…bit bigger than a canary…& I dunno what that makes the mine…but…guess we’re at the coalface again

Employees at Sweden’s national news channel, TV4, were last month told to avoid wearing clothing or badges that might identify their employer’s logo in public. The security risk was deemed too big. The advice was made in response to increased threats against the station and its reporters after its investigative programme, Kalla Fakta (Cold Facts), alleged that the far-right Sweden Democrats – the second biggest party in Sweden – operated a vast network of anonymous social media accounts, coordinating attacks on political opponents and the media.

Sweden is one of the world’s strongest democracies, with very high levels of trust in its media and political institutions. But journalists covering domestic politics now have to fear for their safety.

Swedish media outlets have reported on nationalist “troll farms” in the past, but a TV4 journalist spent a year working undercover at the communications department of the Sweden Democrats. The channel said it was able to confirm at least 23 social media accounts run anonymously from the department. In just three months, posts from these accounts got 27m views across social media platforms.

…23…doesn’t seem like a lot when it comes to that sort of thing…but…27…million…not such a small number…what with being…well…getting on for three times as many people as there are in sweden?

The reporting suggests that this is the tip of an iceberg of misinformation and ultra-nationalist hate speech coming straight out of the publicly funded offices of a party on which the governing coalition relies for support. In hidden camera shots, party strategists were also seen coordinating secret attacks on political opponents, including conservatives who were deemed insufficiently loyal to the Sweden Democrats’ cause.

What was truly remarkable wasn’t the revelations of anonymous accounts, but the response from the Sweden Democrats leader, Jimmie Åkesson, in a so-called “speech to the nation”. Åkesson not only refused to apologise, but also launched a fierce attack on the news media. The entire programme, he claimed, was disinformation; part of a “gigantic, domestic influence operation by the left-liberal establishment” with a secret plan to “demoralise” far-right voters ahead of the EU elections. In follow-up interviews, Åkesson stayed on the attack, often using bullying, condescending language to make fun of reporters for asking about the scandal.
[…]
Unsurprisingly, this response went down well with the nationalists. Josef Fransson, a young MP for the Sweden Democrats, praised Kristersson for not taking action against his party, and rather terrifyingly used the term ljugmedia, a phrase with echoes of Joseph Goebbels’ Nazi slur, Lügenpresse (the lying media).

Without any formal sanctions against these anonymous troll farms, the far right can now continue to operate these accounts and expand their reach. Åkesson’s reactions got tremendous traction on social media, reaching hundreds of thousands of viewers within a few days on Facebook and YouTube. The opposition’s responses received only a fraction of that audience.

As Renée DiResta of Stanford Internet Observatory writes in her book Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, the harsh truth of our new social media-dominated news cycles is that “if it trends, it’s true”.

…so…the place the american right has managed to lawfare out of existence…what coincidence…you see any coincidences around here?

Of the far-right memes alleged to have been anonymously shared by Sweden Democrats’ staffers and members, many are from openly racist and antisemitic American hate groups, along with Holocaust-denying cartoons, pro-Russian content and deep fakes of political opponents. One employee has been put on leave after the newspaper Expressen revealed posts where he expressed support for Putin’s invasion of Crimea in 2014.
[…]
Consistently, Åkesson dismisses criticism by saying that people who can’t laugh at these memes lack a sense of humour. Anyone familiar with the history of antidemocratic movements knows that this is a well-worn tactic. In 1944, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote of Nazi apologists in France at the time: “They are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly … They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/17/sweden-far-right-media-nordic-model

…know what doesn’t make me feel any better?

…yeah, that’d be the part where it doesn’t take the glaring, multiple-online-personality brand of bad faith for that shit to work…in fact…much as it galls me to further expose people to the insidous bullshit that drips from his jowls…I’m still pissed about the part where I ran across a column from bloody nige in the bloody telegraph*

[* – note for them as care about such things…perhaps more so than any other the telegraph is sort of an establishment bastion of a newspaper…if you’re a natural fit for the daily mail but you think you’re better than the tabloids…it’s most likely the broadsheet you reach for…so it’s probably not the first…or last…but…this is the one I ran into]

Why would anybody trust the Conservative Party to make the big decisions about the future of Britain, when they can’t even agree on what to do about Nigel Farage?

