One of the first world leaders Theresa May met after she was appointed Prime Minister was the fanatically right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Since then the Tory party have continued to cosy up to Orbán and his anti-Semitic, xenophobic, judiciary-rigging, free speech-attacking regime.
After Orbán retained power in the 2018 Hungarian elections which featured a massive anti-Semitic poster campaign the then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson Tweeted gushing praise for Orbán and his party.
And in September 2018 Tory MEPs in the European Parliament sided with all the exreme-right nasties in Europe (Front National, Golden Dawn, PiS, PVV, AfD, Swedish Democrats, True Finns, FPÖ, Lega Nord, and Britain's own UKIP) in order to defend Orbán's government against a motion of censure that was overwhelmingly supported by the European centre (from conservatives, through liberals to the socialists and greens).
The Tories were the only (supposedly) mainstream government in Europe to ally themselves with Orbán and the extreme-right.
Here's one of Orbán's most notorious quotes about Jews: "We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world".
Isn't it extraordinary that the mainstream media spent the entire summer digging around in Jeremy Corbyn's past to cherry-pick absurd out-of-context quotes, fixate over images of him laying a wreath (at a graveyard where none of the Munich terrorists were even buried), and even smear a Jewish Holocaust survivor as an anti-Semite to paint Corbyn as an anti-Semite ... but when yet more evidence of the Tories' active collusion with a horrifically right-wing government led by an unmistakably anti-Semetic tyrant comes to light, suddenly the mainstream media anti-Semitism guns have fallen silent?
Orbán's extremism isn't just limited to anti-Semitism either. He's continually attacked Muslims as "invaders", he's been rigging the Hungarian judiciary by stacking it with pro-government figures, he's clamped down on free speech and attacked the free press. His supporters have even drawn up a blacklist of charity workers, campaigners, journalists, academics and other public figures considered "enemies of the state".
It's quite incredible that Theresa May and the Tories have openly colluded with this vile regime right in front of our eyes, for years, safe in the knowledge that they won't be held to account for it by Britain's docile, compliant, and ridiculously right-leaning press.
Even now, when the Tories' scandalous support for this vile regime is incontestably recorded in the voting record of the European Parliament, there's nowhere near as much condemnation and noise from the people who were howling at Corbyn, and making hyperbolic accusations that Labour are an "existential threat" to Jewish people just a few weeks previously.
Instead of vehemently condemning this outrageous Tory collusion with one of the most notorious anti-Semites in Europe, the Jewish Board of Deputies expressed only "disappointment"!
Others to have whipped up the anti-Semitism furore to attack Jeremy Corbyn and undermine the momentum towards genuine democratic socialism haven't even said a word.
The day after this Tory collusion with Orbán, Jonathan Sachs stood up in the House of Lords to talk about anti-Semitism and didn't even mention it!
BBC heavyweight Andrew Neil, who has repeatedly pushed the anti-Semitism attacks against Corbyn remained silent, which is hardly surprising given his personal involvement with the Hungarian government.
All of this raises the question of how stupid and gullible they think we are.
They seem to imagine that they can manipulate us into believing that the lifelong anti-racist campaigner Jeremy Corbyn is the Jew-hater, whilst they actively turn a blind eye to Theresa May and her party repeatedly sucking up to the most notorious anti-Semite in Europe!
In reality this is such a spectacular display of over-reach that swathes of the mainstream media are permanently wrecking their own reputations.
Repeatedly trying convince people that black is white is bad enough, but then after posing as valiant anti-Semitism campaigners for the entire summer of 2018, their deafening silence on the Tory collusion with Orbán clearly exposes their political partisanship and their utter hypocrisy.
If you decide to present yourself as a valiant anti-Semitism campaigner all summer, then you'd better not turn a blind eye to it in the autumn when your political allies are up to their necks in it, otherwise you've just burned your journalistic reputation to the ground.
Anti-Semitism is a vile form of racist bigotry that needs to be confronted wherever it's found.
It's not a convenient issue to be weaponised and used as political ammunition, only to be immediately forgotten about when your political allies decide to defy the European political consensus and actively support the most notorious anti-Semite in Europe.
This political weaponisation of anti-Semitism is particularly disgusting because it cheapens the fight against anti-Semitism by making the issue seem like partisan political point scoring, rather than a serious problem that need to be confronted wherever it arises.
