Post by Baron von Lotsov on Aug 29, 2024 9:53:58 GMT
There is something that is niggling me about Reform. It's not something I can link to via an MSM article in the papers. It is a personal observation which could lead to their downfall.
Right from the early days of this so-called Far right movement, namely the development of UKIP or whatever party Farage happened to call himself at the time, it has been a defining feature of the party to promote itself via social media. I recall a time when every time UKIP even got a few lines mention in the Guardian the members would cheer that the MSM had even acknowledged their existence. MSM promotion was near to zero, but it was social media that did the legwork and built up a following large enough so other papers would take an interest. Funny how the Guardian was first, but that's how I remember it. I know the official history of it regarding the notion of populism, but I would suggest it was not so much Allan Sked but social media which enabled populism to function. You get as lot of this business in this following of the dichotomy between elite and prole.
So with this in mind and a lot of water that has flowed under the bridge since then, most notably the movement did achieve what it set out to achieve, which to this day I find quite amazing considering what people told us 20 years ago, so now we have the latest incarnation called Reform, which has inherited all from the UKIP including Farage. What UKIP established in the early days of social media is now commonplace, and I think it has a right to feel some pride in being the ones who invented it. Now it is calling the shots. It has MPs and all, but what of the social media that built it.
Well this is why I'm worried. Today the main venue is Youtube. It has 2 billion users, so nothing even comes close. Everyone is at it including Reform, and for this party it has a whole array of social media influencers with circa 100k subscribers a piece. Each day these influencers are walking around their manor or in their bedrooms doing broadcasts promoting Reform to Reform followers. Little beknown to its followers though, is anyone dares to level a criticism on something, then they are deleted. Any criticism at all, even one levelled for the best of intentions, such as I would not do that if I were you or this or that will happen. They just won't have it, so what is left? It's monkey vision. Monkey after monkey cries 'vote Reform', 'down with WEF'. This is your Orwellian populism, i.e anything but what it is sold as. Dishonesty will be their downfall, just as it was with the Tories. Centralised top-down control is socialism. This is why the EU was failing. The decision makers were too distant from the people affected by their policies.