept), then complain that people don't just roll over and agree with you.
Also you want positive analysis, but seem happy to make up your own negative analysis.
"That they will put the best interests of the British public above outsider groups whose interests may be at odds with their own. ". As one of those outsider groups, I agree. I've long since given up on the idea that the british public may ever realise that fencing who is "insider" vs "outsider" when it comes to human rights will one day see themselves on the "outsider" side of things. I can only hope there's no afterlife, else the bitter irony of meeting gobsmacked members of this "society" after they too fell afoul of this movement will be too painful to bear.
Ignoring the ignorance about 'mass immigration' etc, and the ignorance of British history, posted by 'Karno' (I assume the clown Fred Karno), what is illuminating is the idea that the residents of Dover welcomed the Blackshirts. Their actual local forums almost uniformly showed fear, and a feeling of being threatened by the 'Patriots'. It might be worth asking what 'British values' were shown by threatening the RNLI volunteers and attempts to dox them. excuse thuggery, you're one yourself. And I agree the left has no organisation to counter the far-right currently. that's one area a return to 1936 would be welcome.
Well, now at least we can make some pretty decent guesses about where this sudden burst of suspiciously organised far-right activity originates.
The OSINT community had already worked out that the migrant surge in Ceuta was organised by the USA through Morocco, at the request of Israel - in retaliation for the present Spanish government daring to oppose the latter.
And right now another Western government is daring to signal a sea change in foreign policy towards Israel; the UK government!
Being as espionage-driven as it is, the fury of the Israeli state in response won't be limited to expelling diplomats and banning charities, nor will it have waited for Miliband's actual announcement to hit the press. One might have considered the possibility of their shrill noises being merely a public show, to disguise a behind-the-scenes friendliness with the Burnham office; but the simultaneous presence of unofficial pressure tactics very similar to those which the Israelis are known to have been using against Spain makes that kind of 5D-chess subtlety seem unlikely. They want Milliband and Burnham either grovelling or gone.
With the Western far-right now having been mostly reorganised to centre around anti-Muslim hatred - enthusiastically adopting support for Palestinian genocide as a logical extension to its uniting belief system (white=superior and might makes right, in a nutshell) - it dances to Neyanyahu's tune these days just as much as it does to Putin's.
Burnham and Labour had better have battened down the hatches! They'll certainly be hoping for the polls to indicate some appreciation of Milliband's insolence towards the Ultra-Zionists who think that they rule us.
Assume you're replying to Kamo, who is this blog's resident dog-whistler on the racist xenophobia patch. (Dog-whistling against the LGBTQ+ community seems to be covered by the Anon who claims to be a former rough-and-tough leftist street fighter, and is also our persistent resident advocate of Putin appeasement if I don't miss my guess at his writing signature.)
Animosity towards the RNLI has been a rallying cry for UKIP/Brexit Party/Reform Plc for years now, evident wherever they pop their heads up online.
The RNLI are a convenient focal point because they're the ones stopping the hated brown people from drowning at sea on their way here. As is common with the extreme right in many countries, it doubles as a reverse intelligence test (think "your IQ must be below this bar to go on this ride"); the extreme right wants foot soldiers - both on the streets and in the public forums - who don't use any of their higher brain functions, because being easier to manipulate makes them much easier to direct as a coherent unit in any kind of conflict!
The sort of person who will fall for demonisation of the emergency services (or public health systems, etc ...) is perfect for the job.
Reportedly, there are even a good few working seafarers, fishermen and the like, who have taken up this anti-RNLI mantra - somehow believing that they can pressure the sort of person who would go out to save others at sea into picking and choosing who they save based on skin colour. That really is the dregs of the human intelligence barrel that we are talking about here, and although they're a minority of the population, there are more than enough of them to provide a few domestic terrorists.
On the subject of whether or not there are active antifa street fighters in the UK today, I have seen a video in which the aggressively thuggish founder of Raise The Colours attempted to lay hands on a much younger fellow in typical black bloc garb, and got himself swiftly punched in the face, walking away with a visibly bleeding lip.
