Latest news with #catfight
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Is "centrism" making a comeback? OK, sort of — but blink and you'll miss it
Who wasn't mesmerized by last week's epic, if profoundly embarrassing, catfight between Elon Musk and Donald Trump? No one, that's who. I browse a lot of random publications from all over the world, and the online feud between the president of the United States and the richest person on the planet (along with the associated memes: 'high-agency males going at it'!) was front-page news in Finland, Italy, Kenya and Argentina, just for starters. So I'm not here to tell you that the Musk-Trump throwdown was some kind of calculated distraction or, as in the vivid imaginations of some right-wing influencers, a 5D-chess gambit meant to force the 'Big Beautiful Bill' through the Senate and compel the release of the so-called Epstein files. Seriously, can you believe the stupidity of the times we live in? I recently read a lengthy book extract about the devastating impact of the asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago, wiping out nearly all life for millions of years after that, and found myself wondering whether that would be such a bad idea. But 'the girls are fighting' — no disrespect to girls, or to fighting! — definitely obscured a handful of disconnected but related events whose consequences might last a lot longer. Much of the Elon-related pseudo-news emerged from one of Trump's hair-raising Oval Office encounters with a foreign leader, in this case newly-elected German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Before that meeting devolved into chaos, it had in fact already gone off the rails: Trump clearly assumed that Merz must be sad about the Nazis losing World War II, and seemed mildly puzzled to learn otherwise. There's certainly room for historical cynicism about postwar Germany and the role of Merz's center-right party, the Christian Democratic Union, in laundering the reputations of many former Nazis or collaborators. But please don't try to convince yourself that Trump knows anything about that. He is simply too ignorant, and too small-minded, to imagine a scenario in which you're glad your country didn't conquer all of Europe, or to understand that the avowed purpose of the CDU, over its eight decades of existence, has been to rehabilitate Germany as a modern democratic state, free of antisemitism and ultra-nationalism. Merz put a brave face on this moment of grotesquerie, because that's his job; the European media was justifiably horrified, because that's theirs. But there was an intriguing undertow below all this that wasn't readily discernible; bear with me for a minute while we work through it. As I wrote here a few weeks ago, Merz is in an unlikely position and he knows it: He's a finance-capital multimillionaire from an aristocratic Catholic family who emerged from an indecisive federal election as the accidental leader of European democracy. In more innocent times he was described as the most pro-American politician in Germany. Now, with Trump back in the White House, Britain self-extracted from the EU and French President Emmanuel Macron fading into irrelevance, Merz more than anyone else is tasked with charting the course of European independence and fending off the continent-wide rise of the far right. Merz's electoral victory over the somewhat-fascist AfD — which has been the object of transatlantic mash notes from JD Vance and Elon Musk — coupled with recent wins by center-left parties in Canada and Australia, suggested something of a global "centrist" comeback. (Setting aside, for the moment, the question of whether that deliberately meaningless word actually means anything.) This wasn't entirely an illusion, and for those with a candle burning in the window for democracy, it was a sign of hope. The grandiose overreach of the second Trump regime has clearly fueled a normie backlash in many parts of the world, pumping new life into mainstream political parties that had seemed to be in terminal decline. As it happens, Merz's visit to Washington coincided with a strange only-in-2025 event taking place in a nearby hotel basement: WelcomeFest, a day-long series of speeches and events billed as the 'largest public gathering of centrist Democrats.' (There's that word again!) I wasn't there, and reports from the no-doubt-riveting scene were decidedly mixed. It sounds like a blend of entirely reasonable debate about how Democrats can craft a broadly popular message and a full-on declaration of war on the Bernie/AOC left and 'the groups,' a codeword used to denigrate social justice movements of many varieties without quite naming them. The