....again

I thought it was a core principle of Western liberalism (e.g. US Declaration of Independence) that it is people that have inalienable rights, not states or system of governance. And if a system of governance denies or violates people's rights, the people have the right to change it.

Simply a factual description of Biden, Scholz, Sunak, and many others...

The former prime minister—a perfectly sensible centrist—publicly and without any obvious sense of shame, remorse, or hesitation, defended the starvation of innocent civilians. Later, he told a series of unpersuasive lies about what he’d done.

Another dimension of this: the Gaza genocide can only be properly and fully understood as a joint venture between the far right Netanyahu government and its centrist enablers in Washington, primarily, but also in London, Berlin and elsewhere.

Great to be back on Politics Theory Other, one of my favourite podcasts. With Alex, you're always guaranteed to have a great conversation, and I appreciated the opportunity to get into the details of our call for the UK to pay reparations to Yemen.

A lot of motivated reasoning in politics

TSP have done some good work busting these myths as well

In my limited experience, the trick with the US style is being as reasonable with it all as you can be until they hit one of your red lines, and then being politely clear that you'd sooner take it elsewhere than have it published in a form youre not 100% happy with. They tend to accept that.

I would say fundamentalist rather than conservative, but yes, 'Fascistic' doesn't really work.

Very hard, but in that specific media scenario, if you've put yourself up to be in that situation then its on you to perform well.

Yeah, I do think that journalists who put the "Do you condemn...?" question to leftists are acting in bad faith and not looking for a constructive, enlightening conversation. But also, leftists often don't do a great job of escaping feelings of defensiveness and properly navigating those scenarios

I will say this. My own experience of the left is more day-to-day and face-to-face others' experience might be. If your primary experience of the left is via social media etc I can see why a different view might be taken. But social media brings out the belligerent and the obtuse in all of us.

My experience of the left over 25 years? It's a fringe (albeit a loud one) that's indulgent of e.g. Hamas. For most of us, we focus on the UK & its allies because that's what we can affect with our work. We see condemnations of actors who are bad, but whose actions we can't affect, as mere posturing

Surest way of doing that is not fertilising the soil in which it grows. But we'd need a different Kemi Badenoch for that.

I recall v.clearly watching in a local pub when Wright scored for England vs Italy in June 97. The response around me was real fury that a black man had scored for England. The mood was so poisonous that I had to leave. These delusions of English innocence and "who we are" as a country serve no one.

We do, but standing against this meaningfully necessitates a degree of honesty. These delusions (maybe conscious lies) about how Wright and Barnes were treated just reinforce the sense of British innocence that is pervasive on the right at the moment, and helps feed their grievances.