Showing posts with label Sexism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sexism. Show all posts

Saturday, 1 April 2023

Keir Starmer: A Misunderstood Political Genius


He may have his detractors on the left, but Keir Starmer is a true political phenomenon who has already proven himself perhaps the greatest politician in the history of British politics. 

Just consider his remarkable track record.

You have to admit that it takes a certain amount of genius to get parachuted into a safe Labour seat that's never been lost to the Tories since it was created in 1983.

Then to participate in an internal coup against the party's democratically elected leader just over a year later was a demonstration of his breath taking audacity (it's just a shame that silly Labour Party members failed to appreciate Owen Smith's ice cream van of political delights isn't it?).

After the Labour right's failed 2016 chicken coup, they then almost failed in their efforts to sabotage the 2017 election meaning the Labour surge delivered the biggest swing in the party's favour since 1945.

Something needed to be done, and Keir Starmer was the man to do it.

In 2019 the Labour right desperately needed to lose the next general election in order to take back control of the Labour Party, and handing Boris Johnson a whopping great majority to impose a ruinous radical-right Brexit shambles was clearly a small price to pay for to achieve this over-riding objective, wasn't it?

These people clearly have their priorities absolutely spot on.

So Keir Starmer came up with the ideal plan to drive away pesky northern Labour voters in their millions. He was going to tell the 150+ Labour held constituencies that voted leave in 2016 that Labour was now "The Party of Remain", and indicate to everyone, that after three tedious years of Brexit horse trading he was going to prolong the whole interminable process even longer by holding a "sore loser" referendum.

And if anyone needed to be shown that they had no place in the Labour Party, it's the stupid gullible idiots who thought Britain would be better off outside the EU. Am I right?

2017 proved that it's much harder to deliberately throw a general election than anyone had ever imagined, but in 2019 Keir Starmer turned out to be the man to deliver Labour the electoral thumping that so many of their MPs were craving.

This guy really delivers doesn't he?

Then Starmer delivered again with a masterful Labour leadership election campaign, in which he lied through his teeth about virtually everything in order to dupe Labour members into believing in the absolute fantasy that he was going to continue with Corbyn's humanist democratic socialist policies, when he was, and always will be, a loyal servant of capitalism and establishment interests.

It's been genuinely delightful to see Starmer backtrack on all of his pro public ownership pledges and impassioned speeches against NHS privatisation, hasn't it?

And if anyone needed to suffer a cruel betrayal, it's the stupid gullible socialists who genuinely believe that some things (public transport, energy, water, mail, education, health ...) are too important to be left in the hands of greedy and reckless capitalist profiteers. Am I right?

Then in another political masterstroke Starmer bragged to Andrew Marr that he would lie to people again if he thought it would win him more political power, proving that he's every bit as dishonest as Boris Johnson, but somehow even more open and upfront about being a cynical and opportunistic political liar than the bloviating oaf.

If anyone deserved to be shown that Labour's not the political party for them, it's people who are sick of being lied to by politicians, isn't it?

After winning the Labour leadership election Keir Starmer immediately binned all of his pro-Remain posturing, rubber stamped Boris Johnson's shambolic Brexit mess, and pledged never to try to make any substantial improvements to it.

And if anyone needed to be shown that the Labour Party delights in betraying them, it's stupid gullible Remainiacs who thought Britain made a mistake in quitting the EU in a hailstorm of Tory jingoism, incompetence, and hubris. Am I right?

After he cleverly cheated his way to the top of the party Starmer immediately brought in new leadership election rules to make sure the Labour Party would always be led by people like him. We all rolled around laughing at the way his new rules would have excluded every person of colour who has ever stood to be Labour leader, as well as all but two of the women who have ever been nominated too, including both of the women who had the temerity to stand against him in 2020.

If anyone needed to be given a right good kicking by the Labour Party it's uppity women and pesky people of colour isn't it?

One of the absolute best things about Starmer is the way he's finally got to grips with antisemitism.

Instead of endlessly apologising and desperately trying to get the right-wing dominated Labour Party bureaucracy to deal with antisemitism allegations in a quick and efficient manner like his disgraced predecessor, Starmer's playing an absolute blinder by having his goons systematically accuse left-wing Jews of being self-hating antisemites, and driving more Jews out of the Labour Party than any Labour leader in history!

After the shambles of the Corbyn years, Starmer honestly doesn't get enough credit for turning Labour into an institutionally antisemitic party that weaponises the antisemitic "self-hating Jew" trope to bully and exclude scores of Jews.

And if anyone needed to be subjected to systematic persecution by Starmer's Labour Party it's the Jews isn't it?

