General News Thread

[Twelveseal]

Inorite. Personally, I'd like to see what another Brexit referendum looks like after everything that's happened since the first one.

Edit: Gratz to her. Now will someone please get this manchild off social media.

[Kamera]

Whelp, RIP Labour.

Lesson: Never put any hope in bourg electoralism. Maybe this time Jezza will follow the proper way to start a political revolution. Insha Allah he will make Robespierre look like a pacifist.

[Strange_One]

Whelp. This a good time to take up prepping?

Not only more conservatives and Boris, that sturgeon gonna be more rabid than ever.

[Twelveseal]

Might not be a bad idea... trends in general seem to be running pro-Right, nationalist, and separatist in Western and Western-influenced cultures still. Does not make me feel especially hopeful for the 2020 election here. Especially with the Impeachment trial in the Senate will force Sanders and Warren to stay in Washington and off the campaign trail unless they're willing to resign as long as it runs. It's not as if Mitch McConnell has a reputation for running out the clock on things for political gain...

Odds of Biden or Buttigieg nominee rising.

[Kamera]

Corbyn was my favourite sucdem until the result revealed that Labour suffered their worst defeat for decades. Thank you based Lexit.

Friendship ended with electoral politics. Now direct action is now my best friend.

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Speaking of USA, honestly you imperialist crackers can go fuck yourselves.

Hope the coming economic and boogaloo crisis burn this cursed settler land to ground.

[AsGryffynn]

Jezza's only mistake was uttering the words "People's Vote" thinking most of Labour were Starbucks drinking, avocado-addicted hipster millennials living in a posh minimalist London flat.

[Seika]

I think we can have strong debate in this thread without resorting to the excesses of language that are starting to come up. Less on "crackers", please.


Meanwhile, as an actual British person and not someone trying to impose their own ideas of politics from the other side of the world, words in respect of the election.

While acknowledging that other data shows a notably greater decrease in Labour turnout rather than a Conservative growth (and that, as such previously Labour DNVs are a significant group whom it would be useful to see polled), there's a pretty obvious pattern here. Corbyn's worst problem by far was Corbyn, not Brexit.

To try to suggest in particular that Corbyn - Trotsky-loving, Chávez-supporting, heavy industry Corbyn - abandoned the "real" working class for snowflake, hipster, metropolitan Londoners is a fundamentally ignorant misreading of our political contexts. The man's a bloody dinosaur, a relic of the opposition in the Thatcher years and before, a throwback to Militant Tendency. He himself and the rest of that movement which he brought back to the Labour Party with him are about as "woke" as you expect for hard left geezers forty years out of date. Which is why his Labour is under investigation by the sodding Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Corbyn is a mediocre protest politician plucked from backbench obscurity by fluke and PLP mistakes, with neither the ability nor the willingness to compromise or update his hoary ideas for the sake of contemporary electability, who has his "virtuous anti-racist" and "nice old grandpa" credentials undermined by an easily-found history of unpleasant remarks about Jews and literal support of terrorists in the IRA and Hamas. All of which problems were relentlessly hammered home (and, in fairness, sometimes exaggerated) over his tenure. This is his essential point of failure, highlighted when against even slightly less appalling (and it is only slightly) opposition than the Theresa May robot.

To address the less significant problem, Labour's position on Brexit was always going to be difficult no matter what. The vast part of their voters are Remain - data has always shown that Labour Leave constituencies went Leave first from the Tory voters there, only abetted by portions of the Labour vote. Lexit invites collapse by pointing this significant core at the LDs and abandons any hope of peeling away Conservative Remainers (between 18 and 25% of their voters, for whatever mad reason); moreover, if someone's defining issue is Brexit, are they really going to vote for Labour over the Conservatives even if Labour says they'll Leave? Committing to Remain conversely allows your Leave vote to be vulnerable to Conservatives or Brexit Party or just apathy. Their actual strategy - to negotiate their own deal and put it to a referendum where they might campaign for Remain anyway - tries to paper over the cracks, but lacks any easy messaging hook, seems both indecisive and really quite pointless, and doesn't satisfy either side. To say I have sympathy for Labour in this respect would probably be overstating it, but to dismissively say that there was some trivial solution to their dilemma is thoughtless.

