Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #spiked

Most recents (14)

#THREAD

Hitler, Franco, & Mussolini all headed coalitions of Nationalist Fascist & Conservative factions, & all subscribed to a far-right ideology which we may call National Conservatism, & which involves scapegoating minorities & the Left as threats to 'Western Civilisation'. ImageImageImageImage
Should we be concerned that it was Britain's turn to host the National Conservatism conference aka #NatCon, aka the #NatC conference?

Unless you've been living under a rock you'll know that in May, the American hard Right came to England. Calvin Robinson did not speak at it. Image
Unlike in Hungary, where last year's gathering of Europe’s extreme-right figures was an offshoot of the Trump & Bolsonaro supporting US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the NatCon conference here was backed by the Edmund Burke Foundation.

Read 31 tweets
#THREAD

A small densely inter-connected homophily of political actors who share media platforms & cooperate with think-tanks, campaign groups & ‘educational charities’ wage the 'war on woke'.

#Spiked is #1 & #GBNews the #2 'anti-woke' media outlets.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.117…
Recently, a group of academics and cultural commentators have framed wokeness as a pseudo-religion.

Hayek, in 1973, foreshadowed this by calling social justice a ‘quasi-religious superstition’ that ‘has no meaningful place in a social order organised around a market economy’. Image
This framing was resurrected by controversial American academic John McWhorter & developed into a full ‘taxonomy’ of ‘woke religion’ by ex-PR Michael Shellenberger, & acadmic Peter Boghossian who "violated ethical guidelines on human-subjects research".

boghossian.substack.com/p/woke-religio… Image
Read 25 tweets
#THREAD

Unlike Andrew Neil, I haven't got the luxury of being Chairman of an establishment magazine which represents its billionaire-owner's interests.

Nonetheless, we need to talk about Andrew Neil's climate change stance & history of working for overseas-based billionaires. Image
Here's Andrew Neil in 2013, asking: "Is the whole global warming schtick over?"

Global warming is, as kids know, the long-term heating of Earth’s climate due to human activity, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. Image
And here's a testy & revealing exchange following Neil's bizarre question, between journalist Andrew Neil & climate expert Bob Ward, who has served as policy & communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change & the Environment at the LSE since 2008. Image
Read 20 tweets
#THREAD

In March 2021, the Govt's 'Commission on Race & Ethnic Disparities' claimed that there was "no evidence" of institutional racism in the UK.

In light of the #Casey report, which confirms its continued presence in the MET police, this was an absurd & misleading claim.
This thread is about how the UK Govt systematically misleads voters. The Race Commission is just one example of how the @Conservatives, supported by the billionaire-owned press, deliberately & irresponsibly deploy a political strategy of misleading voters in order to divide us.
Stephen Lawrence was murdered on 22 April 1993. The 1999 inquiry by William Macpherson found the MET Police to be institutionally racist.

30 years after Stephen's murder, the Casey report finds the MET institutionally racist, misogynistic, & homophobic.

theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/m…
Read 71 tweets
Tonight on #bbcqt:

Descendant of William Gladstone & ex-biomedical venture capitalist, Tory MP George Freeman!

YET ANOTHER #Spiked & GB "News" regular & Brexit Party candidate, Inaya Folarin, a founding director of Toby Young's toxic hard-right Free Speech Union!

Matthew Syed:
AS USUAL, #bbcqt audiences won't know Inaya Folarin is a #Spiked & GB "News" regular, a Brexit Party candidate, & a founding director of Toby Young's toxic Free Speech Union, & a TORY IMPOSED NPG Trustee, she's framed as just a 'journalist & author' & Founder of Equiano Project.
Here's a great explainer about the wider toxic network of authoritarian fringe groups & individuals who are appointed by the Tories to important institutions & bodies, who shape & influence Govt policy, & who are virtually always represented on #bbcqt

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Read 15 tweets
#THREAD

Concern over right-wing 'think-tanks' focusses on their intimate links with members of the Govt, their opaque funding, & the prominence of their spokespeople in the national media, who present them as disinterested researchers as opposed to well-connected lobbyists.
Most are situated in 55 #TuftonStreet, near Parliament, including these eight: the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Civitas, TaxPayers’ Alliance, Business for Britain, Vote Leave, The European Foundation, UK2020 & the lesser known New Culture Forum.

The Adam Smith Institute & the particularly influential & omnipresent Institute for Economic Affairs are located close by in Great Smith Street & Lord North Street, respectively.

