Now I don't know what's worse, someone who denies clear facts cos they don't like them and demand to have their own, or someone who just doesn't know what the basic facts are - but I don't think I'm being hugely elitist by saying that neither are that good.
OK yes it's more malicious or whatever. But people who are ignorant of basic facts and plough on regardless cause just as much damage I think and are most likely more malleable by evil demagogues such as, er, Mark Francois (who is in fact also an idiot who can in turn be controlled by a higher level evil genius such as, er, JRM)
A lethal combination. Sometimes I think you should have to pass a test to vote... just really basic stuff but you know. I mean I know the problems with that but fuck it.
One thing I've noticed about social media is that it encourages you to have and offer an opinion on everything and frequently rewards you for doing so, e.g. you can skim a story, brand someone a twat and someone else will probably validate you with a 'like'.
Those who do not think the rising threats of political violence, strident nationalism, attempts to bypass parliamentary institutions and increasing nastiness towards minorities do not indicate the beginning of a turn towards fascism must ask themselves...
...what would? The way fascism manifested itself in the 1920s and 1930s was not the only way it can manifest itself.
Fascism does not only exist in black and white photos and Pathe news reels.
The nastiness adapts to new promising environments. Think, for example, of the independent institutions which extreme "will of the people" Brexiters have sought to trash:
- parliamentary "saboteurs"
- judicial "enemies of the people"
- civil service "traitors"
Even demanding letters to universities.
This cannot be healthy. There is no value whatsoever in "taking back control" if the cost of Brexit is to trash the very domestic institutions - parliament, judiciary, civil service - which we would require to function more than ever outside the EU. Look at the casual trashing of human rights law and legal aid.
The primary purposes of human rights law and legal aid is to support the individual against the coercive power of law.
Without them an individual is powerless in the last resort against the State. And look at the routine casual insults and nastiness regarding Jewish people, Muslims, trans people.
Attacks on LGBT education.
And recall the first books to be burned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_für_Sexualwissenschaft#Nazi_era
Lots of "others" to be de-humanised, despised, mocked. Look at all this - the attacks on independent institutions, the attacks on legal aid and human rights law, the attacks on the "easy" targets of minorities, and ask yourself...
...what would a rise of fascism not look like in 2019?
Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view – one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. To have a good instance of qualitative populism we no longer need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or the Nuremberg Stadium. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People
Not really Brexit related - except that everything that happens in Britain is Brexit-related now - but Gavin Williamson has been sacked for leaking from the National Security Council meeting, or possibly he's been sacked for not cooperating with the enquiry into who leaked and doing it in a suspicious manner. Anyway, he's still saying that he didn't leak and he did cooperate but I say "fuck off you twunt".