TRASHFUTURE - Luv Bin Men, ’Ate Grooming Gangs, and I Vote

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

Luv Bin Men, ’Ate Grooming Gangs, and I Vote This week, it’s the super chaos configuration of Milo, Hussein, and Nate discussing a recent story in the Times about how a local, locked Facebook group influenced an election in Greater Manchester by basically posting nonstop about how the Labour candidate was running a grooming gang. We also talk about terrible UK local news, how to read the temperature of the nation from Facebook comments, and much more. If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture Please consider donating to charities helping Palestinian people here: https://www.islamic-relief.org.uk/palestine-emergency-appeal/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3oja5NbR8AIVSOmyCh2LdQ9rEAAYAiAAEgKM9PD_BwE and here: https://www.grassrootsalquds.net/ *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s live stand-up show (to be streamed over Zoom!) on May 30th here: gignify.co/miloedwardspindos If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Hello, and welcome to a special chaos edition of Trash Future. You can probably tell from me, Nate, being the person hosting this episode that all is not well in the trashverse. Actually, everything's great. Riley's on vacation. Alice is taking a much needed rest, and it's just myself, Milo and Hussain. How are you all doing tonight, lads? Yeah, it's one of those like weird shows where it's like, you're not quite sure what

pod you're listening to. It was like kind of like a strange hybrid of all the kind of like side pods. So I'm looking, I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, it's like you went to a Slipknot concert and they just have like, there's nine people on stage, but you don't recognize any of them because they're all the backup Slipknot guys. Yeah, this is like the minor people from Blazansquad. This is what I was going to say.

It's not even the minor people from Blazansquad. It's the Blazansquad reserves, the territorial Blazansquad. Territorial Blazansquad. Like, I swear, that's a bit we've done before. I'm pretty sure. When I came on 10k when we talked about the Blazansquad for a very long time, it was like that thing where I sort of like, when I was looking up members of the Blazansquad, I sort of noticed that, oh, shit, they have like reserve Blazansquad members in case

like one of them got sick or something. So actually there were like 20 something Blazansquad members. If you like, counted all of them. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I'm in 23 Blazansquad brackets reserves. Yeah, that's right. Mark Francois and the Blazans, the territorial Blazansquad. Yeah.

So effectively Riley is on a Scottish hiking holiday, Alice is getting a much needed rest and we are going to talk about local news in Britain using social media because every single one of us called local news. Are your children watching local news groups? Are your parents going completely insane about stuff that doesn't exist? I told you last week, yes. So basically, we're going to start with a piece that I found from Hanell Othman in the Sunday Times about a council election in Oldham,

where as I understand it, they basically were going to read the piece. And we're going to discuss some of the intricate and incredibly British details. No, no, we normally don't do this. We normally don't just read a piece all the way through, but there are so much just pure concentrated Britain plus pure concentrated Facebook, specifically locked Facebook community groups that I thought this was relevant and could also be like the lens by which we interpret all the other crazy local news stories that we're going to talk about.

So I'm going to read this and folks, believe me, it's a little long, but you're in for a doozy. The headline is, did a vicious Facebook fake news campaign finish off a council leader? He was a rising young star in the Labour Party, who stood alongside the mayor, Andy Burnham, as Greater Manchester leaders pitted themselves against the government at the height of the pandemic. I love to be a rising star in the Labour Party, a party which has a bright future. I should say a place where people who are rising stars

definitely are taken care of and definitely not thrown to the bulls. National media appearances followed for Sean Fielding, who had become leader of Oldham Council, aged 28, a local lad. He was brought up in Falesworth, the area where he was elected to represent and plays the cornet in brass bands, a proud division in the borough. Fucking nerd. Falesworth, council baths. Oh, he's called the old section.

Don't log it. He's not a French or a British or actually at the at the recent election. He lost his seat toppled, he believes, by a vicious social media campaign, which accused him and other Labour politicians of corruption and allowing Asian grooming gangs to operate in the town with impunity and alleged that police refused to act because they were under the control of Burnham. So he has a pause here for some spooky Scooby-Doo voices. We say Asian grooming gang, a refrain in British news.

Fielding dropped from one thousand five hundred and eleven votes last time, a resounding victory over second place UKIP to twelve hundred and eighty one votes, even though UKIP did not stand a candidate, losing by one hundred and ninety one to a candidate from the hyper local Falesworth independent party. I really, I can't get over the fact that this place is called Falesworth. I know, I was expecting you to react to this powerful Anglo vibe possible. The events at Oldham have led to fears that democracy is at risk from disinformation, so powerful at consuming elections,

allowed to spread by social media companies that will not act and an electoral commission that cannot act as legislation is quote dangerously out of date, unquote. Fielding, thirty one was elected in Falesworth West in twenty twelve and a year later was joint recipient of a National Young Counselor of the Year Award in twenty sixteen. He and his girlfriend bought a house in the area and he was reelected with sixty percent of the vote. And that's when he became a conservative. It happens to everyone. Yeah, sorry, that's the British.

That's the British life cycle, right? Like you grow up, you know, left wing and then you sort of go into this kind of chrysalis and then you emerge as a homeowner and then you immediately start calling for gunboats in the channel. Yeah, that's just that's just how it works. That's for his master stroke was making everyone able to even, you know, to buy their homes, whether it was a council home, like a flat in a larger estate or a row house or whatever, because she knew better than anyone that once a British person owns a house, like there's just the inevitable

bazification of their entire personality. Yeah, that's right. And in a way, Baz take away all the class signifiers of Baz. There's there's posh Baz. There's working class Baz. There's middle class Baz. It's all the same brainwave. It just manifests itself slightly differently. Oh, absolutely.

A community champion who led a successful campaign to slash local bus fairs by 30 percent in twenty eighteen. He was elected to lead the labor group and as a result, the council enter Rajamiya, a former charity head and businessman who took Umbridge with a local labor MP, Jim McMahon, when he responded to concerns from constituents about their relation, when he responded to the concerns from constituents about the Academy Schools. Mia ran his schools later shut down as well as suggesting that fielding

had covered up child abuse. Posts by Mia, which have been shared in local groups, referred to the former council leader as Sean Samosa fielding and accused labor of voter fraud and corruption. I don't know what Samosa is supposed to mean here. Well, I mean, presumably they're accusing him of being like a sort of like in the same way that people might say like N word lover. I'm sort of getting that feeling from Sean Samosa fielding. I'm getting the feeling that we might be dealing with some classic British racism here.

On polling day, one of Mia's Facebook posts said, quote, worrying news emerging of police being called to multiple polling locations where Asian candidates or their cartel goons are intimidating voters. Oh, yes, the Asian cartels. This is all over the place. This is and I have to I have to specify that the guy making these posts is also Asian Pablo Patel and his Asian cartels. Do not be surprised if there are no arrests.

By now, we all know who the gatekeeper, D.I. Kenny Blaine, all caps and Andy Burnham, controlled greater Manchester police are there to protect, unquote, did wait. Did he just it's his conspiracy theory that the people in charge of greater Manchester police are the mayor of Manchester and a detective inspector in the greater Manchester police? Because that doesn't sound like much of a conspiracy theory. That sounds like how it's supposed to work in greater Manchester as a whole.

