NPR

Joost wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:27 am

sockwithaticket wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:10 am

Joost wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:05 am While what Lineker did was probably a breach of the impartiality rules, suspending him and creating this massive sh!t storm has been a spectacular piece of mismanagement by the Beeb.

Could the Chairman (who is apparently good friends with Lineker) not just have pulled him aside and said ‘look Gary, far be it from me to clip your wings on Twitter, you’re only a sports journo after all. But if you’re going to wade into the debate on the Govt’s latest abhorrent policy, do you think you could avoid comparing them to the f%cking Nazis? You know as well as I do that these chinless f%cks would love to scrap the licence fee and restructure us and having our highest-paid presenter spouting the sort of sh!t that a clueless 6th former would probably later reflect on as being a bit stupid and reactionary isn’t helping. Livelihoods depend on this sh!t. Right, now, I’ll tell them we’ve spoken and discussed the rules on impartiality and that you understand that there’s a subtle difference between having a horrible immigration policy and committing systemic genocide and repression of millions of people. Right. Lunch?’

From what I saw Lineker likened policies to 1930s Germany, not the Holocaust, so it would appear that he's already aware of that difference.

In fact I believe he compared the language used to 1930s Germany, but if you’re going to invoke the Nazi comparison, I don’t think you can really separate that from the holocaust (“No, no, you misunderstand. I didn’t mean the genocidal, death camp Nazis of the 1940s. I meant the book burning, window smashing Nazis of the 1930s”).

Personal bugbear - invoking the Nazis allows the Govt to avoid and distract from some incredibly serious concerns about this policy and paint opponents of the policy and the messaging around it as reactionary idiots, when in fact there are some very troubling things which they should be being pulled up on - saying that illegal migrants will have no modern slavery protections - so if you’re trafficked here you’re fair game?? What about those children that travelled here alone and were taken from a hotel by traffickers, no protection for them from exploitation?!

sockwithaticket wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:42 am

Joost wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:27 am

sockwithaticket wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:10 am

From what I saw Lineker likened policies to 1930s Germany, not the Holocaust, so it would appear that he's already aware of that difference.

In fact I believe he compared the language used to 1930s Germany, but if you’re going to invoke the Nazi comparison, I don’t think you can really separate that from the holocaust (“No, no, you misunderstand. I didn’t mean the genocidal, death camp Nazis of the 1940s. I meant the book burning, window smashing Nazis of the 1930s”).

Personal bugbear - invoking the Nazis allows the Govt to avoid and distract from some incredibly serious concerns about this policy and paint opponents of the policy and the messaging around it as reactionary idiots, when in fact there are some very troubling things which they should be being pulled up on - saying that illegal migrants will have no modern slavery protections - so if you’re trafficked here you’re fair game?? What about those children that travelled here alone and were taken from a hotel by traffickers, no protection for them from exploitation?!

Eh, I think you can separate them, extreme xenophobia is still quite removed from genocide, but it's certainly naive to think that any such nuance would be allowed to exist in media discourse and you're right, it gives the government an opportunity to put on an act about being affronted by an extreme comparison and shift focus from substantive criticism.

sockwithaticket wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:42 am Eh, I think you can separate them, extreme xenophobia is still quite removed from genocide, but it's certainly naive to think that any such nuance would be allowed to exist in media discourse and you're right, it gives the government an opportunity to put on an act about being affronted by an extreme comparison and shift focus from substantive criticism.

Joost wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:57 am

sockwithaticket wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:42 am Eh, I think you can separate them, extreme xenophobia is still quite removed from genocide, but it's certainly naive to think that any such nuance would be allowed to exist in media discourse and you're right, it gives the government an opportunity to put on an act about being affronted by an extreme comparison and shift focus from substantive criticism.

Sure, but we all know how the story ended with Nazi Germany and (as you say) thinking you could make a separation between referencing 1930s Germany and what later happened under that regime in the modern Twittersphere would be extremely naive (to put it mildly).

Also looks a bit silly comparing a Govt with a PM and a good proportion of the front bench who are non-white to the Nazis.

Biffer wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 11:55 am Pretty clear Lineker has won here given his tweets to say he would be back and they'd sorted it included reference to the plight of refugees.

