Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation are absolutely essential reading. You don't have to read the whole thing to get a very clear sense of what they are about. Just go to their website and have a look around. They make the German Nazi party look positively disorganised in the detail of their planning. I somehow got myself on their mailing list and they have not backed off one iota.
Anyone still pretending that America is coming back from this anytime soon is deluded. It will get worse before it gets better, despite the amazing people in Minneapolis.
The Telegraph is a flashing red light warning us how easy it would be for the same thing to happen here. We have all the ingredients, minus the guns and religion
It used to be quite a respectable paper, back in the day...slanted conservative, but not lying. It became a propaganda rag after the Barclay twins bought it and has been that since.
Back in the day… me & the lads on the adventure playground used to buy the Telegraph occasionally just to see what the opposition were up to, it was a good counter-point to the Grauniad, New Society etc, and it had a pretty cool crossword which we could actually finish.
Having dumped any pretence of being a sensible organ years ago, I dumped it, but I suspect I need to read this article. Bugger!
"I can’t help but feel that the shift from right-wing aligned publication to full-on propaganda for the right mouthpiece is complete." And the Daily Telegraph has just been taken over by the Daily Mail. Coincidence...?
Many years ago my father read the Telegraph & the Express (when it was still a broadsheet)he did carry on with Express for a while, he was a Conservative but he would be turning in his grave if he could see what has happened to both the Tory party & the papers. His daughters became Labour & Green voters, rebellion on our parts at first I’m sure but we haven’t really changed our views as we’ve become retirees. Project 2025 is extremely worrying & I find the world scary atm as believe it will have to go through a devastating upheaval which with climate change may never be able to recover from, unlike after WWII. I spent a worrying 15 mins earwigging someone’s conversation yesterday whilst at a cafe, a women of about 60 proceeded to tell her friend she didn’t have an interest in politics & never did but went on to give the reasons she was a reform voter. Her reasoning IMO was not sound or rational or even based on facts. The friend couldn’t understand why someone wealthy (house over a million) she knew were Labour voters, they said they voted Labour for the benefit of others not just themselves. She couldn’t understand that sentiment at all. I think we are doomed but won’t give up.
I'd be really interested to hear more about that lady's reasons for voting Reform. You say that they're not sound or rational or based in facts - this is what makes it actually really interesting to me
Aye. I feel like we need to be careful about dismissing Reform supporters' reasoning. They might seem irrational to us. However, they are rational to Reform supporters. Farage has correctly identified a weakness in the political philosophy of the UK's main parties; they ignore the needs of the majority of the electorate.
The fact that Farage has no interest in meeting those needs is irrelevant. He is the only one responding to the concerns of the 'left-behind', the 'just-about-managing', and those who see fewer opportunities for their children than their generation had. Ultimately, Farage wants to build a UK that will make those voters look back on the last 15 years with envy. His vision is of a hyper-libertarian nation that protects wealth and screw the rest.
Like you, though, I'm really interested in what Reform voters find appealing about him. Why do I find him viscerally nauseating, whilst they see him as the second coming of Margaret Thatcher (ignoring the damage she did)? I don't have an answer, but I can only reach one by learning more.
I am so glad you are mentioning Project 2025. The media at large all seem happy to concentrate on T's increasing levels of madness and unpredictability. And yes, there is that. But the core of his actions come straight out of the P2025 playbook and this needs to be said afresh, again and again. This is how the Heritage F. is able to get away with this kind of seemingly benign but dangerous bollocksery.
Dear Bear, I thought that you were taking a break. I can’t understand how the masses who protest are the ones labelled mentally unstable because I think that the right wing propagandists are the mental ones and those who protest are normal.
In an peculiar sort of manner, I regret the morphing of the Telegraph from serious (and respected) old school right wing newspaper to gaslighting propaganda organ of Reform, todays's Tory party and christo-fascist think-tanks. 30-40 years ago when my father used to take it, one could at least use it as "opposition research". Today it's only useful for wrapping fish. In 2025 it was forcee by IPSO to print more that 150 corrections to stories it had published (or in sme cases simply made up).
