Recent elections in Europe and South America are a warning for democracy. Dr Lee Duffield sets about finding psychological causes for what he calls the crop of “off-balance” players, “demagogues”, on the Right-wing.
THE RECENT elections in Sweden and Italy, which went towards extremist parties campaigning against immigrants, and the Brazil election where they were narrowly knocked back, are a warning for democracy.
Source: Democracy in danger: The rise of Right-wing demagogues
American democracy is in peril, teetering between democracy and authoritarianism and under siege by Donald Trump, the Republican Party and the larger white right. To call them “conservative” is an insult to language.
Source: Donald Trump has learned how to manipulate white rage — that’s very dangerous | Salon.com
My thought for the day In view of the rise of far-right Neo conservatism I am reviewing my thoughts. ( John Lord )
Source: Desperation manifests itself in many dangerous ways – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Death to critical thinking it’s too progressive and leads to people from the bottom have second thoughts (ODT)
The top four search results for the term “ABC left-wing” on Google produce articles from News Corp media institutions.
The first three come from Sky News commentary and the fourth result is an article by The Australian.
The emotion-laden headlines read:
The notion that “the ABC is too left-wing” seems to be gaining momentum. It appears that News Corp has played a significant role in furthering this narrative.
Unrelenting attacks: News Corp alleges the ABC is ‘too left-wing’
No president has ever been sent packing. Nixon resigned because he saw it coming. Trump would sooner start a civil war
his recent criticism of the network shows that he doesn’t understand the con at the heart of the network’s model. Fox is a propaganda outlet whose success depends on maintaining just enough trappings of journalism to avoid that label. And if Trump turns his warning shots into a sustained assault, the result could spell disaster for the network.
Fox and Trump have enjoyed a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship. The network helped drive Trump’s political rise, all but fused with his administration after his election, and regularly cheerleads for him. Trump, in turn, is obsessed with the network, whose programming and personalities shape his worldview and frequently impact his decision. He regularly promotes Fox’s coverage and has given its hosts unprecedented access, lifting the network’s ratings.
via Trump’s Fox criticism puts the network’s entire con in jeopardy | Media Matters for America
Anyone thinking we’ll have three years of calm, considered and competent governance is in for a rude shock. What chance it will all blow up in their faces and we get an early opportunity to correct the mass madness of just last month?
Threat Labour can’t ignore advice from Duncan Storrar(ODT)
This is the biggest threat to our democracy.
Everybody thinks Clive Palmer’s texts are silly but where I live they get traction as he is reaching out. His message is a lie but it makes sense to the poor in Whittington, in Geelong and in Corio. We never see most politicians where I live.
But we do have people like the Blair Cottrell crew coming here doing yard maintenance setting up youth groups because they see us as a force to power. Nobody else sees us. This terrifies me. The message they sell is bought here by the masses.
The fact that both the main parties don’t want to deal with poverty will be their demise. So I cry for the poor of this country as we get ignored and used as pawns once again.
The politics in my neighbourhood is all about the Far Right. As nobody in power cares, I fear it will be too late by the time the political class notice that the Far Right is forming an army down here. Their message sells because the Coalition Government and the Labor Party has forgotten us.
And as somebody living in this horrible Great Depression-style poverty that political classes choose for us, I don’t want to live where being like me is dangerous because the Far Right has a foot-hold in my suburb.
Long and Deep Food For Thought
Since the 1970s, American society has lived with the curse of neoliberalism, or what can be called the latest and most extreme stage of predatory capitalism. As part of a broader comprehensive design, neoliberalism’s overriding goal is to consolidate power in the hands of the financial elite. As a mode of rationality, it functions pedagogically in multiple cultural sites to ensure no alternatives to its mode of governance can be imagined or constructed.
Central to its philosophy is the assumption the market drives not just the economy but all of social life. It construes profit-making as the essence of democracy and consuming as the only operable form of agency. It redefines identities, desires and values through a market logic that favors self-interest, a survival-of-the-fittest ethos and unchecked individualism. Under neoliberalism, life-draining and unending competition is a central concept for defining human freedom.
At work here is a neoliberal project to reduce people to human capital and redefine human agency beyond the bonds of sociality, equality, belonging and obligation. All problems and their solutions are now defined exclusively within the purview of the individual. This is a depoliticizing discourse that champions mythic notions of self-reliance and individual character to promote the tearing up of social solidarities and the public spheres that support them.
The Westminster attacker was British-born and previously investigated by Britain’s spy agency MI5 “some years ago” for violent extremism, Prime Minister Theresa May has revealed.
Source: London attack: Westminster attacker identified as British-born Khalid Masood
Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox is currently trying to take full control of the United Kingdom satellite broadcasting company Sky — which oversees Sky News. Such a move would increase media consolidation in the U.K., and it raises concerns that the Murdochs could seek to turn Sky News into a right-wing propaganda outlet like Fox News. In the c
Source: Read The Report Explaining The Danger Of Murdoch’s Sky Takeover
A new PPP poll shows that 51% of Trump supporters believe that two Iraqis actually perpetrated the fictitious “Bowling Green Massacre.”
Source: New Poll: Trump Supporters Believe ‘Bowling Green Massacre’ Was Real | Crooks and Liars
Scientists are witnessing the theoretical turning into reality: infectious microbes emerging from a deep freeze
Source: What lies beneath: As earth warms, diseases within permafrost become a bigger worry – Salon.com
We will rue the day we did not use this period of ultra-low interest rates to invest in infrastructure and put our people to work
By David Alpher | (The Conversation) | – – Take America back from those who have stolen it. Protect America …
Source: US domestic extremists a bigger risk than foreign terrorism, but guess who Trump & GOP Coddle?
In a dangerous escalation in the Syrian conflict, a Russian warplane has been shot down by Turkish fighter jets in Syria near the Turkish border, after it violated the nation’s airspace.
Source: Russian fighter jet shot down by Turkish jets near Syrian-Turkish border
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