'TikTok Nixon is a man of honour, an idealist, a gifted statesman.' Getty Images
Dead presidents rarely go viral. There are, of course, glorious exceptions — listen, for instance, to LBJ pleading for slacks that don’t “cut me like a wire fence”, or JFK ranting about furniture (“Well, this is obviously a fuck-up”). By and large, though, the content circulating about postwar commanders-in-chief is worthy but dull, fascinating to US history buffs but never containing anything that might shift the needle on their historical reputations.
Except Richard Nixon. Recent years have seen the 37th president’s social media profile transform from the familiar Tricky Dick to far more rarified heights. TikTok Nixon is a man of honour, an idealist, a preternaturally gifted statesman armed with acerbic insights into the power of the American media and eerily accurate predictions about the present-day state of Israel, Russia and China — at turns sentimental, even gossipy, but always the doughty defender of the common man.
Not that this is merely a story of some online tickers going steadily upward. On the contrary, Nixon’s social media revival matters in the grubby politics of the here and now. In an age of polarisation, and one in which the young are increasingly disenchanted with democracy itself, the growing lionisation of the only commander-in-chief to resign in disgrace is a red flag for the republic’s future.
At first glance, Nixon’s online persona is remarkably gentle. There’s a good reason for this: most clips are spliced from soft-soap post-Watergate interviews, when Dick was relaxedly hawking foreign policy tomes that, according to biographer Evan Thomas, were “moderately interesting and sold moderately well”. This is Nixon at rest, keen on sharing homespun wisdom about a life spent in service between his verdicts on Mao and the Shah. “What makes life mean something is purpose — a goal, the battle, the struggle,” he says in one such clip. “Even if you don’t win it.”
Spend time in Nixonworld, though, and you’ll quickly spot clips far more brazen in their admiration for Tricky Dick. See, for instance, the excerpts from Mad Men in which Don Draper is suddenly captivated by Nixon’s 1969 inauguration address, or when he waxes lyrical about the Republican’s hardscrabble journey to the vice presidency just six years out of the navy — all before that familiar burr interrupts our regular viewing with a series of smash cuts.
Such lionisation makes sense if you know where most of these clips come from: the Richard Nixon Foundation, the co-owner of the former president’s library in Yorba Linda, California, and an organisation for which the sentence “it was just a burglary” is considered a fair summation of his legacy. The past year has seen the institution not only become an increasingly Trumpy meeting place for the GOP’s great and good, but also such an effective proponent of Nixon across social media that it’s booted many of the spicier White House tapes off the top tier of YouTube search results — and increased its subscriber base by 236%.
For the Nixon connoisseur, this is the historiographical equivalent of seeing the ex-president’s bullfrog jowls gurning through a beachside bodybuilder cut-out. Elements of the overall image are recognisable: Nixon’s mastery of foreign affairs, for example, or his deep-seated suspicion of the media. Yet absent from the picture is the racism, the homophobia — and, let’s not forget, the crimes.
Who watches this stuff? Despite the Boomer flavour of many of the foundation’s in-person events — you, too, can celebrate “the women and girls in your life” with a Title IX fun run — the audience most receptive to the new, hunky Nixon appear to be young, conservative-leaning voters occupying an increasingly polarised media landscape. Raised on a steady media diet of diverse perspectives, fractured across multiple social media platforms (usually TikTok), members of Gen Z are more cynical and anxious than their parents. They also find mainstream news brands increasingly untrustworthy, with only 56% of 18-29-year-olds having a “lot” or “some” trust in national news organisations. That’s down from 62% in 2016, a decline that’s even more pronounced among Millennials.
That mistrust is sharper still among young Republicans, an increasing number of whom wholeheartedly trust the news they consume from social media. Among this cohort is the intellectually impressionable manosphere, for whom Nixon has become a cause célèbre, an appeal that makes sense if you consider the former president’s image of himself as a complex loner misunderstood and maligned by the liberal establishment.“I didn’t know, until Tucker explained it on the show, about Nixon,” podcaster Joe Rogan said last June, referring to a conspiracy theory suggesting that Bob Woodward and the CIA framed the then-president for Watergate. “Nixon, who’s the most popular president in history — that was a government-orchestrated coup!”