As an aside Bear, I emailed you at your gmail address regarding a reader contribution.
My father (a former foreign correspondent in London) said that the Telegraph used to have the best international coverage. That changed some time ago, alas.
The Telegraph, Heritage Foundation and their associated think tanks and mouth pieces are on a long term, carefully planned and incredibly well funded mission to restore a system of government that was current a very long time ago.
In which the rich and powerful rule and sequester the vast majority of a nation’s wealth.
And the rest are left with scraps.
Richard J Murphy discusses this of late on his YouTube channel.
Well worth a watch provided your blood pressure meds are up to it.
Excellent breakdown of how the rhetorical strategy works here. The asymmetry between treating protest as existential threat while rendering state violence "regrettable" is classic authoritarian prep work. I remmeber seeing similar framings during the HK protests where Beijing-aligned media collapsed legitimate dissent into "mob chaos" while police violence got softed into "maintaining order." The bit about sanitzing the civil rights movement is particularly insidious bc it weaponizes MLK's legacy to delegitimize tactics he actually used.
In all honesty, Iratus, I feel like I'm stepping into a peculiar place. Like you, I've been watching the evolution of our present situation with a sense of growing unease, then incredulity, and now ... Well, now I don't know where I'm at. What I find disturbing, though, is that I'm becoming increasingly unemotional. I know that sounds peculiar, but bear with me (sorry, I know ...).
So many people are focusing on events and comments right now, drawing parallels with historical events and trying to use them. It's hardly surprising that the right is pushing back. For decades now, the Third Reich has been portrayed as the worst we have ever seen in human history, not just 20th-century history.
In and of itself, that is peculiar when you consider that Stalin killed far more, at a greater pace, and more efficiently than the National Socialists did under Hitler. The Ukrainian famine alone makes Hitler and his minions look like rank amateurs. As for show trials and the eradication of political enemies, Putin is taking his lesson from a man who wrote the rule book on disinformation and propaganda, with tools no more sophisticated than a light bulb and a sharp knife. AI-generated imagery has nothing on what the Cheka achieved with what was essentially 19th-century technology.
Why is this draining me of emotionality? Right now, we need to pause and consider which lessons we should learn. The right has learned that any linkage between them and the Nazis would be politically devastating. Hence the 'right-washing'. Charlie Kirk was a religiously motivated patriot, fighting for "truth, justice and the American way." His assassin (pop-quiz: name the man who shot Kirk, who attempted to kill Trump, who killed Kennedy) was a left-wing fanatic.
That's the new narrative, just as it was in the 1930s. Reds are still the ultimate bogeymen. Far easier now that Russia is holding Europe ransom and China is ripping off America. It's the same here in the UK. Those objecting to the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza are condemned for hateful, anti-semitic language. Supporters are painted as 'useful, left-wing idiots'.
This is precisely where the mistake in opposing the disturbing political and social forces lies at this time. Ramping up the emotionality, basing our response on that, deprives us of so much. First and foremost, our intellect. It's well established that cognitive function is depleted when emotions run riot, especially primal ones such as anger. Secondly, it hands power to those we oppose. They want to see us outraged; they yearn for it. Like the school-yard bullies of yore (and today), they revel in watching the supposedly rational 'lose their sh**'.
One thing we need to learn from history is to adapt lessons to our present age. The Nazi's would not achieve power through the methods they employed in today's climate precisely because they used them in their own age. We need to allow for that, recognise the ways in which they would have adapted their approaches.
That is exactly what the 'new right' has done. Farage is not an 'out-and-out racist' because he knows that is unacceptable. He is, however, xenophobic and bigoted. He gets away with it because he frames it as rationality, just as Hitler did back in his day, just as Trump has in America. It's about the 'little man' once again. In the 1930s, it was Jews and Communists. Today, it is migrants and 'leftists'. It amounts to the same thing. Reframing it, makes it difficult to undermine this, though, particularly when an emotional response forms the backdrop.
