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keep punching joe posted:On the other hand, if the UK sensibles had actually seriously engaged with the debate (from at least when the referendum was confirmed) and actually spelled out to people what the tangible benefits of the EU membership were it might have been a different story. I suppose Scotland has the advantage of the press barely being able to hold back it's contempt of us even in the Scottish edition Newspapers.
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Mar 14, 2022 11:42
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OwlFancier posted:I think the better analogy would be a succession of governments pushing the country towards the cliff and then going "WHY DID RUSSIA DO THIS" when it falls off. Absolutely. Even if the Russians did have an effect they didn't get us anywhere we weren't rocketing towards already.
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Mar 14, 2022 11:44
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I just don't buy it, same as the theory that UK terfery is driven by US evangelical cash. Sure maybe there is some funding but fundamentally (lol) it's just that this island is full of bigoted busybodies with their noses in everyone else's poo poo.
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Mar 14, 2022 11:48
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Also i guess you should include david cameron doing a bump and then stuffing a road flare up his arse and dancing the macarena on the cliff edge.
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Mar 14, 2022 11:48
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Every country in the world is full of massive amounts of different types of people. The money, be it Russian or otherwise, decides which of them get heard and promoted, and indeed which aspects of people’s views are amplified. The fact that Russia played a large part in this is something that deserves to be reported, and it being reported on is a good thing. In the end, we’re all talking out of our arses and doing a lot of reckoning.
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Mar 14, 2022 11:52
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keep punching joe posted:I just don't buy it, same as the theory that UK terfery is driven by US evangelical cash. Sure maybe there is some funding but fundamentally (lol) it's just that this island is full of bigoted busybodies with their noses in everyone else's business. It's not mutually exclusive. Cash can't buy opportunity but it can exploit it where there is one. The fact that US climate denial money sees fueling it as a worthy investment is important. https://twitter.com/darrengrimes_/status/1503282568279568384 The world isn't "russians" doing this or US oil companies doing that. The world we live in is defined by the shared interests of powerful people rowing in the same direction. When Putin's regime is clandestine supporting the exact same cunts pushing terfery you either have to succumb to accellerationism (which is loving insane) or fight it in some small way
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Mar 14, 2022 11:55
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fuctifino posted:I'm not disagreeing with most of everyone's points, but to totally dismiss Russia's influence over the Brexit vote is disingenuous to say the least. I'm of the belief that we would have narrowly voted to have remained within the EU had Russian troll farms, with their microtargeted ads and untold millions in dark money, had not become involved. I'm of the belief that if Christina Hendricks only got to know me she'd fall madly in love. That's the great things about belief. Focusing on "dark money" at the expense of other reasons we left the EU, such as the amazing campaign that seemed to fail to come up with even 1 positive reason for staying, let's the remainers off the hook in a way they don't deserve. jiggerypokery posted:The reason I think it matters isn't borne of some psudo-racist ruso-phobia. It's not about who is more offensive. In 2022 "Russian influence" means Putin. He literally is the state. The types of things Putin wants to achieve determines the particular "british native" he is willing to support and further empower and the types of real consequences that has on lives of people they have power over. If you think that's tedious, imagine reading someone stanning for Codswallop! (I'm teasing) I'm still not really getting why Putin is a more corrosive influence on Britain than Rupert Murdoch or whichever Lord Rothermere runs the Mail these days. They are all pushing their agenda which is counter to the interests of the working class. OK, Vlad wants to have Britain leave the EU because it weakens the EU & their ability to stand up to growing resurgence of Russian imperialism, right? We agree on this. We merely disagree on the importance (& the uniqueness. Every country tries to influence others through indirect methods. America, China, Britain, Russia, Poland, etc. You think the US government gives money to Brown Moses to look at Google Maps & Wikipedia for any reason other than it intersects with their geopolitical interests?) relative to other factors. Like decades of British (& Australian) owned newspapers making foreigners the scapegoat for every ill in this country because neoliberalism benefits them too much to actually tell the truth.
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Mar 14, 2022 11:57
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Besides, what are you actually gonna do if everyone agrees the perfidious Slav must be foiled? Though I must admit, seizing half of London's skyline would be entertaining.
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Mar 14, 2022 11:58
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keep punching joe posted:I just don't buy it, same as the theory that UK terfery is driven by US evangelical cash. Sure maybe there is some funding but fundamentally (lol) it's just that this island is full of bigoted busybodies with their noses in everyone else's poo poo. Don't surveys show the average UK citizen doesn't hold views that are any more hostile to trans people than Americans or mainland Europeans? So what else could explain our presses obsession with what's between peoples legs?