…why indeed, nige…I have a lot of whys, now you mention it

Former Tory home secretary Suella Braverman last week urged her party to “welcome” me and “unite the right”. But Saturday’s front page headlines had Tory foreign secretary David Cameron hurling insults at me and declaring that “Farage has no place in Tory Party” – apparently because of my “incredibly divisive” approach.

…sure…asked & answered…one of those people is hateful but natural ally to your cause…& the other is currently the foreign secretary…who’s supposed to sound like a grown up…but fuck you very much for making me find common cause with davey boy fucking cameron you god-forsaken fucking shit-stain of a sophist

…actually…look…I throw that word around as though it’s commonplace enough that nobody needs this bit…but…if only to cut my blood-pressure some slack before I try to find out if I ever make it past this one…here’s a bit of context for the term

…there was the original kind…I don’t really got beef with them…but…it would not be unfair to note that when plato made socrates his mary sue…the impression a reader could get that the man with the right answers got the better of every dialogue…had the makings of a cliché…so…it came to be a derogatory term for the “art” of using rhetorical sleight-of-hand to allow a weak argument to overcome a sound one…in direct opposition to socrates’ whole faith in the dialectic method…or…to put it another way

An argument that seems plausible, but is fallacious or misleading, especially one devised deliberately to be so; a sophism.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sophistry

…that’s nige’s whole deal…but…& this is the galling part…he knows his audience…& he’s had enough practice to be…well…dangerously good at it?

…take the “incredibly divisive” thing, for example…it’s in quotes…because it’s a quote…because dave said that…but…if you don’t really listen to dave…or you would do & you’d have known that anyway…that’s by the by in a lot of ways…& if you listen to nige…then you’re as (or probably more) inclined to read that the dog-whistle way…the same as when nige says he doesn’t need to spell out what he stands for because people know without him saying…when he means…like he did with brexit…that this all works better if people fill in the parts he couldn’t with their own wishful thinking…that way they don’t notice theirs doesn’t match up with their team-mates’…or it does but in ways that are on the unacceptable list these days…so…really…the quote being an actual quote is just the thing he hides the dog-whistle behind…nobody’s going to try to unpack how disengenous that little grace-note is because they’ll fall at the first fence & he’ll just get even more smug while they fail to get their point across…& the telegraph gave that an entire fucking column to work with…in an act of dizzying irresponsibility that by rights would be anathema to a paper that purports to represent “the establishment”

If Lord Cameron is worried about damaging divisions, he should look a bit closer to home. The terminally divided Tory Party has proved itself incapable of effective government over the past 14 years – and is set to be even more hopelessly split in opposition, after it gets hammered on July 4th.

That – and Cameron’s complacent, arrogant dismissal of the biggest issue facing the country – is why I’m more convinced than ever that it’s right to stand against them.

It’s why more and more people now rightly see Reform UK as the real opposition to the coming Labour government.

Cameron has the nerve to claim that, after 14 years of failure, the Tories now have a plan to deal with Britain’s immigration crisis. By contrast, he says, all I offer is “inflammatory language and hopeless policy”.

…you look at nige…& you don’t exactly see a boxer…much less a brawler…but…that’s something of a flurry of blows…that land…he’s made himself out to be the pied piper of gammon-faced blowhards & all their brexit-based fantasy politics for fucking years…he’s driven every wedge he’s had so much as a sniff of as deep into the tory party as he could for all that time…his idea of terminal is the sort of ailment that could be cured by amputating anyone of a non-fantasist bent & then resuscitating the patient by swiftly infusing it with a hostile takeover that slots him in as leader of the official tory party instead of its sequence of frothing protest vehicles…indeed he’s already promising to run next time around to be in charge of the country…which is by a considerable margin the stuff of brass balls…moreso than seems reasonable considering that even without it even pro-forma electoral logic would seem to demand that the right take the L this time…the thing that’s hammering them…to the extent that the polling figures make it seem that if he gave back all the children he piped off into his lair just when they need them they could be vying to stay put instead of staring into the maw of electoral embarassment…is nige’s little band of make-vlad-happy fuckwits

