this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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UK Politics

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General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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[–] [email protected] 43 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Why do they give these lunatics a voice?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago

Because that is who they are.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The best way to beat candidates like this is to hear what they actually think and then use that against them.

A prime example of this working was when the then leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, went on Question Time. Straight after that they ceased to be a political force and we've not heard from them since.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That did not work with trump in the U.S.

Gave the guy a platform and he ended up winning.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Because America is mental.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago (1 children)

We Brexshat before America Trumped, you know.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

That's not unique the the U.S.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago

"Give Nazis a megaphone" is not how you stop Nazis.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Just imagine what they are thinking but not saying out loud! 😱

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

”Thinking” is a pretty high bar for most Reform-ists, I doubt many of them engage in it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

It’s the ones that are thinking it but managing to not say it aloud that we really should worry about.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago

Motherfucker, you were neutral against Hitler up until you figured out that he wasn't just expanding east.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I mean....

At a dinner meeting of the Big Three on Nov. 29, Stalin proposed executing 50,000 to 100,000 German officers so that Germany could not plan another war. Roosevelt, believing Stalin was not serious, quipped that “maybe 49,000 would be enough.”

Churchill, however, was outraged and denounced “the cold-blooded execution of soldiers who fought for their country.” Before storming out of the room, he said that only war criminals should be put on trial. Stalin brought him back after saying that he was only joking.

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/fdr-attends-tehran-conference-nov-28-1943-231852

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Stalin said he was joking, but probably wasn't.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Given how WW2 started Stalin should have thrown himself into the mix.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

How's that?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Roosevelt, believing Stalin was not serious, quipped that “maybe 49,000 would be enough.”

Gets me every time

Also worth noting that 50k represented a tiny fraction of the Nazi military -- there were well over a million people under arms right up until the end of the war. So Stalin and Roosevelt were already talking about officers and units that did the worst atrocities, not some mass retribution against the bulk of the military itself.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Interested in what your "moral of the story" is?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Why? Are we forgetting that Britain spent 6 years fighting the Nazis?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Nobody should have remained neutral toward Hitler.

Locks eyes with Switzerland

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Don't forget Sweden.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

Ian Gribbin, the party's candidate in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the "sponging gender" and should be "deprived of health care".

Crikey. Farage’s new crop are making the likes of Godfrey Bloom look tame.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That video shows just how mundane and boring it is for politicians to kill swathes of people.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

This is genuinely one of the reasons I have no interest in a career in politics, and the reason I cut a fair bit of slack to politicians: even outside of actual wars you have to make decisions which will likely kill people either way. It's such an insane burden to have to carry.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Who happens to just know Hitler Youth songs? Ordinary people couldn't even give you the title of one let alone sing it for you without a lyric sheet

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

But this can't be! People on here have asserted that Reform is not a far-right party.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


In posts from 2022 on the Unherd magazine website, seen by the BBC, he said Winston Churchill was "abysmal" and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.A Reform spokesman said the comments were not "endorsements" but "written with an eye to inconvenient perspectives and truths", while his remarks about women were "tongue in cheek".

"The same month he wrote: "In Britain specifically we need to exorcise the cult of Churchill and recognize that in both policy and military strategy, he was abysmal.

"The previous month he criticised women, writing on the site’s message board: "Do you think you could actually work and pay for it all too like good citizens?

In the run up to the invasion of Ukraine, he praised President Putin, writing in January 2022 that he had "shown a maturity of which we can only dream of".He "understands the bonds that create more stable societies; the hypocrisy of the West is preposterous as we stare in the face daily the enormous economic equalities created by our deluded neo liberal ideas", he wrote.In February, Mr Gribbin wrote "if only the West had politicians of his class".

A Reform UK spokesman said: "Through offence archaeology the BBC has found that Mr Gribbin has made a series of comments about a number of subjects.

"His historical perspective of what the UK could have done in the 30s was shared by the vast majority of the British establishment including the BBC of its day, and is probably true.


The original article contains 555 words, the summary contains 245 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

The man seems to be almost there with his ideas of "Churchill left a lot to be desired" and "neoliberalism has failed us", but then manages to faceplant into the Earth's mantle on the very next step.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Wow after all the lying and disinformation spreading the Tories have been doing (even compared to usual) I was really starting to think that Reform were the more reasonable and mature right wing party but I guess there are none... There's a huge gap in the market and it made sense for someone to fill it but I guess we'll have to wait for someone else

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I apologise for these old comments and withdraw them unreservedly and the upset that they have caused.

A Reform UK spokesman initially said: "Through offence archaeology the BBC has found that Mr Gribbin has made a series of comments about a number of subjects.

They keep making this sound like something that happened a long time ago but he wrote all this stuff in 2022! Next they'll tell us he was a younger man and it was actually socially acceptable in those days to be neutral on Hitler.