@robertrotifer.bsky.social
Still the same one I was over there and there and there. (It’s not my bike!) Posting mainly from Canterbury.
Funny kind of "Labour" party, if you ask me.
16.02.2026 10:34 — 👍 108 🔁 27 💬 6 📌 1
I don’t know if it makes sense to mention gigs here, but this will be the first and last Rotifer band gig in a while, in one of my favourite London venues on a bill with one of my favourite London bands. Would be lovely to see you if you’re in town.
wegottickets.com/event/687241/
Die Ausgabe hab ich wo, unter Stößen von Zeug.
13.02.2026 09:37 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Magnificent edition of @robertrotifer.bsky.social's Heartbeat, feat Special Friend, Anja Om Plus, Follow The Zebra, @themonochromeset.bsky.social, The Bevis Frond, waterbaby, Monsterheart, Jane Weaver & @emmatricca.bsky.social, The Notwist, Pictish Trail, Alice Costelloe.
fm4.orf.at/player/20260...
Gut!! Ist auch eine gute Sendung, falls ich das sagen darf
09.02.2026 16:20 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Tonight’s @fm4.orf.at Heartbeat (from 22:00 CET/9pm GMT) playlist looks much like the one from 2 weeks ago due to the mishap with the mixed-up shows that needs undoing and exorcising before we can all move on (random train window shot, not even that allegorical)
www.instagram.com/p/DUiwxyeDJi...
Helps if you speak German, but do yourself a favour and watch this gorgeous doc about pianist Anatol Ugorski, filmed just after he arrived in post-Wende Berlin.
youtu.be/C0qwErV_DSM
While we're talking about the ethics of taking part in the World Cup and Eurovision...
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...
Just a German paper celebrating the annihilation of a “fake Jew” (imagine even typing the word “vernichtet” in that context) while making sure to publicly name and shame him in the process.
03.02.2026 12:44 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Getting the impression that ICE is gearing up for a pogrom in Springfield, Ohio, which was ground zero of Vance’s lies about Haitians during the campaign. Haitians lose temporary protected status on February 3rd. Reporters, lawyers, neighbors — please get ready.
31.01.2026 20:03 — 👍 4640 🔁 2001 💬 90 📌 105Auf deutsch, wie immer
30.01.2026 17:55 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
I wrote this for @fm4.orf.at about the pop world’s reaction to Minneapolis including that Springsteen song, and how trying to conjure up a decent sort of patriotism only repeats the cardinal mistake that got us to where we are now.
fm4.orf.at/stories/3052...
But that’s just the personal part of my grief. More generally, it’s just a shame there doesn’t seem to be a market for a paper like this in Austria today. Prove me wrong, please.
30.01.2026 10:07 — 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Having run the Austrian part in the French résistance at enormous personal risk, Marek was a close friend of my grandfather who I wrote my first piece for the new Tagebuch about a few years ago.
tagebuch.at/2022/03/ein-...
What makes this personally painful for me is the fact that Tagebuch was the revival of another Austrian publication of the same name, run by the communist dissident Ephraim Feuerlicht aka Franz Marek in the 60s & 70s. Read his (auto)biography if you haven’t:
www.mandelbaum.at/buecher/fran...
…and obviously the decline of public discourse on and through social media (yes, the irony).
And while on the subject, let’s not forget the shitstorm created by certain people against Tagebuch about a podcast that never even happened.
So many obvious reasons why this has happened:
The way (particularly the Austrian & German) Left has split, largely along generational lines on subjects like gender, racism/“woke”, Israel/Palestine, the decline of people willing to buy a physical magazine, the ever rising costs of production…
Here’s the news I’d been dreading for a while. Tagebuch, the smartest and most promising publication of the Left coming out of Austria in recent years is calling it a day.
My greatest thanks to editors Benjamin Opratko, Samuel Stuhlpfarrer and everyone working to make it exist for a brief 6 years.
The largest infrastructure projects currently being built in the US appear to be data centers and detention centers. The AI boom has coincided with ICE becoming the most heavily funded government agency. It's hard not to see a connection: This is the architectures of digital fascism
30.01.2026 08:17 — 👍 552 🔁 325 💬 13 📌 40
Anyone who thinks this won't happen at the 2026 World Cup games in the U.S. is delusional.
