Clown or Beast: Rhetorical Tricks of the Extreme Right in Britain Today
Let’s start with the UK’s most influential newspaper columnist Polly Toynbee:
Don’t be fooled by Trumpesque inconsistency by a chump you’ve probably never even heard of.
And yet he’s one of the most powerful and dangerously extreme people in Britain.
Responsible for Brexit and the Mass Infection policy that’s causing so much avoidable suffering to so many millions of people (around the world – never forget that the Alpha variant was a result of the UK’s breach of its international legal obligations to control the epidemic. And Alpha begat Delta).
Brady leads the group of Conservative MPs who pushed for the hardest of Hard Brexits. Since Covid, this group re-branded themselves as the “Covid Recovery Group” (sic).
They’ve consistently opposed EVERY measure to suppress the virus – masks, lockdowns and anti-Mass Infection mitigations in schools.
Through non-transparent influencing the supposedly “independent” Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisations (JCVI), Brady and his henchmen (and they are mostly “men”) now oppose vaccinating children because there’s no “scientific consensus.”
These clownish, anti-science, contradictory campaigns from within the Conservative Party in the UK are part of a cutting-edge far right political strategy.
Brady and those he “leads” first introduced their playbook to an unsuspecting nation during Brexit – for the mad stuff they got up to over Brexit:
Now, having mass infected English political life with their far right ideology during Brexit, Covid is a great opportunity for them.
Their far right ideology is concealed by cut glass accents, sometimes with northern twangs (for authenticity, don’t you know?!).
They wear well-cut suits, roam the corridors of power and spout rhetoric they learn from Talking Points prepared by communications agencies with faux Greek or Latin names.
Unless you know about Brady and his bunch, you might think it strange UK school children are being forced to return to school without hardly any anti-Covid mitigations:
At a time when the evidence is in of high hospitalisation rates for adolescents infected by Covid, Brady and his ilk are sowing division about “science”.
Yet, it was they who promote anti-mask wearing.
It is they who promoted the idea of delaying the second vaccine dose in the UK against the emergency use authorisation for the vaccines; a strange decision at the time.
Delaying the second dose was a huge gamble, and no other country followed it at the time.
The politically convenient decision though did not pay off because when Delta arrived on the scene in early April 2021 because so many UK residents were only protected by one vaccine dose, they were only 30% protected against Delta:
These far right legislators like Brady sound stupid.
But neither he nor they are stupid.
This short piece helps us decode such Machiavellian posturing.
Johnson, Brady, Trump:
Let’s stop laughing at these clowns.
We must take them seriously.
Deadly seriously.
In a time of Covid while they are actively promoting Mass Infection, “deadly seriously” is not a metaphor.
Democracy is also at stake, unless we can learn how better to decode their authoritarianism promoting rhetorical strategies.
Odd things to notice:
1 This chump, Graham Brady, is a “sir”
2 He chairs the UK Tory party sub-committee that selects or deselects the UK prime minister.
3 He’s part of the government, but rhetorically distancing himself from the government.
He’s portraying himself as in opposition, whereas in fact he’s at the very centre of the British State.
This feint is a trick that was used throughout Brexit and Covid to allow the same establishment party members to occupy the “pro” and “anti” positions in debates on the media and in the minds of unsuspecting electors.
This gives a democratic patina to a “debate” which is not a debate: it’s two sides who agree on everything pretending to disagree on something minor.
4 He’s an avid and extremist Brexiteer, yet he’s pretending to support “freedom” and “democracy.”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/three-democratic-deficits-heart-brexit-stephen-douglas/
- Brady had nothing to say about the finding by the Electoral Commission and the courts that both of the Leave campaigns flouted campaign finance laws to the tune of over £500,000 at least. They corrupted the validity of the referendum. Mysteriously the “institutionally corrupt” (as an Ombudsman’s report branded the Met) police force investigating these crimes stopped their investigations against the leading establishment figures including serving Cabinet ministers who committed them.
- And that this illegally spent, darkly sourced campaign finance money was used to manipulate the free thinking British voters judgment into abrogating freedom of movement? Not a word of protest from this “freedom fighter”!
- Brady supported Prime Minister May’s initial and highly unconstitutional plan to push through Brexit without the involvement of Parliament. The Supreme Court rightly held this to be a breach of the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights (Miller 1). Among the many stupidities of Brexit is the cancellation of UK citizens’ rights to live, establish business, transfer capital and work in 27 EU member states. He championed this constraint on freedom, yet now he invokes “freedom” as a rallying cry: Sinister.
