Thread by @shaunjlawson

See also, the loony right in Argentina. Which to its eternal shame, urged people not to take the vaccine because they were being "experimented on" - then harangued the government when the rollout and uptake weren't fast enough. 🙄🙄

These people are always either stupid or bad.

https://twitter.com/DavMicRot/status/1478137239079202816

The Argentina comparison is apposite here because the problem there - for 70 years now! - is that politics has been treated like a war.

- Rich v poor
- Winners v losers
- We won you lost get over it
- Let's grind the losers into the dust, and only govern for our own voters

That's been paralleled all over South America - with added whites v non-whites in places like Venezuela, Chile, Peru or Paraguay.

Political parties are basically treated like football teams in many of these places. 'My tribe, right or wrong'. There's even football-style chants.

The problem in South America is a lot less its awful history of being colonised and exploited, a lot more its modern history of rank, lowest common denominator populism and magic realism.

In Argentina, for example, there is no genuine European-style left at all.

What there is is Peronism. On both sides. Both sides laying claim to the mantle of someone who actually set the country's long, awful decline in motion; both sides all about emotion and sadly, nationalism.

Cristina Kirchner, for example, was never remotely interested in fighting another Falklands War.

Her sabre-rattling was always for domestic consumption: entirely to distract the people from the horrific incompetence and mindboggling corruption and theft of her government.

Populism must always have someone to blame.

- The USA
- The CIA
- The rich
- The imperialists
- Globalisation
- The poor
- Immigrants
- Cuba
- Lockdown
- Lockdown opponents
- The vaccines
- Anti-vaxxers
- Russia
- China

On and on and on it goes... and nobody ever benefits.

So what's happened either side of the Atlantic, and in several Eastern European countries too? The same damn thing.

Magic realism in the US: which insists that Trump 'won' the election. The Big Lie, as Biden rightly terms it. And also insists that Covid is one giant conspiracy.

Magic realism in the UK: which insists that "Boris only did his best", the EU is the reason why Brexit's a disaster, and that the government's rather loose Covid measures are in fact, part of them trying to control everyone forever.

And of course: we won you lost get over it!

Politics as a game: or increasingly in the US, as a war. Notice how even 'moderate' Republicans like Mitt Romney or Susan Collins have blocked EVERYTHING the Biden administration's tried to pass?

The only thing that matters to them is partisanship, regardless of the consequences

The reason why most of Western Europe has either not headed down this route or, in Italy, say, tried and rejected it, is probably because of Western Europe's pluralist voting systems.

That's certainly why Germany and Scandinavia haven't touched this nonsense with a bargepole.

And thankfully, in continental Western Europe, the post-war memory of the importance of conciliation and compromise still holds: to a degree, at least.

Less so in Spain - but in their case, I'd query whether they ever truly cleansed themselves of Francoist nationalism.

Everyone knows who the Brazilian, Argentinian, Venezuelan or British leaders are.

Nobody knows who the Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish or Dutch leaders are.

The former talk and talk and talk and never do anything. The latter don't talk. They ACT, for the benefit of everyone

Democracy is not something that happens one day every four or five years. It is a constantly living, breathing, evolving organism, which requires strong institutions, civic participation and education based on the common good.

Successful, happy countries practice that.

But in Britain, the US, or large chunks of the continent where I live, populism rules.

Enforced by corporate media which DOES NOT WANT the public to know the truth about anything; it only wants the public to act in their corporate robber barons' interests.

Now true, I wouldn't single out CNN for that. Or the Washington Post. Or, for the most part, the New York Times. I wouldn't with Channel 4 News or the FT either.

But it is increasingly difficult for any citizen to find objective truth and facts about all sorts of things.

In Argentina, where leftist media treats the President like the Messiah and rightist media treats him like Kim Jong-Un, it's practically impossible.

And more broadly: it's the very lack of traditional gatekeepers which has encouraged so many grifters to speak absolute, dangerous drivel about Covid and pick up so many followers.

Only clicks, hits, retweets and shares count. Facts and objective truth do not.

Even the bloody Guardian has headed down this road in recent years on Corbyn, antisemitism and trans/women's rights.

It is not a newspaper of record. It is a newspaper increasingly of opinion and polemic, and it's very obvious what the editorial line is.

And why? It needs clickbait to avoid going behind a paywall. Meaning it either provokes or preaches to the converted.

Serious, sober, fact-based pieces are increasingly thin on the ground. As they are on Medium too. The corporate model rules. And the Tories control the BBC.

The internet was supposed to democratise the world. To make it impossible for dictators and tyrants to hide. To expose atrocities and allow the cream of the best thinkers and writers to rise to the top.

Literally none of that has happened.

All it's done is INCREASE partisanship and tribalism. INCREASE disinformation and nonsense conspiracy theories. INCREASE wildly over-simplified ideas and actively erode detail and nuance. About everything.

Remember that Argentinian mural I posted above?

If we don't all stop and think, hard, we'll all end up blind... and democracy will die in darkness.