Quote Originally Posted by Rjk View Post
I was listening to a program on the radio about the witch trials craze, and it was comparing it to the rise of far right populism in the social media age.

they suggested that with groundbreaking changes in the availability of information amongst the population there are always positive and negative effects.

the invention of the printing press led to the enlightenment, the renaissance and reformation.
suddenly new ideas were able to come from a much wider range of sources and reach people a lot more quickly.
unfortunately one of the ways this manifested itself was in the witch trials that led to the deaths of thousands of people (including 5 in Wales).

moving on to today, there are obvious advantages to the amount of information we receive today in many ways, but there is also a definite down side, especially with the amount of information we are bombarded with l, and the fact that how well a message cuts through has little to do with how accurate or factual it is.
It's true that there is a stunning amount of information and misinformation out there, but who is to say whether the parties in question are the witches or the witch hunters in that analogy?

To be a witchhunter you have to have the power in the first place.

I think to be honest most of what the "far right" parties want is a return to what many would view as pretty standard 20 even 10 years ago. There are some genuinely extreme right parties out there that are very different but I think that's the case for most of far-right parties the media talks about