Just wanted to share a few lesser-known facts about 1930s Germany which given the #CostOfLivingCrisis & a new PM, seem salient, taken predominantly from The Third Reich Trilogy by British historian Richard J. Evans, hailed as a "masterpiece of historical scholarship."
Evans produced the report into the writings of David Irving who had claimed he'd been defamed as a Holocaust denier. The report proved irrefutable: Irving had deliberately distorted & manipulated historical evidence to bring it in line with his prejudices. Irving lost the case.
Almost every day I see the tired old claim that because the Nazis had 'socialist' in their official party name, they *were* socialists - despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including the fact they imprisoned & executed socialists, union organisers & other left-wingers.
The Nazis were hostile to the idea of social welfare in principle, & upheld instead the Social Darwinist concept that the feeble should perish.
They condemned the welfare system of the Weimar Republic as well as private charity, accusing them of supporting the inferior & weak.
Social welfare has been demonised & decimated for decades by those who subscribe to #neoliberal policies: the stated aim of the global network of free-market 'think tanks' (lobbyists) who wield so much influence over the UK & US Governments is to reduce or ideally end welfare.
Over the last fifty years, league tables created to measure such nebulous concepts as "economic freedom" by think tanks (lobbyists) such as the Heritage Foundation, show that neoliberalism is about ringfencing economic power- even at the cost of democracy. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Faced with mass unemployment/poverty during the Great Depression, the Nazis set up charitable institutions to help racially-pure Germans in order to maintain popular support, while arguing it represented "racial self-help", not indiscriminate charity or universal social welfare.
We see echoes of this argument today, on social media & in right-wing national newspapers eg in the dog-whistle calls for only British nationals to receive any benefits, or to have access to social housing or the #NHS, despite Britain's legal responsibilities to no-UK citizens.
The Nazi Winter Relief of the German People & National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV) were quasi-private institutions, which encouraged donations from Germans to help others of their race, but those refusing to donate faced severe consequences, & money was used for rearmament.
Unlike Weimar Republic social welfare institutions, the NSV provided support only to those who were "racially sound, capable of & willing to work, politically reliable, & willing & able to reproduce." Non-Aryans, the "work-shy", "asocials" & the "hereditarily ill" were excluded.
The propagandistic Winter Relief campaigns were a major source of Nazi funding, supplanting tax-funded welfare & freeing up money for rearmament, while the disabled & homeless were actively persecuted, labeled as "life unworthy of life" or "useless eaters. disabilitynewsservice.com/disabled-mans-…
The Nazis banned all trade unions, & replaced them with the German Labour Front (DAF), controlled by the Nazi Party. They also outlawed strikes & lockouts. The stated goal of the German Labour Front was not to protect workers, but to increase output.
William L. Shirer wrote that the German Labour Front was "a vast propaganda organization... a gigantic fraud." A board of trustees run by representatives of the Nazi Party, the DAF & the Chamber of Economics was set up to centralize economic activity.
Real wages in Germany dropped by roughly 25% between 1933 & 1938 - coincidentally, the real wages of UK council workers have fallen by 25% since 2012, & UK academic pay has also fallen behind inflation by 25% since 2009.
Along with the abolition of the right to strike, workers were also in large part rendered unable to quit their jobs. 'Labour books' were introduced in 1935, & the consent of the previous employer was required in order to be hired for another job.
Let us #NeverForget that arguably the biggest single factor which led directly to the rise of the Nazis, was the introduction of economic measures which disproportionately hit the poorest after Germany's economy collapsed in 1928 - what today we might call #austerity.
The Chancellor at the time, Heinrich Brüning, favoured austerity measures & liked to issue "notverordunungen" — emergency decrees. He quickly implemented drastic public spending cuts in an effort to get the country back on track & foolishly centralised important fiscal decisions.
The political ramifications of these measures were almost immediate & went beyond the Nazi Party. The austere fiscal policy combined with a depression-induced public-sector slowdown worsened the economic situation for Germans, & it radicalized people across the social spectrum.
As the German people lost faith in their government's ability to manage the situation, unemployed & low-income Germans became more likely to turn to the Communist Party, whereas middle- & upper-income Germans were more likely to turn to the Nazis.
A dangerously polarised country like ours, increasingly tired of its leadership & losing trust in its democratic institutions' ability to protect citizens, can learn from Germany's example - including how quickly bad policies can push voters to extremes.
Just two opinion polling companies have put Reform UK on 20% or more: People Polling (owned by Legatum Snr Fellow Matt Goodwin) & Whitestone Insight (CEO Andrew Hawkins).
The links to Reform UK, the Evangelical Christian Right & fossil fuel interests are concerning.
On 18 June, a poll commissioned by GB "News" (co-owned by Legatum), conducted by Snr Fellow at Legatum Matt Goodwin, put Reform on 24%
The average of all polls since is just 16%.
Only two other outlier polls have put Reform on 20% or more - both conducted by Whitestone Insight.
Before revealing the connections between the two outlier polls & Reform UK & fossil fuel interests, some important context.
In 1997, all the polls correctly predicted Blair’s landslide. That most polls significantly overstated the size of his victory passed virtually unnoticed.
Nowhere in the world have private equity firms found a more welcoming playground than in the UK: the volumes of buyouts have over the past two decades weighed more in the overall economy than in any other advanced market, including the US.
Private equity firms have snapped up high street names from grocers Asda and Morrisons to sandwich chain Pret A Manger, and invested in sectors ranging from insurance to nursing homes and infrastructure.
Now their record, and relatively lower taxation, are once again coming under heightened scrutiny ahead of the election. Labour wants to increase taxes on the performance fees that fund managers receive from asset sales, so these 'dealmakers' may be tempted to relocate elsewhere.
Why did they hold a joint event with barking Clare Fox's Battle of Ideas on “Indoctrination in Education” with barking Frank Furedi of Spiked Online as a speaker?
Britain is NOT America. Not yet.
The term 'Judeo-Christian' became widely used in the US during the Cold War to suggest a unified American identity opposed to communism.
The “Judeo-Christian tradition” was a political invention: an ecumenical marketing meme for combating godless commies.
The term 'Judeo-Christian' is now widely & misleadingly mobilised by the far-right to divide people, mainly by demonising 'Others' (especially Muslims).
"My beliefs are based on a Judeo-Christian worldview that’s thousands of years old" - Miriam Cates.
Danny, a leading expert on housing, health, employment, education & poverty, has published with colleagues more than a dozen books on issues related to UK social inequalities, & several hundred journal papers - which is probably why he's so rarely on TV.
Middle England has been hit hard by the #costoflivingcrisis. Even people doing comparatively well are struggling.
Across Britain, opportunity has been replaced by food banks. Pre-COVID, life expectancy dropped as a result of poverty for the first time since the 1930s.
The hateful anonymous @X account @benonwine constantly tweets out divisive, inflammatory far-right pro-Farage tweets.
Because it's impossible to find out who is behind the grotesque account, we cannot know who, or what, is behind it. It's the same for @UKUpdates_co_uk.
Now that all the main parties have published their manifestos, rather than actually read them, the overwhelming majority of voters will rely on (almost invariably partisan) third-party accounts to summarise and/or interpret them.
But how accurate & reliable is their analysis?
In 2019, in 'The explosion of the public sphere', Dr Martin Moore (Centre for the Study of Media Communication & Power at Kings College) & Dr Gordon Ramsay (University of Westminster) outlined recent developments in our insufficiently regulated UK media.