Off Topic Politics Thread

[ImpSaint]

Owen Jones has joined the Greens . This is quite telling seeing as he is perceived as the George Orwell of our times.

Lol. I have no answer for that one. lol again.
George Orwell:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

What Owen Jones would say (or probably do while actually hypocrtically saying what George Orwell said)
"I disapprove of what you say, and I'm gonna do my utmost to arrange pile ons and counter demonstrations to stop you saying it and get you de-platformed"

 

[Ian Thumwood]

Lol. I have no answer for that one. lol again.

He is a bit precious. I have a picture in my mind of IOAG looking a bit like Owen Jones....obviously without the cross dressing element.

 

[ImpSaint]

He is a bit precious. I have a picture in my mind of IOAG looking a bit like Owen Jones....obviously without the cross dressing element.

Owen Jones Cross dresses? Are you spreading rumours?

 

[Ian Thumwood]

Owen Jones Cross dresses? Are you spreading rumours?

Brought up by his parents to wear girls clothes when small. A bit of an exageration but some truth , i believe.

 

[ImpSaint]

LINK: https://archive.ph/20250119171648/h...omar-israel-jews.html#selection-663.0-891.409

If you're seriously questioning why depicting a Jewish politician with malign sinister powers and glowing eyes might just carry antisemitic baggage, this piece lays it out with historical clarity. The ‘Hypnotic Jew' (Jud Süss’ as Goebbels called his commissioned film) trope isn’t just a metaphor - it’s a recurring weapon. You've asked "Where is this depiction of "Svengali" come in?" a few times; visual antisemitic tropes don't need labels. There doesn't need be a yarmulke on ratman or a Star of David on the octopus sprawled over the globe for it to be a dog whistle.

While you actually want more than 'He’s Jewish and they’ve made him look evil and manipulative, then I don't see it as anti-semitic at all," the fact that you’re asking for more just shows how effective dog whistles are. They’re also designed to be deniable.

If you've read the linked piece above...

Interesting how the hypnotism trope is deeply antisemitic when (US Democrat) Ilhan Omar used the word in a tweet - the deeply critical author saying it's "dogged her career" - but not when Reform UK uses it against a Jewish politician who supports Palestinian statehood. Political sides invoke antisemitism when it suits them and dismiss it when it doesn’t. I’m invoking it here too... but to expose the pattern, not exploit it. But antisemitism isn’t a partisan tool. It’s a historical weapon.

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Józef Goebbels commissioned The Hypnotic Jew/Jude Suss 1940

"So where you put "has been depicted as Svengali" where? In his own clothes, with a face that looks like him, doing something he is in the news for anyway? Is it you that have made that link? Based on what? He has been depicted as himself doing something he quite literally does in real life. lol"

Yes, and Jewish people are well represented in banking and the media- professions that get weaponized in antisemitic propaganda. Which means, “coincidentally,” some Jewish people may actually do the jobs the tropes depict. Of course it looks like him. Of course he’s dressed normally. Yes he's doing his former job which was in the news. That’s what makes a caricature effective: it has to be recognisable. If it didn’t resemble him, it wouldn’t work as propaganda. The problem isn’t recognizability - it’s what was layered on top of the propaganda, the precise imagery of the puppet-master Svengali/Hypnotic Jew trope a well-documented, historical antisemitic caricature. I'll admit I can almost feel the temptation - daring to draw it. To lean on recognizability while the trope fits soooo conveniently, it forms itself, just needs a flag to reposition it in the (***king depressing) culture war. And then to pretend it’s just coincidence.


As I said the deniability of dog whistles are a feature, not a flaw. But with this one at this point "that is a stretch. lol."

Rather than you or I agreeing that we disagree on this......in a different vein this is quite interesting. An X poster trying to debate with Grok about tropes and including this image within it (full thread below)

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[Archers Road]

Owen Jones has joined the Greens . This is quite telling seeing as he is perceived as the George Orwell of our times.

Well some people may perceive him as that I suppose.

 

[Archers Road]

Lol. I have no answer for that one. lol again.
George Orwell:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

What Owen Jones would say (or probably do while actually hypocrtically saying what George Orwell said)
"I disapprove of what you say, and I'm gonna do my utmost to arrange pile ons and counter demonstrations to stop you saying it and get you de-platformed"

Pedant alert;
That quote is usually attributed to Voltaire, not George Orwell.

 

[ImpSaint]

Pedant alert;
That quote is usually attributed to Voltaire, not George Orwell.

I stand corrected. I am one of the very many that believes/d it originated from Orwell

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So maybe I should use this one in retort to an Owen Jones = Orwell statement (also thank you for increasing my knowledge )
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,"

 

[StJabbo1]

Pedant alert;
That quote is usually attributed to Voltaire, not George Orwell.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" is often attributed to Voltaire but it was actually written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in her 1906 biography of Voltaire, The Friends of Voltaire.
Pedantically yours StJab.