The video was recorded by his own cameraman, which makes it slightly odd that it ever saw the light of day! Presumably he released it in an attempt to support the "leftists are the real violent thugs" myth which is beloved of today's neo-fascists, maybe in the hope of getting himself a better bodyguard detail.
It could be very confusing for both sides If the black clad fascists at Dover and Portsmouth were to confront the very similarly clad "Black Bloc" anarchists ! Easy identification of both ones friends and foes is always vital in a street melee ! As some very embarrassing Red on Red "accidents" in the often confused 70's street battles remind me !
Unfortunately the "Black Bloc" anarchists cited by Anonymous 21:40 have actually spent a lot more time beating up activist feminist women than burly street fascists over the last ten years, so I still don't rate their chances at all against the now very much more numerous street fighter fascists.
@ Anonymous who wants examples of ‘progressives’ volte-facing, see Rachel Millward, deputy leader of Greens, and Labour MP Rachael Maskell, both noticeably shifted views when the Home Office wanted to put asylum seekers in their area. I don’t blame them, the risks they raised are real, but moving those risks somewhere else doesn’t make them disappear. Do a Google search, you will find plenty more like this, politicians whose general view on immigration shifts materially depending on how the consequences fall upon them (not that this is new thing or even specific to immigration).
@ Anonymous who makes the facile comparison with the historic relationship between Great Britain and Ireland. I’m aware of the sectarianism and what went with it, it is part of my own ancestry. Even a century ago it was a characteristic, although not a hugely significant one, of the place I grew-up. But this is why I understand the difference. You are comparing lower absolute volumes of migration, between much closer locations, in both directions, over much longer time periods. Whilst there are cultural, religious and historical differences, there is also far more in common, far more that is shared due to proximity and repeated interchange, than with cultures originating thousands of miles away. However, someone's ethnic origin being in a pre-modern, tribal culture a long way away is irrelevant if they (or a recent ancestor) decided it was clearly better to live in a modern, western, no longer tribal, secularised culture.
@ Anonymous who thinks mass immigration isn’t a real thing, or that it is just a racist dog-whistle, we can infer some dubious conclusions from this logic.
We can quibble over numbers, but stats put cumulative net migration around 7 million since 2000, which is estimated at 60% to 70% of population growth over that time (as relative comparison it is estimated that net cumulative migration in period since 2000 is greater in than cumulative net migration in period between 0 and 2000). This ignores other second order effects which affect demographics such as certain immigrant populations having higher birth rates than indigenous populations.
Obviously this a made up concept, with no definition, but if it was real then adding that many people in that time frame would put noticeable pressure on housing, on public infrastructure, on welfare and public services especially if many migrants were net beneficiaries of public spending. But if it never happened, it couldn't have negative consequences, the consequences couldn’t be observed and we don’t need to devote attention to concerns relating to the negative consequences of things that never happened. And presumably if it’s all just a racist dog-whistle then talking about the consequences is a racist dog-whilst too? Whenever someone lobbies for state intervention to deal with the social and economic consequences of the mass immigration that never happened we just tell them it never happened, so they should knock it off with things that are clearly just a racist dog-whistle? Job done.
Ah, "activist feminist women"; I think we can decode that as "TERFs". And perhaps question whether or not any beating up actually took place outside their own myth-building attempts.
Taking Kamo's immigration figures temporarily at face value, a question which arises immediately afterwards is the extent to which those figures are actually relevant to the emotive rhetoric which he packages alongside the figures. For example:
1. Exactly how many of those net migrants are from "pre-modern, tribal cultures", and how is that classification being made? For example, would a former lawyer from Syria be such a person? Would a Polish builder? A Hungarian shop owner?
2. Exactly how many of those net migrants are working (or family of working parents)? In what professions? Could the vacant positions be swiftly filled if they were deported tomorrow - or would a few hospitals, care homes, etc, rapidly cease to function?
That phrase, "pre-modern, tribal culture", has got me thinking...
Of the scene from the Reform conference this week; in which white British pensioners laughed and cheered while other white British pensioners physically assaulted a young protester.
