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| Defending England From Itself: Those dismissed as “far right thugs” don’t hate the refugees holed-up in hotels because they’re Muslims, or because their skins are a different colour, they hate them because they are changing a lifeworld Englishmen like themselves no longer feel able to defend, and which no one – least of all their iron-fisted “Labour” government – is prepared to defend for them. |
KEIR STARMER’S promise to create a “standing army” of specialist riot police undoubtedly evoked a number of disturbing historical associations. Not the least of these would have been the Cromwellian Commonwealth of the 1640s and 50s. The one and only time the British Isles have lived under a republican form of government was made possible by the existence of a large standing army. Indeed, without Oliver Cromwell’s “New Model Army” it is doubtful King Charles I would have lost the English Civil War – let alone his head! Inspired by the ideals of radical puritanism, it was Cromwell’s “plain, russet-coated troopers” who ensured the victory of Parliament over the Crown.
That said, the New Model Army would likely strike contemporary Englishmen and women as something akin to the Taliban in breastplates. Even in the Seventeenth Century, the heavy-handed imposition of the puritans’ abstemious and censorious version of Christianity provoked alarm and despondency.
While Cromwell and his standing army ruled, Bibles in one hand, swords in the other, “Merry England” fell silent. The Puritan-dominated Commonwealth Parliament closed all the theatres and ruthlessly enforced their no-frills observance of the Sabbath. Determined to root out “paganism” in all its forms, the Puritans cut down village maypoles and outlawed the celebration of Christmas!
With Cromwell’s death, England fell under the sway of the New Model Army’s Major-Generals. For a brief period the country was forced to endure a military dictatorship.
The British people’s longstanding hostility towards the maintenance of large standing armies was born out of these bitter experiences. Radical ideology, backed by armed men, has been seen as profoundly un-English ever since.
All the more reason, then, to wonder at Starmer’s use of the term in relation to the violent civil disturbances which have shaken the British people over the past fortnight. It is possible that the United Kingdom’s new prime minister promised to create a standing army of special police in complete ignorance of the term’s historical resonances. But, even if he did, the promise is fraught with danger.
Sir Robert Peel, the British prime minister responsible for the creation of the British police force was careful to reject the idea of modelling his new law enforcement body on the armed French gendarmerie. Aware of the British people’s deep aversion to being ordered about by men with guns, Peel was the original promoter of “policing by consent”. Prior to Peel’s force, the quelling of public disorder had largely been left to the “Redcoats” – soldiers who tended to shoot first and not ask questions later.
Outside of Northern Ireland, it is many years since the British Army has been called to the aid of the Civil Power. This is hardly surprising, since the issuance of such an appeal is the last resort of a state under immense internal pressure. After calling out the armed forces, there is no one left to summon. If soldiers cannot restore order, then the next step is full-scale revolution.
What does it mean, then, that as anti-immigrant rioting peaked across north-west England some Members of Parliament were openly calling for the UK Defence Force to be unleashed upon its own people?
Sadly, it means that the UK political class, like Cromwell’s radical puritans, no longer sees itself as an integral part of the body politic, but as something extrinsic to it. The puritans believed themselves to be the elect of God, a holy minority of true Christians whom the Almighty had already predestined for paradise. The contrast between themselves and the sinful majority, all headed for the endless chastisement of hellfire, could hardly have been sharper.
The contrast between today’s puritans (often labelled “woke”, a term they heartily despise) and the rioting crowds of rock-throwers and arsonists who do not share their betters’ love for refugees and migrants, is every bit as pointed. What’s more, in their hearts, Starmer and his Labour colleagues know that for every angry protester on the street waving the Union Flag and England’s red cross of Saint George, there are hundreds more watching the action unfold on their screens – and urging them on.
The irony of all these riots breaking out along Labour’s “Red Wall” can hardly be lost on its newly-elected MPs. Nor the fact that in so many of the seats Labour reclaimed from the Tories, Nigel Farage’s anti-immigrant Reform Party came second. While Starmer and his Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, promise the perpetrators of “far-right thuggery” a lengthy holiday at His Majesty’s expense, and the UK’s terrifying Director of Public Prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, threatens to incarcerate Freedom of Expression along with them, the yawning gulf between rulers and ruled grows ever greater.
