The Grift is Strong with TalkTV & GB News regular & conspiracy nut, Lois Perry, director & sole shareholder of CAR26, & a representative of Laurence Fox's Reclaim UK.
She's tweeted climate change is a “scam” & “there is no climate emergency”.
Perry is a former PR who worked with her husband Richard Hill, who has an, er, a 'colourful' background. In 2013 it was revealed that Nigella Lawson was the "victim of vicious smear campaign by former Charles Saatchi publicist Richard Hillgrove".
And on 3rd March 2017, "convicted tax fraudster & PR professional Richard Hillgrove was declared bankrupt after failing to pay a £24,500 personal tax bill." A previous conviction came after Hillgrove PR failed to pay nearly £90,000 in VAT & PAYE payments between 2011 & 2012.
Here's a thread from last year which explores in a little more detail the crossover bewtween Perry & Laurnce Fox.
In 2020, Lois Perry made a name for herself as yet another outrage clickbait merchant when as a guest presenter on #JeremyVine she accused Meghan Markle of 'domestic abuse', suggesting that Prince Harry is a victim of domestic abuse.
She's also tweeted that net zero is “net stupid” & that “2.7 million people in Europe can’t afford to turn the heating on in their homes” because of “Climate Death Cultists”.
Perry has more than alluded to the “climate lockdown” conspiracy theory.
Perry suggested that Oxford’s traffic reduction scheme was related to communist China, saying:
“It’s quite well documented that the Chinese communist party makes huge donations to top universities... Jeremy Hunt’s married to somebody who gets a cheque every week from the CCP.”
In an August 2022 TalkTV interview she said: “I do not believe that man-made climate change is a thing, I really don’t. As I say, we’ve had medieval warming periods, we’ve had the Roman warming period in this country. We’ve had Hippopotamuses in the Thames.”
OpenDemocracy noted that CAR26 is strongly linked to Blue Sky Strategy, run by individuals involved in the pro-Brexit campaign, including Rebecca Ryan, director of the “Defund the BBC” campaign.
Perry is also a panellist & guest presenter on #JeremyVine, & in December 2021 made the fearmongering & divisive claim in the Mirror that "face masks instil fear & division".
The Mirror neglected to mention she's a representative of Fox's COVID-denying Reclaim Party or Car26.
Perry was spotted on Glasgow Streets with unhinged anti-vaxxer Piers Corbyn during #COP26, & a poll showing public support for a referendum on the UK’s net zero goal which was on the front page of the Telegraph on October 21st, was paid for by Perry's CAR26. It's a small world!
When asked on TalkTV about the leadership race between Truss & Sunak, Perry said: “I like Liz Truss, I think she’s great. She’s pro-fracking, she’s a low-tax politician, she’s pro-business. She seems to be sounding like the most normal person”, adding: “Rishi is a woke”.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Chase Herro, co-founder of Trump’s main crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, on crypto:
“You can literally sell shit in a can, wrapped in piss, covered in human skin, for a billion dollars if the story’s right, because people will buy it.”
Despite crypto being bullshit, & memecoins being consciously bullshit, many – especially angry young gullible men – still invest: 42% of men & 17% of women aged 18-29 have invested in, traded or used crypto (2024 Pew Research), compared to only 11% of men & 5% of women over 50.
“It’s no accident that memecoins are such a phenomenon among young people who have grown immensely frustrated with a financial system that, I think it’s fair to say, has failed them” - Sander Lutz, the first crypto-focused White House correspondent.
🧵In January, Farage said Musk was justified in calling Starmer complicit in failures to prosecute grooming gangs: “In 2008 Keir Starmer had just been appointed as DPP & there was a case brought before them of alleged mass rape of young girls that did not lead to a prosecution.”
The allegation that Starmer was complicit in failures to prosecute grooming gangs is often repeated. But how true is it?
Two Facebook posts, originally appearing in April/May 2020, claimed Starmer told police when he was working for the CPS not to pursue cases against Muslim men accused of rape due to fears it would stir up anti-Islamic sentiment.
In 2022 the posts and allegations saw a resurgence online with hundreds of new shares. They said: “From 2004 onwards the director of public prosecutions told the police not to prosecute Muslim rape gangs to prevent ‘Islamophobia’.
Decades of research shows that parroting or appeasing the far-right simply legitimises their framing, and further normalises illiberal exclusionary discourse and politics.
Starmer's speech is more evidence that the far-right has been mainstreamed.
Cas Mudde, a Dutch political scientist who focuses on political extremism and populism in Europe and the US, is, imho, one of the most important voices on the Left today.
Allow me to briefly summarise some of his work.
In a 2023 lecture, Mudde emphasizes the importance of precise terminology in discussing the far-right, distinguishing between extreme right (anti-democracy) and radical right (accepts elections but rejects liberal democratic principles like minority rights and rule of law).
He argues we're in a "fourth wave" of postwar far-right politics, characterized by the mainstreaming & normalization of the far-right - what Linguist Prof Ruth Wodak in a related concept refers to as the 'shameless normalization of far-right discourse'.
After eight years as US President, on Janury 17, 1961, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, former supreme commander of the Allied forces in western Europe during WWII, warned us about the the growing "military-industrial complex" (and Trump2.0) in his prescient farewell address.
Before looking at that speech, some context for those unfamiliar with Eisenhower, the 34th US president, serving from 1953 to 1961.
During WWII, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and achieved the five-star rank as General of the Army.
Eisenhower planned & supervised two consequential WWII military campaigns: Operation Torch in the North Africa campaign in 1942–43 & the 1944 Normandy invasion.
The right-wing of the Republican Party clashed with him more often than the Democrats did during his first term.
In England, 18% of adults aged 16-65 - 6.6 million people - can be described as having "very poor literacy skills" AKA 'functionally illiterate'.
This leaves people vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation, and poses significant challenges for society and democracy.
Being 'functionally illiterate' means that a person can understand short straightforward texts on familiar topics accurately & independently, & obtain information from everyday sources, but reading information from unfamiliar sources or on unfamiliar topics can cause problems.
Adult functional illiteracy—lacking the reading, writing, and comprehension skills needed for everyday tasks—poses significant challenges for a country, society, and democracy.