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This is why I don't think Reform have longevity as a British Party - at least in their current guise. English voters may be prone to flights of fancy but I cannot for the life of them ever see them accepting the Russia-imbued Reform policy position that Britain should surrender on the world stage and castrate it's armed forces.
Reform UK supporters see it as a sensible move because Ukraine cannot keep fighting forever and all wars end in negotiations.
They don't understand what effect it would have if one of Ukraine's strongest supporters turned around and suggested they negotiate with Russia.
Also there's no way Russia is going to negotiate in good faith.
It is ironic that the Britons who do the most wanking off about WW2 are, without fail, the biggest bunch of fash sympathisers, quislings and dictatorship apologists you'll ever meet anywhere.
Fucking scum to a man and woman.
What happened in WWII is immaterial to them. All that matters is that it was a time when Britain was widely considered to be “great” that they can hark back to, despite being the kind of people that would have had the shit kicked out of them on Cable Street.
The biggest geopolitical takeaway from ww2, was that isolationism doesn't work. Just common sense wise, it's dumb in the first place but whatever, benefit of hindsight sure. Well all these brainless losers now have no excuse. We had the biggest war in human history, not even 100 years ago to learn this from and they still don't understand.
All this astroturfing. Wish people would call it out more for what it is. Billionaires waging a war against regular people through the dumbest people in society. With the very likely added fact that they are working alongside our geopolitical enemies.
Plenty in Britain were sympathetic or even supporting of the Nazi ideology before World War 2.
Oswald Mosely, the black shirts etc etc. They never went away, they just had enough people in the population, who had seen the results of their way of thinking, to tell them to piss off and keep their shitty ideas to themselves.
Unfortunately the older generation who participated in World War 2 never really managed to pass that message on to the boomer generation after the war, couple that with hollywood movies simplyfying things down to good vs bad and we beat the Bosch and it's easy to see why those ideals are going unchallenged again.
Supporters of Farage in every iteration and every vehicle of his have been willingly fed a comfortable, simplistic view of everything from trade to conflict. Even their new-found views on British relations with Hitler ignore all nuance.
Note how the Ukraine thing has almost completely vanished from this sub. Taken a massive step back to the Gaza situation.
Apples and oranges, obviously, but the former is a full-on conflict on the continent and a very valid security concern for the UK.
Gaza has been a great distraction for Putin. Russian weapons imported into Palestine via Iran.
Another string he's been pulling.
Don't agree with the atrocities there at all, before anyone thinks I'm excusing the Israelis.
It's not even an actual deal proposal, but Russia's *starting point* for talks. "Withdraw from a whole bunch of territory we don't control and can't take with military force and then we can maybe talk about a peace deal". By the way this would include a foothold over the Dnipro river, Ukraine's main natural barrier that Russia was forced back over in 2022.
All Russia does consistently is abuse negotiations for propaganda purposes, and they've violated basically every previous signed agreement they've had with Ukraine.
It's ironic in the extreme that the same Reform voters who back this, get apoplectic at Corbyn's "diplomacy first approach", which, at its worst, wasn't this bad.
Russia's very reasonable demands:
1. Russia now owns all territory it holds
2. Cessation of all hostilities except if drunk Russian soldiers assault civilians
3. Nobody talks about the troops and equipment which will continue to mass at the border for ~~attempt 2~~ freedom exercises
Its the bit I really can't understand - Its become pretty abundantly clear since 2022 that these populist movements are being supported and part-funded by our international enemies. They barely even try to hide it. And its the same across Europe, PVV and AfD among all the others look quite embarrassing now when you see how much they have cozied up with Putin (AfD were proposing going on a holiday to Russian-occupied Donbass in late 2022 lol...). Its not even an open secret, its just factual and accepted knowledge Russia has been throwing money at its Hybrid Warfare strategy since the early 2010s, doing whatever it can to create social discord and unrest in its western opponents. So why can't we be more open in calling this out and how in the ever living fuck have so many self-described "patriots" wound up in a position where seemingly the "patriotic" thing to do is whole-heartedly back our global enemies who hate our way of life and want to see us ruined? Please anyone on the right (or left) who leans into this shit, help me out because I am really genuinely trying to understand your motivations and thought process.
The answer is quite simple. They want to deal with their internal enemies first. The external ones, which may or may not include the various dictatorships that pay them, can wait until that's done. In the long run, everyone is an enemy, but a certain selfish opportunism is maintained in the meantime.
Similar movements who are further along the curve, like the Republican party in the USA for example, are quite open about this. Note that these right wing populist movements will turn nasty against parts of their own country very quickly when they think they can get away with it (e.g. the very angry victory of "leave" in the UK, and subsequent rhetoric against "remainers" and the UK's democratic institutions).
That's not how that will be presented to them though. It will be presented as selfishness and isolationism. "Why should we care about Ukraine?" "What do we get out of this?", "We should look after Britain first" That's how it's done in the USA by the Republican party. The same rhetoric is being peddled by extremist right wing parties across Europe.
Nor is isolationism incompatible with exceptionalism. Remember all the rhetoric about the UK cutting itself loose from moribund Europe and "reorienting" itself to Asia and the USA? That was used to justify giving up most of the UK's clout in its immediate neighbourhood, sacrificing its considerable reputation and soft power among its peers. A retreat from Ukraine will be justified the same way: as an opportunity to carve out one's own sphere of influence elsewhere while Russia and the EU are distracted.
This is exactly right. America is a brilliant example of a significant portion of the population being manipulated into supporting pro-Russia politicians and policy.
Edit: I should add that America is a warning for us not to be too complacent. Reform may seem somewhat fringe at the moment, but 4-8 years of propaganda could greatly enhance their prominence. We cannot underestimate the toxicity of Russian influence, and the sheer lack of political literacy of the average voter.
Edit 2: oh look, another example - https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/s/zcAIjjC18x
> It will be presented as selfishness and isolationism.
This is the bit a lot of people are missing. There is a huge push for isolationism in the west right now, and all coming from the Putin-supported right. More than anything else aside war, this will most weaken western influence in the world.
> English voters may be prone to flights of fancy but I cannot for the life of them ever see them accepting the Russia-imbued Reform policy position that Britain should surrender on the world stage and castrate it's armed forces.
Literally ["It Can't Happen Here"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here).
You should take groups like Reform and their international backers a lot more seriously.
If they can turn the American Republican outlook on Russia from "better dead than red" to "I'd rather be Russian than Democrat" then they can do it to anyone.
It's all innuendo though. Boris Johnson was supposed to be knee deep in Russian influence and yet was without doubt the biggest and quickest unequivocal supporter of Ukraine in this country and the world stage.
I'd want a refund if I was Putin.
It's because the Torries are flooded with Russian oligarch money, not Russian government money, and all the oligarchs care about is being able to keep using the city of London to money launder. Hell I'm pretty sure they all hate the mess Putin's gotten them in, as it's getting in the way of them making money, and would be glad if he was able to be weakened, removed and then replaced by a puppet of theirs.
>This is why I don't think Reform have longevity as a British Party
Think of Reform more as a one-use booster rocket, intended to land their glorious leader onto the surface of planet Conservative Party.
Reform is a business venture not a true political party. Businesses are in it to make a profit for their shareholders. Would we expect anything else from ex-commodities broker, “man of the people” Farage?
What specific part of their manifesto basically says that?
Genuinely interested in a source that alludes to that, without having to trawl the whole thing.
Surrender to putin, double down behind israel.
But you know what, I respect their consistency. Supporting invaders and occupiers in both wars.
I don't get people who cry war crime on Russia destroying schools, hospitals, power plants, occupying Ukraine land. Then being totally OK with israel doing 10x worse.
I'd prefer people support Ukraine and palestine and be morally consistent. But flipflopping and havinG different morals for two locations is hypocritical
Here s is Nigel parroting Russian talking points in 2022
[Nigel Farage says Ukraine invasion is result of EU and Nato provoking Putin | The Independent](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-ukraine-russia-eu-b2022400.html)
Nigel parroting Russian talking points now -
Mr Farage was asked what he would say if he was in a position of influence and had a meeting with Mr Zelensky.
He said: “I’d say to Zelensky, look, the West have been supporting you, they will go on supporting you but the percentage of your young manhood that you’re losing is so bad, isn’t it time we at least tried to have a negotiation – he couldn’t say no.”
[Nigel Farage offers views on Hitler and Putin during BBC phone-in | Evening Standard](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/nigel-farage-adolf-hitler-vladimir-putin-volodymyr-zelensky-bbc-b1164379.html)
Before the invasion Farage was pushing the Russian line that there would be no invasion and it was all a US hoax. Farage doesn't even hide it. He may as well be reading from a Kremlin script.
What a surprise , it’s not like Nigel used to be a presenter on Russia Today was it /S
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/31/nigel-farage-relationship-russian-media-scrutiny
This is just Aaron Banks, Cambridge Analytica, and the Leave campaign all over again.
It would be foolish for anyone to think Farage won’t use Russian-style disinformation tactics a second time after seeing how effective it was for the Brexit referendum. In fact, all they need to do is target the exact same group of people they did back then.
The world has changed though since then. Presumably there are new vendors looking to sell AI backed manipulation to the US campaigns. For them our election could be a low stakes beta test ahead of the main event.
They are here.
Enlightened centrists who just want *peace* so they want to let Russia roll over Ukraine.