Jim Lahey wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 12:05 pm

Biffer wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 11:55 am Pretty clear Lineker has won here given his tweets to say he would be back and they'd sorted it included reference to the plight of refugees.

That's probably the first mention I've heard about the refugees on this subject for a few days.

Shitshow from the BBC. If they didn't make it 100% clear that Lineker was contractually bounded to not weigh into political debates then they only have themselves to blame.

The whole impartiality thing is bollocks anyway. No one is impartial, and can be impartial to everything. Especially in the social media era when celebrities feel the need to voice opinions about everything.

Scrap the licence fee, make it an organisation funded by profits and move on.

JM2K6 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 11:49 am Hi I think we absolutely should make the comparisons with the most famous fascists when our government apes them in ways that's near-guaranteed to cause violence and stoke division and send us further down the same path. The hand-wringing simply means that unless the Tories rebrand as THE NAZI PARTY then they continue to get away with escalating this shit.

"But it's counter productive" no, fuck off - there are people dying over this shit

Propaganda must always address itself to the broad masses of the people. (...) All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. (...) The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses. The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. (...) The great majority of a nation is so feminine in its character and outlook that its thought and conduct are ruled by sentiment rather than by sober reasoning. This sentiment, however, is not complex, but simple and consistent. It is not highly differentiated, but has only the negative and positive notions of love and hatred, right and wrong, truth and falsehood

Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favorable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favorable to its own side. (...) The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward[. (...) Every change that is made in the subject of a propagandist message must always emphasize the same conclusion. The leading slogan must, of course, be illustrated in many ways and from several angles, but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula

tc27 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 12:46 pm Think the governments handled the potential failure of SVB UK pretty well. Sold to HSBC before markets opened.

Biffer wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 12:39 pm The thing is, the policy isn’t going to be in a contract of employment. There will be reference to abiding by policy, but that policy is subject to change at any time, and those changes can be disputed (when Lineker started at the bbc there wasn’t a social media policy).

fishfoodie wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 1:19 pm

Biffer wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 12:39 pm The thing is, the policy isn’t going to be in a contract of employment. There will be reference to abiding by policy, but that policy is subject to change at any time, and those changes can be disputed (when Lineker started at the bbc there wasn’t a social media policy).

Well they've had a policy for a long time, & if they tried disciplinary measures against him using the policy; it would have taken his lawyers about 0.1 seconds to completely shred the Beebs lawyers, because having a policy, & never previously enforcing it against posts supporting the Tories, by other employees makes any action untenable.

It's also rather bizarre that they're choosing social media as the battleground, but I suppose this makes it easy for them to ignore other contractors working for newspapers, & other tv stations, & giving vent to their political views live & in colour, but to somehow pretend that this isn't partisan, but a tweet, or post on facebooks is ?

Biffer wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 1:11 pm

tc27 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 12:46 pm Think the governments handled the potential failure of SVB UK pretty well. Sold to HSBC before markets opened.

Amazing how quickly they can act if something is going to affect the Finance markets.

tc27 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 1:30 pm

Biffer wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 1:11 pm

tc27 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 12:46 pm Think the governments handled the potential failure of SVB UK pretty well. Sold to HSBC before markets opened.

Amazing how quickly they can act if something is going to affect the Finance markets.

It was lots of tech firms going possibly going insolvent or not making payroll.

It was also done in a way that did not cost the BOE of the taxpayer anything

JM2K6 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 11:49 am Hi I think we absolutely should make the comparisons with the most famous fascists when our government apes them in ways that's near-guaranteed to cause violence and stoke division and send us further down the same path. The hand-wringing simply means that unless the Tories rebrand as THE NAZI PARTY then they continue to get away with escalating this shit.

"But it's counter productive" no, fuck off - there are people dying over this shit

Biffer wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 1:24 pm

fishfoodie wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 1:19 pm

Biffer wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 12:39 pm The thing is, the policy isn’t going to be in a contract of employment. There will be reference to abiding by policy, but that policy is subject to change at any time, and those changes can be disputed (when Lineker started at the bbc there wasn’t a social media policy).

Well they've had a policy for a long time, & if they tried disciplinary measures against him using the policy; it would have taken his lawyers about 0.1 seconds to completely shred the Beebs lawyers, because having a policy, & never previously enforcing it against posts supporting the Tories, by other employees makes any action untenable.