groups in question would seem to include LGBTQ activists, the climate justice movement, police and prison reformers or abolitionists, and anyone who utters the word 'Palestine.' As Aída Chávez of The Nation reports, pundit Matt Yglesias — pseudo-intellectual poster boy for this entire phenomenon — still thinks it was a bad idea for Democrats to give a crap about Kilmar Ábrego García's illegal deportation to El Salvador. Pollster David Shor told Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, according to David Weigel of Semafor, that 'voters really hate electric cars.' Slotkin, who clearly hopes to be the Democrats' centrist savior in 2028, politely demurred: What voters actually hate is too much regulation, blah blah blah. Talk of 'abundance' was abundant — speaking of meaningless catchphrases of the moment — and in some cases deployed to attack labor unions or suggest that left-wing rhetoric about oligarchy and corporate power was strictly for the kids' table. So is this the centrist moment? Is neoliberalism back from its remarkably brief and partial ideological exile, under the inspiring and all-unifying banner of not being quite as bad as Trump? Are we about to witness the end of the end of the end of history? I'm sorry for posing such dumb questions, especially since the answer to all of them is 'kind of.' In domestic politics, the agenda of WelcomeFesters like Yglesias, Slotkin, Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington is clear enough: They want to party like it's 1992. They want to make sex less fun, freedom less free and state repression more repressive, on the endlessly disproven hypothesis that surrendering your principles, cowering in fear and giving hateful people most of what they supposedly want might win the next election. I try to avoid overt editorializing in this space, but as my Uncle Fred would have said: F**k that for a game of specifically, the centrist vanguard wants to use the Democratic Party's post-Kamala crisis to cancel the 2020 peace treaty between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and return to the time-honored ritual of punishing and purging the left. God knows there's enough blame to go around for the failures of the 2024 Harris campaign, but the not-so-hidden message here is a thoroughgoing rejection of the former president that basically all these people claimed to adore until about this time last year: Biden was too old, too stubborn and too woke, and led us into this disaster. On the global stage, there are already signs that the centrist renaissance may be a transitory phenomenon, not much more than 'kicking the can down the road,' as Armida van Rij of Chatham House wrote last week in Foreign Policy. Poland's presidential election ended in a narrow victory by far-right nationalist Karol Nawrocki, a conspicuous Trump ally in one of Europe's largest and most strategically important countries. Poland is deeply divided along lines of class, culture and geography (not entirely dissimilar to America's), and Nawrocki's win shouldn't be simplistically understood as a referendum on Trumpism, even if Kristi Noem, without the slightest idea of where she was or what she was doing there, showed up to campaign for him. This is likely to mean several more years of political paralysis in between authoritarianism and democracy, and increasingly fraught relations with Ukraine, which is directly to Poland's east. Meanwhile, the Dutch government has collapsed (once again) after anti-immigrant agitator Geert Wilders pulled his newborn far-right party out of an already wobbly coalition, clearly hoping to win a greater share of power in an October election. It's entirely possible, as many analysts believe, that Wilders has overplayed his hand and that the migrant crisis is no longer the dominant issue in European politics, largely thanks to Trump 2.0. But Wilders' chaos-agent antics, along with the Polish result and the startling gains made in recent British local elections by Nigel Farage's shambolic Reform UK, should make clear that reassuring narratives about the global demise of the Trump-style far right — politics is healing itself! — must be taken with several kilos of salt. "Centrist" leaders like Merz, Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer have repeatedly tried to triangulate toward some democracy-salvaging consensus by repackaging the right's most seductive ideas and offloading all remaining vestiges of left-flavored economic populism. Whether that's hard-headed realpolitik or deep-seated cynicism and corruption is up for debate, but it should sound familiar to anyone acquainted with the Democratic Party's 40-year trajectory. Look how well that has worked.