The likes of the Telegraph, Facebook, Twitter, the Mail, GBNews, and the other media channels are both useful idiots and enablers. Tackling the weaponisation of discourse requires a measured response. Emotionality is useful, but only after deliberation. Righteous anger is based on consideration of circumstances. That said, it is all the more infuriating when it is hidden behind an impassive face.
I haven’t bought (or read) a daily newspaper since the 1990’s. I suppose they have always been biased toward their owners worldview - even if they “thought” they were on the right side. To be honest, I do wonder how much time I spend in the echo chamber of “alternative” news, and how it is any different to those with an opposite view. There may be no unbiased reporting anymore, and I suspect there never was…really.
Having said all that, I heartily agree with your assessment of the situation as it stands, and will do whatever I can to stop things from going even further off course. Be well Bear!
I used to read what was then nicknamed the Torygraph but it has turned into Reform Daily with what I consider to be disgraceful articles in regular appearance. Pure Trump style propaganda sheet. The USA constitution does indeed contain checks and balances that should work except that the judiciary is not neutral at SCOTUS level. It does, in my view, need two major amendments. The first is to exclude huge donations by corporate or individual donors and to scrap the electoral college votes that appear to be a feature left over from the Magna Carta when the Barons didn't trust the unwashed to know how to vote. If they had not done that, they might have lost their tax cut. Meanwhile, in the UK, too many seem to be falling for the undeliverable promises and disgusting blame game.
Let's hope that there are enough people in America that are seeing through this revolting propaganda for what it is.
The stage has been set here, by Farage and Tommy Ten Names types, for this sort of bilge to settle in murky puddles in our own political landscape. Not a cheery thought.
Let's hope there are enough people in the UK to see this revolting propaganda for what it is! Reform surged in the polls last December. I've not seen recent polls.
Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation are absolutely essential reading. You don't have to read the whole thing to get a very clear sense of what they are about. Just go to their website and have a look around. They make the German Nazi party look positively disorganised in the detail of their planning. I somehow got myself on their mailing list and they have not backed off one iota.
Anyone still pretending that America is coming back from this anytime soon is deluded. It will get worse before it gets better, despite the amazing people in Minneapolis.
The Telegraph is a flashing red light warning us how easy it would be for the same thing to happen here. We have all the ingredients, minus the guns and religion
It occurs to me that Project 2025 is what you'd get if you asked a bunch of management consultants to turn Hitler's Mein Kampf into a business plan
It used to be quite a respectable paper, back in the day...slanted conservative, but not lying. It became a propaganda rag after the Barclay twins bought it and has been that since.
Back in the day… me & the lads on the adventure playground used to buy the Telegraph occasionally just to see what the opposition were up to, it was a good counter-point to the Grauniad, New Society etc, and it had a pretty cool crossword which we could actually finish.
Having dumped any pretence of being a sensible organ years ago, I dumped it, but I suspect I need to read this article. Bugger!
"I can’t help but feel that the shift from right-wing aligned publication to full-on propaganda for the right mouthpiece is complete." And the Daily Telegraph has just been taken over by the Daily Mail. Coincidence...?
Many years ago my father read the Telegraph & the Express (when it was still a broadsheet)he did carry on with Express for a while, he was a Conservative but he would be turning in his grave if he could see what has happened to both the Tory party & the papers. His daughters became Labour & Green voters, rebellion on our parts at first I’m sure but we haven’t really changed our views as we’ve become retirees. Project 2025 is extremely worrying & I find the world scary atm as believe it will have to go through a devastating upheaval which with climate change may never be able to recover from, unlike after WWII. I spent a worrying 15 mins earwigging someone’s conversation yesterday whilst at a cafe, a women of about 60 proceeded to tell her friend she didn’t have an interest in politics & never did but went on to give the reasons she was a reform voter. Her reasoning IMO was not sound or rational or even based on facts. The friend couldn’t understand why someone wealthy (house over a million) she knew were Labour voters, they said they voted Labour for the benefit of others not just themselves. She couldn’t understand that sentiment at all. I think we are doomed but won’t give up.
