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LeftishBrit

(41,192 posts)
Mon May 2, 2016, 12:27 PM May 2016

'It's ugly and dangerous': the inside story of the battle to be London mayor

...Goldsmith was accompanied by his media adviser, Katy Eustice, a former journalist who works for the Australian campaign strategist Lynton Crosby, famous for his “dog-whistle” politics and negative campaigning. The analogy is to those high-frequency whistles that can be heard by dogs, but are inaudible to the human ear. It’s a form of campaigning that uses coded language – euphemisms, juxtapositions – that can have one meaning to the general population and another to a specific group...


The tactic was famously used in the campaigns of Australian prime minister John Howard, who won four terms in power partly because of his tough stance on immigration. While the language Howard used was never overtly racist, the use of words such as “illegals” and “un-Australian” appealed to those with racist leanings. Crosby was Howard’s principal strategist. In 2013, he worked on Tony Abbott’s successful bid for power in Australia, won largely on the strength of a four-word slogan: “Turn back the boats.”



Eustice intervened: “Lynton’s not even involved,” she said. And, technically, this is true: the man masterminding Goldsmith’s campaign is Mark Fullbrook, co-founder of CTF Partners (alongside Crosby and pollster Mark Textor); he is also a former head of campaigns for the Conservatives, and was deputy director of Johnson’s successful 2012 mayoral campaign. But you don’t need Crosby at the helm for a campaign to bear all his hallmarks; his staff have been visible at many of Goldsmith’s campaign events. The CTF website boasts that Fullbrook was “described by Newt Gingrich as the UK’s own Lee Atwater”. Atwater, who could be said to be the forefather of dog-whistle politics, was an American strategist who famously described in a 1981 interview how Republicans could win racist votes without sounding racist. There is no suggestion that Fullbrook endorses his views...

When we met, Goldsmith insisted his use of “radical” and “dangerous” to describe Khan is purely political, and that only Khan had interpreted this as anything to do with his ethnic or religious background. “He is a fundamentally partisan figure,” Goldsmith argued. “It is obvious to anybody who is not unfair or wanting to misinterpret, the terms I was using were in a political context. I have not met a normal person who has chosen to interpret [campaign literature] like that.”


http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/30/battle-london-mayor-dirtiest-fight-zac-goldsmith-sadiq-khan


(Much more at link. It's all VERY worrying. I have been saying for a long time that the American Right have far too much input into our politics.)

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'It's ugly and dangerous': the inside story of the battle to be London mayor (Original Post) LeftishBrit May 2016 OP
I agree. Bad Dog May 2016 #1

Bad Dog

(2,025 posts)
1. I agree.
Tue May 3, 2016, 03:55 AM
May 2016

Zak Goldsmith is an awful figure who is using gutter politics to smear his opposition, and he's full of shit. This video sums him up.



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