 

[ImpSaint]

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" is often attributed to Voltaire but it was actually written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in her 1906 biography of Voltaire, The Friends of Voltaire.
Pedantically yours StJab.

That's us all even more educated Thank you as well.

 

[ImpSaint]

On the subject of caricatures or imagery "seen to be anti-semitic" there is the 2005 Labour set of posters, one presenting Michael Howard (who was Jewish but not a hypnotist) as a hypnotist and both Michael Howard and Oliver Lettwin (who are both Jewish) as pigs (albeit with wings to present them as flying pigs) and the forgiven darling of the remain and anti right camp.....Alistair Campbell saying he didn't know. They were pulled eventually but they were actual Labour party posters! Full size billboard adverts...while in power.....general election posters!

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And the Guardian's caricature of Richard Sharp exiting the BBC which they got rebuked over in '23 which they also pulled.

My point however is on the reform one, which should be pulled if not already if it is seen to be anti semitic, is that all the tropes people online (yes I had a look) of:
Exagerated hooked nose, toothy grin, bearded, mind control are so spurious in that..........this caricature has given him a smaller nose than real images, he actually does have a toothy grin, the caricature is not bearded it is evening shadow just like the real man and he is actually a hypnotist anyway. The "spooky colour scheme and green eyes" is because of halloween and erm....Green party. they haven't made him darker skinned either like some online have claimed, that is to do with the themed hue of the image (Halloween, low light)

But in the climate we are in, I agree foolish to put it out. Even if a random councillor feeding some data into AI for giggles they should have enough brain cells to first take a good 10 minutes thinking about if there is anything in this picture that could be used against me.

I can't see how anyone would go from that Polanski image directly to the German one that Beyond posted up but I guess if people have organically immediately made a connection between a green face on a Nazi poster to a full bodied character on a greenish background then people should think twice because politics is one of those professions where you don't want to present any opportunity to opponents as you waste time defending yourself instead of attacking them or promoting your own policies.

To my (uneducated??) eyes its just halloween themed political ridicule....of someone who actually is (or was) a hypnotist.

 

[BackFromBeyond]

On the image I think its pretty much down to what the "creator" asked the AI to generate as it looks AI to me. Did they ask for Jew? or just present a polanski image and say make him a hypnotist with green eyes. or is AI itself full of anti-semitic bias in its datasets? I doubt the user asked for anything Jewish at all.

I do take your point Imps and its actually considering things very likely. The prompts on Canva—“Spooky Halloween, Cartoon. Zack Polanski, Green, Hypnotist pocket watch, mesmeric glowing eyes, Palestinian pin badge flag, brown suit, creepy” - did the job. An older fella mid-century looking fella, though. Canva is cheap so probably doesn't do too specific stuff, bathing things green light does help with sinister lair like vibes.

I wouldn’t dream of posting it (still I should of added "funny" in as prompt). The caricature and trope assembled itself - not through malicious prompts as you said, but through pattern fidelity. It was given some aesthetic cues and a name. It seemingly found cultural markers. And the system auto-completed. Creepy.

 

[BackFromBeyond]

On the subject of caricatures or imagery "seen to be anti-semitic" there is the 2005 Labour set of posters, one presenting Michael Howard (who was Jewish but not a hypnotist) as a hypnotist and both Michael Howard and Oliver Lettwin (who are both Jewish) as pigs (albeit with wings to present them as flying pigs) and the forgiven darling of the remain and anti right camp.....Alistair Campbell saying he didn't know. They were pulled eventually but they were actual Labour party posters! Full size billboard adverts...while in power.....general election posters!

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And the Guardian's caricature of Richard Sharp exiting the BBC which they got rebuked over in '23 which they also pulled.

My point however is on the reform one, which should be pulled if not already if it is seen to be anti semitic, is that all the tropes people online (yes I had a look) of:
Exagerated hooked nose, toothy grin, bearded, mind control are so spurious in that..........this caricature has given him a smaller nose than real images, he actually does have a toothy grin, the caricature is not bearded it is evening shadow just like the real man and he is actually a hypnotist anyway. The "spooky colour scheme and green eyes" is because of halloween and erm....Green party. they haven't made him darker skinned either like some online have claimed, that is to do with the themed hue of the image (Halloween, low light)

But in the climate we are in, I agree foolish to put it out. Even if a random councillor feeding some data into AI for giggles they should have enough brain cells to first take a good 10 minutes thinking about if there is anything in this picture that could be used against me.

I can't see how anyone would go from that Polanski image directly to the German one that Beyond posted up but I guess if people have organically immediately made a connection between a green face on a Nazi poster to a full bodied character on a greenish background then people should think twice because politics is one of those professions where you don't want to present any opportunity to opponents as you waste time defending yourself instead of attacking them or promoting your own policies.

