Comment by mft_

Elements of the UK media fulfil this role, continually advancing a corrosive narrative that the country is broken. E.g. frequently using the words ‘lawless’ or ‘tinderbox’ in any headline or op-ed title that also contains the word ‘Britain’

> This view (“the Bourgeois’, etc.) seems to imply there’s a group of very clever manipulators somewhere, overtly planning and executing this (presumably in a dark room with armchairs and cigars). But I just can’t imagine this, in the UK’s example.

If you read any history about any daring military action during WW2, a lot of it was done by men thinking up of stuff in dark rooms while smoking cigars. Why is this so unbelievable now?

BTW, The UK ran the world's largest empire and until recently this was in living memory.

> What I see instead is the other side of Hanlon’s razor —incompetence— coupled with a political class riven with pockets of self-interest, and very few seemingly with an intellectual hypothesis to explain the UK’s current predicament, or to chart a path out of it.

Hanlon's razor IMO is nonsense. It is honestly believe it was invented so people could explain away their malice.

Anyone who is relatively intelligent will work at out some point, that if they don't want to do something they can passively aggressively work against the authority while working withing the rules. My father (who builds luxury yachts and is near retirement) was telling me how he maliciously complies with various companies rules to make his superior's life more difficult, this is a way to get back at them for their poor planning.

Even if you accept that Hanlon's razor is mostly true. It cannot be applied when you are dealing with political actors. Political actors, the media and anything related are literally trying to manipulate you. In fact it is a good rule that whatever they tell you that it is, assume the opposite and that is typically true.

Have you read the Telegraph or pretty much any UK media lately?

Smells like coded antisemitism, in this case.

Are you aware of the reason Epstein island existed? Do you know about the history of intelligence agencies influence on national governments? Transnational corporate lobbying? (All incompetence. I suppose.)

No dark rooms, armchairs or cigars are needed. Did you guys even read Wikileaks?

They are not a hivemind, after all they also suffer from intraclass conflict, as seen in the NATO-Russian war. But there are definitely interest groups, and we know since the mid 19th century that the class that controls the economy is also the class that shapes society as a whole. So no, it's not a conspiracy theory, it's sociology and marxism. After all, it's not crazy to think that the handful of capitalists who own the British press also defend their own interests through this same press.

>But I just can’t imagine this, in the UK’s example.

No need to imagine it. Read the Wikileaks. Names are named. The class division is real, and it is fomented by those who seek to profit from the subterfuge - and they DO profit, at massive scale.