If you were still in any doubt about not just how divisive & misguided Laurence Fox is, but also how dangerously irresponsible he is, this might help.

Brextremist millionaire Jeremy Hosking, who funds contrarian libertarian magazine 'The Critic', also funds Fox's Reclaim Party.
Hosking is a multi-millionaire financier with a financial interest in Marathon Asset Management, which is owned offshore in Jersey & operates in the Cayman Islands. Hosking gave over £1.8 million to the Vote Leave campaign & previously donated £700,000 to the @Conservatives.
Like other rich libertarians such as Robert Mercer who funded Breitbart, last year Hosking gave £850,000 to Standpoint magazine - its core mission "to celebrate western civilisation", in particular 'free speech'. Michael Gove is on the advisory board.

 –ft.com/content/77f879…
In 2017, @GeorgeMonbiot wrote about the anti-democratic nature of Hosking's pledge to spend up to £700,000 on ousting @UKLabour MPs who campaigned against Brexit, thereby reducing parliamentary opposition to a hard Brexit or, as is now likely, no deal.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
As @BylineTimes recently reported, Patrick Barrow, Reputation Communications' founder & MD, has a longstanding relationship with Hosking, & now, with a small team behind him, Barrow is 'constructing Reclaim’s foundations.'

bylinetimes.com/2020/11/20/beh…
Patrick Barrow used to run corporate affairs for the group which encompassed the Sunday Telegraph & The Spectator.

In a June 2020 Critic article about #GE19, he wrote: "Oh, bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, The Daily Telegraph was, quite literally, running the country."
While the article is critical of Johnson & virtually the entire cabinet (not Sunak & Patel) - he also attacks Unions, teachers, broadcast media & the police, & says George Floyd's death ("a race incident") caused "a corrosive attack on Britain’s history, society & rule of law."
As part of the well-funded army of unhinged 'libertarian' cranks, supported by endless think tanks, contrarians, bigots & grifters, he inevitably blames 'Cultural Marxism' for society's ills - since Bannon, the 'go-to' antisemitic conspiracy theory which inspired Anders Breivik.
Barrow knows all about the dark arts: he worked for @BBCNews on Today & The World at One, then as press officer for #BBCQT with Peter Sissons, then Corporate Management at PR giant Ketchum, helping multinational clients such as the World Economic Forum & investment banks.
Why does any of this matter?

Imho, societies across the world are under sustained attack by powerful libertarians, who much prefer a completely deregulated oligarchy to democracy, & who are doing everything they possibly can to divide societies & encourage populist nationalism.
I want to attach two related THREAD:

First, one that makes explicit the links between the dangerously divisive anti-lockdown rhetoric used by Laurence Fox & Nigel Farage, & powerful US libertarian billionaires:

The second THREAD acts as an introduction to the rise of the Far Right across much of the world: we hear a lot about the terms 'populism' & 'nationalism', but what exactly do they mean, what do they refer to, & why should we be concerned?

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More from @docrussjackson

21 Dec
A short THREAD which attempts to summarize the interesting & informative paper: 'MORBID SYMPTOM: IMMIGRATION AND THE RISE OF FAR -RIGHT POPULISM IN WESTERN EUROPE', by Ayaz Rzayev.

It contains pragmatic suggestions for stemming the rise of the Far Right, which deserve a hearing. Image
ALL Far-Right parties across Europe:

▶️Emphasise 'nativism' rooted in myths about an idealised past, & hostility towards immigration

▶️Have programs directed toward making the nation more ethnically homogeneous & returning to 'traditional values' of Western civilization. Image
ALL Far-Right parties across Europe:

▶️Accuse the establishment of favoring their own narrow self-interests over the interests of the people

▶️Try to avoid explicit #racism by emphasising 'the Muslim threat' & welfare costs of immigration. Image
Read 11 tweets
18 Dec
Seeing as #Foucault is trending, I have some quotes:
"If you are not like everybody else, then you are abnormal, if you are abnormal, then you are sick. These three categories, not being like everybody else, not being normal and being sick are in fact very different but have been reduced to the same thing."
"One has to distinguish between different things in the analysis of an institution. First, there is what can be called its rationality, or its aim, that is, the ends it has in view and the means it possesses for attaining those ends... Second, there is the question of results...
Read 25 tweets
17 Dec
Reading #Breitbart (& Spiked, InfoWars etc)

Media texts are a form of discourse that are not simply reflective of reality, but a primary vehicle for the articulation & reproduction of dominant structures of power.

Once you see this, you can't unsee it.

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
Breitbart's (& in the UK, Spiked's) "discourse of binary opposition focused on ‘us versus them’ dyads that use precisely the language of the culture wars of the 1980s & 1990s, is sufficient to demonstrate the persistence of culture wars discourse in contemporary media discourse."
Through their coverage of news & politics, they create "a self-referential ‘communication world’ in which certain ‘truths’ about the binary nature of issues are parsed as an agonistic struggle between the ‘us’ of (common sense) conservatism & the ‘they’ of (woke) ‘Liberalism’."
Read 9 tweets
17 Dec
"Brexit is a national tragedy built on a chimera. The UK is about to discover that it has traded the real power to shape its destiny for an illusion drenched in nostalgia."

ft.com/content/f5cf57…
"The UK will need 50,000 or more new customs agents to cope with the bureaucracy being injected into once-frictionless trading arrangements. The bargain under discussion is the first trade agreement in history consciously to raise protectionist barriers."
"UK citizens will forfeit the right to travel & work without hindrance across the EU. Service industry workers will lose automatic recognition of their skills & qualifications... In return, British citizens will be able to indulge their nostalgia with a new, blue-hued passport".
Read 4 tweets
17 Dec
Worryingly, far right parties are influential in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia & Switzerland.

THREAD summary of this article:

annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.11…
Far right parties are either radical or extremist in their ideology. Radicalism calls for “root and branch” reform of the political & economic system but does not explicitly seek the elimination of all forms of democracy. In contrast, extremism is directly opposed to democracy.
Far-right parties often have incentives to hide their extremism to avoid legal repercussions.

Radical parties are inherently “anti-system,” & In Europe, this system is typically a combination of liberal democracy & capitalism.

Radicalism & extremism occur on the left & right.
Read 66 tweets
16 Dec
Presumably Claire Fox is on #newsnight because Tommy Robinson, David Starkey, Darren Grimes, Katie Hopkins, Nigel Farage, Laurence Fox, Allison Pearson, Isabel Oakeshott, Richard Tice, Tim Martin, Toby Young, Brendan O'Neill & that Scottish bloke from 'Coast' are all unavailable.
People asking why I included Coast Guy:

1 For bigging up David Starkey after his racist outburst

2 For saying young people shouldn’t go to university because Universities have succumbed to a "Maoist" cultural revolution

3 For RTing unhinged hard-right crank Paul Joseph-Watson
4 Saying #BlackLivesMatter is essentially a plot by anarchists & communists to undermine the fabric of the British nation

5 Amplifying the antisemitic conspiracy theory about 'Cultural Marxism' which inspired Anders Breivik..

Just do your own research👍

thenational.scot/news/18560680.…
Read 4 tweets

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