And of the story about the real-world "Lord of the Flies" incident, in which a group of boys became stranded on a Pacific island. Except that in the real world they were Polynesian islanders, not English boys; and they failed to kill or hunt even one of their own number, instead co-operating quite effectively until they were rescued a year later.
My, my Kamo you seem - due to your shared ethnic background with a set of tribal migrants - to find reasons to think mass immigration by the Irish fine and dandy, You seem to forget that many of the Irish migrants were young men of fighting age who then waged military campaigns in Enland or contributed funds to organisations hostile to the UK. It seems facile of you to give afree pass to the mass migration of one group of colonial subjects due to their proximity and not others. Both sets fled of flee hunger, poverty and imparial oppression.
Anonymous 20:38 chooses to use the , deliberately dehumanising, deliberately contentless , playground abuse, term ,"terf" ,for radical feminist , often also socialist, women , who have indeed been harassed at their meetings and even beaten up on loads of very well documented occasions over the last ten years by these "black bloc" misogynist cowards. This tells us everything about Anonymous 20:38 we need to know, and the facts suggest the Black Bloc types will not be much use against the nowadays numerically greater, burly black clad fascists on our streets today.
@ Anonymous
I would say a modern society/culture is one that reflects post-enlightenment trends and concepts. Formal equality before the law based on sex, race, religion etc. Universal suffrage with free elections, universal human rights, separation of powers, freedom of association, freedom of speech (bounded only by libel and immediate threats of harm), religious tolerance etc. Pre-modern society/cultures reject some, many or even all of those. Tribal culture is one where power and patronage are tightly controlled by kinship groups, where the interests or ‘honour’ of the tribe/clan overrides the needs of lawful and civil society.
The fact that people anywhere can behave badly, stupidly or break laws is irrelevant to the distinction between modern vs pre-modern and tribal vs non-tribal cultures. A hypothetical example: if I found out my relatives were using family relationships to organise a sexual exploitation gang, but I declined to inform the police to protect family ‘honour’, that would be tribalism. If my relatives told me they were only targeting people from other ethnic groups, who were not protected by our ’honour’ system, or were lesser by way of their ethnicity, that would be pre-modern.
But where you came from is irrelevant, if you have moved to a modern culture from a pre-modern one, to gain benefits/avoid disbenefits, then your responsibility is to the modern culture (that’s where the rights you have actively sought to gain come from) . You may have been a lawyer in Syria and Syria definitely is tribal e.g. the Assad family and the Alawite Kalbiyya tribe, but if you’re not in Syria anymore that tribalism is inappropriate.
I do not advocate deporting large numbers of people, I am saying, by any sensible view, there has been mass immigration and this clearly has consequences. If they were to be deported, how quickly their roles could be filled isn’t a simple question. It depends on the job. We have lots of economically inactive native people who might do some of those jobs, but currently won’t do some of those jobs because the marginal income above what they get for not working isn’t worth it. Some wages might rise where a job definitely has to be done e.g. a care home worker. There will probably be some substitution of capital for labour e.g. automating some work. Some low productivity jobs that rely heavily on low wage immigrants might disappear e.g. how much are you prepared to pay for a man on a L plate scooter to deliver your takeaway?
A few European governments have made public assessments on economic impacts of immigration, the results are not particularly surprising, on average immigrants from the developing world tend to make a negative net contribution and those from the developed world tend to make a positive net contribution. There’s lots of pointless strawmen that can be built from this, and obviously the more the actual immigration profile skews towards the developing world the more controversial it gets. The UK Gov’t has made a point of steering clear of making anything like this public, but there’s a very strong chance the UK falls into a similar pattern. My personal take on immigration is two fold: 1) economically does it raise per capita GDP (including dependents), and 2) socially, are they willing to accept the norms of modern, western, liberal, democratic, secular leaning society?
"Contentless", Anon? You do know what the term stands for, right?
Just in case you don't, and for the benefit of anyone reading who might not, it's "Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists".
