Sadly this seems to be a worldwide phenomenon. Almost all the right wing populist parties in different countries seem to be heavily connected to MAGA and co in the US, and want to try and push the same things in their own countries.
And even without the whole social media thing, we see an alarming trend where 'issues' seen as controversial in the US end up becoming controversies in other countries too, even if they're basically irrelevant on a cultural level/were perfectly fine for years or decades beforehand.
Add this to political figures from these parties being seen with their US counterparts on a fairly regular basis, and it generally feels like world politics is quickly becoming Americanised.
They see the American experiment of populism as validating, and the fact that in America it is mostly been pulled off by bunglers is interesting too. And the fact that you can get such traction with very few ideas and mostly just labels like “woke” makes the whole thing seem like magic.
But what are they actually pushing for? Like, what does the UK spiralling into a right-wing basket case actually provide to these people? Is it simply that they reckon they can be the metaphorical kings in hell rather than servants in heaven?
There's so much more money to be made by not trashing everything. Is it just that they don't care if that money didn't go directly to them in the first instance?
I think the study is flawed. They do not seem to have separated American followers of these accounts from British. Maybe the followers are following American accounts because they are Americans, or because Twitter attracts a particular group, or because they are bots or,.... Following an account does not mean you agree with it - I do not really use Twitter any more (like a lot of people!) but I follow many people I disagree with. I am also rather suspicious of the value of research commissioned by a labour MP, particularly one who is in danger of losing his seat at the next election (he only got 31% of the vote at the last election).
This is seeing things through an American lens is true of Britain in general, and the left as well as the right. This leads to some odd things: I have seen the silly phrase "global majority" adopted both by the woke and by racists (the latter in support of replacement theory).
I see this particularly on the left in conversations about racism, which talk as though our problems are the same as those of the US. It is a topic I have some experience of and have devoted much thought to as a visibly ethnic minority Britain, who was born in (and spent a significant part of my life in) a country that fought a decades long ethnic civil war to parents from two different minorities. I have blogged about this: https://pietersz.co.uk/2023/08/racism-culture-different The Tl;DR is the history is very different and current racism is almost entirely driven by resentment of small boat asylum claims.
I think it also exaggerates the links of right wing populism to the US. The article mostly talks about Reform - a party that turned down a huge donation from Elon Musk because Musk made it conditional on allowing Tommy Robinson (the leader of an anti-Muslim group) to join the party.
I also think that that those who become too American will damage their own popularity because they will lose touch with the attitudes of their voters.
> End Wokeness — an anonymous account with 3.2 million followers — has repeatedly amplified debunked claims about minorities.
There’s no source mentioned and no link to substantiate this claim. People previously said the UK rape gangs were debunked claims against minorities and we now know that to be false and that hundreds of thousands of young poor girls were assaulted - so we should probably ignore a website that writes with no supporting evidence that End Wokeness supports debunked claims against minorities.
> Common threads run through almost all of them: anti-trans rhetoric, climate denial, pandemic conspiracies
There is nothing wrong with not believing in trans ideology. It’s also fairly obvious when one watches An Inconvenient Truth that global warning concerns were amplified beyond what actually happened in the next two decades. Likewise it’s more likely that the novel coronavirus came from the novel coronavirus lab than a wet market.
> There’s no source mentioned and no link to substantiate this claim
.. when someone mixes up two things, saying for example "People previously said the UK rape gangs were debunked claims against minorities and we now know that to be false and that hundreds of thousands of poor girls were assaulted", the hammer on my bullshit meter starts to slam the right-hand bell.
The implication here is that "hundreds of thousands of poor girls" were raped by gangs in the UK, according to studies [1], that figure was actually ... 706 in the latest figures that I could find. Being absolutely clear, that is 706 too many, but it's not "hundreds of thousands".
The conflation is that half a million or so cases of sexual assault are made against minors on a yearly basis, but the bar for that is a lot lower than "rape gang". Also, to be clear, that's half a million too many.
The good news here is that investigations into police and governmental policy have been made, 12 recommendations were produced, and all have been accepted by the government. Hopefully this can help matters, and these poor kids (of both sexes) in the future.
> There is nothing wrong with not believing in trans ideology
Well, that's open to debate. If you believe that sexuality is innate, like skin colour, then discriminating against someone's sexuality is akin to being racist. Just saying.
> It’s also fairly obvious when one watches An Inconvenient Truth that global warning concerns were amplified beyond what actually happened in the next two decades
Uh huh. The Y2K problem was massively mitigated by a huge effort to fix it, and the success of that effort meant there wasn't much that went wrong on the actual day. Global warming has had a lot less effort (though still substantial), the ozone hole has been pretty much closed, but the world is still on a pretty terrible path. It's almost as if people can't see the ever-increasing heat in Summer, and "polar vortexes" in Winter as the evidence that's as plain as the nose on your face.
> Likewise it’s more likely that the novel coronavirus came from the novel coronavirus lab than a wet market
And even without the whole social media thing, we see an alarming trend where 'issues' seen as controversial in the US end up becoming controversies in other countries too, even if they're basically irrelevant on a cultural level/were perfectly fine for years or decades beforehand.
Add this to political figures from these parties being seen with their US counterparts on a fairly regular basis, and it generally feels like world politics is quickly becoming Americanised.
reply