As Carlson’s characterisation of Nixon implies, it’s easy to see him as a Seventies stand-in for Donald Trump offline too, with both men the undeserving victims of a snobbish liberal establishment determined to preserve its monopoly on power at the expense of the hardworking American public. Republicans are also enthusiastic in echoing Nixon’s dictum that “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal” whenever they feel duty-bound to defend the former businessman (turns out, it mostly isn’t.) One good example is Ted Cruz, who has argued that democracy should be decided “at the ballot box” — even as Republicans tried to overturn the 2020 election.
It’s a superficially appealing comparison. Much has been written comparing presidents 47 and 37, mostly about their animosity toward the press, women, ethnic minorities and the rule of law. Similarities in their personalities is also a popular topic. “There is a volcanic centre to both men: the ranting, the anger, the paranoid concerns; the hatred,” is how historian Timothy Naftali put it in 2018, speculating that Trump could yet engage in dodgy “Nixonian” behaviour.
They certainly liked each other. “I think that you are one of this country’s great men,” Trump wrote to Nixon in 1982, a few days after the pair had been spotted together at a dining club in New York City. In a series of exchanges, and over the course of one beautiful night in Houston, the two discussed everything from the New Jersey Admirals to the importance of using crowds as “props” during rallies. Pat Nixon even hoped The Donald himself might run for political office in future. “As you can imagine, she is an expert on politics,” wrote her doting husband, “and she predicts that whenever you decide to run for office you will be a winner!”
Trump had that letter framed, later promising he’d hang it in the Oval Office. It’s unclear if he ever did — or indeed whether it served less as a source of inspiration than a warning of what not to do in the White House. At the height of the impeachment speculation, during his first term in 2019, Trump asserted that he wouldn’t suffer the same fate as his long-dead predecessor because he’d never be cowardly enough to resign. Similarly, the 47th president bemoaned Nixon’s reluctance to let wayward staff marinate in their own insubordination before firing them. In fact, a plausible argument can be made for Trump seeing Andrew Jackson, not Tricky Dick, as his primary presidential inspiration. After all, it’s Old Hickory’s portrait, not Nixon’s letter, that takes pride of place in most Oval Office photo ops.
But if Trump himself has left Nixon behind, his acolytes clearly haven’t. “When it comes to foreign policy,” intoned Vivek Ramaswamy during his abortive run for the GOP nomination in 2023, “the president I most admire is Richard Nixon.” The Californian’s canny insights into the Russian psyche have routinely been cited as inspiration by conservative activists for ending the war in Ukraine, a possibility left unexplored by the Biden administration. “My answer to this whole proposal of […] whether or not the Russians can be trusted is very simply: only if we make agreements which are in their interests to keep,” Nixon told one interviewer. It’s a lesson Trumpworld figures have been more than happy to absorb. “If we aren’t careful,” said ex-Trump advisor Steve Bannon, “it will turn into Trump’s Vietnam. That’s what happened to Richard Nixon. He ended up owning the war and it went down as his war, not Lyndon Johnson’s.”
Ultimately, though, these comparisons can only be taken so far. Trump’s tariffs, and his meetings with Pyongyang’s pound-shop Mao, compare poorly to the scale of the Nixon administration’s achievements in rebuilding US credibility while pretending not to lose in Indochina. That’s because the global outlook of the two men is fundamentally different. Where Trump leads his country abroad as if he were still a rapacious Eighties landlord, Nixon knew that US power rested on leveraging its fragile position as primus inter pares.
There are, of course, other obvious differences. Where Nixon was personally brave, enlisting in 1941 despite his Quaker faith, Trump said avoiding catching STIs during the Nineties was his own “personal Vietnam” — even as he received a dubious bone spur diagnosis to avoid being drafted into the real thing. Where Trump has made the term “braggadocious” part of his personal brand, meanwhile, Nixon was so socially awkward that he couldn’t look his doctor in the eye and felt duty-bound to apologise to his researcher for chuckling at The Dick van Dyke Show.
All the same, one very obvious similarity between the two men lies in their hatred of what Nixon called the “liberal establishment” — with the former president cited as a source of inspiration among conservative thinkers. Leading the charge has been self-styled Right-wing Leninist Christopher Rufo, who, when he’s not drafting lesson plans for teachers in Florida, argues for Nixon’s elevation as the spiritual father of the modern Republican Party. The ex-president “set the stakes for the American public and established themes that still dominate American politics today,” Rufo wrote in 2023.
