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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 20/10/2026

I've just been to her wikipedia entry to look for a link to something and was reintroduced to some of the wingbattery of hers that I had (happily) forgotten. I mean, her on Obama alone:

Early in the presidency of Barack Obama, Phillips accused him of "adopting the agenda of the Islamist", and of being "firmly in the Islamists' camp".[44] Shortly after Obama's re-election for a second term, Phillips said that, "Four years ago, America put into the White House a sulky narcissist with an unbroken history of involvement in thuggish, corrupt, far-left, black power, Jew-bashing, west-hating politics". She warned that Obama would lead America into a "terrifying darkness". The Independent termed it "rather odd", and an "angry rant".[45]

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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 14/10/2026

This is the Phil Wang one. The lead-in to the last ten seconds, when he makes his 'joke' about what Corbyn would call a Nazi officer, are needed for context:

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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 14/10/2026

Aside from Juliet Jacques's good piece in Red Pepper on how Corbyn really pissed off comedians (www.redpepper.org.uk/culture-medi...), one thing that really turned me off about Charlie Brooker was his odious "joke" about Labour:

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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 12/10/2026

I came across this in regards to one of their shows (via faroutmagazine.co.uk/piss-band-yo...):

The band are aware of that too. Before they begin their set at Rotown, their singer, Taylor Zantingh, echoes the warning and lays down rules. While plenty of hardcore bands talk about helping people back up if they fall or general mosh pit safety, this is different. Instead, Zantingh sets up a system where anyone who wants to leave has to raise their hand, and the crowd must part to allow them out. It is known in the room that the rule is for emotions first. Everyone in the space comes into it, or is reminded then and there, that what they’re about to be pushed about by is likely not so much a rowdy crowd, but rough memories and intense reactions to them.

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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 09/10/2026

The rabbi and mullah that are both very lovely family friends, having known me as a kid, if they saw me write that:

A painting of a late middle age woman - perhaps - in a hood. She has an open book in her lap, her hands on the book. She is looking at the viewer in what could be described as exasperation.

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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 09/10/2026

Oh, that bloody music, such a lazy attempt at pulling heartstrings. With Haunting of Hill House, something like Diamanda Galás's Deliver Me would be more apt, not bad 'indie'. I was so annoyed by the way they quoted the ending of the book, I had to go back and read it, and:

Patrick Stewart as Star Trek Captain Jean Luc Picard. He has his hands on his forehead, looking very Done.

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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 07/10/2026

This is something that Eric Kurlander discusses in his "Living with Hitler: Liberal Democrats in the Third Reich". Below is a section from his own introduction:

Third, this book shows the ample space for liberal criticism and everyday opposition in the Third Reich, especially before the outbreak of the Second World War. When liberals failed to resist, at least intellectually, it had less to do with fear of arrest or persecution and more to do with a tacit desire to accommodate specific policies. In many cases liberals did encounter pressures to conform in terms of pursuing a career or maintaining a personal or professional relationship. Yet these kinds of pressure - including the
necessity of joining Reich organizations, avoiding “minority* hires and clients, or toeing a politically palatable line - were not qualitatively different from those imposed, for example, on Wall Street or in the American South in the interwar period. That is not to exaggerate the Democrats’ ability to carry out open resistance, or to downplay the escalating persecution experienced by individuals on the margins of the national or “people’s community" (Volksgemeinschaß). With several notable exceptions, bourgeois liberals simply enjoyed greater freedom of manoeuvrer and encountered fewer intrusions into their daily existence than Communists and Socialists, the disabled, or the putatively racially inferior.
Fourth and finally, most liberal democrats who at first acquiesced in
aspects of the Nazi “revolution” eventually rejected it because of their individual
experience of National Socialism. Here again historical context and
contingency are paramount. There were various points at which liberals reevaluated their position and gradually turned away from even a tentative endorsement of Nazi policies. It is indeed remarkable that many
Weimar Democrats rationalized and even defended elements of German foreign and domestic policy after 1933. But rather than dismiss their
ambivalence as a sign of German peculiarity vis-à-vis the “West,” we
should take it as a warning of the susceptibility of liberal democracy to Fascism, particularly in times of economic di…

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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 02/10/2026

@heistberlin.bsky.social has a great piece on Berghain now essentially being Disneyland for Adults (not complimentary), and there's this great paragraph that could apply to many an arts scene, and/or Berlin at large: www.heistberlin.com/berghain-pol...