Another of Starmer's great achievements is his development of an excellent "Hierarchy of Racism" within the Labour Party, and making Labour a Hostile Environment for people of colour. Imagine the balls it takes to block 19 mainly Black and Asian Labour councillors from seeking re-election in Britain's most multicultural city of Leicester, after having deliberately thrown the Forde Report and all of its anti-racism recommendations in the bin! 

Starmer is a man who takes a no-nonsense approach to telling Black and Asian voters that Labour isn't the party for them, and he deserves a lot of credit for it.

Not only is Starmer doing a wonderful job of maintaining a "Hierarchy of Racism", he's also brought back all the anti-immigrant mug people like Yvette Cooper who so wisely abstained on Theresa May's unlawfully racist Hostile Environment in 2014, facilitating the Windrush scandal and the systematic abuse of thousands of Black and Asian Brits across the country.

And if anyone needed to be made unwelcome in Starmer's Brave New Labour Party it's Windrush Brits and those stupid, annoying anti-racists, isn't it?

Another of Starmer's major political achievements was driving anyone with any kind of socially liberal principles out of his shadow cabinet by instructing them to abstain on Tory legislation to give impunity to rape cops, and to those who commit war crimes in British military uniforms.

If anyone needed to be driven away from the Labour Party it's the kind of wishy washy social liberal who thinks British soldiers shouldn't be committing war crimes, and that undercover cops shouldn't be tricking unsuspecting women into having sexual relationships with them. Am I right?

Another of Starmer's triumphs was banning several Labour-affiliated organisations, and then retroactively purging loads of Labour Party members for having shared links and social media posts in the times before they were banned.

It's genuinely hilarious that Labour is led by a lawyer who clearly detests the concept of due process, and if anyone needed to be driven away from the Labour Party it's the kind of naive idiot who believes in fairness and natural justice, isn't it?

One of the best things about Starmer is the way he's actively turned his back on ordinary workers in the midst of an unprecedented inflation crisis. He's absolutely right to ignore the pleas of British workers who have simply had it too easy for too long, and fully deserve to have their living standards eroded away by inflation and capitalist greed. It's not like the founding principle of the Labour Party was to represent the interests of workers in the corridors of power, is it?

And if anyone needed to to be shown the cold shoulder by the Labour Party it's those tiresome workers and irksome trade unionists, isn't it?

And Keir's made it absolutely clear that when he tries to drag Britain into another foolish, unwinnable, and unlawful war of aggression, he'll viciously purge anyone within the Labour Party who tries to warn him not to.

If anyone needed to be driven away from the Labour Party it's the kind of pathetic snowflake who thinks Britain shouldn't be arming apartheid states and blood-soaked tyrannies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, or creating terrorism breeding grounds and vast refugee crises by reducing foreign countries to rubble, isn't it?

Another of Keir's genius moves was to get a trendy bunch of London image consultants to tell him to try to trick working class people into voting for him with a fascism-adjacent ultranationalist propaganda blitz of "flags, family, and fatherlandism", before rigging Labour selection processes to exclude working class people in favour of the kind of upper middle class, comfortably wealthy liberal-capitalists the Labour Party is meant to be represented by.

If anyone needed to be patronised like a bunch of idiots and excluded from participation in the Parliamentary Labour Party, it's the working class, isn't it?

You have to applaud Starmer's judgement in appointing a private health bankrolled lickspittle like Wes Streeting as his shadow health minister, and allowing him to publicly attack NHS workers and repeatedly spout NHS privatisation propaganda.

If anyone needed to be completely disillusioned by the Labour Party it's those daft idiots who love the NHS, and consider it the finest achievement of any Labour government in history, isn't it?

These awful leftists have tried to claim that Starmer's politics is just reheated Blairism, but this is incredibly unfair. In 1997 Blair stupidly tried to give people hope that Britain deserved better than Tory sleaze, chaos and continued national decline, and he foolishly tolerated alternative views within the Labour ranks, allowing the likes of Tony Benn, Robin Cook, and Jeremy Corbyn to defy him over the Iraq invasion, without even mercilessly hounding them out of the party to create a closed ideological echo chamber like Starmer obviously would have done.

Keir Starmer is just a man with the the downright good sense to tell centrists exactly what they want to hear? "We're lying to you, we don't care, nothing is going to get better, and we're just going to be marginally more competent than the Tories at managing Britain's inevitable economic decline", and he deserves a lot of credit for that.

So it's sickening to see all these Jews, people of colour, socialists, trade unionists, social progressives, and Remainers queuing up to air their petty grievances about being lied to and abused by Starmer's Labour when people have been saying literally the most horrible things about our beloved leader.