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Mar 14, 2022 12:04
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The Saviour posted:I conisder myself reasonably aware of UK politics, but thanks to the weird thread discussion today I found out about a military plot against Harold Wilson? Where can inread more than on Wikipedia about it. Plot*s*. There was more than one, although the actual involvement of the military in the first one is doubtful. Clockwork Orange, the actual military plot against him (which intersected with the MI5 campaign) was about the fear of the possible exposure of the extensive links between MI5, military intelligence in Northern Ireland, the RUC, and loyalist death squads. In particular the massive escalation of The Troubles before and particularly after Bloody Sunday had horrified Wilson (especially as it was he who had first sent the Army into Northern Ireland in his first stint as PM) and he had proposed, while in opposition, a plan for peace in NI that included enquiries into the conduct of the RUC, intelligence agencies, and the army in NI. He also, in private, was of the opinion that NI should actually just be abandoned by Westminster to become an independent state which could then choose whether or not it wanted to carry on independently, enter into a political union with the Republic, or just join the Republic. Obviously even *without* the prospect of having their crimes uncovered, the mindset of the sort of person working in army intelligence in NI in the 70s couldn't countenance the idea of actually letting the Republicans "win" like that, so fairly significant chunks of their efforts in 74 and 75 were turned against Wilson, and it's long been rumoured that significant chunks of the Paras and other regiments were willing to take it beyond simple mud-slinging if Wilson did actually attempt to pursue peace. Intersecting with that you had the Young Turks at MI5 were convinced that there were multiple moles at the very top of the establishment. This is really instructive of the problem with intelligence agencies generally - a series of failures in MI6 missions in the Soviet Union had convinced the cohort of MI5 officers that had come in during and after WW2, and had successfully tracked down the Cambridge spy ring and multiple other spies that had managed to get in through the pre-war old boys network method of recruitment, that more moles must be present. However the failures were so wide-ranging that it had to mean either every part of the intelligence community was compromised, or one of the very few people who would be privy to those secrets was compromised. That Peter Wright and several of the other Young Turks were completely spellbound by James Jesus Angleton, who was considered a wacko *even by the rest of the CIA*, really didn't help. Angleton was such a cliched reds-under-the-bed type that if he were a fictional character you'd dismiss him as the work of a hack, but his paranoia seeped into the entire western intelligence community. As it turns out, most of the failures came from simple incompetence, and in fact MI5 had - almost accidentally - wiped out the entire KGB operation in the UK in the early 70s (a KGB resident, arrested for drunk driving, turned over a list of every single resident in return for being allowed to defect). Of course the Young Turks had used the fact that they'd expelled over a hundred spies as evidence that there were in fact *thousands* more out there. Anyway they eventually settled on Harold Wilson as being the mole (Wright himself was less sure, believing Roger Hollis, then DG of MI5, was the mole, although with even less actual evidence), and IMO this was actually more to do with the upper-middle-class hatred of Wilson's relatively good relationship with the unions and generally not cosseting the gentry enough, and enthusiastically threw themselves into the campaign. It's still heavily disputed whether or not they bugged Wilson directly (and the fact this is even in question should be instructive enough of just how out-of-control they got). I've suggested it before but Spy Catcher, Wright's autobiography, is the only first-hand account we have of the times and it's well worth a read as long as you keep reminding yourself of just what an unreliable narrator Wright is. It's available as an ebook with only minimal digging and I'd strongly suggest you read it.
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Mar 14, 2022 12:05
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I would suggest that british society is very good at elevating its most unhinged freaks of nature to positions of esteem and authority.
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Mar 14, 2022 12:06
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jiggerypokery posted:When Putin's regime is clandestine supporting the exact same cunts pushing terfery you either have to succumb to accellerationism (which is loving insane) or fight it in some small way See, this is the actual difference between the two sides in this discussion: you think it's something with 2 choices & I don't. I think there is a 3rd choice, make a positive case for something better and different. Something that addresses the root causes that make things lovely enough that all that Русский дезинформация has an audience willing to listen. Although if you give me the binary choice between being an accelerationist and being Russiagate brained then clearly things in the country are bad enough that accelerationism is actually a reasonable response because at that point you're better to hit rock bottom tomorrow so that building something new can begin than drag it out for 10 more years of managed decline before hitting the floor. It's really loving dumb I can (I think) spell дезинформация & not be so sure about accelerationism. forkboy84 fucked around with this message at 12:14 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 12:08
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Mega Comrade posted:Don't surveys show the average UK citizen doesn't hold views that are any more hostile to trans people than Americans or mainland Europeans? So what else could explain our presses obsession with what's between peoples legs? It's at least partly because second-wave feminists, who are the intellectual backbone (and the RF in TERF) of modern transphobia, happen to be the most prominent names in feminism in Britain.