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Days after the Tories aligned themselves with all the extreme-right nasties in the European Parliament to vote against censure of Viktor Orbán's anti-Semitic, judiciary-rigging, free press-attacking, human rights-demolishing government in Hungary, Theresa May and the Tories are still refusing to provide a convincing explanation for their actions.
The political parties the Tory MEPs aligned themselves with include:
Fidesz - Orbán's ruling party in Hungary.
PiS - The extreme-right government in Poland that is launching similar attacks on the judiciary and the free press to Orbán.
Golden Dawn - The Greek neo-Nazis
Front National - The French extreme-right led by Marine Le Pen.
FPÖ - The Austrian extreme-right party founded by the Nazi Anton Reinthaller.
AfD - The German extreme-right anti-immigrant party.
True Finns - An anti-immigrant nationalist party in Finland.
Sweden Democrats - The Swedish extreme-right party with fascist and white supremacist origins.
Lega Nord - The Italian extreme-right who are in coalition government with the populist anti-vaxxer Five Star movement.
PVV - Geert Wilders' extreme right party in the Netherlands.
Fortunately the Tories decision to back Orbán's fanatically right-wing government failed as the motion of censure was passed by 448 - 197, just passing the 2/3 majority needed.
The Tory party were the only ruling conservative party in Europe to back Orbán, with the rest of the European conservatives joining the socialists, liberals and greens to condemn his undermining of the independence of the judiciary, his attacks on free speech and the freedom of the press, his vendetta against Hungarian civic society, his anti-Semitic smear campaigns, his anti-Muslim bigotry, and his discriminatory ethno-nationalist policies.
When the scandal initially broke Theresa May tried to wash her hands of it by claiming that she had no knowledge of how her own MEPs had voted!
This excuse is an extraordinary admission that Theresa May imagines that using her own incompetence and poor leadership as an excuse is an adequate reason for supposedly not knowing what her own MEPs are up to!
The next excuse the Tories tried was that the vote was just a technical matter rather than an endorsement of Orbán's extreme-right government, with Downing Street instructing all the Tory MEPs who sided with the extreme-right nasties to back Orbán's government to issue a tweet claiming that their vote to back Orbán's government wasn't an endorsement of Orbán's government!
This narrative is ridiculous enough in its own right, but it's truly absurd when it's viewed in the context of the Tory Foreign Secretary's gushing praise for Orbán and his extreme-right party earlier this year after they used a massive anti-Semitic poster campaign to win the Hungarian election.
There's a lot of speculation going around that the Tories deliberately aligned themselves with the European extreme-right in this way as a cynical Brexit manoeuvre to undermine the EU position in the negotiations by eliciting support from the mainly Euro-sceptic extreme-right.
If that's the case then it certainly puts their Brexiteering into perspective. They're so keen to launch a hard-right economy-tanking, environment-wrecking, workers' rights-abolishing, food standards-trashing Brexit that they'll gladly align themselves with the European extreme-right fringe to achieve it.
But don't expect Theresa May to be pressed very hard on this outrageous scandal because backing her into a corner over her party's demonstrable support for one of the most dangerous anti-Semitic bigots in Europe runs entirely counter to the prevailing mainstream media objective of steadfastly defending the neoliberal orthodoxy by vilifying Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party's return to democratic socialism under his leadership.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
Theresa May and the Tories continually use the anti-Semitism furore to distract attention away from their lamentable track record in government, but when it comes to the crunch their actions speak louder than words.
When it comes to proof of higher rates of anti-Semitism in the Tory ranks, Theresa May does nothing to weed out anti-Semitism in her own party's ranks.
When it comes to other forms of bigotry it's even worse, with the Tory party outright stonewalling calls for an inquiry into anti-Muslim bigotry in the Tory party from the Muslim Council of Britain and two Muslim Tory politicians.
But the actions of the Tory group of MEPs in the European Parliament absolutely take the biscuit, with 17 of the 19 voting against a motion of censure against Viktor Orbán's blatantly anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim government in Hungary.
The right-wing Hungarian government has been interfering in the independence of the Hungarian judiciary in order to stack it with pro-government judges, attacking press freedoms, and using anti-Semitic smear campaigns.
The European Parliament motion of censure against the Hungarian government for their attacks on the independence of the judiciary and press freedom was passed by 448 votes to 197 after the vast majority of liberal, socialist, green, and centre-right conservative MEPs supported it, but it's deeply concerning that the Tory party aligned themselves with the rag-tag bunch of extreme-right parties that opposed it.