They've called him "The Silent Knight", and "Keith Stalin", and "a haircut in a suit", and they've even deliberately misspelled his name as "Kier"!

Just think about the pain and trauma these awful people have caused to poor old Keir with their horrible mouth words ... and then they have the absolute temerity to whine that they're merely being systematically purged, marginalised, discriminated against, abused, and ignored!

Have they no sense of perspective?

Keir Starmer is like a 1997 era Tony Blair without any of the useless and unimportant things like charisma, inspiration, oratory skills, verve, or tolerance of other people's opinions.

All in all, he's an absolute dream boat for sensible liberal-capitalist centrists isn't he?

It's as clear as day that Keir Starmer is so much more than a "boring haircut in a suit". He's as dishonest, vindictive, and profoundly unlikeable as politicians get, and isn't this exactly the kind of person that us Brits demonstrably love to be ruled over by?

And who could possibly doubt Starmer's genius strategy of driving away pesky, annoying, and unimportant minorities like:
  • People who wanted the UK to leave the EU
  • People who wanted the UK to remain in the EU
  • People who are sick of political liars
  • Workers
  • The trade unionists who actually fund the Labour Party
  • The clear majority of Brits who believe in public ownership
  • People who disapprove of rape cops and war criminals
  • Genuine socialists
  • 200,000+ Labour Party members and activists
  • People who don't want Britain to repeat horrifying foreign policy disasters like Iraq
  • Social progressives
  • The working class
  • People who believe in democracy and natural justice
  • People who love the NHS and respect NHS workers
  • Anti-racists
  • Women
  • People of colour
  • Jews
In order to appeal exclusively to important core political demographics like:
  • Comfortably wealthy Guardian hacks on six figure salaries
  • Fading celebrities who remember their receding heydays coinciding with Blairism
  • Liberal-capitalist twonks who support political liars, as long as it's their political liar
  • Billionaire capitalists, media moguls, and private health profiteers
  • "Soft Tories" who want vicious, dishonest, radical-right neoliberalism that's just a fraction less malicious than the Tories themselves
The man's a misunderstood political genius, and there's no way that the British public could ever be foolish enough to believe that they deserve better.

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Monday, 12 August 2019

Who is in Caroline Lucas' all-female all-white Brexit-foiling "fantasy cabinet"?


The Green Party's only MP Caroline Lucas has completely and utterly lost the plot over Brexit.

For years she was one of my absolute favourite politicians. She led the Greens when they were the only UK-wide party opposing ruinous austerity fanaticism (Labour pushed pathetic austerity-lite rubbish until this pathetic non-opposition cost them the 2015 general election and triggered the Corbyn fightback against the "centrist" policy of imitating Tory austerity fanaticism, rather than opposing it). Lucas has also consistently been on the right side of important parliamentary votes (alongside Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, John McDonnell, and Dennis Skinner she was the only other MP with sufficient principles to vote against Theresa May's racist hostile environmentDavid Cameron's disastrous war-mongering in Libya, and Theresa May's enhanced state snooping powers, and George Osborne's welfare vandalism bill).

Over the last few months it's been bad enough watching the Greens voluntarily turning themselves into recruitment agents for the austerity enabling, privatisation scamming, welfare vandalising, workers' rights attacking, fracking tax cutting, disability persecuting, student impoverishing, electoral reform abandoning Lib-Dem warmongers, but Lucas' "fantasy cabinet" of herself and ten all-white, all-female MPs is an extraordinary blowout.

Here are details on the ten other women Lucas wants to orchestrate a "foil Brexit at any cost" coup with:

Anna Soubry: Ex-Tory Soubry talks a good game pretending to oppose Brexit, but when it came to the crunch she actually voted in favour of Theresa May's hard Brexit shambles of a Withdrawal Agreement! Soubry has also made it absolutely clear that she'd prefer a ruinous Tory-administered Brexit than stopping Brexit under a Corbyn-led Labour government. She also referred to the ruinous living standards destroying policies of the austerity coalition that laid the groundwork for Brexit as "marvellous".

Heidi Allen: Another ex-Tory. As a Tory she once cried in parliament about the devastating impact of Tory welfare vandalism to gather "compassionate Conservative" headlines, before wilfully marching through the lobby to vote in favour of even more of the welfare vandalism and devastating cuts she was crying over. She's also responsible for the stupidest and most dangerous Remainer idea yet, which is to just let No Deal go ahead, then try to magically undo it using retroactive legislation!