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Mar 14, 2022 12:09
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keep punching joe posted:I just don't buy it, same as the theory that UK terfery is driven by US evangelical cash. Sure maybe there is some funding but fundamentally (lol) it's just that this island is full of bigoted busybodies with their noses in everyone else's poo poo. I reckon it's good for getting things started. You invite like three mid rank journalists to an all expenses paid weekend where you pump them full of mid range champagne and tell them about the evils of whatever you want people to hate and Britain has such an incestuous pit of a media class that the bullshit spreads and mutates like Covid in a home. Them blaming "Russian Troll Farms" is probably more of an outrage that they cut out them as the middle men more than anything else.
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Mar 14, 2022 12:14
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Mega Comrade posted:Don't surveys show the average UK citizen doesn't hold views that are any more hostile to trans people than Americans or mainland Europeans? So what else could explain our presses obsession with what's between peoples legs? Or it could be that none of the people who are actually leading terfs are skeptical about poo poo, because they all treat O Level biology as gospel, so maybe it's just that they rooted their theology in the mantra of 'basic biology' because of the comparative lack of Evangelical shouty churches to hoover up people who mostly just want certainty in their spite.
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Mar 14, 2022 12:23
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goddamnedtwisto posted:I can't overstate this - when Putin was still in secondary school, the owner of the largest circulation newspaper in this country was *literally plotting a military coup* against Harold Wilson. Foreign money is not the problem, and has never been the problem. If you replace the word ‘foreign money’ with ‘imperialism’ , then you start to see the common pattern. Wilson and his predecessor’s didn’t get couped, and so did dismantle the British Empire. No longer was London an direct imperial capital. Turns out better things are at least sometimes possible. But London remained an imperial financial capital, as it remained where rich people from the former Empire (especially the Saudi and Gulf Royals) kept and spent their money. There was probably a bigger financial extraction from the Middle East to London during the 30 years after 1970 than there was of any comparable period of the Raj. Russian money is the direct successor to that post-imperial money, the new new imperialism. It is not some incidental liberal distraction, it is structural. London is effectively the financial capital of the Russian empire, as Moscow is its military capital. Consequently, the troops that are bombarding Kyiv are _our_ troops, or at least paid for by us. The distinction between Ukraine and other recent imperial adventures exist, but are subtle. Unlike the troops bombarding Yemen. they are not armed with Western weaponry. Unlike Iraq, there is no attempt to build popular or native elite support for the invasion. But all three are branches of the same tree.
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Mar 14, 2022 12:25
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forkboy84 posted:I'm still not really getting why Putin is a more corrosive influence on Britain than Rupert Murdoch or whichever Lord Rothermere runs the Mail these days. They are all pushing their agenda which is counter to the interests of the working class. I think when powerful people want the same bad things it is extremely important to pay attention. Mega Comrade posted:Don't surveys show the average UK citizen doesn't hold views that are any more hostile to trans people than Americans or mainland Europeans? So what else could explain our presses obsession with what's between peoples legs? It's not that there isn't an audience, but terfery is not making anyone money. Someone is out of pocket giving this oval office a job. It matters who and why. https://twitter.com/darrengrimes_/status/1503083952747261956 forkboy84 posted:If you think that's tedious, imagine reading someone stanning for Codswallop! (I'm teasing) You aren't alone. Careful when using the clichés of the fash. https://twitter.com/darrengrimes_/status/1503079884301688847
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Mar 14, 2022 12:25
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Do you really think the country is not full of horrible people who want to listen to that brand of shite, and that the main reason gbnews isn't very popular is because they're operating in a saturated market? You don't need grimes when you can get the same ideas from the bbc.
