In a broader sense, too, Farage and Lowe make the same promise: that Britain’s supposed decline will be reversed through a population purge, tougher policing, the promotion of Christianity and traditional patriotism, the removal of red tape and environmental targets, and the elevation of self-reliant, entrepreneurial citizens.
I’ve not known Nige to say anything at all about Christianity, tbh.
But isn’t it lovely how Beckett just throws that in there as part of the list of sins?
He makes those sound like Bad Things.
Because to his ilk, they are!
Andy Beckett (born 1969) is a British journalist and historian. He writes for The Guardian, the London Review of Books and T magazine.he New York Times Magazine
He studied Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford
Just look at the bloke.
I always think of Mr Mackey from South Park when I see him.
Is it possible to have negative testosterone?
I don’t know what it is about that guys bio pic but it always makes think to myself ‘check the hard drive’
Lol
I had a lecturer who looked just like him. Card carrying ( on the executive even ) commie of the CPGB.
I thought he was a berk.
Someone needs to sit him down and slowly explain to him that the country has been trying it his way for the last 30 odd years. Look where it has got us.
He wouldn’t understand, because none of the negative aspects have touched him or anyone he knows.
Yet.
I doubt he’d understand even then.
They’re too invested in directing this collective plummet.
Not sure the flight out lasts that long.
Tsk, it’s only “supposed decline”, apparently. Even though the Graun itself is full of articles about how terrible everything is.
I just don’t see people like Farage as this insane extremist that he is painted as. 1) Britain should rule itself 2) We shouldn’t have mass migration 3) People should keep more of their money. It’s all very normie.
I don’t even think he’s as minarchist as I am.
Which is one reason why he is also characterised as controlled opposition.
(the other is his recruitment of Tory husks).
It isn’t “normie” to the people opposing him, and currently rulking the roost ….
It’s Anathema to them… It ruins all their Divine Plans…
I know I’ve turned into a bit of a conspirazoid since Covid, but it’s hardly a stretch to suggest that powerful global interests, working on the basis of divide and rule (which approach to the accretion of power has, after all, been around since the Romans, and Sun Tzu, and probably since the first tribes), are doing everything they can to smash the building blocks of successful western countries, namely belief in your country, a nuclear family (or at least good relations between men and women, and for that matter young and old) in a tight and essentially homogenous community, and our sort-of ancestral religion.
Who and why, I have no idea.
Maybe – and I don’t rule it out – it is all just utter fuckwittery.
100%. Bad actors, be they direct enemies like China, Russia, NK or just their useful idiots have been marching through the institutions for a long time.
Social media is another layer to spread more misinformation and division. The good thing is social media can also get the truth out, hence the lefts desire to censor/control it.
There’s no conspiracy. This is purely about lots of people with a self-interest.
The people that do useful government jobs aren’t that political. Whatever happens, flowerbeds in the park will be weeded, roads will be gritted, planning applications will need to be reviewed. Everyone wants that done.
Guardian reader jobs are best thought of as the junior aristocracy. Their livelihoods depend on the regime in charge. There is not universal love of diversity, railways, eco, local museums, the BBC. And if their job is destroyed, they are really fucked. Because the skills they have are not necessarily transferrable to the private sector. Or, like the BBC or the railways, they are often paid far more.
And they really fear regime change. These were the people that lost their minds most about Brexit. They like Labour, LDs, Greens as they are the regime. They’re terrified of Farage. Because if anyone is going to overturn the current regime, it’s him. Do you want to lose your £75,000 diversity job with 5 years experience? What are you going to do instead? Does that fit changing tyres at Kwik-Fit? Waitressing at Pizza Hut? We don’t bring people into software jobs with that. You know, got any Python?
You might be right, and the people who run the world are all idiots and never talk to each other, or plan anything, but this is just an assertion.
I accept that the converse is equally hard to prove, but the evidence points that way (to me).
Not, obviously at the level of £75k a year civil servants, but then in a war you don’t require (and in fact do not want) every individual soldier to see the whole battlefield or understand the entire battle plan – he just does what you want him to do (you hope) within a set of parameters which you have engineered.
There may have been a conspiracy, but I don’t think it was successful. The Trots never really got anywhere. Yes, a lot of their aims have been achieved, but not because of them.
What’s caused it is middle-class status signalling, and the increased income of the working classes. Once the proles could afford the old status symbols (car, holiday, new sofa), the middle class had to switch to something else to show off with. They tried high end brands, but that didn’t work, because a lot of the working classes had as much disposable income as the middle classes (look at Burberry).
