This Week in the New Normal #95

Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.

1. I’m sorry…what?

Jonathan Freedland’s Guardian column made me laugh this week. Not intentionally of course, it was more a sort of exasperated bark of disbelief.

Journalistic integrity compels me to link to it, but human decency bids me warn you against reading it. Trust me, you have better things to do.

I’m not going into detail. because you can guess and it doesn’t matter. Fascism blah blah, democracy blah blah, po-faced moral superiority blah blah, stupid made-up lies to shock people blah blah blah.

I just wanted to highlight the opening paragraph [emphasis added]:

There is a good chance that in 10 days’ time, Americans will elect the first fascist president of the United States. It sounds hyperbolic, it sounds hysterical. Indeed, for exactly those reasons, many of his opponents long held back from using that word about Donald Trump.

Seriously? Seriously?

Can anyone out there actually really, honestly contend there has been some kind of moratorium on calling Trump a fascist?

Trump has been called “fascist” thousands of times over the last eight years, a cursory Google tells you as much. (Here’s half-a-dozen examples I found in 30 seconds:[1][2][3][4][5][6])

Forget Trump – because this isn’t about defending the man – has anyone witnessed any reluctance to use the word “fascist” from any MSM outlet ever about anything? Anti-vaxxers, Covid skeptics, “climate deniers”, free speech absolutists…we’ve all been called “fascists” before now.

One of the hallmarks of just how backwards our world has become in the last decade is the media’s enthusiasm to label almost everyone a fascist, except actual fascists.

Reading Jonathan Freedland’s editorials used to be a regular part of my job. I do not miss it.

2. The most sickening spectacle you’ll ever see…

Speaking of contrived political drama, The Washington Post made headlines this week when it refused to endorse a presidential candidate, prompting the editor to resign in protest.

The editor in question is Robert Kagan (here he is calling Trump a fascist in 2016, in a column I guess Jonathan Freedland thinks is a figment of our collective imagination), but apart from that he’s also co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, husband of Victoria Nuland, architect of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, NeoCon warmongering monster extraordinaire…

…and now, a “hero of democracy”. Social media was awash with out-pourings of support. Yet another demonstration of just how out of touch with objective reality the political landscape has become.

3. The very obvious agenda behind the reparations row

A major public debate in the UK is whether or not the Caribbean countries full of the descendants of slaves are owed reparations from Britain.

Historically, it’s a fairly dumb question and if you start demanding reparations from every country that won a war to every people that were conquered and enslaved you’d create a never-ending cycle of victimhood.

Also, it should be noted, if reparations are paid they’ll go through foundations and charities and government agencies who will all skim some off the top and ordinary people will see – at absolute most – some tiny token percentage.

More likely, “reparations” will be about formalizing a system where countries in the “global south” can be bribed to get in line with globalist policies. We have noted a similar possibility included in “pandemic preparedness” funding.

It also stokes massive racial resentment from working class Brits who’ve just been told their granny won’t be getting a winter fuel payment this year.

BONUS: Hypocrite of the week

That would be Esther Ranzten, the current celebrity face of the pro-assisted dying campaign in the UK, with manipulative headlines like this making her case:

Difficult to feel sympathetic considering she wanted to deny healthcare to the unvaccinated.

All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention making “worms easier to swallow” or the UK’s proposed digital ID bill (more on that during the week).