I'd be really interested to hear more about that lady's reasons for voting Reform. You say that they're not sound or rational or based in facts - this is what makes it actually really interesting to me
Thank you.
Aye. I feel like we need to be careful about dismissing Reform supporters' reasoning. They might seem irrational to us. However, they are rational to Reform supporters. Farage has correctly identified a weakness in the political philosophy of the UK's main parties; they ignore the needs of the majority of the electorate.
The fact that Farage has no interest in meeting those needs is irrelevant. He is the only one responding to the concerns of the 'left-behind', the 'just-about-managing', and those who see fewer opportunities for their children than their generation had. Ultimately, Farage wants to build a UK that will make those voters look back on the last 15 years with envy. His vision is of a hyper-libertarian nation that protects wealth and screw the rest.
Like you, though, I'm really interested in what Reform voters find appealing about him. Why do I find him viscerally nauseating, whilst they see him as the second coming of Margaret Thatcher (ignoring the damage she did)? I don't have an answer, but I can only reach one by learning more.
I am so glad you are mentioning Project 2025. The media at large all seem happy to concentrate on T's increasing levels of madness and unpredictability. And yes, there is that. But the core of his actions come straight out of the P2025 playbook and this needs to be said afresh, again and again. This is how the Heritage F. is able to get away with this kind of seemingly benign but dangerous bollocksery.
Dear Bear, I thought that you were taking a break. I can’t understand how the masses who protest are the ones labelled mentally unstable because I think that the right wing propagandists are the mental ones and those who protest are normal.
In an peculiar sort of manner, I regret the morphing of the Telegraph from serious (and respected) old school right wing newspaper to gaslighting propaganda organ of Reform, todays's Tory party and christo-fascist think-tanks. 30-40 years ago when my father used to take it, one could at least use it as "opposition research". Today it's only useful for wrapping fish. In 2025 it was forcee by IPSO to print more that 150 corrections to stories it had published (or in sme cases simply made up).
As an aside Bear, I emailed you at your gmail address regarding a reader contribution.
My father (a former foreign correspondent in London) said that the Telegraph used to have the best international coverage. That changed some time ago, alas.
Quite honestly, I wouldn’t even eat fish out of it! It’s not even fit to wrap rotten fish in for the bin!
The Telegraph, Heritage Foundation and their associated think tanks and mouth pieces are on a long term, carefully planned and incredibly well funded mission to restore a system of government that was current a very long time ago.
In which the rich and powerful rule and sequester the vast majority of a nation’s wealth.
And the rest are left with scraps.
Richard J Murphy discusses this of late on his YouTube channel.
Well worth a watch provided your blood pressure meds are up to it.
It used to be called feudalism
I thought of feudalism and the decided that late 17th and 18th C through to mid period was more suited.
The Regency epitomises the sequestration of wealth and wholescale political and economic suppression of the masses.
Excellent breakdown of how the rhetorical strategy works here. The asymmetry between treating protest as existential threat while rendering state violence "regrettable" is classic authoritarian prep work. I remmeber seeing similar framings during the HK protests where Beijing-aligned media collapsed legitimate dissent into "mob chaos" while police violence got softed into "maintaining order." The bit about sanitzing the civil rights movement is particularly insidious bc it weaponizes MLK's legacy to delegitimize tactics he actually used.
In all honesty, Iratus, I feel like I'm stepping into a peculiar place. Like you, I've been watching the evolution of our present situation with a sense of growing unease, then incredulity, and now ... Well, now I don't know where I'm at. What I find disturbing, though, is that I'm becoming increasingly unemotional. I know that sounds peculiar, but bear with me (sorry, I know ...).
So many people are focusing on events and comments right now, drawing parallels with historical events and trying to use them. It's hardly surprising that the right is pushing back. For decades now, the Third Reich has been portrayed as the worst we have ever seen in human history, not just 20th-century history.