According to Rufo, Nixon’s plans to overhaul the bureaucracy; reestablish law and order by smashing Left-wing radical groups; and create a conservative “counter-elite” to supplant liberal reporters form an ideal blueprint for rebuilding America. The result, the activist argues, would be a truly “pluralist republic” that prizes “excellence over diversity, equality over equity, dignity over inclusion, order over chaos”.
It’s a vision of America that the GOP has been grasping at since 1968 — but one that the conservative movement is closer than ever to achieving. Nixon’s crusade began in the mid-Sixties, in an America that was, though wracked by protests, violent crime and racial segregation, still enamoured by a liberal consensus that kept Tricky Dick’s coattails short in 1972. He may have smashed George McGovern in a landslide, yet both Republicans and the public at large quickly turned against him once the full scope of the Watergate scandal came out. Now, though, the GOP dominates all three branches of the US government, egged on by a Right-wing media machine pushing it to erode the ability of its opponents to nominate judges, prevent gerrymandering, exercise the right to vote, or even guarantee a safe transition of power.
Poor Richard. While Nixon was never slow to see opponents in every corner, and certainly wanted to politically sideline as many as possible, these actions were never consciously undertaken to undermine democracy. Were he alive today and somehow operating in our political landscape, maybe things would be different. As Geraldo Rivera ruefully told Trump-supporting presenter Sean Hannity in 2019: “Nixon never would have been forced to resign if you existed in your current state back in 1972, ’73, ’74.”
Surely, though, the emergence of a new Nixon as a conservative Jeremiah is bad enough for the health of the republic. While the White House incumbent is not powerful or motivated enough to kick away the safeguards preventing him from assuming the purple, the 47% of Americans who consider a second civil war is inevitable probably think a figure like that may soon emerge. By then, voters won’t have a Nixon type to kick around anymore, but instead someone far more dangerous.
Greg Noone is a journalist and writer living in Hampshire. His work has previously featured in The Atlantic, The Guardian, Outside and Hakai.
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SubscribeA friend who works for a German company describes his annoyance with his colleagues; “I get endless lectures about Brexit, the chaos of the UK and how Germany does everything better. Their self-confidence is amazing. When I mention their disastrous foreign and energy policies and their treatment of the southern EU they look at me in genuine astonishment. They seem oblivious to the idea they could possibly do anything wrong. And this is a country still highly reliant on the fax machine.”
The figures may be inaccurate but prpbably aren’t in order-of-magnitude terms: supposedly something like €2trn of European GDP was dependent on around €20bn of gas imports.
If only there were a word for the happiness I feel on witnessing another’s misfortune…
my md has gone blank but I’m sure that the Germans have such a word.
my md has gone blank but I’m sure that the Germans have such a word.
Did he mention the war?
Which one?
Ach! I lost count!
Ach! I lost count!
Which one?
Lectures from Germans about Brexit. Yes probably because yet again UK will be the ONE major European country Germany will not be able to dominate.
Shame about France and the others Not really) who have still unwittingly given control of their country to ECB (aka Germany)
Check out how efficient Germany was building their flagship airport at Berlin. 10 years late and as much over budget. Same as most of their public infrastructure – to say nothing of Merkels disasterous energy policy
Do Germans realise that Merkel dropped the whole continent in it with her energy policy?
Hahaha, yes I can totally imagine that! A friend of mine who comes from Berlin but lives in the UK is forever posting on social media about how terrible the UK is, how chaotic, how dumb Brexit was and how “Germans just do it better”…yes, the person who comes from a city that can’t even conduct its own election. They’re in a massive state of denial.
The figures may be inaccurate but prpbably aren’t in order-of-magnitude terms: supposedly something like €2trn of European GDP was dependent on around €20bn of gas imports.
If only there were a word for the happiness I feel on witnessing another’s misfortune…
Did he mention the war?
Lectures from Germans about Brexit. Yes probably because yet again UK will be the ONE major European country Germany will not be able to dominate.
Shame about France and the others Not really) who have still unwittingly given control of their country to ECB (aka Germany)
Check out how efficient Germany was building their flagship airport at Berlin. 10 years late and as much over budget. Same as most of their public infrastructure – to say nothing of Merkels disasterous energy policy
Do Germans realise that Merkel dropped the whole continent in it with her energy policy?
Hahaha, yes I can totally imagine that! A friend of mine who comes from Berlin but lives in the UK is forever posting on social media about how terrible the UK is, how chaotic, how dumb Brexit was and how “Germans just do it better”…yes, the person who comes from a city that can’t even conduct its own election. They’re in a massive state of denial.