Far from being contentless, their entire politics is right there in the epithet. They call themselves feminists but their single defining issue is transphobia.
The transphobia is clearly what unites them with our ex-street fighter, Putin appeasement advocate Anon. Yet he's bizarrely shy of stating so openly - instead preferring to hide behind code terms like "identity politics".
Seems like we've got Kamo on a good day this time. Coherent, reasonable, explicit statements of a position, with any dog-whistles that might be in it now subtle enough to evade my notice on a first pass.
I'm not sure that I even disagree with much of it. The main thing I'd note is that many of the negative characteristics which Kamo details as differentiating the positive "us" from the negative "them", are things which are now very noticeably beginning to also show up from the political wing among "us" which claims to be most afraid of "them". Kamo's entire "modern" list (universal suffrage, free elections, universal human rights, separation of powers, freedom of association, freedom of speech, religious tolerance) are manifestly on the chopping block for the authoritarian Christian ethno-nationalists even while they continue to protest cultural superiority based upon a cultural history of exactly those things. With "pre-modern, tribal" immigrants still being very much a numerical minority, it should be obvious which of the two is the greater threat to the cultural institutions which Kamo claims to value.
Classic @Kamo. "I don't support the far right, but..." and then goes on to explain how it does actually support them, and believes that they have widespread support in this instance. Which turns out to be every instance if you have had the misfortune to see its comments on a regular basis.
I am disappointed, though. Using cliches like "virtue signalling"..please! Have some originality. Show us you can think for yourself rather than just parrot the standard rightist phrases.
As for "numerous examples" - really? I guess if challenged you could come up with something, but it'll be made up or misrepresented, as per usual.
As for this " they want to know that their leaders have their backs first and foremost. That they will put the best interests of the British public above outsider groups whose interests may be at odds with their own." Can't think who you might mean. There's that deranged orange kleptocrat over the water - his interests are clearly at odds with ours. Or those genocidal psychopaths busy terrorising their neighbours. Can't see how their interests align with ours. Or perhaps the sociopath megalo-Tech bros? Ditto. Or the crypto-fascists? Same. Yet strangely, your beloved Tories, and secret crush, Fuhrage, align with all three. Odd that.
We can conclude that neither The Reform, Tories nor Labour have our backs. Instead they are busy pandering to these others, which is why politics is in such turmoil.
@Kamo. Someone has been impressed by your usual pseuod-erudite guff. When you talk of 'modern society' and its virtues, I wonder which existing society meets this standard? What was the enlightenment after all other than a successful attempt by one elite to overthrow another? The dominance of the Church and the aristocracy had to be undermined, and faith channelled into capitalism-friendly form. People had to be removed from their interdependency networks so that they could be made into mobile wage-slaves to provide the labour required by the new elite. Religious tolerance only became a thing much later – once religion ceased to be associated with power. In our lifetimes there was still embedded sectarianism in many British communities. Freedom of speech is strictly limited to those that speak within the acceptable framing. Universal suffrage is a very recent phenomenon, and free elections a fiction given who controls the media and the widespread manipulation of ‘popular’ opinion.
Regarding 'Tribal' and 'pre-Modern', these are definitions you have invented with no basis other than in your own bigotry and prejudice.
The sort of ‘tribalism’ you describe is widespread in ethnic British culture. The idea that you don’t snitch on your own is even bullied into our elite in boarding schools which certainly used to be full of sexual exploitation. As for targeting other ethnic groups – that is the raison d’etre of numerous political organisations over the years – including some of our existing mainstream political parties. The only difference is they are not explicitly sexual in their exploitation and abuse. It's more general.
You little aside on Syria suggest you read an article about it and now presume an understanding of their society. Have you heard about the Ivy league, or Eton and Oxford? The elite in the US and UK are from a fairly tribal bunch – they may not share blood, but they have been indoctrinated and inducted into the ‘network’ of influence and favours. It's as ‘tribal’ as any blood-tied tribe.
@kamo part 2.
There are some key phrases that give away someone who gets their ideas from too much Telegraph / Mail / Spectator reading. One is “economically inactive” as a term of abuse. Nice touch to add ‘native’ to it. What is a native in this context? I’d love to see your definition.