Labour bucked the national trend and held on to the vast majority of its councils, helped in part by a Burnham bounce. But fielding was defeated. He thinks the online smear campaign reignited historical tensions and played on local spheres leading to his defeat. Fielding is not the only one who is battled against a campaign of disinformation. Aspergions have been cast on the Labour deputy leader, Angela Rainer, who represents Ashton underline the parliamentary constituency

that includes Falesworth, too, as well as her fellow MPs, McMahon and Debbie Abraham's and other councillors. The Oldham disinformation campaign has echoes of QAnon, the US conspiracy theory that believes political figures to be part of a shadowy global pedophile ring whose followers were among the insurgents that stormed the Capitol Building in January. QAnon's theories spread like wildfire and social media. And it is social media that allowed the conspiracy to take hold in Oldham enclosed Facebook groups, where some of the most powerful local political

messages were posted beyond the eyes and scope of the Electoral Commission. Hyper local Facebook groups are often controlled by a small group of residents and posts typically cover everything from offers of fleet free plants to request for recommendations for a childminder to warning about suspicious characters spotted in the neighborhood. I agree with gangs. I love I love the kind of like juxtaposition of like these kind of local because like partly it is true, like these local Facebook groups.

And I'm like a part of it because like at the beginning of the pandemic, obviously a lot of the mutual aid groups like set up on Facebook. And it's been like quite fascinating watching them turn from like these very temporarily, like optimistic places where, you know, you were kind of like happy that, you know, there was like at least some community into like these weird like settings where there isn't a lot of mutual aid going on. But it's either like people advertising like their small businesses selling like selling crystals.

I've noticed a lot of these groups like are selling like crystals and stuff like that, or but like the kind of one thing that has like stuck throughout the pandemic is like all the beefs that like happened in these groups. And like how you can kind of watch like various gripes between people in the local area and they're the only people that are like really actively using the group. But it's like, yeah, it's very, it's very funny to me. It's like that sort of like juxtaposition of like, oh, these Facebook groups can be really helpful for coordinating, but also they're great ways of like

snitching on your neighbors and sewing suspicion into a community that was already like quite hostile to each other. To begin and the author mentions that this also, you know, can foray into politics. And the article continues gripes about MPs, local councillors in general dissatisfaction with the area are often discussed in view of hundreds of voters. But most of these groups are closed to the public, typically requiring those who wish to join to provide details about their connection to the area and sometimes supply an address or postcode.

While every billboard online advert or leaflet must be declared and costed, Facebook posts come under no such scrutiny. And in Fielding's case, the local residence group, Falesworth Matters, where many of the messages against him were posted, is managed by a small group of Facebook accounts, one in the name of Mark and Kath Wilkinson. Mark and Kath all one word. Mark Wilkinson, a community activist and former policeman, is the man who defeated Fielding at the ballot box and who won the seat for the Falesworth

Independent Party. Fielding had made attempts to defend himself in the group, but he said he was removed by the administrators, as were other people, typically labor members who had spoken in support of him. The Wilkinsons did not deny abusive material were posted on the page, but say they never posted anything themselves and deleted it when they saw it. A second local group, Falesworth First, which also contained what Fielding said were some of the most visceral attacks on him, was run by a far right

sympathizer, Stephen Wall. She was convicted as part of a gang involved in the Oldham race riots. Walls declined to comment. The number of posts, comments and shared links in these and other local groups, which between them have a membership of more than 10,000, which referred to corruption and coverups by labor, which referred to corruption and coverups by labor numbering in the thousands, Fielding said, with allegations repeated on a daily basis.

Photographs and details about his partner and other members of his family have been shared on Facebook and Twitter by far right accounts, he said. His pleas to social media companies to do something got nowhere. Oh my God. All right. Quote, Sean Fielding and his labor cronies are up to their sick, spelled wrong, necks in the grooming gangs, one fails to Facebook comment, read, quote, the labor counselors are too sick, busy sweeping child, child abuse under the

carpet at that mosque in Oldham said another. Well, there are a lot of carpets in the mosque, to be fair. If you were going to high child abuse under a carpet somewhere, it would at least make logistical sense. This was, I mean, if I'm not mistaken, this is also like the mosque that when the Manchester bombings took, when the Manchester attack took place a couple of years ago and Tommy Robinson went to, I think he went to Oldham. I think he may have went to Oldham.

And I think it may have been the same mosque where like he kind of said that they were hiding weapons in the mosque under the same carpet. It's crowded under there. There's a bunch of nonce children, AK-47s, all sorts. Yeah. If I was like hiding stuff, I would, you know, I would, I would, I would invest in, I would invest in a basement or something. There you go.

Osterity, Bryson. What I love about the, the sort of like Asian grooming gangs, nutters is that they, they're in the way they envisage, like Muslim terrorists or whatever is basically the film for lions. Like they, like they can't actually conceive of actually threatening Islamic terrorists. Like they're all like bumbling. Like, well, of course, the only place we could hide this would be under the

carpet, the mosque. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, like, yeah, like Chris Morris once again is like the best satirist, or the best, the person who's like best able to sort of understand the real psyche of Britain. Well, so, so this, the story continues. The last comment that, that McMahon received was your, your sick up to your

neck in a heap of trouble with your Pakistani pedo friends. Aren't you, Jim? Fielding began to realize how much Jeremy Corbyn got in a lot of trouble for referring to our Pakistani pedo friends. She's correct. They never let him live that one down. Fielding began to realize how much the allegations had cut through when coronavirus restrictions were lifted and he was able to knock on doors in the

run up to the election. Quote, when I was going around, there were people that wouldn't engage with me or engage with the labor party because they'd already gotten impression of us from what they read in that Facebook group, he said, and people who were willing to engage often it became so time consuming that you're having to spend 10 minutes when they would say, what's all this about in a net about child abuse? I'm sorry, I had to say that voice. A Facebook spokesman said, blah, blah, blah, who cares?

Facebook doesn't care. The point being, they're like, all right, well, we remove pages. They say that, that, you know, have violated our policies, but the thing about our policies is they don't actually review any of this stuff until it's flagged and that wasn't happening. Now, the article continues, there's no evidence to suggest that grooming gangs are operating freely and old them, but the smears are powerful because they play on historical tensions.

It, this explains, uh, Rochdale. And I suppose maybe I should, I should read this because we have a lot of American listeners who may not be familiar that, um, at the turn of the century, the town erupted in violence after a long period of strained relations between groups from the white and South Asian communities. They were the first of a number of race riots in towns across Northern England. More than a decade later in neighboring Rochdale, a gang of British Pakistani men were convicted of long running offenses, including rape and trafficking

of vulnerable girls, leading Greater Manchester police to apologize for failing to investigate property. The ringleader Shabir Ahmed previously worked for Oldham Council. It was long before fielding was in charge, but the connection is still used to link the labor run authority to child sexual exploitation. The social media fire started by Mia has been fueled by the far right, seeking to explore, exploit community tensions and local labor leaders say some of those stoking those tensions use Mia's ethnicity to deny their motivations were racist.