So it had to be something that the oiks wouldn’t want. It also had to allow for grades within the status-seeking (much as Jaguar used to have different models and trim levels). Environmentalism and wokery worked nicely.
I’ve seen an argument that the tipping point was the Prius. Expensive enough to show you were well off, not too expensive to afford, flaunts your high-status eco-credentials, but not something the proles were going to buy, because they didn’t want one.
Expensive reusable water bottles and metal drinking straws serve much the same purpose.
And it’s not just me – people are putting their money behind it being a long-term trend:
https://www.marketingcharts.com/demographics-and-audiences/europe-demographics-and-audiences-10874
Here’s a commercial article on eco-status flaunting (including a survey that 77% of Gen-Z have experienced sexual attraction for someone’s “sustainable lifestyle”), and how businesses can make money out of it:
https://www.sgieurope.com/sustainability-has-become-a-status-symbol-for-gen-z/102761.article
And here’s an academic paper analysing “petty bourgeois environmentalism”:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377891336_THE_PARADOX_OF_ENVIRONMENTALISM_WHEN_ENVIRONMENTALIST_CONSUMPTION_BECOMES_A_STATUS_SYMBOL
There’s no conspiracy. This is purely about lots of people with a self-interest.
Amen!
I’m not a great fan of Christianity but I relent a little when I contemplate the alternatives – Greenism, Marxism, Mo-ism, Roman Catholicism, …
Heh.
I suspect Nige would be supportive of Christianity on the basis of where we have public holidays such as Christmas and Easter etc. and “celebrating” them in a non religious way. The alternative of suppressing Christian celebrations at that time and actively promoting non Christian events to achieve “parity”, would definitely not be a goal. Hopefully he would be quite happy for people to hold more private celebrations at any time that may or may not align with some other religious calendar.
Well, at least Andy doesn’t think Nigel is racist. I’m sure he doesn’t. Or he would have said, wouldn’t he?
Oh, wait…
Beckett doesn’t use the words exactly, but it seems to be the same baseless accusation of ‘Christian Nationalism’ that gets aimed at Trump and MAGA generally. Another Leftist import from America?
It’s not entirely baseless, a lot of Yank Christians are trying to figure out how to (re)create habitable order out of the chaos of Clown World.
I think it’s very foolish to append any qualifiers to Christianity tho.
Jesus did not ask us to be Christian nationalists, he asked us to follow him. I dislike seeing flags in church. A man should love his country, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with nationalism. But church is about rendering unto God, not Caesar.
I don’t disagree at all. Yes, there is a Christian Nationalist movement amongst the MAGA crowd, but they are a minority. It isn’t an ideology intrinsic to the MAGA movement, but the Dems try to tar the whole movement with it.
I dislike seeing flags in church
I like it very much when I see the wall of a parish church lined with flags dripping off it. They can be all sorts of things, but are often military. Local regiments, that sort of thing.
Similarly when I see the flag of St. George flying from the bell tower I am always slightly heartened. And surprised.
Having said which, I don’t much care for Westminster Abbey as an ecclesiastical building precisely because it’s a national pantheon before it has any religious feeling to it.
YMMV, but the places in which I have felt God’s presence were the quiet places, with no distractions. Most people dislike religion inserting itself into politics. I believe the opposite: politics shouldn’t insert itself into religion. Religion is far too important.
On t’other, I was proud to bear the Union Jack on my uniform.
The duality of man, eh? Or, to everything there is a season perhaps. Also, tastes and mores. You don’t usually see flags or banners in Catholic churches, tho even Papists aren’t a hive mind – lots of Yank Catholic churches have the stars and stripes inside. Maybe the Vatican’s flag, but that’s because (something ancient Protestant paranoia didn’t account for), the Vatican is not the Katholic Kremlin. It’s the Popish United Nations. Catholics in practice are equally likely to ignore the Pope as obey. But we all love the Holy Father, sure. Seems like a nice enough chap I suppose, he probably wouldn’t steal your wallet. Talks a lot of unholy shite tho. Turn, turn, turn!
Remember when you could turn the latch on the door in the porch of a village church without wondering first whether it had been locked from the inside?
It was not that long ago.
Still can in my village.
But what’s inside?
Brilliant Steve.
They all use the same script. They’re supposed to customize for each local audience to hide this, but they don’t really know the locals, so sometimes they make mistakes like this.
“The promotion of Christianity” is a woke way of saying “not kissing Islam’s arse at every possible opportunity.”
Britain’s supposed decline will be reversed through a population purge
Yes.
Farage is too wet to ever mention Christianity positively.
Nice to read a Guardian hate screed and Trump is never mentioned.