Jo Swinson: She isn't a Tory, but she might as well be, having been more loyal to the Tory whip during the ruinous austerity coalition than numerous Tory MPs (including recent Tory leadership candidate Jeremy Hunt!). Whatever horrible abuse and economically illiterate nonsense the Tories were pushing, Swinson wilfully voted it all through, refusing to protest by resigning as Employment Minister, even when they launched their vile and unlawful policy of protecting bad bosses by pricing low-income workers out of the justice system with £1,200 upfront Tribunal Fees. She's also bankrolled by the owner of a fracking operation and voted in favour of Cameron and Osborne's massive tax cut for onshore fracking (which makes her a very odd bedfellow for a Green MP).

Justine Greening: If you're going to stuff your "fantasy cabinet" full of ex-Tory austerity enforcers and Lib-Dem austerity enablers, you might as well include a sitting Tory MP just to hammer home the point that opposing the austerity fanaticism that caused Brexit in the first place will be an absolute non-priority. Aside from being a horrifying austerity-enforcer, Greening was also personally in charge of the mass privatisation of state schools in England. The vast majority of Brits believe that schools should be run as not-for-profit public services, but somehow Lucas wants to include a hard-right school-privatising extremist in her "fantasy cabinet".

Nicola Sturgeon: Sturgeon does occasionally let herself down with cheap partisan political point scoring (which is regrettable, but understandable given the tides of absolute filth that are spewed in her direction), but in general she's a really strong and popular leader. The main problem with the inclusion of SNP figures like Sturgeon and Kirsty Blackman is that Swinson and the Lib-Dems have outright refused to work with the SNP to stop Brexit because they actually see preventing another Scottish independence referendum as a much higher priority than stopping Brexit.

Liz Saville Roberts: Including Plaid Cymru's only female MP is an obvious choice if you're doing a stupid identity politics driven all-female "fantasy cabinet". She has been a hard-working MP since arriving in parliament in 2015, and she's on the decent side of parliamentary divisions the majority of the time. It's hard to see how an alliance between a Welsh independence MP and the ultra-unionist Lib-Dems could ever really hold up for very long though.

Sylvia Hermon: Again, there's nothing particularly wrong with the former UUP, now independent Northern Irish MP Sylvia Hermon. It's just an odd selection to pick a solitary independent MP from Northern Ireland, unless the reason is the tokenism of picking the only Brexit-sceptic MP in Northern Ireland (the DUP are hard Brexit militants and Sinn Féin refuse their Westminster seats on principle).

Emily Thornberry: Reaching out to a serving Labour Party cabinet minister to engage in a plot to sideline Labour from the anti-No Deal fightback is a bold move, but Thornberry is surely far too sensible a political operator to ditch her career by joining this ludicrous identity politics publicity stunt.

Yvette Cooper: Cooper is one of the oddest picks of all. Yes she's involved herself in opposing Brexit, but she's stopped short of calling for another referendum (unlike Labour front bench MPs like Diane Abbott, who has repeatedly made the case for a final say referendum on Brexit).
  • The inclusion of a load of pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, pro-fracking, Heathrow expansion-supporting, solar subsidy slashing MPs in Lucas' "fantasy cabinet" just goes to show how wildly she's lost her way. She won so much admiration for her principled stances on austerity, welfare, privatisation, and the environment, and now she's bulldozing the lot into a fire pit in order to cavort with hard-right austerity enablers and fracking advocates!
  • The idea of gender exclusion is absolutely terrible too. Anyone who is genuinely opposed to Brexit must understand that a ludicrous identity politics dick-counting exercise is a pointless distraction. Anyone who thinks an unprincipled loudmouth like Anna Soubry is more of an asset to the Brexit fightback than Dominic Grieve or Keir Starmer, simply because she's female, is absolutely out of their god-damned tree.
  • An all-white cabinet which includes several Brexit enablers, whilst excluding significantly more anti-Brexit BAME women like Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler, Marsha de Cordova, and Rupa Huq is extraordinary. And their exclusion makes no sense either. Lucas reached out to Thornberry who is in Corbyn's shadow cabinet, so she could have reached out to Abbott and Butler too, and she reached out to Cooper who is a Labour back bencher, meaning there must be some other reason she decided not to involve BAME Labour backbenchers like Huq and de Cordova.
  • One of the most worrying things is that nobody in the Green Party seems able or willing to take her to one side and ask her to stop this increasingly erratic and damaging behaviour. There's absolutely no way that this all-female all-white "fantasy cabinet" idea including a load of austerity-enablers, privatisation fanatics, and environmental vandals was approved at Green Party conference, so she's not only making a fool of herself, she's also making a mockery of the Green Party's claim to be the most democratic and accountable party in UK politics.
  • The whole thing seems to be a desperate last-ditch effort to exclude Corbyn and the Labour-left from the process, even though it's absolutely obvious that the support of the Labour-left would be absolutely vital if Lucas ever gets the "another roll of the dice" referendum she's expended so much energy on demanding (whilst ignoring the role austerity fanaticism played in causing Brexit in the first place).
  • And last but not least the whole idea of a "foil Brexit at any cost" cross-bench coup is absolutely terrible anyway. If you wanted to think of the ideal way of empowering Boris Johnson to seize the moral high ground and romp to a general election victory, an unelected Westminster establishment clique overturning Brexit without even a General Election or Referendum result to give them a mandate would be pretty much exactly what the Brextremists would be wishing for!
Caroline Lucas is far from the only person to have been driven to absolute insanity by Brexit, but seeing a strong and principled woman I really admired degenerate to the point of proposing ludicrous unworkable nonsense that burns all of her preexisting principles to ashes is definitely the saddest case of Brexit Brain Worms yet.