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- General
- Daily Mail
Model is hauled to court after being attacked by mother and daughter in furious nightclub toilets catfight
A model who was attacked by a mother and daughter in a furious nightclub toilets catfight has been hauled to court. Bethany Brown left 23-year-old Amelia Begg with a bloody nose after attacking her when she was slapped by Amelia's mother, Heather, 40. Violence flared in the ladies' toilet at the venue PJs in Warrington, Cheshire, after the trio were said to have got into an 'exchange of words' on February 2. The argument escalated after Heather slapped 23-year-old Brown in the face, prompting the hairdresser to grab Amelia's hair and punch her in the face as Heather tried to separate them. Amelia then punched at Brown and her mother joined in the assault. During the brawl, Amelia threw a further slew of punches at Brown until she was pulled away by another woman in the bathroom. But it did not end there, as Brown then responded again by repeatedly punching Amelia to the head before he was also pulled off by another woman. The whole incident was said to have lasted around 45 seconds. At Warrington Magistrates' Court, CCTV footage was played of the incident as the women pleaded guilty to using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent to cause fear of or provoke unlawful violence. Elizabeth Browne, for the prosecution, said: 'The matter dates back to February 2 of this year. 'This incident arises from an altercation in the communal area of a public bathroom. There is CCTV of the incident. 'I suggest showing it to you rather than describing it as it speaks for itself. There was substantial use of force. 'Miss Brown grabbed the other lady's hair and punched her on several occasions.' CCTV shown to the court showed the inside the busy communal area of the nightclub's ladies' bathroom Women can be seen at the washbasins, while Brown, wearing a backless top and trousers, is standing at the door looking out into the club with her back to the camera. During the brawl, Amelia Begg, pictured, threw a further slew of punches at Brown until she was pulled away by another woman in the bathroom She turns around briefly before going back to the door when she becomes involved in a confrontation with the Begg women who are standing outside of the bathroom. One of the women, said to be Heather Begg, slaps Brown to the left side of the face. The women move out of the bathroom briefly after which Brown can be seen holding Amelia's hair and punching her whilst Heather tries to pull her off and separate the women. The fight moves into the bathroom area and Amelia punches Brown. Heather also punches Brown. Amelia then rains down a series of punches on Brown. Another woman pulls her away. Brown hits back and she repeatedly punches Amelia in the face. Another woman pulls her back. Peter Green, defending the model, said his client is the lady who is initially assaulted, adding: 'What is clear is that perhaps initially she was acting in self-defence, but then it goes beyond self-defence. 'However, she did not start the incident at all - it is the other two ladies who started the incident. They were the initial aggressors. 'My client's involvement was not sustained. It was for a limited period that she was committing this offence. At the start of the violence, she was the person being assaulted.' For the Beggs, Simon Dunn said in mitigation: 'Heather Begg was the person who precipitated the incident. There had been some interaction between the two parties. 'It was based on a situation Bethany Brown took exception to and challenged Heather Begg and you can see the exchange in the doorway. 'Heather Begg accepts she should not have slapped Bethany Brown, but Bethany Brown reacted to that, grabbed hold of Heather, and Amelia came to her mother's rescue. 'From Heather Begg's point of view, she was trying to separate the two parties. 'The officer in their summary says that there is an opportunity for all in the party to disengage at various points but that did not happen. 'It lasted about 45 seconds and certainly other women are involved. Punches were thrown towards Heather and Amelia. 'Amelia did end up with a bloody nose and bruising to the face and was in shock by the whole set of circumstances. She wished she had not been involved. 'This happened in February of this year, and there have been no issues whatsoever since then. There is significant remorse for what happened and what occurred.' JP Alf Bean said: 'That does not make good viewing, does it? 'Watching it was not pleasant, and I am sure that you are quite ashamed of yourselves for behaving like that.' He told Brown: ' We have heard representations on your behalf that you were initially the victim and we tend to agree with that. 'That is how it started. But you moved from a position of self-defence, you grabbed Amelia against the wall and were punching her. 'It was not a good situation to be involved in, and your copybook has not been blotted. 'We have taken into account that you have never appeared before the court before - make sure that you do not come back again.' Brown from Birchwood, Warrington who was fined £546 with £303 in costs, was dealt with separately from the Beggs from Great Sankey area of the town, who were each fined £615 with £331 in costs and surcharge.
