A week before the parent company of Cambridge Analytica filed for bankruptcy, one of its employees opened a UK firm that has since been providing similar “behavioral modification” training to clients including the military.
Respected historian Nancy MacLean contends that James McGill Buchanan's influential philosophy is behind the dramatic, unnerving & profound changes we're seeing played out in real time.
If Americans really knew what Buchanan thought & promoted, & how destructively his vision is manifesting under their noses, it would dawn on them how close the country is to a transformation most would not even want to imagine, much less accept.
Britain is heading the same way.
MacLean makes her case in a meticulously researched book, 'Democracy in Chains', a finalist for the National Book Award.
While Americans grapple with Trump’s chaos, we may be missing key changes, which once locked into place, there may be no going back.
Here's another question you will NEVER hear asked on any @BBCNews or @BBCPolitics shows:
When things go wrong in a socialist or a communist country, #socialism & #communism are blamed, so why is it that when things go wrong in a capitalist country, #capitalism is NEVER blamed?
Here's another question you will NEVER hear asked on any @BBCNews or @BBCPolitics shows:
What role do the influential state broadcaster's news & political shows play in shaping public opinion about #neoliberal free-market #capitalism?
The song's lyrics appear to extol the virtues of the #YMCA. However, in gay culture from which the Village People stemmed, the song is understood as celebrating YMCA's reputation as a popular cruising & hookup spot, particularly for younger gay men.
And once more for the particularly delusional or hard of thinking: Trump's support base is the Christian Right - who hate gay people. You're welcome.
And if you *really* want to understand the mindset of much of US Christian Right, and why Trump is so popular with them, read this:
A 2016 study found that the sharp decline in the number of working-class @UKLabour MPs had - entirely predictably - caused a slump in support among voters with similar backgrounds,
The study says Neil Kinnock & Tony Blair made a deliberate & concerted effort to select “more & more middle-class candidates to run for office during the 1980s & 1990s as part of an effort to rebrand,” resulting in success at the ballot box.
But the study claimed that the “conscious electoral strategy” of reducing working-class MPs stored up intractable problems for @UKLabour - played out with the rise of UKIP & Brexit - as working-class voters, who initially simply didn’t vote in response, sought an alternative.
If you're STILL unconcerned about foreign billionaires investing in the tech companies, media platforms, think tanks & new political parties dividing Britain by scapegoating minorities & demonising anyone or anything Left of the BNP or Britain First, you don't know 1930s history.
The US Right have been convincing themselves that "Liberals" or "Leftists" are EVIL since the 1950s & now, under Steve Bannon's guidance, this strategy has been imported wholesale to the UK, rolled out across the ENTIRE media & is now the main Govt policy. washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-…
Deregulated free-market capitalism, combined with antiquated electoral systems, have led the #UK, #USA & many other large western economies to become grotesquely unequal, dangerously polarised & unstable failing states, led by manipulative, sadistic & divisive populist liars.
Steve Bannon's pal Robert Mercer is a US hedge fund billionaire, early AI developer & former main investor in Cambridge Analytica.
He played a key role in Brexit by donating data analytics services to Nigel Farage. He was a major funder of Breitbart News & Trump's 2016 campaign.
In 2016, far-right billionaire & @Facebook board member Peter Thiel met with white nationalist Kevin DeAnna, who has called for "the formation of an ethnostate, the great dream of the White Republic". He's also on the #Palantir board.