 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.




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Tuesday, 18 June 2019

How are "centrists" fine with this demeaning and degrading language?


"Centrist" hack Suzanne Moore has written a truly execrable article for the Guardian whining that Jeremy Corbyn hasn't got any women in his inner circle.

The weirdest thing is that Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinets have demonstrably been the most gender-balanced in history, with incredible and capable women in key positions, many of whom would never have been given a chance at the top table had the pro-austerity pro-privatisation orthodox neoliberal "centrists" managed to maintain their grip on the party after they pathetically tanked the 2015 General Election.

She's deliberately seeking to downplay and erase the role of capable and intelligent Labour 
women like Diane Abbott, and Angela Rayner, and Dawn Butler, and Rebecca Long-Bailey, to create the reality-reversed narrative that Corbyn's somehow a misogynist intent on keeping women down, rather than the Labour leader who has actually done the most to lift capable women into positions of responsibility within the party.

It's not difficult to see what the real agenda is, given that the article hearer image is of "centrist" self-publicity merchant Jess Phillips.

After her call for a "centrist" woman like Jess Phillips or Stella Creasy to take over the Labour Party, the author resorts to the most despicable line of the whole incontinent diatribe by referring to the women in Corbyn's cabinet in the most demeaning language with the phrase "a suitable female pet has to be groomed or the revolution may stall".

Suzanne Moore and all of the "centrist" dupes who have shared this noxious diatribe have deliberately invisibalised and demeaned intelligent and capable non-white, and working class, and genuinely left-wing Labour MPs.

And they've done it purely in order to promote their favoured choice of white, centre-right women from extremely privileged backgrounds (Creasy comes from an aristocratic family, and despite her faux working class pretensions Jess Phillips grew up in an incredibly wealthy household).


And what makes referring to Labour women in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet as if they're just mindless groomed pets on display, rather than strong independent capable women with minds and political views of their own all the worse is that Suzanne Moore and her "centrist" ilk would immediately assume the role of furious language police if it was anyone else (from either the political right or from the left) who was using such demeaning language about women with diferrent political views to their own.

These people are hypocritically spreading this undisguised misogynist contempt because they simply don't want to have, or even acknowledge the existence of black, or left-wing, or working class Labour women at all, because the only women they're interested in acknowledging or being represented by are white wealthy women who are exactly like them.

They're a bunch of arrogant, racist, classist, prigs, but they're so wrapped up in their self-righteous bubbles of "centrist" delusion that they've convinced themselves that speaking about other women in this grotesque and demeaning way is perfectly acceptable, because they actually believe that any woman who serves with Corbyn is fully deserving of all the contempt, and ridicule, and marginalisation, and abuse that they get.

In reality Moore and her ilk are just a couple of steps away from far-right bigots ripping veils off Muslim women and calling them "letterboxes" because these women won't do as they're told, but this type are so self-righteous in their "centrism" that they can't even see what kind of people they've become.

Suzanne Moore should be ashamed of writing this fact-averse and misogynistic diatribe. The Guardian should be ashamed for commissioning and publishing it. And anyone who shared it for any other reason than criticism of it needs to have a good hard look at themselves too.


 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.




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Monday, 25 March 2019

What's going on here?


Every single time I mention the indisputable fact that the older demographics are more likely to vote Tory, to support Brexit, and to approve of right-wing authoritarian propaganda tropes, the inevitable response is a barrage of  self-defensive "how dare you!" comments from people stating their age and then saying that they never voted Tory in their lives.

Nowadays I always preface comments about age demographics with "obviously not all old people are like this and it's wrong to generalise" type disclaimers in order to deter the inevitable barrage of "how dare you!" comments, but it doesn't seem to matter.
 