Hope not hate an advocacy group that monitors and campaigns against far right activities said that quote, closed Facebook groups are now a key tool for far right organizing. So most of the rest of the stuff is sort of talking about the internet, which we know about and don't really need to go into. But I felt like this was interesting because this, the phenomenon of close Facebook groups was something that I had wondered about because like, like you said, stuff with local organizing and mutual aid, I saw the same thing in

Southern, but also because I remember hearing stories, people saying, like, you don't even want to know the shit that's getting shared in the run up to election day in 2019. And I was thinking about this, that like, once these things get turned on in WhatsApp groups or private Facebook groups, especially if there's actually dark money, you know, being used to fund people to generate content to put this stuff in, you find yourself in a situation where, yeah, I mean, how do you stop the rumor?

If someone's like, you know, I have this deed poll where the guy actually changed his name from John Knott's to his current name. Like, if that becomes a thing you're constantly having to fucking defend yourself against, then yeah. Yeah, Abu Musa Ab, I'll not daddy. It's one of those things that you can't know daddy. Well, so, so I'm interested who's saying, because it feels like this is something that you've reported on quite a bit in the past.

And I'm interested what your take is on, on this sort of thing, particularly because on one hand it's like, there's the novel aspect of Facebook and Facebook groups. On the other hand, like, it's the same prejudice. There's just like a new way to channel it. Yeah. There's a few things going on. And like, so I've got two examples.

The first is when I, when I did that infamous, like a Muslim cafe owner tweet, I must assume we all know and love, like to, that we all know and love and that I hate talking about, but always like recirculates every few months. Pedophile cafe owner saying more and more deep fried every time that it's shared after like the 150 different screen caps on like boomer Facebook. Like, yeah. And most of the thing was like a lot, a lot of these, the kind of reason it gets circulated is because it circulates largely on Facebook in groups

that like you can't see unless you're a member of, right? So it kind of like makes its way through that ecosystem in these ways where like it's very difficult number one for like Facebook to detect because again, it's a screenshot, it's an image and it's not like a Twitter like, you know, link or whatever. So, but it's kind of remarkable how it's in both spaces where you see the most kind of sincere, angry reactions. So like when that tweet or the other one about the doctor get circulated, even

if like people, even if like people like me joined these groups and say, like, look, this was me, this was like a joke. None of it is serious. Like this hospital isn't even real. They'll still kind of like respond with this thing of like, oh yeah, but like, I reckon it's real somewhere. I reckon there must be a doctor in some hospital somewhere who's like whispering and I reckon there's some like, I reckon whenever I go to some cafe,

the waiter who I abuse is probably like whispering Quran verses into my coffee or whatever. Like, and this is the thing. I think it kind of like it plays, as you mentioned, it plays into these existing prejudices that have always been there and like crucially, because we're talking about media, stuff that means like mainstream media outlets like the sun, like the Daily Mail, have kind of fostered for like decades, right? And particularly during like new, during the period of new labor, when like in the

last few years, they really went in on the whole like, you know, unchecked illegal immigration, labor bringing like thousands of immigrants coming. Yeah, all this stuff that was like on like demonstrably untrue, but like was kind of seed is like so the seeds so much for like, I didn't know my life, you remember, but during like the 2010 election, like the basically the biggest issue wasn't really like Jillian Duffy and it wasn't really like, you know, Gordon Brown selling off the gold. It was about immigration.

Like it wasn't it was like one of the first kind of big immigration referendums before we had the actual like Brexit referendum. So like, you know, so then the question is, waiting for the immigration referendum myself. It will happen. Like, you know, the lave is worrying. So like, you know, so then the question is like, okay, so how does like Facebook come into this?

And this is where I have some issues with like reporters who I don't think really understand like the mechanics of online or like what online actually is. They just kind of like think that online is a thing as like an object. But the thing about like sharing on Facebook, and this has sort of been said by like people who analyze social media and like have written about digital culture and stuff, is that the kind of level of like institutional disillusionment in this country is really widespread. So even things like even kind of like stuff like right wing media, you know, a lot of British people don't really kind of buy into, right?

They don't like, you know, the kind of relevance of the male in the sun, I think is really kind of dilucid in the past decade. But what do people trust? Remember when the news was odd? That's times you don't run the sun and it punch you in the face. And then there'd be a woman with huge knockers. A bit of a consolation prize, if you will. One day, if you ever do a Britonology on page three, I've got some really fun stories about

like customers who used to come to my parent shop and complain that like the knockers were too small. I was like 16. You called these knockers. You missold me. Anyway, the point that I was trying to make was... Using your father of diluting the tits to like make more profit. The point that I was trying to make was that like, you know, as kind of this disillusionment with like media and like printed media and journalists in general has happened simultaneously,

like people who have kind of like, especially like old boomers who have like discovered how to use Facebook for the first time and Facebook has optimized it to make it easy and addictive for them, you know, they're much more willing to trust people that they know or like people that are kind of like their friends on Facebook and stuff like that. So when they share information from like websites that are obviously run by like far right groups or obviously like fake news outfits and stuff like that, where even if you go on the website, you can see like how horrible the website is designed to know that it's just an aggregation

service. There you can view that as much like much more trustworthy and then much more likely to share it. So I really do think that like it is a combination of like nationwide disillusionment but also like platforms and platform like logics that really build into existing just forms of discrimination. I mean, the final point, and I don't want to make this like an episode of 10K post, but like we really need to think about what a Facebook group, a closed Facebook group is and how, you know, even though you have like administration, administrators and stuff, but not really moderators, like no one, none of these people who run these groups really know how to moderate a platform or like moderate a forum and stuff.

So it's actually in these admins interest to like let more and more unhinged stuff play out because if they don't then like, you know, they're going to get all the heat and they're going to get all the shit. And if you haven't ever like grown up on forums or like know how to be a moderator or know how to act towards a moderator, like that can be a very difficult like set of social relations to navigate, right? So yeah, those are kind of like my overall thinking about why we're seeing much more like, we're seeing like a lot of like similar stories to this one. You know, we're planning an episode in the future with a cartoonist Rory Blank who has done some of our shirts, who was at one point a content moderator on contract for a social media

company. And one of the points that I would make in talking about this is like you said, Hussein, you know, there was a day not a dynamic when there's a moderator involved on forums. And but there's also some of that I've noticed with social media is as social media replaced web forums over the course of the last decade really, because you know, yeah, Facebook was big, but most most adults like most non-college students weren't really getting into Facebook until the end of the 2000s, the very beginning of the 2010s. Facebook groups weren't really becoming a thing until the 2010s. So it really was the last 10, you know, 10, 15 years really this has happened. And internet forum culture in my opinion kind of, I mean,

