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See also: Guinea, Guyana, New Guinea in three different continents.

A similar example to the dindon is that the animal known in English as the Guinea pig (which comes from South America - unlike, say, Guinea fowl, which come from Africa) is to the French a cochon d'Inde, the pig of India.

the european quest for indian riches changed the world so irrevocably, and it leaves these terrible echoes, for those that live in the caribbean now are deemed west and east indians and the native americans deemed indians too and when india is finally opened up inevitably the forms of immiseration evolve. but the plunder continues.

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In the same way as Harris was never going to convince the truly racist proportion of Trump voters, I'm not sure that Badenoch can ever win back a chunk of those now leaning Reform.

This is a monster the Conservatives have created by continually working to whip up a moral panic over immigration for the past decade, despite being in Government for most of this period and not offering any solution (perhaps realising that it was actually impractical when they got down to it), on the basis that leaving this spectre hanging over voters would push them to the right.

In response to accusations of racism from the centre, they have then made sure to fill their leadership roles with women and ethnic minorities (but still with increasingly far right views) so that they always have a response to the white male dominated Labour or the Lib Dems. White liberals panic when the Islamaphobe before them is e.g. of Indian descent, and feel unqualified to call their racism what it is.

This has brought about a vacuum where the terminally thick racists who have swallowed the anti-illegals, anti-woke talking points (ironically often imported from America) are unable to tell the difference and happily referred to Sunak as a Muslim. They have therefore jumped ship for the new far-right party whose MPs are all white men.

Badenoch is a long-time devotee of the anti-woke, anti immigration agenda, but she is also an immigrant from Africa. That combination may once have been an advantage in convincing people that her views, which may have been taken as bigoted from a white man, must be reasonable and acceptable to share, but unfortunately that wedge approach has been so successful in shifting the Overton Window that we now have many anti-immigrant crusaders who would rather vote for a white man saying the same things.

As with the US election, this may seem a facile analysis, but it seems to be something people are afraid to acknowledge. Many voters are racist! You're not allowed to say that in public, because if you call voters bigoted (Brown) or deplorables (Clinton) or far-right (Starmer) you get hammered by the opposition and lose even more votes, but it's a fact.

A lot of the Trumpist attacks on Harris characterised her as Kamabla the DEI hire who slept her way to the top, in keeping with his racist, misogynistic agenda, and though we can talk about whether her policies were too centrist or not radical enough I don't think there's much she could have done as a brown woman to convince those people.

At some point policy doesn't matter. Harris could have run as a Republican with Trump's exact platform, except more lucid, and they still wouldn't have voted for her. Many MAGA simply don't want a brown woman as president, no matter who she is. That's where we're heading in the UK. Badenoch could adopt Farage's manifesto wholesale, as the more established party, but the people who support it would rather it came from him.

Pushing far-right misinformation has propelled her this far, but now those beliefs have taken on a life of their own. Her party thought they could ride this monster, but it destroyed them and has now entirely escaped their control. It always felt particularly short-sighted for the Hindutva or Zionist Islamophobes to choose to ride the fascist tiger, but the others are all being eaten as well.

In 2010, Cameron, Brown and Clegg shared 88% of the vote across relatively socially liberal and pro-EU platforms. UKIP/BNP had only 5%. But Cameron's austerity and the EU referendum radicalised our politics and for many years we became obsessed with the single issue of Brexit and immigration. The referendum result has been the perfect weapon for those to the right of Cameron... and those to the right of them... and those to the right of them...

Because the Brexit campaign made impossible promises, those in power have never been able to deliver on them, and with each failure or compromise they have been accused of betraying the will of the British people by opportunists looking to ride this populist wave into power. But when they get there they hit the same reality, and were faced by new opportunists to their right. Thus the Conservative party cannibalised itself until there was nobody left, and now Reform are doing the same thing to them.

Where we go from here is a lot less certain, but it doesn't exactly look positive.

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It's convenient for current Scottish nationalists to use the language of independence and colonialism in distancing themselves from Britain and compare themselves to countries like India - but this is deeply disrespectful for the countries who actually faced colonialism under the British Empire, of which the Scottish were a willing part.

Whilst there were conflicts between Scotland and England in the distant past, these were clashes of approximate equals, just like the conflicts England had with France and Spain. There were often battles between neighbouring nations in this era of European history, but these had nothing to do with Scotland becoming part of the United Kingdom.

England united with Scotland on a Scottish king's ascension to the English throne, not the other way around. Scotland was never conquered. It's simply that this is an effective rhetorical device, in the same way that English nationalists talk of independence from the European Union. People love to feel like they are part of the rebellion, not the empire.

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Every time there's a heatwave in the UK you'll find Americans queueing up to laugh at us for not being built (literally - our buildings are designed to retain heat and we have minimal air conditioning, so when it's hot and humid and still there's no escape, but yes we're also not accustomed to it) to handle temperatures they might be used to. The discourse gets a little boring, and the mockery doesn't land well when hundreds of people die from the heat each time.

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I saw an American on X/Twitter made the mistake of mentioning the Falkland Islands in passing and is now dealing with the usual tirade of angry Spanish in his replies, demanding they are referred to as Los Malvinas at all times.

The Argentinian obsession with this cause is ridiculous. They have a national holiday. There are stadiums named after the islands. The sad thing is that some people will back down, worried about not being woke and using the native, Spanish name, but counterintuitively standing firm is the right thing to do here. The right-wing nationalists are the ones not speaking English.

To recap:

Argentina were a colonial European power, not the native people of the region.

They had no previous occupation of the Falkland Islands. They have never been part of Argentina. They hadn't even been part of Spain. They had been uninhabited until the first British colony.