It's also rather bizarre that they're choosing social media as the battleground, but I suppose this makes it easy for them to ignore other contractors working for newspapers, & other tv stations, & giving vent to their political views live & in colour, but to somehow pretend that this isn't partisan, but a tweet, or post on facebooks is ?

They’ve changed the policy in the last two years or so.

Joost wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 1:47 pm

JM2K6 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 11:49 am Hi I think we absolutely should make the comparisons with the most famous fascists when our government apes them in ways that's near-guaranteed to cause violence and stoke division and send us further down the same path. The hand-wringing simply means that unless the Tories rebrand as THE NAZI PARTY then they continue to get away with escalating this shit.

"But it's counter productive" no, fuck off - there are people dying over this shit

They are and it is therefore imperative that a magnifying glass is held up to how manifestly ridiculous some of the headlines of this policy are: saying that people who arrive illegally will never be able to claim asylum/gain the right to work when there is no legal route for them to enter the UK, saying that some of the most vulnerable people in society won’t have any protection from modern slavery.

That’s not being ‘tough on illegal immigration’, it is a lack of compassion and disregard for human rights that we should be ashamed of as a first world democracy.

Comparing the policy and the rhetoric around it (and the Tory party more generally) to Nazi Germany sounds foolish and is easy for the Tories to play - Braverman gets to say how insulted she is because he husband is Jewish and the party gets to spin how protecting your borders isn’t racist, how implying that a party with a PM and HS with immigrant heritage are stoking hatred against immigrants is patently ridiculous and that the people making comparisons to the Nazis are reactionary idiots. That’s how they get off the hook and they shouldn’t be given the opportunity.

JM2K6 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 5:30 pm

Joost wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 1:47 pm

JM2K6 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 11:49 am Hi I think we absolutely should make the comparisons with the most famous fascists when our government apes them in ways that's near-guaranteed to cause violence and stoke division and send us further down the same path. The hand-wringing simply means that unless the Tories rebrand as THE NAZI PARTY then they continue to get away with escalating this shit.

"But it's counter productive" no, fuck off - there are people dying over this shit

They are and it is therefore imperative that a magnifying glass is held up to how manifestly ridiculous some of the headlines of this policy are: saying that people who arrive illegally will never be able to claim asylum/gain the right to work when there is no legal route for them to enter the UK, saying that some of the most vulnerable people in society won’t have any protection from modern slavery.

That’s not being ‘tough on illegal immigration’, it is a lack of compassion and disregard for human rights that we should be ashamed of as a first world democracy.

Comparing the policy and the rhetoric around it (and the Tory party more generally) to Nazi Germany sounds foolish and is easy for the Tories to play - Braverman gets to say how insulted she is because he husband is Jewish and the party gets to spin how protecting your borders isn’t racist, how implying that a party with a PM and HS with immigrant heritage are stoking hatred against immigrants is patently ridiculous and that the people making comparisons to the Nazis are reactionary idiots. That’s how they get off the hook and they shouldn’t be given the opportunity.

I don't give a shit - the Tories and their press will spin whatever gets said. Better to be honest than to run scared of the very people you're trying to criticise. We absolutely cannot allow them to set the agenda. If you soften the language you're not going to be met with any less spin or pushback.

Biffer wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 1:24 pm

fishfoodie wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 1:19 pm

Biffer wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 12:39 pm The thing is, the policy isn’t going to be in a contract of employment. There will be reference to abiding by policy, but that policy is subject to change at any time, and those changes can be disputed (when Lineker started at the bbc there wasn’t a social media policy).

Well they've had a policy for a long time, & if they tried disciplinary measures against him using the policy; it would have taken his lawyers about 0.1 seconds to completely shred the Beebs lawyers, because having a policy, & never previously enforcing it against posts supporting the Tories, by other employees makes any action untenable.

It's also rather bizarre that they're choosing social media as the battleground, but I suppose this makes it easy for them to ignore other contractors working for newspapers, & other tv stations, & giving vent to their political views live & in colour, but to somehow pretend that this isn't partisan, but a tweet, or post on facebooks is ?

They’ve changed the policy in the last two years or so.

