Giorgia Meloni

[tyke1962]

You reckon fascists usually get elected on a policy of "we are going to destroy democracy and instigate a far right dictatorship"?

It is important to recognise the signs of any sort of ideological creep early on. I think leaders are becoming increasingly authoritarian.

Take this speech for example.

https://twitter.com/backtolife_2023/status/1575002436808298501?s=46&t=9W-l1BNgMMMEw_nq6_VUOQ

Ah. The caring Jacinda and her love for us all. What did she say during Covid? Something along the lines of if it doesn't come from the NZ Government then it is misinformation. 

Jesus. Poor sods in kiwiland. Dictator in plain sight.

Nothing wrong with authoritarian governments when it's needed .

They save the population from the selfish ...........

The Y axis of the political compass is just as important as the X axis.

Be careful when cheering authoritarians on, another will soon be against you one day.

I wouldn't lecture myself on authoritarian governments if I was you as a former member of the Enemy Within Club .

You wouldn't know an authoritarian government if it bit you on the nose .

A load of hysterical nonsense by  folk who weren't even locked down anyway in the true sense of the phrase .

We’ve moved on to New Zealand.

You literally just said there’s nothing wrong with authoritarian governments in “times of need”. Go lecture yourself then.

I don't need to lecture myself , a very contagious virus that kills a huge number of people with underlying health issues and in some cases perfectly healthy ones .

A virus that had the capacity to totally and utterly crash the economy .

The government of that time supported you , paid you to stay at home , supported businesses and tried to ensure life would be returned once the virus was contained .

All they asked is that you took care of yourself and by doing so protected others by trying to keep away from others as much as you could .

In essence that's all they asked you to do and you consider that authoritarian ?

Have a word with yourself .

You’ve gotten distracted from my actual point, I just posted a link to a politician who wants to control what people think.

Excuse me if this sounds patronising but I always have this problem when dealing with libertarians. Libertarians see the world in black and white. "If you advocate any shackles on pure freedom, you are the enemy."

Here's the problem. Leave social media unpoliced, leave it free for anyone to say anything and do you know what happens? Enemy foreign powers realise that they have a direct line into the heads of tens of millions of gullible people, who can be fed propaganda with efficiency of effort that Goebbels and Lenin could only have dreamed of.

That's not a dystopian future. It's been happening for the past decade. You can see the consequences in some of the posters we have here.

Do you remember how those who opposed the Iraq war were represented in the media? I’m sure that if that was now, saying Saddam didn’t have MWD would be flagged as misinformation by Twitter.

People are capable of independent thought. I have this problem with leftists or to an extent as you have alluded to right-wing conspiracists. They think every person who has an alternative view has been brainwashed / misled.

If an opinion is so obviously reprehensible it can be shut down with evidence and the overriding opinion of the free public square.

The state controls social media in Russia and China. Yes that’s obviously an extreme example, but the slippery slope is real.

Trudeau in Canada blocked the bank accounts of those who protested against him, what did you think of that?

Clearly you missed the million people in central London who were protesting about going to war again in Iraq , it was all over the media for weeks .

https://fujomedia.eu/chilcot-news-media/

Your assuming because it was in the media the public swallowed it .

They didn't entirely .

Ok thanks, I was only 8 years old after all!

The point I’m trying to make is that state endorsed censorship and media control (there was no social media to censor then) is wrong and that it won’t always be on your side. You got hung up on a technicality there.

It’s good to allow people to be open minded and question the groupthink, this is how we move forwards as a society.

Back to the topic, this Meloni looks like she has formed a coalition with centre-right parties so she will be toned down a bit. It will be interesting to see what the EU think of her and vice versa.

Let me put it to you another way on how it played out or at least as I remember it .

The Labour vote at the 2005 election fell off the cliff and to be honest the fact that no WOMD's were ever found was in that loss of votes but the main reason was the fact we'd gone back there at all .

The media were also waking up to the fact that Blair and Bush were getting a little too chumy and getting fed up with it and they were saying so .

They won the 2005 election comfortably enough although they couldn't really lose it given the Tories were in disarray .

However Blair knew he was shot and he knew why and a plan was hatched for Brown to take over .

Thanks Tyke.

I know I’ve got some different opinions to you lot but I do enjoy the debate, learning things on here and seeing things from other perspectives.

Nice one Rover