GET A GRIP Profile picture
Dec 10, 2021 7 tweets 2 min read Read on X
I was struck by this sentence, written by Andrew Neil, calling for penalties for the unvaccinated:

"I'm not impressed by those who claim this is an egregious assault on our freedoms. Liberty is not the same as unbridled licence to do what you want, which is the road to anarchy."
Functional democracies have to find the right balance between on one hand, maximum freedom for individuals, & on the other, sensible measures to protect decent people from those who would cheat, lie, exploit, manipulate or use violence or intimidation to satisfy their desires.
Over recent decades, the Right has lurched toward 'free-market libertarianism', of the kind that reduces the influence of the state on economic matters, yet increases the repressive power of the state by abandoning rules, rights & regulations designed to protect citizens.
This lurch toward unbridled free-market capitalism, pushed by almost every grotesquely wealthy media baron, corporate CEO, right-wing Government & free-market think tank on earth brought us the catastrophic financial crash & is pushing the earth toward cataclysmic climate change.
As we can see in Britain, the Govt's cynical libertarian attitude, exploitation of good faith, & utter contempt for rules, regulations, human rights, codes of conduct & even truth itself, is resulting in division, anger, frustration & the breakdown of trust in democracy itself.
Imho, the Govt's cynical, exploitative & dangerously irresponsible lurch toward right-wing libertarian populism - of the kind broadly supported by Andrew Neil - is the REAL "egregious assault on our freedoms. Liberty is not the same as unbridled licence to do what you want".
"Freedom".

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More from @docrussjackson

Nov 4
#THREAD

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.
Read 17 tweets
Nov 2
#THREAD

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.

theguardian.com/politics/2024/…
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.
Read 6 tweets
Oct 16
🧵ASYLUM QUIZ

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). Image
Read 31 tweets
Oct 14
#THREAD

'Divide and Rule'.

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? Image
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. Image
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.

Read 25 tweets
Oct 3
#THREAD

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”. Image
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".

theguardian.com/uk-news/articl…Image
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.”

Read 29 tweets
Sep 30
#THREAD

'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.

So how might we define 'the far-right'?

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…
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.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/146981…
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.
Read 87 tweets

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