Fascinating, wide-ranging analysis by @jemgilbert on the strengths, weaknesses & challenges facing the contemporary Left, on both sides of the Atlantic.
The professional political class, & the interests it represents (finance capital/Big Tech) have fought off a democratic assault by convincing affluent professionals that the Left is a threat to their most cherished values: meritocratic, individualistic, cosmopolitan liberalism.
"The world-view of older voters with low-education is heavily shaped by the power of the tabloid press & its ideological allies online in the UK; by the media constellation organised around Fox News in the US."
These institutions, & the ideologies they propagate, remain major obstacles for any project that would seek to actually address the fundamental social questions raised by the fight against structural racism (or against rampant economic inequality, or against climate catastrophe).
'A degree of basic economic protection for the poorest workers has been stripped away since the 1970s. For poor white workers, especially straight men, the decline in the value accorded to their cultural status has coincided with a decline in their economic & political power.'
This provokes resentment of a cosmopolitan political elite, driving support for the far-Right. In the UK & US, the second most powerful section of the mass media (after neoliberals at the @BBC & other major broadcasters) is committed to an ideology of authoritarian nationalism.
In 2019 voters didn’t believe that a Corbyn govt would be able to deliver its programme. The City of London, the BBC, the Murdoch press, the Right wing of the @UKLabour Party would have conspired to ensure that it failed, & the movement just wasn’t big enough to take them on.
‘Disaster nationalist’ politics thrives in the chaos of a society in permanent crisis, deploying nationalist tropes to win support for its aim: to prevent a coherent challenge to capitalist power. Platform nationalism deploys social media & digital platforms to further this end.
"Despite the electoral setbacks of 2019/20, the organised Left is larger and more dynamic in both the UK and the US than it has been at any point since the catastrophic defeats of the 1980s. Just 5 years ago it would not have been remotely plausible to make such a claim."
Corbyn & Sanders inspired & mobilised hundreds of thousands of younger activists who had never been mobilised before, to remake connections between electoral politics & movement activism, detoxifying the concept of socialism with many voters: an enormous historical achievement.
Millions of people are now experiencing the lived contradiction between the obvious power of both govts & people to act collectively in a highly-networked world, AND the complete failure of neoliberal capitalism to deliver on its promises of prosperity & autonomy for citizens.
We continue to enjoy relatively high levels of union density: 23% as of 2018, as opposed to 10% in the US. Pressuring unions to take a more active role in countering Right-wing propaganda is an obvious task for the Left for the foreseeable future.
One implication of Jem Gilbert's analysis is the urgency of developing propaganda, alternative media and political education resources aimed not only at working class citizens and young graduates, but at the middle-aged, middle-class voters.
The attempt by the populist Right to associate the Green New Deal with a middle-class & cosmopolitan culture, that they will portray as inimical to the values & interests of the White post-industrial working-class, presents a significant ideological and organisational challenge.
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To spell out why, we need to unpack both the underlying implication of Andrew Doyle's argument and the reasons why it fails to adequately account for contemporary political dangers.
Andrew Doyle asserts that the term "fascism" is misused to the point of recklessness, echoing George Orwell’s 1944 observation that the word had been rendered meaningless. Doyle’s concern is not uncommon—but imho, it’s ultimately misplaced, especially in today’s context.
While it’s true that “fascism” is sometimes deployed rhetorically or hyperbolically (eg by Trump), Doyle’s framing dangerously downplays the genuine resurgence of fascist-adjacent movements across the Western world and undermines the analytical clarity necessary to confront them.
Boris Johnson appears to have had a secret meeting with billionaire Peter Thiel - perhaps the most fanatical of the libertarian Oligarchs and co-founder of the controversial US data firm Palantir, the year before it was given a role at the heart of the UK’s pandemic response.
The hour-long afternoon meeting on 28 August 2019 was marked “private” in a log of Johnson’s activities that day and was not subsequently disclosed on the government’s public log of meetings.