…but…let’s face it…dave was complacent…that’s how we got brexit…which was nothing if not a failed attempt at an arrogant dismissal of very much the factional vote nige doesn’t so much represent as embody…so these land…& that lets the next part land…they’re not really anybody’s parliamentary opposition…not just because they haven’t got a voice in the commons…which is part of what he’s promising…vote me in, coach…vote me in & I’ll do to the mother of parliaments what I did to the one in brussels that’s still paying my pension…with the added efficacy of being able to obstruct the business of domestic governance & foreign policy alike like a republican senate…but…thanks to the featured bug in the first past the post system…he can mortally wound dave’s lot at the ballot box all over the country & lay claim to a statistically significant mandate from some sort of huddled mass…albeit it a malignant one…but…almost nothing short of an act of god gets reform more seats than you can count on your thumbs…more likely even if one of them is still stuck up your ass…but who knows…maybe you’ll turn out to need some fingers, too

…that’s what he’d make out he’s talking about…not the part where he’s opposing them in the sense of disembowelling their core vote…& in that sense taking the fight to them in a way labour can’t claim to be

…so…maybe it takes some nerve for dave to break out the party line that they think they’ve finally cracked the most dishonestly represented conundrum in their repetoire…but…compared to the fucking nerve it takes for nige to make out he isn’t vastly less sinned against than sinning on that score…his nerve is a tender sapling in the mighty forest of nige’s…who twists that knife again with the quote marks…even though “inflammatory language and hopeless policy” is…literally…exactly what nige offers…while those quote marks make it out that the literal description belongs in air-quotes…like the möebius loop of punctuation marks…& it is a contrast…because he can do that…while cammers & co…they’re constrained…their bullshit has to hold enough water to be able to carry their line while they’re on deck with a record to be held to…nige is standing pat on a bottomless well of never having to walk any of the walks he talks…it’s a neat bit of dissembling in some senses…mostly because everyone helpfully makes out that rhetorically it’s a level playing-field on which nige is playing david to davey’s goliath…which is a gross mischaracterization

[…fuck it…I’m clearly not getting beyond boiling over on this one head of steam today…but…it’s past time…so…here’s the tip of this melting iceberg while I go back to using the flames on my head to blowtorch some more of the bugger?]

…so…here come the disingenous quote marks again…in a literal double down of stating a valid charge as though it’s an indictment of anyone that would level it rather than a side-step in the shape of commas that invert the meaning more than their position on the line

By “inflammatory language”, does he mean my stating the fact that 3.5 million immigrants have come to the UK over the past three years alone? Or that, under the current the Tory Government, one more migrant enters the UK every minute? Or that, under the Conservatives and Labour governments before them, more people have come to the UK over the past 25 years than in all of British history before that?

…I’m…well, let’s be honest…I’m too pissed off & being that pissed off has ensured I’m too short of what might laughably be referred to as “spare time” (see how that works with the quote mark thing?) to go dig up the appropriate panolpy of links to demonstrate it…but…this is kind of the big one, isn’t it…the ultimate in questionable quote-mark designations…the “honest conversation” about immigration…so…for the record…I can’t bring an example to mind of a place that is having that conversation at the level of “political discourse”…because the issue is played for a caricature of a political football…& in that game acknowledging that places that would be screwed without a steady influx of immigrants…like most of europe…& the states…can also…mostly by dint of having fostered the shittiest way of thinking about it…be ill-prepared for the numbers of people being driven in their direction…or the ways that number is liable to swell…&…if you boil it down a bit…as the plot thickens…& stuff bubbles up the way it does when refugees get herded towards borders in ways that make for convenient headlines as elections approach & the likes of nige want a rallying cry…the ones playing sheepdog…like the greek coastguard getting caught throwing migrants into the seas in broad daylight the other day…& their spokesman going on the record with the BBC to say “I see no problem in these images” & slip in the suggestion that “they do this, you know – abandon their children like that – they don’t seem to have the same…attachment…to theirs that…we…do”…before pulling a hot mike moment in greek to someone with them & saying “it’s clear as day & obviously it’s an international crime – what the hell were they thinking doing it where people could see…but I managed to give them basically nothing so I think we’re all right there”…& the ones playing shepherd…like…well…name your petro-state but vlad’s the go-to pooster boy…are the root fucking cause of the ever-growing-but-already-biggest driver of forced migration…fucking climate change…which by constantly finding new ways to tie political shoelaces together they can both continue to profit off making worse…& stymie attempts to trim their sails & force them onto a different tack…&…much as I do truly loathe nige in ways that would be more than adequate to result in all this ranting & raving…that bit…that lives in the subtext of the subtext of a subtext we don’t speak of because we mostly don’t even think of it in a conscious fashion…yeah…if I’m honest…that’s what’s got me all

