PopCons...
This sounds like a dangerous group...
https://nation.cymru/news/truss-warns-of-left-wing-extremists-as-she-urges-secret-tories-to-galvanise/
https://nation.cymru/news/truss-warns-of-left-wing-extremists-as-she-urges-secret-tories-to-galvanise/
Comments
In a sense, all tories are dangerous, being given over wholly to furthering their own interests, and caring nothing for the poor and disadvantaged they have so sorely afflicted - and are still afflicting...
Pass the PopCon please…
There seem to be quite a few of these *We're the real Conservatives* groups springing up at the moment, presumably on account of the amount of bullshit flying about...
Meanwhile, Marina Hyde's take on The PopCons and The Lettuce (coming soon to a pantomime venue near you...):
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/06/liz-truss-popcons-tory-lettuce
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4
🤣🤣
The Popular Conservatives
The People's Conservatives
The Conservative Peoples Front
The Popular Front of Conservatives
The Unpopular Arse of Conservatives
The Lettuce Pray For Global Britain Conservatives...
SPLITTERS!!
Is there a topic for debate here? If anyone wants to debate the OP, or pick up on anything in the article linked by @Bishops Finger carry on.
If anyone simply wants to rant about the Tories, there is an existing thread in Hell.
North East Quine, Purgatory host
Amen, Alan, @Alan Cresswell that is. May it be as you have said.
It looks like she expects to have at least one international partner in a malevolant cahooterie. Wonder what their private phone calls have been like. So great. So great.
Pray for a lever and a fulcrum like Mount Nyiragongo.
And a coalition of someones with the guts to use them.
I was hoping for a serious consideration of the dangerous rise of this sort of popularism, yes.
Maybe it's early days, and forthcoming byelections and/or local elections might bear out the Mad Lettuce's assertion that her brand of popularism is what The People™ really want.
Some do, no doubt, but enough to make a difference to the political complexion of the country?
Surely if the last few years have taught us anything, it's that the potential power of swivel-eyed loonery should not be underestimated.
@Bishops Finger take it seriously.
Eight years ago I watched the primary election in the U.S with absolute disbelief. We Americans may be off kilter, but I never imagined my nation had completely gone off it's rocker. And here we are again with the [redacted for legal reasons] 45th president attempting to be the 47th and with great support from the people who count -- the ones with money and votes.
I am still aghast. And I have no idea how to counter the thinking that draws voters to candidates like him, and which makes those voters look at decent (or even less terrible) candidates with suspicion. A man [redacted for legal reasons] sexual abuse, defamation, falsifying business records, paying hush money, and on and on. has the monitary and moral support of "his" party.
TAKE IT SERIOUSLY.
Removed defamation risk material. BroJames, Purgatory Host.
I hear what you say, but I meant that, at the moment here in the UK, it's hard to take Liz The Lettuce and her fellow-loons seriously.
I totally agree with you about the situation you find yourselves in on your side of the Pond.
This is sadly, alas, all too true. Again, I was referring to the Mad Salad Ingredient, but there are lots of others like her...
Apologies for not having made myself clearer! However, it would be interesting to know just what proportion of the electorate might be prepared to support Insane Vegetables in their quest for World Domination. Shipmates who are far better informed about political affairs (and affinities) in this country will have some ideas, no doubt.
Now that I have typed all that I realize the common use of the phrase is giving actual loons a bad name. They are among my favourite birds and I love their haunting calls. The human variety, on the other hand ....
I can only petition the gods of Pegāna to implore MĀNA-YOOD-SUSHA̅I̅ to wake up, and do something:
The chief of the gods of Pegāna is MĀNA-YOOD-SUSHA̅I̅, who created the other gods and then fell asleep; when he wakes, he "will make again new gods and other worlds, and will destroy the gods whom he hath made." Men may pray to "all the gods but one"; only the gods themselves may pray to MĀNA-YOOD-SUSHA̅I̅.
(From the stories of Lord Dunsany)
There's that, but there's also the way a credulous press will take swivel-eyed loons' self-serving claims to be the true representatives of "Real Americans Britons" as serious and legitimate. One of the most frustrating things about the American press during the 2016 election cycle was their "kid gloves" approach to Donald Trump generally, and especially to any scandal involving Trump.
It's about force - momentum. One little leaf by herself can't do much. When masses and masses of salad units join in, attracted by the recipe; all moving in the same direction; well, that can be more powerful than anyone imagined.
Yes, it's dangerous in the extreme to say *it couldn't happen here*...
North East Quine, Purgatory Host
Perhaps, but if you have to spend a lot of time explaining to folks how popular you are, you probably aren't.
Oops.
My bad.
I thought we were in Hell - apologies, and point taken!
The difference in the UK is that the press are not so much credulous as active enablers. Media is concentrated largely in a single city, involves a few hundred people who have long standing professional and personal relationships with the political class and is concentrated in a small number of organisations such that the average journalist isn't to have a successful career unless they are willing - at some point - to work for Murdoch or worse.
Not noticing things and knowing which questions your managers may not want to know the answers to are skills that I suspect come early.
The 'pop con' conference was fronted by a director from the IEA, and representatives of his and related Atlas Network organisations are rarely off the airwaves.
I'm not sure there's that much of a difference between British and American media, at least in this regard. I've always thought that one of the under-explored factors in the recent rightward trend in certain Anglophone countries (U.S., U.K., Australia) has been because these are the places with a strong Murdoch media presence.
Thing is, even if you strip out the Sun, Times and Sky, the UK still has a press dominated by the extreme right. The Daily Mail is a byword for neo-fascist scaremongering, and the Daily Telegraph and Daily Express are as bad. GB"News" isn't Murdoch but it's still a mouthpiece for the nastiest bits of the right.
As per @Arethosemyfeet above; in the UK right wing media doesn't start and end with Murdoch, there's the Telegraph Group (who also own the Spectator), DMG and Reach (who own the Express and a large chunk of all local papers), between them owning 90% of all print media by circulation.
As for popularity, it is not necessarily a Good Thing. I can think of many people over the years who were immensely popular for a time but who went on to commit crimes against humanity. Nero was extremely popular at one time, as was Caligula. (Neatly avoiding some pretty obvious 20th-century cases.)
I think brain damage from leaded petrol and other pollutants among older generations is a more likely culprit - it's been implicated in violent crime so it's not much of a stretch to think it might be associated with an increased tendency towards reactionary views of this kind (particularly the nastier end of anti-immigrant rhetoric).
Yep.
Sorry. I also thought we were in Hell.
Not in what passes for mainstream politics, no. There are some "honest we're not racists" racist parties of that ilk but they're tiny.