26.01.2026 21:35 — 👍 134 🔁 72 💬 0 📌 7
The Legislation Upon winning a general election, a Reform government under Prime Minister Nigel Farage will: 1) Leave the ECHR 2.) Repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. 3.) Pass The Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Bill: This Bill will: Create a legal duty to remove illegal migrants for the Home Secretary The Bill opens with a blunt obligation for the Home Secretary: "The Secretary of State shall ensure the removal from the United Kingdom of each person who does not have extant leave to remain and is not an Irish citizen or otherwise protected by regulations made under this Act." The following parts of the legislation are introduced on an emergency basis, with an in-built sunset clause after 5 years: Disapply the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UN Convention Against Torture, the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention (ECAT) Derogation is justified under the Vienna Convention doctrine of state of necessity: Britain faces a national emergency in which uncontrolled illegal migration undermines public order. These treaties will otherwise be used by activist judges to frustrate deportations, even after the repeals of the HRA and ECHR. Create Detention Power Without Hardial Singh Constraints This means illegal migrants can be detained until they are deported. Activist lawyers routinely use Hardial Singh to secure their client's bail, after which the client absconds. If you came to the UK illegally, you are ineligible for asylum. End of story All asylum claims will become inadmissible if made by a person within the Act's scope. If you came to the country illegally, you are ineligible for asylum in the UK. This strips the Home Office, the immigration tribunals and the higher courts of jurisdiction to even consider claims. A claim that cannot be considered cannot suspend removal and therefore, cannot delay a flight. Re-entering after deportation and destroying ID becomes a serious criminal offence Re-entry after deportation will be…
The Operational Plan We will create an enforcement unit called UK Deportation Command, including an Illegal Migrant Identification Centre - harnessing cutting edge data fusion A Reform government will create a cutting edge enforcement data centre to relentlessly identify and detain all illegal migrants in the UK. Using powers granted by the new legislation, it will automatically share data between the Home Office, NHS, HMRC, DVLA, banks and the police. It will power bulk warrants, including mandatory biometric capture during any police encounter. Each power addresses a failure mode observed over the past decade - for example, banks and GP surgeries unaware of a customer's status, or overstayers slipping through because a warrant covered only a single property. Secure Immigration Removal Centres (SIRC) will be built rapidly to detain up to 24,000 Detention capacity for up to 24,000 will be created within 18 months. The Home Office will build Secure Immigration Removal Centres. This will be modular accommodation built in remote parts of the country. Conditions are basic but not punitive: prefabricated two-person rooms, canteen catering, on-site medical suites. Robust perimeters and internal movement controls prevent escapes. This enables detention-on-arrest: no more bail. This capacity would allow for up to 24,000 illegal migrants to be deported per month. Initial Voluntary Return Window A six-month Assisted Voluntary Return window precedes large-scale raids. Illegal migrants will be offered a financial incentive to self-deport. An app will be launched to facilitate this. The Deportation Flights The Home Office will scale up charters to 5 flights per day. To guard against last-minute aircraft unserviceability, the RAF will keep one Voyager aircraft on six-hour 'hot-spare' readiness. If a commercial charter breaks down, detainees can still be flown out that night, preserving operational integrity. The legal reset will mean activist lawyers will no longer be able preven…
The UK version of “Project 2025” by the Reform party includes a British ICE, a concentration camp for 24,000 people, mass surveillance and withdrawing from refugee, anti-torture and anti-trafficking conventions.
It’s on their website. That’s how comfortable fascists are in the UK today.
As people are again debating ownership of trauma instead of uniting against fascism, another reminder of how right Hersch Lauterpacht was in arguing for the Holocaust to be seen as Crime against Humanity.
27.01.2026 10:26 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0HUGE APOLOGIES TO EVERYBODY LISTENING.
THROUGH, AS I HAVE NOW ASCERTAINED,
M Y O W N F A U L T
they're playing the show from Jan 12. I just sent the wrong one by accident.
Has never happened and should never happened but can't be undone now.
Playlist for tonight’s @fm4.orf.at Heartbeat from 22:00 CET/9pm GMT is here:
Pic is a screenshot from that newish Bonnie Prince Billy song “They Keep Trying To Find You” which catches the current mood in the US so well (and it’s on the list, obviously)
www.instagram.com/p/DT-V6a7jLh...