They still turn up, state their age, and chastise me for generalising about all old people despite my explicit disclaimers explaining that discussion of demographic trends is not the same as generalising about all old people.

Whether I shroud my comments about demographic trends in disclaimers or not, these comments always appear without fail.


So what's going on here?

Why are so many older people so determined to self-defensively shout down commentary on the observable demographic reality about the voting habits of older people?

Surely we're all familiar with the fragile male who interrupts the conversation about issues like rape and domestic violence to proclaim "not all men", as if he's interpreted criticism of rapists and wife-beaters as being an attack on his personal masculinity.

And we're familiar with the ultra-defensive white fragility of some white people when it's pointed out that whites are still the beneficiaries of systemic racism, as if the fact that systemic racism still exists is somehow a personal attack on them for being white.

The same thing is going on with over-60s when they lash out at the demographic evidence that tells us that the majority of their peers vote Tory, support Brexit, and tend to fall for right-wing authoritarian and ultranationalist rhetoric.

They're lashing out because just like the "not all men" interrupter misinterpreting criticism of rapists as criticism of his masculinity, and the white fragility sufferer misinterpreting criticism of systemic racism as an attack on their white identity, these older people are misinterpreting the demographic discussion as an attack on their self-identity as an older person.

It turns out that it doesn't really matter how many facts and evidence and disclaimers we use because this self-defence response isn't a rational one, it's an emotive one.

As soon as people feel their identity as an older person, a male, a white, or whatever is under attack, logic and reason go straight in the bin, they tend to become impervious to facts and evidence, and a vehement emotive defence is mounted.

This kind of emotive reaction to perceived criticism of the self-identity is clearly a deeply embedded human trait, and one that it's easily possible to weaponise.

Older people who ignore all of the disclaimers to post their "I'm [insert age] and I'm not a [Tory/Brexiter], how very dare you generalise about me!" beneath any reference to age-related demographic trends are frustratingly predictable, but in the grand scheme of things they're pretty much harmless. After all their emotive response is to defend their self-identity as a good person who cares about society.

What's a lot more concerning is the way these emotive self-identity reactions are weaponised by the extreme-right, because the extreme-right know that once you've got people thinking with their emotions, they're incredibly easy to manipulate.

The reason victimhood narratives are so prevalent in extreme-right politics is that telling people their identity as a white/wealthy/male/heterosexual/Christian/Brit/whatever is under threat from the immigrants/Marxists/Feminazis/queers/atheists/PC thought police/Jews is designed to trigger this emotive self-defence reaction.

And the further towards the extreme-right the Conservative party drifts, the more we see Tory politicians and Tory supporters actively spreading these extreme-right victimhood narratives, conspiracy theories about "cultural Marxists", "the great replacement", "white genocide" and "postmodern neo-Merxism", and fear-mongering about the terrifying plot to erase Western culture and western people's identities.

This extreme-right political tactic is incredibly sinister and dangerous because these ideas are driving terrorist attacks like the Jo Cox assassination and the Christchurch massacres.

However the emotive self-identity defence these extreme-right victimhood narratives are designed to trigger have exactly the same emotional root as the old lefty typing out a furious "how dare you!" comment in response to the demographic data that proves that older people are generally more susceptible to this kind of identity-driven right-wing propaganda than the younger generations are.


Like I said before in my multiple disclaimers, these self-defensive "how dare you!" older people are not sinister, and they're not the enemy. At worst they're a mild annoyance for the way they just climb over the massive walls of disclaimers I've erected to post the exact same comments as if the walls weren't there at all.

But there is actually a lot to be learned by thinking about the instinctive and emotive self-identity defence reaction that drives these self-defensive comments, and how these often-harmless instincts and emotions can be manipulated for nefarious political purposes.


 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.




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Wednesday, 19 December 2018

12 reasons you shouldn't get distracted by the Tory "stupid woman" smears


The Tories and their chums in the mainstream media are brazenly lying that when Jeremy Corbyn said "stupid people" to the howling and braying mob behind Theresa May, he was saying "stupid woman" to her.


I can't believe I'm wasting my time writing about this staggeringly dishonest piece of faux outrage Tory propaganda that's clearly based on a flat-out lie, but here we go.

Here are 12 reasons you shouldn't allow yourself to get distracted by this ridiculous scandal.