A friend who works for a German company describes his annoyance with his colleagues; “I get endless lectures about Brexit, the chaos of the UK and how Germany does everything better. Their self-confidence is amazing. When I mention their disastrous foreign and energy policies and their treatment of the southern EU they look at me in genuine astonishment. They seem oblivious to the idea they could possibly do anything wrong. And this is a country still highly reliant on the fax machine.”
When politicians (especially in the EU itself) make a career of being the most ‘politiciany’ you end up with with a load of actors in charge, rather than doers. ‘Doing stuff’ is now seen by politicians as risky for their continued performances, but their ineffectiveness is exposed once the ‘good times’ run into difficulties.
Perhaps Populism really does arise from the failures of The Powers That Be? Who knew? Who cared? Until now.
“their ineffectiveness is exposed once the ‘good times’ run into difficulties.”
Yes, they’re simply not up to it. That’s not just Germany. What do we do about it?
Edit: the terrible thing is they haven’t been able to capitalise on the good times and there’s nothing to act as a buffer against the tough times.
Term Limits.
That is the answer. The Lobbyists own the politicians, the corporate capture becomes almost complete given enough time.
Term Limits.
That is the answer. The Lobbyists own the politicians, the corporate capture becomes almost complete given enough time.
“their ineffectiveness is exposed once the ‘good times’ run into difficulties.”
Yes, they’re simply not up to it. That’s not just Germany. What do we do about it?
Edit: the terrible thing is they haven’t been able to capitalise on the good times and there’s nothing to act as a buffer against the tough times.
When politicians (especially in the EU itself) make a career of being the most ‘politiciany’ you end up with with a load of actors in charge, rather than doers. ‘Doing stuff’ is now seen by politicians as risky for their continued performances, but their ineffectiveness is exposed once the ‘good times’ run into difficulties.
Perhaps Populism really does arise from the failures of The Powers That Be? Who knew? Who cared? Until now.
Not just the UK then.
Indeed not. I find it remarkable that Remain voters, who often congratulate themselves on their alleged greater awareness of European countries, are so oblivious of what is going on there. I have recently undergone a 3 hour operation in St George’s, Tooting. The staff were efficency and kindness personified. From diagnosis to operation was 9 weeks. Yes, the NHS has problems. Yes, it needs reform. But there is a tendency in Britain to catastrophise and to think that everything we do is bad, and everything other countries, especially in the EU, do is better. Accurate reporting on “foreign affairs” in Britain in the MSM is sadly lacking. Probably because of poor language skills.
Catastrophe is the name of the game. A headline on BBC NI today is “NI Health Service pressure amazingly unprecedented – surgeon” . Amazingly unprecedented! It’s just the winter. Hospitals are busy but the media should have a bit of sense about this and stop trying to terrorise/propagandise the public
Catastrophe is the name of the game. A headline on BBC NI today is “NI Health Service pressure amazingly unprecedented – surgeon” . Amazingly unprecedented! It’s just the winter. Hospitals are busy but the media should have a bit of sense about this and stop trying to terrorise/propagandise the public
Indeed not. I find it remarkable that Remain voters, who often congratulate themselves on their alleged greater awareness of European countries, are so oblivious of what is going on there. I have recently undergone a 3 hour operation in St George’s, Tooting. The staff were efficency and kindness personified. From diagnosis to operation was 9 weeks. Yes, the NHS has problems. Yes, it needs reform. But there is a tendency in Britain to catastrophise and to think that everything we do is bad, and everything other countries, especially in the EU, do is better. Accurate reporting on “foreign affairs” in Britain in the MSM is sadly lacking. Probably because of poor language skills.
Not just the UK then.
The saddest part is that a third of them still trust the anti-democratic, corrupt EU.
The saddest part is that a third of them still trust the anti-democratic, corrupt EU.
“Taking democracy for granted,” may be less of a problem for Germany than actually structuring a democracy capable of reflecting the interest and wishes of the electorate, or being accountable to that electorate. The Parliament has 736 members. Only 299 of these are directly elected and accountable. The other 437 are primarily accountable to unelected party officials who have promoted their tenure. Party lists remain a preferred representation. A Committee tasked with reducing ballooning Bundestag membership recommends cutting down on directly elected representation. Pathways to unaccountable democracy are more what “Germany of all Nations,” should recognise.
