Immigration panic: how the west fell for manufactured rage

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From Trump to Orbán, politicians are winning votes by stoking age-old hatreds. Where does this fear of migrants come from? By Suketu Mehta

The west is being destroyed, not by migrants, but by the fear of migrants. In country after country, the ghosts of the fascists have rematerialised and are sitting in parliaments in Germany, in Austria, in Italy. They have successfully convinced their populations that the greatest threat to their nations isn’t government tyranny or inequality or climate change, but immigration. And that, to stop this wave of migrants, everyone’s civil liberties must be curtailed. Surveillance cameras must be installed everywhere. Passports must be produced for the most routine of tasks, like buying a mobile phone.

Take a look at Hungary, where Viktor Orbán has forced out the Central European University and almost destroyed the country’s free press and most other liberal institutions, using immigrants and George Soros as bogeymen. Or Poland, whose ruling party purged the judiciary, banished political opponents from government media, greatly restricted public gatherings and passed a law, modified only after an international outcry, making it a crime to accuse Poland of complicity in the Holocaust. Or Austria, where the neo-Nazis in the governing coalition want to fail kindergarteners for not knowing German. Or Italy, where a fanatically anti-immigrant coalition that won power is now going after the Roma. All these rode to power, or intensified their grip on it, like Orbán, by stoking voters’ fear of migrants, promising to ban new immigrants and to take away the rights of immigrants already in the country. Once in power, they energetically set about depriving everyone else of their rights, migrants or citizens.

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Boris Johnson accused of misleading public over police numbers

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Labour say home secretary’s letter suggests officers will be recruited away from frontline

Labour has accused Boris Johnson of misleading the public when he promised to recruit 20,000 police officers after it emerged from leaked correspondence that thousands are likely to be recruited away from frontline roles.

The opposition has seized on a letter written by the home secretary, Priti Patel, to the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, last week, in which she says the new officers will be allocated “between territorial, regional and national policing functions”.

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NYT columnist quits Twitter after daring critic to ‘call me a bedbug to my face’

HA HA HA HA – can’t take heat? Get out of kitchen!

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Free speech advocate Bret Stephens emailed David Karpf’s boss to complain about ‘bedbug’ joke – and then quit Twitter after being widely mocked

Bret Stephens would like a word with your manager. Or possibly a good fumigator.

The New York Times columnist, who portrays himself as a defender of free speech, was at the center of a social media meltdown on Monday which ended up with Stephens deleting his Twitter account and, once again, bemoaning the lack of civility of his critics.

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The media has become gossip, clickbait and punditry. This threatens democracy | Bernie Sanders

So says one of the top click baiters!

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We cannot sit by and allow corporations, billionaires, and demagogues to destroy the Fourth Estate

Walter Cronkite once said that “journalism is what we need to make democracy work.” He was absolutely right, which is why today’s assault on journalism by Wall Street, billionaire businessmen, Silicon Valley and Donald Trump presents a crisis – and why we must take concrete action.

Real journalism is different from the gossip, punditry and clickbait that dominates today’s news. Real journalism, in the words of Joseph Pulitzer, is the painstaking reporting that will “fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, [and] always fight demagogues”. Pulitzer said journalism must always “oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty”.

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Corbyn’s summit shows a no-deal Brexit is avoidable if MPs put tribalism aside | Jonathan Lis

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Today’s cross-party statement could be a watershed if our political parties can work together

Good news from the bubble of party politics: Britain’s opposition leaders have today decided to engage and cooperate rather than facilitate national food and medicine shortages in nine weeks’ time.

Many commentators suggested that Jeremy Corbyn’s meeting with the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Change UK and Greens would yield little but grandstanding and bad temper. On the contrary, participants have described a positive and constructive session, with further summits planned. Their joint statement stresses the “urgency to act together to find practical ways to prevent no deal, including the possibility of passing legislation and a vote of no confidence”.

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Would Nigel Farage be Hitler or Stalin in Brexit ‘non-aggression pact’? | John Crace

both!

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Brexit party leader offers to back Boris Johnson – but only if the PM unleashes no deal on Britain

A bell tolled five times and then a loud, heavy metal drumbeat played through the PA system of the main hall of the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster. Five-hundred prospective Brexit party parliamentary candidates rose as one to greet their messiah in the very building where he had announced his retirement from frontline politics just three years earlier. Nigel Farage milked the acclaim as he slowly walked down the aisle from the back of the auditorium.

“Are you ready?” he yelled when he finally stepped up on stage.

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