The presenter in the studio did seem like he would struggle to be coherent if he wasn't reading a teleprompter.

I'd love to see the intersection of proud boys, boogaloo dudes, Qanon, incels, infowars readers and Trump supporters.

I doubt Infowars has many "readers", to be honest.

Judging by the comments section they can hardly string two words together so I doubt they read much. They probably do a lot of watching though, watching Jones sell anti covid toothpaste etc.

Anti 5g USB sticks.

Jinx

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/11/holocaust-slavery-atrocities-memorials-rivals

The real issue here is the West has never truly sat back and reflected on these atrocities; why they happened in the first place. Biggest culprit being of course we only like to reminisce on our great success', not on how we actually got here.

Slavery and colonialism happened because of capitalism, and 'free market enterprise'. The Dutch East Indian Compagnie (VoC) was the first international business that issued stocks on a stock market. The West Indian Compagnie (WiC)  was built on the same template. Think about that for a second and let it sink in. The rest of Europe soon followed and it was every nation and Compagnie for itself. Driven by 'free enterprise' things like slavery were suddenly a viable and cheap business option, with a nod from a complicit state legal as well. It wasn't until the general public got wind of the actual atrocities of slavery that public opinion began to change on the subject and governments were forced to abolish slavery.

WW2 happened due to the Germans losing ww1 and feeling humiliated by the French. But the real trigger was the krach (crash) of 1929. Unregulated Big Business and wall street stock market cowboys caused economies worldwide to come crashing down. Economic inequality grew and the main public outlet was, you guessed it, racism. The right (here: nazi's, fascists) scapegoated outsiders like Jews, gays, gypsies as the problem and the masses gleefully lapped it all up. Sounds familiar no?

After the crash of '29 the US government put up many regulations to keep Big Business under control and to prevent such a crash from ever happening again. Except, Big Business doesn't like to be regulated. They don't like to be on a leash, they want to be 'free'. Free from what they see as the tyranny of government.

And by 2020, almost all the regulation that was in place to prevent an economic crash like in '29 has been reverted. The crash of 2008 happened of course and Trump has gleefully undone most of the Obama administration's work. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

The West needs to realise that the 'free market' isn't the answer to everything and we need to find that balance between 'free enterprise' and the public good, between left and right. The two often don't allign. If we don't find that balance we might soon find ourselves extinct due to issues like climate change.

Agreed, the whole capitalist system is corrupt with cash flowing upward to tax havens for the rich. It needs a serious rethink but the conservatives won't consider it. Why throw away a good thing eh?

At least the Dems and Obama have a notion of the role a government should have in a democracy. The new wave of Republicans believe that role to be wasted time, effort and money. From their perspective, the free market should rule everything with no state regulation or intervention. The state in service of Big Business, not the other way around. Survival of the fittest aka oligarchy.

Funkstain wrote:

JonB wrote:

hunk wrote:

And by 2020, almost all the regulation that was in place to prevent an economic crash like in '29 has been reverted. The crash of 2008 happened of course and Trump has gleefully undone most of the Obama administration's work. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

And Obama's work opened the door for Trump. He got the economy growing again but most of the growth went to the top. The majority still got poorer, leaving the sense that centrist politics and economics is disconnected from everyday needs - even when it's working. It doesn't solve the upflow of capital that's now embedded in the system. People wanted another answer.

Jon. When are you going to listen. Incremental improvements! That’s all we can hope for. If we’re lucky. No one wants to vote for anything different. We’re all either
A) idiots voting against our interests
B ) idiots believing the lies of tories
C) idiots voting for overly radical change in for eg Labour leadership

Remember you need to get power first and for that you have to betray your principles and any kind of solid ground upon which to lay foundations of change because the whole electorate are racist bigoted fuckwits who want to nuke Sweden. Just say things like “we need to fix our relationship with business” and then when in power “fix it” so you and your family and friends are made for life. Er I mean incremental improvements.

I feel this is aimed at me, and it's unfair imo. I would love for proper change. I joined the Labour Party and voted for Corbyn every opportunity I had.

What I said was I would take incremental improvements over bloody revolution, so please don't twist my words and make me out to be a fucking idiot.

I’m not. Sorry please don’t take it that way that’s not how I meant it. The conversation went on to how we’ve been trained to believe that real change is near impossible, this sort of heartbreaking idea that we’re stuck with voters like I describe (not you) so the best we can hope for is someone electable who isn’t as terrible as trump / Johnson / putin etc.

I don’t believe the only alternative (to incremental improvement) is bloody revolution, but it’s certainly a realistic scenario (not anytime soon I think, things gotta get worse first), and I’d like to avoid it like you. Sorry I just liked the idea of “incremental improvements” describing the limit of what we can hope for

GooberTheHat wrote:

What I said was I would take incremental improvements over bloody revolution, so please don't twist my words and make me out to be a fucking idiot.

Nobody was arguing in support of bloody revolution though. It's not like we're currently facing a crossroads where that's one of the options.

The problem for me is that the current Labour approach basically adds up to an incremental drift to the right. It's not a lurch to the right like the Tories, but it'll still slowly follow them along. The future of this can be seen in the Democratic establishment in the US, where candidates have to assure voters/the media that they won't ban fracking or offer a universal healthcare system like some dirty communist. It's accepting the terms set by the right, rather than challenge them.

The alternative isn't revolution, it's being able to set out a different vision and trying to get people on board.

Kimchi isn't even a fruit. He could at least equate her correctly to pickled cabbage.

Ah racism. What was once 'far right' is now...normal? See how shifting the political centre works?

BS, it's offensive on tv when the owners are probably going bankrupt and all you can do is laugh at their funny foreign names.

Roujin wrote:

Kow wrote:

That kind of laughing at names etc was never far right, it was completely normal and inoffensive, something that nobody batted an eyelid at. It's only over the last 20 years or so that it's become unacceptable.

It was unacceptable back then, it's just that the majority of people didn't think about how offensive it was. 

It's like when you were 9 and everything was "gay" if you didn't like it. Nobody batted an eyelid, it was offensive as fuck though but because people's sensitivities to the issues that gay people had back then there was fucking zero consideration.

This is exactly the same, just absolute sheer cultural insensitivity towards a minority group.

That's what I mean. Its offensiveness wasn't generally noticed by people. Which made it "acceptable". I'm not defending it, in case anyone thinks I am. The Irish were the regular butt of those types of jokes on British tv.