This is a long article (excerpts from a book apparently) but it’s interesting.

Basically the author, a man with Jewish heritage, makes a fake persona and joins far-right groups. He’s assisted by the group Hope Not Hate.

What do you think of the far-right? One of the interesting points that is made in the article a few times is that some far-right adherents, met by the author, seem to want friendship more than anything else. At least that’s the author’s view.

  • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
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    2 days ago

    Powerful piece. Incredibly sad that most of the “foot soldiers” of these organisations seem to be socially awkward and craving friendship. Terrible that they are finding friendship in these organisations. If only the government provided them with a better more fulfilling outlook that might have been avoided.

    It goes to show that the reason these groups exist is that a small minority of wealthy racists are taking advantage of fragile minds.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
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      2 days ago

      These wealthy racists are extremely misguided. They think in a post-capitalist society, shock collars will keep security detail loyal to them. Perhaps they’ve come around to think feeding them well, too. What they aren’t counting these men have learned to overcome physical and emotional pain and deprivation. They have possibly learned to master their emotions, but I’m betting beneath the surface, something is seething that doesn’t bode well for the wealthy racists.

    • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 days ago

      There is a great series with Stephen Graham about this very topic and it really does seem like a lot of disenfranchised men get sucked in.

      It’s called The Walk-In.

    • Fluke@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      Any guesses as to what effect pulling loads of people’s PIP is going to have on this situation?

      😐

      • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
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        2 days ago

        I don’t think that’s the only answer (as in restoring PIP). At least in the UK, we’ve been horrible for over 50 years at creating meaningful and lasting communities where people can afford to live and work. In my opinion, we should create the conditions to make it easier for as many people as possible to be working and contributing to community life. Get some pride back by seeing small improvements in your life or local areas instead of seeing a slow lazy slide into decline and exorbitant prices and shit infrastructure. Business rent is absolutely mental in most places for example. Imagine not paying all that amount in business rent and taxes and instead hiring more staff that get paid a decent wage and offering a decent snack or sandwich with every drink you sold - oh and it would also cost a few quid instead of close to a tenner for a drink and pack of crisps. These things happen right now in Europe so it isn’t beyond the UK to do something similar. Nobody can afford to make being a waiter a career choice in the UK but it is quite common on the continent. Why is that? Get more people working and feeling a sense of pride in their life instead of struggling month to month. Obviously being a a waiter and the restaurant industry is just one example.

        • Fluke@lemm.ee
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          2 days ago

          The reason your pint and a packet of crisps costs what it does is huge multinationals buying all the breweries out, buying all the pubs out, buying all the land the pubs are standing on.

          Those huge companies then squeeze every last drop of profit out of everything, leaving very little product, at a very high price.

          Exactly the same thing is what’s wrong with every single government service, from the very tippy top, to absolute rock bottom, it is all run by private entities whose sole purpose is to extract maximum profit above all else.

          Prisons, railways, schools, GPs and dental surgeries, hospitals, power infrastructure, public transport, road construction and maintenance, everything is subject to the same problem; private enterprise leeching money and resources away from it’s intended purposes towards those that have more than they can spend in a million lifetimes back to back.

          All the major political parties in the UK for the last 40 years have done the same thing, sold off what was yours to private companies so they can profit off you coming and going.

          Until we the people of this poxy island remind the politicians who they work for, you will continue to be bent over a barrel and buggered for all you’re worth.

          Edit: Worth pointing out here that the entire benefits system in run by private companies leeching billions of pounds a year out of the benefit budget for themselves. The real benefits scroungers are capita, g4s, serco, et al.

          • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
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            2 days ago

            How does it work on the continent, for example? Multinationals don’t exist? Or do the governments over there restrict what they can and can’t do such that you can have multiple neighbourhoods with good quality cheap food and drink and great service year round.

            • Fluke@lemm.ee
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              2 days ago

              I simply don’t know. I am ignorant of how continental governments manage this problem, or if they are suffering the same fate at all.

