Seizing back control: The ILX lol brexit is how we're all gonna die thread.

sorry if i'm missing something but by my lights the "nasty" side of Farage has always been the core of his appeal. anyone can get a pint and laugh with the grannies - but it was only Farage who you knew, underneath it all, wouldn't flinch if these terrible times required us to put people in concentration camps. it's the same as the appeal of the Daily Mail. an outward show of mittel-England jocularity but no mistaking the cold steel beneath it.

Still has the easiest gig in politics so the strategy is back of a beermat.

as soon as he starts making unguarded comments about the type of policies he would support from beyond the single issue Brexit Betrayed momentum he's built up, then only the most committed idiots are going to stick with him, which isn't enough for the party to be little more than a right wing pressure group, imo.

i'd be a bit concerned that his party isn't going to go away, tbh. not least because brexit isn't looking like it's going away anytime soon. i guess we don't know if they can repeat this popularity in a general election but it seems possible at least. i have to say i'm starting to think any form of deal to be able to say 'we have left the eu', asap, seems quite important for the uk at the moment. i fully understand why labour won't vote for the current deal, but i sometimes think they should fall on their sword for the sake of the country and back themselves to get elected on their policies anyway. it does sort of let the tories off the hook but it seems like the public are relatively prepared to give them a kicking in the polls anyway. and the things people like about labour are not brexit-related. far from it.

i've been on doorsteps the last few weeks in solidly Labour Newham and a lot of people apparently feel Corbyn isn't being "honest" about what he wants re: Brexit (and one guy was furious about Corbyn's comment from like 3 years ago about how he wouldn't launch a nuclear strike lol)

pretty amazing that Cameron figured he'd snuff out the UKIP threat once and for all, and now appears to have ensured its rampant saliency for years to come

(for "UKIP" feel free to substitute whatever right-wing Faragist stabbed-in-back party of ethno-fantasists you want)

#milkshakegate Victorians were inveterate missile-throwers. Most notably, Victorians often threw dead cats - that's right, DEAD CATS - at politicians/during riots. Look closely at this contemporary drawing of Chartist rioting, and you can spot one flying through the air: pic.twitter.com/ePOjH8NK0i

— Victorian Election Violence UK (@VictorianEV_UK) May 21, 2019

some historical perspective on recent events.

Live cats would be even more effective, I feel.

Agreed.

How did they go about acquiring cat corpses, I wonder? I imagine felines weren’t as beloved back then as they are today.

Corpses of every description were ten a penny back in those days.

I think Corbyn has been completely honest - media interlocutors are so obviously angling for either OMG HE SAID REMAIN or OMG HE SAID LEAVE in the form of a short, pithy headline quote and he’s been doing exactly what Labour agreed at conference. Can you blame the man for getting tetchy with the line of questioning he gets? If Labour hadn’t advanced amendments to the WA or voted as a bloc against it, we’d have left already. It’s not a fudge to try to respect the result of the referendum until all options of doing so prove impossible, but if I were him I’d move towards a ratification vote by channeling the DIY dad side of his persona : ‘measure twice, cut once’. Lots of shed dads in the Leave vote....

Also there is a basic misunderstanding of what MEPs do amongst an electorate that has ignored EU elections until shit got real - MEPs affiliate with groupings in the EU Parliament so left voters in England should choose those who will be in the socialist group or the green group. Tories and Brexit will be in the right-wing group along with Orban and similar racist thugs. I’m not sure Lib Dems are in a left group, nor am I sure about Plaid or SNP because I’m in England obvs.

they used to put cat corpses into the walls of their homes to ward off evil spirits, and create a lovely aroma.

Oh and re: milkshaking, let’s not forget that it only became a thing because a bunch of Yax thugs surrounded an Asian lad who was trying to walk home alone, and wouldn’t let him pass so SYL could harangue him for being a Muslim.

Pretty sure the first milkshake outrage was before that.

The day before? Could be wrong though.

these establishments are going to have to come to an in-house malt solution

No, it was the kid and he only chucked it because he had no other form of self-defense. Some antifa had their faces punched in by SYL goons on the same afternoon.

the first guy was a pretty sad tale - don't think he appreciated being made into a meme too much. got doxxed etc.

Can't say I'm that worried by the Brexit party doing well in the European elections. Brexit has a solid base, this is roughly the same crowd that voted for them in the last euro elections.

And that should hold for a general election but I think part of that will be fought on different set of fields. Should it happen at all.

a lot of ppl cannot really get the hang of the idea that a major party isn't being directed by the whims of a maverick strongman

yeah, the first milkshake murder wasn't some planned event, just a very human fight or flight response when you get threatened and surrounded by multiple bigger ppl than you.

@Archimbaldo
The other part of Bad Milkshake Discourse: let's not be inconsistent about direct action.

Yes, you can consistently say that milkshaking Farage is good but egging Corbyn is bad. You can't say that one is harmless fun, exercising free speech, but the other is violent intimidation

@Archimbaldo
Left direct action (or certain forms of it) is a demonstration of power. Often it is intimidation. Sometimes obviously it's literal violence. Fine, but let's be honest about it. Being opportunistically mealy-mouthed, selectively outraged makes us look like hypocrites and liars

@Archimbaldo
Fascist violence is bad because it's fascist, not because it's violent. Anti-fascist violence is justified because it's antifascist, not because it isn't violent.

@Archimbaldo
If you think Brexit is a fight against fascism, don't call the police when protesters in yellow vests intimidate Owen Jones - form a militia and smash them.

