Five years ago today, Jo Cox MP was murdered by a racist shouting "Britain First".
Yesterday, @BBC journalist Nick Watt was harassed & abused.
Politicians, the press & TV & radio presenters MUST #STOP using divisive, provocative & inflammatory populist nationalist rhetoric.
Mair was a #racist, radicalized by the Far-Right, persuaded that white people were being erased.
But his greatest obsession & deepest bitterness was over those white people whom he condemned as “the collaborators”: the liberals, the left & the media - in other words, the "WOKE".
The 'culture war' is not merely an argument between 'two sides' about Britain's future: it's a deliberately divisive, antagonistic, & extremely dangerous political strategy that mobilses polarizing rhetoric to radicalize millions of people, with sometimes deadly consequences.
Let's ALL try to avoid demonizing & negatively stereotyping groups we disagree with.
People supporting trans rights or taking the knee aren't necessarily "woke", just as expressing concern about aspects of Self-ID or taking the knee aren't necessarily transphobic or racist.
The @BBC & the @nationaltrust aren't "anti-British" or "cultural Marxists".
It's alarming that journalists, pundits & MPs (including Govt Ministers) have used this dangerous rhetoric: 'cultural Marxism' is the far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory that inspired Anders Breivik.
Let's #NeverForget that according to the eyewitness, as Mair killed Jo Cox, he said: “Britain first, keep Britain independent, Britain will always come first", before finally yelling “This is for Britain.”
Patriotism is fine.
Populist nationalist rhetoric is NOT: it MUST #STOP.
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'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.
I missed this story about Kevin Roberts - President of the Heritage Foundation & the man behind #Project2025, who has close ties to Truss, Patel, Oliver Dowden & Jenrick (who have all given speeches at the Heritage Foundation) - KILLING HIS NEIGHBOUR'S DOG WITH A SHOVEL!
“He was discussing in the hallway with various members of the faculty, including me, that a neighbor’s dog had been barking pretty relentlessly... he kind of lost it & took a shovel and killed the dog. End of problem,” said Kenneth Hammond, chair of the History Dept at the time.
Farage may become Britain's Trump, & Reform UK, Britain's Republicans: same divisive 1930s-style propaganda; same support from the same handful of billionaires; same climate change denial; same policies, from the same opaquely funded global network of free-market think-tanks.🤑
Tommy Robinson CHECKS HIS SOURCES, so he knows Evie is a right-wing online magazine which has spread COVID-19 & vaccine misinformation, & has a traditionalist/antifeminist worldview.
In 2022, Evie launched an app which collects menstruation data, funded by Peter Thiel.
Evie’s anti-vax blogs provide a window into how COVID denialism & misinformation are being marketed in right-wing women’s media. Evie’s founder and editor-in-chief is a former model turned would-be Catholic lifestyle influencer named Brittany Martinez.
In 2023, Rolling Stone described as the "Gen Z ‘Cosmo’ for the far-right" (so Tiny Tommy obviously gravitates towards it), the Peter Thiel-linked Evie Magazine is "harnessing the culture war to grow its audience."
Nazi propaganda dehumanized Jews in order to facilitate the Holocaust.
In the book 'Unhumans', right-wing conspiracy theorists Jack Posobiec &Joshua Lisec claim that Progressive-minded Americans are bloodthirsty Communist "unhumans" hellbent on destrying civilization.
This 🧵quotes this article by Gil Duran of @GeorgeLakoff's #FrameLab. George is a cognitive linguist & philosopher, best known for his thesis that our lives are significantly influenced by the conceptual metaphors used use to explain complex phenomena.
Here's the context debunking the abhorrent lies about Springfield Haitians 'eating geese & pets' currently being pushed by Trump, Vance, endless gullible MAGAs, & much of the US right-wing media, which have so far resulted in two bomb threats.