domingo, 20 de novembro de 2016

Trump’s UK allies put Remain MPs in their sights / Breitbart, baluarte da “alt-right” norte-americana, planeia expansão europeia


Breitbart, baluarte da “alt-right” norte-americana, planeia expansão europeia
MARIA JOÃO GUIMARÃES 20/11/2016 – 18:19

Site que apela a supremacistas brancos e outros extremistas quer aproveitar subida do populismo anti-imigração em França e na Alemanha.

O site norte-americano Breitbart, onde há artigos questionando se o feminismo torna as mulheres feias e que tem uma secção de “crime negro”, está a planear uma expansão para a Europa, para dois países que terão eleições em breve: França e Alemanha.

O site ganhou popularidade sob liderança de Stephen Bannon, que assumiu que era uma espécie de plataforma da chamada alt-right, definido por especialistas em extrema-direita como Cas Mudde como nada mais do que uma palavra diferente para um movimento muito antigo, o de supremacistas brancos, com laivos anti-semitas e juntando-lhe também misoginia.

Bannon saiu do site para a campanha de Donald Trump. Durante a corrida presidencial, o Breitbart registou visitas ao nível de jornais estabelecidos como o Wall Street Journal, e a sua popularidade nas redes sociais foi comparável aos sites da CNN ou do New York Times.

Stephen Bannon ganhou ainda mais destaque ao ser escolhido para um dos principais conselheiros de Donald Trump.

O site e a política populista são inseparáveis: a sua insistência em temas europeus – um dos seus alvos preferidos de críticas é a chanceler alemã, Angela Merkel, e a sua política de portas abertas para os refugiados – nota-se em pesquisas no motor de busca Google News: procurando pelas palavras chave "Merkel" e "refugiados", é certo que um artigo do Breitbart vai surgir nos resultados cimeiros; o mesmo por buscas por "Le Pen" e "eleições".

Exploração do "medo racial"
Estes sites na Alemanha e em França seguir-se-ão a um Breitbart britânico, que começou em 2013 e se focou na discussão da campanha para o referendo da saída do Reino Unido da União Europeia ("Brexit").

O director do Breitbart London, Raheem Kassan, tirou a dada altura uma licença sem vencimento do site para aconselhar o lider do populista Partido da Independência do Reino Unido (Ukip) Nigel Farage, uma das vozes pró-"Brexit". O dia do referendo britânico, 23 de Julho, marcou um pico de tráfego no site.

Apesar de não ter notícias falsas, o Breitbart não faz jornalismo, sublinhou Jeff Jarvis, professor na City University of New York (CUNY). Trata-se “de um movimento político a fazer-se passar por um meio de comunicação social”, escreveu Jarvis no seu blogue.

“Não têm estatuto editorial nem práticas jornalísticas”, notou Angelo Carusone, do observatório Media Matters for America, citado pela agência francesa AFP.

Uma amostra de alguns dos artigos mais populares do site mostra histórias comparando “vítimas de planeamento familiar” com o número de vítimas do Holocausto (desde 2006 são metade, diz o artigo), ou outra sobre as “raízes fascistas” da organização de planeamento familiar dos EUA.

As mulheres são também um tema comum, com artigos defendendo que há uma solução simples para o assédio de mulheres online: “as mulheres deveriam fazer log off”, sugere o site, enquanto outro título explica que não há discriminação de mulheres na área da tecnologia, “elas são simplesmente más nas entrevistas”.

Homossexuais e transexuais também são vistos com desdém, e o site rejeita tudo o que entende ser “politicamente correcto”.

Os crimes perpetrados por muçulmanos ou por negros são valorizados (há mesmo a secção de “crime negro”). E duas semanas após um ataque a uma igreja de uma comunidade negra da Carolina do Sul o site tinha um artigo sobre a herança da bandeira da Confederação (face às propostas de esta ser retirada por ser um símbolo de ódio).

Angelo Carussone sublinha que o mais grave é este uso de “medos raciais”.

Algo que poderá servir bem os seus objectivos em França, onde Marine Le Pen tem, com a sua retórica anti-imigração, passagem assegurada à segunda volta das presidenciais do próximo ano, ou ainda na Alemanha, onde um movimento islamófobo surgiu abertamente em manifestações, criticando os media tradicionais, a “imprensa mentirosa”.

Trump’s UK allies put Remain MPs in their sights
A new populist, anti-establishment movement will launch early next year.

By CHARLIE COOPER 11/20/16, 10:43 PM CET

LONDON — Allies of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, plotting a new populist movement in Britain, have a plan to target the least popular, pro-EU MPs and take their seats.

The new anti-establishment, Trump-inspired movement will launch in early 2017, possibly as soon as January, the millionaire UKIP donor Arron Banks said.