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Mar 14, 2022 12:28
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In my opinion the fact that lots of people & groups interfere with our lovely democracy is not a valid reason not to pay attention when Russia does it
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Mar 14, 2022 12:32
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jiggerypokery posted:You aren't alone. Careful when using the clichés of the fash. And I can post links to a million dumb loving libs like Alistair Campbell who think the sun shines out of Carole's arse, what a stupid distraction. Fascists and Communists both support the end of liberal capitalism that doesn't make Communists wrong. Two people with extremely different solutions can still diagnose the same flaw while having wildly differing solutions to that. Borrovan posted:In my opinion the fact that lots of people & groups interfere with our lovely democracy is not a valid reason not to pay attention when Russia does it Ruddy good job that's no oval office's point then (here at least). Mild difference between saying "ignore Russia" & "focusing on Russia to the exclusion of everyone else is dumb"
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Mar 14, 2022 12:37
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Borrovan posted:In my opinion the fact that lots of people & groups interfere with our lovely democracy is not a valid reason not to pay attention when Russia does it This. It isn’t ‘Russia brained’ to think it’s worth pointing out that Russian elites have, to some degree or other, negatively influenced politics in the UK. I also don’t think it’s the world’s greatest crime for the journalist who has ploughed probably thousands of hours into this topic to focus inordinately on it. That’s just like… normal. Also find it kind of funny to hark back to the days of Harold Wilson to make a point about this. The world is actually quite different now. E: ^^^ so Cadwalladr should either report on all sources of political manipulation in the UK equally, or none at all?
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Mar 14, 2022 12:39
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Borrovan posted:In my opinion the fact that lots of people & groups interfere with our lovely democracy is not a valid reason not to pay attention when Russia does it Sooooo much this.
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Mar 14, 2022 12:39
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Borrovan posted:In my opinion the fact that lots of people & groups interfere with our lovely democracy is not a valid reason not to pay attention when Russia does it You probably shouldn't poo poo in the water supply but I'm not going to pretend it's the tipping point when we've been pumping untreated sewage into it for the past hundred years.
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Mar 14, 2022 12:40
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Listen, if we're not going to solve all problems at once, we shouldn't solve any at all, or it's not fair.
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Mar 14, 2022 12:44
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I do think that the left underestimates somewhat the threat of Russian influence on our politics. Russia is a far-right facist dictatorship, and basically represents the end-goal of even the mainstream right in most western countries. A country where the rich have total control, live lives of luxury on the backs of the completely disenfranchised masses and all opposition is crushed, and frequently murdered. This Is The World Conservatives Want. They also are also invested in exporting this system as far and wide as possible, for various reasons. They would love to see the whole world like Russia, and they put a lot of effort into trying to make that happen. Occasionally that means in the very short-term their interests align with the left's as they also would like to see, for instance, mass protests against the British establishment. But while we want that as a way to force progressive change, Russia wants that in order to destabilise the country and use the discontent to push things right. This is basically what happened with Brexit. But even if every so often an outlet like RT might be more sympathetic to our sort of thing we still should never engage with them as it works against us long-term. The problem with people like Carol Cadwalladr is that she thinks this is One Weird Trick to reverse the rightward shift of the last few years. Brexit will somehow be invalidated if we can show everyone that Russia funded Vote Leave and we'll just automatically rejoin the EU. Not only does this ignore the decades of scapegoating of the EU by the press, and the shitloads of poo poo people who wanted Brexit for their own reasons, but it also forgets that the problem with propaganda is that it cannot be simply undone. Even if it was done with lies, it worked and lots of people changed their opinions in a certain way. But those opinions are still real. Most people do not care that Russia helped make them dislike the EU, they just do dislike the EU now, and they have their own reasons in their head for it. So complaining about Russian influence retrospectively is just kind of pointless. So, like a good centrist, I think that the issue is bigger than the left generally considers, but not worth the amount of angst and focus that many liberals put on it. The truth is in the middle.
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Mar 14, 2022 12:44
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Jakabite posted:E: ^^^ so Cadwalladr should either report on all sources of political manipulation in the UK equally, or none at all? This is the thing isn't it. I'm "stanning" for her because she's one of the only people left doing it to the degree needed to be meaningful and survive libel laws. It's a drat shame she doesn't have the same priorities of those of us ITT but supporting that sort of work makes space for those who do share our priorities to take it on as well.
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Mar 14, 2022 12:44
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HopperUK posted:Listen, if we're not going to solve all problems at once, we shouldn't solve any at all, or it's not fair. You could solve the problem of Russian Billionaires influencing elections and politics if you put in measures to stop rich people in general influencing elections. But that's not what they're focusing on. They're not even focusing on Foreign Billionaires because that might annoy Murdoch. They're focusing on them being Russian, which is utterly useless.