[SpoonyViking]

As a Brit, Seika, what do you think of the "this had less to do with Corbyn's popularity and more to do with how mass media actively supports fear and hatred of immigrants and minorities" opinions I've seen floating around?

[Kamera]

It seems Anglo politics care less about actual consequences of their votes than short-term outrage over some porky propaganda. Truly, the "developed" first-world are class-cucked beyond measures with their ruling class hegemony (as in Gramsci) shoved down everyone's throat. Have fun with worsening neoliberal austerity and incoming recession.

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The only thing that matters in political analysis is your grasp of dialectical materialism. Nationality is irrelevant :P

[Pendant]

Hamas is a duly elected political party. Obviously terrorism in all its forms should be denounced but what are a people who live on the fringes supposed to do? It's all well and good that you can have faith your judicial system to see that justice is done on your behalf but when you live somewhere where the legal avenues for redress are not merely indifferent to your plight but downright antagonistic to it, it cuts down drastically on what you can do in the legal arena. Given these realities on the ground you can't then turn around in shock that some people will opt for violent struggle.

tldr - seeing Palestinians as human beings is not antisemitic

[Kamera]

free palestine
tiocfaidh ár lá

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Balkanization of the UK and US when

[rxrx]

Speaking of immigrants and minorities, India's new Citizenship Amendment Bill is amazing.

[Orange]

Speaking of immigrants and minorities, India's new Citizenship Amendment Bill is amazing.

A bill that marks the first step in stripping 28% of it's citizens of citizenship and has already resulted in multiple deaths. Truly amazing.

[Kamera]

"if you're oppressed non-muslim in one of the 3 muslim majority neighbouring country and come to india, you get citizenship" it's a poorly thought bill at best. and an absolute disaster of an idpol spooked religitards idiocy at worst.

[Orange]

The current party in power benefits greatly from religious polarization and we are currently in an economic recession. The aims of the bill are pretty transparent.

[Kamera]

so this is what they meant by superpower 2020

[Orange]

That was never going to happen but I'm sure it's the Muslim's fault somehow. I just heard that five trains were just burnt down and also the Chief Minister of our state just said that our government will refuse to implement it and will resist all attempts at implementation. Taking into account that this state is currently being ruled by the Communist Party of India(Marxist) this can only end well.

[Seika]

As a Brit, Seika, what do you think of the "this had less to do with Corbyn's popularity and more to do with how mass media actively supports fear and hatred of immigrants and minorities" opinions I've seen floating around?

All the data I've seen, and my general sense of the nation, agrees with the poll I posted: Brexit remains only one issue among many at our GEs, and still not the most important for many people. (I think 2017 actually showed that; 2019 is the confirmation). And, in specific terms of Brexit, this was a far less nasty campaign than that around the referendum - "Get Brexit Done" makes no assertion about why Brexit is a good idea, where the Leave groups in 2016 certainly were raising fears around immigration. In general, I don't think any side made much of trying to change anyone's opinion on Brexit - in that respect, it was purely "vote Conservatives for Brexit to happen, in some form", "vote LDs for Brexit to not happen", and "vote Labour for [please project your own hopes here and ignore our mixed messages because our policy is vague and silly]".

This time around the Tories benefitted from the spread of issues more than other parties. More specifically, Tory policies played terribly last time and their leader did worse, where Labour policies at least managed to be popular in some quarters and Corbyn managed to look slightly better by comparison to May. Now, Boris was bad but skated by on memories of a more jocular and less harmful persona with a lot of less involved voters, and that let the shadow of all Corbyn's problems rise up. In terms of policies, the Tories ran a campaign on Brexit and blatant lies about public investment, which appears to have worked, with Labour unable to land a telling blow by way of asserting their own intentions. They might have done better to focus on some specific arena to push, rather than the mass nationalisation everyone already knew Corbyn wanted. In 2017, I think energy broke through to voters somewhat effectively, with much fuss made of the profits the Big Six were raking in.