- He supported the unlawful suspension of Parliament to prevent Parliament from stopping a so-called No Deal Brexit – the Supreme Court found again this unlawful activity was a breach of the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights (Miller 2). Those fundamental constitutional documents make it unlawful to annul the rights of UK citizens without a vote in Parliament.
- He was elected by his constituents promising to vote for the EU-UK withdrawal treaty that included the Northern Ireland protocol. Ten months later he voted to breach that treaty in the full knowledge doing so was a breach of international law (a senior UK govt minister admitted it was a breach in Parliament – see photograph above).
5 With his anti-masking mask on, “sir” Graham Brady is consciously adopting a stereotypical character trait of the extreme right to signal he’s part of the group. Part of the gang.
This is a very sinister development in British politics.
That such a conformist, elitist, and above all “establishment” figure such as he feels it’s safe and indeed necessary to adopt such a deeply cynical leadership strategy marks a turning point in the rise of authoritarianism in Britain.
This is not a joke.
6 He’s anti-science: masks work. There’s never been any doubt.
Yet early in Covid extreme right forces in the US successfully transformed a medical issue (do masks work?! 🙄) into a rallying cry, an organising fiction around which High Right Wing Authoritarian followers could be organised, identified and mobilised.
This chump is just joining the crowd here.
He’s following his fellow extreme right-wing “friends” down the pathway to authoritarianism out of fear he’ll be ejected from the group if he doesn’t continue peddling these cynical and dangerous lies and deceptions.
7 His use of the words “democratic” “freedom” to justify anti-science, anti-democratic authoritarian government is not a joke either.
The illegally funded brexit advisory referendum was transformed with this chump’s support into anti-democratic bulldozing of democratic rights on a scale not seen in Europe since the 1930s.
This chump opposed a confirmatory vote once the Brexit deal had been agreed – that’s not democratic, is it?!
8 UK government’s chief medical officer’s report forecasts the Central Case for Covid infections by the middle of August 2021: 750,000 a day.
That’s not the worse case scenario effect of the policy this chump campaigned for since March 2020: the removal of all restrictions on Covid’s freedom of movement through the whole population.
It’s the “central case.”
An NHS funded research project that looked at 500,000 pre-Delta Covid cases found 20% of them had symptoms that lasted longer than six months after infection
Brady’s constant undermining of health messages and undermining of support for suppressing the virus is partly responsible for the 160K deaths, the worst toll in Europe so far in the pandemic.
Instead of learning from this, he’s doubling down.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stephen-douglas_brexit-eu-uk-activity-6641237367527096320-jeTG
Deeply immoral behaviour.
Deeply cynical.
Deeply dangerous.
Deeply dispassionate.
Deeply uncaring.
Deeply authoritarian.
Every utterance from this creature is consistent with the promotion of a Mass Infection strategy.
He may deny that – he would say that, wouldn’t he?!
However, the effect of the policies he’s been promoting through Brexit and Covid is undemocracy, mass death and mass suffering.
And, oh, chaos.
And this is the clear aim of this creature and their ilk: manufacture ever greater crises (policies he’s supported have cost the UK people £1t+ since March 2020).
He’s literally supported policies that have transformed the UK into a failed State that spreads deadly diseases like authoritarianism and Covid around the world.
Now he’s feigning concern about the depths to which he has brought the country he leads?!
Don’t take my word for it – I’m just an expert in UK constitutional law with law degrees from Cambridge.
This is the view of the former British Prime Minister:
This chump and his ilk crying crocodile tears at the foreseeable disaster wrought by the policies they’ve promoted:
World-beating Chutzpah.
Out of such chaos and using rhetorical tricks like representing himself in debates as a
- Dissident when he’s the governing mainstream;
- A democrat, when through Brexit (and even now when most people support effective public health measures), he’s done everything in his power to weaken democracy and the effect and impact of public health measures to suppress Covid;
- Anti-science, yet he clothes his anti-science rhetoric in the rhetoric of “freedom” which his work since Brexit has done so much to restrict (promoting a mass infection policy since March 2020 in whatever guise has done as much as Brexit has to restrict freedoms in the UK)…
Out of this chaos the effect of such rhetoric is to trigger the 30% of the UK population who are High Right Wing Authoritarian followers.
As Bob Altemeyer’s empirical psychological work and research on High Right Wing Authoritarian followers
has shown, Trump, Hitler and all other authoritarian projects have come to power by controlling this small segment of the population of any State.
And that is the effect and the trajectory of this chump’s (and that of his fellow travellers in his party) rhetoric.
Whenever you spot any of the rhetorical elements I’ve noted here you can immediately identify those who are trying to trigger High Right Wing Authoritarian Followers.
High RWAs have a higher than average aggressive reaction to breaches of what they are convinced is “writ.”