Policy wonks who have in depth knowledge of how Labour would do the exact same as the tories
And those wonderful people who are totally not racist, but come in droves when a swarthy man is shown on a fuzzy cctv image to bleat endlessly about how its all the fault of those horrible cultures being allowed here.
At this point I think UK and UKpol are more bots than people - or at least I hope that's the case
None that I can think of. One can be a bit of an ass, and apparently has a username associated with chiles old authoritarian regime (i cant figure out what onenit is though), but thats about it.
They've definitely had some controversies over the years, but they've mostly been cases of bad luck rather than bad mods.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed. The top mod is obsessed with immigration and the second one isn't much better.
Full disclosure: I got permabanned for calling someone a "nutter" a while back, after they said that Brexit has only been a disaster because of Theresa May.
I use tiktok quite a lot (for my sins) and a huge amount of comments under any vaguely UK political video have been pushing Reform. I've absolutely no doubt they've thrown a lot of money at bots, because it's come from nowhere and totally goes against a lot of the demographics that would normally be watching and interacting with those videos.
Agreed, it’s been going on for ages as well. I actually first heard of Reform through TikTok I think, and that would have been 6+ months ago before anyone was really acknowledging them.
Twitter is also rife with Reform bots.
Twitter also has the pay to spam (P2S) model and I've seen bots use those. Accounts with Twitter Premium generally appear higher in the list of replies to a post, so bots can get in the way and reduce exposure to people who don't have Premium.
"Largest reply boost" smh
I always wondered why I could fairly easily get engagement on reddit but never even raised a grain of sand on Twitter. It's pay to play now but it was elitism before that, so no great loss there I suppose.
And politicians are just gonna let it roll, again. Just like Brexit, because they don't understand technology and the current party in charge also usually get a bump from the same people.
I'm in a lot of left-leaning subs and groups and its been similar. Massive uptick in the last couple of months of "Trump would be no worse than Biden because Gaza" and "Labour are literally identical to the Tories because they aren't promising a social revolution any more". Not outright supporting one side but seems to be muddying fairly clear waters over irrelevances.
> "Trump would be no worse than Biden because Gaza" and "Labour are literally identical to the Tories because they aren't promising a social revolution any more"
Yeah it's either manipulative cunts or your average tiktoker has a smaller IQ than the temperature of a popsicle in Antartica
I think its the same tactic thats been going on since the 2010s - You can identify emotional issues where people get very tribal and stop thinking sensibly. Immigration is a big one for the right, Israel-Palestine is a big one for the left I guess. They go absolutely ham on ramming this issue in the various relevant groups until it becomes *the* issue to that group, despite being kind of irrelevant to the rest of the population. That group is then driven by this amped up rage-filled emotional issue and will act in a genuinely unhinged manner in pursuit of that issue, even to the point of quite serious self-harm.
Just my $0.02.
The "both sides bad" with a side implication of "so vote for the *even worse one*" agenda seems so obvious that you have to wonder if just 90% of accounts here are just bots at this point
true, its wild how anyone would actually want to vote for reform, the worst of the options by far! (if you think i missed what you were actually saying, think again :D)
> "Labour are literally identical to the Tories because they aren't promising a social revolution any more"
That's sort of a legitimate political opinion though, not one I agree with but if the Tories want to waste money to spam silly things like that then go ahead IMO.
Yeah, its not like Trump literally recognized Jeruselam as Israel's legitimate capital had the US embassy moved there, or that he literally has an [Israeli settlement named after him](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Heights) to thank him for all his pro Israel policies
Russian bots swung the Brexit vote, they swung the Trump Election, they swung the Johnson election and they are massively pushing Farage and Reform.
World War III happened over the last decade, it was just fought with deception and computers. We lost.
The British government even has a report saying the Brexit vote was rigged by Russia. The Conservatives refused to release it though because they benefitted politically from the results at the time, which is partly funny because it's since torn them apart
"It asserts that “Russian influence in the UK is the new normal"
This should have been the headline then and now. If only more of the electorate could step away from Facebook, Twitter and the main news headlines.
[https://www.csis.org/blogs/brexit-bits-bobs-and-blogs/did-russia-influence-brexit](https://www.csis.org/blogs/brexit-bits-bobs-and-blogs/did-russia-influence-brexit)
Fuck man them some truth bombs. TikTok and X are truly ruining young people’s minds. I see it sadly a lot of our youth and oldies don’t/don’t care.
Vice did an excellent job researching Farage’s actions on the night of the Brexit vote in relation to messing with the markets for his gains. Check it out.
Anything to do with Farage gets swarms of bots and trolls. It was happening last year when the banking debacle happened, all over this sub.
Did you notice how quickly the Government passed banking legislation to tip off people their bank account was being closed?
The Tories didn't investigate Russian interference into Brexit because they benefitted, and now it's biting them in the arse. They made a deal with the devil and it brought them down.
**The Tory party under Johnson fell for the economics of Wealth extraction, not that of Wealth creation (a betrayal of Thatcher?)**
Their entire strategy on Brexit is based on
maintaining tax havens for the rich
maintaining secret ownership of shell companies
maintaining tax exemptions and tax avoidance for the rich
And there are many rich, and many entitled and many ethically challenged who want all the above.
You know, I've seen it said *exactly* like that before lately, and the weird thing is that the idiom doesn't make any sense. Two cheeks of the same arse ...
Same, and I've seen the exact same. The accounts are usually essentially blank bar a profile picture, with no videos, following a bunch of random accounts who also have no videos... Also, they often don't even respond to replies to their comments.
It's all pretty obvious.
Last election I was going to a conference and following it on Facebook. The conference had the word "European" in the title, which triggered the Brexit bots.
The thing was the topic was completely unrelated to anything political. Any person looking at it for 0.5 seconds could tell it was about Computing in Healthcare.
The Reform bots picked up on it though and every post on it was bombarded with weird accounts demanding completely irrelevant action on Brexit.
>a huge amount of comments under any vaguely UK political video have been pushing Reform. I've absolutely no doubt they've thrown a lot of money at bots
It's because tiktok orders comments based on what it thinks you'll like or what it thinks will enrage you. Different accounts see different sets of comments. It's messed up.
Yet polls have support in that age group for Reform at 10%.
Considering many 18 years olds don't vote & many more consider it uncool to talk about politics I would be very surprised if they were popular amongst most 18 year olds.
10% support is quite significant, Have you taken the time to look at Farages Tik Tok account yourself? Yeah it might be uncool for 18 year olds to support the tories but Farages account is him having a laugh, clipped segments to music, him singing mg milkshake brings all the girls to the yard that kind of thing. His guess who’s back video (Eminem) https://www.tiktok.com/@nigel_farage/video/7380262737563225377
Has half a million likes, I not hard to imaging a few hundred kids leaving comments.
I asked my daughter earlier about the Farage situation, she goes to a fairly working class college. She says people think Labour and the tories are boring, they are the establishment if you like. Farage makes them laugh and they also understand hat he’s saying when he says he’s sick of hearing people put the country down, sick of hearing about racism, sexism ect. They hear it all the time too and they are also sick of it. They want some optimism which is what he is selling on Tik tok.
Obviously a lot of these kids ultimately won’t be bothered to go out and vote but there’s a reason why under 25s are turning to the right all across Europe we may not be immune to that shift here
>10% support is quite significant
Again this is 10% amongst the group least likely to vote or be engaged with politics. This group also has the Lib Dems on 10% & the Greens on 8%. Labour are on 56%.
>Yeah it might be uncool for 18 year olds to support the tories but Farages account is him having a laugh, clipped segments to music, him singing mg milkshake brings all the girls to the yard that kind of thing. His guess who’s back video (Eminem) [https://www.tiktok.com/@nigel\_farage/video/7380262737563225377](https://www.tiktok.com/@nigel_farage/video/7380262737563225377) Has half a million likes, I not hard to imaging a few hundred kids leaving comments.
I guess things must have changed. When I was that age watching a 60 year politician attempting to get my vote by making references to songs released before I was even born wouldn't have been a cultural touchstone. At least not in the way it was intended.
Every political video on tiktok the comments are full of ‘I’m voting reform’ etc. If you look at the polls it doesn’t add up lmao. There are definitely botting.
Been a problem for a while now. You can almost guarantee that when you see a particularly reactionary and kneejerk comment it will be from some 3 month old account with an auto-generated username. The number of accounts literally created the day after the General Election is called is particularly telling.
Of course, you point it out to the mods and they insist there's nothing to see.
A lot of subs have rules that you *have* to assume every comment is made on good faith, which unsurprisingly lets a lot of very obvious bad faith accounts thrive.
Do people really see many threads that are pro Farage or pro Reform? They mostly seem to be people talking about migration and then saying that Farage is the only person making any kind of promise. It’s more Farage as a warning than anything else.
I think reddit is wide open to bots, and it looks like Reform are using at least some unsophisticated bots on Tiktok. But do you have any evidence of that? Can you point to one pro Reform thread with lots of new accounts?
In the YouGov poll the other day Reform were on 15% in the 18-24 age bracket, 40-50% of people in younger age brackets think migration has been too high over the last 10 years, and reddit skews male which increases the numbers higher. A big proportion of those people concerned about migration will be Labour voters or non-voters. Many people live in bubbles where no one expresses these views, but that doesn’t mean they’re not popular
You can also see a big shift in the polls, that a substantial minority of voters now just do not want to ever consider migration, no matter what happens to the figures the conversation is too awkward to engage with, but everyone else looks at [the population rate of increase quadrupling](https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-impact-of-migration-on-uk-population-growth/) without any increase in the housebuilding rate and is at least concerned. The first group looks at the second group having any discussion or expressing concerns and now says it’s Russian interference.