1. When Tory Chancellor Philip Hammond clearly and undeniably called Andrea Jenkyns a "stupid woman" in parliament how quickly was it completely forgotten about by Tory MPs? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)

2. Did anyone see Tory MPs howling about sexism just last week when Theresa May welcomed an alleged rapist back into the Tory fold without the conclusion of a proper investigation into the allegations just because she was afraid of losing the internal Tory vote of no confidence in her leadership? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)

3. Did anyone see Tory MPs banging on about sexism last week when Theresa May also readmitted a vile Tory sex pest who bombarded female constituents with disgusting sex texts and stands accused of bullying a junior female member of staff? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)

4. Why do Tory MPs never complain when Theresa May grovels before misogynistic head-chopping tyrants from Saudi Arabia in order to flog them weapons to commit their war crimes in Yemen despite the fact they execute women's rights protesters, even when she welcomes them to Britain on International Women's Day? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)

5. Tory MPs all actively vote in favour of sexist austerity dogma that deliberately loads 86% of the economic pain onto women and even after it's pointed out to them they continue their "war on women" with another brazenly sexist budget designed to punish low-income women and single parents (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)

6. Did anyone see any Tory MP express distaste at the outrageous sexist views of their Tory candidate for mayor of London Shaun Bailey or complaining when Theresa May backed their parliamentary candidate in Darlington last year despite a slew of sexist and homophobic posts on his personal blog? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism or other forms of bigotry)

7. Did anyone see Tories howling with outrage when the Tory MP Christopher Chope deliberately sabotaged the Upskirting Bill by talking for so long there was no time left to vote on it? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)

8. How many Tory MPs complained so loud when Theresa May made a vile extreme-right misogynistic Twitter troll famous by quoting him in parliament to score cheap political points against Jeremy Corbyn? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)

9. Where was the outpouring of Tory outrage when the misogynistic Tory MP Philip Davies tried to deliberately derail Domestic Violence legislation with an absurd 91 minute speech aimed at talking out the debate so the vote couldn't happen? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)

10. Where was the outpouring of Tory outrage when the then-Home Secretary Theresa May introduced brazenly sexist arbitrary income requirements for British citizens applying to bring their non-EU spouses to Britain? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism) 
 
11. Misrepresenting "stupid people" as "stupid woman" and howling faux outrage about it is such a blatant distraction tactic. It's clearly a piece of fake outrage nonsense to deliberately deflect public attention away from the extraordinary game of reckless "no deal" Brexit brinkmanship Theresa May is playing with the nation's future (the subject Corbyn was holding her to account over during the parliamentary session where he made the widely misrepresented "stupid people" comment).

12. The evidence is absolutely clear that Corbyn didn't even say what the Tories and their propaganda agents in the mainstream media accused him of saying (watch the slow-mo video). It's just yet another example of Tory/mainstream media smear tactics aimed at destroying anyone who doesn't go along with the neoliberal economic fanaticism that has wreaked so much damage on the UK over the last four decades.
It's absolutely shocking to see so many people allowing themselves to be so easily distracted by such a ridiculous display of faux outrage over a comment that wasn't even made, while Theresa May recklessly gambles with the entire nation's future right in front of our eyes.

 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.




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Saturday, 15 December 2018

Theresa may is pretending to be a feminist again


In Tory Britain words speak louder than actions. This is clearly the only possible explanation for Theresa May's decision to pretend to be a feminist just two days after deliberately welcoming two alleged sex pest Tory MPs back into the Tory fold so that they could support her in the internal Tory party vote of confidence in her leadership.

In a celebration of 100 years since the first UK election in which some women were allowed to vote Theresa May claimed that she's "personally committed to ensuring women seize opportunities to enter politics".

It sounds like a noble and worthy ambition until you realise that her actions demonstrate the exact opposite.

One of the reinstated Tory MPs harassed two female constituents with thousands of sexually explicit text messages (no doubts about this at all, the texts are in the public domain) and stands accused of bullying a female councillor for years (Andrew Griffiths). The other stands accused of raping a former member of his staff (Charlie Elphicke).

What kind of message does it send to women who want to "enter politics" that the men in politics who are accused of sexually harassing, bullying and even raping women in politics are welcomed back into the Tory fold with open arms?

Aside from the despicable decision to welcome these two back into the Tory party before the completion of investigations into the very serious allegations against them, there's loads of other glaring evidence that Theresa May is a misogynist.

House of Commons research demonstrates that 86% of the economic burden of Tory austerity dogma has been loaded onto the shoulders of women.

Rather than do anything to reverse this outrageously sexist trend since she became Prime Minister, Theresa May has actively continued it. The most recent Tory budget demonstrably continued this ideologically-driven Tory "war on women" by discriminating against the lowest income workers (the majority of whom are women) and single parents (even more likely to be women).