JM2K6 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 5:30 pm I don't give a shit - the Tories and their press will spin whatever gets said. Better to be honest than to run scared of the very people you're trying to criticise. We absolutely cannot allow them to set the agenda. If you soften the language you're not going to be met with any less spin or pushback.

Joost wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 7:21 pm

JM2K6 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 5:30 pm I don't give a shit - the Tories and their press will spin whatever gets said. Better to be honest than to run scared of the very people you're trying to criticise. We absolutely cannot allow them to set the agenda. If you soften the language you're not going to be met with any less spin or pushback.

Who’s running scared?! This is about raising legitimate questions that the Govt should be made to answer publicly about this policy. You can be uncompromisingly (and I would argue far more effectively) critical of this Govt policy without invoking the Nazis and suggesting that people are being ‘dishonest’ if they don’t make this connection is a bit weird. Still, maybe I’m overestimating the nuances of political discourse in the social media age!

Joost wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 7:21 pm

JM2K6 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 5:30 pm I don't give a shit - the Tories and their press will spin whatever gets said. Better to be honest than to run scared of the very people you're trying to criticise. We absolutely cannot allow them to set the agenda. If you soften the language you're not going to be met with any less spin or pushback.

Who’s running scared?! This is about raising legitimate questions that the Govt should be made to answer publicly about this policy. You can be uncompromisingly (and I would argue far more effectively) critical of this Govt policy without invoking the Nazis and suggesting that people are being ‘dishonest’ if they don’t make this connection is a bit weird. Still, maybe I’m overestimating the nuances of political discourse in the social media age!

sturginho wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 7:26 pm The PM stands behind a lectern with "STOP THE BOATS" written in big bold letters and you want to talk about nuance?

tabascoboy wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 8:40 pm Wow, well if we want to raise the SVB here:

Joost wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 9:08 pm

sturginho wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 7:26 pm The PM stands behind a lectern with "STOP THE BOATS" written in big bold letters and you want to talk about nuance?

Yeah, what the hell, let’s see if we can come up with/plagiarise a compelling argument that this steaming turd of a bill won’t provide the slightest deterrent to people crossing in small boats or lead to more deportations.

The current legislation, which was passed in the last year, was also meant to be a deterrent and states that anyone who arrives illegally will be deemed inadmissible and returned to the country they arrived from or a safe third country. The Home Office has deemed 18,000 people to be inadmissible because they travelled through safe third countries before arriving in the UK. So far the Govt has returned a grand total of 21 people, mainly because it neglected to negotiate any return agreements. Meanwhile, numbers arriving in small boats has continued to rise exponentially. Bribing the French to up their patrols is unlikely to have much of an impact.

The Govt’s messaging suggests that people seeking asylum in the UK should avail themselves of the safe and legal routes to apply for this, but the reality is that there are none at this point (or contemplated) and crossing in small boats is the only option for most of these desperate people.

Also, the vast majority of those who claim asylum in the UK ultimately obtain refugee status and are therefore not removable to their country of origin under international law. The Govt has no agreement in place with the EU or any other country to return refugees aside from Rwanda, which will only accept a few hundred people, not thousands or tens of thousands. The reality is therefore that these poor souls will remain in the UK, housed in hotels or asylum centres at great cost to the tax payer, unable to work and with no regard for their dignity and supposedly now no possibility of obtaining citizenship or the right to work. This legislation is unworkable, illegal and an affront to human rights, it shames us all as a nation.


Or, y’know, we could just call the PM a fascist and see if that helps…

tabascoboy wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 8:40 pm Wow, well if we want to raise the SVB here:

UK Government’s Illegal Migration Bill is ‘cruel and immoral’ says DUP’s Gavin Robinson

The government’s controversial Illegal Migration Bill amounts to a culture war that has been brought with the next General Election in mind, DUP MP Gavin Robinson has said.

Mr Robinson was speaking in the UK Parliament during the Second Reading of the government’s Illegal Migration Bill on Monday evening.

After Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s statement on the Bill that she was ‘unable’ to state the Bill was compatible with the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), a Labour amendment was moved in order to block the Bill’s passage.

The Belfast East MP confirmed he would be supporting the Labour amendment and said he would be working to change the Bill.