“Taking democracy for granted,” may be less of a problem for Germany than actually structuring a democracy capable of reflecting the interest and wishes of the electorate, or being accountable to that electorate. The Parliament has 736 members. Only 299 of these are directly elected and accountable. The other 437 are primarily accountable to unelected party officials who have promoted their tenure. Party lists remain a preferred representation. A Committee tasked with reducing ballooning Bundestag membership recommends cutting down on directly elected representation. Pathways to unaccountable democracy are more what “Germany of all Nations,” should recognise.
There was an interesting article published by Unherd by Rob Lownie on the decline of innovative thinking in science. This was regarded as attributable to greater specialisation and bureaucratic thinking encouraging conformist funding of next step ideas rather than fundamental innovation.
I think we see this in politics where the politicians of the traditional parties are drawn from an increasingly narrow social and educational background and regard it as a career path where conformist thinking is rewarded so that current shibboleths do not get challenged. I am not sure too what extent this translates over to Germany but I suspect it does so that In the case of Germany the CDU led but SDP inclusive coalition introduced massive unfocused and demographically skewed immigration and the closing of coal and nuclear energy sources and over reliance on Russian energy that was never properly thought through but supported in a
conformist fashion by the main parties. There was insufficient intellectual challenge that allowed corruption and inefficiency to grow behind the facade of German exceptionalism.
You were going well for a while Jeremy, but most politicians have no idea, as the paradigm has shifted and what used to a dead set certainty is now just waffle.
They gave everything to business who used that largesse to screw their workforce, which happened to be most of the citizens and surprise, surprise the citizens are starting to understand that they count for nothing and are looking for alternatives.
All of the blather regarding energy supply is simply nonsense. Russia was a dependable supplier until the Americans decided that it was not and blew up the pipelines.
You are looking for enemies, but in the wrong places.
PS America is not your friend.
As a UK conservative I certainly don’t regard the US as automatically my friend and in particular deplore the introduction of the malign US originated Diversity, inclusion and equity programs here.
However, the perpetrator of the damage to the Nordstream pipeline has not been identified so attributing it to the US is still in the realm of a conspiracy theory rather than fact. Moreover the decision to move to reducing imports of oil from Russia was an EU mandated decision not one demanded by the US. Trade sanctions are regarded as a normal tactic to register disapproval short of taking steps to mobilise and the trigger for this was the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia not anything initiated by the US. Ukraine posed no threat to Russia but Putin wished to seize their rich oil and grain resources and warm sea ports for the Russian navy.
Whether oil sanctions in fact harm the EU more than Russia in fact is clearly open for debate but to suggest it is part of a US anti-European conspiracy is more likely to prompt the conspiracy speculation that you are merely a Russian troll.
No worries Jeremy, just keep that blindfold on. USA, USA here to stay, just ask the Iraqis and the Afghanis not to mention the Vietnamese. Still in Iraq, but doing what, maybe facilitating greater thievery.
If you believe that nonsense that the EU acts independently of the US I’ve got a bridge for sale. The EU politicians shit their pants when they have to think of anything beyond the sinecures that they have managed to obtain.
World peace doesn’t count for jack shit amongst those arseholes
I think most have been a bit harsh on Chris, yes his language is a bit rough but there may be more reality behind his comments that we would like to think.
The USA prefers a not too strong europe: how it tries to achieve this I leave to the academics to work out: there are many opinions and explanations on offer left right and centre.
Of course the big problem is the EU needing to become really democratic: this will be an ongoing process and hopefully (also for the benefit of the UK) will be able to achieve this. There may be some trouble ahead by populations in the street and more EU countries ignoring EU policy aspects. But that is how humanity has been fiddling ever since the beginning of our history: success, failure, success, failure, success, failure, …..
You need to read the WWII account of the Tehran Conference when Churchill, FDR, and Stalin met to divide up the world. Really – get a book on Churchill and read that section. Really… maybe then you will understand how the world is.
Basically… FDR and Stalin held the conference in private and excluded Churchill. It had been decided at the very beginning of the war that UK would de-Colonize as the price of USA arms, and at Tehran they divided up Europe with Churchill locked out. Really – read the story, it is in every book of Churchill.
FDR gave Stalin East Europe to break European Power. That was it – that was what went down. USA was going to be top Superpower. He did it by making Europe and Russia opposing forces in equal power – both for then on second rate actors. Russia greatly risen, Europe greatly diminished. Trueman continued with this.