Seeing the US government flail in trying to frame these as anything but executions by incompetent trigger happy goons makes me feel like I owe an apology to the FSB morons I mocked for trying to stage an apartment as a Ukrainian terror plot but planting a copy of The Sims III instead of 3 SIM cards.
26.01.2026 10:04 — 👍 845 🔁 170 💬 13 📌 2
Netanyahu sprach von einem „Angrifi auf die westliche jüdisch-christliche Zivilisation", ausgeführt vom radikalen Islam in Zusammenarbeit mit der radikalen Linken. Obwohl beide Kräfte eigentlich Gegner sein müssten, „eint sie eine Sache: der Hass auf Israel und die Juden", bekräftigte der Regierungschef.
Zudem kritisierte Netanyahu europäische Staaten, die ihre Grenzen „ohne jegliche Kontrolle geöffnet" haben.
Israels Transportministerin Miri Regev, die Vilimsky ebenfalls traf, soll Vorsitzende der neu gegründeten „Patriots for Jerusalem/Israel" werden - einer Schwesterstruktur zur europäischen Patrioten-Fraktion. Vilimsky schrieb auf X, er habe mit Regev und anderen Vertretern der „patriotischen Allianz" in Jerusalem bereits „kommende politische Aktionen" geplant. „Da kommt noch einiges."
In einer Stellungnahme der FPÖ heißt es, es sei ein „historischer Moment", da die Partei erstmals offiziell von der israelischen Regierung eingeladen worden sei. FPÖ-Generalsekretär Maximilian Krauss kommentierte den Besuch auf X mit den Worten: „Das endgültige Ende der Ausgrenzung." Bislang wurden FPÖ-Politiker von israelischen Spitzenvertretern gemieden - aus Rücksicht auf die jüdische Gemeinde in Österreich. Diese verweigert die Kooperation mit Spitzenvertretern der FPÖ unter Verweis auf antisemitische Vorfälle.
the rest of the piece:
25.01.2026 22:30 — 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
„Historisches Treffen": FPÖ von Netanyahu nach Israel eingeladen Erstmals wurde mit dem EU-Parlamentarier Harald Vilimsky ein Parteirepräsentant der FPÖ offiziell von der israelischen Regierung eingeladen - und persönlich von Premier Benjamin Netanyahu empfangen. Thema: die Bedrohung durch radikalen Islam, extreme Linke und unkontrollierte Migration nach Europa.
Es ist ein politisches Signal mit erheblicher Sprengkraft: Der israelische Ministerpräsident Benjamin Netanyahu hat am Sonntag eine Delegation europäischer Abgeordneter empfangen - darunter erstmals auch einen Vertreter der Freiheitlichen. Mit dabei war Harald Vilimsky, FPÖ- Delegationsleiter im EU-Parlament. Er sprach im Anschluss von einem „historischen Treffen".
Es kaum auch zum Austausch mit der israelischen Verkehrsministerin Miri Regev. Harald
Das Gespräch dauerte rund 45 Minuten. Teil der Delegation waren Parlamentarier aus Ungarn, Österreich, Spanien und Frankreich aus der Fraktion „Patriots for Europe". Im Mittelpunkt des Gesprächs standen der radikale Islam und die expansive Strategie des Iran, berichtete Vilimsky. Der Freiheitliche zeigte sich von Netanyahus „messerscharfer Analyse" beeindruckt. Israel bezeichnete er als „Schutzwall vor expansiven islamistischen Tendenzen".
Just the Austrian far right on an official visit to Netanyahu and Miri Regev to talk about a “patriotic alliance”, as reported in positive terms by an Austrian hard right news site (no link here)
25.01.2026 22:28 — 👍 21 🔁 4 💬 3 📌 1I’ve seen people say this is bad timing/bad framing by the government, but really timing and framing is all it is (as the article says there already is a National Crime Agency).
Still trying to please the British Trump apologist cheering on the bloodshed on FB as potential “hero voter” material.
This perfectly demonstrates the pernicious nature of BBC two-sidism.
It almost always benefits the side with the most power.
In this case that's the side which is murdering peaceful protesters in the street, on camera, and then lying about it
