Is "BAME" the wrong description?

rikki

@Grenners - well capitalism isn't exactly working out for most people and the coronavirus has and will expose that even more, and historically anywhere that tries a different system tends to either get bombed, sanctioned, or overthrown by capitalists who don't like that kind of thing. I wouldn't regard that as a great advert for a system.

@LukeG I think that people who deny climate change and push their neo-liberal agenda and who've managed to move the overton window so far that their views are regarded as 'mainstream' could reasonably be characterised as 'far right' but i understand people may have different views and I accept your point about labels.

therattle

I agree with Luke about the Barclays Bros not being far right - strongly right wing, absolutely, but far-right has connotations of fascism, racism, nationalism, and usually a commitment to violence.

And I agree with rikki about capitalism! It's not really working all that well, is it? At the very least it needs to be very strongly regulated and controlled. Unfortunately, for all of capitalism's many and extreme failings I am not sure what a viable alternative is.

Scruffy

A viable alternative is that we take it in turns to act as a sort of executive-officer-for-the-week. We could run this site like that come the (sad) day when Akela cedes supreme executive power over it.

rikki

re The Telegraph, they today published an interview with Norman Tebbit where he claims that Hitler was apparently extreme-left. They did so without correcting his ludicrous historical revisionism. This would appear to put them and him rather to the right of Hitler. I think that The Telegraph (along with all the other newspapers belonging to non-tax-paying billionaires) DOES promote and perpetuate a system that is committed to extreme violence - the violence of war, exploitation, racism, ecological destruction, and climate collapse - which is rained down on the majority of humans on this planet.

These newspapers also have an enormous influence on our overton window as can be seen by our main TV channels running reports and discussions about the next day's front pages every night, amplifying the reach with powerful free advertising.

re a viable alternative to capitalism, I'd recommend the replacing of our corrupted undemocratic governments with Citizen's Assemblies. Wherever this has been tried on smaller scales, sensible solutions and amazingly democratic consensus politics has resulted. It's a growing movement whose time has come. I think unless we strive for something like this, we will only see polarised revolt and inevitable fascism as the planet's resources run out under the present systems.