Almost no one actually knows world history. Think of World History as being like covid – not a pandemic, but a plandemic – but all the authorities took one side, and all the Media towed the line. Truth was what you were told, not what it was actually.
Anyway – what the pipeline means is huge. Qatar and USA Gas.. The Sanctions were not for Russia’s harm – but for Europe’s. These $100,000,000,000 Biden gave to corrupt the world economies and destroy Europe and Ukraine and Russia – it was not for democracy….
The 250,000 dead and 250,000 disabled and maimed, and the 8 million refugees, and the Ukraine destroyed, and a global depression created, and Europe and UK set to big recession and their currencies devalued.. – this was not to preserve democracy like you silly sheep believe….. It is Politics by another means – it is weird and not what you believe – or could even guess the reasons – it all is a Great Game, and you are losing……badly…
You need to read the WWII account of the Tehran Conference when Churchill, FDR, and Stalin met to divide up the world. Really – get a book on Churchill and read that section. Really… maybe then you will understand how the world is.
Basically… FDR and Stalin held the conference in private and excluded Churchill. It had been decided at the very beginning of the war that UK would de-Colonize as the price of USA arms, and at Tehran they divided up Europe with Churchill locked out. Really – read the story, it is in every book of Churchill.
FDR gave Stalin East Europe to break European Power. That was it – that was what went down. USA was going to be top Superpower. He did it by making Europe and Russia opposing forces in equal power – both for then on second rate actors. Russia greatly risen, Europe greatly diminished. Trueman continued with this.
Almost no one actually knows world history. Think of World History as being like covid – not a pandemic, but a plandemic – but all the authorities took one side, and all the Media towed the line. Truth was what you were told, not what it was actually.
Anyway – what the pipeline means is huge. Qatar and USA Gas.. The Sanctions were not for Russia’s harm – but for Europe’s. These $100,000,000,000 Biden gave to corrupt the world economies and destroy Europe and Ukraine and Russia – it was not for democracy….
The 250,000 dead and 250,000 disabled and maimed, and the 8 million refugees, and the Ukraine destroyed, and a global depression created, and Europe and UK set to big recession and their currencies devalued.. – this was not to preserve democracy like you silly sheep believe….. It is Politics by another means – it is weird and not what you believe – or could even guess the reasons – it all is a Great Game, and you are losing……badly…
I think most have been a bit harsh on Chris, yes his language is a bit rough but there may be more reality behind his comments that we would like to think.
The USA prefers a not too strong europe: how it tries to achieve this I leave to the academics to work out: there are many opinions and explanations on offer left right and centre.
Of course the big problem is the EU needing to become really democratic: this will be an ongoing process and hopefully (also for the benefit of the UK) will be able to achieve this. There may be some trouble ahead by populations in the street and more EU countries ignoring EU policy aspects. But that is how humanity has been fiddling ever since the beginning of our history: success, failure, success, failure, success, failure, …..
in particular deplore the introduction of the malign US originated Diversity, inclusion and equity programs here.
I read this type of thing frequently in the comments, and it always strikes me as odd. It’s not like the US forced this on you by making it contingent for NATO funding or something. YOUR political leaders and power brokers gleefully adopted these ideas and forced them on you. Don’t blame the US.
Fair comment. A daft program introduced in the US for perhaps understandable reasons given the the history of institutional discrimination should never have been transferred to the UK with an entirely different racial history. But as you say we did it to ourselves. But it is still a malign program originating from the US so I am still unhappy it was popularised in the US, even if it was introduced here by home grown ideologues.
This wasn’t a daft program introduced by anyone and it has nothing to do with racism.
The political and technocratic elite that have been running the show for the last 15 years in the US, Britain, Europe, Canada etc are the same people. They just have different names and locations.
Johnson, Trudeau, Biden, Merkel – whoever – they’re all over-educated, under-skilled career politicians who never had real jobs and don’t know anyone outside their cloistered circle.
If you do get a maverick politician, they are soon choked out by bureaucrats who come from the same progressive, over-educated, under-skilled class of people.
They all think the same on every subject – racism, foreign policy, freedom of speech, climate change, the pandemic. And it doesn’t matter if they are Liberal, Conservative, Labour, Democrat. They’re all hd same.
This wasn’t a daft program introduced by anyone and it has nothing to do with racism.
The political and technocratic elite that have been running the show for the last 15 years in the US, Britain, Europe, Canada etc are the same people. They just have different names and locations.