The parties the Tories decided to side with include Orbán's own Fidesz party, UKIP, the French neo-fascists Front National, the extreme-right Italian Northern League, the Nazi-founded Swedish Democrats, and the extreme-right Polish government who are enacting similar judiciary-rigging and free speech repressing policies themselves.
Theresa May then attempted to wash her hands of this scandalous vote with claims that she was unaware of the vote, as if incompetence is somehow an excuse for her allowing members of her party to side with a judiciary-rigging, rights-quashing bunch of extreme-right anti-Semites!
So when it comes to Tories weaponising anti-Semitism in order to score points against Labour, just remember that when it comes to actions, the Tories align themselves against the political majority in Europe to stand shoulder to shoulder with the extreme-right to defend the anti-Semitic extremist Viktor Orbán!
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
There's absolutely no doubt that the extreme-right is on the rise. Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Israel have elected extreme-right ethno-nationalists into government.
In Britain it's not all Brexit voters were vile extreme-right fanatics, but there's no doubt whatever that the extreme-right demographic were numerous enough to tip the balance in favour of Leave in a very close 52%-48% referendum vote.
In the United States Donald Trump was propelled into power with the support of the KKK and the 'alt-right', and he returned the favour by appointing the alt-right ideologue Steve Bannon as his most senior adviser, and then actually claimed that the Swastika-carrying "Jews will not replace us" thugs and murderous extreme-right terrorists in Charlottsville included "some very fine people".
One of the most extraordinary things about this resurgence of fascism is that the modern extreme-right are doing little more than lazily copying tactics straight out of the Nazi propaganda playbook, presumably because they don't actually have any new ideas of their own, and just want another stab at world domination via the methods that almost succeeded for Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
The censorship fallacy
One of the most blatant examples of the modern extreme-right ripping off Nazi propaganda tactics is the continual refrain that their ideas are being censored, often expressed through sound systems on stages and glitzy websites (where the money actually comes from to pay for all of this extreme-right propaganda is the subject for another article ...).
Even worse than standing on a stage to claim that you're being silenced is the extreme-right tactic of screaming "censorship" whenever anyone else dares to use their own freedom of speech to criticise what the extreme-right fanatic was talking about.
Freedom of speech means that you're free to say whatever you like (within the bounds of the law), but it certainly doesn't provide freedom from criticism if what you chose to say was a load of absolute shite.
Just like Adolf Hitler in 1928 the modern extreme-right are pretending that their views are being unfairly censored, and if these dangerous fanatics ever did assume political power, we can be absolutely sure that their very first moves would involve launching their own clamp down on free speech and setting about the ruthless persecution of their political opponents, just like Adolf Hitler did before them.
Free speech and criminality
Of course extreme-right fanatics will immediately try to counter criticism of their victims of censorship posturing by citing Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon).
"But we are being censored" they'll wail "because our beloved Tommy has been jailed for free speech".
The problem with this "free Tommy" narrative is that it's pure deception. Yaxley-Lennon wasn't jailed for free speech, he was jailed for attempting to disrupt the prosecution of child sex abuse gangs as a personal publicity stunt.
He risked collapsing several linked trials and freeing monstrous child sex abusers, he did it as a publicity stunt despite having been previously warned to stop disrupting trials by judges, and he pleaded guilty to the crimes he was charged with.
The fundamental deceit here is the claim that free speech gives people a blanket right to say and do whatever they like, but that's not how free speech works. Nobody is free to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre, nobody is free to threaten to rape or kill people when they disagree with them, and nobody is free to deliberately disrupt child sex abuse trials for their own personal advantage.
Anyone who pretends that free speech does cover these things is simply misusing the term to excuse criminal behaviour.
Victim complexing
One of the most effective extreme-right propaganda techniques is victim complexing, which constitutes an effort to instil extreme levels of self-pity within the victims of their propaganda.
Pretending that certain minority groups are receiving favours is one way of doing it, pushing the fiction that the most privileged people in society are the biggest victims of discrimination is another, and pretending that certain political views are being banned is another.
The whole point of victim complexing is to inflate people's levels of self-pity as much as possible, because once you've got your intended audience walking around with victim complexes the size of hot air balloons, it only takes the slightest puff of wind to get them all floating in the desired direction.
Xenophobia and anti-Semitism
Stoking fear of foreigners has always been a core tactic of the extreme-right, as has anti-Semitism. It's absolutely clear that this kind of rampant xenophobia and bigotry is on the rise again.