In and of itself, that is peculiar when you consider that Stalin killed far more, at a greater pace, and more efficiently than the National Socialists did under Hitler. The Ukrainian famine alone makes Hitler and his minions look like rank amateurs. As for show trials and the eradication of political enemies, Putin is taking his lesson from a man who wrote the rule book on disinformation and propaganda, with tools no more sophisticated than a light bulb and a sharp knife. AI-generated imagery has nothing on what the Cheka achieved with what was essentially 19th-century technology.
Why is this draining me of emotionality? Right now, we need to pause and consider which lessons we should learn. The right has learned that any linkage between them and the Nazis would be politically devastating. Hence the 'right-washing'. Charlie Kirk was a religiously motivated patriot, fighting for "truth, justice and the American way." His assassin (pop-quiz: name the man who shot Kirk, who attempted to kill Trump, who killed Kennedy) was a left-wing fanatic.
That's the new narrative, just as it was in the 1930s. Reds are still the ultimate bogeymen. Far easier now that Russia is holding Europe ransom and China is ripping off America. It's the same here in the UK. Those objecting to the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza are condemned for hateful, anti-semitic language. Supporters are painted as 'useful, left-wing idiots'.
This is precisely where the mistake in opposing the disturbing political and social forces lies at this time. Ramping up the emotionality, basing our response on that, deprives us of so much. First and foremost, our intellect. It's well established that cognitive function is depleted when emotions run riot, especially primal ones such as anger. Secondly, it hands power to those we oppose. They want to see us outraged; they yearn for it. Like the school-yard bullies of yore (and today), they revel in watching the supposedly rational 'lose their sh**'.
One thing we need to learn from history is to adapt lessons to our present age. The Nazi's would not achieve power through the methods they employed in today's climate precisely because they used them in their own age. We need to allow for that, recognise the ways in which they would have adapted their approaches.
That is exactly what the 'new right' has done. Farage is not an 'out-and-out racist' because he knows that is unacceptable. He is, however, xenophobic and bigoted. He gets away with it because he frames it as rationality, just as Hitler did back in his day, just as Trump has in America. It's about the 'little man' once again. In the 1930s, it was Jews and Communists. Today, it is migrants and 'leftists'. It amounts to the same thing. Reframing it, makes it difficult to undermine this, though, particularly when an emotional response forms the backdrop.
The likes of the Telegraph, Facebook, Twitter, the Mail, GBNews, and the other media channels are both useful idiots and enablers. Tackling the weaponisation of discourse requires a measured response. Emotionality is useful, but only after deliberation. Righteous anger is based on consideration of circumstances. That said, it is all the more infuriating when it is hidden behind an impassive face.
I haven’t bought (or read) a daily newspaper since the 1990’s. I suppose they have always been biased toward their owners worldview - even if they “thought” they were on the right side. To be honest, I do wonder how much time I spend in the echo chamber of “alternative” news, and how it is any different to those with an opposite view. There may be no unbiased reporting anymore, and I suspect there never was…really.
Having said all that, I heartily agree with your assessment of the situation as it stands, and will do whatever I can to stop things from going even further off course. Be well Bear!
I used to read what was then nicknamed the Torygraph but it has turned into Reform Daily with what I consider to be disgraceful articles in regular appearance. Pure Trump style propaganda sheet. The USA constitution does indeed contain checks and balances that should work except that the judiciary is not neutral at SCOTUS level. It does, in my view, need two major amendments. The first is to exclude huge donations by corporate or individual donors and to scrap the electoral college votes that appear to be a feature left over from the Magna Carta when the Barons didn't trust the unwashed to know how to vote. If they had not done that, they might have lost their tax cut. Meanwhile, in the UK, too many seem to be falling for the undeliverable promises and disgusting blame game.
Terrifying.
I get the impression that his critique of Mobocracy doesn’t cover January 6? Am I right? I started reading but gave up, it seemed so one sided
Let's hope that there are enough people in America that are seeing through this revolting propaganda for what it is.
The stage has been set here, by Farage and Tommy Ten Names types, for this sort of bilge to settle in murky puddles in our own political landscape. Not a cheery thought.
Let's hope there are enough people in the UK to see this revolting propaganda for what it is! Reform surged in the polls last December. I've not seen recent polls.
All this!