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@docrussjackson
Nov 14, 2022 • 24 tweets • 10 min read • Read on X
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#THREAD

Remember when RADICAL FEMINIST Elon Musk won plaudits for "activating Starlink" to help Iranian protestors? His superfans swooned & the White House entered into talks with him about setting up SpaceX's satellite internet service in Iran to FIGHT THE POWER! About that...
This thread quotes from recent articles in @PrivateEyeNews & @WIRED.

The Iranian Govt imposed widespread internet blackouts to try to contain the unrest that followed the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, detained for not wearing a hijab properly.

theguardian.com/world/2022/sep…
In response, billionaire SpaceX founder & serial attention-hogger Elon Musk asked the US government for exemptions from Iran export controls for his Starlink satellite internet service.

"Activating Starlink,” he tweeted, quickly gaining 187,000+ likes.
The tweet received great applause, with some of Musk's followers declaring him “one of the greatest freedom fighters of our century!"

Even the US government fell for the hype, with the State Department saying it would welcome & prioritise a licence application.
The idea was that satellite-based broadband service could help Iranians circumvent the regime's restrictions on accessing the internet & certain social media platforms, & so help Iranian women in their struggle - a noble ambition hardly anyone would criticise.

However...
While Starlink has plenty of satellites in position, there aren't any ground stations in Iran to receive signals. A terminal costs $599 & doesn't just require access to the satellites - they also need to be within a few hundred miles of a ground station. There are *none* in Iran.
They will only work, therefore, around the perimeter of the country, where terminals in neighboring nations, such as Turkey, Azerbaijan or Iraq, can be accessed.

While they're reasonably easy to disguise visually, they transmit as well as receive - making them simple to detect.
Musk hasn't said he'll cover the cost of the necessary satellite receiver dishes ($599 each) nor even the $110-per-month subscription fee - & thanks to Iran's ban on international transactions, Iranians can't buy them themselves.

Don't believe the hype.

While there is some evidence of receiver dishes being smuggled into Iran, it doesn't really matter as given that the dishes transmit as well as receive, they'd be announcing their presence to the Iranian authorities.

The fact is "there isn't a hope in hell of the plan working".
Concerning the protests in Iran, at tremendous risk to their safety, young people are demanding an end to years of oppression - burning their hijabs, shearing their hair, & marching in solidarity as the protest anthem Baraye, with its chorus “for #WomenLifeFreedom”.
In addition to instituting strict internet controls, blocking access to social media & knocking the entire web offline, the Iranian authorities have responded with a brutal crackdown in which over 230 Iranians are believed to have died.

pbs.org/newshour/world…
Govts across the world are using technology to oppose uprisings, but another equally important question is: should grotesquely wealthy individuals like Elon Musk - known to have strong political views - really have a similar power? They already own swathes of our (news) media...
Many nations have severely curtailed internet freedom, including full shutdowns, as their default response to popular protests.

The most repressive regimes learn from each other, sharing technology & sometimes personnel to establish an ironclad grip on the web & their citizens.
At least 225 internet shutdowns have taken place in response to popular protests since 2016.

Access Now, which tracks internet shutdowns, reports that protests & political instability were the cause of 128 of 182 confirmed internet shutdowns in 2021.

ohchr.org/en/press-relea…
Draconian protest laws & internet restrictions, including complete shutdowns, have followed popular protests in at least five countries in just the past 10 months, including Kazakhstan, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Burkina Faso & Tajikistan.

With great power comes great responsibility.
Protecting democracy & curbing the use of internet shutdowns—and the severe second-order consequences that attend them—requires a united approach that recognizes the underlying impulses & technologies, as well as the struggle of those impacted.

wired.com/story/iran-mah…
Repressive Governments have sought full control over the internet from the moment it was introduced, but shutdowns have emerged as a tactic in the past decade.

