On Friday, anti-democratic right-wing populist nationalist authoritarian PM with a long history of racist comments Boris Johnson, is meeting with Putin ally Viktor Orbán.
Under Orbán's leadership, Hungary has experienced democratic backsliding & a lurch towards authoritarianism.
Orbán's populism, social-national conservatism, soft Euroscepticism & advocacy of what he describes as an "illiberal state" have attracted significant European & international attention & criticism from domestic & foreign leaders, including Angela Merkel, but praise from Johnson.
Orbán has gradually undermined the rule of law, established tight control over the country’s independent institutions, adopted a new constitution & fundamentally changing electoral laws & the system of campaign financing.
Johnson's 👏 Govt 👏 is 👏 doing👏 the 👏same.#NotADrill
Orbán's Govt has captured the public media & taken control over much private media through an extensive network of Govt-friendly oligarchs.
Orbán's regime is close to Andrew Neil too, the @BBC is now led by Tory stooges, & Ofcom may be run by Paul Dacre.
These developments grant Fidesz-KDNP extraordinary advantage over the opposition: Hungary today can no longer be regarded as a democracy but belongs to the growing group of hybrid regimes, sitting in the “gray zone” between democracies & pure autocracies.
In 2017, Boris Johnson met Steve Bannon in the US, & Bannon met with Jacob Rees-Mogg in London.
In 2018, Bannon met with Michael Gove, & Bannon was filmed saying “I’ve been talking to him (Boris Johnson) all weekend about this speech. We went back and forth over the text.”
Also in 2018, Bannon advised Viktor Orban.
The links between far-right provocateur Bannon, Libertarian US billionaire-funded US & Tufton St free-market think tanks & the Spiked mob, the far-right Orbán regime & the UK Govt, are well-established & profoundly disturbing.
WAKE UP!
Some people argue Boris Johnson's "friend" Viktor Orban can't be an antisemite - as well as a xenophobic racist - because he's mates with Netanyahu.
Tory & Reform UK MPs, #TuftonSt lobbyists, & Media Barons Rupert Murdoch, Jonathan Harmsworth & Paul Marshall despise two of Britain’s most loved institutions: our @BBC & our #NHS.
They use their power to undermine them.
Why?
And who is the new @BBC Chair, Samir Shah?
For these individuals & organisations, our @BBC & #NHS are a constant reminder that free-market capitalism is a profoundly flawed ideology fuelling greed & climate change, & that not every large organisation should either be a charity or be owned by shareholders & run for profit.
This thread focuses on how @BBCNews & @BBCPolitics output has, since 2000, become increasingly skewed to the right & a vehicle for defending free-market capitalism.
I'd need to write a 100K word thesis to cover everything I want to say about the @BBC, but I'll convey the basics.
English neo-Nazi who stabbed asylum seeker was a serial stalker.
Terrorist Callum Parslow was previously jailed for sending 10 women sexually explicit and misogynistic messages, and even targeted a black former GB "News" presenter.
A neo-Nazi terrorist who was found guilty last month of the attempted murder of an asylum seeker is a prolific online stalker who had previously been jailed and referred to the #Prevent counter-terrorism scheme.
Parslow was convicted on 25 October of attempted murder after stabbing an asylum seeker at a hotel in April. He was jailed in 2018 for targeting 10 women and girls with messages describing sexually motivated murder, torture and rape, and then changed his name after his release.
We hear A LOT about Small Boats & Migrant Hotels, but basic facts are often misrepresented.
Q1 When compared to EU countries plus Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein & Norway, where did the UK rank in 2023 by per capita asylum applications? (1st=most)
DON'T CHEAT
ANSWER to Q1:
When adjusted by population size, the UK received the 20th highest number of applications: 12.5 per 10,000 residents.
Q2 Where did the UK rank in 2023 in ACCEPTING/APPROVING per capita asylum applications?
(1st=most, 31st=last).
ANSWER TO Q2
Adjusted for population size, the UK ranks 10th: in 2023 we granted protection to 9 asylum seekers per 10,000 of our resident population.
Germany had 351,000 asylum applicants (compared to our 80,000), granting protection to 135,000 people (compared to our 62,000).
What if the 1% are deliberately manufacturing deeply polarised societies?
What if the differences between, for example, the "woke and anti-woke", Leavers and Remainers, migrants and non-migrants are deliberately exaggerated, or entirely manufactured?
What if the 1% remain powerful because they invest in the strategy of Divide & Rule?
For many reasons, including ignorance, desperation, trauma, stupidity & selfishness, millions of people respect & even vote for shameless, divisive, dangerously irresponsible sociopathic liars.
One way to account for this is to look at the gradual & shameless normalisation of lies & inflammatory speech. Another (related) way is to look at the role of ourselves and our media.
Professsor Ruth Wodak has spent decades examined the former.
A January amendment to the Online Safety Act 2023 allows for the prosecution of those who convey information they know to be false & “if the person intended the message, or the information in it, to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience”.
The #Southport stabbing was on 29th July. At 4.44pm on 30th July, Tommy Robinson posted a tweet to his more than 1 million followers on @X, referring to Muslims and saying "people need to rise up", and "our daughters are being butchered in dance classes".
Bernadette Spofforth, alleged to have been the first to tweet Southport disinformation on @X, was arrested on 8th August, but on 18th September police said that following an investigation... “no further action will be taken due to insufficient evidence.”
'The Left' can be defined on the basis of its 'egalitarian drive': its credo is to remove—also through state intervention—barriers that make people unequal, advocating equal rights & opportunities for all.
The following 🧵quotes extensively from the 2022 article 'Far right: The significance of an umbrella concept', by Andrea Pirro, published in Nations and Nationalism, a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers research on nationalism and related issues.
The Right is described as non-egalitarian, precisely because its models of political and social order are rooted in the necessity and legitimacy of institutionalised inequality.
Broadly, the right seeks to maintain a status quo whereby differences between people are entrenched.