…so…if we’re all sitting comfortably…back to the patented “your man, nige” microcosmic case study…AKA “how punchable can one git be…you know…for science?”

Does the Tory Government now consider these plain facts to be too “inflammatory” for the ears of the British people? (The BBC seems to think so, having desperately fact-checked my statements but failed to find any untruths.) If anybody is being dishonest, it is those who refuse to admit that our country simply cannot cope with this uncontrolled influx, economically or culturally.

…no, you vainglorious popinjay of an absolute [thing-I-won’t-call-you-because-ellie-doesn’t-like-it-&-you-don’t-deserve-the-accidental-compliment-the-comparison-does-you]…if anybody’s being fucking dishonest…it’s fucking you…as fucking always…because you aren’t admitting anywhere can’t cope…or that it’s uncontrollable…economically or culturally…you might know it…but even there you’re smuggling the reality past the choir you’re preaching to…because you claim to offer the one true path to squeeze their scape-camel through the eye of the electoral needle…& fucking control it…& the fact that for 14 years the government of the day has utterly failed to do anything that resembles that when actually having their hands full with the reality of the thing…does not miraculously confer upon your empty boasts the property of being remotely tethered to reality…making use of the tories’ capacity to demonstrate they are full of shit does not make you immune to the charge…it’s the very definition of cognitive dissonance to say of two people that are wrong that one of them made the other out to look more wrong and therefore is now right…but the way that goes unremarked & unacknowledged is the oxygen that gives nige life…&…for my sins…the whole schtick makes me fucking incandescent with rage…but…when I posted the track I was stuck on in the DUAN last night it actually did exorcise the blockage…so…tenous as the idea might be…I’m basically midway through an attempt to reclaim some use from my brain today via textual catharsis…no harm to innocent bystanders intended?

[…ok…so…in my defense…& I’m not really sure who I think I’m defending myself to…against which particular collection of charges…or why…the part where it’s been an hour or so & I’m only one paragraph of this ill-wrought pile of lipstick-laquered pig-shit along from where I was…is at least in part because I’ve been doing more constructive things while I settle in to a piecemeal approach to this…less of a stewing-on-low-heat deal than…ever watched video of those jet-engine-looking burners they slap a wok on top of to cook a dish in a fraction of a minute? …that, basically…despite the cooling off periods each time…so…the tunes could be a while today…unless maybe I designate that part as an acceptable displacement actvity…which might not be a bad idea…but will probably need to be a playlist that balloons the way this post is liable to? …anyway…here’s this chunk…back in a bit?]

As for “hopeless policy”, that’s a subject that Rishi “Rwanda plan” Sunak knows all about. By contrast Reform UK’s policies – to freeze all non-essential immigration, detain and deport all illegal migrants and leave the European Convention on Human Rights – offer realistic hope of addressing the migration crisis and stopping European judges overruling the will of the British people. This is at the heart of our Contract with the British people, which we are launching on Monday.