Johnson, Trudeau, Biden, Merkel – whoever – they’re all over-educated, under-skilled career politicians who never had real jobs and don’t know anyone outside their cloistered circle.
If you do get a maverick politician, they are soon choked out by bureaucrats who come from the same progressive, over-educated, under-skilled class of people.
They all think the same on every subject – racism, foreign policy, freedom of speech, climate change, the pandemic. And it doesn’t matter if they are Liberal, Conservative, Labour, Democrat. They’re all hd same.
Fair comment. A daft program introduced in the US for perhaps understandable reasons given the the history of institutional discrimination should never have been transferred to the UK with an entirely different racial history. But as you say we did it to ourselves. But it is still a malign program originating from the US so I am still unhappy it was popularised in the US, even if it was introduced here by home grown ideologues.
The US is/was the ONLY country with an interest in destroying Nordstream, which, incidentally, they had vehemently opposed from the start and vowed to put an end to. Biden openly said so, with Olaf Scholz standing right next to him, smiling sheepishly.
.. maybe be better to describe it as a “theory” – rather than a “conspiracy theory”. The latter is usually just the left-wingers way to imply someone is a fantasist.
No worries Jeremy, just keep that blindfold on. USA, USA here to stay, just ask the Iraqis and the Afghanis not to mention the Vietnamese. Still in Iraq, but doing what, maybe facilitating greater thievery.
If you believe that nonsense that the EU acts independently of the US I’ve got a bridge for sale. The EU politicians shit their pants when they have to think of anything beyond the sinecures that they have managed to obtain.
World peace doesn’t count for jack shit amongst those arseholes
in particular deplore the introduction of the malign US originated Diversity, inclusion and equity programs here.
I read this type of thing frequently in the comments, and it always strikes me as odd. It’s not like the US forced this on you by making it contingent for NATO funding or something. YOUR political leaders and power brokers gleefully adopted these ideas and forced them on you. Don’t blame the US.
The US is/was the ONLY country with an interest in destroying Nordstream, which, incidentally, they had vehemently opposed from the start and vowed to put an end to. Biden openly said so, with Olaf Scholz standing right next to him, smiling sheepishly.
.. maybe be better to describe it as a “theory” – rather than a “conspiracy theory”. The latter is usually just the left-wingers way to imply someone is a fantasist.
“How much evidence is required before it is clear that Western Civilization is empty of integrity, judgment, reason, morality, empathy, compassion, self-awareness, truth, empty of everything that Western Civilization once respected?
All that is left of the West is insouciance and unrestrained evil.”
~Paul Craig Roberts, former Undersecretary Of Treasury, Reagan Administration
As a UK conservative I certainly don’t regard the US as automatically my friend and in particular deplore the introduction of the malign US originated Diversity, inclusion and equity programs here.
However, the perpetrator of the damage to the Nordstream pipeline has not been identified so attributing it to the US is still in the realm of a conspiracy theory rather than fact. Moreover the decision to move to reducing imports of oil from Russia was an EU mandated decision not one demanded by the US. Trade sanctions are regarded as a normal tactic to register disapproval short of taking steps to mobilise and the trigger for this was the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia not anything initiated by the US. Ukraine posed no threat to Russia but Putin wished to seize their rich oil and grain resources and warm sea ports for the Russian navy.
Whether oil sanctions in fact harm the EU more than Russia in fact is clearly open for debate but to suggest it is part of a US anti-European conspiracy is more likely to prompt the conspiracy speculation that you are merely a Russian troll.
“How much evidence is required before it is clear that Western Civilization is empty of integrity, judgment, reason, morality, empathy, compassion, self-awareness, truth, empty of everything that Western Civilization once respected?
All that is left of the West is insouciance and unrestrained evil.”
~Paul Craig Roberts, former Undersecretary Of Treasury, Reagan Administration
Bang on thanks !
You were going well for a while Jeremy, but most politicians have no idea, as the paradigm has shifted and what used to a dead set certainty is now just waffle.
They gave everything to business who used that largesse to screw their workforce, which happened to be most of the citizens and surprise, surprise the citizens are starting to understand that they count for nothing and are looking for alternatives.
All of the blather regarding energy supply is simply nonsense. Russia was a dependable supplier until the Americans decided that it was not and blew up the pipelines.
You are looking for enemies, but in the wrong places.