Another is “mass immigration”. Did the Celts say that about the Anglo-Saxons, or even the Romans? What about the Normans? Perhaps the immigrant Anglos-Saxons used to slag off the mass immigration of those blasted Normans – coming over here taking our crown. The mythology of the nation state as made up of a pure ethnic group isolated from the rest of humanity is utter and complete b*ll*cks. Immigration has always happened. It's the norm for humans. What is peculiar is this idea of ‘natives’ and of an indigenous culture untouched by outside influences. Cultures change and evolve continually. If they didn’t, we’d still be speaking whatever language the Iron age tribes spoke (so-called brythonic, or perhaps belgic) and worshipping the Celtic gods and goddesses.
The most you can argue on the topic of immigration is that the speed and numbers are somewhat destabilising. But actually that requires ignoring the real destabilisers – the changes in the type of work and the loss of locality-based large-scale industry, and resulting erosion of community; the drive to turn us into individual consumer units; the increase in mobility and movement to the big urban centres, the rise in personal entertainment and away from shared experience with those we live amongst in favour of temporary aggregations of individuals. All this has created alienation and disconnection and withdrawal from physical-location-based society, replacing it with virtual and often illusory ‘communities’.
Do these ‘few European governments’ have names, and can you reference these ‘reports’? By developing world I assume you mean the ex-colonies and resource-source exploited nations that we extracted our wealth from? Perhaps it is time we gave something back? After all, we wouldn’t be ‘developed’ if we had not had their resources to plunder.
Your concern for GDP is predictable. Presumably you think it means something important. Even per capita is fairly meaningless since that is just an average share. But if almost all of it goes to a small elite, then the average may well rise without most people seeing any improvement. I suppose keeping the population down would help raise it, but wouldn’t it be better to stop the plebs, shirkers and crims from reproducing – I’m sure that’s what the Mail and Telegraph think.
Your final point is telling – ‘modern’ is meaningless, western is code for white, liberal means capitalist, and as for secular leaning – the rise of the Christian Right rather pushes back on that one.
"wouldn’t it be better to stop the plebs, shirkers and crims from reproducing – I’m sure that’s what the Mail and Telegraph think"
That's a tea-spitter, Sean; today's right wing is smack in the middle of a spectacular 180 degree about-face, from years of decrying and bemoaning the over-fecundity of the white lower classes (transparently to use them as an economic scapegoat distracting from their own misdeeds), to decrying and bemoaning the under-fecundity of the white lower classes (transparently to stoke fears of ethnic replacement and distract from their own misdeeds). It would be funny to watch if it wasn't so morally repulsive and dangerous to the lives of real people.
Nor is this behaviour even unique to our favourite white-majority "Western" nations, and their most visible lunatic racist oligarchs! Erdogan's Turkey is also in on this act right now, with its grotesque "decade of the family". When it comes to regressives attempting to reject and destroy the modernity which they find so uncomfortable, there's no present clear leader between the white Christian nations and the brown Muslim nations.
@ Sean Dearg, 12 September 2026 at 17:36
RE "psychopaths"
By FAR the most vital urgent and DEEP understanding everyone needs to gain is that a mafia network of manipulating PSYCHOPATHS (or sociopaths) is, and always has been, governing big businesses and institutions (eg official medicine, big academia, big tech, big banks, big religions), governments and the world -- the evidence is, and has been, very solid in front of everyone's "awake" nose: see “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room”... https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html
"We’ll sit on the edge of our seats watching made-up tales about psychopathic killers while psychopathic killers rule the world." --- Caitlin Johnstone, Independent Journalist
And psychopaths are typically NOT how Hollywood propaganda movies (or the Wikipedia/WebMD propaganda outlets) have showcased them. And therefore one better RE-learns what a psychopath REALLY is. One'll then know why they exploit/harm everyone, why they want to control everyone and have been creating a new world order/global dictatorship, and many other formerly puzzling things will become very clear.