Nowadays, disaster capitalist wealth, garnered via the disinheritance of low-income Black Americans, is what gives you your Berlin techno content on Instagram. It's all a bit removed from Underground Resistance, the radical Detroit collective that defined techno's political origins. At times, one wonders whether it's merely the cosplay of a counterculture.

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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 01/10/2026

How I'm visualising that second part about Machiavelli:

A screenshot from the cartoon The Simpsons. Homer Simpson is in a bed, the blanket up and right under his nose. He is staring at the ceiling (perhaps), in annoyance, his eyebrows furrowed.

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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 30/09/2026

The sort of response I'm seeing from some they're interacting with people that are rightly sceptical about a speech from Burnham that may *sound* nice in parts, but doesn't exist in a political/social/economic/geopolitical vacuum, and is clearly trying to cargo-cult '97 or Obama's '08 into being:

A screenshot of a scene from the film Donnie Darko. A woman, appearing to be either anxious or very much in anguish, is saying to someone else (off camera) that "Sometimes I doubt your committent to Sparkle Motion!"

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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026

Mic rightly references the classic and (still) haunting 1965 mockumentary by Peter Watkins, also called "The War Game". The way that the BBC (who banned the '65 film for years) et al are normalising a state of war brings this from the film to mind:

During a recent meeting of the Ecumenical Council at the Vatican, an English and an American Bishop expressed the view that "the church must tell the faithful that they should learn to live with, though need not love, the nuclear bomb, provided that it is 'clean' and of a good family."

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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026

I don't keep many Twitter screenshots, but one that comes to mind and sums up the Centrist mindset wrt the left and/or minorities, whenever Centrists are annoyed that people are rightly unhappy w/ Centrist Sparkle Motion, is this one, again in the context of the French 2022 GE.

Caroline dA @caroline_MCR
•兮
Replying to @GeekBoyMusic and @lanDunt
That really is irrelevant, the responsibility on them is to do the right thing regardless if they have been courted or not
3:49 pm • 12 Apr 2022 • Twitter for iPhone

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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 25/09/2026

*Someone on the centre-right, trawling through BlueSky*

An image of Spongebob Squarepants looking through binoculars. He is shouting at Patrick - a starfish with bermuda shots and bifocals - to WRITE THAT DOWN! WRITE THAT DOWN!. Patrick is writing it down, indeed.

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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 25/09/2026

She was Very Sad indeed. Trouble is anytime she looks remotely serious, she reminds me of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Tommy from Third Rock From The Sun:

A younger Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a long haired Tommy, his ears sticking out, from the show Third Rock From The Sun, looking as if he's in trouble.

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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 24/09/2026

On occasion, Eric Kurlander's "Living with Hitler: Liberal Democrats in the Third Reich" (in my opinion, nuanced and fair, & also blunt and honest, work re liberal democrats under the Nazis):

Fourth and finally, most liberal democrats who at first acquiesced in
aspects of the Nazi “revolution” eventually rejected it because of their individual experience of National Socialism. Here again historical context and contingency are paramount. There were various points at which liberals re-evaluated their position and gradually turned away from even a tentative endorsement of Nazi policies. It is indeed remarkable that many Weimar Democrats rationalized and even defended elements of German foreign and domestic policy after 1933. But rather than dismiss their ambivalence as a sign of German peculiarity vis-à-vis the “West,” we should take it as a warning of the susceptibility of liberal democracy to Fascism, particularly in times of economic distress and political chaos.

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Ghost Coast. @spectralthrum.eurosky.social · 19/09/2026

The manner in which certain outlets, politicians, senior academic types talk about how "AI is here to stay" reminds me of this screen card from Peter Watkins's "The War Game":

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