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As a Brit I'm pretty confused as to how we should split into two teams in order to fight each other and what we are supposed to be fighting about. Perhaps Musk

by tim333 1y ago

As a Brit I'm pretty confused as to how we should split into two teams in order to fight each other and what we are supposed to be fighting about. Perhaps Musk could give us better instructions at to what this war is supposed to be over and which side I'm on? His views on the UK all seem oddly out of touch and I get the impression a lot of info comes from people on X/twitter who don't live in the UK.

mrtksn 1y ago
You don't need to split into two equal sides to have a civil war. You can start having terrorist organizations that are able to obtain weapons with help from these billionaires to do acts that serve their agenda. They can fly people to private military companies for warfare training. Not necessarily everyone will be fighting everyone, you can end up having an organization doing very bad things and some of the population that has grievances(real or induced through information shaping) supporting it. At first the non-supporting side will demand to suspend some liberties to fix the security issues which very easily(the every bit of controversy or imperfection will do that) can deepen the divide and increase the support for the other side. The tenser it gets the more extreme politicians will raise and a feedback loop will be formed that will tear down the country. For now they are just shaping the information landscape to convince people that certain very bad things are happening and that they need to take action but let's say they start providing the material and the training, who's going to stop them? They happen to be close allies of a much larger country's administration that built a reputation for disdain towards the rule of law. If a Billionaire finances the shipping a few thousand rifles and explosive to UK in drug induced rage night, will the UK politicians and law enforcement or the intelligence services be able to do anything about that? So IMHO the premise isn't implausible at all. These things happen all over the world, all those civil war torn countries are fighting with real military grade weapons being shipped to them from Europe, Russia and USA. At this very time CIA is apparently trying to orchestrate something like that in Venezuela, it's not even secret, Trump recently authorized covert CIA operation in Venezuela and Trump's claim that Venezuela is doin something similar in USA isn't implausible either: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/us/politics/trump-covert-cia-action-venezuela.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/us/politics/trump-covert-... Once you have enough distrust in the society, others can do a lot of things to that society.
- graemep 1y ago
  > You can start having terrorist organizations that are able to obtain weapons with help from these billionaires to do acts that serve their agenda. I lived in Sri Lanka during part of its civil war. It started as a terrorism, The backing came not billionaires but ordinary people: rising ethnic tensions caused by terrorism increased the support the separatists had, and an overseas diaspora able to fund them was hugely expanded by people fleeing the civil war - and became more willing to do so in reaction to race riots and the like. > If a Billionaire finances the shipping a few thousand rifles and explosive to UK in drug induced rage night, will the UK politicians and law enforcement or the intelligence services be able to do anything about that? I think they would. its a crime, and its very hard to maintain secrecy at the scale needed to distribute large numbers of weapons. The IRA had thousands of rifles and stocks of ammunition. Islamic terrorists have billionaire backers. Neither has been able to scale up beyond bombings and similar small scale attacks in mainland Britain. The IRA were able to in Northern Ireland, but that was with a large proportion of the population backing their cause (though not necessarily their use of violence).
- tim333 1y ago
  >If a Billionaire finances the shipping a few thousand rifles and explosive to UK ... will the UK politicians and law enforcement or the intelligence services be able to do anything about that? They would certainly have a go. I wouldn't recommend to Musk or similar to try that one.
tastyface 1y ago
The subtext is obvious: white vs. nonwhite. Musk, DHH, Tommy Robinson and all their deranged ilk are itching for a race war.
- tim333 1y ago
  It's a bit integrated here though. I mean our last prime minister was non white and London is a huge mix. You can make arguments for restricting immigration and getting rid of illegals but that happens in all countries and is business as usual really, not war.
  - graemep 1y ago
    I think something that Americans, and some British people (usually racists or people who are performatively anti-racist) miss is that the vast majority of us (ethnic minority British people) are well integrated. its easy to focus on the people who are not integrated and take them as the norm. We do not have the history that people such as black Americans do. Our ancestors came here voluntarily, never faced lynch mobs or segregation or bans on marrying someone of a different race. It shows in a lot of things. For example, we usually speak the same dialect of English as people from the same background and region - it might be PR or Brummie, but there is nothing that corresponds to Africa American vernacular (some communities do speak an ancestral dialect, of course, but that is different tends to die out over a few generations). As you pointed out ,someone's race is less important in politics (having a non-white PM was nothing like as revolutionary here as having a non-white president in the US).
    - tim333 1y ago
      Yeah, I was thinking the one time in my life time we did have something like a civil war was the troubles in Northern Ireland and that was the aftermath of the British occupation of Ireland under Henry VIII and then the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921). These historical things rumble on.
- graemep 1y ago
  They are not getting very far in the UK. The only thing that keeps them going is illegal immigration, and small boats in particular. IMO this suits the uniparty fine as it distracts attention from all their other failures. The most successful of those figures (at least in the UK) has been Tommy Robinson with the EDL, but the EDL is a highly unstable coalition of people who hate each other (neo-Nazis, gays, Jews, some ethnic minorities/immigrant groups) On the whole, the long term trend in the UK has been away from racism. Both my experience as a visible ethnic minority person who has lived in multiple places (London, Manchester, Midlands, Cheshire) over the years, and the data from surveys and studies confirm this.
graemep 1y ago
> His views on the UK all seem oddly out of touch and I get the impression a lot of info comes from people on X/twitter who don't live in the UK. Yes, he does, he gets his view of the UK from Americans who share his political leanings and engagement bait on social media. That said British politicians are right here in the country and can be very out of touch too. If we ever have political violence that will be the underlying cause, whatever form it takes. The most consistent trend in British politics has been people moving away from the long established big three (Conservatives, Labour, Libdems) to anyone who is not them (Scottish and Welsh Nationalists, Reform, Greens..).
- tim333 1y ago
  Yeah, they could do better. I've been a bit disappointed with their performance over the last couple of decades.

