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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Tory donor Bassim Haidar is the latest multimillionaire to say he'll leave the UK to avoid paying £millions in tax following plans to scrap the “non-dom” regime, which has allowed him & 68,800 other non-doms to avoid paying UK tax on overseas income for 225 years.
Haidar, who owns “more than 10 properties” in central London, including a £20 MILLION flat near Sloane Square, "gave" the @Conservatives £450,000 last year - including £10,000 worth of advertising to Lee Anderson in November, who promptly joined Reform UK. search.electoralcommission.org.uk/?currentPage=2…
For decades the UK news media, owned by fellow non-dom billionaires, regularly run stories warning how 'superrich wealth creators' will leave Britain.
It's a bold & often-made claim, but is there any truth in it? Will many - or indeed any - of our 68,800 non-doms leave Britain?
The #Rwanda Plan, based on deterrence, is ineffective, expensive, & thoroughly neoliberal: based on rational choice theory, it assumes people act based on the costs & benefits of different actions. But the Plan ignores the evidence & the complex reality of the situation.
Tensions are rising between the UK and Ireland, as asylum seekers cross into Ireland from Northern Ireland, reportedly fearing that if they remain in the UK, they will be sent to Rwanda. But all is not as it seems, as Matilde Rosina demonstrates...
Rishi Sunak has claimed that this shows the Rwanda plan is working as a deterrent. For over two years, the government has insisted that the policy to remove asylum seekers to Rwanda would deter potential asylum seekers from making dangerous journeys across the English Channel.
Batshit Truss was stopped, “ambushed” & held “at gunpoint” by the “Deep State”, the “anti-growth coalition” & “declinists” - defeated by a progressive & Marxist alliance which includes Joe Biden &, er, Michel Foucault!
For all this, however, Truss’s book offers some important lessons for future PMs, albeit more in terms of what NOT to do than how to do the job well.
Prime ministers, for a start, need to listen. All PMs stop listening eventually - but it seems Truss never even started.
Even before becoming prime minister, her own husband warned it would “all end in tears”. Truss reveals that even her agent said “I should run – but he thought it would be best if I came second”!
The Queen warned Truss to “pace yourself”. As we also know, she didn’t.
In 2022, the Home Office considered giving Gideon Falter a role advising the Commission for Countering Extremism, but antisemitism tsar John Mann told Braverman he'd quit if Falter was appointed.
However, the MUCH BIGGER story concerns CCE Commissioner, Robin Simcox...
This is a thread about how the UK Govt appoints extremists to influential positions in order to manufacture a perception of impartiality, while in reality helping to push through harmful ideologically extreme free-market policies which serve the interests of the rich & powerful.
Robin Simcox, who has worked for the Henry Jackson Society AND the Heritage Foundation - two of the most ideologically extreme 'think tanks' in the western world - downplays the threat of far-right terrorism while talking-up the threats from Islamism AND environmental protestors.
The government claims to have secured the airfield and charter flights necessary for removing people to Rwanda. However, campaigners who oppose the scheme are targeting these elements of the policy in an attempt to make flights logistically impossible. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-688718…
In October 2022, the charity Freedom from Torture successfully convinced the airline Privilege Style to withdraw from the government’s Rwanda scheme.
In 'free-market' societies like ours, consumer pressure in the form of protests & boycotts often work.
Today is one of Britain’s most shameful days ever: a stain on Britain’s reputation as a tolerant, fair-minded, lawful, democratic and welcoming country.
The barbaric #RwandaPlan was dreamed up following the #PartyGate scandal, as part of ‘Operation Save Big Dog’.
The #RwandaPlan was announced on 14th April 2022 by disgraced lawbreaking liar & former PM Boris Johnson, who in a speech at Dover falsely claimed it could potentially see Rwanda “resettle tens of thousands of people in the years ahead”, & claimed it would cost £120 million.
In reality, the capacity of the proposed facility in #Rwanda is 200 people/year, representing 0.7% of 2023 small boat arrivals.
The ACTUAL cost will be £1.8 MILLION for EACH of the first 300 deportees. There is ZERO evidence it will have a deterrent effect or be value for money.