It is tragic that no one entrusted with the running of the UK has thought to wonder publicly what could possibly inspire sufficient rage to render otherwise ordinary people capable of attempting to set fire to a hotel containing scores of terrified refugees.
The go-to explanation for the Prime Minister, and for the UK’s mainstream news media, is that the riots are the work of “far right thugs”. This is, in part, a plausible charge, inasmuch as a great deal of the disinformation carried by social-media has, indeed, been the work of white supremacists and outright fascists.
It is wide of the mark, however, at the level of the working-class lad marching alongside his mates in the name of the community they all grew up in, but which is now fast dissolving before their eyes. These youths do not come from Far Right families. There was a time when all of them voted, with an almost religious fervour, “not for the iron fist, but for the helping-hand”. For Labour.
These guys don’t hate the refugees holed-up in the hotels because they’re Muslims, or because their skins are a different colour, they hate them because they are changing a lifeworld Englishmen like themselves no longer feel able to defend, and which no one – least of all their iron-fisted “Labour” government – is prepared to defend for them.
What do they want from Keir Starmer? They want a “standing army” to protect their communities from being overwhelmed by a flood of refugees and immigrants (more than two million in the last two years) that they did not ask for and cannot absorb.
What are they being offered by Keir Starmer? A standing army of special coppers bearing a frightening resemblance to the ones who cracked their father’s heads during the Miners’ Strike of the 1980s. Or, for those among them who know even more of their nation’s history, to Cromwell’s standing army of radical puritans who silenced Merry England in the 1650s.
This essay was posted on the Bowalley Road blogsite on Monday, 12 August 2024.
55 comments:
1. The difference between Starmer and Cromwell is that Cromwell's government had very little authority outside of the major cities – in fact very little outside of London itself and maybe the Home Counties a bit.
2. I suspect even in the 17th and 18th centuries, the British realised that a standing army was a prelude to an authoritarian royalist regime – as happened in France.
3. The reaction against immigration seems very strong in places that never see an immigrant from one year to the next.
4. I think it was the Guardian made the point – why are these far right people simply condemned as thugs, while every instance of Muslim violence is viewed as terrorism.
5. Much of this increased immigration was facilitated by the Tories, and not reduced by brexit.
6. Britain now suffers from labour shortages in a number of areas. There will be the usual cries of Britons don't want to work, to which the answer is "at the wages you are paying them". No one seems to be able to address this particular problem.
Your view of who constitutes an "Englishman" is of concern and undermines your entire article. Merry England, the British people, profoundly un-English, lifeworld Englishmen who are 'otherwise ordinary people'. As they say, and can be attributed to your post, "there ain't no black in your Union Jack".
I was living in Britain in the late '80s / early 90's, and was entwined with especially the Afro-Caribbean community, as well as strong interactions with the African, Sub-Continental and East Asian peoples. Almost all were at least 2nd generation British, the children of the Windrush generation. Many of those friends are now grandparents. At least 4th generation Britons.
I am aware of Chris' avocation of the rights of the descendants of immigrants in NZ, especially those from old limey. I wonder how many generations before a 'immigrant' becomes British in this blog. The Huguenots and the Jewish populations that came in the 19th century to launch the British skilled mercantile sector? Are they British? or indeed the Jewish population that fled Hitler? That was a decade before Windrush.
So a British born son of (presumably Christian) migrants commits' a horrendous crime. It is now clear that Putin's Russia used social media to promote malicious misinformation, organized far right activists (disturb by what democracy delivered) had riot plans in place and in the football off season, the violent thugs were mobilized.
So what has Starmer looked at? The use of social media to promote misinformation, especially aided be hostile foreign operatives, is looked at to be limited. This is very much the 'cry fire in the cinema' scenario of modern times. Not a limitation on free speech, but preventing misinformation designed to cause harm. Rather than have to move local bobbies between local districts, have a core group of trained police that can be moved to trouble spots. With specialist training, there is a greater chance of incidents being dealt with quickly and professionally. I think comparing this to the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649–1653) is a screech, and an insult to the Irish suffering.
The economy of many of the towns concerned has been laid waste. The real otherwise ordinary people have stood up. The anti-racism counter protests have well out numbered the thugs. All British people have marched to show solidarity to their neighbour, their school mates, their post master, their co-worked, their football players, their singers and musicians, their local shop keeper - those integrated into the town and the identity of the people.