it was starting to get bigger, but it really, really became big immediately, like around the beginning of the 2000s. And then by the mid 2000s, it was huge. I mean, anybody who was on at the time, like if you were posting, you recognize what I'm talking about. And the point I would make in this is that social media stuff like Facebook, especially in close groups, effectively gets you in a situation where there it's almost like there's no mods. Now it's not completely unmoderated. Like obviously, if stuff, if people are putting research and content, like it can get flagged by Facebook in the sense that if it's like repeat spam of the same thing, or if it's an image or a video, like they have people that they've outsourced into these call centers who

have to review everything that goes up to make sure that it's not abusive or prohibited and stuff like that. But my take has always been that like a completely unpoliced space on the internet, unmoderated space on the internet is basically going to become, you know, wire fraud scams or like, you know, email scams, beheading videos, child porn and Nazi shit. Yeah. Welcome to the ugly village Facebook group as the occasional beheading video. Well, this is what I kind of love about this is that these Facebook groups are like, they're so British that you'll just, you'll just get like some like quite, quite worrying like racist conspiracy theories about grooming gangs, but it'll just be interspersed with like,

yeah, I've got an archaea dresser, 40 quid, and then someone going like, can I collect tomorrow hun and then like four kisses? Or yeah, or like, or like a woman called Deborah with like various, what do you call it, those like filters on their Facebook thing. That says something like, I love the dolphins. Yeah. And they kind of like respond to like some fucking horrible news about like, someone getting like mauled by a car or something, and they'll be like, oh, that's horrible xxx. It'll be like, it'll be like that posting about like a missing dog, but the dog is missing in like Kentucky. Yeah. Please share four kisses. Oh my God.

Two things related that I have to say that I've seen online. One was somebody was, it was like, I think it was an Irish poster basically saying something to the effect of like, it was literally someone had made a print out paper poster and put it on a street in Dublin somewhere that says like, your ma shares lost dog adverts from another country. Which is, yeah, very mom behavior on Facebook. But the other one was somebody basically saying, in like Glasgow, saying like, wow, when I was a kid, I didn't, I never saw this many things for missing dogs. Now I see them all the time. This country is just getting worse and worse. What's going on? And the first reply was just like, Muslims. And it's like, could it be that now

you're connected and you get news from outside your local community and or what national newspapers and the TV put on? Well, this is, yeah, this is, this is the other thing too. I think, you know, and this is something that like, I think about, I think about a lot and is kind of part of my current like academic research, which is about like, what happens when you take like quite sophisticated platforms and like, you know, Facebook work, it doesn't like work at all, but like it is a sophisticated platform. It's horrible. I always wear a black tie to log on. Yeah, that's right. Like it's horribly dysfunctional. But what happens when you take these sophisticated platforms that like, you kind of already know what their incentives are,

and you sort of know that they have literally no interest in like community building or like facilitating any sort of like local community and stuff like that. And you take on and you, and you like introduce a bunch of like tech, like newbie tech, like boomers onto the platform, and you just kind of like bombard them with like a plethora of content, right? Like, if you get overwhelmed on Twitter because there's so much stuff happening and like, it's really difficult to like archive stuff. And like, I've definitely felt it as someone who like works in like, who has worked in current affairs for a long time, like having to deal with what is effectively like trauma after trauma after trauma, that can get like

really exasperating. And I think that like the only thing that sort of like kept me semi stable is the fact that like, I spent my teenage years like viewing literally the worst websites in the world to the point where like, I have now, yeah, like we have like this inbuilt resilience, but none of these guys do. So you're introducing them to like this horrible system that's designed for people that have already been broken by the internet. And you're just kind of telling them to like have fun with it. And by the way, here are all these new tools that like can give you a sense of power and importance in the world, which is also why like a lot of the admins of these local Facebook groups are really fucking horrible admins that

sometimes like incentivize the worst behaviors, right? Like in one of my local, in one of my local like mutual aid groups on Facebook that I had joined, like I kind of like dipping in and out every so often. Like one of the admins was like actually like bullying a person on the platform because they were trying to kind of like sell, they were trying to like promote their like business or something like that. And their business was selling, it was like selling like, like bespoke pet food, but it was made of, it was like made from like some kind of like animal. What shape was the business model of this? If we had to pick one of the classic Euclidean shapes.

Well, I mean, I think the same thing too with, I signed up to Southern Mutual Aid and then some more local ones based, you know, specifically where I live in the borough and big mistake. And then also on Facebook as well as WhatsApp groups. And the WhatsApp groups have almost gone dead. There's one or two people who are like obviously in dire need. And you know, the council is involved, but these people are just broke. And so like they're periodically asking for help for stuff like electricity and gas and groceries and stuff like that. But then in the Facebook groups, it's basically descended into two things. Number one is people trying to give away old shit they don't want like broken ass old, you know, chests of drawers and stuff like that.

Of course. And people losing their god damned minds about low traffic neighborhoods. Which for those of you who are not in London, and I don't think these are everywhere in London, they're just specifically in certain boroughs or certain wards. Low traffic neighborhoods are basically where they have blocked off streets to through traffic. You can go through on bike or on foot, but you can't go through in cars. And so obviously that does put some pressure on like the main arterial roads. But a lot of people, as I understand, have been complaining that in, you know, since the advent of stuff like GPS navigation apps and things like that, you know, these roads that used to not be that busy because the only people who really knew their way around

were locals have become incredibly busy. And so people are, they just had to try and block them off and make the roads a little bit less congested. And these things pull very highly in terms of favorability. Like it's like, I think something like 65% or 70% are in favor, not just ambivalent, but in favor. The people who have negative opinions of them are maybe 10 to 15% based on the polling I've seen. But those 10 to 15% gonna come at me on the podcast, call me by name. Here's the thing, right? The 10 to 15% of people who are angry at them are fucking psychos, and they've made it their life's mission to do weird civil disobedience about low traffic neighborhoods. And like, or in some cases, come and smash up the fucking, like the flower boxes

and the benches with sledgehammers in the dead of night to try to clear, like, no, I will drive my fucking voxel corset down this goddamn street. I don't care how much I have to fight. I am Charles Mortel, and I'm striking a blow for European civilization. That is kind of king shit, to be honest with you, like smashing up the bollards in the middle of the night so you can drive your car through the next day. That's cool. And what's very interesting about like, even the other like LTN stuff, like the LTN stuff doesn't affect like my borough because they haven't like really instituted it, but not putting stuff in like that. No.

No, because I mean, because they like, they, well, here's the thing, because they really value like the people in Bexley, they really love cars and they fucking hate bikes. And they certainly don't have any public transport. Yeah. Well, you know, they have, they have a guy with a horse. Yeah, horse paths. They have a guy with a horse. Does the low traffic neighborhood apply to the horse? Are you allowed to like jump over them like it's the Grand National?