One of the central ideological tenets of the Conservative ideology is that wealth provides economic liberty, and that economic liberty equates to freedom in general. So by deliberately loading the majority of the economic burden of Tory austerity dogma onto women, Theresa May and her Tory pals are wilfully and knowingly making British women less free.

Then there's Theresa May's close association with the tyrannical, homophobic, misogynistic, head-chopping Saudi war criminals.

Theresa May knows perfectly well that Saudi Arabia is the most notoriously misogynistic nation on earth where women are denied basic human rights like freedom of movement, freedom of association, and where women face severe restrictions on their rights to own property and run businesses.

Theresa May also knows that Saudi Arabia persecutes, jails, tortures, and kills women who participate in non-violent protests in favour of women's rights and democratic freedoms, yet she continues to create a veneer of legitimacy for this vile regime by sucking up to them and even welcomed them to Britain with open arms on International Women's Day 2018!

Theresa May also knows that women and children constitute the majority of the victims of the famine that Saudi Arabia is deliberately causing in Yemen as part of their wider campaign of war crimes there, yet she still keeps selling them £billions in weapons.

How can she claim to be "personally committed to ensuring women seize opportunities to enter politics" when she's perfectly happy to turn a blind eye to grotesque Saudi misogyny in order to flog them even more weapons to commit war crimes in Yemen with?

All in all it's absolutely obvious that Theresa May doesn't give a shit about other women. Especially women who have suffered sexual harassment at work, women who have suffered destitution as a result of her own party's sexist economic policies, or women suffering horrific abuse at the hands of her tyrannical Saudi mates.

But sadly many right-wing women are just as susceptible to the kind of ridiculously shallow identity-politics as people on the left are so often accused of.

That Theresa May is a woman and that she claims to care about other women is enough for them, and screw the fact that her track record proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that she's every bit as bad as any male misogynist when it comes to her failure to stand up for the women who need it the most; the poor, the persecuted, and the victims of sexual abuse.


 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.




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Monday, 26 November 2018

Shut up and eat your Tory ice cream


When IPPR analysis of the Tory budget revealed that once again the Tories are rigging the economy against women, the vast majority of mainstream media outlets refused to even mention the evidence that the misogynistic Tory "war on women" is continuing unabated. Only The Guardian covered the story in any detail.

Fast forward just a few days and there's a huge mainstream media frenzy going on about Margaret Thatcher being long-listed to be the 'scientist' to appear on the new £50 note because of her 'contributions to science'.

Her claimed contribution being a short stint between 1949 and 1951 working for the processed food company that introduced soft-serve ice cream to the UK. A fact that has gradually been inflated over the years to her being the sole and outright inventor of Mr Whippy type ice cream.

Nobody seems to care that soft-serve ice cream was actually invented the decade before in the United States, and that the company Thatcher worked for had teamed up with the US giant Mr Softee to bring it to the UK.

So Tories are openly celebrating that they've managed to game the system to get Margaret Thatcher long-listed as a "scientist" based on the absurdly-easy-to-disprove urban myth that she invented soft serve ice cream, and the mainstream media are pushing out as many articles on the Thatcher-£50-ice cream story as possible in order to hoover up all the clicks.

If sense prevails then Thatcher should get nowhere near the final shortlist because her contribution to science is trivial at best, if not entirely fanciful.


But the real issue here isn't that Tories have gamed the system in a pathetic effort to replace legitimate British scientific legends (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick, Edmund Halley, Alan Turing, Ada Lovelace, Peter Higgs ...) with their ridiculously divisive political idol, it's that the mainstream media have made such a huge frenzy over this trivial story, after steadfastly ignoring the ruinous impact of Tory austerity dogma on the hundreds of thousands of poor and ordinary women just a few days ago.

People are literally starving, low-income workers are relying on food bank charity in ever greater numbers, hundreds of thousands of struggling single mothers are struggling to feed and clothe their kids, children are turning up to school so hungry and malnourished they can't concentrate on their work, and the Tory government is actively making this situation worse ... but fuck that eh? Who would even read about that, even if we published it, so here are 20 virtually identical churnalised articles about Thatcher, and ice cream, and £50 notes.

They're doing it because they think this Thatcher-£50-ice cream idiot fodder is way more likely to generate clicks and advertising revenue than the evidence that the Tory party is continuing with their grotesque and profoundly misogynistic economic attacks on the poorest women in society.

They're doing it because they think you prefer being distracted with utterly trivial nonsense like this than being informed about reality.

So shut up, don't think about or research anything for yourself, and eat your delicious Tory ice-cream straight from the mainstream media churn.

 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.




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