Argentina were under a repressive military dictatorship, which decided to invade the islands to shore up nationalist support, with no claim other than 'they're closer to us' despite the inhabitants (having been settled there for over a century) objecting. This is effectively the same as Trump looking at Greenland and thinking colonial thoughts.

The invasion was condemned by the world for what it was at the time.

The attempt was rebuffed when British troops arrived to protect the inhabitants of the islands, and there was much tragic loss of life over a completely avoidable war the Argentinian dictator decided to start.

Rather than look back at this as a lesson against nationalism and condemn the dictator for causing all this bloodshed, Argentina as a nation seem to have chosen to double down and somehow frame the war as a crime done to them, using the language of anti-colonialism to suggest that recognising the Argentinian name is the right thing to do. It isn't. The people telling you this are colonial nationalists with no respect for sovereignty glorifying a military dictator.

The British have on multiple occasions offered to give up the islands if that is what the inhabitants want, but funnily enough they appreciate the protection. Most recently the islanders had a referendum in which 99.8% voted not to be part of Argentina, whilst Argentina, still bitter over a failed attempt to colonise them, are still trying to strangle their existence in terms of trade and shipping rights.

It's one of the bizarre quirks of British history that, despite a massive rap sheet of actual colonial atrocities and countries with a right to resent us and celebrate their independence, I almost entirely see anti-colonialist, pro-independence rhetoric focused on the Falklands and other cases (e.g. the US, Scotland, Wales) where it doesn't really make sense.

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Are these both sitting members of Congress? Reacting purely to the election of a (liberal) Muslim politician?

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One of the many, many stupid things about racism is how arbitrary it is. I've been unlucky enough to see increasing numbers of emboldened American race scientists online, and the distinctions they do and don't draw don't really translate to the racists over here. The treatment of 'Asians', for example, is shaped by the completely different geopolitics and patterns of migration from South Asia to the UK and East Asia to America.

There seems to be rising hostility to South Asians as economic migrants in the US, where they are broadly stereotyped as poor, unclean, the wrong type of Asian, whereas here they are more established communities and racists have learnt to distinguish between those of Pakistani heritage (who face general anti-Muslim racism) and those of Indian heritage (more often tolerated, thanks to the goodwill earnt by restaurants which are more often run by Bangladeshis...)

There does not seem to be much in the way of targeted xenophobia towards Hispanic migrants here, because that hasn't been a trend or nationalist concern, so anti-Latin sentiment doesn't make sense. Mexicans are seen in the same way as Greeks, as rare exotic visitors with their own cultural goodwill, and face the microaggression of jokes rather than slurs and hatred. On the other hand, there have been massive political campaigns against Eastern Europeans here (with Brexit fuelled on anti-Romanian and Bulgarian xenophobia), whereas most of the American RETVRN racists seem to idolise the idea of a Slavic wife unspoilt by Western corruption.

They like to formalise and categorise things as much as possible, to give some veneer of their prejudice being rooted in anything but their own insecurities, but it's all so transparently made up.

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I try not to be a hysterical leftist jumping straight into Godwin's Law, but, after a deep breath and thinking purely rationally...

You're telling me that there are masked men in unmarked vans going around the country abducting people of a certain demographic, separating children from their mothers? No identification, but if you don't go with them they charge you with resisting arrest? Sometimes to be sent to a secret prison camp across the border where you aren't expected to leave?

You're saying that peaceful protestors who criticise the government are also detained and deported, whilst far-right rioters are pardoned for attempting to overturn an election? That new arrivals have to surrender their phones to be searched for any criticism of the regime, and are deported home if they have shared so much as a meme?

The government are invoking wartime powers meant to be used against 'alien enemies' of the state? Encouraging people to inform on their neighbours and colleagues? You're saying that Republicans are not only in favour of all this, but want to strip away any right to stand against it? They want no due process for anyone seized as an 'illegal'? They think anyone advocating for their rights should be deported too, including politicians, lawyers, journalists, as traitors to the country?

Even as a casual racist, how can anyone be comfortable with this without being an actual fascist?

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sitting through a meeting with jd couch on easter killed the fucking pope

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Hello UK folks,

Trans people and allies outnumber transphobes by a long, long way. Please express your support for trans people to your MP.

WriteToThem.com makes it very easy. You just put your postcode in, and then it tells you who your MP is and gives you a form to send them an email.

Write from the heart, tell them you think trans people should be recognised socially and legally as the sex and gender that they are, not the one they were born as. It doesn't have to be long or eloquent. If you're cisgender, say so.

Make them count us all.

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Like, my go to thing about the crank coalition in modern times is Clay Clark's ReAwaken America tour. Which has featured both members of Trump's family and administration, AND multiple old school holocaust deniers and anti-semites, the kind of people who will say with a straight face that Hitler was simply trying to protect the German people and in return the international Jewish conspiracy destroyed him, and that Israel is behind everything bad in America.

And Clay Clark looks at both those positions and goes, "Yep I'm on the same side as both of these people."

And the thing is, this isn't because these people don't hold their positions strongly; the Trump administration is not just rhetorically willing to use accusations of anti-Semitism as a weapon against their enemies, but are actually pretty damn staunch allies of Israel. Meanwhile just being a holocaust deniers in public has tremendous social costs, to the point where if it wasn't a big deal you might expect people to hide it or simply abandon the position.

And it's not a sort of ecumenical "I don't hate anybody" big tent ideology; everyone involved is livid about their enemies and is willing to make radical moves against them.

So like, what is the shared world-view that these people have that makes it seem not only possible, but almost obvious that these differences should be papered over and that everyone involved gains from the alliance?

Pretend you're explaining it to a Star Trek alien who doesn't have or understand our cultural biases, it's actually really hard to articulate in ordinary political terms.

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