The number of shutdowns ballooned from just a handful in 2011 to a peak of 213 in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic.
While I welcome Musk's preference for an absence of censorship, in a democratic society, access to social media platforms, satellite technology & other essential components for the free flow of information should not be in the hands of profit-hungry corporations & individuals.
The Declaration for the Future of the Internet, signed last spring by the US, the European Union, & 60 other countries, is the strongest commitment governments have yet made to the future of a free, open, and global internet.

state.gov/declaration-fo…
Among the declaration’s provisions is a commitment to “refrain from government-imposed internet shutdowns or degrading domestic Internet access, either entirely or partially.” The signatories to the declaration could form an alliance to counter creeping digital authoritarianism.
With Governments like the UK's signalling it wants to reduce or even withdraw from long-established internationally agreed laws & conventions of basic human rights, citizens & organisations that favour democracy over authoritarianism must remain vigilant.
hrw.org/news/2022/10/2…
The threat to free access to information & the enjoyment of basic human rights is not an isolated one, but a global, networked menace. Countering it will likewise require a deeply interconnected global movement.
Transnational movements like the #MilkteaAlliance, have further united protesters demanding democracy & respect for human rights.

To achieve meaningful & durable change, connections like these must be further supported, sustained, & deepened.

theguardian.com/technology/202…
#NeverForget #NeverAgain

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More from @docrussjackson

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Dec 12
🧵

Reform UK’s slick, stage-managed launch of a Christian Fellowship in St Michael’s Church is not some harmless Christmas-season publicity stunt. It is a clear and brazen step towards the Trumpification of UK politics, where religion is weaponised as a tool for cultural warfare and political mobilisation.

This is not organic Christian revival. It’s strategic political engineering.

Behind this development sit figures who have spent years trying to inject a US-style fusion of right-wing politics and religious identity into British political culture:

• Paul Marshall

A billionaire media financier with a clear ideological project: to build a hard-right cultural and religious counter-establishment. Through GB “News”, The |Spectator and UnHerd and other platforms he has amplified narratives about “woke attacks” on tradition, identity, and Christianity. The Islamophobic tweets he liked are disgusting. His network provides the media oxygen for precisely the kind of politicised Christianity on display at the Reform launch.

• James Orr

A Cambridge academic and prominent Anglican conservative intellectual, closely connected to the “post-liberal” movement and hard-right US conservative and Hungarian organisations. Orr openly promotes the idea of restoring Britain’s “Christian identity” through politics — a framing that sits uncomfortably close to the Christian-nationalist rhetoric of the US right. His advisory role to senior Reform figures is a clear sign of the ideological hardening underway.

• Danny Kruger

Long known for advocating a more “muscular” Christian politics, Kruger has repeatedly argued that the UK should explicitly root its laws and social policy in “Judeo-Christian values” - a dog whistle I explain in the next tweet.

This is the British echo of US culture-war evangelicalism: turning religion into a political badge, not a spiritual or moral tradition. His involvement in shaping Reform’s policy direction cements the party’s shift toward faith-infused populism.

• Calvin Robinson

Though no longer in the Church of England, disgraced former GBN presenter and political extremist Robinson remains one of the most prominent voices pushing an aggressive “anti-woke, anti-liberal” form of Christianity in the media — including endorsing narratives that paint inclusive or progressive churches as heretical. His alignment with Reform’s messaging shows how the party is deliberately courting polemical, grievance-driven Christian activism.

Together, these figures represent a new coalition: a British attempt to import the US religious-right model, with all its corrosive social consequences.

Using St Michael’s Cornhill — a church rooted in the conservative evangelical network — as the backdrop for this political spectacle is shocking in a UK context.

This is not merely a “religious event attended by politicians.” It was a political rally held in a church, wrapped in Anglican aesthetics.

The Church of England has historically avoided such political entanglement precisely because it knows how dangerous it is to let a religious institution become a vessel for partisan identity politics.

Britain is not America — but Reform UK wants to change that

What we are seeing is the deliberate construction of a political identity rooted in far-right themes lurching toward a contemporary form of Christofascism:

grievance Christianity
nostalgia for a mythic “Christian Britain”
hostility to minorities and multiculturalism
anti-LGBTQ+ theology rebranded as “family values”
anti-immigrant populism framed as moral duty
and a narrative of cultural siege identical to the US evangelical right

It is the Trump playbook, translated into British idiom.

This is disturbing, because once a political movement fuses religious identity with national identity, democratic debate changes: Opponents are no longer wrong — they are heretical. Policies are no longer argued — they are sanctified. Compromise becomes betrayal. And politics becomes a zero-sum culture war.

Britain has largely avoided this polarising poison. Reform UK is now trying to inject it directly into the bloodstream of national politics.

Reform UK’s “Christian Fellowship” is not about faith. It is the public unveiling of a British Christian-nationalist project — backed by wealthy ideologues, amplified by culture-war media, and borrowing heavily from the most divisive elements of the US right.