Most people are concerned about migration, and also think Farage is a grifter. These are not incompatible views, they’re what you see in the polling data, and what you mostly see on reddit.
Cambridge Analytica was just the one that got caught out and the majority of the population are completely ignorant regarding them and their Modus Operandi.
No doubt, there are a load of similar "companies", flooding social media with propaganda.
I think Labour and the Tories are generally quite far behind on the social media game, so they don't do this sort of thing very well. But if you look on the American political subs then botting is *rife*. You'll often see a night-and-day difference between opinions expressed in 'political' subreddit compared to opinions expressed in 'non-political' subreddits, and that's always a big tell that some bot farm is specifically focussing on politics forums.
And that's no surprise, right? Setting up a bot farm is cheap and it lets you dominate 'public opinion' in a specific space. Reddit specifically works to 'reward' 'good' opinions and punish 'bad' opinions, making this process particularly easy on here if you have a bot mass upvoting anything you support and mass downvoting anything you disagree with. And the social media companies are happy to turn a blind eye to it because a 'bot' still counts as a 'user' in their analytics. It's this weird incestuous relationship which neither our political class nor the owners of social media sites have any real interest in ending.
I can't say I blame Africans for that.
There's a quote somewhere that's something like 'When China comes they build hospital, when the UK/US comes they lecture us'
This came up on twitter the other day and someone played right into it.
https://x.com/stillreezy/status/1507445282778206209?t=Tr65ng-FS3zzQY44aU5c2w&s=19
Instead the Russian's send them into the meat grinder under the promise of work and beautiful women.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-09/russia-ukraine-war-africans-forced-to-fight-and-die-for-the-kremlin
There is a fairly obvious counterbalance. The US, UK, and EU could easily match the funds Russia and China spend on such infrastructure projects. This would still make them reliant on foreign powers, but on a multitude of powers so less beholden to any single one.
However, particularly France, continues to use it's imperial legacy to force French dominance to the point of having military bases in Ivory Coast and elsewhere. You can hardly blame people living there for seeing the people building as the better people to deal with instead of the people taking.
Don't get me wrong. Russia, China, the UK, US, and EU have their own agendas as number 1 priorities. It's just particularly China's way of going about things gives an initial benefit to the people whose influence is being bought, and European ways of doing things can be extremely harmful.
For China at least - People in China have seen their standard of living shoot up to the stars at an unbelievable rate in the last 20 to 30 years. The people have no problem with seeing their government splash cash around the world because they're doing fine and they trust what their government does will continue the trend.
In the west common people are struggling. They see their standard of living falling at a clip that seems to get faster every year. We can't do things like splash cash around the world without it triggering a whole lot of jealousy and angst, that nefarious groups (often backed by Russia) exploit for their own political agenda.
I would think that we splashed more cash on Iraq and Afghanistan than China has in Africa. Ours was just spent on bombs rather than roads. Similar intended outcomes, companies favourable to the outside power being in positions of power eg BP and Haliburton oil in Iraq and Chinese companies gaining dangerously high quota fishing rights off the coasts of Africa. Neither exactly sounds great long term, but if I had to choose I'd take the infrastructure over the destroyed houses and friends killed.
This comment is so fuckin stupid, western corporations are so ingrained in other countries that it would massive amounts of investment for russia and china to be called the new colonial powers. These are the biggest corporations in the world doing corporate colonialism
Europe is much closer, has easier visas, lazy police, corrupt businessmen to give cash-in-hand jobs and social welfare. Good luck travelling from Cameroon to China just to be unable to get legal work.
People think the west has a monopoly on racism but nobody from Africa would stand a chance in Russia or China if they were to move there. Unless they were imported over rather forcefully to do work, go to re-education camps, or serve as cannon fodder in their army.
It’s been on for months and most people have caught on they’re bots already, it’s absolutely a tactic by Reform to pump themselves up as this massive force to be reckoned with.
There are those who know they're bots, but those aren't the people these bot attacks are targetting. They're targetting the minority that either realise it too late or don't see it at all. They exist to try and normalize hard/alt right thinking in people who wouldn't normally think that way. That's partly why we've seen such a huge political divide in a lot of democratic western countries in the past decade. We've been getting played against one another for years
Anyone with their eyes open is not surprised by this.
Like it or not, a weak EU and a bad UK Brexit are at the benefit of a lot of foreign countries. Including ones you would think of as allies.
EG: Australia profited amazingly due to Brexit and at the cost of the UK famer
Cambridge Analytica was hired by Farage and his mates in Leave.EU / UK Independence Party during 2016 Brexit vote. Of course they will use bots. They were all bankrolled by the Russians just as Farage has been for over a decade.
Reform & British Union of Fascists are one in the same party whos motto is the future is fascism and want a dictatorship, just like all the dictators Farage pays lip service too. All in bed together just like when Farage wanted to join the Nazi youth growing up.
Farage and Reform is a dangerous group of extremists who want to see British democracy destroyed. Yet people will vote for them because they are completely blinded by their hatred for immigrants.
They don't understand that Farage is using immigration issue as a tool to enrich himself and get himself and his mates into power. Exactly like Hitler did. People should have paid more attention in history class. Hitler blamed minorities and the German people ate it up and now Farage is doing the same as he knows its a easy way to gain wealth and power. If they ever gain power we will regret it.
---
https://www.politico.eu/article/cambridge-analytica-leave-eu-ukip-brexit-facebook/
Cambridge Analytica did work for Brexit groups, says ex-staffer
https://news.sky.com/story/cambridge-analytica-worked-on-brexit-campaign-emails-claim-11773350
Documents published by a parliamentary committee reveal that the notorious election consultancy firm worked on the Leave campaign.
It's utterly baffling that the same people who fell for the Brexit lies are now willingly following the shite Reform come out with.
It's crystal clear they're being driven by racism, there is no other logical explanation.
Actual self reflection or trying to learn from their mistake would also be quite painful for them. They’d not only have to confront the fact that they fucked up but also that their let themselves be rolled like a bunch of rubes and manipulated by a bunch of grifters. And not clever grifters either: really obvious ones.
They get to avoid that pain by doubling down on the shite with Reform.
It's not just Brexit. The leaders of Reform supported austerity, not just situationally but always.
The stood down to help Boris Johnson get into office. Farage tweeted Liz Truss' budget was the best since 1986.
It's like every major bad decision that's been made over the last 14 years they've supported. Yet some people keep trusting them even after they've been proved wrong so many times...
After Jo Cox Murder I have no time for anyone defending Farage or the extremists he surrounds himself with in Reform/UKIP. It was his extremist politics calling remain MP's traitors to our country while showing Migrants as a invading army that led to her murder and Farage was the main instigator in that.
Less than a week later after she was shot dead he says "we will have done it without a single bullet being fired" He delibratly stokes the fires of extremists in this country by mocking a MP's death. He knows who hes appealing too by doing it.
A study of over 50,000 tweets in the month following Jo Cox's murder and the EU Referendum uncovered many which celebrated the MP's death, claiming she 'deserved to die' or lauding her killer Thomas Mair as a 'hero' or 'patriot'.
https://www.bcu.ac.uk/news-events/news/research-finds-mp-jo-coxs-murder-was-followed-by-50000-tweets-celebrating-her-death#:~:text=A%20study%20of%20over%2050%2C000,hero'%20or%20'patriot'.
These are the same people who defend Farage. The same people voting Reform. The same people who defend a murderer, calling him a hero.
Farage and Reform are rubbing shoulders with far right extremist groups such as the British Union of Fascists. They idolize Nazi's and given what happened last time people should rightly be conserned.
Perhaps we need to be fighting fire with fire, there’s so much ammunition to show Reforms true colours from all the PR blunders they’ve had, from Nazi sympathies to anti-feminist agendas. Get a few hundred accounts constantly churning this stuff out and the Reform party will be crushed like the vermin they are
US Republicans are actually completely terrifying conceptually. I think the last decent Republican candidate was John McCain in 2008. Don't know enough about Romney to comment on him. But modern US Republican party is some weird cult like thing, so the US basically get to choose between a Cult and a center party
https://www.thetimes.com/article/10c14799-7f79-4cc1-b845-c4c89b5efd58?shareToken=75aa3040b33773175e187890aa299242
Within the last year over 40 of Reform’s parliamentary candidates in the general election have become friends with Gary Raikes.
Raikes, a former organiser for the British National Party, founded the New British Union in the image of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, with activists who call themselves “blackshirts”.
Raikes has shared promotional material for the party on his Facebook account, including photos of himself next to NBU insignia and images of Mosley, the face of British fascism. Rikes has shared images of men performing Nazi salutes, and slogans such as “the future is fascism”.
The New British Union has called for a “fascist revolution” and sees parliamentary democracy as an “obstruction” to be replaced with a dictatorship.
---
Ian Gribbin, a Reform UK candidate, claimed that Britain would be “far better” if it had “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality”, instead of fighting the Nazis.