This is so interesting Chris. Lot's of background that we all have forgotten and the effects of bad moves we seem likely to repeat. And your discussion about the British PM's actions and statements seem to resonate with my belief that most people who are in political and administrative positions don't know much about the relevant history relating to their tasks. Nor do they understand the highs and lows of human traits.
"The proper study of mankind, is man." Alexander Pope (1688--1744)
National Institutes of Health (NIH) (.gov) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › ...
It's ironic that the quote is repeated by the USA Health Department. They appear to study humankind, but at a high cost. Probably we will follow the same study as we revise our Health System.
(It's a pity you had to let a devotee of internet settings fiddle with your site. They love to redecorate, even overturn, the old familiar scenario.)
‘My shop was looted by rioters, then saved by strangers’ - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-e885e189-aee4-4250-bbfc-c7f3c52f4d48
Perhaps the British are not the Toby Jug and Walter Scott stereotypes of Chris' blog post. We do not have to freeze them in time as a demographic, we can welcome that all societies grow and change while maintaining the core of the values. The above BBC article shows how the far right, Russian initiated thugs destroyed the south Asian owned mini mart in Southport, where racist violence occurred.
The local community raised money and turned up to repair the damage to his shop. Most unknown to him. The spirit of Dunkirk and the Blitz has not disappeared, but it has become inclusive as to protecting that which is British.
"The contrast between today’s puritans (often labelled “woke”, a term they heartily despise)" - I almost overlooked this nugget.
So those celebrating the right to difference and multiplicity of identity are . . . puritans? And those trying to violently eliminate rights and cultural and ethnic difference are . . . cavalier?
Cognitive dissonance in defense of a world view.
The imagined gulf between white supremacists, fascists, football hooligans and working class lads, is more of a narrow gap. The former Labour Party voters who voted Brexit and Tory handing the Tories many Labour seats, shows that Labour can't take these voters for granted in the 2020s as they might have done 30-50 years ago. How many of these working class lads that are terrorising refugees are members of a trade union? They are from that class but do they share their grandfather's politics?
In Germany the support for the AfD comes disproportionately from the formally communist part of Germany. In the 1930s the Gestapo estimated that 70% of the recruits for the Nazi paramilitary Sturmabteilung (the Brown Shirts) in Berlin were formerly communists. Such recruits were jokingly called beefsteaks - brown on the outside, red in the centre.
Those who are willing to take physical action, when voting doesn't seem to work, will go along with their mates regardless of whether the mob they are joining is labeled "Left" or "Right". There an be much more satisfaction in doing something dramatic than there is in ticking a box on a piece of paper once every 3-5 years. Especially when voting just leads to more of the same no matter which party wins.
Very good summary of what I've been looking at too.
There are some quite well known personalities, historian David Starkey, for one, who are extremely concerned in the way the UK has been going for decades. And a number of concerns at the authoritarian state the UK is becoming.
Puritans they are. The "public service" appear to have become overlords above elected officials, like the courts, who are there to continue the implementation of their politcal, bordering on religious, beliefs, regardless of their ministers. And it appears, if the stars align and the public servants, now master's, and the elected government are equal believers of the same cult, then onwards and upwards go their noble causes. Just like NZ, 2020 to 2023.
The sheer arrogance of this insidious movement of progressiveism is in no way making society a better place, rather it's destroying it. Where they, the anointed, are activists, the riff raff working class proles who dare to question their wisdom are labelled extreme right wingers, who will feel the full force of the law!
Secular we may be nowadays in the traditional sense, but religions have always had different gods. Progressiveism is just another brand. A toxic ugly lying brand.
Those "working class lads" have never voted in their lives, except for the occasional far-right candidate. Neither did their parents, probably, what with Britain's terrible voter turnout. Perhaps their grandparents voted Labour long ago, or perhaps those grandparents voted Tory to keep the Catholics down. Or maybe they were fans of Enoch Powell. Though I would point out the far-right has long since infected working class football hooliganism too.
Between your embrace of Auckland Boomer culture-war hysteria, your implied praise for Le Pen, and now this, you really are turning into quite the far-right apologist, aren't you, Mr Trotter? What would your younger self think? There's a sad irony that your blog still features this:
"However, I do add this warning. If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their collective spleen."