Well, this is the thing, because in my next door group, which I also don't check very often because of like racism, like the main, like the main man who lives on this street. I believe, I believe he's running a terrorist coffee shop. Yeah. He's also a doctor. You don't even want to know what he gets up to. Don't let him whisper in your ear. I've been caught that way before. But main two grievances, the main two grievances are number one, the Roma Traveller community and like horses and stuff, because the area is like, like, it was like one of the kind of first kind of communities of like Roma Travellers and how it interferes with people, how it disrupts

people from driving. And the second one is about LTNs, despite the fact that LTNs do not exist in this area, but they're still kind of complaining about that, if they're still complaining that like they're convinced that Sadiq Khan is going to like extend them over here, despite the fact that like the roads around here are kind of so wide that they wouldn't be effective anyway. And there's like definitely not enough like Sadiq Khan is going to be doing it. It's going to be your local council. And if your local council is all Tories or like Tory adjacent people, they're not going to do it. And this is what I was, and this is ultimately what I was going to say. It was ultimately what I was thinking. And every time people like talk about

local news and stuff, this is really what I get to, which is that like we've had like several things happen again over the past decade to kind of get us to this point where like nobody knows how their council works. Nobody really knows who's like accountable, but like the place, the public places in which we can talk about politics, either like local or national, you know, but in this case, like local politics happens to be on these like massive hyper like surveillance incentivized platforms where literally anyone can kind of like jump in on conversations and by extension, like distort it through like critical mass, right? So suddenly like a local issue about like parking spaces or, you know, the bin men not being hard enough anymore

becomes like, becomes the fault of Sadiq Khan. And by the way, do you know that Sadiq Khan, when he was a solicitor, represented Guantanamo Bay detainees, which means that now like Al-Qaeda is involved and like ISIS is involved in all this. I've seen about the same because you told me, and I had no idea about this, but you told me this when you were on hell of a way like two years ago, that, you know, a lot of stuff with the BNP basically started, they built up their Facebook following basically doing a page about like animal abuse is bad. Here's cute pictures of animals. And then as they, oh yeah, that's a classic. Yeah. Like hanging the dog murderers. And that was like Britain first as well. Like they, they kind of like set up a bunch of these pages

that were just like posting cruelty to dog videos in order to kind of like bring like critical support and then like slowly or like not even slowly, like quite relatively quickly, they kind of changed all the graphics like Britain first and like even though they were still posting dog content as a way of like bringing people in, they would kind of suddenly start kind of posting, you know, like mobile phone videos of like, you know, various like, you know, Muslim immigrant or like Muslim groups like going for prayers or, you know, when the East London Mosque on Fridays kind of does the call to prayer, filming that and kind of like getting all the sort of like suburban mums called Debra really scared, right? Yeah. I mean, if Jihadi John had beheaded

a fucking a staffie on in one of those videos, there would have immediately been raised a sort of volunteer brigade of Baz who would have gone over there and sorted ISIS out in no time. Well, I genuinely, I genuinely think for like British people would care a lot more about like international conflict if like they showed more dogs, like the day that the IDF kills a dog, it's over for them. Right. Like Baz will be over there. Him, Baz and Debra will be fucking in Ramallah, fucking hurling stones at every IDF officer they can find. What gets me about it is, yeah, I mean, and I know we're going to move on to some extremely local news that you guys have collected, but my take was the LTN thing because it was weird when I saw the, I saw the Facebook

groups pop up at the beginning of the pandemic for Mutual Aid and they were very active and people were sharing stuff. A lot of people got involved and then they died off. And what's left of them, like I said, is intermittent sort of like, you know, take this junk off my hands posts and stuff about LTN. Please come touch my junk. Exactly. Well, no, that's the WhatsApp groups. Periodically, we used to get spammed by Boris, like pro Boris, copy pasta nonstop. Now that's died off. And then basically every, it'll be like the same admin trying to find, you know, people to give money to the same one or two people who are, you know, in need, desperately in need, but like, you know, are not getting taken care of by the council or it'll just be like a porn map looking image. Like,

it looks like a porn ad from 2004 with like a woman sucking a dude off or something and then like a link to it. And it's just like, God damn it again. You get, yeah, your phone, your phone vibrates and it's just like this. I was promised milfs in my area. I was going to say how horny mums in my area were supposed to get in touch with me. I hate to be kind of his low mill fairies. Bring back the milfs. The Sharia Brigade are trying to ban milfs from our neighborhoods. I'm still, I'm still just laughing at the idea that the guys who would come into your family's store in, in, um, where your store was in, in Lewish and whatever it was, wasn't it? Or in? No, it was it like, no, it was in, it was, it was, yeah, it was in Woolwich.

Yeah. Your family, the guys would come into your family's store in Woolwich and be like, they're adulterating the boobs. Like this, this, this store has smaller boobs on page three than any of the other proper British shows I go to. No, they were just, they were complaining generally. But I think this was like, I was still in school during this time. So it was like one of those weekends where I was like working and, um, there was always, there's always this customer that like would sort of like come in and try to kind of have any sort of kind of conversation that you would have to entertain as like part of the job. And it just so happened that like on this occasion, the conversation that he wanted to have was that, um, uh, do you like, well, I don't know

whether it was due to political correctness, but basically it was like, he was complaining that the boobs on page three aren't bigger, aren't as big as they used to be. He used to go into the jogs. Yeah. And then his name was like, yeah, there's a special Arabic phrase you can say that makes the tits bigger. It would just repeat after me, dude, you, you, you joke, but I'm not kidding. When I was in Afghanistan, this absolutely happened to me one time, a guy was like, Hey, you know, there's this, there's this express, you're learning Pashto. There's this expression that we use in Afghanistan. It's just like a thing we say to good for good luck. You should learn. I'm like, Oh, what is it? And he's like, uh, I should do and

and I was just like, I know what the Shahad is. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's a local thing. It's the thing we say in Afghanistan. You just say it with me. Just say after me. I should do and lie, lie, lie. I was like, he was, he was doing your favor. If you, if you died, you would have, you would have died a martyr. I just, I just, I just love the idea. Hussein has to do that to make conversation with the guy who's mad about the posting as else. The appends in a lovely turning isaf into a jihad force. I wasn't even sure what to say, but not least because like, I don't think the boobs were smaller. I think that they've been varied for a long time, but like,

after a while, when you see so many boobs printed on like low quality, like with low quality ink on like newspaper, like it all will, it all will get blurry. Well, I mean, so I guess the thing I've got to ask then is, I feel like your larger point, Hussein, I definitely agree with that what you're seeing in the piece in the Sunday times that we were talking about is sort of like the reach of these platforms, the, the sort of confidence people have in people they know in their own lives, and the utter distrust they have of national media and basically of national government or local government, all sorts of things like that. But the way that it's then manifested comes

out in these just like shockingly British things. And I mean, okay, don't be wrong. In America, there's all the things about like the best of next door and stuff like that, where people on next door are just posting the most insane shit, and there's Facebook, local groups and things like that too. That, that all exists. But obviously in America, it's like, it's like much more, I've seen a black person on my street. It's like, it's like stranger danger and intruders and stuff like that. Whereas here, it's a, yeah, it's just, it's just got its own local flavor. And so I guess I ask you that question because I want to know, I want to hear what weird local news is circulating in your area,

besides horny mills. I was actually just before we get onto that, I was going to throw up another thing about the, the page three thing, because this reminded me of something that happened. I think it was like summer 2012, when the British government brought in this weird law, that all the lads max that they sell and news agents and stuff had to go on the top shelf, and they had to be put in these like, like, modesty jackets. So you could, you could read the name of the magazine, but all of the like sexy ladies on the front were like covered up by this like gray jacket. They gave, they gave the magazine, they gave the magazine a burger. Yeah, exactly. That was the joke that all of the newspapers were making that it was like,

because it did, because it was like, they had this like narrow window at the top that to show the name of the magazine. So it looked like a niqab, but like on nuts magazine. I feel like there was, oh, you know, that guy, what's his name? The stuff, like his Twitter thing is like the suffragettes woman or something. And he's just like, and he's, and, and he's just like a fucking dislike, Paul, Joseph Watson ass, right wing loser. But I think that like, that was the moment he became like, that was, that was the point where he became like really rad because he used to be like, he used to be like the editor of nuts or something. No.

