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Even an idiot can now see what's going on in the US.

Tucker Carlson is now accusing Trump’s regime of using Charlie Kirk’s assassination as a pretext to:

- Abolish the First Amendment
- Round up Americans
- And Nazify the country

Yes, Tucker said that.
And for once… he’s not wrong.
https://x.com/allenanalysis/status/1976473095641641151

So if Tucker is having a go at Trump he’s a sage, but the other 99% of the time he’s a crazy conspiracy theorist?

If he's losing the conspiracy nutters who else does he have? The Epstein stuff has holed him and I've also got videos of that Theo Von guy getting upset by ICE.

You’re right on the Epstein stuff, that’s gone down really badly with the base, they were told they’d be seeing the Epstein files and they haven’t turned up. The base are pretty pissed with Pam Bondi for her comments on “hate speech” as well.

The likes of Joe Rogan and Theo Von are both pretty centrist comics, despite them both voting for Trump last time out. They’ve both made negative comments on execution of immigration raids, while being supportive of the concept. They’re a pretty good barometer for the general feeling in the country I think.

As for Tucker, everything he says needs to be taken with a large pinch of salt. Like so many journalists now working for himself and paid to have an opinion, he doesn’t make factual stuff up but often leaves out a lot of context, and also knows that the wildest opinions drive social media “engagement”.

I'm not convinced by your definition of "centrist". Back in September, you described Charlie Kirk as "a middle-of-the-road conservative Christian youth movement leader". Charlie Kirk absolutely did not deserve to die, but he was racist and anti-Semitic, so it seems odd to describe him as "middle-of-the-road", as it seems odd to describe Rogan as "centrist". I suggest that you are still so deep in a MAGA social media bubble that you are struggling to discern reality.

Oh dear.

Rogan said he’d never voted Republican before last year, and that he voted for Obama. He’s described himself as centre-left, but said that the Democrats had gone crazy over censorship and gender stuff.

Von is slightly to the right of Rogan, but has also described himself as pretty centrist.

Charlie Kirk was not racist, there’s no evidence whatsoever of that.

Rogan has supported vaccine misinformation, HIV denialism and denies climate change. He’s said Jews are “interested in money”. Are these centrist views?

As for Kirk, start at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk#Race and work down. The man was deeply racist and an anti-Semite. He explicitly said the Great Replacement Theory conspiracy was true and he blamed Jews for it.

Many of Kirk's views were deeply repulsive. You don't graduate from Princeton, and get a law doctorate from Harvard, as Michelle Obama did, without possessing a lot of brainpower.

We hear lots about the casual and gratuitous use of 'racist' by the left. And ok there's some truth in that. But less discussed and at least equally prevalent is the opposite tendency on the right whereby unless a person goes round in a tee-shirt emblazoned with "KKK White Power!" they can't in fairness be described as a racist.

Don’t worry, the vast majority of us on the centre right think the KKK are racist. Pretty much any organised group of the right is very quick to disassociate themselves from anyone who crosses the line, including groups such as Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point.

Personally my line would be Nigel Farage on the right and Jeremy Corbyn on the left, both of whom are not racist but have been known to associate with those who are.

In my employment lawyer experience there’s no sharp dividing line between “racist” and “not racist” people. There’s a spectrum between, say, stereotypically assuming the Irish person in a round ordered the Guinness (one I was guilty of once), and joining Combat 18.

E.g. Corbyn’s not “a racist”, but his reaction to the Mear One mural in Hackney was, even inadvertently. And he hangs out with some who perform even more unsavoury actions.

Charlie Kirk on his shows talking about Jews:

"Jewish donors have been the No. 1 funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions and nonprofits. This is a beast created by secular Jews and now they're coming for Jews, and they're like, "What on Earth happened?"

"And it's not just the colleges. It's the nonprofits, it's the movies, it's Hollywood, it's all of it."

And in another episode:

"Jews have been some of the largest funders of cultural Marxist ideas and supporters of those ideas over the last 30 or 40 years.

[…]

"Until you cleanse that ideology from the hierarchy in the academic elite of the West, there will not be a safe future. I'm not going to say Israel won't exist, but Israel will be in jeopardy as long as the Western children, children of the West, are being taught, with primarily Jewish dollars, subsidizing it, to view everything through oppressor oppressed dynamic. Until you shed that ideology, you will not be able to build the case for Israel, because they view Israel as an oppressor."

The above is from Snopes, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/charlie-kirk-jewish-money-quote/

When Elon Musk said "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them," Kirk defended Musk and said this was accurate. See https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-defends-elon-musks-antisemitism-some-largest-financiers-left-wing-anti

'De mortuis nil nisi bonum' and all that but two things stand out about this man to me: Firstly that a range of his opinions are profoundly disturbing.

Secondly, and unnoticed and intellectually important is this: he majored on free and open debate and discussion. But in fact his entire emphasis is on him, Kirk, persuading his audience that he is right with no emphasis at all on the the thought that he could learn from them or be wrong.

Socrates he was not.

The Greens have no full answers as yet.

On the other hand, they're serving a usual function. No one else is making some of the kind of perfectly valid case that Polanski was making on QT, that billionaires are helping place all the blame on minorities from structural social and economic issues since Thatcherism.

Neither Starmer, or particularly the Lib Dens, are drawing attention to this reality, and YourParty seems not be functioning yet.

The result is that the public sense of who to hold accountable is gradually being drawn further and further to the right, so he's a useful corrective.

The problem with the Greens is that they are antediluvian, and their policy proposals are crap.

The Greens do believe in a prelapsarian paradise, perhaps something they share with Reform UK.

Reform only want to take us back to 1955. The Greens want to take us back to pre-industrial times.

OT Japan: Koumeito which is the political wing of Soka Gakkai (sort of like Scientology but Buddhist) pulled out of the ruling coalition. They've been part of it for a couple of decades. They mainly care about tax cuts for religious cults but they also don't like militarism so they didn't really vibe with Sanae "Liz Truss but without the common sense" Takaichi.

Previously the LDP+Koumeito were a little bit short of a majority but they had two right/centrist parties they could play off against each other, Isshin (the ruling party of Osaka) and People's Democrats (the right-wing faction resulting from a schism in the main opposition party). Without Koumeito they only really have Isshin to make the numbers, it's not clear whether they can make a deal.

In principle you could now get a non-LDP coalition together with nobody too bonkers in it but it's a lot of cats to herd.

Three quarters of pensioners own their own home.

The same can not be said about working people.

Working people's wages should go to themselves first, before it goes to anyone else.

Working people should not be worse off than those who are not working.

I’m genuinely amazed people who have worked 40 plus years have paid off their mortgage whereas people who have been in the world of work a few years haven’t 😂😂😂😂

Taz, this site is full of greedy entitled arseholes. Instead of going out and working to better tyhemselves they just constantly whine about people who have spent 50 years grafting to get themselves a few bob. It is no wonder the country is so f**ed if this is representative of the public. Want everything for nothing.

I am so glad you are finally showing signs of self awareness.

Good job @malcolmg.

We salute you.