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21 Jun, 9 tweets, 5 min read
'The most striking thing about GB News is not how original it is, but how familiar it feels. For a supposedly “fresh approach", the only novelty lies in the fact that it’s on TV - it's a mix of tabloid sensationalism & ill-tempered phone-in radio.'

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Like Fox News, GB News is a grievance-culture amplification system: from Brexit-based resentment against the EU to "anti-wokeness” & everything in-between: hostility to immigration, racial equality movements, “cancel culture” & lockdowns. an inexhaustible source of cheap content. ImageImage
"GB News is a natural extension of the increasing popularity of a sort of conservative grievance politics, more concerned about what pictures students have on their walls than how the economy works or the outcomes of public policy." Image
Wootton claims it's a “broadcasting revolution in the UK, where presenters like me are honest about what we believe”. One of his first acts in that revolution was to quote the Sun, which asked if there's "a link between lockdown & the Govt’s drastic zero-emissions green agenda”. Image
GB News is planted in a soil already tilled by the rightwing press. In power is a govt that is only too happy to comment on & nourish culture-war confections... the audience will be slowly radicalised, helping to push Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit England even further to the right. Image
"We won’t be like Fox (News) in that they come from a hard right disinformation fake news conspiracy agenda." - Andrew Neil. 🤥

Epidemiologists are "DOOMSDAY SCIENTISTS ADDICTED TO POWER! WE MUST FIGHT BACK AGAINST THIS MADNESS!" - Dan Wootton. 🤪

#NewsMyArse
#StopFundingHate Image
Andrew Neil is GB "News" Chair, & Tom Harwood its Political Correspondent. There isn't a serious, credible news channel *on earth* that would allow its tea-maker to tweet dangerously inflammatory shit like this about a female journalist - never mind its "Political Correspondent." ImageImageImage
Without a decent, credible news media, democracies cease to function. Disaster capitalists, libertarians & free market fundamentalists invest heavily in news media, & this process is well under way in Britain, America, Brazil, Hungary & other countries.

But why?

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More from @docrussjackson

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22 Jun
#Thread

'One Britain One Nation' & the DoE is calling for children to stand together behind a flag, like Hitler Youth, & sing 'STRONG BRITAIN, GREAT NATION!" 😳

Now call me cynical, but the term "Great Britain" is used to refer to the nation*S* of England, Scotland & Wales. 🧐 Image
Conflating "Britain" with *ONE* nation is VERY 'one nation conservatism', but chanting "Strong Britain, Great Nation!" is fucking unhinged, & just about as *unBritish* as it's possible to be.

Brave people fought WWII to AVOID this authoritarian populist nationalist bullshit. ImageImageImage
Btw, no law has ever been passed making the Union Jack (aka the Union Flag) the national flag of the UK: it's become one through precedent.

The Union Flag has no official status, & there are no national regulations concerning its use, or prohibitions against flag desecration. 🤔 Image
Read 37 tweets
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21 Jun
In the US, hedge funds or private equity firms control half of all US daily newspapers, while in Britain, three billionaire families control nearly 70% of the national newspaper industry.

#FreeThePress
#StopFundingHate

ft.com/content/5c2207…
GB News secured £60 million in funding: £20 million came from US media company Discovery, & the rest came from Brextremist hedge fund manager Paul Marshall, & the Dubai-based private investment firm Legatum.

How very patriotic. 🇬🇧 NOT.

metro.co.uk/2021/06/16/gb-…
Legatum funds the dodgy London-based free-market disaster-capitalist think-tank 'Legatum Institute', which in 2017 formed the 'Special Trade Commission', headed by Shanker Singham, who along with Matthew Elliott left in 2018 to take his team to the IEA.

opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-…
Read 4 tweets
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21 Jun
Since 2019, public electoral fraud led to just *TWO* police cautions, while *84* individuals & political organisations breached electoral law, so Tories introduce #VoterSuppression & strip the electoral commission of the power to prosecute law-breaking! 🤬
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…
How can a dangerous, unprecedented, coordinated & profoundly anti-British attack on democracy not be lead stories or on the front pages?

Unless, of course, nobody actually gives a f*ck.

What a broken country we've become. 😭

Read 5 tweets
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20 Jun
Goebbels would be very impressed with how far the cranks at the Telegraph & the UK Government's Oliver Dowden have developed the Nazi's relatively unsophisticated #propaganda.

The "virus" of "wokeism" & the "minority" "undermining our freedom"?

Fuck off.
It's not hard to understand why extremely wealthy people fund the relentless demonization of decent citizens concerned about racism & other forms of bigotry, about the legacy of colonialism, about the impending climate crisis & about grotesque inequality:

Read 4 tweets
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20 Jun
Across the world, the Right reaches out to its base by campaigning on cultural issues, while serving elite economic interests.

This effective political strategy works by making the base ever angrier & more desperate.

It explains why #GBNews is paid for by wealthy hedge-funders.
Trump, Orban, Bolsonaro, Farage & now Boris Johnson have all embraced & successfully exploited this strategy.

ALL of these societies are now dangerously polarised.

For centuries, dictators have galvanised support by demonizing imagined enemies - it's the exact same principle.
This is, effectively, what the culture war is all about: KEEP fueling the passionate base's anger & desperation: KEEP telling them that Britain, civilisation, & *our entire way of life* is under threat from a wide range of Others who are everywhere.

It's McCarthyism on steroids.
Read 8 tweets
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19 Jun
#THREAD

A small selection of what's "woke" - according to the US Libertarian billionaire-funded delusional paranoid divisive insufferable apocalyptical unhinged grifting culture war cranks at Spiked.
Prisons, schools, Lisa Nandy’s colonialism, & the lefties (who are secretly the militant wing of neoliberalism).
The capitalist class, the state, the ruling class, & capitalism.
Read 10 tweets

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