Banks, who is close to Nigel Farage, currently UKIP’s interim leader, told POLITICO that the movement would draw on lessons from U.S. political consultant Gerry Gunster, who has advised Banks to “micro-target” constituencies where the majority voted Leave in the EU referendum, but the incumbent MP backed Remain.

Calling the plan a form of “direct democracy,” Banks said he wanted to put candidates in constituencies where polling indicates high levels of voter dissatisfaction with the elected representative. “The idea is you ask people in the actual constituency to rate their MP… It’s up to people to decide what we do,” he said.

Farage, Gunster and Banks, along with communications advisor Andy Wigmore and Breitbart London editor Raheem Kassam, were the quintet photographed with Trump in front of a pair of golden doors in Trump Tower last week.

Arron Banks said his new movement would be “a one-off attempt to drain the swamp,” with candidates elected on a pledge of systemic change.
Banks’ declaration, after meeting Trump, that he wanted to “drain the swamp” of the House of Commons by standing 200 candidates against 200 of “the worst, most corrupt MPs,” has led to speculation that the next U.K.-wide election could see another populist, anti-politics earthquake.

Revealing more about the new movement, Banks told POLITICO that he wanted to build on methods used by Gunster, who was previously hired to support Leave.EU, the pro-Brexit campaign group Banks funded.

Gunster’s consultancy, the Washington D.C. based Goddard Gunster, claims to have a 95 percent success rate in referendums. Its website promises clients “campaigns that have visceral effects on audiences” and combine “logic and emotion” in their appeals to voters.

Gunster told POLITICO: “I am intrigued by what it is that Arron’s trying to accomplish and would be open to having a discussion with him about how Goddard Gunster can help him.

“There’s still a lot that could happen with the Brexit movement,” he said. “As time goes on, people are going to see that life continues and a lot of the things that some of the folks from the Remain camp said would happen aren’t going to happen. When constituents see that the country is actually doing quite well, I think Arron’s movement has a lot of opportunity.”

Gunster said that Banks had a “pretty impressive” database of Leave voters, thought to number around 1 million, that he could call upon and should “solidify the base” by urging them to lobby their local MP on the issue of Brexit.

Post-truth politics

Leave.EU was credited with appealing to blue-collar voters but was criticized by many for its hardline anti-immigration message. Gunster Goddard has been criticized for promoting “post-truth politics,” with Banks claiming Gunster advised him “facts don’t matter.”

Gunster said his firm used fact-based campaigning, but “backed up with emotion.”

Banks’ faith in Gunster was sealed when Leave.EU’s poll on the eve of the referendum accurately predicted the result within 0.2 percent.

“We understood the polling better because we got Gerry to do it and we used social media,” Banks said. “The traditional polling methods basically say: ‘did you vote at the last election?’ and if you say no, they discount you down to almost nothing.”

Banks told the Times newspaper last week that his new movement would be “a one-off attempt to drain the swamp,” with candidates elected on a pledge of systemic change, which he told POLITICO would include abolishing the House of Lords in its current form and reducing the number of MPs to 300.

The party would also appeal to English national identity, he said, adding there was “every chance” that this would be reflected in its name, and joking that he wanted to build “a big beautiful wall” on the Scottish border. Banks declined to comment on speculation that Farage, who will hand over the UKIP leadership at the end of November, would lead the new movement.

However, many remain skeptical that an electoral breakthrough is possible in a Westminster election, where the choice facing voters will not be as binary as in the EU referendum and the U.S. presidential election.

“The electoral system does make life difficult, nor do you have a primary system where you can take over a party like Trump did,” said John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University — and the man whose 2015 general election exit poll bucked the polling trend and accurately predicted the outcome.

“I would be surprised if it proved to be that successful an enterprise. There is clearly a risk that the broader leave movement just falls apart. Nigel Farage continues to prosper, but who is going to overtake UKIP and keep it going?”

Frank Field, the veteran Labour MP for Birkenhead, who has warned that his party risks losing swathes of voters to UKIP because of its failure to address voters’ concerns about immigration, said that Banks’ movement could end up helping UKIP, by luring “extreme right-wingers” away from the party.

“Arron Banks will actually find he’s clearing the swamp of UKIP. It will actually create a much stronger UKIP,” Field predicted. “The party Banks wants to set up with Nigel Farage — I’m sure that’s the plan — will quickly become a Le Pen party,” he added, referring to the French National Front. “The worry is then that UKIP, drained of the swamp, will naturally become the English party.”

UKIP’s leadership election — its second this year — will end on November 28, with MEP Paul Nuttall the bookmakers’ favorite.

Authors:


Charlie Cooper  

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