Below are a links to news & academic articles concerning these so-called 'think tanks' (lobbyists).
Read 14 tweets
The same dangerously divisive free-market US billionaires who have been shovelling money into #TuftonStreet & #Spiked, also shovelled money into Charlie Kirk's toxic far-right Turning Point USA & it's bastard far-right offshoot - supported by Jacob Rees-Mogg - Turning Point UK. ImageImageImage
Read 3 tweets
#THREAD

The cranks at US libertarian billionaire-funded #Spiked have sent an email asking for money to help fund their divisive propaganda: "It’s a difficult time out there financially for many people... Over the next few weeks, we’re doing a donation drive!"
#CostOfGreedCrisis
#Spiked are divisive & dangerous, ideologically extreme, #propagandists.

A joint investigation between @DeSmog & The @guardian revealed that #Spiked US Inc. received funding from the Charles Koch Foundation between 2016 & 2018 to the tune of $300,000.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
#Spiked is just one of the myriad #propaganda wings of the dangerous free-market growth ideology having profoundly harmful impacts on individuals, communities, societies, countries & democracies across the world, as well leading to environmental degradation & the #ClimateCrisis.
Read 11 tweets
There have been a spate of spiking incidents on Merseyside this year and also across the country. The effects can be devastating as seen in this video

We look at what’s been happening regarding this issue
New police figures reveal that UK forces have received 24 reports of some form of injection being used to incapacitate victims and the number is growing
Up to last week, Merseyside Police confirmed they are aware of a number of spiking incidents in town, five of which specifically relate to injection spiking liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool…
Read 16 tweets
Yet another shameless, regressive divisive, & purely ideological culture war appointment, as UK’s ‘strictest’ headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh is made social mobility chief. Up there with Nadine Dorries as Culture Secretary.

Smile - or else.

By far the worst ever British Govt.
An utterly absurd gaslighting tragedy.

theguardian.com/society/2021/o…
Says everything that headteacher of a "free school" Katharine Birbalsingh confused Lord of the Flies (about a group of boys stranded on an uninhabited island) with Lord of the Rings (about hobbits featuring a Dark Lord striving for world domination by magic & physical violence).
Read 28 tweets
The unhinged grifting anti-expert, anti-animal, anti-protest, anti-Left anti-everything COVID-sceptic Libertarian cranks at #Spiked - who have received funding from Koch & other climate-change deniers - continue to pump out climate-change denial from fellow discredited cranks. 🥱
The latest climate-change-downplaying grifter is Steven E. Koonin, who became publicly involved in the policy debate about climate change starting with a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in 2017.
In 2019, Trump proposed a "Presidential Committee on Climate Security" to conduct an "adversarial" review of the scientific consensus on climate change. Koonin helped recruit but it was scrapped in favor of an initiative not "subject to the same level of public disclosure."
Read 16 tweets
#Spiked is funded in part by Libertarian billionaire-owned Koch Industries, a corporation profiting from fossil fuels, which lobbies to fight all regulation, & helps keep the UK Government in power.

#TalkRadio is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Who runs Britain? Foreign billionaires.
Here's talkRadio giving a platform to well known far-right activist Steve Laws, whose barbaric, divisive, grotesque & antiquated views wouldn't have been out of place in 1930s Germany - or at the Home Office!

Well done Murdoch, @Ofcom & Government.

And here's Spiked's Outrage Creator Brendan O'Neill childishly claiming "lockdown fanatics" are the *real* problem.

Read 3 tweets
“It’s just a horse, a dumb, unfeeling creature, unaware of pain, unaware even of its own existence... When you whip a horse it doesn’t think “This is so painful & humiliating” because it is incapable of thought" - Brendan O'Neill writing about Grand National horse deaths in 2013.
He wrote this crap in a Telegraph article: "So what if a few horses die in the Grand National? It is our pleasure, not their wellbeing, that is important".
Shamefully, he's rarely off national broadcast news & politics shows, & often appears in the Press. brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/what-is-bren…
Brendan O'Neill has made a career out of championing 'free speech' while abusing it to demonize anyone he disagrees with.

People should know what he is: a divisive contrarian who takes money from billionaires to help keep ordinary people angry & divided.

leftfootforward.org/2013/05/dont-f…
Read 24 tweets
US Libertarian billionaires pay #Spiked to divide UK society.

The irresponsible cranks at Spiked pretend they're for "greater freedom & democracy", but NOT ONCE have they mentioned the anti-freedom & anti-democracy 'Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Bill'.

#PoliceCrackdownBill
Like #Breitbart, EVERY DAY they puke out divisive 'culture war' stories about 'dangerous cultural Marxists', 'the death of free speech', or how 'anti-racists are the REAL racists'.

It's pathetic & relentless. & it is paid simply to #divide voters, & thus help their rich funders.
A 2018 investigation revealed #Spiked received at least $300,000 between 2015 & 2018 from the Koch brothers — the right-wing libertarian US oil billionaires who have been at the heart of climate change denial in the USA.

#Spiked ARE 'the thought police'.

desmog.co.uk/2018/12/04/spi…
Read 6 tweets

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