Look at Donald Trump's use of grotesque anti-immigrant rhetoric to whip up his extreme-right base (despite the fact that his mother was an immigrant, and two of his three wives have been immigrants!).
Look at the way both Brexit campaigns used anti-immigrant fearmongering to achieve their aims (the Nazi style Leave.EU posters & the recently exposed Vote Leave campaign of highly misleading anti-immigrant fearmongering targeted social media dark ads).
Consider the wave of racism and racist attacks in Italy that have accompanied the rapid resurgence of Italian fascism there.
Consider the use of anti-immigrant rhetoric and vile anti-Semitic propaganda by the extreme-right Hungarian government of Vikton Orbán to provide cover for his ever more tyrannical and anti-democratic political agenda.
The parallels between Orbán's massive anti-Semitic poster campaign declaring the Jewish billionaire George Soros as an "enemy of the people" and the two minutes hate against Emmanuel Goldstein in George Orwell's 1984 are impossible to ignore.
Cultural Marxism
The threat of "cultural Marxism" is another fascist trope pulled straight out of the Nazi propaganda playbook.
The Nazi propaganda trope of "Kulturbolschewismus" (cultural Bolshevism) was a way of railing against modernism and progressive values.
In those days allegations of "Kulturbolschewismus" were lobbed at modern art, Bauhaus architecture, and anything resembling socially liberal values. Today the same allegation of "cultural Marxism" is used to disparage issues like gay rights, transgender rights, and gender neutrality.
Given that Marx's economic philosophy centred on exposing the inequalities and abuses of the capitalist economy, and steered well clear of architectural aesthetics and transgender issues, it's absolutely clear that the term "cultural Marxism" is just a way of invoking scary red bogeymen in order to fearmonger against progressive and modernist trends that the extreme-right see as threats to their traditionalist hyper-conformist mentality.
Normalisation of Nazi propaganda
One of the most shocking things about this resurgence of fascism is the way in which Nazi propaganda is being rapidly normalised within political discourse.
Donald Trump is the obvious example, with members of the Republican Party ever willing to excuse, or even parrot Trump's extremist rhetoric out of their desire to ride on the coat tails of his success. It's not necessary to rehabilitate the reputation of the hard-right warmonger George W. Bush to note that at least the previous Republican President never resorted to racist Trumpian anti-immigrant abuse to whip up support from the extreme-right, nor sought to impose constitution defying anti-immigrant legislation.
In Britain the story is the same. The once centre-right Tory party has passionately embraced the extreme-right, welcoming the fanatically right-wing ultranationalist blue-kip demographic into the Tory fold with open arms.
from Theresa May spewing vile anti-immigrant rhetoric, through the disgusting BNP-inspired fearmongering of the Tories' 2016 London Mayoral election campaign, to young Tories openly spreading Nazi propaganda tropes without fear of recriminations, it's absolutely clear that the Tory party has shifted so far to the right, that what was until recently the domain of the extreme-right is now considered perfectly normal and acceptable, not just among the Tory rank and file, but more worryingly, within the party leadership too.
The paradox of tolerance
We've already seen how the extreme-right resort to victim-complex crying over their freedom of speech when they are imprisoned for their lawless behaviour, or even when others use their own freedom of speech to argue back against their propaganda.
It's absolutely clear that the extreme-right want to exist in an unlimited tolerance environment where they are free from the constraints of the laws of the land, and free from any criticism of their views.
Essentially they're demanding absolute tolerance of their ever increasing use of Nazi propaganda, and their unquestionably lawless behaviour.
But as Karl Popper pointed out in 1945, "unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them".
It's hard to argue that he was wrong given that he witnessed Adolf Hitler's rise to power using the victim complexing narrative that his ideas were being unfairly censored, only to immediately set about silencing and executing all of his political opponents to create one of the most deadly and intolerant autocratic regimes in human history once he got into power.
The lessons of history
Now that the same process is repeating over again, with the modern extreme-right using the exact same propaganda tactics to spread their intolerant ideologies, it's worth remembering Winston Churchill's warning: "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it".