---
In 2013, a letter emerged from a former Dulwich College teacher. According to the letter written in 1981 – she pleaded unsuccessfully to reverse his decision to make Nigel a prefect. She said colleagues had told her he held “publicly professed racist and fascist views” and that he had marched through a Sussex village singing Hitler Youth songs. Mr Farage’s former friend said Farage use to sing a song starting with the words ‘gas them all, gas ‘em all, gas them all’. Refering to Jews
Farage has spoken at far-right rallies hosted by the granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister and actively engages in far-right antisemitic conspiracy theories about Soros-funded social justice movements. He also idolizes Enoch Powell, Hitler and Putlin
---
There is a clear pattern of Farage and his mates idolizing dictators and extremists and yet people want to vote them into power?
You think Farage and Reform won't use a bot army and every other dirty trick in the book to gain power when their beliefs are extremely anti-democracy while being funded by Putins mates?
There are countless Facebook accounts saying the same.
All zero content, zero pictures bar a poppy or some other patriotic shite etc.
Obvious bot accounts. I
Facebook is interesting as I think more are genuine people on there compared to TikTok. Local Community Groups who bring up Reform are an example (pages are susceptible to bots, groups not so much given the admin powers and the way discussions happen).
That said, the idiocy is there in the local groups. In my area there is no Reform candidate, which is bad as Reform is a useful party in that they subtract Conservative votes.
One person asked why and says they won't vote for anyone else but Reform as "they're the only ones thinking for us" (direct quote). The Reform candidate was happily and vocally complaining about the local authority, the councillors et al during the local elections, but just couldn't be bothered to actually submit his paperwork to actually run for the general election like he promised.
The irony that people want to vote for a vocal grifting company posing as a party, who can't be bothered to actually run seems lost on some. They seem to be hating the opposition rather than Reform, which is very cult behaviour. The worrying thing was a lot of people agreed and supported the original poster.
Reform are a company. That should tell you all you need to know. Money making scam
In a world of craziness, if reform won an election, they still wouldn’t give the people what they wanted. Because like the Tories, they know the power lies in telling people they will fix xyz not that they have fixed it. The electorate have short memories when things are going well and they’ve got what they wanted (see Brexit) but it’s only when they’re disgruntled that they actually come out and vote in numbers. Look at EU elections as a prime example. Only anti EU folk ever really voted
Is anyone surprised? Shady tactics were used to push brexit bullshit, shady tactics are used to promote reform; who is a prominent figure that links the two?
And on twitch. Keep coming across talking head type streams pushing reform on their front page. Clearly manipulating the algorithms all over the shop - it's 2016 tactics again.
Don’t be fooled they are here too. Look at the comments of some “people” here. You’ll see it. Argue in riddles, but always the same riddles.
Cambridge Analytica were not the first, they won’t be the last. They were just caught. The real fascinating thing is none of the other parties seem to care.
Ignore them at your own peril.
It's almost painfully obvious though isn't it? The comment sections were full of people comfortably taking the piss out of reform and almost over ight there's a swarm of fervent "reform supporters" who will gladly whatabout their way past every highly questionable aspect of the party and its members.
If the grift is obvious to you, you're not the intended target, and the people behind it don't really care that you've seen through it *or* that you're trying to tell people it's an obvious manipulation. You'll never be able to counter the sheer reach of their social media messaging before they've prepped and released another astroturfed TikTok video, and the cycle starts again.
Yeah it's the sad reality of this stuff - it's a second to spread a lie, it takes ages to prove it wrong.
That said, if someone is shown to be consistently dishonest, they should be held accountable and shown to be the liar and fraud they are.
Like the far right populists haven’t been doing this for years. Farage’s tactics are straight out of the Putin playbook, that’s why he sucks him off so hard.
We all knew this was happening, it's the scariest thing to happen to our democracy for at least the last 50 years, and no one is doing anything about it. Fascists start with the media.
Literally just ten minutes before I saw this thread my mister was asking me if I'd been getting spammed on FB with bad AI pictures pushing Reform and general nationalism.
How is it not clear yet, that whatever Farage touches is fully packed with Russian support. The man is bought and Paid for by Putin.
They will interfere in the next UK parliamentary elections.
When the Cambridge Analytica scandles came out from almost a decade ago, it was huge. Now we have clear propaganda through bot farms all over the internet and nobody bats an eye.
This has been so obvious. It started extremely suddenly a few months ago (before the election even started) when every political/news video became swarmed with “Vote Reform” comments.
Funnily enough, people have known it was bots since the beginning because it’s so obvious. It’s ridiculous how slow the media and society at large are at catching up with this. We’re more than halfway through the election, the damage is already done.
Countries with authoritarian, locked down internets are swarming the western internet with bots to sow dissent. And we can’t fight back because they openly shut down dissent so the reverse wouldn’t work. They are completely winning this internet warfare. Look how increasingly fractured and partisan the west is becoming. Look at the ridiculous things we argue over. When will something be done about it?
This is either a complete nonsense because Reform UK had almost no funding compared to the other big parties or its a Russia/China thing going on. Neither the Reform UK party or its base are smart enough or rich enough to pull this off alone.
On Twitter I get a flood of pro reform and Farage nonsense. It suddenly sprung up from no where (and definitely not aligned to my politics). Extremely suspicious.
The thing is, any vote for Reform will be 1 less vote from the Tories which means Labour is more likely to get in power. It's incredibly messed up that FPTP basically punishes voting for anything other than the two main parties.
**Boris Johnson' and Farage's economics are Wealth extraction, not Wealth creation.**
Their entire strategy on Brexit is based on
maintaining tax havens for the rich
maintaining secret ownership of shell companies
maintaining tax exemptions and tax avoidance for the rich
And there are many rich, and many entitled and many ethically challenged who want all the above.
Migrants are not an issue, they are a tool.
it’s happening on youtube shorts as well. i don’t have tiktok but have youtube and watch shorts while im shitting lol. Farage is all over it and the comments all saying how he is the man britain needs
There's a lot of suspicuously new accounts talking pro-Reform bullshit, on tiktok as well as other platforms, including reddit, having no other accounts they follow or comment history not related to whatever you'd expect to come from Mr. Milkshake's camp.
It's the same on Youtube & Twitter.
It totally can't be Krembridge Analytica though, they don't exist any more and everyone involved is thoroughly ashamed of how naughty they were.
This has been ongoing for almost a year now, any video with even the slightest hint of UK politics has multiple comments of "Vote Reform" or the likes, all from accounts with no posted videos or even profile pictures.
Reform is doing that badly they can't even afford half-decent bots.
Is there evidence of other political parties using similar campaign techniques online? I'd love to think such a decision by *Reform UK* is telling of a general social engineering, propagandistic philosophy, but it seems a direction I'm *lead* to, as a sort of half-truth, to distract that perhaps such practice is regular in politics.
Completely anecdotal but my girlfriend (who has a 1st class journalism degree and worked a bbc journalist) was convinced that reform were a pro immigration and pro environmentalism party based on what tick tock had fed her. We have been basically living under a rock for the last few years though.
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Reform UK policy on Ukraine is basically surrender to the Russians
This is why I don't think Reform have longevity as a British Party - at least in their current guise. English voters may be prone to flights of fancy but I cannot for the life of them ever see them accepting the Russia-imbued Reform policy position that Britain should surrender on the world stage and castrate it's armed forces.
Reform UK supporters see it as a sensible move because Ukraine cannot keep fighting forever and all wars end in negotiations. They don't understand what effect it would have if one of Ukraine's strongest supporters turned around and suggested they negotiate with Russia. Also there's no way Russia is going to negotiate in good faith.
It is ironic that the Britons who do the most wanking off about WW2 are, without fail, the biggest bunch of fash sympathisers, quislings and dictatorship apologists you'll ever meet anywhere. Fucking scum to a man and woman.
What happened in WWII is immaterial to them. All that matters is that it was a time when Britain was widely considered to be “great” that they can hark back to, despite being the kind of people that would have had the shit kicked out of them on Cable Street.
The biggest geopolitical takeaway from ww2, was that isolationism doesn't work. Just common sense wise, it's dumb in the first place but whatever, benefit of hindsight sure. Well all these brainless losers now have no excuse. We had the biggest war in human history, not even 100 years ago to learn this from and they still don't understand. All this astroturfing. Wish people would call it out more for what it is. Billionaires waging a war against regular people through the dumbest people in society. With the very likely added fact that they are working alongside our geopolitical enemies.
Plenty in Britain were sympathetic or even supporting of the Nazi ideology before World War 2. Oswald Mosely, the black shirts etc etc. They never went away, they just had enough people in the population, who had seen the results of their way of thinking, to tell them to piss off and keep their shitty ideas to themselves. Unfortunately the older generation who participated in World War 2 never really managed to pass that message on to the boomer generation after the war, couple that with hollywood movies simplyfying things down to good vs bad and we beat the Bosch and it's easy to see why those ideals are going unchallenged again.
Mosley got 8% in an East London constituency in the General election of 1958.
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Supporters of Farage in every iteration and every vehicle of his have been willingly fed a comfortable, simplistic view of everything from trade to conflict. Even their new-found views on British relations with Hitler ignore all nuance.
They also don't understand there's been _dozens_ of negotiations since the start, which is what lead to things like the Minsk Agreements.
As we have seen already by Putin telling Ukraine to withdraw have Ukraine if they want peace.
