Liberal democracy is in serious peril, ironically much more so than during the Cold War, because the threat comes from within. The preservation of our democracy from a descent into the horrors of the 20th century has to be every single politician, journalist & commentator's most urgent task. - ThreadSky

marstrina.bsky.social • 13 days ago

Liberal democracy is in serious peril, ironically much more so than during the Cold War, because the threat comes from within. The preservation of our democracy from a descent into the horrors of the 20th century has to be every single politician, journalist & commentator's most urgent task.

Reposted from Rafael Behr

Column: In the Musk Revolution lessons from 20th Century history will be deleted www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

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marstrina.bsky.social•13 days ago

Instead we have a journalistic class obsessed with the minutiae of opinion polls & the personality quirks of the PM, endlessly picking over the hypothesised electoral implications of policies that the voter who gets their news from clips on social media will only ever hear misrepresented & attacked.

marstrina.bsky.social•13 days ago

Just look at this selection of podcast episode titles from the last few weeks. And these aren't even the right wing, hostile podcasts. Newspaper headlines are worse still. This could be our last normal government, at least for a while, & *these* are the things that matter?

marstrina.bsky.social•13 days ago

It's all well & good to accuse Starmer of not being a good storyteller - he isn't - but what chance would even Ronald Reagan stand in this media mood? No reporter would write up the new national story, they'll be in their WhatsApps, asking their contacts who in No.10 is pissed off about the font.

marstrina.bsky.social•13 days ago

Meanwhile, also in podcastland... (zoom in on the image)

marstrina.bsky.social•12 days ago

I mean, if this turns out to be the last fully democratic government the UK has for a couple decades, won't we all feel better about it knowing that the chancellor's social media was properly scrutinised?

marstrina.bsky.social•9 days ago

Narrator: it was not, in fact, helpful

https://bsky.app/profile/sianushka.bsky.social/post/3libvtwh6ks22

leithmotive.bsky.social•13 days ago

It's gossip, isn't it? Just cheap gossip. Costs nothing more than the price of a small studio and the fees of your guests.

marstrina.bsky.social•13 days ago

Exactly that.

yellowboy.bsky.social•13 days ago

I don't think we have the right stuff in hand to deal with the current mode of politics. The language, tools, rules etc. were all developed to deal with a different kind of beast, and just don't work in this - what is it? - populist? Identitarian? Bullshit-based? Grifty? era.

marstrina.bsky.social•13 days ago

Techno-authoritarian, people are beginning to call it. Sam Freedman has a piece out about how it all started with Gamergate, which I haven't read in full but which has a ring of plausibility. And you're right, we don't have tools to deal with QAnon politics.

yellowboy.bsky.social•13 days ago

It's not so much naming, but the tools of measurement, the values we'd previously use- right/left, effective/ineffective policy, truth/lies are no longer compelling or impactful. The first clear example I can think of was the 2016 election, she was judged the old way, but he was doing something new.

marstrina.bsky.social•13 days ago

Right, you're definitely on to something there, but the thing is that the 2016 double standard hasn't transitioned into a new way of judging politicians - Labour are *still* judged on the old metrics while Farage is graded on the populist curve. The very playing field is fragmented.

yellowboy.bsky.social•12 days ago

I don't understand this systematically yet, it's incomplete. We need to work out a way of combating/competing when the usual arguments (facts, effectiveness, values, conventions, precedents, customs, ideology, even law and constitution) that were relevant for 70-odd years, have been overtaken.

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