I kind of feel that not enough is made of how the far-right has weaponised the internet and is totally undermining democracy. Like everyone knows it but is there much being done to oppose it? At this point I think there's every possibility that reform uk will win loads of seats in the next election here, and win the election after that, just by manipulating public opinion on otherwise uncontroversial issues like active travel and human rights.
@yaxu Generalising from my own trajectory... there's an ideological problem: a left-learning person of the Internet generation grew up on the idea that a libertarian Internet would be empowering and just. We campaigned so much on censorship, net neutrality, etc. -- Now we discover our vision was fundamentally flawed if the medium becomes important: powerful actors will corrupt the medium anyway. We don't have a recipe to fix this, that doesn't involve the Internet control we've so long opposed.
Great point, Dan!! It's overwhelming how the right (authoritarian and standardizer) was able to use a libertarian and eclectic/decentralised principle to push its authoritarian and standardizer agenda through a decentralised medium and with decentralised and pseudo-autonomous methods. It makes me think that internet, as any other medium, when mediates, in the end it controls. Maybe it is not a corrupt factor. Maybe it is intrinsic in the aparathus, in the system. To be functional it must control in a certain level. And who controls technology controls who uses it. We are vulnerable users by principle. And even if we think that educated users can overcome that barrier it is impossible to educate everyone in time to have a critical viewpoint about that. So yes, from where we are now, I don't see a way out that is not counting with a centralised control over internet content. And that's a sad story to tell.
not to underplay the effects of online manipulation/astroturfing/bots etc, but the fact print media has been in freefall for a while means outrage = clicks = revenue for most news outlets. tv news is no different really. everything is a 'debate' now.
and the left are traditionally way easier to divide because there are so many minorities with diff concerns; the rise of gotcha-ism is super easy to leverage for the right, exaggerating fault lines that have always existed but been kept quiet.
and then add in the fact that every time something outrageous happens on the right, the left media think it's a great idea to never shut up about it, giving it oxygen etc.
@yaxu Indeed, and I feel that so much of it is difficult to unravel because it's not actually about politics or issues instead it's about aesthetics as applied in a symbolic Winners vs. Losers battle. It does not matter what actually happens, and most definitely longer term consequences are totally irrelevant. What's important is a professional-wrestling-like performative public insult battle with people who are other. Trash talk and machismo. Everyone cheers and forgets what happened last week.
It feels like a very sad game of psychological avoidance - folks avoid the things that really scare them and make them sad as well as the real conditions that make their lives difficult – instead they project onto someone being cruel, convinced they are on the side of the winners on the other side of a screen.
@yaxu I think you may be overestimating Reform's chances. Even though they're polling at roughly 10% now, that is spread around geographically and likely won't get them any seats at all. See https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html
They may get some council seats in the local elections, which certainly isn't good, but probably isn't that strong an indicator for a general election.
In my opinion, the reason the Tories are lurching to the right is that they have lost a lot of broader support and are now fighting it out amongst themselves to slice up the much smaller pie they're left with. They're appealing to Tory party members, people who've voluntarily paid into the Tory party, rather than Tory voters, and there are roughly 2 orders of magnitude fewer members than voters.
All that said, complacency isn't the answer and there's clearly a growing far right tendency globally, it's just the UK voting structure means it's quite hard for narrow issue parties to get much electoral traction.
@grodin Yes I hope so! I'm just looking at the pattern across Europe though, including Portugal at the moment which I thought was the one good story for European socialism.
@yaxu I dunno it feels more like the neoliberal centre has given away so much power to big tech while failing to provide for ordinary people and thats whats done the damage. The far right and other opportunists fill the narrative vacuum , the rich profit from the clicks. Profit comes before democracy
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