…another solid hit on the rwanda thing…but…it’s a false contrast…if I [do the thing I won’t have a record to be judged on that the current administration would fucking love to do but can’t even though it can force through something as utterly mis-conceived as that rwanda bollocks]…then [I would magically solve the issue in just the way you think you want it solved even though that would in practice fuck up so much shit it would make your fucking empty head spin]…ta fucking da…never mind there’s no room for a rabbit in a flat cap & you made sure you weren’t laying the hat on a table before promising to pull that rabbit forth…it’s true what they say…they do it with mirrors…smoke & mirrors…vague opaque shapes & vivid reflections…& they think they’re fucking wizards…bannon…jones…musk…all the little wannabe two-faced gods hawking their twisted gateways to a promised land of mirages that hide the barren, salted earth

…the heart of their unenforceable verbal contract…fetid & rotten to the very core

Eight years is a long time in politics, yet Cameron and the Conservatives appear to have forgotten nothing and learned nothing since the EU referendum of 2016.

Perhaps I shouldn’t blame Lord Cameron for his personal animus towards me, since the success of our Leave campaign did cost him his job as Prime Minister. But the Tories’ repeated betrayals of the British people and the Brexit they voted for is unforgivable.

…when what they should have learned is that nige…self-appointed effigy of “the will of the people”…heedless of the oh-so-visible strings by which he’s puppeted…calls the shots…he doesn’t even need to say “you’re fired”…davey couldn’t get out of downing st & cozied up in five-figures’-worth of shepherd’s hut in the cotswolds or wherever-the-fuck fast enough…but “it was nige wot done it”…while “the brexit they voted for”…the fever-dream preserved against the depredations of the real world as though the sole entity to ever vanquish entropy…can hardly be anything but “betrayed”…& was never meant to be forgiven…that’s its fucking antithesis

Cameron called that referendum in the smug belief that the Project Fear run by him and his chancellor, George Osborne, would hoodwink the British electorate into voting to Remain in thrall to the EU. When instead 17.4m voted Leave – lest we forget, the biggest vote for anything in British history – he flounced off and left Theresa May and the Remainer-dominated parliament to try to sell out Brexit.

…project fear…fuck that noise…should still be project be-afraid-be-very-fucking-afraid…we’re on the inverted home straight of the möebius strip of the foundational logic here…where the predictions that match the reality considerably closer than the pie-in-the-sky-&-jam-tomorrow frothing nonsense of mutually-exclusive promises 17.4 million varities of fucking numpty found more palatable are purportedly…& emotionally…provided a more or less mortal lock on there being no room for introspection…*in contrast*…which…ultimately…they do stand in…just not to the implied counterpart that makes them inelligible for framing as an example of hoodwinking…which in & of itself is already a better example, mind…but that’s just the pike…the twist to this dive…after alluding to a greater popular mandate than any government ever…which is up there with the damnable statistically-filtered lies, by the way…is the “sell out brexit”…the man shilling this bill of goods sold all of this out before he fucking got on his god-forsaken gravy train…few clearer examples of the definition of “sell out” exist than nigel bloody spluttering farage…brexit was a masterclass in selling out the interests of those it purported to champion…& this tick will keep sucking until the well is dry & the kingdom so thoroughly disunited they’ll have to change the name & downsize to the will-they-won’t-they modern day atlantis reanacment society…bloated little parasite upon the body politic that he has more than shown himself to be

[…at this rate I might get to the end by…oh…tomorrow sometime…so…there’s another hour or so gone on mostly-not-doing-this…but maybe I ought to focus on some less discordant notes before I wedge another tranche in between this & those?]

The victory of my Brexit Party in the 2019 European elections drove Mrs May from Number 10 and brought in Boris Johnson who – with my help – won the general election that year on the promise to “get Brexit done”. Yet five years and three Tory prime ministers later, we are patently no nearer to taking back control of our borders and our laws.

…me…your boy, nige…I did that…they only got the top job because I handed to them…not you lot that do the voting…me…your misbegotten messiah…even though I knew…well…let’s be honest…quite a lot precisely because I knew…they had a snowball’s chance in hell of being so much as in a position to do what I’d be prepared to admit was enough to clear my amorphous bar & make it into “control” of our borders…or not-coincidentally…our laws…since doing the one thing would require setting fire to quite a bit of the statute book…while hoping nobody noticed what was going up in all that smoke…or the signals it would be sending

That betrayal of Brexit is ultimately why millions of furious voters have turned their backs on the remains of the Conservative Party. It is why Keir Starmer’s Labour is set to win on July 4th, despite the lack of public enthusiasm for his party, his personality or his six big election pledges – which do not include a word about migration.

