There's way too much disingenuous false equivanency being used in the left vs right debate - and thank you, u_t_l, for replying to ninja. I just get so bloody fed up with engaging with these people who claim to be "the voice of reason" with "no axe to grind" who always, without fail, turn out to be a long, long way right of centre politically, often seemingly without even realising it themselves. But oh, one thing they do know is that they don't like lefties!

In the mean time, and back in the real world, I think that Trump has more or less taken on the mentality of a defeated and retreating army that destroys everything as it goes - crops, livestock, bridges, roads, railways, buildings - any and all infrastructure that the advancing army can use in the future. He is, in essence, burning down America, while all the true autocrats and dictators around the world just rub their hands in glee that he's made their job so easy for them.

False equivocation... Good phrase.
A bit like equating a threat to kick someone in the nads (unpleasant and distressing as that may be), with the very real, very actual death and bloodshed wrought upon innocent people in the name of right wing beliefs

Equivalency - which I since edited to fix the typo - but yes, quite.

Question. Why do you think this forum (and others by the way) is so bereft of right leaning contributions? And I mean right leaning, not far right.

Apologies if I've misinterpreted their stance but:

isondil - rarely seen
Greenrod - rarely posts these days
greeneagle - disappeared form this board ages ago
signalspast - rarely seen

Me - got fed up a couple of times but keep returning like the fool I am.

and now ninjamissile.

I'd struggle to think of anyone posting regularly with centre right persuasion - except me.

Maybe it's because anyone who dares to voice such an opinion gets shouted down or labelled far right (as even I have by one person).

The interesting thing is I've never really thought of anybody on here as far right, but there are a fair few I would guess at being far left.

But if you want a left wing echo chamber, that's in your gift.

I'll tell you why, Frank: because you're the only right-leaning poster who has something valid to say, and can put it in terms that we lefties can respect and engage with.

'Maybe it's because anyone who dares to voice such an opinion gets shouted down or labelled far right (as even I have by one person).'

'ninja' stated lefties were 'hateful' and 'angry'
Now when that is firmly spun round with numerous examples of right wing violence and killing, pointing out facts gets called bullying, or 'shouting down'

If there hadn't been such a ludicrously hypocritical statement as the original one that lefties were hateful and angry I wouldn't have had to start reeling off the numerous incidents of the right wing murdering and violently intimidating its oponents... But apparently now its bullying to point out how often right wing people pick up weapons and brutalise people compared with supposedly 'hateful lefties'

Credit where its due you did try to provide examples of left wing violence to offset against the murdering and beatings that the right wing dole out (Dawson's tweet)

Lefties tend to be angry whilst right wingers, calmly and rationally take out a semi automatic weapons and fire into crowds or drive vans at people outside mosques, or calmly, totally non-hatefully, go around hacking politicians to death, or say really non-agressive things like 'if there's a second referendum I'm picking up my gun'.... That what you mean 'ninja'?

I cant remember the last time Owen Jones was so angry he kicked someones head in... But I do remember when some really calm, peaceable, not-angry-at-all right wing nicies kicked his in.

Oh yeah i remember when some of those rabid nasty lefties lobbed some milkshake at those poor poor right wing politicians.
I'm sure Jo Cox wouldn't have minded being on the end of a milkshake rather than a right wing machete...
Lefties are angry.... F&&king right

So we're getting mixed up here. The far right in America is without doubt a scary proposition and to be abhorred by most sensible human beings. But to compare that with Owen Jones and UK politics in general is wrong - we have far right and far left in the UK - both equally dumb in my opinion - but whilst there are incidents they are never really on the scale of what we see over the pond.

You are right to pick out some pretty nasty UK incidents, but there are nasties on the left as well. In Corbyn's era, the Momentum crowd would often turn up, mob handed - most notably for me was when Amber Rudd deputised for Theresa May when her father had passed away and was baited horrifically.

And then last week we had the delightful Andy Dawson - who incidentally has written for both the Mirror and Guardian tweeting this about Michael Gove:

“I see your **** of a husband is lying through his ******* teeth all over the TV this morning.

“I’d pay hard cash to chase the ****** down the street and boot him in the b***s and DEFINITELY in front of your kids cos they need to know what a rank s***house their dad is.”

And yes, as you'll deduce addressed directly to Gove's wife. Delightful.

Let's be honest, we have our fair share of idiocy on both sides of the political spectrum, but as Ade says, let's not confuse that with America.