I think the focus on media is much exaggerated, and bluntly down to a lot of Corbynites being unhappy that the cult hasn't achieved much penetration there. The BBC did slip up at points during this campaign, but it and the other television broadcasters are subject to and broadly stayed within the lines of the neutrality controls of Ofcom, and that's a large part of the news cycle. Otherwise, the newspapers are much as they always are. By circulation, there's a rightward tilt, I absolutely won't deny it, but there's no serious change in their coverage compared to 2017 or before, so looking there is an attempt to shift the blame in my eyes. If anything, again, it was rather less nasty than we had during the referendum campaign, because it was about what parties would or wouldn't deliver Brexit, rather than whether Brexit would be good or bad. (I note also that Corbyn has his own record with regards to THE IMMIGRANTS TAKING OUR JOBS and undoing free movement, so it's hardly a devastating attack line).

Hamas is a duly elected political party. Obviously terrorism in all its forms should be denounced but what are a people who live on the fringes supposed to do? It's all well and good that you can have faith your judicial system to see that justice is done on your behalf but when you live somewhere where the legal avenues for redress are not merely indifferent to your plight but downright antagonistic to it, it cuts down drastically on what you can do in the legal arena. Given these realities on the ground you can't then turn around in shock that some people will opt for violent struggle.

tldr - seeing Palestinians as human beings is not antisemitic

I don't want to get too far into the Israeli situation in itself, because it's a little beside the point I'm trying to address right now. Nonetheless, whether Hamas is elected or not, it maintains a paramilitary wing that is a blacklisted terrorist organisation across the vast part of the globe, including in the EU generally and the UK specifically. That's a factual statement. (Without in any way endorsing further Israeli settlement or annexation, I also submit that this paramilitary wing's efforts are almost wholly futile given their opposition's capabilities, that in failing to harm military targets they tend to spill over to civilian ones, and are an overall detriment to the Palestinian cause in terms of image, wasted effort, and financing). Moreover, before the revised Hamas charter of 2017, which is moderately more conciliatory, the Hamas that Corbyn stood beside and called "friends" and a "force for peace and social justice" was founded on a charter calling for the extermination of all Jews in preparation for the Day of Judgement, and both tortures and executes queer people.

However, and this is part of the whole necessity in keeping up with closer national reporting instead of assuming a limitation to the globally divisive Israel-Palestine issue, Corbyn and Corbynite Labour's Jewish problems go far far beyond that. Chakrabarti's initial internal report was widely considered a whitewash, which looked all the more corrupt when she was given a baronetcy two months later. Members up to and including the National Executive Committee of Labour continually refer to issues raised as being part of a Zionist plot - id est, the evil Jews control the media - instead of acknowledging problems. Corbyn himself was their exemplar in endorsing that same imagery in art and in academia. He referred to Jews having lived all their lives in Britain as still not understanding English irony, because Jews are of course always a race apart and not quite proper citizens. For a campaigner against racism, he has terrible taste in the rallies he marches in and speaks at. He supported and intervened on behalf of Chris Williamson. The list of Corbynite Labour's problems goes on and on and on and on past this. Again, there is a reason the Equality and Human Rights Commission is investigating Labour - this is not a trivial or unfounded problem.

[Kamera]

is the modern liberal democracy political discourse revolve only around "you're anti-semite" shit-flinging and "immigrant" shift blaming? or is this some deliberate bourg media attemt to divert the focus from the real class struggle?

[rxrx]

That was never going to happen but I'm sure it's the Muslim's fault somehow. I just heard that five trains were just burnt down and also the Chief Minister of our state just said that our government will refuse to implement it and will resist all attempts at implementation. Taking into account that this state is currently being ruled by the Communist Party of India(Marxist) this can only end well.

What exactly is happening in India? It feels like the government is using the Muslims as a punching bag and hate sink to direct grievances away.