…if we substitute for “betrayal of Brexit” which is only intelligible if you’re too used to swilling down the kool aid to notice the funny taste compressed, distilled & barrel-aged bullshit gives to the concoction…something approximating what it’s standing fig-leaf duty for…like…”this insidious brand of malignant metastasized magical thinking masqerading as a legitimate rhetorical peer IRL (LOL)™”…then…yeah…pretty much…you’ve been wormtongue-ing away like your name was gríma while playing pan-pipes made of dog-whistles & banging drums like you’re a one-man-band & not a walking, talking living doll like max headroom with no sense of irony upscaled for HDTV…migration is your “woke” you jumped up little herbert of shitheel

[…thank fuck…we might be approaching the blessed relief of finally getting to the fucking bitter end…although…I’m going to need to steel myself to not move on to the next bone of contention…if they’re going to throw these around this way

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/18/britain-is-already-at-war-china-nobody-wants-to-admit

…that one’s iain duncan smith…or IDS…to sound like IBS…but…you know…was prime minister once…like “was the future once” billy boy hague…if this is how they test your faith…the folks at r/AITA would been all over telling you to kick that toxic ass to the curb, girlfriend…just sayin’]

It is also why I decided to stand for election. In two weeks, Reform UK has breathed life into this zombie general election and overtaken the Tories in major opinion polls, winning the support of millions of people across the country who have simply had enough of the establishment parties.

…a poll…last I checked…literally everyone but you gov was still putting rishi’s mob ahead of nige’s rabble by the numbers…but…who’s counting…eh, nige?

In his lowest personal insult at the weekend, the Tory Foreign Secretary accused me of using “dog whistle” politics to play on popular prejudices. As ever, the biggest insult here is directed at the voters, who snobs such as Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton see as dumb mutts to be herded into pens. I trust the good judgement of the British people to see through such Tory prejudice.

…yes, he’s a fucking snob…just like fucking you are, nige…not to mention the faithful that flock to hear you preach your good™^{(it’s not a lie in the eyes of the law if it’s a trademark)} word…mix up your sheeple metaphors with your man’s best friend all you like…your trust has only ever been in them letting you play them for mugs while you seranade them with a repetoire of insincerity on the world’s smallest violin…maybe you even do expect their judgement to extend to seeing through the tory prejudice…just…never past the wool over their eyes to the part where you’re slitting their wrists while promising the supply of warm bathwater will last longer than they’ll live to see

Cameron is right about one thing. There is “no place for Farage” in this divided, sinking hulk of a Conservative Party. My place is leading the real opposition to Labour, and building the resistance to the threat of a one-party state over the next five years. The last conservatives in the Tory Party, such as Suella Braverman, are very welcome to join the revolt.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/16/david-cameron-is-a-disgrace-to-britain/

…you can almost hear him licking his lips at the very thought…while the real tory party is stuck playing out their part of the electoral theatre in a rearguard formation aimed at preventing a rout…he’s free to do some table setting for the post-mortem era he’s looking to fashion…wherein if he can…to use a sorta-business metaphor…co-opt enough of the c-suite to join him in a hostile takeover…he could run the tea-party-to-MAGA table…& go from suella’s new boss to her old boss once retro-engineered into the driving seat at the old firm under new management

…dante didn’t have enough circles to find a fitting home for these revelling, ravelling, ravenous caniballistic sin-eating sinners…or the cognitive driftwood that sail with them…but at least I’ve bottomed out for the time being?

[…okay…maybe if I pace myself eventually I’ll get to something like william orbit’s strange cargoes…but water from a vine leaf is somewhere over the rainbow for the time being…so…in the meantime…while I try to wring something constructive out of my day & divest further pieces of my mind somewhere up above as/when the opportunity affords itself…here’s a start at something less tin-eared?]