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Mar 14, 2022 12:51
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Beefeater1980 posted:Having been a tenant in the UK, China, Brazil and Hong Kong, the UK is the only one where the state gave me any reliable rights against my landlord, weak though they were. If you really want to see “hostile to renters”, try Hong Kong, where for 150 years every meaningful precedent-setting judicial decision and every piece of legislation has weirdly favoured property developers over landlords and landlords over tenants (my favourite example was upholding the rule that apartments should be priced by “gross area”, including theoretical spaces not actually part of the flat, which was only set aside after the GFC, but you can also see eg the decision to flat out ignore zoning restrictions in the New Territories). Even the UK can’t match that record. OTOH I've lived in other parts of Europe and comparably UK renter rights are awful - fixed term contracts, deposits, all kinds of nonsense in the tenancy agreement, restrictions on benefit claimants and disabled people, restrictions on guests, etc. Also the whole thing about landlords giving references meaning that tenants can't afford to speak up. That's aside from the UK only being second in Europe to Monaco in home cost per sq. m. Even Switzerland is not as bad, Private Speech fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 13:07
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Gonzo McFee posted:You could solve the problem of Russian Billionaires influencing elections and politics if you put in measures to stop rich people in general influencing elections. But that's not what they're focusing on. They're not even focusing on Foreign Billionaires because that might annoy Murdoch. They're focusing on them being Russian, which is utterly useless. So the left wing attack line pretty much writes itself, doesn't it? Use the very relevant example of Russian millionaires interfering to make a case against all millionaires interfering. Pivoting from "you can see why this one case is bad" to "and actually, this is just an example of why we should do the bigger thing" is easier than making people who aren't paying attention care about something they might not see a problem with, sort of from scratch. But it starts with removal of the Russian money. And once you've done that, at a point where it should be an easy sell, you've set precedent for doing the rest.
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Mar 14, 2022 13:13
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I'm quite capable of saying they're all as bad as each other but I don't think that cadwalladr or her fan club are remotely interested in doing that.
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Mar 14, 2022 13:17
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Isomermaid posted:So the left wing attack line pretty much writes itself, doesn't it? Use the very relevant example of Russian millionaires interfering to make a case against all millionaires interfering. Pivoting from "you can see why this one case is bad" to "and actually, this is just an example of why we should do the bigger thing" is easier than making people who aren't paying attention care about something they might not see a problem with, sort of from scratch. This is how I see things. It's a very hard sell in this thread though because many people here are past thinking there's any point trying to do anything and are locked in to accelerationism and ensuing oblivion. Why anyone would think "things have to get worse before they get better" means "things will get better after they get worse" is loving beyond me.
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Mar 14, 2022 13:21
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This is the first moment for meaningful activism we've had in years.
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Mar 14, 2022 13:27
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The absolute first half second it looked like it would affect Murdoch it would be destroyed like Leveson. This is Coke complaining that Pepsi has gotten in on its turf.
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Mar 14, 2022 13:28
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forkboy84 posted:People were absolutely convinced he was a Soviet agent. There's a BBC documentary which is still on Youtube, The Plot Against Harold Wilson. It's also covered in the first episode of season 3 of The Crown, which is quite amusing in its own way.
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Mar 14, 2022 13:33
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jiggerypokery posted:This is how I see things. It's a very hard sell in this thread though because many people here are past thinking there's any point trying to do anything and are locked in to accelerationism and ensuing oblivion. While there is that, I almost suspect some people in this thread have inside knowledge that someone in Corbyn’s inner circle took Putin’s money in return for deliberately tanking the 2019 election. That’s the only thing that can see that would would be explain the level of defensiveness on this topic, the avoidance of common sense concrete left wing arguments based on solidarity by those being shelled by the rich in favour of vague liberal whataboutery. I guess that’s the problem with conspiracy theories; there is always one that perfectly explains any given set of facts. Still, …
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Mar 14, 2022 13:36
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Truly it is the people who think that there is little difference between russian war crimes and british and american war crimes who lack solidarity.
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Mar 14, 2022 13:37
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radmonger posted:While there is that, I almost suspect some people in this thread have inside knowledge that someone in Corbyn’s inner circle took Putin’s money in return for deliberately tanking the 2019 election. That’s the only thing that can see that would would be explain the level of defensiveness on this topic Show yourself coward!
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Mar 14, 2022 13:41
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It's me, I took the Russian money. I'm laughing at you in Cyrillic right now.
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Mar 14, 2022 13:45
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radmonger posted:While there is that, I almost suspect some people in this thread have inside knowledge that someone in Corbyn’s inner circle took Putin’s money in return for deliberately tanking the 2019 election. That’s the only thing that can see that would would be explain the level of defensiveness on this topic, the avoidance of common sense concrete left wing arguments based on solidarity by those being shelled by the rich in favour of vague liberal whataboutery. No, that seems realy silly. Not that it could have happened but mate nobody in this thread knows anything.
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Mar 14, 2022 13:45
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Private Speech posted:
That's insanely distorted by London though. From my Dublin perspective even much larger cities like Manchester or Liverpool are way cheaper to buy in than here
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Mar 14, 2022 14:06
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