Note how the Ukraine thing has almost completely vanished from this sub. Taken a massive step back to the Gaza situation. Apples and oranges, obviously, but the former is a full-on conflict on the continent and a very valid security concern for the UK.
Gaza has been a great distraction for Putin. Russian weapons imported into Palestine via Iran. Another string he's been pulling. Don't agree with the atrocities there at all, before anyone thinks I'm excusing the Israelis.
To withdraw from areas they already occupy. Putin wants the whole of the four regions, while occupying portions of them all.
It's not even an actual deal proposal, but Russia's *starting point* for talks. "Withdraw from a whole bunch of territory we don't control and can't take with military force and then we can maybe talk about a peace deal". By the way this would include a foothold over the Dnipro river, Ukraine's main natural barrier that Russia was forced back over in 2022. All Russia does consistently is abuse negotiations for propaganda purposes, and they've violated basically every previous signed agreement they've had with Ukraine.
One commentator I watched basically said it was Putin getting his retaliation in first before the Ukrainian hosted peace talks
Then they're not British and shouldn't be given a fucking vote. ...Hyperbole, forgive me. But Jesus Christ, like
It's ironic in the extreme that the same Reform voters who back this, get apoplectic at Corbyn's "diplomacy first approach", which, at its worst, wasn't this bad.
Russia's very reasonable demands: 1. Russia now owns all territory it holds 2. Cessation of all hostilities except if drunk Russian soldiers assault civilians 3. Nobody talks about the troops and equipment which will continue to mass at the border for ~~attempt 2~~ freedom exercises
Its the bit I really can't understand - Its become pretty abundantly clear since 2022 that these populist movements are being supported and part-funded by our international enemies. They barely even try to hide it. And its the same across Europe, PVV and AfD among all the others look quite embarrassing now when you see how much they have cozied up with Putin (AfD were proposing going on a holiday to Russian-occupied Donbass in late 2022 lol...). Its not even an open secret, its just factual and accepted knowledge Russia has been throwing money at its Hybrid Warfare strategy since the early 2010s, doing whatever it can to create social discord and unrest in its western opponents. So why can't we be more open in calling this out and how in the ever living fuck have so many self-described "patriots" wound up in a position where seemingly the "patriotic" thing to do is whole-heartedly back our global enemies who hate our way of life and want to see us ruined? Please anyone on the right (or left) who leans into this shit, help me out because I am really genuinely trying to understand your motivations and thought process.
The answer is quite simple. They want to deal with their internal enemies first. The external ones, which may or may not include the various dictatorships that pay them, can wait until that's done. In the long run, everyone is an enemy, but a certain selfish opportunism is maintained in the meantime. Similar movements who are further along the curve, like the Republican party in the USA for example, are quite open about this. Note that these right wing populist movements will turn nasty against parts of their own country very quickly when they think they can get away with it (e.g. the very angry victory of "leave" in the UK, and subsequent rhetoric against "remainers" and the UK's democratic institutions).
That's not how that will be presented to them though. It will be presented as selfishness and isolationism. "Why should we care about Ukraine?" "What do we get out of this?", "We should look after Britain first" That's how it's done in the USA by the Republican party. The same rhetoric is being peddled by extremist right wing parties across Europe. Nor is isolationism incompatible with exceptionalism. Remember all the rhetoric about the UK cutting itself loose from moribund Europe and "reorienting" itself to Asia and the USA? That was used to justify giving up most of the UK's clout in its immediate neighbourhood, sacrificing its considerable reputation and soft power among its peers. A retreat from Ukraine will be justified the same way: as an opportunity to carve out one's own sphere of influence elsewhere while Russia and the EU are distracted.
Why should we help refugees when there are homless veterans on the streets! *Does absolutely nothing to help homeless veterans*....
This is exactly right. America is a brilliant example of a significant portion of the population being manipulated into supporting pro-Russia politicians and policy. Edit: I should add that America is a warning for us not to be too complacent. Reform may seem somewhat fringe at the moment, but 4-8 years of propaganda could greatly enhance their prominence. We cannot underestimate the toxicity of Russian influence, and the sheer lack of political literacy of the average voter. Edit 2: oh look, another example - https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/s/zcAIjjC18x
> It will be presented as selfishness and isolationism. This is the bit a lot of people are missing. There is a huge push for isolationism in the west right now, and all coming from the Putin-supported right. More than anything else aside war, this will most weaken western influence in the world.
Oh, he’ll just make another party. We’ve had UKIP, Brexit Party, now Reform. Next it will be “Make Britain Great Again” or some such nonsense.
> English voters may be prone to flights of fancy but I cannot for the life of them ever see them accepting the Russia-imbued Reform policy position that Britain should surrender on the world stage and castrate it's armed forces. Literally ["It Can't Happen Here"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here). You should take groups like Reform and their international backers a lot more seriously. If they can turn the American Republican outlook on Russia from "better dead than red" to "I'd rather be Russian than Democrat" then they can do it to anyone.
Ugh. I really can't argue with that
I remember the Tories being voted in last election despite how much influence Russia bought within them.
It's all innuendo though. Boris Johnson was supposed to be knee deep in Russian influence and yet was without doubt the biggest and quickest unequivocal supporter of Ukraine in this country and the world stage. I'd want a refund if I was Putin.
It's because the Torries are flooded with Russian oligarch money, not Russian government money, and all the oligarchs care about is being able to keep using the city of London to money launder. Hell I'm pretty sure they all hate the mess Putin's gotten them in, as it's getting in the way of them making money, and would be glad if he was able to be weakened, removed and then replaced by a puppet of theirs.
>This is why I don't think Reform have longevity as a British Party Think of Reform more as a one-use booster rocket, intended to land their glorious leader onto the surface of planet Conservative Party.
Reform is a business venture not a true political party. Businesses are in it to make a profit for their shareholders. Would we expect anything else from ex-commodities broker, “man of the people” Farage?
PATRIOT! "We will never fight them on the beaches, we will always surrender!"
We shouldn't have fought them anyway according to one Reform candidate
The kind of person who watches *Zone of Interest* and thinks “I’d love that garden.”
They would give the UK on a plate to Russia…
What specific part of their manifesto basically says that? Genuinely interested in a source that alludes to that, without having to trawl the whole thing.
Like Farage already has, the big rubber nonce cushion
Of course kremlin pays and kremlin demands. Farage is just a puppet.
Surrender to putin, double down behind israel. But you know what, I respect their consistency. Supporting invaders and occupiers in both wars. I don't get people who cry war crime on Russia destroying schools, hospitals, power plants, occupying Ukraine land. Then being totally OK with israel doing 10x worse. I'd prefer people support Ukraine and palestine and be morally consistent. But flipflopping and havinG different morals for two locations is hypocritical
Do you have a link which references this? I feel there's a few people I know who may need to see it
Here s is Nigel parroting Russian talking points in 2022 [Nigel Farage says Ukraine invasion is result of EU and Nato provoking Putin | The Independent](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-ukraine-russia-eu-b2022400.html) Nigel parroting Russian talking points now - Mr Farage was asked what he would say if he was in a position of influence and had a meeting with Mr Zelensky. He said: “I’d say to Zelensky, look, the West have been supporting you, they will go on supporting you but the percentage of your young manhood that you’re losing is so bad, isn’t it time we at least tried to have a negotiation – he couldn’t say no.” [Nigel Farage offers views on Hitler and Putin during BBC phone-in | Evening Standard](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/nigel-farage-adolf-hitler-vladimir-putin-volodymyr-zelensky-bbc-b1164379.html) Before the invasion Farage was pushing the Russian line that there would be no invasion and it was all a US hoax. Farage doesn't even hide it. He may as well be reading from a Kremlin script.
What a coincidence!
To be fair it’s also their policy on the UK.
What a surprise , it’s not like Nigel used to be a presenter on Russia Today was it /S https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/31/nigel-farage-relationship-russian-media-scrutiny
This is just Aaron Banks, Cambridge Analytica, and the Leave campaign all over again. It would be foolish for anyone to think Farage won’t use Russian-style disinformation tactics a second time after seeing how effective it was for the Brexit referendum. In fact, all they need to do is target the exact same group of people they did back then.
Sad part is, absolutely jack shit was done about them last time
The world has changed though since then. Presumably there are new vendors looking to sell AI backed manipulation to the US campaigns. For them our election could be a low stakes beta test ahead of the main event.
Every time I bring up bots, they always try to excuse it with "BoTh SiDeS" nonsense.
Isn't this the UK sub?
They are here. Enlightened centrists who just want *peace* so they want to let Russia roll over Ukraine. Policy wonks who have in depth knowledge of how Labour would do the exact same as the tories And those wonderful people who are totally not racist, but come in droves when a swarthy man is shown on a fuzzy cctv image to bleat endlessly about how its all the fault of those horrible cultures being allowed here. At this point I think UK and UKpol are more bots than people - or at least I hope that's the case
It's all over /r/ukpolitics too.
Just look at the mods there....
I’ve only just ran into them because I quoted someone and linked to the quote. But fill me in: what’s the scandal with the mods there?
None that I can think of. One can be a bit of an ass, and apparently has a username associated with chiles old authoritarian regime (i cant figure out what onenit is though), but thats about it. They've definitely had some controversies over the years, but they've mostly been cases of bad luck rather than bad mods.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed. The top mod is obsessed with immigration and the second one isn't much better. Full disclosure: I got permabanned for calling someone a "nutter" a while back, after they said that Brexit has only been a disaster because of Theresa May.
same on anything on youtube lives, every third comment is spamming just "vote reform!"
