The Reform Party and the UK’s lurch towards fascism

They're criminals.

That's a bit of a difference.

Rich_cb wrote:

They're criminals.

Not all Tories are criminals but the majority of those who make it to the top, are. 

Likewise any political party.

White collar crime isn't crime then. Let's not worry about corruption around PPE during the pandemic or the award of contracts to organisations linked to the PM/PM family.

Hirsute wrote:

White collar crime isn't crime then. Let's not worry about corruption around PPE during the pandemic or the award of contracts to organisations linked to the PM/PM family.

Don't forget the partying whilst not allowing people to visit dying relatives. Or am I just out-grouping those who think the laws that they implemented don't apply to themselves?

Is any political party different?

You can't out group an entire segment of the population because their politicians are doing what all politicians do.

On this ever changing, sliding scale of yours how criminal do your activities have to be before you can legitimately assign someone to an outgroup?

Do you have a line that can't be crossed ?

Rich_cb wrote:

They're criminals. That's a bit of a difference.

Toryspiv effectively write the laws to suit themselves. Those laws that don't suit or are unimportant to them in holding up their corrupt New Aristocracy edifice are ignored. Billions of pounds of taxpayer money is corruptly stolen but nothing happens. A few concerned old folk protest about the billions of taxpayer dosh subsidising the oil industry and new laws are writ to persecute them mercilessly.

Carspivs, meanwhile, maim and murder with gay abandon. Rapists are rife, especially within the police force. Toryspiv cronies steal billions.

In short, Toryspivs are criminals who've decriminalised themselves by employing their vast power to manipulate and corrupt the rule of law. The damage they're doing is immense - so great that it probably going to end up killing us all in the next 20 or 30 years.

We'll die of weather and oligarch.

Rich_cb wrote:

I'm not missing the point. You are. Throughout human history people have wanted an outgroup to hate.

Here's your problem in a nutshell, dear Rich - you assume that people who merely disagree with you or with people promoting damaging policies that you like are "hating". The hating emotion is one generally felt by those totalitarian types I mentioned to you, based on their intolerance for anything not in their dogma. Opponents are all sub-human enemies.

Those of us who find your intolerance (and that of those you defend) intolerable are merely disagreeing with a stance that is damaging because it wants to destroy our fundamental political tradition of democracy. Most people dislike and disagree with (not hate) Toryspiv policies, not the Toryspivs themselves, who they tend to regard as just deranged. 

Toryspiv want to gaol those who protest their damaging policies but not those lawbreakers who support them. They're also happy to make policy that will kill their various scapegoats (immigrants, the poor, et al). One supporter has just called for the killing of the London mayor. (He regrets doing so, because he got told off, not because he's changed his tiny mind)

Yet I and others who find Toryspivery damaging and best stopped hate no one. I don't hate the Toryspivs who are so damaging to us all. Even their policies and various acts don't invoke feelings of hatred in me but rather feelings of fear and loathing, since they seem to be policies that are well on the road to fascism.

You deny the current Tory party is far right, yet they have many of the markers:

Powerful and continuing faux nationalism.

Disdain for the recognition of human rights.

Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.

Control and suborning of the mass media.

Obsession with national security and borders.

Corporate power is protected no matter their damages and crimes.

Unions and other power rivals are suppressed.

Disdain for intellectuals and the arts.

Obsession with crime and punishment - but not for "friends".

Rampant cronyism and corruption.

Fraudulent elections (aka first past the post system).

Attempts to subvert and suborn other agencies with power such as the judiciary.

Distain for the rule of law except as a means of suppressing political rivals, scapegoats and pariahs - but not their "friends".

*********

Face it - you approve of proto-fascists and hate their opponents out of a basic stance of intolerance. Your mind is unable to understand any other attitude so you assume opponents are haters just like yourself. Happily, 'tis not so.

I stand by what I said earlier.

If you think the current government is far right then you need to read a history book.

You've created a label for the "Toryspivs" and you hold them responsible for multiple ills.

I did enjoy "fraudulent elections" though, it was the point you went full tinfoil hat, I'm guessing we've never had a legitimate government by your definition?

Rich_cb wrote:

I stand by what I said earlier. If you think the current government is far right then you need to read a history book. You've created a label for the "Toryspivs" and you hold them responsible for multiple ills. I did enjoy "fraudulent elections" though, it was the point you went full tinfoil hat, I'm guessing we've never had a legitimate government by your definition?

History - I recall the GCE O-level books they gave us in skool - how the Bwitish Empire was gweat and we gave the lucky creatures who begin at Calais oh so many advantages. In fact, we just robbed and killed them until Little Bwitain got too weak to prevent them chucking us out.

"History shall be kind to me, as I intend to write it".  Who said that, eh?  Personally I prefer the Foucault anaysis of how history is dreamt up and writ. Essentially, by the "winners", composed of justifications for their often evil deeds and beliefs, many of which they also denied! Alternative histories of a less self-serving kind are available, you know. But you won't like them. No.

**********

The in-group I refer to as Toryspivs have grouped themselves with no help from me.  They clot together in a cabal rife with corrupt practices employing their ill-gotten political power. The policies, attitudes and beliefs giving rise to those "multiple ills" are not denied by Toryspiv. Indeed, they're quite proud and boastful about them. See gutter press for details.

