Shaun Lawson Profile picture
Sep 24, 2020 15 tweets 3 min read Read on X
There are now just 40 days until not just the most important election of anyone's lifetime - but in my view, the most important political moment the entire Western world has faced since the war. And the reason for that is because of what's going to follow.

Winter is coming.
Ahead of any US presidential election, I'd normally be looking at the polls, the forecasts. Who's up, who's down? I'm not doing that this year - because I think it's going to be irrelevant.

I think Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death was, very likely, the moment American democracy died.
The Republicans' disgusting hypocrisy in immediately demanding her seat is filled isn't just to turn the conservative majority from 5-4 to 6-3. It's entirely so they can fix the election. That is the plan; that is what they're going to do.
Whose supporters are, because they're more responsible, more aware, much more likely to use mail-in ballots during a global pandemic? Biden's.

Whose supporters are much more likely to vote on the day - and intimidate any Democrats doing the same thing? Trump's.
Trump's plan is based around the following. It's not about who wins the electoral college based on the total votes. It's about if there's a difference between the mail-in results, and the on the day results. Which there inevitably will be.
And if (when) there is, the response will be: "See? The difference means this was rigged! These results are a fraud! I'm going to the Supreme Court!"

Which, with its huge conservative majority, will simply do whatever he wants. That's what happens in autocracies.
The reason RBG's death was so pivotal is: I don't think Chief Justice Roberts - who does respect the constitution - will play ball. But the other five (including whoever the new justice is) will. They're beholden to Trump, who is like a mafia boss.
Then think of what the fall-out will involve. There are already protests sweeping the US because of police brutality, racism and total unaccountability: confirmed yet again by the horrific failure to prosecute anyone for Breonna Taylor's murder.
Well - Trump fixing the election would turn what's currently a frozen civil war into something rather hotter. And as law and order collapses, in will go the military alongside the police. Much death and violence will be the result, as the world looks on in horror.
It is - and has always been - absolute cloud cuckoo land to imagine that a criminal gangster and his criminal family will just walk away from office if they lose an election. The stakes are far too high for them to do so. If they walk away, they'll go to jail.
Authoritarians do not respect democracy - and the courts do their bidding. That's always been the case; there's nothing new in that. What's new in this case is that the United States is about to have its democracy forcibly removed.
And if that happens, then think of what it'll mean for the world. The US is, by a million miles, the world's strongest military power. So its traditional allies will, at least to some extent, also have to play ball... or else.

The US won't wake up to 2021... but to 1933.
Because when you remove democracy and accountability, you can do entirely what you want, to whoever you want.

- To journalists
- To political opponents
- To activists
- To anyone non-white

And fascism descends, with much blood, as the conversion to dictatorship accelerates.
Last week, something extraordinary happened in Britain. Ahead of a democratic election in a much more powerful allied nation, it is borderline unheard of for a governing party to openly side with its government - because you have to work with whoever wins that election.
"What are the Tories doing?", we wondered. "How can they afford to alienate the Democrats at a time like this when they desperately need a trade deal?"

Well - maybe the Tories already know what's going to go down. Maybe they already know that Trump will stay, no matter what.

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More from @shaunjlawson

Jan 6
You pathetic, odious, vile little plankton.

Gary Neville won 8 Premier League titles, 2 Champions Leagues and 85 England caps.

You got relegated with Newcastle, relegated twice with QPR, handed Man City the title by assaulting three of their players, and won 1 England cap.
That one lousy England cap was as part of our worst team since 1993. The ONLY one not to qualify - and you weren't even good enough to be picked for it more than once.

In fact, you have MORE CONVICTIONS FOR VIOLENT CRIME than England caps, you absolute waste of skin.
Gary Neville can tell his grandkids about the absolutely magnificent career he had in the game.

You can tell yours about the time you stubbed a lit cigar out in a youth player's eye.

Or when you violently assaulted a teammate, leaving him unconscious with a detached retina.
Read 8 tweets
Dec 30, 2023
Today, in the world of sensible centrist liberal media 🙄🙄🙄

1. Thomas L. Friedman is worried for the world and tries to explain what's happening to it. He explains what's happening to it by... saying THIS. Image
Yes folks. The difference between Dubai and Gaza isn't that one is staggeringly rich in natural resources and the other is a rock. And it isn't that one is independent and the other has been illegally occupied and blockaded for so long.

It's 'visionary leadership'.
I'll tell you one of the very many things wrong with this awful world, Tom. It's that racist Orientalists like you - utterly incapable of EVER treating Arab people as equals - get given such a high profile platform to pump out such constant ignorant beyond imagination drivel.
Read 17 tweets
Nov 20, 2023
THREAD: Argentina. Why has this happened - and what's going to happen now?

The first thing to say about why this has happened is pretty simple. The options facing a desperate, frantic Argentinian public were APPALLING. All of them.
In August, at the primaries, the mostly centre-right Juntos por Cambio (which governed, very badly, through Mauricio Macri between 2015 and 2019) voters made a dreadful, in my view indefensible blunder.

They selected Patricia Bullrich over Horacio Rodriguez Larreta.
Bullrich is right wing. She's also maybe the most completely talentless politician I have EVER seen in this part of the world.

She's charmless, utterly unlikeable, and has made an absolutely preposterous political journey from militant leftist to now, the far right,
Read 52 tweets
Oct 28, 2023
When the provisional IRA tried to assassinate the entire British government, the British government did not respond by carpet bombing Belfast for weeks on end.

Nor did it impose a 16-year-long siege on the island of Ireland.
Nor did it cut off electricity, water, food, fuel and communications.

In fact, much of the world - including, notably, the US - understood that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland had an entirely legitimate grievance. And were victims of an historic injustice.
UK politicians wouldn't have even dreamt of such a response. Had it been attempted, we'd have been ostracised by the entire world, maybe forever.

And in the end, peace was achieved. Draining the swamp of support for terrorism through dialogue, power-sharing and democracy.
Read 19 tweets
Oct 14, 2023


"Research by the IJPR shows about 2% of the population of Great Britain can be characterised as “hardcore” antisemites - defined as those believing multiple anti-Jewish tropes simultaneously - whereas 70% is found to hold no anti-Jewish views at all".theguardian.com/world/2023/oct…
"A 2021 survey by the institute, conducted two months after the last war in Gaza, found that almost three-quarters of Jewish adults in the UK felt that non-Jews held them responsible for the actions of the Israeli government during the conflict..."
"More than half said that public and media criticism of Israel at the time made them feel that Jews were not welcome in the UK".

Several things here.

1. Anyone attacking or insulting British Jews for the actions of Israel is an antisemitic arsehole.
Read 24 tweets
Oct 8, 2023
Someone just asked me if I thought Gazans supported what Hamas are doing. I replied: "Mostly, yes".

But no, that's not because ordinary Palestinians are terrorists. It's because they have been left so completely bereft, they have nowhere else to turn.
It cannot be overstated just how corrupt, how weak, how pathetic the Palestinian Authority now is.

Under the risible leadership of Mahmoud Abbas: who's both a vehement antisemite and traitor to his people, only interested in his own position and status.
Sadly, Fatah have pretty much always been like that. Way back in the 1990s, around the time of the Oslo process, my grandmother travelled on a plane to Tel Aviv and sat right behind a VERY prominent Palestinian negotiator, who appeared on TV programmes all the time.
Read 31 tweets

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