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→ Gordon Brown accuses centrists of appeasing far-Right
Gordon Brown has warned the world of the rise of the far-Right — again. Writing in The Guardian, the former prime minister argued that a Right-wing wave has swept across Europe as a result of moderates capitulating to extremists. Brown claimed that Austria’s likely incoming “anti-immigration, pro-Russia government” will “cement a new hard-Right axis across Austria, Hungary and Slovakia, and [..] Italy, where […] the far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni (who met Keir Starmer on Monday), is accused of taking control of the press and the judiciary”.
However, Brown goes on to say that Labour’s recent victory is a harbinger of hope, as is Ursula von der Leyen’s re-election to the European Commission and Pedro Sánchez’s outmanoeuvring of the Spanish far-Right. Given his contempt for Meloni, would Brown have met with her if he were in Starmer’s shoes? How many authoritarian leaders did Brown appease in the name of realpolitik?
→ Jill Stein refuses to call Putin a war criminal
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has stumbled over a new roadblock in her long-shot bid for the White House. Stein repeatedly declined to call Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal during an interview with journalist Mehdi Hasan, citing the need for diplomacy in the hope of future negotiations, but then proceeded to call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal.
She explained the discrepancy between her treatment of Israel’s and Russia’s leaders by inaccurately claiming the International Criminal Court had only declared the former a war criminal — which Hasan quickly corrected.
Me: “Vladimir Putin is a war criminal in your view? And Assad is a war criminal?”
Jill Stein: “Uh, yes. In so many words.”
Me: “What does that mean, ‘in so many words’?”My exchange with the Green Party candidate on war crimes.
Full interview: https://t.co/czLGXpz2tu pic.twitter.com/cedmDpbWbH
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) September 16, 2024
The car-crash interview is likely to be more damaging than her recent spat with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez which, if anything, actually raised her public profile. With a projected vote share of less than 2%, Stein has little to lose.
→ Gen Z wishes social media didn’t exist — but can’t stay away
About half the members of Gen Z wish the most popular social media platforms among their generation had never been invented, according to new polling. Some 50% of respondents wished X (or its predecessor Twitter) had never been invented, compared to 47% for TikTok and 43% for Snapchat. For YouTube and Netflix, by comparison, under 20% of Zoomers wished the same.
As Jonathan Haidt and Will Johnson wrote in the New York Times today, this indicates that social media, unlike other forms of digital entertainment, is addictive — “more like cigarettes” than walkie-talkies. Further, 39% of Zoomers spend four to six hours a day on social media, and nearly a quarter spend at least seven hours on it. The kids are not alright.
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SubscribeThe rise the far right isn’t something that governments need to combat. All they have to do is listen to and learn from ordinary people instead of sneering at them. Gordo did the classic when he arrogantly dismissed an elderly lady as a bigot for the crime of saying something contrary to his privileged view of utopia.
Exactly! Those dratted microphones again!
“Who was that bigoted old woman?” and then . . .
“I hate prejudice, discrimination, and snobbishness of any kind – it always reflects on the person judging and not the person being judged.”
“I have abolished boom and bust”
“I’m going to sell the UK’s gold… in an auction”
“a one-eyed, Scottish, idiot” (J Clarkson on G Brown)
Gordon Brown; the worst, most arrogant and fiscally incontinent chancellor the UK ever had. And then an even worse PM. Starmer has a tough act to follow but I’m sure he’ll tool-up to do the best job he can (once he’s put on a new suit)…
Here we go: a puffed up, spendthrift, hard left clown perks up to tell us that opposition to limitless immigration, which overwhelms whole districts, puts the future of European identity in doubt and imposes unbearable burdens on the native poor, is somehow “extremist”. It is just the latest iteration of the left’s brass necked trick of “projection”, for the only extremists around these days are the reds; and the only political force which uses doctrines of collective, inherited guilt to demonise an ethnic group is the dominant “radical-progressive” government class – its victim being the historic peoples of Europe. Only hard left extremists could possibly pretend that inviting indifferent, dependent and sometimes hostile multitudes to settle in the heart of the west is “normal”.
You do wonder how Brown could ever have been PM. Quite clearly there has been a shift to the right precisely because centrists did not listen to ordinary peoples concerns. Having left it too late, they now are faced with no other choice than “appeasement”.
So why didn’t Brown, Blair and the rest see it coming? Plenty of others did. A case of the man who mistakes what he sees in his mirror for external reality.
In 2004 Gordon Brown quite deliberately broke the link between housing costs and interest rates in order to engineer a house price boom in time for the 2005 election. Meanwhile his partner in many crimes introduced the open borders policy that has been pursued by his admirers ever since.
The consequence has been the fastest widening of the class divide in our history. It’s extraordinary that a man of such Himalayan dishonesty and incompetence should be rewarded with the status of elder statesman.
Has Gordon Brown ever shown reliable judgement on anything at all ?
He seems like one of those people who think they understand everything (and usually don’t) and are desperate to hand out advice, but no one voluntarily asks.
Not once. His only use, in fact, is to be ‘the man who is always wrong’ a la C Northcote Parkinson character in “In Laws and Outlaws” – listen to him and then do precisely the opposite.
He joins Blair, and Major in this club. Ex PMs who’ve done untold damage.
Who should now just shut their traps and sod off to spend time with their ill gotten fortunes.
Is there any point that supperannuated politicians like Gordon Brown will just f**k off?
Gordon Brown . . . He’s number two on my list after Blair.