We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day When Ikea pulled its GBN ads yesterday, it said it wanted to make sure the content on the channel was in line with the firm’s ‘humanistic values’. You might ask what humanism has to do with selling flat-pack furniture. More to the point, what does humanism have to do with spying on employees – something else Ikea has been up to of late?
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It’s also worth noting that while Ikea is pulling promotional material from GBN, it has previously edited its promotional materials for use in Saudi Arabia, to better align with the regime’s values. In 2012, it was forced to apologise after it was found to have airbrushed women out of images in its catalogue.
– Tom Slater, Ikea and the con of woke capitalism
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Beiersdorf (Nivea, TESA, etc) also a neo-Marxist corporation.
Fascist really. I am very much all in for the “Fascism is the attempt to introduce socialist planning with the cooperation of big business” definition of fascism, as it even has the value of showing fascism is just an alternative delivery system for socialism. They not completely separate things.
On a more positive note, the Co-op chain of convenience stores has responded to woketard activism against GB News by stating that it will not be withdrawing advertising from the channel, explaining: “1- We will not seek to affect the editorial independence of publications or channels. 2- We will not undermine the commercial value of our society for our members. 3- We will ensure our values & principles are clear and undiminished regardless of surrounding content.”
Given that this is the Co-op, which is a part of the wider Co-operative movement, including the Co-operative Party (which co-sponsors some Labour MPs but does not stand its own separate candidates in elections) this is perhaps at least an encouraging sign of a pushback.
Moreover, those advertisers who have succumbed to the activists might reflect on the fact that Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, gave a lengthy interview on the channel’s flagship show tonight. In recent years other prominent political figures have been much criticised for agreeing to appear on the Russian-owned ‘RT’ channel and thereby ‘legitimising’ it, so Sunak’s appearance on GBN might be interpreted as a firm snub to leftist agitators seeking to stifle a new media platform that has explicitly rejected their agenda.
The move by Co-op is both encouraging and surprising, but when you look at the reality of the situation it shouldn’t be. There can be no “Right-wing TV Channels” on mainstream UK television because OFCOM rules prevent such obvious bias (on the right at least). Shame they don’t equally enforce this against the leftwing bias of the other channels, but that’s a feature of OFCOM, not a bug.
Looking at the companies involved in the anti-GB News headlines, I either don’t use them (Nivea etc), don’t like them (Ikea) or never heard of them (Kopparberg)
If I was a TV advertising customer I’d be looking for a potential bargain over at GB News. What about Weatherspoon’s sponsoring “Brillo’s Sunday Grill”? or Thatcher’s Cider?
After all, being anti-woke carries a premium, surely?
To me the most contemptible part is these companies’ knee jerk reaction to a hate filled pressure group. Instead of waiting until GB News went on air and checking for themselves to see what it was like they raced each other to be the first to be oh so righteous.
You remember the old days, when the Tory party was going to have a ‘bonfire’ of the Quangos? OFCOM ought to be one of the first for the chop. But the Tory party, useless, spineless dishonest operation.
The first step to reforming British politics, would be to destroy Conservative Central office.
The Co-op lost round 1 with Andrew Neil when they pulled their advertising from the Spectator a year or two back.
Good to see they don’t fancy round 2
From what I’ve seen of it, GBN’s whole schtick is that it’s for the whole country, not just metropolitan media luvvies. So, when Ikea, Nivea, Grolsch et al. say it’s not “in line with their values”, I have to assume that their “values” are – however much they may proclaim otherwise – exclusive and élitist. Fair enough. I’ll avoid them in future.
APL – I would like to argue with you, but I can not think of any counter arguments.
Mr Neil made it very clear that G.B. News was going to be moderate – no truck with evil people (like me), who believe in such things as Early Treatment for Covid 19, or who believe that the American Presidential Election of 2020 was rigged, or people who actually listen when the World Economic Forum define “Sustainable Development” (Agenda 2030 – the development of Agenda 21 which was agreed as long ago as 1991, rubber stamped by the Administration of the first President Bush, the government led by Prime Minister John Major and other “fictional figures – they do not exist Paul”) as a system where a vast government and vast, pet, Corporations control everything – and as for ordinary people “you will own nothing”. The World Economic Forum, the United Nations, and so on, do NOT hide this.
This is all “conspiracy theories” – even though there is no “conspiracy” as it is all declared openly (and has been for many years). All out in the open – yet (somehow) dismissed as “conspiracy theories” – even while the Central Bank and the pet commercial banks continue to create money from NOTHING and hand it out to organisations such as Black Rock to buy up housing (remember ordinary people – “you will own nothing”) as ordinary people can not possibly compete with interests that get a flow of money that is just created (from nothing) and “lent” to them at essentially zero interest rates.
The dream of Saint-Simon – bankers and other Big Business types actually being in charge of a socialistic (collectivist) system. As they are “Stakeholders” – working with officials (“scientific experts”) to create POLICY.
None of the above is on GB News – but the “Woke” Corporations want to destroy GB News anyway.
Mr Neil – that is the thing about totalitarians. They do not care if you are an “extremist” like Paul Marks, or an ultra moderate like your good self (Andrew Neil), they wish to destroy anyone who does not 100% follow the “narrative” at all times.
They hate you, Mr Neil, just as much as they hate “extremists” like me – your moderation buys you absolutely no mercy from them.
On financial matters the first “conspiracy theorist” was the Irish economist Richard Cantillon three hundred years ago – the “Cantillon Effect” now dominates the Western world.
