If you were gullible enough to believe the the extreme-right propaganda promoted by billionaire owned rags like the Daily Mail, S*n and Express, you'd end up believing that liberals and the left are terrible bullies intent on repressing freedom-loving right-wingers like Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and Theresa May's Brexiteer squad.
The reality couldn't be more different.
Any Brit with a social media account must be familiar with the baying mob of Brexiters who insist on shouting down any effort to question what Theresa May is actually up to with insults, abuse and instructions to "shut up" and "get over it" because they simply can't tolerate anyone holding a different opinion to their own.
This savagely dictatorial mentality that wishes to silence and eradicate dissenting opinion isn't just limited to the followers of extreme-right demagogues like Farage, Trump and Le Pen. These demagogues and their inner circles also have the same intolerant attitude towards dissent and questioning.
Look at the way Marine Le Pen's thugs dragged away the journalist Paul Larrouturou for daring to ask her a question about the 300,000€ in expenses she scammed from the European Parliament and is still refusing to repay.
This is far from the only example of right-wing demagogues hatred of being held to account by the free press. Take a look at the American Spanish-language journalist Jorge Ramos being thrown out of a Trump press conference and then told to "get out of my country" by one of Trump's minions.
Consider the extraordinary propaganda war on the press from Trump and his team because they dared to point out that Obama's 2009 Inauguration crowd was bigger than Trump's in 2017.Why isn't this trending???! #TrumpsAmerica #TrumpBan pic.twitter.com/E16itne7VR— Noorlicious (@NoorAjaj) January 31, 2017
The extraordinary thing about people who have been duped by extreme-right propaganda is that they will always find reasons to justify their demagogues. It doesn't matter how many expenses they scam (even if they end up getting jailed for it), how many outright lies they tell, how much criminal activity their associates get caught up in, how much divisive rhetoric they spew, how many times they recycle Nazi propaganda techniques, how many times they disparage or violently repress journalists who dare to ask them questions - their slavish followers will always find excuses for it.
The extreme-right feed into the victim complexes of the gullible by telling them that the evil liberal elites want to silence them and remove their freedoms, whilst simultaneously violently repressing and disparaging members of the press who try to hold the extreme-right to account!
Anyone who actually thinks about things from a rational perspective couldn't possibly fall for this kind of abject hypocrisy, but unfortunately lots of people are easily swayed by emotional manipulation. Thus the extreme-right use themes like victimhood, fear and patriotism to emotionally sway their audience, and it doesn't matter how many coherent rational critiques are offered afterwards, once swayed by emotions the supporters of extreme-right demagogues are highly unlikely to be won back over by dry facts and analysis.
Even video evidence of the violent ejection of a journalist is unlikely to overcome this demagogue-worship because it's always much easier to fool a person than to convince them they've been fooled. But at least evidence like this has got a better chance than cold factual analysis if it's framed in the same kind of emotional way; as a breathtakingly hypocritical attack on freedom by a bunch of cry-bullies who constantly claim that they're the victims of censorship and persecution whilst seeking to silence and repress others.
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