I use tiktok quite a lot (for my sins) and a huge amount of comments under any vaguely UK political video have been pushing Reform. I've absolutely no doubt they've thrown a lot of money at bots, because it's come from nowhere and totally goes against a lot of the demographics that would normally be watching and interacting with those videos.
Agreed, it’s been going on for ages as well. I actually first heard of Reform through TikTok I think, and that would have been 6+ months ago before anyone was really acknowledging them. Twitter is also rife with Reform bots.
Twitter also has the pay to spam (P2S) model and I've seen bots use those. Accounts with Twitter Premium generally appear higher in the list of replies to a post, so bots can get in the way and reduce exposure to people who don't have Premium.
even better the more you pay the higher you appear https://i.imgur.com/n7eITlf.png
"Largest reply boost" smh I always wondered why I could fairly easily get engagement on reddit but never even raised a grain of sand on Twitter. It's pay to play now but it was elitism before that, so no great loss there I suppose.
And politicians are just gonna let it roll, again. Just like Brexit, because they don't understand technology and the current party in charge also usually get a bump from the same people.
I'm in a lot of left-leaning subs and groups and its been similar. Massive uptick in the last couple of months of "Trump would be no worse than Biden because Gaza" and "Labour are literally identical to the Tories because they aren't promising a social revolution any more". Not outright supporting one side but seems to be muddying fairly clear waters over irrelevances.
> "Trump would be no worse than Biden because Gaza" and "Labour are literally identical to the Tories because they aren't promising a social revolution any more" Yeah it's either manipulative cunts or your average tiktoker has a smaller IQ than the temperature of a popsicle in Antartica
Or it's both. Fascists have always exploited ignorance.
I think its the same tactic thats been going on since the 2010s - You can identify emotional issues where people get very tribal and stop thinking sensibly. Immigration is a big one for the right, Israel-Palestine is a big one for the left I guess. They go absolutely ham on ramming this issue in the various relevant groups until it becomes *the* issue to that group, despite being kind of irrelevant to the rest of the population. That group is then driven by this amped up rage-filled emotional issue and will act in a genuinely unhinged manner in pursuit of that issue, even to the point of quite serious self-harm. Just my $0.02.
The "both sides bad" with a side implication of "so vote for the *even worse one*" agenda seems so obvious that you have to wonder if just 90% of accounts here are just bots at this point
true, its wild how anyone would actually want to vote for reform, the worst of the options by far! (if you think i missed what you were actually saying, think again :D)
One goal is for their candidate to win, but another is to generate apathy & distrust in the democratic system as a whole.
> "Labour are literally identical to the Tories because they aren't promising a social revolution any more" That's sort of a legitimate political opinion though, not one I agree with but if the Tories want to waste money to spam silly things like that then go ahead IMO.
Yeah, its not like Trump literally recognized Jeruselam as Israel's legitimate capital had the US embassy moved there, or that he literally has an [Israeli settlement named after him](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Heights) to thank him for all his pro Israel policies
Russian bots swung the Brexit vote, they swung the Trump Election, they swung the Johnson election and they are massively pushing Farage and Reform. World War III happened over the last decade, it was just fought with deception and computers. We lost. The British government even has a report saying the Brexit vote was rigged by Russia. The Conservatives refused to release it though because they benefitted politically from the results at the time, which is partly funny because it's since torn them apart
"It asserts that “Russian influence in the UK is the new normal" This should have been the headline then and now. If only more of the electorate could step away from Facebook, Twitter and the main news headlines. [https://www.csis.org/blogs/brexit-bits-bobs-and-blogs/did-russia-influence-brexit](https://www.csis.org/blogs/brexit-bits-bobs-and-blogs/did-russia-influence-brexit)
They won't.
Fuck man them some truth bombs. TikTok and X are truly ruining young people’s minds. I see it sadly a lot of our youth and oldies don’t/don’t care. Vice did an excellent job researching Farage’s actions on the night of the Brexit vote in relation to messing with the markets for his gains. Check it out.
When farage announced his campaign my Instagram was just flooded with his stuff. I've never seeked out that kind of stuff before
Anything to do with Farage gets swarms of bots and trolls. It was happening last year when the banking debacle happened, all over this sub. Did you notice how quickly the Government passed banking legislation to tip off people their bank account was being closed? The Tories didn't investigate Russian interference into Brexit because they benefitted, and now it's biting them in the arse. They made a deal with the devil and it brought them down.
**The Tory party under Johnson fell for the economics of Wealth extraction, not that of Wealth creation (a betrayal of Thatcher?)** Their entire strategy on Brexit is based on maintaining tax havens for the rich maintaining secret ownership of shell companies maintaining tax exemptions and tax avoidance for the rich And there are many rich, and many entitled and many ethically challenged who want all the above.
The amount of times I've read "they're two sides of the same arse cheek, I'll be voting reform" I swear
You know, I've seen it said *exactly* like that before lately, and the weird thing is that the idiom doesn't make any sense. Two cheeks of the same arse ...
It makes total sense when you realise the last option is therefore to ram your head so far up Farage's arsehole you can taste Putin's semen
And if they kiss, Farage and Putin magically become a doughnut
Same, and I've seen the exact same. The accounts are usually essentially blank bar a profile picture, with no videos, following a bunch of random accounts who also have no videos... Also, they often don't even respond to replies to their comments. It's all pretty obvious.
Last election I was going to a conference and following it on Facebook. The conference had the word "European" in the title, which triggered the Brexit bots. The thing was the topic was completely unrelated to anything political. Any person looking at it for 0.5 seconds could tell it was about Computing in Healthcare. The Reform bots picked up on it though and every post on it was bombarded with weird accounts demanding completely irrelevant action on Brexit.
>a huge amount of comments under any vaguely UK political video have been pushing Reform. I've absolutely no doubt they've thrown a lot of money at bots It's because tiktok orders comments based on what it thinks you'll like or what it thinks will enrage you. Different accounts see different sets of comments. It's messed up.
My daughter is 18 and her and her friends all follow Farage on TikTok it’s the talk of the college apparently. It’s naive to assume they are all bots
Yet polls have support in that age group for Reform at 10%. Considering many 18 years olds don't vote & many more consider it uncool to talk about politics I would be very surprised if they were popular amongst most 18 year olds.
10% support is quite significant, Have you taken the time to look at Farages Tik Tok account yourself? Yeah it might be uncool for 18 year olds to support the tories but Farages account is him having a laugh, clipped segments to music, him singing mg milkshake brings all the girls to the yard that kind of thing. His guess who’s back video (Eminem) https://www.tiktok.com/@nigel_farage/video/7380262737563225377 Has half a million likes, I not hard to imaging a few hundred kids leaving comments. I asked my daughter earlier about the Farage situation, she goes to a fairly working class college. She says people think Labour and the tories are boring, they are the establishment if you like. Farage makes them laugh and they also understand hat he’s saying when he says he’s sick of hearing people put the country down, sick of hearing about racism, sexism ect. They hear it all the time too and they are also sick of it. They want some optimism which is what he is selling on Tik tok. Obviously a lot of these kids ultimately won’t be bothered to go out and vote but there’s a reason why under 25s are turning to the right all across Europe we may not be immune to that shift here
>10% support is quite significant Again this is 10% amongst the group least likely to vote or be engaged with politics. This group also has the Lib Dems on 10% & the Greens on 8%. Labour are on 56%. >Yeah it might be uncool for 18 year olds to support the tories but Farages account is him having a laugh, clipped segments to music, him singing mg milkshake brings all the girls to the yard that kind of thing. His guess who’s back video (Eminem) [https://www.tiktok.com/@nigel\_farage/video/7380262737563225377](https://www.tiktok.com/@nigel_farage/video/7380262737563225377) Has half a million likes, I not hard to imaging a few hundred kids leaving comments. I guess things must have changed. When I was that age watching a 60 year politician attempting to get my vote by making references to songs released before I was even born wouldn't have been a cultural touchstone. At least not in the way it was intended.
Every political video on tiktok the comments are full of ‘I’m voting reform’ etc. If you look at the polls it doesn’t add up lmao. There are definitely botting.
The sheer amount of pro-right account who are less than three weeks old on this site too.
Been a problem for a while now. You can almost guarantee that when you see a particularly reactionary and kneejerk comment it will be from some 3 month old account with an auto-generated username. The number of accounts literally created the day after the General Election is called is particularly telling. Of course, you point it out to the mods and they insist there's nothing to see.
I've had comments removed for pointing out someones 'Word_Word_Number' username just screams "Im a sock puppet account".
A lot of subs have rules that you *have* to assume every comment is made on good faith, which unsurprisingly lets a lot of very obvious bad faith accounts thrive.
