Thomas Mair has given his name as “death to traitors, freedom for Britain” during his appearance in court charged with the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox. (The Guardian)
“[Mainstream politicians] in most cases are clueless on how to deal with the public debate. Petrified by the rise of the populists they try to neuter them by taking their ground and aping their rhetoric. Far from closing down the debates, these steps legitimise their views, reinforce their frames and pull the debate further to the extremes (Sarkozy and the continuing rise of Front National is a case in point).”
“They obsess over numbers (to most people 10,000 sounds as scary as 100,000), when they should focus on reinforcing frames of fairness and order.
“The UK government policy is a masterclass in how to get the crisis wrong; set an unrealistic target, miss it, report on it quarterly and in doing so show a complete lack of control heightening concern and fanning the flames of resentment.” Brendan Cox
Nigel Farage is an arch proponent of stooping very low on the back of simplistic populist notions. He genuinely believes his own obfuscatory narrative and uses memes and posters and de contextualised language to win the hearts and minds of those most susceptible to fear. He may have forced a disunited Tory party to hold a referendum but he has poisoned British politics by choosing hyperbole over facts – the diet of many. The Remain campaign decided very early to follow suit as they recognised that the complexities of the EU debate would be ignored for simplistic notions by many. And they were right weren’t they? The very dumbed down culture they helped create has come back to bite them on their genitalia.
The corporate media is complicit in all of this. They are profit driven and if the masses want propaganda, fear and hype they are, they argue, obliged to give it to them. This is of course not true. They could change the menu and take a hit in the short term and then gain trust and respect in the long term. But they are accountable to their shareholders and the bottom line is the balance sheet. Next on the list is keeping the masses in check and facts and mature debate are perceived by the billionaire oligarchs in control as antonymous to this end.
This is exemplified by the hypocrisy currently being purpoted by the media and politicians alike in Jo Fox’s murder.
Just look at this analysis by The Intercept:
‘…This stands in stark contrast to a very similar incident that took place in the U.K. in 2010, when a British MP, Stephen Timms, was brutally stabbed and almost killed by a woman angry over his vote in support of the Iraq War. In that case, British media outlets almost uniformly called the attack “terrorism”; The Guardian, for instance, described it as “the first terrorist attack to injure someone on the U.K. mainland since 7 July 2005.” The headline of the British tabloid Mirror called the attacker a “woman terrorist.” And just yesterday, another tabloid, The Sun, reported on Timms’s comments about Cox and, in its headline, referred to him as “Terror Stab Survivor.”
The difference is obvious: Timms’s attacker was a Muslim of Bangladeshi descent, while Cox’s alleged killer … is not.’
There is an agenda to maintain a hegemony. That of fear through the manipulation and placement of language. This way the hordes will pay to be manipulated. Win! Win!
Well for them but not us.
The Interceptor goes on ‘The scholars Remi Brulin and Lisa Stampnitzky have spent years documenting how the term (terrorism), from the start, was little more than a propaganda tool designed to legitimize one side’s violence while delegitimizing its enemies’ violence.
The New Statesman takes it further in context ‘Today, commentators and apologists are scrambling to make this tragedy anything other than political. That is an insult to the memory of an activist who dedicated her life to the politics of hope and inclusion. It is also a monumental cop-out.’
This country is on the verge of something very frightening. We can collectively back away from it and put decency first. We can challenge hypocrisy and propaganda or just ignore it. What we cannot do is keep putting up with being played as fools in which our reality is built upon others lies. Jo Cox and every other victim of this hate and oppression deserves better.
Jo Cox Was Murdered By A Radicalised Far Right White Wing Terrorist. Got It Yet?
Douglas James
