The Braverman story is developing by the hour and there is still a (remote) possibility that Sunak will discover a scrap of moral fibre and fire her but, to be honest, she should have gone for the homeless/lifestyle callousness. The Highcliffe Guy explains why.
How Propaganda Works:
Suella Braverman’s attack on homeless people is possibly her most cruel, contemptuous, irresponsible & deceitful piece of Culture War propaganda yet.
To explain exactly what she’s doing here, I’ve broken down the whole appalling thread.
Buckle in:
She sides with ‘compassionate’ Brits. As someone representing them, she implies she’s one, too.
So, anything she does is out of ‘compassion’ – for you, and for ‘true’ homeless people.
This sets the stage for what follows.
Note the use of the word “genuinely”, and the claim that some people are homeless “as a lifestyle choice”.
This is a signal to you:
– That many of those you see on the streets *want to be there*.
– And that the government can’t help them.
She’s trying to recruit your consent to this.
And who are these horrors who choose to deliberately “take over” your streets?
Why, it’s people “from abroad”, of course.
Which links subconsciously to her never-ending narratives about refugees and small boats.
And she did all that in one tweet.
Moving on:
Note the imperative at the start.
“Unless we take action”.
Having laid out the issue, she warns of severe consequences of not acting.
She invokes bogeymen in US cities as a warning. Of course, you don’t have experience of those, so you have to take her word for it. [That reference to US urban crime is no accident.
It was a theme at the far-right Nat-C conference in May, where Braverman was a speaker.
For the US far-right, it’s a tool to raise suspicions of racial minorities as well as immigrants.]
Crucially, Braverman uses the word “weak”.
She’s drawing a line between herself and others, to identify herself as ‘strong’.
[The fetishization of strength, by the way, is a classic hallmark of fascism.]
She’s telling you that even if her policy seems tough, it’s for the good.
“Nobody” should be “on the streets”.
“There are options”… but only for people “who don’t want to be sleeping rough”.
SB is preparing you to accept that there’s no reason for anyone to be out there in winter.
And so, if you do see rough sleepers, IT’S THEIR CHOICE.
This is the darkest moment of the whole thread.
After 13 years of Austerity, rising poverty rates, and a brutalisation of support claimants, Braverman is telling you that anyone you see on the streets, is there by choice.
They can’t be helped.
The government is not at fault.
Then the final payoff for this tweet: the reference to “those with drug & alcohol addiction”.
This helps to further distance her targets from your compassion.
These people aren’t just leisure homeless. They’re junkies too.
This links to the previous tweet about crime too.
Braverman triples down on that crime angle, with a string of references to homeless people committing crimes and “blighting our communities”.
Again, she’s dehumanising the homeless you’ll see outside this Xmas, and recruiting your consent for whatever she does next.
It’s a perfect example of what Braverman has done ever since entering government.
Every Culture War trope is here.
And though she cloaks her words in reasonableness, her aim is brutal:
to publicly denounce the most vulnerable in society, and ask you to help her by turning your back.
Originally tweeted by The Highcliffe Guy: https://twitter.com/AdamHighcliffe/status/1720786288104612237