PS America is not your friend.
Bang on thanks !
There was an interesting article published by Unherd by Rob Lownie on the decline of innovative thinking in science. This was regarded as attributable to greater specialisation and bureaucratic thinking encouraging conformist funding of next step ideas rather than fundamental innovation.
I think we see this in politics where the politicians of the traditional parties are drawn from an increasingly narrow social and educational background and regard it as a career path where conformist thinking is rewarded so that current shibboleths do not get challenged. I am not sure too what extent this translates over to Germany but I suspect it does so that In the case of Germany the CDU led but SDP inclusive coalition introduced massive unfocused and demographically skewed immigration and the closing of coal and nuclear energy sources and over reliance on Russian energy that was never properly thought through but supported in a
conformist fashion by the main parties. There was insufficient intellectual challenge that allowed corruption and inefficiency to grow behind the facade of German exceptionalism.
The Germans and most of Europe is fucked as the US is using the war in Ukraine to de-industrialise the continent and their political leadership is going along with it. The destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines should have been a massive warning to the Europeans but they have merely shrugged their shoulders and kept on with their slow motion economic suicide.
It is no wonder that their populations are pissed off. Plenty of money to blow things up in Ukraine but little to ease the pressures created by their own economic war via the sanctions.
The public don’t even realise that they are involved but they have been duped for years . The Russians, Chinese and American leadership amongst others, know what is going on but the public in the West is totally oblivious and the political leadership daren’t even think about what they see before their very eyes, so are in massive denial. It won’t end well even if the nuclear war is averted.
Not everyone in the US is oblivious. Many of us know the war in Ukraine is a money laundering operation for politicians and their confrères. We vote – our only recourse – but that basic act of self-determination is no longer a factor, having been completely corrupted by all “sides” of the political class.
Not everyone in the US is oblivious. Many of us know the war in Ukraine is a money laundering operation for politicians and their confrères. We vote – our only recourse – but that basic act of self-determination is no longer a factor, having been completely corrupted by all “sides” of the political class.
The Germans and most of Europe is fucked as the US is using the war in Ukraine to de-industrialise the continent and their political leadership is going along with it. The destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines should have been a massive warning to the Europeans but they have merely shrugged their shoulders and kept on with their slow motion economic suicide.
It is no wonder that their populations are pissed off. Plenty of money to blow things up in Ukraine but little to ease the pressures created by their own economic war via the sanctions.
The public don’t even realise that they are involved but they have been duped for years . The Russians, Chinese and American leadership amongst others, know what is going on but the public in the West is totally oblivious and the political leadership daren’t even think about what they see before their very eyes, so are in massive denial. It won’t end well even if the nuclear war is averted.
Hmm. Seems to be a lot of this going around these days – across the west.
Hmm. Seems to be a lot of this going around these days – across the west.
They should be annoyed as their leadership is actively destroying their own country in their indulgent involvement in the Ukraine civil war.
To be trusted leaders need to be trustworthy and this lot aren’t as they turn a blind eye to what is obvious to anyone with a critical eye, especially after the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline. The US is destroying the German industrial base and the German politicians don’t want to know.
They should be annoyed as their leadership is actively destroying their own country in their indulgent involvement in the Ukraine civil war.
To be trusted leaders need to be trustworthy and this lot aren’t as they turn a blind eye to what is obvious to anyone with a critical eye, especially after the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline. The US is destroying the German industrial base and the German politicians don’t want to know.
You could almost feel sorry for politicians these days (I said *almost*!). They are hamstrung whichever way they turn it’s as if the political landscape is shifting beneath their feet. These are the times we are living through and we watch and wait, wondering what is going to emerge, and we may very well look back on these days as the good old times.
They are all volunteers Dermot wanting to run your life so I have very little pity. I really hope that these aren’t the days the days that will be held as the good old days as something better beckons but no-one is blazing the path, least of all the fuckers that crawled over everyone else to grab the job.
They are all volunteers Dermot wanting to run your life so I have very little pity. I really hope that these aren’t the days the days that will be held as the good old days as something better beckons but no-one is blazing the path, least of all the fuckers that crawled over everyone else to grab the job.
You could almost feel sorry for politicians these days (I said *almost*!). They are hamstrung whichever way they turn it’s as if the political landscape is shifting beneath their feet. These are the times we are living through and we watch and wait, wondering what is going to emerge, and we may very well look back on these days as the good old times.