Hello @Conservatives,

You gave the UK a destructive Brexit.

Brexit ‘gave’ me this.

Tomorrow, I’m going to use it as my voter ID to vote in the UK for the very first time as a British citizen.

I’m going help ensure that you are voted out. As I do so, as I cast my vote, I will remember the suicidal EU citizen I spent I night talking to after yet another tirade against us by some in your party.

Truss gives speech at far right convention, referring to deep state actors & sharing platform with Bannon & people wanting to end democracy.

Braverman escalates her extremism further.

Anderson tries to outdo her.

Fascist don’t pop up out of thin air. This is how they arise. Politicians who do this are dangerous: a threat to our democracy. I do not think people in the UK appreciate enough at what a dangerous crossroad we are standing here. Our society has not built up enough resilience for this. We must take a stronger stand. Democracies can fall.

.@Tesco I have just been told by a security guard in one of your shops that it is your policy not to allow the wearing of face masks in your shops. Care to comment? To say that I am angry about this doesn’t cover this even remotely, esp given the probing questions I got. In case you missed it: there is still an airborne virus out there that is having a detrimental impact on millions, esp those more vulnerable. On what grounds do you think it is ok to not allow a customer to wear a face covering?

Even going by Boris Johnson’s standards this is just crazy. Trump has been found liable for sexual abuse; he denies Biden’s legitimate election; he was impeached for inciting insurrection; he endorses the idea he should be able to assassinate opponents w/o being prosecuted; … 🧵 … and he’s openly using the language of Hitler now, speaking of immigrants ‘poisoning the blood of’ Americans.

Who the hell chooses to align with someone like that? And Johnson isn’t the only one as Rees-Mogg and Truss also have, amongst others.

Has it ever occurred to politicians that the problem is not a crisis of migration, but a crisis of fabrication of misleading problems? Yes, there are a lot of migrants. This *will* continue. That's why the approach of 'fortress Europe' will not work. theguardian.com/world/2024/jan… From the Netherlands to Germany, the more politicians play into the fabrication of the wrong problem, the more hate they will stir up; the more populist our politics will become; and the more the far right will grow... to the point of this in Germany: theguardian.com/world/2024/jan…

The main problem with @Keir_Starmer’s article in the Telegraph isn’t that he mentions Margret Thatcher in one sentence—sure, it really is no good at all given the damage she caused in so many communities. Nevertheless, the main problem is his overall framing and what it implies: Yet more focus on a ‘betrayal’ of voters (though he clearly means only a specific group); yet more dog whistle—and it is awful as you can see below.

This approach will NOT help build a better future, it prevents it.

Immigrants are not the problem but part of the solution.

A hurricane brings destruction. For Braverman to choose to invoke that image when speaking about immigrants is not surprising: she has already made clear where she stands—she’s literally using the language of the far right. But this is not just repulsive, it is also dangerous.🧵 I do not know what needs to happen for more people to take a public stand against the extremist rhetoric coming from the Conservatives—yes, I consider this the appropriate word to describe it. What else is the language of the far right? Of QAnon etc? See this for what it is.

I am going to say all this one more time 🧵

1) Migration is life.

Our human existence has been shaped by the movement of people since day one. Even if you yourself have never moved, you are where you are—and who you are—because of migration. It will continue to shape our lives. 2) The movement of people—and multiculturalism that flows from it—is not the root cause of any of the UK’s problems.

The same is true for other countries.

Where issues exist, there have been policy failures, but migration, in itself, is *not* the problem!

Hi @theresa_may, I still remember when you chose to threaten EU citizen rights in your pitch to become Tory leader; called us queue-jumpers and chose to implement a retroactive application system for us. You *made* the hostile environment and actively used it at every turn. 🧵

https://twitter.com/ameliagentleman/status/1697316148923047989

So no: you don’t just get to say that you regret using the term: this really is not simply about the use of terms. It is about bad policies that have destroyed lives. Remember this, for example? independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…

Catastrophic response from Starmer. He is literally handing the Tories their GE election lifeline on a golden platter while casting doubt on the kind of measures we need to save our planet (and hence us). Expect more of this: climate emergency responses have become the new … 🧵

https://twitter.com/sophyridgesky/status/1682380879132340225

… focus of far right and right-wing populists which means others will seek to pander to what they demand. The rise of the AfD in Germany can partly be attributed to this, but instead of standing up to that, the CDU keeps drawing on the same anti-climate populism to try …

The removal of these cartoon murals may seem trivial to some, but it really isn’t. It constitutes another—and in my view very significant given this relates to children—escalation in the complete dehumanisation of refugees. Shameful but also dangerous. 1/3 theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/j… But there’s a bigger picture issue too: this continues the opening of what truly is Pandora’s box: the dehumanisation of vulnerable groups is only ever the beginning. Someone else will always be next. And then there are of course the basic questions of compassion and humanity.2/3

When Boris Johnson indicated in June last year that he’d step down as Prime Minister I wrote a thread on why I think we can already say that he is the worst PM the UK has ever had. That thread is even more fitting today. pingthread.com/thread/1533789… The way in which he stepped down yesterday is entirely in keeping with who he is. He is still serving himself and himself only. The only question remains the same I posed last time: whether this ends today, or whether he will wreak even more havoc. I think it will be the latter.