It is a serious warning sign of where Reform UK intends to take the country: toward a politics defined by religious grievance, cultural division, and the erosion of the pluralistic norms that have protected Britain from the worst excesses of American political extremism.
Concerning Paul Marshall:
Concerning James Orr:
Read 10 tweets
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Dec 9
🧵

How have populist UK politicians and Britain’s right-wing press and broadcasters got away with repeating — day after day, year after year — the brazenly false and wildly misleading claim that we live in a “high-welfare, high-tax” country? Image
Why the “High-Welfare, High-Tax” Myth Persists.

The claim that Britain is a “high-welfare, high-tax” country is a shameless lie—brazenly false—as OECD and OBR data consistently show: the UK's tax take is ~36% of GDP (mid-table globally, and well under the EU average of 40.5%). Image
The UK's total tax take of 36% is far under France's 45% or Denmark's 46%. Welfare benefits spending (including state pensions) is a modest ~11% of GDP—among the lowest in the OECD, well below the EU average of 17.5%, and just under half that of France (20.5%) and Italy (20%). Image
Read 31 tweets
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Dec 8
🧵

Not only has Nigel Farage shamelessly normalized far right discourse, but Reform UK have welcomed a new generation of young, radicalised, Andrew Tate fanboys who think it's acceptable to spread divisive bigoted lies and disinformation, and to make crass bigoted 'jokes'. Image
Joseph Boam is a radicalised 22-year-old Tate fanboy who started out as a Tory, running as a district councillor, then switching to Reform UK in 2024 and becoming a councillor in May 2025 representing the Whitwick division on Leicestershire County Council for the Reform UK party. Image
A former KFC worker, who has worked with his dad on sheds and property renovation, despite his total lack of any relevant experience or knowledge of the area, he was appointed Council deputy leader and cabinet member for adult social care—which ispatently absurd. Image
Read 14 tweets
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Dec 5
🧵

‘The Psychology of the New Far Right: Privilege, Fear, and Media Power in the Rise of Authoritarianism.’

Fear, belonging, and power are being manipulated into a frightening new age of populist outrage and algorithmic media, argues Dr Russell Jackson.

bylinesupplement.com/p/the-psycholo…
I've reproduced the article in 🧵 form, below, because its a subscriber only article from @BylineTimes.

You can subscribe here, and I would encourage you to - Bylines tells the stories and undertakes investigations many national news media fear to.

subscribe.bylinetimes.com
Across the West, figures such as Trump, JD Vance, Farage, Johnson, Tice, Kruger, and Lowe helped normalise far-right populist rhetoric within mainstream politics. Their appeal is anti-elite—yet they themselves embody the privilege they claim to challenge.

populismstudies.org
Read 91 tweets
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Nov 21
🧵

In May, Reform UK became the UK’s first party to accept crypto donations; experts warned of major money-laundering and foreign interference risks.

The NCA says Tether—backed by Reform’s £13.7M donor Christopher Harborne—has been used by Russia to fund its war in Ukraine. Image
A multibillion-dollar scheme that exchanges cash from drug and gun sales in the UK for crypto—digital tokens hiding users’ identities—has enabling “sanctions evasions and the highest levels of organised crime, including providing money-laundering services to the Russian state”.
theguardian.com/politics/2025/…Image
In 2023, the hedge fund co-founded by GB "News" owner Paul Marshall, who employs 60% of anti-Net Zero Reform UK's MPs, had £1.8 BILLION invested in fossil fuel firms.

Harborne (who has Thai citizenship under the name 'Chakrit Sakunkrit) also makes money from fossil fuels.

Read 17 tweets
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Nov 19
🧵

I and countless others are sick to death of the billionaire-funded Reform UK propaganda machine, GB “News”, and their decontextualised ‘facts’ that would make Goebbels blush.

Let’s examine the claim that “one quarter of foreign sex offenders come from just five countries”.
Yes, the raw data comes from a genuine Ministry of Justice (MoJ) prison census, but the way it’s being weaponised is deeply misleading.

The statistic sounds explosive, and deliberately so: a factoid engineered to sound like a revelation of hidden danger.
The right-wing information pipeline: a cherry-picked fragment of official data stripped of context, laundered through an opaquely funded “think tank” that isn't a think tank, amplified by billionaire-funded media, and weaponised by opportunistic politicians for electoral gain.
Read 38 tweets

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