They’re paranoid to a higher than average degree.
And they hate equality of any kind. Human Rights repels them like garlic repels a vampire.
They see equal access to opportunities for men and women as being a harbinger of the end of the world.
They see any advance in progressive society. – BLM, LGBTIQ+ as a threat to their identity and as a sign of the World Gone Mad:
This is how you spot the Social Dominators like “sir” Graham Brady who are trying to trigger and then direct High Right Wing Authoritarian Followers.
Social Dominators have the same psychological profile as HRWAs with one difference they explicitly hate equality.
They suffer from a deep feeling of inadequacy. This means that it’s only in a society which is fixed in their favour that they can succeed.
Their whole cultural war schtick is all about this. It’s a mask for their own fear. Yet while most of us are zen with being fearful, these clowns are afraid.
They do genuinely feel threatened when an lgbtiq+ person or a woman avails of the same freedoms as they do.
They’re rabidly conformist.
As Altemeyer’s empirical research that’s been replicated throughout the world proved, this means that even when they harbour secret doubts about what they’re doing (taken a look at Johnson’s uncontrolled facial expressions recently?!) they’ll stick with following a path they know is leading to disaster, rather than step outside the conventional wisdom of their peer group and risk opprobrium and being ostracised.
Remember all of these people voted and promoted the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
All of these same people still today defend Brexit after it has turned into a £1t+++ white elephant.
And all continue to defend the government’s failed attempts at reaching herd immunity.
Even now after fifteen months of failure, these fearful conformists are still supporting Mass Infection now as a way of preventing some mythical and preventable Mass Infection sometime in the future.
And they are willing to do everything in their power – and remember despite his faux anti-government stance “sir” Graham Brady is a VERY powerful man – to pushback against the further realisation of policies consistent with the universality of human rights.
It’s not all bad though.
There is some comedy amidst the Brexit and Covid catastrophe “sir” Graham Brady’s incompetence has wrought.
Johnson would not be prime minister without Brady’s support.
Brady and his henchmen (and they are all men – remember Social Dominators fear women and women in power almost more than anything else) controls the committee that on a whim can vote to terminate Johnson’s leadership.
This means that Johnson, wannabe king of the world, is the 1922 Committee’s puppet.
Bringing England to its knees; turning it into an international pariah; turning beautiful England into plague island; propagating Really Bad Vibes; and being subjected to the yoke of the crazies in his party is not what the school boy Johnson dreaming of leading Global Britain had in mind.
The fear and disappointment is clear for all to see in every facial expression.
So at once the most powerful man in England and yet Johnson cannot do anything without that fearful chump Brady’s say so.
The dogs can be unleashed at anytime on Johnson, and it’s for fear of this the deeply fearful and cynical Johnson has unleashed the fog of Covid on the decent British people.
This is why Johnson has turned a safe country into one where you run a high risk of contracting a deadly virus just walking to shops, unless you wear an FP2 mask – anywhere in that sceptered isle.
As he dreamed of becoming Prime Minister, Johnson never imagined he would preside over such a mess.
On “Freedom Day” the deadly virus came knocking at his door.
Again.
Of course while we might revel in Johnson’s suffering under such constraints, we must remember we the people pay the price – £1t+ on a failed Brexit they promised would make us richer; 160,000 souls (and counting); millions with Long Covid; and life in a Failed State.
Brady and his ilk see themselves as the pushback against the progressive realisation of human rights.
This is a decades long project by the extreme right in the UK – take this anti-Good Friday agreement tract by former journalist, ardent Brexiteer, Herd Immunity'ite and now highly influential Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove:
We must make a choice at moments like this:
Do we muddle along, hoping no-one comes knocking at our door at night to drag us away on trumped up charges?
Do we submit our children into the hands of an anti-mask education minister who was fired from his last post for breaching the ministerial code and lying about it?
Or do we see ourselves as the pushback against that pushback which these authoritarians are pursuing?
Are they clowns or beasts?
You decide.
Quick.
Let’s act.
Before they decide for you.
And by then it’ll be too late.
These chumps specialise in closing down options and manufacturing inevitability.
There’s a pattern of law breaking and planned law breaking:
If they’re willing to allow and not even change course after one million of our children get infected with a pathogenic, contagious, antigenic and mutating virus, where do you think this will end?!
When your grandchildren either living in a free society or a dictatorship, in a whisper, ask you:
“What did YOU do to stop me being infected by Corona, and our country by authoritarianism?”
Will you respond:
“I did nothing”?
COVID posts collected:
Why be “political” on LinkedIn
UK Government’s 141 Greatest Hits – Brexit to Covid