by tim333 1y ago

mrtksn 1y ago

You don't need to split into two equal sides to have a civil war. You can start having terrorist organizations that are able to obtain weapons with help from these billionaires to do acts that serve their agenda. They can fly people to private military companies for warfare training. Not necessarily everyone will be fighting everyone, you can end up having an organization doing very bad things and some of the population that has grievances(real or induced through information shaping) supporting it. At first the non-supporting side will demand to suspend some liberties to fix the security issues which very easily(the every bit of controversy or imperfection will do that) can deepen the divide and increase the support for the other side. The tenser it gets the more extreme politicians will raise and a feedback loop will be formed that will tear down the country. For now they are just shaping the information landscape to convince people that certain very bad things are happening and that they need to take action but let's say they start providing the material and the training, who's going to stop them? They happen to be close allies of a much larger country's administration that built a reputation for disdain towards the rule of law. If a Billionaire finances the shipping a few thousand rifles and explosive to UK in drug induced rage night, will the UK politicians and law enforcement or the intelligence services be able to do anything about that? So IMHO the premise isn't implausible at all. These things happen all over the world, all those civil war torn countries are fighting with real military grade weapons being shipped to them from Europe, Russia and USA. At this very time CIA is apparently trying to orchestrate something like that in Venezuela, it's not even secret, Trump recently authorized covert CIA operation in Venezuela and Trump's claim that Venezuela is doin something similar in USA isn't implausible either: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/us/politics/trump-covert-cia-action-venezuela.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/us/politics/trump-covert-... Once you have enough distrust in the society, others can do a lot of things to that society.

graemep 1y ago
> You can start having terrorist organizations that are able to obtain weapons with help from these billionaires to do acts that serve their agenda. I lived in Sri Lanka during part of its civil war. It started as a terrorism, The backing came not billionaires but ordinary people: rising ethnic tensions caused by terrorism increased the support the separatists had, and an overseas diaspora able to fund them was hugely expanded by people fleeing the civil war - and became more willing to do so in reaction to race riots and the like. > If a Billionaire finances the shipping a few thousand rifles and explosive to UK in drug induced rage night, will the UK politicians and law enforcement or the intelligence services be able to do anything about that? I think they would. its a crime, and its very hard to maintain secrecy at the scale needed to distribute large numbers of weapons. The IRA had thousands of rifles and stocks of ammunition. Islamic terrorists have billionaire backers. Neither has been able to scale up beyond bombings and similar small scale attacks in mainland Britain. The IRA were able to in Northern Ireland, but that was with a large proportion of the population backing their cause (though not necessarily their use of violence).
tim333 1y ago
>If a Billionaire finances the shipping a few thousand rifles and explosive to UK ... will the UK politicians and law enforcement or the intelligence services be able to do anything about that? They would certainly have a go. I wouldn't recommend to Musk or similar to try that one.

tastyface 1y ago

The subtext is obvious: white vs. nonwhite. Musk, DHH, Tommy Robinson and all their deranged ilk are itching for a race war.

tim333 1y ago
It's a bit integrated here though. I mean our last prime minister was non white and London is a huge mix. You can make arguments for restricting immigration and getting rid of illegals but that happens in all countries and is business as usual really, not war.
- graemep 1y ago
  I think something that Americans, and some British people (usually racists or people who are performatively anti-racist) miss is that the vast majority of us (ethnic minority British people) are well integrated. its easy to focus on the people who are not integrated and take them as the norm. We do not have the history that people such as black Americans do. Our ancestors came here voluntarily, never faced lynch mobs or segregation or bans on marrying someone of a different race. It shows in a lot of things. For example, we usually speak the same dialect of English as people from the same background and region - it might be PR or Brummie, but there is nothing that corresponds to Africa American vernacular (some communities do speak an ancestral dialect, of course, but that is different tends to die out over a few generations). As you pointed out ,someone's race is less important in politics (having a non-white PM was nothing like as revolutionary here as having a non-white president in the US).
  - tim333 1y ago
    Yeah, I was thinking the one time in my life time we did have something like a civil war was the troubles in Northern Ireland and that was the aftermath of the British occupation of Ireland under Henry VIII and then the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921). These historical things rumble on.
graemep 1y ago
They are not getting very far in the UK. The only thing that keeps them going is illegal immigration, and small boats in particular. IMO this suits the uniparty fine as it distracts attention from all their other failures. The most successful of those figures (at least in the UK) has been Tommy Robinson with the EDL, but the EDL is a highly unstable coalition of people who hate each other (neo-Nazis, gays, Jews, some ethnic minorities/immigrant groups) On the whole, the long term trend in the UK has been away from racism. Both my experience as a visible ethnic minority person who has lived in multiple places (London, Manchester, Midlands, Cheshire) over the years, and the data from surveys and studies confirm this.

graemep 1y ago

> His views on the UK all seem oddly out of touch and I get the impression a lot of info comes from people on X/twitter who don't live in the UK. Yes, he does, he gets his view of the UK from Americans who share his political leanings and engagement bait on social media. That said British politicians are right here in the country and can be very out of touch too. If we ever have political violence that will be the underlying cause, whatever form it takes. The most consistent trend in British politics has been people moving away from the long established big three (Conservatives, Labour, Libdems) to anyone who is not them (Scottish and Welsh Nationalists, Reform, Greens..).

tim333 1y ago
Yeah, they could do better. I've been a bit disappointed with their performance over the last couple of decades.