Yeah. I think he was like the editor of nuts or zoo or something like that. And I think like, the modesty jackets thing might have been the moment where he became, the way he just got like, where he just got radicalized. Growing up, we were all nuts guys or zoo guys. That was the real divide. Yeah. That and max power. That was a very different subset. I was a very classy person. I used to sneak, I used to sneak watch, but I used to like sneak into, uh, it's sneaking to the, uh, the storage room, um, in the shop. And I would browse through some of the pages of FHM that way in case my father was read, my father found me.

I would just say that I was perusing some of the articles. Of course. Plastic. Um, yeah. There's an interesting article about Islam in this one, actually. Um, yeah. I, uh, I think I was never, I was never a lads, a lads mags guy. I never had the balls to purchase myself a lads mag less I'd be caught. I was very much a like PlayStation two magazine guy. And then what would people have said if you had bought the lad bag though? Well, I mean, when I was a child, I think my mum would have had something to say about it. I thought you meant like it's like a teen or something. Well, no, but even as a teen, like my mum would very much have had something to say about it.

Um, and then, but then I think when I was about like 14 or 15, I decided I was cool. And then I stopped buying PlayStation two magazine and began buying like Q magazine. I mean, I'm going to read this article about Jack White. I'm not going to lie. Like I remember asking my mom if I could get the sports illustrated swimsuit edition when I was 13 and she just bought it for me. I think in the back of her mind, well, at least he's straight. As long as it's chicks, it's just funny to me too, because I mean, my parents, my parents used to the German dogs eating pussy magazine that you had as a child. It was like, yeah, you know what, fine. It's more normal for friends of the show

who have not listened to the very first Balthazar speedboat. I'll give you the summarized version when I was six. I was excited. I was really into heavy metal. My parents thought they could cure me of this or that they just indulge me a little bit by buying me a German heavy metal magazine. It did not, in fact, cure me. I cut out all the pictures and put them up on my wall as like, and we're talking, we're talking bands like fucking Queensrish, like Queensrish and fucking and poison and rats and bands, awful bands. But the point I'm trying to make here is there was also a weird cartoon in there about like a dog that eats out the master's wife while the master is gone and then the master comes home, sees this, shoots the dog and then starts going down on his

wife. And so I, so having read this at age six and be like, I'm supposed to find this funny, I think, I just very like blasé sort of in a six year old way described this to my parents like, oh yeah, it's really funny. And they just, you can imagine how fucking crestfallen they were and they immediately took the magazine and fucking threw it in the fireplace. Devilish heavy metal. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And bear in mind, this is, this is in like 1990. So I'm just laughing because I'm now imagining you trying to be cool buying Q magazine or buying a lad mag and learning all about, I don't know, Lynx Africa or something like that. Well, as a British boy, you never had to learn about Lynx Africa. It was bought for you every

Christmas from the age of about seven in a gift set by some sort of well-meaning uncle. I probably have like enough Lynx Africa to like blow up a state building somewhere, somewhere in like a cupboard. So I pulled us a little local news story here because I feel like the thing that most summarizes the British local kind of vibe is anything to do with bins. I mean, we've talked about this in great detail in the podcast before. There is a Facebook page that I follow that I would recommend to anyone called Angry People and Local Newspapers. And all they do is share just like cursed local news stories. They have a number of memes on there, such as one they call Compo Face,

which is when someone is in the local newspaper trying to campaign to get compensation for something and they're always doing this like annoyed face. They also give out awards for people pointing at things that were like routinely like residents angry at potholes. And then like some local newspaper photographer will just get them all to stand in the road and like angrily point at the pothole. But this is a classic one that I found on there. Like literally it took me about five minutes to find this, if that this is from news and star, which is in conjunction with the Cumberland Times. The headline is Brampton Woman adapts Sinead O'Connor song on uncollected bins. That's right, folks.

The article says, Nothing compares to your bins being collected after eight weeks of piled up rubbish. One Carlisle woman took matters into her own hands in a quirky way when she went eight weeks without having her bins collected. For eight weeks, Carlisle City Council had collected her green bins without fail. However, they had neglected her refuse bin. Mrs Reynolds of Brampton said, At first I wasn't really worried. It was just one of those things. I popped the rubbish in the car and took it to the tip.

Since the first time I've had surgery, so I can't keep doing that. When it was missed again, I spoke with the council, but they weren't very helpful. I suggested not paying my council tax if they weren't going to collect my refuse. I was annoyed and frustrated. I thought that rather than keep moaning, I would see the funny side. After operation, the refuse started to build up and she was told the bin men would collect an extra four bags. I remember when a bin man could carry eight bags, actually, because they were so strong. After this, she decided to decorate the bins with altered lyrics from the iconic Sinead O'Connor song, Nothing Compares to You, and also added a play on words saying,

Would you like to guess what the play on words she added to the bins was because you're going to lose your fucking minds. The clue is that her green bins have been collected, but her refuse bin has not. Is she going to call herself like a refugee or something like that? Oh, you see, that would be good. That would be better than what she's done. Is her refuse bin blue? No. Refuse bins in the UK are usually black. Because I have green refuse bins and blue recycling bins where I live.

So, oh, wait. Oh, God. Wait. Wait. If the refuse bin is black. I think Nate's getting better. Did she say black bins matter? She fucking did. Yeah, that's fucking right, lads. Since she put up the sign, she said, I had one person say it was offensive, but a man who said he was from the council stopped to take pictures and apologized. See, it's funny because, for one, this is like passive aggressive and Tweet at the same time,

makes it extremely British to me. But then also, I'm just reminded of where I live. There's a guy who's got his bins on like a more heavily trafficked road than the road I live on. And his green bin, he has written the number on the front and on the back. He's written in a very aggressive block lettering. If you touch my bin, I will kill you. And that to me, I was like, you know what, British politics is just kind of this. This is it. The most active I've ever seen in my neighborhood WhatsApp group is when the bins don't get collected. We must defend the bins.