"If we have learned anything in the past six years, it is that vaccinologists, doctors, and the government in general do not have good intentions and never did. The clear intention of everyone concerned was and is to make as much dirty money as possible, letting any amount of collateral damage slide, including a genocide and mass poisoning [with Covid-19 jabs]. The fact [is] that Big Pharma just murdered millions of people, with the full support of government, media, and “science”. With Covid, everyone is part of the fraud, many of them paid off, so no one has any reason to expose it, and big reasons to bury it. Don't believe anything these people tell you, ABOUT ANYTHING. It isn't time for a civil war against your neighbors, it is time for a revolution against these hoaxers and thieves." --- Miles Mathis, American author, in 2025
How can the masses potentially get out of this whole mess (and create justice, freedom and peace for all)? First, EVERYONE needs to learn, and teach others, what TRUE morality is ---99% of people don't know what it is because (1) it's NOT taught in the official indoctrination system, better know as the "education system," and (2) it's NOT the same as religious morality: https://odysee.com/@woeih:e/Mark-Passio-Government-Is-Slavery:a
https://odysee.com/@woeih:e/Mark-Passio-Interviewed-By-Shaun-Atwood-2026-06-18:6
Because if you don't know what TRUE morality is you will not stop doing, unwittingly or wittingly, evil things...
"The solution is NOT to create something new (eg, new systems of organization, new technologies, etc). The solution is to STOP being complicit with evil. To STOP doing things that are not moral for a reward. To STOP being complicit with anything the control system tells us we must do." --- Mark Passio, Spiritual Teacher, in 2023
"Every time people accept a new restriction —mask mandates, digital IDs, cashless payments— they reinforce the system and normalize control. Authorities rely on social pressure and fear of consequences to drive compliance. Most individuals don't want conflict, so they follow rules even when they disagree. THIS SILENT MAJORITY ENABLES A SMALL ELITE TO CONTROL BILLIONS. Without MASS OBEDIENCE, digital IDs ... and surveillance grids cannot be enforced at scale. The system thrives not just on active co-operation, but on PASSIVE ACCEPTANCE —shrugging off restrictions as inevitable or 'for the greater good'. NON-COMPLIANCE —whether through using cash, rejecting digital IDs, or resisting propaganda— denies elites THE PARTICIPATION THEY NEED to legitimize their agendas. Ultimately, compliance is the lifeblood of control; RESISTANCE, EVEN IN SMALL ACTS, IS THE ANTIDOTE." --- AI Chat bot in 2025 (https://archive.ph/Wdzsg)
"Zailee" gives us here a great example of how a fundamental and important truth can be used as a hook upon which to hang a whole crazed structure of self-defeating delusions.
Psychopaths* run the world? Sure. They're about 2-3% of the general population, rising as high as 20% at the top of the modern social tree. They're mostly not an organised mafia; because every single one of them is biologically compelled to be out for nobody but themselves, to the extreme of seeing their own descendants as little more than trophies for their ego. But they do often act in a de-facto coordinated manner due to all having such a similar way of thinking.
They control all the doctors in order to poison everyone with vaccinations? How about... no. Now we're deep in crazy-land with little chance of finding our way out. Hot tip: if given a choice between trusting large and well established organisations of doctors, or trusting a worm-brained freak like RFK Jr (or the presumably equally deranged "Miles Mathis"), you've probably got a better chance of selecting yourself out of the population in the latter case. Communities of doctors do not tend to work in a strictly hierarchical fashion and hence are relatively hard for psychopaths to gain control of.
But harken ye! If you ARE going to live dangerously (and perhaps more briefly) as part of the making-it-up-as-you-go-along crowd, then it will be helpful to others around you if you clearly signal your state of mind by OVERLY FREQUENT use of staccato EMPHASIS by means of ALL CAPS.
*A relatively rare neurotype which cannot imagine indirect benefits to themselves from benefits to their community - meaning they have no natural empathy, seeing other humans only as tools; and who almost incidentally have a reduced fear response. Strongly promoted in most hierarchical social control structures within any sufficiently large population.
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