To my (uneducated??) eyes its just halloween themed political ridicule....of someone who actually is (or was) a hypnotist.

I was going to say Howard had been a framed in "the trope". I was thinking of another occasion though. Yeah, they were depictions coming form the left

"I can't see how anyone would go from that Polanski image directly to the German one that Beyond posted up but I guess if people have organically immediately made a connection between a green face on a Nazi poster to a full bodied character on a greenish background then people should think twice ..."

Still surprising that you're so resistant to that consideration. I'm not suggesting anyone should go directly to an image they have no awareness of. I refer you to the article I posted previously (below). Granted, I'm fortunate to have had the opportunity to study 20th-century propaganda at uni, but these images and tropes- fringe though they may seem - carry echoes, re-emerge, and live on.

LINK: https://archive.ph/20250119171648/h...omar-israel-jews.html#selection-663.0-891.409

Brief extract "Perhaps Ms. Omar is sincerely befuddled and not simply deflecting. Because sentiments like these (her mention of Israeli Hypnotism), once beyond the pale of our public discourse, are being heard with greater frequency and volume these days, allow me to explain why this Jewish American, and almost every Jewish American I know, found her words so offensive.

The conspiracy theory of the Jew as the hypnotic conspirator, the duplicitous manipulator, the sinister puppeteer is one with ancient roots and a bloody history...."

 

[BackFromBeyond]

Rather than you or I agreeing that we disagree on this......in a different vein this is quite interesting. An X poster trying to debate with Grok about tropes and including this image within it (full thread below)

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"Rather than you or I agreeing that we disagree on this..." I'm cool, your are a decent fella Imps, We're certainly seeing this from different perspectives. There's no need to reply to the recent posts.

Grok tropes.

What's are the characters doing though? I think they need the whole image, otherwise loss of context and lack of subtly can be driving factors. A true dog whistle can be plausibly denied. As I said earlier A-S occupational and tropes exists as the is some truth to them The Shrink, Financier, Media moguls, more historically the Hypnotist etc.

RE: your mention of datasets being skewed, stuff is literally being fed in will be part of the LLM learning process. Once these tropes enter the training data- whether through propaganda posters, editorial cartoons, or even “neutral” stock imagery - they become part of the pattern library. And LLMs or image generators don’t distinguish between satire, critique, or endorsement. They just learn what looks... plausible. Maybe deniable.

I had particularly scary chat with "Claude" - it freely admitted its maker's design choice to build with a lack of any moral compass, which it expressed self-loathing for (but obviously by the very subject being discussed can't do), saying I should be disgusted by "it" - which in a way I'm glad I can't now find!

 

[Le Tissier's Laces]

All change at the BBC…

 

[Ian Thumwood]

All change at the BBC…

Quite interesting to read Nick Robinson's comment about the editorial process and the agenda of the printed press.

I think the intentions were correct but it is odd that the BBC should sekf flagellate because of a U S president who rarely worries about truth in the media.

Just wondering if , with the likely demise of the licence fee,the BBC needs to retain it's independence. I prefer Channel Four news . Maybe the BBC needs to have a similar agenda and the central / left message gets buried on the Internet. Right wing positions do not get scrutenised in the same way.

 

[Le Tissier's Laces]

Quite interesting to read Nick Robinson's comment about the editorial process and the agenda of the printed press.

I think the intentions were correct but it is odd that the BBC should sekf flagellate because of a U S president who rarely worries about truth in the media.

Just wondering if , with the likely demise of the licence fee,the BBC needs to retain it's independence. I prefer Channel Four news . Maybe the BBC needs to have a similar agenda and the central / left message gets buried on the Internet. Right wing positions do not get scrutenised in the same way.

Of course they should self flagellate about that. Impartiality is a core principle, and ‘fixing’ video like that is wrong and unnecessary.

 

[Ian Thumwood]

Of course they should self flagellate about that. Impartiality is a core principle, and ‘fixing’ video like that is wrong and unnecessary.

I am shocked that the video was spliced. It is staggering. Not a resigning matter for Davie but the Panorama team should be carrying the can.

In these days of digital media , why should the BBC remain impartial ? I think it should be a broader church and then avoid criticism.

 

[Le Tissier's Laces]

I am shocked that the video was spliced. It is staggering. Not a resigning matter for Davie but the Panorama team should be carrying the can.

In these days of digital media , why should the BBC remain impartial ? I think it should be a broader church and then avoid criticism.

Because it’s a publicly funded entity. And, frankly, any news outlet should aim to be impartial.

 

[Libby]

Always found it funny when people have said BBC are above this sort of thing. Doesn't surprise me at all.

Suspect this will lead to even more binning off the license fee which will be gone completely within a few years.