That is all we have left at this point because there was a guy who was, because where I live, they don't have regulated parking. And so our street and ones nearby it, if you can get a place, you don't need a permit. So people will be parking in and out and folks will sometimes park if they live down the street. But sometimes it'll be like visitors and so on and so forth. Well, there was a guy who was parking because we live on a row, like a dead-end row. There was a guy who was parking like a sprinter van. He lived nearby, but periodically he would park it on the corner

because it was kind of an open spot. And that was blocking the entrance to the row. So basically like the crew would come through and they just like, yeah, fuck it. We can't get down the street. We're just not going down it. And they wouldn't collect either the refuse or the recyclables. And so the WhatsApp group went fucking bananas. They were like, we're going to abandon by the bin. Exactly. They were like, we're going to put up a word of caution letter on this guy's thing. Their report is played. Someone's like, maybe we should cut his fucking tires.

And I was like, well, wouldn't that defeat the whole purpose? I mean, surely you want him to move the van, not have the van be immobilized by you cutting the tires. But I was like, no, but that's, there's nothing more British than that. Like, I hate that this van is outside my house, so I'm going to slash the tires thereby. It kind of happened in my area too, because like as during like, as the lockdown sort of gone on, like several, like there have been a few people in like the little cul-de-sac that we're in who have like started like businesses, so they've bought like vans and everything. And like when the, when this kind of neighborhood kind of when it first emerged,

it was designed so that like each household only had like one car. And it was mostly for like old age pensioners and stuff like that. Obviously over time that's changed. So now you have families with like two or three cars and everything. And like car drama has basically been like the main drama for the past like few months. And there was, you know, my neighbor, like who is only ring, like she rings my bell basically every day, but only to kind of complain about cars. And she was telling me like a few months ago, but like she was planning on like slashing her neighbor's car. And I was kind of like, I don't think you should do that because I don't think it solves your problem.

But also like you're telling me this during the day in an open space, like if you're going to slash your neighbor's tires, like maybe you shouldn't tell me you're going to do it. To begin with. Can't you have a word with Mammy about a car? Can't he do something about it? I'm not a religious woman myself, but surely. You know what? The conversation wasn't actually that, but like it was like, do you know anyone from the council who can do that in that type of voice? I was like, no, I don't know anyone from the council. Like, you know,

just talk to your neighbors. You don't have to slash their tires. That's the thing, isn't it though? People don't want to fucking talk to their neighbors. They're so aggressively non-confrontational, but also passive aggressive about it. Like they want to, they want people to pick up on stuff. So rather than ever just clearing the air and discussing what the problem is, they just like either complain to each other or try to find ways to register their displeasure without actually confronting it. That has led to my observation that the American dream is owning your own home and owning your own business. And all of them are based on racism and being able to like racially exclude people you don't want in your home or

business. Whereas the British dream is staring out your curtains, watching your neighbor get hauled off by the police. And it's someone you've hated for 10 years, but you've never confronted him ever. Yeah, basically, I think basically you're right. That's the only time those people nut is when something like that happens. That's the best here. That's the best. Like neighbor drama is such a running theme of British life. I remember there's a guy who like lived next door to my parents for a long time, who was quite difficult, who had this hedge that was like overgrowing into our garden. And he came round and offered, he was like quite belligerent. And he came round and offered my dad

that like he would hire a guy to like trim the hedge and he would like split the cost with my dad. And my dad was like, but it's your head. He was like, yeah, but I thought we could sprint again. And apparently my dad just had to have like, well, I think if I came round and made a similar offer to you, you might tell me to fuck off Jeff. And he's like, oh, and he goes, so I'm telling you to fuck off. And that's just like, that's as, that's as, you know, confrontational as British people ever get. But that's the thing is that now you have Facebook groups to fucking then accuse Jeff of running a grooming gang so that everybody runs out of the neighborhood. Right. And I just stressed Jeff is not his real name. Don't try and hunt Jeff down.

Yeah. And I do think that you're right about this. I think it's like, you know, like kind of, and you know, I've joked about this before, but I do think that this is genuinely true, but I think we're heading towards a kind of like local and national politics where basically every sort of election is a referendum on like, who's a pedophile and who isn't. And I do think that like that's basically going to be used as a way of like, all the changes is whether that's good or not. Whether that's actually a plus point. Right. Right. Like, yeah, it's not, he's not even kind of like consistent in that way. But I do think that like, you know, I have heard stories about like neighbor in the, in my area of people

who have like tried to call the cops on their neighbors because they rude. They don't like from over like the most petty thing, like parking too close to a garage or something. And they'll try and they'll get the police to come faster by saying that, oh, I think like kids or kids are inside there on their own. Well, the thing about it is, is that like, okay, this is a problem in America. We've talked to Ryan Broderick years ago, and then Vincent Bevin's also about this, for example, in Brazil, you know, this being a problem that, you know, sort of machine gun WhatsApp groups just blasting out insane memes to all of the faithful and stuff, flooding Facebook, you know,

Facebook integrating with WhatsApp so that you can, you know, send articles immediately to WhatsApp groups, things along those lines, make it easy to spread disinformation. And the way that that seems to manifest specifically in Britain, whether it's, you know, with regard to local issues or like local political contests, it always does seem to come back to, and I'm not saying because this is like the dominant theme, but it just, this is what it seems to be the things that get people riled up is it always seems to be he likes Muslims too much and or he's in a grooming gang. Like basically, you are either Muslim or nonce, like that is that those are the two animating two genders, the two genders and often by exactly, you know, but but all Muslims have

nonce me beans. That was I was going to say is literally like you like the scandal is either noncing or Muslims, but it's also all under the ages of bin collection. Like those those are your options in a way, I guess it's not twin polls. There's three polls and it's just like it's a big it's a big triangle and it falls three polls and that's very too many. They're coming over it. But that's the same thing with turf shit though. How does a fucking website that's like a forum about like how long you're supposed to breastfeed for or like a woman being like, oh yeah, my husband keeps a glass of water on the night table next to our bed so we can wash his dick after sex that forum that becomes like fucking like like ISIS's magazine, but for turf

shit. You know what I mean? Oh yeah. Like how does that happen? It's just for some reason, badly moderated stuff, you know, extraordinarily connected shit, you know, like this people people suddenly being able to connect and bond over their shared hatred and their shared suspicions and the total lack of any kind of moderation whatsoever, you know, in any meaningful sense, like yes, you'll probably get your shit taken down if you're posting Facebook videos or like sex abuse videos or something like that. Roger, but like when it comes to this kind of stuff where it's, you know, it's not like on its face so objectionable because it's not like a video of, you know, I mean, literally there was a I won't even describe it because but there was an article in

