Far right tropes: how to spot if your friend is going down the rabbit hole & how to respond

[A380]

He tried his damnedest (and #NotAllVenusians - Atlanteans were allies, and some Treens became collaborators and rebelled against the Mekon), as one would expect of someone who was conceived as an intergalactic padre.

# DismantleTheTriganEmpireNow!

 

[The39thStep]

OK, so how is that countered?

Two tier fighting age

 

[brogdale]

3. Surely an opportunity to pea-roast this?

 

[spitfire]

The debate about frothers and war enthusiasts is tricky. There’s a thread on Urban where the wrong’uns claim to be arguing for peace against NATO fanboys driven mad with war lust by half-remembered Eagle comics and Twitter OSINT accounts. Maybe we should stick with the far right trope debunking.

Warlord, Victor and Commando actually.

Eagle was far too sophisticated.

 

[klang]

It's normally elderly male frothers who never wore a uniform in their life who get excited at the thought of a war. Although quite how useful a late 70's 19 stone boomer with boarder line COPD is going to be in close quarters combat in an urban environment is open to debate. See also Nigel man frog Farage and his 'I'll pick up a rifle' speech about two seconds before he started hiding on his bus because of milkshakes...

In short, cunts.

Thinking about it, i don't know any boomers eg friends of my parents or patents of friends who get excited about the idea of military action.
I do know quite a few people of my age who got overly interested in para stuff and warfare when we were in our 20s and 30s....some supposedly came from a militant lefty stance. Others found afghanistan and operation desert storm intriguing.

 

[SpookyFrank]

The second one is the conspiracy that, who ever THEY are, THEY are shipping people over who are of fighting age as come the great replacement they'll kill off the resistance here. ?

There'll be lots of overlap with people who fetishise our magnificent armed forces while simultaneously scaremongering about the prospect of them being overrun by a bunch of skinny young lads with no equipment, training or support. Almost as if some of these people don't think very much about their opinions.

 

[RubyToogood]

When the Rothschilds get introduced into a superficially reasonable take down of the financial system massive klaxons go off for me.

 

[Elpenor]

If anyone has a right to call out “two tier policing”, it’s not white people

 

[DaveCinzano]

# DismantleTheTriganEmpireNow!

Beneath the imperial pomp, Trigo is just a regular guy

 

[A380]

Beneath the imperial pomp, Trigo is just a regular guy

Just a regular, completely and unequivocally straight guy.

 

[MickiQ]

# DismantleTheTriganEmpireNow!

I owned some of the Trigan Empire books at the time, wished I'd kept them because they would worth a lot now.
Even at the time though it struck me as odd that the Trigans rode round on horses wielding swords whilst at the same time operating aircraft armed with heat rays. I seem to remember one episode where the hero ended up as a galley slave since they seemed to have skipped over the invention of the propeller

 

[PTK]

I knew noting of this Trigan Empire until a short while ago.

 

[Lotte]

In many places they'll also be exactly the people who would be forced to fight in some pointless war for some dictator or warlord if they stayed at home. Ethiopia and Eritrea both still have forced conscription IIRC, and they're in a permanent state of war with each other.

My brother deals with refugees in his job and he gets a lot of Eritrean men fleeing conscription. It's not like Israel where you can get exemptions - if you're a man, you join up and that's it.

 

[DaveCinzano]

I knew noting of this Trigan Empire until a short while ago.

It was the pseudohistorical comic strip sugar to sweeten the educational pill that was Look And Learn

 

[DaveCinzano]

I owned some of the Trigan Empire books at the time, wished I'd kept them because they would worth a lot now.
Even at the time though it struck me as odd that the Trigans rode round on horses wielding swords whilst at the same time operating aircraft armed with heat rays. I seem to remember one episode where the hero ended up as a galley slave since they seemed to have skipped over the invention of the propeller

Story aside, the Don Lawrence artwork was mindblowing

 

[The39thStep]

I knew noting of this Trigan Empire until a short while ago.

Normal sort of enthusiasm/ nostalgia for empires in a period where initial post war austerity and anti colonial movements had pretty much seen imperial states disengage from them or be pushed out from them.

 

[Idris2002]

That Gary Younge had a thing about often meeting conspiraloons when he covered the American beat. If someone said something like "Barack Hussein Obama is a secret Muslin who is hiding the truth that the earth is flat", he wouldn't rise to the bait. He'd just say "why do you think that?"

 

[story]

That Gary Younge had a thing about often meeting conspiraloons when he covered the American beat. If someone said something like "Barack Hussein Obama is a secret Muslin who is hiding the truth that the earth is flat", he wouldn't rise to the bait. He'd just say "why do you think that?"