I wasn't confusing them.
'lefties' were generalised in another post angry and hateful.
I merely pointed out I couldn't remember a recent time when someone on the left got so angry that they macheted a politician to death.
Same as I can't remember a leftie getting so riled as to drive their car into a group of people and murder a young girl.
No confusion here about whose angry and whose not
Michael Gove's wife remains unharmed I'm happy to report... However Jo Cox's husband still grieves
If you want to conflate the murder of a politician by machete or a right wing person driving into muslims with a d list comedian from Sunderland shooting his mouth off be my guest.

Goodnight

Just picking up again on this "right" thing...

Put it this way: if someone has a pretty solid understanding of what the Trump regime has been up to over these last three-plus years (and, if I do say so myself, I do), and still sees themselves as a Trump supporter, or even "doesn't think he's so bad" or thinks that "he gets a lot of things right" or "talks a lot of sense" or maybe is "the victim of a lot of unfair treatment" then they, in my view, unquestionably hold political views that are well right of centre, because the Trump regime itself is well right of centre, and just about everything Trump says and does is well right of centre.

Trump himself is far too stupid and ignorant to hold a coherent political philosophy, of course, but plenty of people around him do. That philosophy? Well right of centre. Otherwise the terms left and right in politics are pretty much meaningless, because you can't go much further to the right than the Trump regime without the country descending into - oh, wait a minute, it's happening right now.

I take back everything negative I've ever said about the living saint currently beatifying the White House with his holy presence. It turns out that he's a peace-loving religious leader who can at times even hold the bible the right way up during a photo op following his parting of the Red Sea of protesters by calling in the troops and police to horse-charge and flashbang-grenade and tear-gas and rubber-bullet a peaceful demonstration near the White House.

On an even more serious note than the violent dispersal of peaceful protesters exercising their first amendment rights, I remember way back in this thread expressing my fear that something akin to civil war would break out in America. With Trump yesterday specifically, and totally unnecessarily and jarringly inappropriately, bringing up "your second amendment rights" in his shocking Rose Garden speech, I actually think that civil war might be what he wants now. I think he sees total mayhem and social breakdown as his last best chance to stay in power - not to be re-elected, note, but to stay in power.

Who knows where this is going, but as you say Micky, I do believe he would rather civil war than relinquish power in November. What will be the collateral damage that this madman creates as he goes down fighting, and caring for nothing and no one but himself ?

If only he had been invited onto Elon Musks rocket last week as it left for space. L.H.O MK2 anyone ?

Have you noticed that cities where peaceful demonstration has resulted in rioting and looting are run by the Democrats? This may come back to bite them.

Have you noticed that cities where peaceful demonstration has resulted in rioting and looting are run by the Democrats? This may come back to bite them.

That's nowhere near the stat that Republicans would like it to be, because only a small percentage of the population of large cities even has a non-Democrat mayor - over 75% of the top 100 cities by population have a Democrat mayor, and a number of the rest have an independent.

It's also wrong - of course it's wrong. Check out San Diego and Jacksonville, for example, which have Republican mayors and have also had their own riots.

I found this out with a couple of minutes of research. Far more fun to throw out biased scare stories without checking first, though.

And have you noticed the radically different approach taken by police who quietly stood by while MAGA thugs strutted their stuff waving their assualt rifles around while bleating about so-called freedom a few weeks back because they were upset that they couldn't get a mani-pedi; and now the hugely militarised, riot gear, armoured tank, tear gas and rubber bullet approach taken by the police (and the military, for god's sake) when the people demonstrating peacefully - no guns, no nothing - are not so sympathetic to Trump and his increasingly authoritarian regime?

If the US isn't on the verge of becoming a dictatorship, I don't know what is.

700 paratroopers ‘issued bayonets’ as 82nd Airborne prepares to carry out ‘Operation Themis’ at #DCprotests

That's right: the 82nd Airborne, possibly with bayonets affixed, potentially on the streets of the nation's capital. Secretary of Defence Mark Esper talked the other day of "dominating the battlespace" in the streets. The battlespace, for crying out loud. If someone in his position is thinking in those terms, how long before something really terrible happens?

Oh, for those innocent days when we thought that coronavirus was the worst that could happen!

It's a mess, a nasty horrible mess, and it could get a lot worse before it gets better.

On the one hand there's Trump, who uses aggressive and combative language and comes across as lacking empathy. On the other there are the Antifa thugs and other opportunistic rioters who aren't doing much to help the situation.

Trump needs help to defuse the situation but I'm not sure he'll get it.