I want to say was in Wired magazine written years ago about people in the Philippines and some of the stuff that they saw like like so horrendous that like we'd have to put fucking content warnings at the beginning of this episode like level of bad. But those kinds of videos, yeah, they're going to get taken down immediately because they're going to get flagged by the content moderators. But you know, a closed group basically saying like, I think they're sweeping the grooming gangs under those rugs at the mosque. Like that is also insane, completely insane. That's like and the reason they're doing that is because they can't bin them because the bins are being collected radio Rwanda shit. But that's not getting that it's not being treated with the same

kind of serious like the way people are in this country. Like that shit really freaks me out. And it's just you see how it's all abetted by this stuff like because it just seems to be the common fucking denominator. If it's not hating black people or hating migrants or hating, hating trans people, it's it's like all Muslims are in grooming gangs and it said like they'll constantly belabor that point. And so like to me, it's British news is always hilarious, but also it's just like it's so dark because any unfiltered comment section, that's what you're going to get. Yeah. Yeah. But also like, I mean, most people aren't on the like they do attract insane people. Most British people I know are not are not in fucking Facebook groups

doing this. Yeah. I mean, at the same time, like I think it's worth also bearing in mind that like are kind of way into this particular aspect of the British psyche comes through like Facebook groups and comment threads and stuff like that. And often when you really like dig into who is like the real people behind these things, but often like quite comfortable and like well to do middle class people who like are too lazy and also like not even too lazy, but like they're too kind of like concerned about their property to kind of even do any kind of like collective action against their kind of supposed enemies, right? Like they're much more happy like letting themselves get as mad as possible. So that they can send like really vast the thing. I

think they're like, and I think it's one of the reasons why so many of them are so obsessed with free speech over anything else because really what they want is just to say slurs. Like they just want to be able to say slurs. They have no kind of like vision for you know, what, you know, any sort of like collective, you know, collective punishment. They don't really have like even the idea of like, you know, instituting like doing deportation stuff like that is also too ambitious for them. One of the funniest things about like right wing, like various kind of like far right nationalist groups in the UK is like how much they complain about conservatives because they won't,

like they're not willing to give up anything for their like supposed political struggle. So they're very good at like distributing and sharing information online and that is like a danger. Like don't get me wrong, but they don't like have, but most of them don't have any desire to mobilize. And I think that's also just like a very interesting insight into this particular aspect of the British psyche. Yeah. They just want a politician who's prepared to say the British end well. Yeah. Nonsense. That's right. Yeah.

Well, I mean, you know, maybe I'm overly sensitive towards this stuff, but I just, I see the rhetoric going unchallenged. You know, you see stuff that the BNP were saying 10 years ago that is in not too disguised form, basically Tory policy now. Yeah. But it was also done, but it was also done by like a Nick Griffin for like, despite how much he tried to lop being kind of like a working bloke was like a private school Cambridge grad who like would have been in like was in the Tory party, I think for a short period of time, but would have been like a Tory rising star had it not been for the fact that he was so narcissistic that like he wanted to kind of be the star of the show immediately and just ended

up getting, you know, making a fool of himself. And he became a cooking. And then he became a cooking YouTuber who like, you know, and I will make, I will make this admission. I don't think his beef stew is really that bad in terms of being a recipe. It looks, it looks miserable. Don't get me wrong. Like it looks like a very miserable, like he looks like he really is not enjoying himself while he's cooking, but it is not like as bad a meal as people said it was. I'm sorry, sir. I cannot bring myself to say that it was a trash ass meal. It's not, it's not, it's not that different from, it's not that different from Anthony Bourdain's

like beef, beef, beef stroganoff. That's all I'm going to say. I'm just laughing at the idea. It's like, sir, I might reject your politics, but I will defend to the death your right to make a passable beef stew. Yeah, man. Well, look, I mean, I guess the point that I'm making is that we saw this play out in the 2019 general election here. You know, so many people that I knew were hearing stuff from their parents from Facebook groups or WhatsApp groups that were being shared, you know, of forged Corbin tweets, of, you know, Corbin IRA stuff, of, you know, you know, EU is going to turn everybody trans and Muslim stuff.

All these insane conspiracy theories getting circulated. One of my mutuals told me that he knew a guy who worked at Facebook who was just completely blackpilled and he's like, we can monitor a lot of the stuff that's being shared and the stuff in Britain right now about Corbin is just, just like brain destroyingly psychotic. And so I've worried about the way that, because I mean, to me, the first time I saw this stuff and it really freaked me out was right around the time, like, yeah, I started seeing groups at all in say 2010, 2011-ish thereabouts when I come back from deployment and like lots of people that I'd connected with who were soldiers of mine and joined on Facebook, I would see the stuff

they were sharing and the stuff they were sharing with their families and or their family members were sharing and it was groups like destroy Islam and stuff like that. And I was just like, I don't think these groups should exist. One ambitious Facebook group though. You do have to kind of credit them with like a sort of like a broad vision there. Like, you know, like it certainly, it certainly shits all over like Essex Slimming World tips and tricks, isn't it? In terms of like the scope of its ideals, their reach may exceed their grasp, but you can't deny that it is at least an ambitious attempt. I fucking love the energy of a guy who's probably set up another Facebook group that's like,

I don't know, like best quotes from Roseanne. And then like the other one is destroy Islam. I mean, look, my take on this is like, you know, maybe if Pope Urban II cared more about the bins, he would have succeeded against the Viserys and armies. That's his L. Yeah. Well, you know what? And it's RL. Calling him Pope Urban was a bit of a dog whistle in my view. Well, that's his L. Yeah. What we do, what we need is a Pope Suburban. Am I right? Yeah. Well, the thing is when you, when you hand the Pope and L, he's just like 50 of what?

Oh, mother fucker. Yeah, that's fucking right. That's fucking right. Fuck you. Fuck you. Try and cancel me for my classical education. I don't care. I'm not embarrassed. I won't be shamed. That's what we call a ponteflex, folks.

Well, thank you for listening to Trash Future. We're quitting the show. It's over. We've all quit and discussed. We'll abandon our own podcast. We're going to start rival. Yeah. Before we go, we'll just say as usual, we have a Patreon. It's $5 a month. It gets you all the bonus content, unless you want an extra Britannology a month and a Q&A, in which case we have a $10 tier for that. In addition to all the other content, we also have my show, What a Hell of a Way to Die.

It's all content. We have Milo's two shows, if I'm not mistaken. Masters of Our Domain and Russian podcast for people who are Russian speakers. Yeah. If you want to speak Russian or if you don't speak Russian, you just want to hear me and Olga being deranged. They do sing songs in where they redo lyrics, but in Russian, you know, American pop songs, so that's at least fun to listen to if you don't speak the language at all. And then, of course, we have 10K posts from Hussein,

a great show about posting a thing that has consumed our lives. And most of our parents too, it seems these days. Yeah. I feel like 10K posts is a good way of understanding how to save your parents before they fall into the trap of joining a group about cute cats and then coming out completely deranged. But, you know, getting signing on to that person's Teespring, you know, portal. And it's just like, Dad, why did you buy a shirt that says destroy Islam on it? Well, you know, it happens to the best of us.

But anyway, thank you everyone for listening. Thank you for once again, tolerating the super chaos configuration of the three of us. Riley, enjoy your hike. And everyone else, we will catch you on the bonus later this week. Also, don't forget the YouTube zone streams Thursday and Sunday nights at 9 p.m. U.K. time. Hope you enjoy. Check that out. If you think this was chaotic, check out the YouTube zone.

And we'll talk to you later. Bye. Bye.