**************

Yes, I'd claim that any government having less than most of the votes in a general election but who were first past the post is illegitimate in a polity claiming to be democratic. The practice often, albeit not always, results in a minority government that most people didn't vote for. In addition, the "opposition" is virtually pwerless so that the partisan first-past-the-posters serve only their own whims and those of their familiars.

And its a standing joke (a very dark one) that virtually no government formed in this way, other than perhaps that of Attlee, ever does what their manifesto for the election said they would do. Bare faced lies are the norm.

********

We Blighters have lived in a compromised nation-state for decades, with only a very few occasions when politicians in power worked for everyone. When they did (Attlee again) the usual Tory tactic was to row back any good policies towards their fundamental strategic intent of taking matters back to their glorious C19th peak of exploitation of everyone and everything unto the death in one or another satanic mill.

They're nearly there now, eh? Satanic mills, physical and metaphysical, are legion.

Ah yes. The Victorian values the tories would like to bring back, where everyone knew their place. I also remember the films they used to show us at primary school glorifying our wonderful empire. They always seemed to feature an Indian tea plantation for some reason, with lots of happy smiling faces. It made me think I'd like to work on an Indian tea plantation. But I was only nine.

Rich_cb wrote:

So the correct outgroup to demonise is Conservatives?

In the present circumstances I'd say yes. Though not demonise but definitely blame for many of the deliberately harmful decisions made to ensure that the everyday life for most of the population of the UK have been made considerably worse by the government that has been unashamedly abusing its power and influence continuously since 2010. They're not an out-group, they are just happy to make enemies along with vast amounts of money.

Being a diehard Tory voter, you may not like the idea but I'm past caring about that, just like you don't care about clean water, decent public services, addressing our impact on climate change, treating non-white people, foreign-born people, disabled people and many more minority groups as fellow human beings and with a basic level of respect.

You are happy to keep voting for and supporting those selfish, amoral, lying, moneylaundering, lawbreaking, shit-stirring pro-fascist, racist and deeply corrupt grifter c**ts. To paraphrase an old truism, you are judged by the people you vote for.

I detest the Conservative governments of the last 13 years. I hate all the harm they've done and every rotten thing they stand for, more than anything else I can remember.

Simon E wrote:

They're not an out-group...

selfish, amoral, lying, moneylaundering, lawbreaking, shit-stirring pro-fascist, racist and deeply corrupt grifter c**ts

I detest the Conservative governments of the last 13 years. I hate ... every rotten thing they stand for, more than anything else I can remember.

Well that just completely disproved my point...

Rich_cb wrote:

Simon E wrote:

They're not an out-group... selfish, amoral, lying, moneylaundering, lawbreaking, shit-stirring pro-fascist, racist and deeply corrupt grifter c**ts

I detest the Conservative governments of the last 13 years. I hate ... every rotten thing they stand for, more than anything else I can remember.

Well that just completely disproved my point...

A group isn't an outgroup if they are in power, and are the Establishment.  They can't be.  They are - if anything - the ingroup.

Of course they can be an outgroup.

The political sphere is not the only one in which people move.

Rich_cb wrote:

So the correct outgroup to demonise is Conservatives? People like to put other people in outgroups, that's always been the case. The left like to think that placing conservatives in an outgroup is somehow different. It isn't, it's the exact same phenomenon with the exact same ugly sentiment underlying it. If it wasn't for 'group X' then life in this country would be so much better...

Except that the Tories and their supporters are doing it from a position of power.

Power is relative.

If at a social gathering or a work place somebody is ostracised because of their political beliefs does it matter that said person supports the party currently in power?

Perfect example of...'enabling significant privileged groups to think of themselves as the downtrodden underdog.'

essexian wrote:

* Almost 40 years since the Battle of the Beanfield. Never forget, never forgive. 

I was listening to a Levellers album t'other day and one of the lyrics is "The year is 1991, it seems that freedom's dead and gone".  I don't know about you, but I honestly imagined in 1991 that things were going to get better, not worse... 

Indeed. But then, I thought the same when this song came out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6QJr2ID_Ac&t=1s

Then, the most evil women ever, Thatcher, came to power and it was all downhill from there. 

essexian wrote:

Indeed. But then, I thought the same when this song came out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6QJr2ID_Ac&t=1s

Then, the most evil women ever, Thatcher, came to power and it was all downhill from there. 

I'm certainly no fan of Thatcher's policies, but I doubt that she was the most evil woman ever. Elizabeth Báthory would be a strong candidate though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_B%C3%A1thory

(A vampire character based loosely on her was played by Lady Gaga in American Horror Story: Hotel)

I feel the 320 plus people murdered under Thatchers orders on the General Belgrano may beg to differ. 

essexian wrote:

I feel the 320 plus people murdered under Thatchers orders on the General Belgrano may beg to differ. 

Well, yes, but I don't think Thatcher was intending to bathe in their blood to keep her youthful, good looks.

hawkinspeter wrote:

essexian wrote:

I feel the 320 plus people murdered under Thatchers orders on the General Belgrano may beg to differ. 

Well, yes, but I don't think Thatcher was intending to bathe in their blood to keep her youthful, good looks.

Now on the lookout for that connection popping up in a generative pre-trained transformer...

I remember the Earl of Cardigan who witnessed the police brutality that day being roundly vilified by the press. Another example of thatchers private army.