Read this, & then try to deny the terrifying parallels between many of the techniques, policies & especially the rhetoric deployed by Boris Johnson's @Conservatives, Trump's Republicans & the Bolsanaro, Oban & other right wing regimes, & Hitler's Govt.
Won mass support on the back of a major economic crisis
Offered voters a vision of a better future, one he contrasted with the policies of the parties that had plunged the country into crisis in the first place.
Hitler:
Initially attracted the poorest people to vote for him by demonising opponents.
Emphasised a nationalistic moral restoration of the nation.
Projected purpose and dynamism in contrast to dithering or acting as mere administrators.
Hitler:
Was a master at denouncing existing political & democratic conventions & manipulating the media.
Issued an endless stream of slogans to win potential supporters over: he would 'make Germany great again', 'give Germans work once more' & put 'Germany first'.
Hitler:
Would revive the nation’s rusting industries, laid to waste by the economic depression.
Would crush the alien ideologies—socialism, liberalism, communism—that were undermining the nation’s will to survive and destroying its core values.
Hitler:
Would "use vulgar comparisons" & “not shy away from the cheapest allusions.” Hitler’s language was
Never use measured or careful language.
Mobilise base allegations & vile stereotypes, designed to gain maximum attention from the media & maximum reaction from voters.
Hitler:
Would use sophisticated (& blunt) propaganda techniques taken from the new practice of 'public relations'.
Flaunt his vulgarity & exploited tribal hatreds;
Lied and lied and lied his way to success.
Hitler:
Insisted politicians of the other parties, were hopelessly venal and corrupt and should be put in jail.
Insist Nazi thugs were good people who were victims of a “monstrous blood-verdict”.
Insisted that liberal newspapers that criticized Hitler were the "lying press.”
Hitler:
Imprisoned vagrants.
Deported illegal Polish immigrants.
Demonized & shut down Feminist associations.
Pulled out of international organizations, tore up treaties with cynical abandon, dismantled or emasculated structures of international cooperation erected post WWI.
Hitler:
Triumphantly declared “our departure from the community of nations".
Assured voters he would “rather die” than stay within a community of nations
Gleefully challenged then shut down the country’s democratic institutions.
Destroyed the freedom of its press and media.
Hitler:
Got Goebbels to say: “If the Jewish press still thinks it can intimidate the National Socialist movement with veiled threats, if they think they can evade our emergency decrees, they should watch out! One day our patience will run out".
Hitler:
Made sure that with the disappearance of a free, critical media, & the subordination of law-enforcement agencies, the path was open for a massive expansion of political corruption at every level of the regime.
Nearly forgot: "Leading Brexiters who accuse civil servants of sabotaging Britain’s exit from the EU are adopting dangerous tactics similar to those of rightwing German nationalists between the two world wars, former head of the civil service has warned."
Just two opinion polling companies have put Reform UK on 20% or more: People Polling (owned by Legatum Snr Fellow Matt Goodwin) & Whitestone Insight (CEO Andrew Hawkins).
The links to Reform UK, the Evangelical Christian Right & fossil fuel interests are concerning.
On 18 June, a poll commissioned by GB "News" (co-owned by Legatum), conducted by Snr Fellow at Legatum Matt Goodwin, put Reform on 24%
The average of all polls since is just 16%.
Only two other outlier polls have put Reform on 20% or more - both conducted by Whitestone Insight.
Before revealing the connections between the two outlier polls & Reform UK & fossil fuel interests, some important context.
In 1997, all the polls correctly predicted Blair’s landslide. That most polls significantly overstated the size of his victory passed virtually unnoticed.
Nowhere in the world have private equity firms found a more welcoming playground than in the UK: the volumes of buyouts have over the past two decades weighed more in the overall economy than in any other advanced market, including the US.
Private equity firms have snapped up high street names from grocers Asda and Morrisons to sandwich chain Pret A Manger, and invested in sectors ranging from insurance to nursing homes and infrastructure.
Now their record, and relatively lower taxation, are once again coming under heightened scrutiny ahead of the election. Labour wants to increase taxes on the performance fees that fund managers receive from asset sales, so these 'dealmakers' may be tempted to relocate elsewhere.
Why did they hold a joint event with barking Clare Fox's Battle of Ideas on “Indoctrination in Education” with barking Frank Furedi of Spiked Online as a speaker?
Britain is NOT America. Not yet.
The term 'Judeo-Christian' became widely used in the US during the Cold War to suggest a unified American identity opposed to communism.
The “Judeo-Christian tradition” was a political invention: an ecumenical marketing meme for combating godless commies.
The term 'Judeo-Christian' is now widely & misleadingly mobilised by the far-right to divide people, mainly by demonising 'Others' (especially Muslims).
"My beliefs are based on a Judeo-Christian worldview that’s thousands of years old" - Miriam Cates.
Danny, a leading expert on housing, health, employment, education & poverty, has published with colleagues more than a dozen books on issues related to UK social inequalities, & several hundred journal papers - which is probably why he's so rarely on TV.
Middle England has been hit hard by the #costoflivingcrisis. Even people doing comparatively well are struggling.
Across Britain, opportunity has been replaced by food banks. Pre-COVID, life expectancy dropped as a result of poverty for the first time since the 1930s.
The hateful anonymous @X account @benonwine constantly tweets out divisive, inflammatory far-right pro-Farage tweets.
Because it's impossible to find out who is behind the grotesque account, we cannot know who, or what, is behind it. It's the same for @UKUpdates_co_uk.
Now that all the main parties have published their manifestos, rather than actually read them, the overwhelming majority of voters will rely on (almost invariably partisan) third-party accounts to summarise and/or interpret them.
But how accurate & reliable is their analysis?
In 2019, in 'The explosion of the public sphere', Dr Martin Moore (Centre for the Study of Media Communication & Power at Kings College) & Dr Gordon Ramsay (University of Westminster) outlined recent developments in our insufficiently regulated UK media.