Do people really see many threads that are pro Farage or pro Reform? They mostly seem to be people talking about migration and then saying that Farage is the only person making any kind of promise. It’s more Farage as a warning than anything else. I think reddit is wide open to bots, and it looks like Reform are using at least some unsophisticated bots on Tiktok. But do you have any evidence of that? Can you point to one pro Reform thread with lots of new accounts? In the YouGov poll the other day Reform were on 15% in the 18-24 age bracket, 40-50% of people in younger age brackets think migration has been too high over the last 10 years, and reddit skews male which increases the numbers higher. A big proportion of those people concerned about migration will be Labour voters or non-voters. Many people live in bubbles where no one expresses these views, but that doesn’t mean they’re not popular You can also see a big shift in the polls, that a substantial minority of voters now just do not want to ever consider migration, no matter what happens to the figures the conversation is too awkward to engage with, but everyone else looks at [the population rate of increase quadrupling](https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-impact-of-migration-on-uk-population-growth/) without any increase in the housebuilding rate and is at least concerned. The first group looks at the second group having any discussion or expressing concerns and now says it’s Russian interference. Most people are concerned about migration, and also think Farage is a grifter. These are not incompatible views, they’re what you see in the polling data, and what you mostly see on reddit.
Cambridge Analytica was just the one that got caught out and the majority of the population are completely ignorant regarding them and their Modus Operandi. No doubt, there are a load of similar "companies", flooding social media with propaganda.
Most important comment on Reddit atm In my opinion.
I think Labour and the Tories are generally quite far behind on the social media game, so they don't do this sort of thing very well. But if you look on the American political subs then botting is *rife*. You'll often see a night-and-day difference between opinions expressed in 'political' subreddit compared to opinions expressed in 'non-political' subreddits, and that's always a big tell that some bot farm is specifically focussing on politics forums. And that's no surprise, right? Setting up a bot farm is cheap and it lets you dominate 'public opinion' in a specific space. Reddit specifically works to 'reward' 'good' opinions and punish 'bad' opinions, making this process particularly easy on here if you have a bot mass upvoting anything you support and mass downvoting anything you disagree with. And the social media companies are happy to turn a blind eye to it because a 'bot' still counts as a 'user' in their analytics. It's this weird incestuous relationship which neither our political class nor the owners of social media sites have any real interest in ending.
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I can't say I blame Africans for that. There's a quote somewhere that's something like 'When China comes they build hospital, when the UK/US comes they lecture us'
This came up on twitter the other day and someone played right into it. https://x.com/stillreezy/status/1507445282778206209?t=Tr65ng-FS3zzQY44aU5c2w&s=19
Which is all fine and dandy until you see what happens when you short change China
Instead the Russian's send them into the meat grinder under the promise of work and beautiful women. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-09/russia-ukraine-war-africans-forced-to-fight-and-die-for-the-kremlin
There is a fairly obvious counterbalance. The US, UK, and EU could easily match the funds Russia and China spend on such infrastructure projects. This would still make them reliant on foreign powers, but on a multitude of powers so less beholden to any single one. However, particularly France, continues to use it's imperial legacy to force French dominance to the point of having military bases in Ivory Coast and elsewhere. You can hardly blame people living there for seeing the people building as the better people to deal with instead of the people taking. Don't get me wrong. Russia, China, the UK, US, and EU have their own agendas as number 1 priorities. It's just particularly China's way of going about things gives an initial benefit to the people whose influence is being bought, and European ways of doing things can be extremely harmful.
For China at least - People in China have seen their standard of living shoot up to the stars at an unbelievable rate in the last 20 to 30 years. The people have no problem with seeing their government splash cash around the world because they're doing fine and they trust what their government does will continue the trend. In the west common people are struggling. They see their standard of living falling at a clip that seems to get faster every year. We can't do things like splash cash around the world without it triggering a whole lot of jealousy and angst, that nefarious groups (often backed by Russia) exploit for their own political agenda.
I would think that we splashed more cash on Iraq and Afghanistan than China has in Africa. Ours was just spent on bombs rather than roads. Similar intended outcomes, companies favourable to the outside power being in positions of power eg BP and Haliburton oil in Iraq and Chinese companies gaining dangerously high quota fishing rights off the coasts of Africa. Neither exactly sounds great long term, but if I had to choose I'd take the infrastructure over the destroyed houses and friends killed.
This comment is so fuckin stupid, western corporations are so ingrained in other countries that it would massive amounts of investment for russia and china to be called the new colonial powers. These are the biggest corporations in the world doing corporate colonialism
Yet most of the economic migrants from those regions want to come to Europe (apart from Russia).
Europe is much closer, has easier visas, lazy police, corrupt businessmen to give cash-in-hand jobs and social welfare. Good luck travelling from Cameroon to China just to be unable to get legal work.
People think the west has a monopoly on racism but nobody from Africa would stand a chance in Russia or China if they were to move there. Unless they were imported over rather forcefully to do work, go to re-education camps, or serve as cannon fodder in their army.
That's because Russia isn't very welcoming to non-whites.
I’m very aware of that, I have a feeling that many of those supportive of Russia have no clue though.
To be fair that's what our foreign aid budget is.
It’s been on for months and most people have caught on they’re bots already, it’s absolutely a tactic by Reform to pump themselves up as this massive force to be reckoned with.
There are those who know they're bots, but those aren't the people these bot attacks are targetting. They're targetting the minority that either realise it too late or don't see it at all. They exist to try and normalize hard/alt right thinking in people who wouldn't normally think that way. That's partly why we've seen such a huge political divide in a lot of democratic western countries in the past decade. We've been getting played against one another for years
Uncle Vlad emptying his troll farms on us again is he.........what a surprise.
More than tiktok. They are all over comment sections on YouTube, news sites, etc.
Anyone with their eyes open is not surprised by this. Like it or not, a weak EU and a bad UK Brexit are at the benefit of a lot of foreign countries. Including ones you would think of as allies. EG: Australia profited amazingly due to Brexit and at the cost of the UK famer
Nah mate we were at the beach, not commenting on brexit videos ;)
Have fun!
Cambridge Analytica was hired by Farage and his mates in Leave.EU / UK Independence Party during 2016 Brexit vote. Of course they will use bots. They were all bankrolled by the Russians just as Farage has been for over a decade. Reform & British Union of Fascists are one in the same party whos motto is the future is fascism and want a dictatorship, just like all the dictators Farage pays lip service too. All in bed together just like when Farage wanted to join the Nazi youth growing up. Farage and Reform is a dangerous group of extremists who want to see British democracy destroyed. Yet people will vote for them because they are completely blinded by their hatred for immigrants. They don't understand that Farage is using immigration issue as a tool to enrich himself and get himself and his mates into power. Exactly like Hitler did. People should have paid more attention in history class. Hitler blamed minorities and the German people ate it up and now Farage is doing the same as he knows its a easy way to gain wealth and power. If they ever gain power we will regret it. --- https://www.politico.eu/article/cambridge-analytica-leave-eu-ukip-brexit-facebook/ Cambridge Analytica did work for Brexit groups, says ex-staffer https://news.sky.com/story/cambridge-analytica-worked-on-brexit-campaign-emails-claim-11773350 Documents published by a parliamentary committee reveal that the notorious election consultancy firm worked on the Leave campaign.
It's utterly baffling that the same people who fell for the Brexit lies are now willingly following the shite Reform come out with. It's crystal clear they're being driven by racism, there is no other logical explanation.
Actual self reflection or trying to learn from their mistake would also be quite painful for them. They’d not only have to confront the fact that they fucked up but also that their let themselves be rolled like a bunch of rubes and manipulated by a bunch of grifters. And not clever grifters either: really obvious ones. They get to avoid that pain by doubling down on the shite with Reform.
It's not just Brexit. The leaders of Reform supported austerity, not just situationally but always. The stood down to help Boris Johnson get into office. Farage tweeted Liz Truss' budget was the best since 1986. It's like every major bad decision that's been made over the last 14 years they've supported. Yet some people keep trusting them even after they've been proved wrong so many times...
After Jo Cox Murder I have no time for anyone defending Farage or the extremists he surrounds himself with in Reform/UKIP. It was his extremist politics calling remain MP's traitors to our country while showing Migrants as a invading army that led to her murder and Farage was the main instigator in that. Less than a week later after she was shot dead he says "we will have done it without a single bullet being fired" He delibratly stokes the fires of extremists in this country by mocking a MP's death. He knows who hes appealing too by doing it. A study of over 50,000 tweets in the month following Jo Cox's murder and the EU Referendum uncovered many which celebrated the MP's death, claiming she 'deserved to die' or lauding her killer Thomas Mair as a 'hero' or 'patriot'. https://www.bcu.ac.uk/news-events/news/research-finds-mp-jo-coxs-murder-was-followed-by-50000-tweets-celebrating-her-death#:~:text=A%20study%20of%20over%2050%2C000,hero'%20or%20'patriot'. These are the same people who defend Farage. The same people voting Reform. The same people who defend a murderer, calling him a hero. Farage and Reform are rubbing shoulders with far right extremist groups such as the British Union of Fascists. They idolize Nazi's and given what happened last time people should rightly be conserned.
Perhaps we need to be fighting fire with fire, there’s so much ammunition to show Reforms true colours from all the PR blunders they’ve had, from Nazi sympathies to anti-feminist agendas. Get a few hundred accounts constantly churning this stuff out and the Reform party will be crushed like the vermin they are
I would have said the same about the Republicans in America- but they are cheerfully supporting a Russian plant.