Now that almost all of the generation who witnessed the disgusting barbarity of fascism first hand (which obviously included Orwell, Popper and Churchill) are now dead, with the very youngest of the WWII veterans into their 90s now, it's becoming increasingly clear that the lessons of history are indeed being forgotten, and the extreme-right are perfectly prepared to use the exact same propaganda tactics as the Nazis before them in order to attack and undermine socially liberal democracy.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
Even though the Tory party have been caught out fielding two absolutely despicable local election candidates, the mainstream media focus is still firmly on Labour when it comes to anti-Semitism.
George C. Stoakley
When Pete Wilson had Tory local election propaganda shoved through his door he decided to check out what the candidates were saying on Twitter. What he found was absolutely disgusting. One of the candidates describing himself as a "libertarian Conservative" had used the phrase "sweating like a Jew in an attic" (a reference to Anne Frank) as well as a load of other bigoted extreme-right rubbish including the use of homophobic slurs, a joke about AIDS being "weaponised semen", and a call for handguns to be legalised in Britain featuring the hashtag #ArmBritain.
After the comments were exposed Stoakley locked down his Twitter account to prevent anyone else from finding incriminating evidence of his anti-Semitism and bigotry, and the Tory party have simply decided to ignore the scandal in the hope that it goes away rather than immediately suspending him and issuing an apology that such an individual was ever selected as a Tory council candidate.
Darren Harrison
Just one week previously another Tory local election candidate was exposed as being a supporter of the extreme-right white supremacist Generation Identity movement who are so extreme that their leaders have been banned from entering the UK by the Tory government.
Generation Identity is an absolute hotbed of anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry (especially Islamophobic abuse), yet the Tories saw fit to stand the active neo-Nazi fanatic and Generation Identity supporter Darren Harrison as a Conservative local election candidate in Watford.
Tory anti-Semitism
Research by the Campaign against anti-Semitism has found that anti-Semitic attitudes are far more prevalent amongst Tory supporters than Labour supporters. In fact YouGov polls have repeatedly demonstrated that anti-Semitic views are so commonplace amongst Tories that they're far more prevalent amongst Tory voters than in the general public!
Any coverage of the Labour anti-Semitism scandal should be framed in the context that Labour are actually doing something to root out anti-Semites in their ranks, while the Tories do nothing to confront anti-Semitism and bigotry in their party (other than temporarily suspending their bigots and then letting them sneak back in once the fuss dies down).
Theresa May's anti-Semitism
When Jeremy Corbyn confronted Theresa May about the devastating impact of Tory local government cuts in March 2018 Theresa May retorted with a classic whataboutery distraction focusing on the much publicised Labour anti-Semitism issue, but by stating that "there's no place in Labour for those who want to tackle anti-Semitism" she's clearly using a vile anti-Semitic trope to attack all Jewish members of the Labour Party as "self-hating Jews".
When the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom can resort to lobbing anti-Semitic tropes in order to evade responsibility for the dreadful consequences of their ruinous obsession with hard-right austerity dogma without a whisper of criticisms from the mainstream press, it suddenly becomes obvious that most of them don't give a damn about anti-Semitism, and just see the issue as a convenient stick to beat Jeremy Corbyn with.
The Tories' anti-Semitic friends
Let's not forget that the Tory party have fostered very close links with some of the most anti-Semitic governments on earth. Anti-Semitism is rife in Saudi Arabia, and the Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán just won another term in power via a profoundly anti-Semitic election campaign.
Do the Tories criticise either of these regimes?
No, they continually grovel before the Saudis begging for more arms contracts, and Boris Johnson sent Orbán a fawning congratulation Tweet on his election win saying "We look forward to working with our Hungarian friends to further develop our close partnership".
The mainstream media double standard
The Tories can field bigoted anti-Semites and neo-Nazis as their election candidates, they can grovel and fawn over some of the most anti-Semitic regimes on earth, their supporters can be found to be the most anti-Semitic of the lot on numerous occasions, and their leader can even be seen using the vile "self-hating Jew" trope in parliament, yet the mainstream media will never stand up and accuse them of anti-Semitism.
The reason is obvious. If mainstream media pundits really cared about anti-Semitism then they'd demand that Boris Johnson condemn Victor Orbán rather than cosying up to him. If they gave a damn they'd ask why the Tories keep standing anti-Semites and neo-Nazis as their election candidates. If they gave a damn they would highlight the fact that anti-Semitism is far more common amongst Tories than labour supporters, and they would have furiously condemned Theresa May for using an anti-Semitic trope in parliament.