Elon Musk has been amplifying far-right accounts again, including Tommy Robinson, Rupert Lowe, and numerous anonynmous known #disinformation superspreader accounts like 'End Wokeness'.
Let's examine the context for yesterday's march in Richard Tice's constituency, #Skegness.
After decades of neglect, Skegness (pop 20K), stands out on key socio-economic markers on national averages: residents are older; whiter; lower full-time employment; higher rates of few/no qualifications; and concentrated deprivation - it's far-more deprived than most of England.
History repeatedly teaches us that burdening already struggling communities is a recipe for disaster.
These communities have been crying out for help for DECADES, but successive UK Govts have largely ignored their pleas, and continued to increase inequality, which harms us all.
🧵 @Rylan Asylum seekers coming here aren’t technically "illegal." International law (the 1951 Refugee Convention) allows people to seek asylum in any country regardless of how they arrive or how many countries they pass through, as long as they're fleeing persecution or danger.
Allow me to explain why asylum seekers aren’t “illegal”, and how misinformation and nasty demonising and scapegoating rhetoric by certain politicians and media, including news media, has made some British people less welcoming of asylum seeekers.
@Rylan
People fleeing war, torture, or persecution have the legal right to seek asylum.
The 1951 Refugee Convention, which the UK helped write, says anyone escaping danger can apply for asylum in another country no matter how they arrive: claiming asylum isn't a crime.
Farage's illiberal, immoral, & unworkable authoritarian plan involves ripping up human rights laws forged after WWII, which protect British people, & wasting £billions of UK taxpayers' money, giving some of it to corrupt misogynistic totalitarian regimes. theguardian.com/politics/2025/…
Leaving the #ECHR, repealing the Human Rights Act and disapplying international conventions
The UK would be an outlier among European democracies, in the company of only Russia and Belarus, if it were to leave the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
Opting out of treaties such as the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the UN Convention against torture and the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention would also be likely to do serious harm to the UK’s international reputation.
It could also undermine current return deals, including with France, and other cooperation agreements on people-smuggling with European nations such as Germany.
The Society of Labour Lawyers said the plan would “in all likelihood preclude further cooperation and law enforcement in dealing with small boats coming from the continent and so increase, rather than reduce, the numbers reaching our shores”.
Farage said he would legislate to remove the “Hardial Singh” safeguards – a reference to a legal precedent that sets limits on the Home Office’s immigration detention powers – to allow indefinite detention for immigration purposes. This would be highly vulnerable to legal challenge.
Many of the rights protected by the ECHR and the Human Rights Act are rooted in British case law, so judges would still be able to prevent deportations, even without international conventions.
Reform UK’s grotesque far-right mass deportation plan is not just economically and socially illiterate (Britain an ageing population and low birth rate) rely on striking “returns agreements” with countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Eritrea and Sudan, offering financial incentives to secure these deals, alongside visa restrictions and potential sanctions on countries that refuse.
These are countries where the Home Office’s risk reports warn of widespread torture and persecution.
It would risk the scenario of making payments to countries such as Iran, whose regime the UK government has accused of plotting terror attacks on British soil.
The Liberal Democrats called the payments “a Taliban tax”, saying the plan would entail sending billions “to an oppressive regime that British soldiers fought and died to defeat”. They said: “Not a penny of taxpayers’ money should go to a group so closely linked to terrorist organisations proscribed by the UK.”
A reminder of the one, viewed 310,000 times, for which she was jailed, which urged people to burn down asylum seeker hotels after the #Southport attack - which had nothing to do with asylum seekers.
While all these tweets of Connolly's were made before her incendiary post, they don't say which year they were posted.
They can be accessed here, via The Wayback Machine, which has archived more than 916 billion web pages.
Connolly's tweet (top right) was in response to the tweet on the left, which criticised Laurence Fox for posting an upskirt photograph of Narinder Kaur.
The next one (right centre) was Connolly asking Kaur if she had 'flashed her gash'.