“As the DUP spokesperson on home affairs and immigration in this chamber, that I am not an out-of-touch leftie,” he told the Commons.

_Os_ wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:27 pm

tabascoboy wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 8:40 pm Wow, well if we want to raise the SVB here:

Hmm, no it's a good thing the WSJ mentioned this in passing. When merit is eroded bad things happen, when that approach becomes societal the society itself is damaged. It seems to be something every multi racial/ethnic/cultural society attempts at some point, from all my reading on the subject the best case scenario for anywhere that attempts this stuff (informal and formal quotas in employment etc) is stagnation and polarisation. The worst case scenarios lead to the darkest parts of human history.

Seeing as the Nazis are in the UK political news, it's worth remembering what the actual arguments made in 1930s Germany were. The angle Lineker takes, that Jews were a scapegoated minority blamed for all manner of problems Germany was facing none of which had anything to do with them, is one part of it. The other component, which is basically never mentioned in the West, is the Nazi claim that Jews were 'over represented' in certain white collar professions (law, medicine, etc) and these professions should reflect the demographics of Germany (which often meant Jews losing their careers). In other words it's a literal 1930s Nazi claim to say that the demographics of a country should guide hiring practice in each individual business (rather than the entire economy simply being left to reflect who is working), when this is done across a society the market distortion becomes significant and everyone ends up worse off.

This isn't focused on in the West, because a lot of elites think it's correct. They are fighting for elite positions to reflect the demographics of their country. To do this they appeal to fairness and equality, but the argument is really no different to those made elsewhere.

Seeing as Rwanda gets mentioned in UK politics now, it provides another example. Decades before the genocide areas controlled by government (university places, civil service jobs, etc) had been made to reflect the demographics of the country, which in practice meant excluding Tutsis (who were/are a small minority).

It's an evil idea that's the opposite of MLK's dream, it goes unchallenged because it's easier to ignore. Mentioning it potentially means being called racist, then you lose your job etc, and it's the orthodox view so will not change anyway. I hardly think genocide is likely in the West, but it does seem to me that if elite positions are optimised for capturing a wide spread of identities (and that's what is now happening), then merit is going to be undermined and there'll be poorer outcomes than otherwise would've been the case. If it continues to go unchallenged then the logic of the argument means it'll be applied further down the food chain eventually (probably once whites become a minority).

TheNatalShark wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 8:09 am Agree we should avoid all references to Nazis apart from contexts where it involves the variables of Germany, a party calling themselves national socialists (without being socialists), trains into Poland, a second world, a religious group with ethnic hereditary rules and a vegetarian leader called Adolf with only one testical.

Instead we cross reference current events to a historical context of which 99.5% of people have no fucking clue about, to properly demonstrate the nuance and complexity of situations.


Art in simplicity, we reach for Nazis as it doesn't come with required reading and is a demonstrative of a reasonable nth degree. It's no different a process from vast majority of arguments, it just has the moral baggage.

Paddington Bear wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 8:33 am

TheNatalShark wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 8:09 am Agree we should avoid all references to Nazis apart from contexts where it involves the variables of Germany, a party calling themselves national socialists (without being socialists), trains into Poland, a second world, a religious group with ethnic hereditary rules and a vegetarian leader called Adolf with only one testical.

Instead we cross reference current events to a historical context of which 99.5% of people have no fucking clue about, to properly demonstrate the nuance and complexity of situations.


Art in simplicity, we reach for Nazis as it doesn't come with required reading and is a demonstrative of a reasonable nth degree. It's no different a process from vast majority of arguments, it just has the moral baggage.

It's just dumb though as clearly 99.99% of people in this country aren't nazis and so it gives anyone accused of it an out and a way of turning the debate back on to you, and the vast majority of voters you're trying to reach know it isn't true. You can also compare just about any government to Nazi Germany if you want.

Take Alastair Campbell for example, given he's been front and centre on this:
- Communications guru at the cutting edge of a new brand of politics
- Part of a party that took control of the legislature with around 40% of the vote
- Fabricated evidence to facilitate the invasion of a country under false pretences
- Cunt

Oh look, he's literally Goebbells.

GogLais wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 9:44 am My simplistic view is they’re Fascists/Nazis when they start wearing uniforms.