Through their inaction they've proven conclusively that they don't actually care about anti-Semitism at all, they just see it as a convenient stick to attack Jeremy Corbyn with (despite the fact that anti-Semitic views amongst Labour supporters have fallen dramatically since he became Labour leader).
And the worst thing about this double standard?
It's the fact that when the mainstream media make a huge fuss about anti-Semitism in one political party whilst turning a total blind eye to it in another, they trivialise the fight against anti-Semitism, which remains a very serious issue in British society, alongside many other dangerous forms of bigotry such as anti-Muslim hate, racism, homophobia, misogyny, and extreme-right fanaticism - all of which are welcomed and tolerated within the Tory party.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
Robert Kimbell is a Brexit fanatic, Ukipper and Twitter celebrity. He's regularly lauded as an economics expert by the hard right, but in this article I'm going to expose the cynical cherry-picking trick he keeps using to create utterly misleading EU-bad narratives.
A quick browse through Kimbell's Twitter feed reveals his extreme Brexit bias, with links to fanatically right-wing Brexit propaganda sites like Westmonster and Brexit Central strewn amongst links to the pro-Brexit right-wing corporate media (Daily Mail, Express, Telegraph, S*n) and Retweets of numerous hard-Brexit celebrities and commentators.
Kimbell's favourite Twitter trick is to pick a country in the EU that has fallen down the global GDP ranking a little bit since their entry to the EU, and then compare them to a random country from the developing world that has risen slightly in the global GDP ranking over the same period (see screenshots).
Beware of crude GDP figures
Anyone with a bit of basic economic nous understands that relying on crude GDP figures is a surefire way of creating misleading economic narratives.
Take the talk of the so-called Tory "economic recovery" between 2010-2015 that helped them win their unexpected majority at the 2015 General Election.
It is true that the UK's GDP grew a bit between 2010 and 2015, but what the Tories omitted to mention was that nearly all of that economic growth was generated by the rising population caused by Theresa May's all-time record breaking increases in the net immigration rate.
Between 2010 and 2015 our economy was only really growing because of the all-time high levels of immigration, with the amount of economic activity per person (GDP per capita) remaining well below the level it was before the economic crisis.
Reworking the crude GDP con for Brexiteering
Kimbell's approach is that if the Tories could win a General Election by pushing a shockingly misleading crude GDP narrative, he can use the same trick to make the ongoing Brexit shambles look like a fantastic idea.
Thus he's repeatedly used comparisons of crude GDP figures on Twitter to make EU countries look like failures compared to growing economies in the developing world.
I'll go through five examples of him using this trick to show how utterly misleading his little anti-EU propaganda tropes are.
Hungary vs Bangladesh
Since Hungary joined the EU in 2004 it has fallen from 44th to 58th in the global GDP ranking. In the same time Bangladesh has risen from 57th to 46th.
What Kimbell has omitted to mention is that Bangladesh has a population of 163 million people (the 8th most populous country on earth), while Hungary has a population of 9.8 million (the 92nd most populous).
A look at the International Monetary Fund's GDP per capita figures reveal that Hungary is the 45th most prosperous country per person ($27,482), while Bangladesh is 139th ($3,891 per person).
Additionally, since 2004 the GDP per capita in Hungary has increased by over $4,000 per person (more than the entire current GDP per capita of Bangladesh), while GDP per capita in Bangladesh has increased by less than $1,400 per person.
The idea that Bangladesh is now surpassing Hungary thanks to the failure of the EU is based on a crude statistical trick that completely ignores the fact that the population of Bangladesh is over 16 times the size of Hungary, and has in fact grown by over 20 million (double the population of Hungary) since Hungary joined the EU just 13 years ago!
Luxembourg vs Oman
Since 1960 Luxembourg it has fallen from 55th to 76th in the global GDP ranking. In the same time Oman has risen from 97th to 75th.
What Kimbell has omitted to mention is that Oman has a population of 4.6 million people (the 125th most populous country on earth), while Luxembourg has a population of below 600,000 (the 166th most populous).
The question shouldn't be why has Luxemburg fallen behind Oman, but why has it taken Oman so long to catch up given their population is over seven times the size, and the large oil and natural gas reserves they've been exploiting for decades.
The International Monetary Fund's GDP per capita figures reveal that Luxembourg is the 2nd most prosperous country per person ($104,003), while Oman is 21st ($46,698 per person).
