Police chief warning

'To be honest I can’t understand what you are saying.'

same here, re-read 3 times to try and make sense of it all- but just can't.

They patrol the beaches here is the South. They’ve taken it on themselves to police the border.

I was surprised to hear from the police chief that 20 far right terrorist plots had been foiled recently. All of this nationalism has been whipped up by Brexit and I do hope once the issue is settled nationalism will fade.

The Tory party has made a big lurch to the right and although their views in public are moderate and PC but I know a few who in private have very right wing views and support many of the suprematist aims.

If any forum member who wishes to witness how the Extream Right can gain influence and eventually ultimate power they need only watch the current BBC series "The Rise of the Nazis"

The Series is highly detailed in it's appraisal of that rise, and how everyone in mainstream politics in Germany at that time thought they could handle them and even use Hitler and the Brownshirts to the advantage of their own mainstream parties. How wrong they were.

The series has many parallels I feel with 1930s German politics and the current political situation in Britain.

First three episodes are on BBC Iplayer currently with a fourth to come next week.

Grandad1943

I agree. I remember my maternal grandparents drawing a similar parallel with far-right groups in the 1970s and the abhorrence they felt about people like Enoch Powell in the 60s. They weren't fiery lefties but lifelong members of the Conservative party. Both became very disillusioned when Thatcher was PM because they said she'd divide the country and were really worried about the extent of privatisation, especially water, gas and electricity. They also felt the obsession with low taxation would be the death-knell of the NHS.

LondonGranny your grandparents were right in every respect - especially about Thatcher.

On another note:
We lived in Brixton in the early 80s, very close to Railton Road which was notorious at the time for stop and search. A fire engine was high jacked and driven into the garden of a house at the end of our road. During the early evening of the first day of rioting we stood in Railton Road watching events and when a burning building collapsed into the road the watchers, who had been calm, suddenly became rioters and rushed to join in the fray. At that point we returned home, a little frightened because we had never experienced anything like it before. We filled our bath with water and put blankets nearby and moved our papers and valuables to the back of the house. In the early hours of the next morning the police broke up the riot by driving the rioters up our road and the three adjacent ones. They were using their batons against their shields and shouting.

The causes of the riot are well documented in the Scarman report which was generally well received. The rioters were mostly attacking the police. Several buildings in Railton Road were completely destroyed - mainly houses due for demolition and some businesses attacked. The rioters were driven away from the Chinese take away by the Chinese staff appearing with cleavers.

2 more riots followed in quick succession but by then we were fairly blase about them.

We were scared at the time of the first riot but I think the current terrorism threat from the extreme right is much more scary. These are hard men following an extreme ideology.

I am pleased to read that the information made public by the BBC has finally forced the Tories to act against those in their membership who belong to the cultural nationalist school and have spread hate and islamaphobia.

Watching a documentary recently the first words of the programme words sent a chill through me:

He refuses to engage in the boring day to day detail of running a country. He has no interest in the opinions of experts and refuses to read briefings. Instead, he tasks his team with making him, Dictator. Destroying democracy will take just six months.

It was, of course, "Rise of the Nazis. The First Six Months in Power.(https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0008c79/rise-of-the-nazis-series-1-2-the-first-six-months-in-power)
but how similar to our present time and leader it sounds.

The bottom line is not to give air-time or any sort of auto-suggestion as to what these groups are up to or intend doing as this is exactly what they want to feed their passion.

This government has destroyed democracy by back-pedalling on their Brexit vote 3 years ago. Although I voted remain and wouldn't have been best pleased at the outcome, the fact that a majority vote had been cast should have then allowed the country to move forward.

The balancing view to that is that for evil to triumph it is necesary only for good men to do nothing. If good men are unaware of the machinations of evil, they are not able to take positive action to counteract them.

Turning a blind eye is not the way to defeat them.

Britain First thugs are now patrolling beaches to stop desperate refugee families who have risked their lives to seek safety here. In Ww2 our soldiers risked their lives to help refugees. How has Britain sunk so low? No better than the Nazi's we fought!

It must always be remembered that the methods used by the extreme right are exactly the same as used by the extreme left and visa versa. It also tends to be that the rise of one leads to a rise in the other.

The only solution is to support the parties of the centre and not be enticed to one extreme or the other.

Poundshop Trumpism in the UK. The far right group Britain First has set up ‘patriot patrols’ called ‘operation white cliffs’ on Britain’s south coast beaches to ‘catch migrants’.

"support the parties of the centre and not be enticed to one extreme or the other." Agreed. You don't counteract extremists by swinging to the opposite, and espousing extremism at the other end of the spectrum. The most likely result of doing so is that each side becomes more and more entranched in its intransigence.

entrenched not . Nice-sounding word, entranched, though, pity it doesn't seem to have a meaning.

On second thoughts, maybe it wasn't so far out - This pic could show entranched extremists. www.loc.gov/item/95513312/

Sorry if I missed this but what would these vigilantes do with any 'offenders ' they found?
Citizens' arrests and off to the local police?
Beat them up to 'teach them a lesson'?
Chuck them back in the channel and hope they drown?

Somone once showed us a film of a sociological experiment by a teacher of highschool children in America. ?1980s.
They were slowly introduced to someone's idea that some groups of people were socially inferior, because of race, ability etc.
Ordinary, decent kids started to turn against some of their own friends, and colleagues and alienate them.
The teacher finally revealed the identity of their indoctrinator - a photo of Hitler appeared on the screen.
Shows how easily people can be persuaded.

Nowadays, as we saw clearly in the fraudulent referendum of 2016, the powers of persuasion by malign forces have so much more power as they have harnessed the power of the internet.

How to counteract this evil influence is the biggest challenge to our democracy.

Masses and masses of genuine, unbiased information on the internet, easy to access and guaranteed (how???) to be free from prejudice and self-seeking lies? School lessons in how our country's institutions work? Education in "How to spot a manipulator" ?

Entrenched - brain hop - entrenching tool: Mitford: war: Grumpy old Baron: "Abroad is bloody" early Brexiteer?

I think maybe I should give up the politics threads

They are bad for the brain.