Oh by the way – there is Early Treatment for Covid 19, and the American Presidential Election of 2020 was rigged. Have a nice day.
I believe Ikea was founded by a man who was literally a Nazi. Not the “Nazis” the Antifa mob attack, that is, everyone to the right of Jeremy Corbyn, no, an actual member of the Swedish Nazi Party.
Sure, he was a young man at the time, and later recanted, but people have been cancelled for much less. The fact that Ikea has such links to real life Nazism is something they don’t like to talk about. But we should.
And of course, Ikea also used factories run by the Stasi. As someone on Twitter pointed out, it’s a mite tricky to claim the moral highground when your hinterland contains both the Nazis and the Stasi…
@TomJ – It’s always the case isn’t it? Those that virtue shill the hardest are the one’s who’ve committed the worst crimes.
Hi John,
Thank you for contacting the MoneySuperMarket customer services team.
Just to confirm that MoneySuperMarket is not boycotting its advertising on @GBNews, sorry for any confusion caused
Kind regards,
Gill Sprake | Customer Services Agent
MoneySuperMarket
Moneysupermarket House | St. David’s Park | Ewloe | Flintshire | CH5 3UZ | UK
Good move.
“Fascist really. I am very much all in for the “Fascism is the attempt to introduce socialist planning with the cooperation of big business” definition of fascism, as it even has the value of showing fascism is just an alternative delivery system for socialism. They not completely separate things.”
I disagree, the ideas are Marxist. And the only objective behind them is power not socialism.
Marxists after their failure running countries noticed 2 things:
Corporations can be and are a strong normalizing tool, to make us all “equal”.
Corporations are an excellent tool to wage power.
When Marxist failed in Governments they moved first to Media and Education – in practice more of a reinforcement since proselytism is natural to a Marxist so they already had strong presence there- then to NGO’s and now the next logical step are corporations.
Notice how all Marxist influence is outside elected Government: Education complex and most Civil Service, Media/Entertainment complex, Publicity complex, Corporations complex, etc. Today Marxist power is waged trough indirect means. For them they have the benefit of not being easily accountable.
@lucklucky
“…When Marxist failed in Governments they moved first to Media and Education – in practice more of a reinforcement since proselytism is natural to a Marxist so they already had strong presence there- then to NGO’s and now the next logical step are corporations…”
It was planned over 50 years ago:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_march_through_the_institutions
And it’s been bloody successful for them – true freedom is dying the death of a thousand cuts.
Paul Marks,
I agree, yes, there is early treatment for Covid. But it is not a matter of belief, it is a matter of science, proven by successful Clinical Trials.
And for any who may doubt:
COVID-19 early treatment: real-time analysis of 697 studies
https://c19early.com/
mmacg – there are indeed many studies showing the usefulness of Early Treatment of Covid 19 with a combination of existing medications.
The technical establishment are many things – but they are not ignorant, and they are not stupid.
That makes their covering up and SMEARING of Early Treatment truly horrifying.
I can not understand how anyone can ignore this atrocity – for atrocity it is.
The private justification of “it was necessary to undermine the existing unjust society, and create a better society in its place” I reject on two grounds….
Firstly the society they wish to create is not better – it is worse than the society they wish to destroy.
But also, even if the society they wish to create was indeed better than the existing society – it would not justify the deaths of so many innocent people. “One can not make an omelette without breaking eggs” is the sort of flippant response which we should reject, utterly reject.
lucklucky and Ted Treen.
It is actually pre Marxist.
Sir Francis Bacon had the idea of using “science” (really fake science) as a justification for tyranny – see his “The New Atlantis” – and his followers such as Sir William Petty and Thomas Hobbes misused mathematics for the same purpose of trying to justify tyranny.
One can see in the followers of J. Bentham in the early 19th century an effort to use the words “freedom” and “liberty” as justifications to INCREASE state power (the 13 Departments of State idea – but the exact number of departments is not important) – supposedly for the greatest good of the greatest number.
Some of the French Revolutionaries had already had the same idea – scream the words “freedom” and “liberty£ very loudly (make them your own) in order to DESTROY liberty. The “rebels” of 1968 followed the same line.
As for using vast Corporations and Credit Bubble banks to create tyranny (tyranny in the name of “freedom” and “science”) – Saint-Simon and his followers had this idea some two hundred years ago. People such as Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum (supported by most Western governments and vast corporations) are very much in this tradition – the tradition of the Saint-Simonists the Technocracy.
As for Karl Marx – when he was young man the ideas of the Saint-Simonists were very popular in his home town – many leading citizens were Saint-Simonists.
And thus we come full circle.
The de facto alliance between “capitalist” Big Business, the vast Corporations – who depend on the endless Credit Money from the Central Banking system, and the “Woke” Marxists, is not so unnatural after all.
They are different (and they may even kill each other at some point) – but they both detest liberty, and want unlimited power.
Whether the future is to be “Technocracy” or Marxism – we have no future in such a state-of-affairs. Other than death – or serfdom.
Should I be sad or glad that I have no custom I can withdraw from Ikea, that I don’t drink any cider let alone Kopparberg’s, that I wasn’t planning on taking an Open University course, etc.?
The Vodaphone situation may have started with their social media team going rogue – we’ll see how it ends. Meanwhile, when the rogue team told the world that they cancelled GBNews advertising because it “promised to combat so-called cancel culture”, they may not have helped their cause as much as they thought. 🙂
That leaves the (ex-)BBC Producer organising the boycott. Since the law requiring we buy the beeb’s product has not stopped them hating us sampling another as well, perhaps they could be made more tolerant by its absence.