Omitting to mention the fact that Oman has a population seven times the size of Luxembourg, the fossil fuel bonanza that has fuelled Oman's climb up the GDP rankings, and the fact that the people of Luxembourg are actually the 2nd most prosperous on earth to create an EU-bad narrative are all indications of the lengths Brexiteers will go to in order to con people into supporting Brexit.
Austria vs Nigeria
Since Austria joined the EU in 1995 it has fallen from 21st to 28th in the global GDP ranking. In the same time Nigeria has risen from 57th to 27th.
Again Kimbell is using the same trick of ignoring population growth, ignoring GDP per capita, and ignoring a huge fossil fuel bonanza going on in the cherry-picked developing nation. Here are some of the stats.
Austria has a population of 8.8 million (the 96th most populous nation). Nigeria has a population of 193.5 million (the 7th most populous).
A look at the International Monetary Fund's GDP per capita figures reveal that Austria is the 19th most prosperous country per person ($48,005), while Nigeria is 126th ($5,942 per person).
Nigeria has a population over 20 times the size of Austria's, yet they've only just climbed to one place ahead of them in the crude GDP statistics, and the amount of economic activity per person in Nigeria is one eighth of the amount per person in Austria.
In fact, since 1995 the population of Nigeria has grown by 85 million people, so in order to surpass Austria by one place in the crude GDP rankings, Nigeria has had to increase its population by over 9 times the total population of Austria!
In the same period GDP per capita in Austria has grown by over $10,000 per person, an increase of almost double the current total GDP per capita in Nigeria!
The idea that wealthy Austria is somehow being held back by the EU because their economy has fallen one place behind a poverty stricken developing nation country with over 20x the population is exactly the kind of hopelessly delusional drivel that hard-right Brexiters thrive on.
Slovenia vs Angola
When Slovenia joined the EU in 2004 it had the 65th biggest economy, now it's 85th. In the same period Angola has risen from 81st to 63rd.
It's exactly the same trick again.
In 2005 (one year after Slovenia joined the EU) Angola had a population of 16.5 million, now it has a population of 28.4 million (48th in the world). In the same period the population of Slovenia has changed from 2.00 million to 2.06 million (146th).
One country has almost doubled its population in the period, whilst the other has remained almost completely static. Is it any wonder that a country which now has a population eight times the size of the other has edged above them in the crude GDP ranking?
A look at the much more informative GDP per capita rankings paints a very much less misleading picture. According the the IMF, Slovenia are 37th in the world at £32,085 per person, while Angola are 120th at $6,844 per person.
The effort to attack the EU by painting Slovenia as some kind of failing dump and Angola as a thriving success story based solely on crude GDP figures is clearly the work of a person who takes their audience as a pack of absolutely gullible idiots.
Malta vs Zambia
Kimbell asserts that Malta has fallen from 124 to 132 in the crude GDP rankings, while Zambia has climbed from 126 to 107.
Between 2004 and the present the population of Malta has increased slightly from 401,000 to 437,000. In the same period the population of Zambia has increased from 11.4 million to 16.4 million.
In 2004 Zambia had a population over 28 times the size of Malta, and now it has a population over 37 times the size of Malta. It's not a surprise that the Zambian economy is now bigger than the Maltese economy at all. What is surprising is that they were still behind the tiny island of Malta just 13 years ago.
Let's compare the GDP per capita of failing Malta and booming Zambia:
Zambia are 140th in the world with $3,880 in economic activity per person per year. Malta are 28th with $39,834.
Only the most agenda driven fanatic could try to paint wealthy and stable Malta as some kind of failing economic basket case compared to poverty stricken Zambia, which has less than a tenth of the economic activity per person as the former-British colony in the Mediterranean.
Beware of Brexiter statistics
I'm sure most of us remember the disgraceful £350 million for the NHS lies promoted by the Vote Leave mob, but it's still worth remembering that these same dishonest Brexiteers are still out there programming people with warped narratives, cherry-picked statistics, and downright lies in order to con them into continuing to support the hard-right anti-democratic Tory Brexit shambles.
The really sad thing is that the UK education system has failed so spectacularly that huge numbers of people have not been equipped with the critical thinking skills to even see through such crude and manipulative statistical cherry-picking.
What to do about people who have been let down by the education system and left with such weak critical thinking skills that they don't even question such ludicrously cherry-picked stats is a question for another time, but what to do about Robert Kimbell and his ilk is easy: Call them out on their shockingly deceptive idiot fodder whenever we see them spewing it.
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