Yeah, they often believe two contradictory things.
Like, Barack Obama is still pulling the strings at the WH, but Trump is also secretly the true king.
If you can get them to see the conflict simply by asking for clarification it can dawn on them that it doesn’t hold together.
But they tend to only talk about this shit with people who agree with them, so it’s just building another storey on the house of cards.

 

[pogofish]

It think 'fighting age' means 'should be back at home fighting in whatever war or conflict is going on'. Because of course every migrant is fleeing war out of sheer cowardice, nobody is running from persecution or deprivation or anything else that you can't realistically fight with a gun.

The phrase usually comes from people well past 'fighting age' for whom it has never been necessary to even metaphorically fight for anything.

This is about how I'd take the vast majority of instances I've seen/heard it used.

And yes, mainly by people who wouldn't stand a chance in any conflict worse than a bar fight!

 

[pogofish]

Warlord, Victor and Commando actually.

Eagle was far too sophisticated.

Way back, after the fall of the wall and as the Soviet Union began to lose its grip on Eastern Europe. A colleague and I were landed with a group of visitors from the DDR, which was still just in existence.

His first words to me were - "Fuck knows how we got these guys - All my German is from Commando books..!"

We persevered though and put together a range of activities, including a visit to the local BBC studio.

Which is how I managed to be "in the room" when a journalist barged-in, told us all to shut-up and stand still whilst he got the engineer to connect the only direct live telephone line to the West for Lithuania's declaring independence, to the network in London...!

 

[story]

What’s the opposite of a merge threads request?
Is there a way we can ask for threads to be separated?

 

[ddraig]

What’s the opposite of a merge threads request?
Is there a way we can ask for threads to be separated?

Forked!

 

[Knotted]

1. “Fighting age men”/ “military-age male migrants”.

Let’s start with that one. What’s being implied? That there’s a foreign force planning an invasion? Does being “military age” mean you have military skills? Aren’t they also “cricket age”? Are they planning a takeover of cricket?

Discuss, debate, debunk.

This is a really good idea for a thread. I've heard "men of fighting age" from people who wouldn't even know who the far right are.

In so far as this idea of young men trying to get into the country is true, they're young men of working age with no dependents only contributing to the economy and taking nothing out. And yes this may mean more exploitation from employers but the people who say that sort of thing main concern is tax burden and stretched services - they think NHS is being driven into the ground by the overwhelming burden of migrants for example.

 

[frogwoman]

My dad told me that 'a guy was arrested for a post on twitter calling someone's police horse gay.' is this some sort of dog whistle?

 

[xenon]

My dad told me that 'a guy was arrested for a post on twitter calling someone's police horse gay.' is this some sort of dog whistle?

I initially read this is a joke and thought I don’t get it.

I think it’s just a variation on arrested and jailed for hurty words. Whilst those who beat up female police officers are still free. The Manchester Airport thing. This is where I see that type of comment on social media

 

[Silas Loom]

My dad told me that 'a guy was arrested for a post on twitter calling someone's police horse gay.' is this some sort of dog whistle?

Someone was arrested for calling a police horse gay to its face, IIRC, but the arrestable bar for online hate speech is rather higher than for offensive and threatening behaviour in real life, for which various plausible offences can be made out if the cops just want to nick someone for being a pain in the arse.

E2A Just checked: the arrested person, a student from Oxford, refused to pay an out of court settlement and the CPS declined to take it further, so your dad is probably safe to call horses gay both online and to their muzzles, if he is hippohomophobically inclined.

 

[A380]

What’s the opposite of a merge threads request?
Is there a way we can ask for threads to be separated?

Agreed people keep derailing this thread about 1950/60/70s comics with stuff about far right tropes…

 

[Silas Loom]

Agreed people keep derailing this thread about 1950/60/70s comics with stuff about far right tropes…

It’s the derails about thread forking that are confusing me.

 

[A380]

Someone was arrested for calling a police horse gay to its face, IIRC, but the arrestable bar for online hate speech is rather higher than for offensive and threatening behaviour in real life, for which various plausible offences can be made out if the cops just want to nick someone for being a pain in the arse.

Back in the day the old bill could arrest people for telling the cop to fuck off or similar levels of abuse if that person had been warned not to do it immediately before (S5 public order act) Then an appeal court judge, probably quite rightly, said the bar for insulting the old bill was much much higher than for members of the public.

 

[Silas Loom]

Back in the day the old bill could arrest people for telling the cop to fuck off or similar levels of abuse if that person had been warned not to do it immediately before (S5 public order act) Then an appeal court judge, probably quite rightly, said the bar for insulting the old bill was much much higher than for members of the public.

Although that ruling leaves it open whether police staff, dogs and horses should have to suck it up like warranted officers.