I think I agree with this, that the distinction between violent and non-violent that a lot of ppl are making is fairly indistinct

Corbyn wasn’t egged, he was punched in the head. Anyone making the comparison is a fucking idiot.

Start freezing your milkshakes first, then we'll talk

Not that i disagree with the thrust of Mr Mboldo's argument, but as far as i'm aware nothing about the shakings so far really constitutes "violence" in intent or execution

the definition of 'violence' seems to be fairly malleable at this moment in time, on every side of the political spectrum. maybe it always is.

https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3577/3480840777_42d3450f8e.jpg

I'm ready..

I feel like a lot of ppl's assessment of whether this kind of stuff is 'violence' depends on who the target is.
I mean, this was literally the exact same thing that happened to Corbyn for example, and a lot of ppl who approved of one disapproved of the other

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTtOuP1-rJQ

I think it's legit to say that this was ok b/c this guy's a far-right creep and Corbyn isn't, but why not be open about that being the distinction rather than the act itself?

I guess you could say that the identities of the participants matter in a deeper way, e.g. if a white man throws something at a black female pol like Diane Abbott I think a lot of pro-milkshaking ppl would see that as an act of violence, but might say that the identities of the ppl involved changes the nature of the act, that making a distinction between the act and identities of the ppl involved is artificial?

I think you can draw a distinction between specific acts that appear to involve an intent to hurt or intimidate and those that appear to be about ridicule, but that specificity would vary case on case and might only really matter in a legal context. I broadly agree that trying to distinguish between "their" violence and "our" violence as qualitatively different is rhetorically futile.

Punching somebody with an egg in your hand is qualitatively different to throwing harmless liquid at them imo.

a lot of people would class words or insults or gestures as 'violence', or maybe political views. that seems a fairly growing definition in academia, though it does pose problems.

From what I can see the main effect of the last few weeks of elections, particularly the Euro elections, has allowed people on both sides of the argument to inhabit a lovely fantasy world where Parliamentary arithmetic doesn't exist.

Well i guess i think there are kinds of language use that are contextually designed to intimidate or instil fear and that could be construed as a form of violence. The problem or mistake is trying to reduce specifics to hard general rules.

Disturbing to see people laugh at Nigel Farage getting a milkshake thrown at him. What if it had been a sundae? What if he had rainbow sprinkles in his hair and butterscotch pooling in one of his ears? What if there was a maraschino cherry atop his head? Not so funny now, is it?

— David Roth (@david_j_roth) May 20, 2019

xxp was thinking that this morning Matt, even if these elections have a huge turnout what odds does it make to anything happening in Parliament?

Could you elucidate, Matt? Do you just mean parliament is likely to be hung?

Well i guess i think there are kinds of language use that are contextually designed to intimidate or instil fear and that could be construed as a form of violence. The problem or mistake is trying to reduce specifics to hard general rules.

like the law, lol.

(saying that in agreement with you)

The context of Corbyn was a violent right-winger went into a mosque on interfaith day intending to assault him, in direct view of a congregation that had been traumatised by another right-wing thug mowing down one of their congregants because it proved impossible to run over Corbyn or Sadiq Khan.

The first milkshaker was a guy who reacted in the moment to being surrounded by haranguing fascists who tried to beat him up after that. Subsequent milkshakers have no intention that couldn’t be sorted by a trip to the dry cleaners or a change of clothes. Women and minorities are frightened of injury or being killed, while right-wing bigots are frightened of mockery.

What I mean is, that when the dust has settled and everyone is claiming victory, we'll be in exactly the same place we were when May last tried to get the WA through Parliament, or at the indicative votes stage.

There's still no outcome that commands a majority of votes in Parliament. The main difference will be that an election is even less likely, because the Tories fear being obliterated and the CHUKers won't vote against the government in a no-confidence vote.

Yeah I'm not looking at these elections as meaning anything for brexit or UK politics in general, really - orienting principle should be who do you trust to make the right decisions in the EU parliament, for however long they still get to sit there.

Fuck sake, poor old Ted Heath was forever getting stuff thrown at him and no-one saw it as an assault on democracy. Stupid world we live in.

No doubt these elections would be deemed more meaningful if Labour were poised to win.

parliamentary sitch is basically labour holding their nerve until an election. how much pressure the PLP can pile on corbyn during this time will be largely dictated by what happens outside of westminster

It would point at something different regarding a general election maybe pom, but it still wouldn't affect this parliament, so not really

When you have elections where the leading party subsequently fails to win a single seat in the following General Election, then it's kind of hard to take them seriously.

parliamentary sitch is basically labour holding their nerve until an election.

An election is three years away.

I think I would question anyone who’s saying that stuff like this

Diane Abbott receives so many racist messages that her office does not have time to take them to the police every day, so an assistant bundles them up and sends them once a week.

A recent survey found that a third of all abuse sent to politicians goes to the shadow home secretary, one of Jeremy Corbyn’s closest allies, who 30 years ago became Britain’s first black female MP.

And we have the fun of the wa being rejected, may going and a headbanger successor appointed before then xp

Related:

http://gal-dem.com/why-are-some-people-more-outraged-by-milkshakes-than-racism/?utm_campaign=TwitterAutoPost&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitter

FTPA + a Tory party in meltdown should put it off for as long as possible, the lamer a duck is the longer it hangs on for.

Probably the stupidest of the many stupid things that the Independents did was say they wouldn't vote against the govt in a VONC, or do anything to precipitate a GE. An anti-Brexit party who have vowed not to do the one thing that might prevent Brexit - removing the Tories from power.

A gen election three years away is too much certainty when there is usually some calamity most weeks.