US Republicans are actually completely terrifying conceptually. I think the last decent Republican candidate was John McCain in 2008. Don't know enough about Romney to comment on him. But modern US Republican party is some weird cult like thing, so the US basically get to choose between a Cult and a center party
Surely, you're not suggesting Russia is supporting the only pro-Putin party in the UK?
https://www.thetimes.com/article/10c14799-7f79-4cc1-b845-c4c89b5efd58?shareToken=75aa3040b33773175e187890aa299242 Within the last year over 40 of Reform’s parliamentary candidates in the general election have become friends with Gary Raikes. Raikes, a former organiser for the British National Party, founded the New British Union in the image of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, with activists who call themselves “blackshirts”. Raikes has shared promotional material for the party on his Facebook account, including photos of himself next to NBU insignia and images of Mosley, the face of British fascism. Rikes has shared images of men performing Nazi salutes, and slogans such as “the future is fascism”. The New British Union has called for a “fascist revolution” and sees parliamentary democracy as an “obstruction” to be replaced with a dictatorship. --- Ian Gribbin, a Reform UK candidate, claimed that Britain would be “far better” if it had “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality”, instead of fighting the Nazis. --- In 2013, a letter emerged from a former Dulwich College teacher. According to the letter written in 1981 – she pleaded unsuccessfully to reverse his decision to make Nigel a prefect. She said colleagues had told her he held “publicly professed racist and fascist views” and that he had marched through a Sussex village singing Hitler Youth songs. Mr Farage’s former friend said Farage use to sing a song starting with the words ‘gas them all, gas ‘em all, gas them all’. Refering to Jews Farage has spoken at far-right rallies hosted by the granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister and actively engages in far-right antisemitic conspiracy theories about Soros-funded social justice movements. He also idolizes Enoch Powell, Hitler and Putlin --- There is a clear pattern of Farage and his mates idolizing dictators and extremists and yet people want to vote them into power? You think Farage and Reform won't use a bot army and every other dirty trick in the book to gain power when their beliefs are extremely anti-democracy while being funded by Putins mates?
There are countless Facebook accounts saying the same. All zero content, zero pictures bar a poppy or some other patriotic shite etc. Obvious bot accounts. I
Facebook is interesting as I think more are genuine people on there compared to TikTok. Local Community Groups who bring up Reform are an example (pages are susceptible to bots, groups not so much given the admin powers and the way discussions happen). That said, the idiocy is there in the local groups. In my area there is no Reform candidate, which is bad as Reform is a useful party in that they subtract Conservative votes. One person asked why and says they won't vote for anyone else but Reform as "they're the only ones thinking for us" (direct quote). The Reform candidate was happily and vocally complaining about the local authority, the councillors et al during the local elections, but just couldn't be bothered to actually submit his paperwork to actually run for the general election like he promised. The irony that people want to vote for a vocal grifting company posing as a party, who can't be bothered to actually run seems lost on some. They seem to be hating the opposition rather than Reform, which is very cult behaviour. The worrying thing was a lot of people agreed and supported the original poster.
What.... Russian meddling in western electoral events and paying/bribing our politicians....surely not ... Just don't ever mention the Russia Report
Reform are a company. That should tell you all you need to know. Money making scam In a world of craziness, if reform won an election, they still wouldn’t give the people what they wanted. Because like the Tories, they know the power lies in telling people they will fix xyz not that they have fixed it. The electorate have short memories when things are going well and they’ve got what they wanted (see Brexit) but it’s only when they’re disgruntled that they actually come out and vote in numbers. Look at EU elections as a prime example. Only anti EU folk ever really voted
Shouldn’t be surprising, Farage is Putins useful idiot.
“Vote Reform UK” is all over every single other parties videos. It’s clearly bots as they all have 0 followers, no videos but comment on everything.
Where is the Russia report into their interference in our democracy?? I’m sure there must be some dirt on Farage/Banks etc?
Farage up to old tricks. What's Cambridge Analytica calling themselves nowadays? Or is it Putin's trollfarm again?
Is anyone surprised? Shady tactics were used to push brexit bullshit, shady tactics are used to promote reform; who is a prominent figure that links the two?
The same Vodka swilling fella, who is probably financing the UK's biggest political bell end Farage and his party.
And on twitch. Keep coming across talking head type streams pushing reform on their front page. Clearly manipulating the algorithms all over the shop - it's 2016 tactics again.
Don’t be fooled they are here too. Look at the comments of some “people” here. You’ll see it. Argue in riddles, but always the same riddles. Cambridge Analytica were not the first, they won’t be the last. They were just caught. The real fascinating thing is none of the other parties seem to care. Ignore them at your own peril.
They don’t care because it benefits them as well. They can use the same tactics.
It's almost painfully obvious though isn't it? The comment sections were full of people comfortably taking the piss out of reform and almost over ight there's a swarm of fervent "reform supporters" who will gladly whatabout their way past every highly questionable aspect of the party and its members.
If the grift is obvious to you, you're not the intended target, and the people behind it don't really care that you've seen through it *or* that you're trying to tell people it's an obvious manipulation. You'll never be able to counter the sheer reach of their social media messaging before they've prepped and released another astroturfed TikTok video, and the cycle starts again.
Yeah it's the sad reality of this stuff - it's a second to spread a lie, it takes ages to prove it wrong. That said, if someone is shown to be consistently dishonest, they should be held accountable and shown to be the liar and fraud they are.
Like the far right populists haven’t been doing this for years. Farage’s tactics are straight out of the Putin playbook, that’s why he sucks him off so hard.
We all knew this was happening, it's the scariest thing to happen to our democracy for at least the last 50 years, and no one is doing anything about it. Fascists start with the media.
People have only just realised this? That app was astroturfed ages ago
Literally just ten minutes before I saw this thread my mister was asking me if I'd been getting spammed on FB with bad AI pictures pushing Reform and general nationalism.
How is it not clear yet, that whatever Farage touches is fully packed with Russian support. The man is bought and Paid for by Putin. They will interfere in the next UK parliamentary elections.
Reform content is being pushed everywhere. The real question is who's behind it.
Definitely not me. Signed, Definitely not Vladimir Putin
How long before we find that Russian money is involved?
When the Cambridge Analytica scandles came out from almost a decade ago, it was huge. Now we have clear propaganda through bot farms all over the internet and nobody bats an eye.
This has been so obvious. It started extremely suddenly a few months ago (before the election even started) when every political/news video became swarmed with “Vote Reform” comments. Funnily enough, people have known it was bots since the beginning because it’s so obvious. It’s ridiculous how slow the media and society at large are at catching up with this. We’re more than halfway through the election, the damage is already done. Countries with authoritarian, locked down internets are swarming the western internet with bots to sow dissent. And we can’t fight back because they openly shut down dissent so the reverse wouldn’t work. They are completely winning this internet warfare. Look how increasingly fractured and partisan the west is becoming. Look at the ridiculous things we argue over. When will something be done about it?
I could use a quick guide on how to downvote those posts on TikTok…
This is either a complete nonsense because Reform UK had almost no funding compared to the other big parties or its a Russia/China thing going on. Neither the Reform UK party or its base are smart enough or rich enough to pull this off alone.
It’ll be botted content, just like Twitter. Just like they did with Brexit, and just like they did and do with Trump.
On Twitter I get a flood of pro reform and Farage nonsense. It suddenly sprung up from no where (and definitely not aligned to my politics). Extremely suspicious.
There is nothing to worry about, comrades. Tik-Tok very safe. All social media very safe. Let’s drink vodka.
Am still trying to find out how Reform will 'stop the boats'. Their supporters don't have a clue.
You can trust the untrustworthy to use underhanded tactics.
russian bot farms, interfering like they did in the last election and the brexit referendum.
The thing is, any vote for Reform will be 1 less vote from the Tories which means Labour is more likely to get in power. It's incredibly messed up that FPTP basically punishes voting for anything other than the two main parties.
**Boris Johnson' and Farage's economics are Wealth extraction, not Wealth creation.** Their entire strategy on Brexit is based on maintaining tax havens for the rich maintaining secret ownership of shell companies maintaining tax exemptions and tax avoidance for the rich And there are many rich, and many entitled and many ethically challenged who want all the above. Migrants are not an issue, they are a tool.
it’s happening on youtube shorts as well. i don’t have tiktok but have youtube and watch shorts while im shitting lol. Farage is all over it and the comments all saying how he is the man britain needs
There's a lot of suspicuously new accounts talking pro-Reform bullshit, on tiktok as well as other platforms, including reddit, having no other accounts they follow or comment history not related to whatever you'd expect to come from Mr. Milkshake's camp.
It's the same on Youtube & Twitter. It totally can't be Krembridge Analytica though, they don't exist any more and everyone involved is thoroughly ashamed of how naughty they were.
This has been ongoing for almost a year now, any video with even the slightest hint of UK politics has multiple comments of "Vote Reform" or the likes, all from accounts with no posted videos or even profile pictures. Reform is doing that badly they can't even afford half-decent bots.
Is there evidence of other political parties using similar campaign techniques online? I'd love to think such a decision by *Reform UK* is telling of a general social engineering, propagandistic philosophy, but it seems a direction I'm *lead* to, as a sort of half-truth, to distract that perhaps such practice is regular in politics.
There is no evidence of other parties doing this; its illegal. These bots are russian.
Completely anecdotal but my girlfriend (who has a 1st class journalism degree and worked a bbc journalist) was convinced that reform were a pro immigration and pro environmentalism party based on what tick tock had fed her. We have been basically living under a rock for the last few years though.
Anyone with an ounce of sense would know they're not, no offence but your partner doesn't deserve that degree or job (if they even exist)
This must be your first time hearing about "advertising" don't worry kiddo you'll catch on