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."
"Foreigners" DO NOT claim £1BILLION/month in benefits.
This disgusting anti-migrant dogwhistle by shameless liar and former Head of Policy Exchange, Neil O'Brien MP, is just one of several recent dispicable divisive Telegraph front page lies.
WTAF @IpsoNews? @HoCStandards?
The claims that the UK spends £1bn/month "on UC benefits for overseas nationals" (O'Brien) and "Foreigners claim £1bn a month in benefits" (Telegraph) are revealed to be lies in the article: the£1bn relates to "Benefits claims by HOUSEHOLDS with AT LEAST ONE FOREIGN NATIONAL."
The Telegraph claims that (unnamed) "experts suggested the increase reflected a SURGE in the number of asylum seekers being granted refugee status and in net migration."
To evaluate/make sense of this sensational unsourced claim, additional context is needed (but not provided).
Chase Herro, co-founder of Trump’s main crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, on crypto:
“You can literally sell shit in a can, wrapped in piss, covered in human skin, for a billion dollars if the story’s right, because people will buy it.”
Despite crypto being bullshit, & memecoins being consciously bullshit, many – especially angry young gullible men – still invest: 42% of men & 17% of women aged 18-29 have invested in, traded or used crypto (2024 Pew Research), compared to only 11% of men & 5% of women over 50.
“It’s no accident that memecoins are such a phenomenon among young people who have grown immensely frustrated with a financial system that, I think it’s fair to say, has failed them” - Sander Lutz, the first crypto-focused White House correspondent.
🧵In January, Farage said Musk was justified in calling Starmer complicit in failures to prosecute grooming gangs: “In 2008 Keir Starmer had just been appointed as DPP & there was a case brought before them of alleged mass rape of young girls that did not lead to a prosecution.”
The allegation that Starmer was complicit in failures to prosecute grooming gangs is often repeated. But how true is it?
Two Facebook posts, originally appearing in April/May 2020, claimed Starmer told police when he was working for the CPS not to pursue cases against Muslim men accused of rape due to fears it would stir up anti-Islamic sentiment.
In 2022 the posts and allegations saw a resurgence online with hundreds of new shares. They said: “From 2004 onwards the director of public prosecutions told the police not to prosecute Muslim rape gangs to prevent ‘Islamophobia’.
Decades of research shows that parroting or appeasing the far-right simply legitimises their framing, and further normalises illiberal exclusionary discourse and politics.
Starmer's speech is more evidence that the far-right has been mainstreamed.
Cas Mudde, a Dutch political scientist who focuses on political extremism and populism in Europe and the US, is, imho, one of the most important voices on the Left today.
Allow me to briefly summarise some of his work.
In a 2023 lecture, Mudde emphasizes the importance of precise terminology in discussing the far-right, distinguishing between extreme right (anti-democracy) and radical right (accepts elections but rejects liberal democratic principles like minority rights and rule of law).
He argues we're in a "fourth wave" of postwar far-right politics, characterized by the mainstreaming & normalization of the far-right - what Linguist Prof Ruth Wodak in a related concept refers to as the 'shameless normalization of far-right discourse'.
After eight years as US President, on Janury 17, 1961, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, former supreme commander of the Allied forces in western Europe during WWII, warned us about the the growing "military-industrial complex" (and Trump2.0) in his prescient farewell address.
Before looking at that speech, some context for those unfamiliar with Eisenhower, the 34th US president, serving from 1953 to 1961.
During WWII, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and achieved the five-star rank as General of the Army.
Eisenhower planned & supervised two consequential WWII military campaigns: Operation Torch in the North Africa campaign in 1942–43 & the 1944 Normandy invasion.
The right-wing of the Republican Party clashed with him more often than the Democrats did during his first term.