Seeing titles of articles sympathetic to Trump in right-wing propaganda outlets being changed, and watching all the high-profile right-wing grifting cranks furiously deleting their tweets about how Trump 'really isn't that bad' is hilarious!
Matt Goodwin - on the advisory panel of Toby Young's "Free Speech Union" - has been particularly busy!
On 27 May 2017, he predicted @UKLabour would not reach 38% of the vote in the #GE2017 & he would eat his book if they did. Labour did and, on 10 June, Goodwin chewed one page out of his book, live on Sky News.
New research into anti-immigration rhetoric, which I'll try to summarise in this THREAD.
It basically suggests that the emotive use of metaphor & hyperbole in anti-immigration rhetoric drives base support & INCREASES their likelihood of political action.
Typical anti-immigration rhetoric used by right-wing populist nationalist parties presents immigrants as outsiders, who are framed as a threat to the populist nationalists idealized nation.
In their anti-immigration rhetoric, politicians typically use strong, vivid, & negative metaphors & hyperboles to frame their political statements.
There is agreement that, at least for parts of the electorate, such populist anti-immigration rhetoric can be highly persuasive.
Well it doesn't happen very often, but this has blown my mind.
Written in 1971 to the US Chamber of Commerce, the Powell Memo was perhaps THE precipitating event for the corporate takeover of the #USA, starting in the early 1970s.
Hedrick Smith's 2013 book reveals how pivotal laws & policies were altered, how Congress ignored public opinion, why moderate politicians got sidelined, & how Wall St often won politically by hiring over 1,400 former government officials as lobbyists.
2008's 'The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule', by Thomas Frank, exposes the naked cynicism of US conservatism's war on liberal Govt: US Libertarians believe “the liberal state has no more claim to legitimacy than the thief who robs you at gunpoint.”
While many politicians, pundits, & 'influencers' on the Right have been busy deleting their sycophantic or supportive tweets about Trump - particularly those which downplayed/denied the very real dangers he has ALWAYS posed to the #USA & democracy - I'm retweeting some of mine.👍
We're watching you Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage, & anyone else who scapegoats & demonizes minorities with their faux patriotic populist nationalist bullshit - you should NEVER have listened to a word Steve Bannon said, let alone adopted his playbook.
And here's the little-reported news of Boris Johnson facing growing condemnation for an “appalling” Tory alliance with neo-Nazi and anti-Muslim parties across Europe.
The @Conservatives' peer Lord Balfe revealed how Johnson had simply refused to act.
President of Bristol Free Speech Society: “We have been used by Toby Young to legitimise this project. Organisations like the Free Speech Union are just perpetuating a culture war.”
Oxford University student & founder of the Oxford Society for Free Discourse: “They said very clearly this is a grassroots movement. They purposely hushed the Free Speech Union’s involvement down.”
Toby Young now describes facemasks as "face nappies".