              I do know that the French National Electricity supplier EDF, is owned by the French government and operates here, making vast profits that benefit the French.

              I have no issue with the French, past the friendly banter that hangs off the back of centuries of shared history. Honestly, we Brits could do with being more like the French. That is to say; willing to bring the whole fucking country to it’s knees when the politicians do something they don’t like.

              Perhaps it will take a British version of the French Revolution to jnstil the populace with that kind of fortitude, confidence, and sense of duty to each other?

              I will again point out how much change for the good would come of the Houses of Parliament burning to the ground, provided “we the people” are responsible for the event.

          • Tenebris Nox@feddit.uk
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            2 days ago

            Give it it’s clearest name: corruption. Permeating every aspect of life here. So normalised that it’s pretty invisible to 51% of country.

            • Fluke@lemm.ee
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              No, this isn’t corruption. This is capitalism at work. Nothing illegal per se, just privatisation doing what it does; feeding money to “shareholders”.

              Edit: Don’t get me wrong, the absolutely rife corruption and nepotism infesting every choice on your voting forms doesn’t help matters in any way, shape, or form. But even if you managed to strip that away, private enterprise by it’s very nature maximises profits at the expense of all else, services rendered, products produced, people employed, all suffer for profit’s sake.

              • thanks AV@lemmy.world
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                Right, like, corruption is there, sure. But the corruption in and of itself has no impact on the viability of the public service. The fact that it is privately owned and for profit by definition will mean that the money allocated for the service originally will be redirected into being profit instead. What happens to a service that now has less funding? It turns to shit.

                Can public services have corruption? Sure.

                The difference being: corruption of a service in which 99% of funding is directed towards providing the service takes less away than corruption of a service with half of the funding being allocated as “profits” before even getting to the “corruption” in the equation.

                You’re basically multiplying the effectiveness of corruption by giving the responsibility to capitalists who will, first and foremost, create profits out of a publicly funded service.

                • Tenebris Nox@feddit.uk
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                  21 hours ago

                  I can only agree with you.

                  There is also the corruption of the managerial class who collaborate in the erosion of public services. The management of schools, for instance, some of whom are recieving salaries of up to £500k.

      • realconor@feddit.uk
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        20 hours ago

        the therapists that wouldn’t hesitate to mouth off about everything you tell them to the authorities and have you involuntarily held? it’s almost like they aren’t your friend

      • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
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        2 days ago

        Yeah I guess that’s the easy lazy answer, for sure. But the harder question is how can we get therapy to be both more appealing to men in this situation and, crucially, not needed in the first place?

  • TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    yeah… this is a major factor contributing to the substance abuse crisis in the modern world. it’s also a big reason AA has been so successful. free friends on every corner, just gotta say that you’re powerless over alcohol and that life has become unmanageable and you’ll make the best friends of your life

  • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml
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    Leaders in the far right conceal their true nature to present a more acceptable version to potential voters, donors and sometimes their own members. One prominent eugenicist who works in Westminster admitted this tactic after I’d befriended him. “Everyone puts on the mask,” he said…

    Among the rank and file members of far-right organisations, I was struck by their loneliness. In discussion groups, in city pubs, at secret meetings in the countryside, many of them spoke about feeling like outcasts.

    These people don’t want “friendship more than anything else.” If you want friendship you play a sport or join a pub trivia team – you don’t join a eugenics fanclub. The only reason you join a eugenics fanclub is if you’re a fan of eugenics.

    Of course, these fascists can’t find friends among most people because most people find their beliefs reprehensible, so they have to constantly lie (“everyone puts on the mask”) to avoid being ostracized or worse. But that is their fascist politics causing their loneliness, not their loneliness leading them to fascist politics.

    • realconor@feddit.uk
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      20 hours ago

      the reason they “are looking for eugenics fanclubs” are because they were ostricised when they were looking for “mildly conservative fanclubs”