There are four basic facts:

1) Migration is life.

2) The UK needs immigrants; it needs more, of us, in fact.

3) Immigrants contribute more than they take out.*

4) Immigration is not the root cause of any of the UK’s problems—it’s part of the solution to them.

🧵 Until the point at which politicians recognise those basic facts, they will:

- Forever provide the wrong ‘solution’ to what is a non-problem.

- Not address what really are the problems (underfunding; structural neglect of regions; Brexit etc).

- Fuel xenophobia and hate.

79 years ago today, the Nazis began the main phase of extermination of Hungarian Jews. Three trains arrived in Auschwitz that day in 1944, with 9,000 deportees murdered in gas chambers.

79 years later, NatCon speaker Douglas Murray refers to Nazism as a ‘mucking up’. 🧵

https://twitter.com/natcontalk/status/1658404877582712833

Minimising the Holocaust in this way and conflating Nazism with feeling pride in one’s country—it is as ahistorical as it is shameful.

The *deliberate* Nazi policy of exterminating those deemed unworthy is not a ‘mucking up’.

It is genocide.

Wishing all actually verified accounts a happy blue de-ticking day … I won’t be paying for Twitter Blue, so might well disappear from feeds depending on what the algorithm does. The old verified system was problematic in some ways, but what a mess M*sk is about to create. I, btw, never applied for a tick: I just got it one day. I suspect that this happened partly because I had pestered Twitter for a long time to verify more women—I had hoped this …

Dear journalists and other media,

Thanks for getting in touch with me about my thread, I appreciate it. But if you want to talk to me about that, you want to talk to the wrong person.

You need to talk to the UK Government.

When you do, I suggest you ask these questions: 🧵 ❓Why are they still using the language they’re using even though we’ve already had an attempted bomb attack on a processing centre for people seeking sanctuary? telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/0…

In the past, some took issue with my being German because of Germany’s crimes against humanity during the Nazi regime.

Now some take issue with my being German because I pointed out that education on that history has taught me about the warning signs of populism*.

Which is it? When I visited the UK for the second time when I was 14, some youths my age in the place I was staying asked me if I’m a Nazi / my family supports the Nazis. Trust me: I know the pervasiveness of our history. So maybe, just maybe, it’s worth listening to Germans on this.

Hi @BBC,
As a German I can tell you this: when politicians speak in a language not dissimilar to that used in 1930s Germany, I recognise it. Why? Because I have been taught about it all my life—and that it needs to be called out and rejected. It’s a duty to do so, in fact. 🧵

https://twitter.com/skynews/status/1633312516234199041

The language we have heard from this Govt, no matter how many times they claim otherwise, is not dissimilar in some ways to that used in 1930s Germany. So while we need to be mindful of the specific contexts of 1930s Germany and should not draw direct parallels with today, …

100 million people could come to the UK under current refugee laws, Suella Braverman said. A lie to fuel fear and anxiety. It’s the populist playbook all over again.

But the figure is useful for one thing: to debunk the vile claims of invasion etc the Govt continue to make. 🧵 There were, UNHCR estimates, 103 million forcibly displaced people globally at mid-2022.

Of them, 53.2 million are internally displaced people; 32.5 million are refugees; 4.9 million are asylum-seekers; and 5.3 million are other people in need of international protection.

Hi @Independent,
Care to comment on why, in your editorial following Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation, you chose to have the editorial illustrated with a ‘cartoon’ that shows her decapitation, Sturgeon’s head on the ground in a pool of blood?*

What the hell were you thinking? Female politicians, including Sturgeon, continually are the recipients of vile abuse and threats, including horrific death threats. I saw a few yesterday on here (all reported obvs).

Following the EU referendum result in June 2016, @NicolaSturgeon gave a statement and in her first words she also said: ‘This morning [I want] to speak directly to citizens of other EU countries living here in Scotland - you remain welcome here, Scotland is your home’. 🧵 For me that was a very emotional moment: someone had said so clearly what so many other politicians had expressly denied us during the EUref campaign—that we EU citizens are at home here. And said this right at the start of the statement. This contrasted very starkly with others.