A memory of better times.
This comment lacks balance The Barron. Don't ride your white horse of universal love and purity and acceptance of every grievance, right over us. I hadn't noticed you taking that line before.
There were at least 100,000 black people in Britain when the government made slavery illegal. I suspect they didn't just go away.
Well over a decade ago 102 historians wrote an open letter calling for media and publications not to refer to Starkey as an historian except in relation to his specialist area of Tudor history.
Subsequently, his racist and nationalist views and expressions have been so untethered from academic research every university, learning institution and professional body has expelled him and withdrawn previous awards.
Before the cry of cancelation is made, you have to consider he has used his professional and academic positions to promote and give credence to unresearched fringe opinions targeted against communities in Britain. Institutions had to distance themselves from his vile views.
These include disruption of modern communities, and his views on trans Atlantic slavery that have been liken to holocaust denialism.
DS
The phrase "far-right" appears in your comment four times. I wonder if a) you'd like to define what you think "far-right" means, and b) why, as is implicit in your comment, being "far-right" is something one should avoid or repudiate in others.
I'm actually amazed that it has taken this long for there to be a backlash against the effects of mass immigration, sparked, in this case, by a first generation son of immigrants.
Turn the tables and, if there was a policy where Whites were flooding into non-White countries and being given every advantage unavailable to the locals (which isn't happening because forced diversity is only a policy in historically White countries - obviously, non-Whites value the racial and cultural homogeneity in their homelands), the hard-of-thinking self-hating Whites among us would be appalled ("colonisation" they'd probably call it). But when it's non-Whites being (legally or illegally) being pumped into formerly homogenous White societies (the last 20 or 30 years seeing more immigration into Britain than in the preceding 1000 years, probably even longer), it's seen as the best thing ever, usually because these champions of diversity are in a position to completely avoid its effects.
There isn't a success story to be found in any historical situation featuring high levels of diversity (usually, it's a recipe for war at worst, and significant tension, friction and conflict at least), and the diversity project being foisted on the West since WW 2 and particularly the last 20 years (which, as we are seeing in Britain, necessitates authoritarianism as a means of maintaining order in an inherently unstable social situation) will be no different. If people want to know how mass immigration leading to high levels of heterogeneity looks like, just look at Britain and the rest of Europe. It doesn't matter what effects people would prefer diversity entails, it only matters what effects it does entail.
I'd be interested to know what would you consider to be the benefits (we are told practically self-evident - certainly, I've never heard any plausible justification for the pop slogan "diversity is strength) of a highly heterogeneous society, as opposed to what Britain used to be until beginning about 50 years ago, which was highly homogeneous.
On the basic principle (well established in many contexts) that any complex system is more inherently reliable, stable and anti-fragile the fewer its moving parts or elements (or the less difference, you could say), I don't think there is any valid argument in favour of greater complexity over less.
After all, why are there distinct races to begin with? Could it be because human beings prefer other human beings who share common traits, common history and common genetics, over the out group? If humans didn't naturally tend towards likeness over difference, our differences would never have been maintained.
The British establishment have rushed to condemn not only the perpetrators but the very idea that any concerns over mass immigration could have some validity. Very much like the "rivers of filth" response to the anti-mandate protests here.
Rather than addressing the concerns, people raising the issues (immigrant criminality for example) are being convicted and imprisoned.
Does anyone seriously believe this will make anything better?
I must admit a touch of schadenfreud whenever I see communists destroying themselves, although my joy is always tempered by the fact that they never learn and because innocent people get caught up in the meat grinder.
So it is with Britain, watching some titled toff leading the "Labour" Party in gleefully going after his own voters and employing another titled toff in the Police for the ground work. And to make it even funnier they're using, and extending, a set of Orwellian laws passed by the Tories, that enable the State to define what is "misinformation" and having special police to deal with it. They need to hire a few old Stasi agents to show them how it's don
Best of all is watching their supporters - who'd all be squealing like stuck pigs were it communists and other Far Lefters being targeted - get behind all this, including dismissing the protestors as not being Left-wing at all: "othering" at its best.
From a Tory POV it's all good; the riots don't happen in the nice, leafy places that support open borders and educate their white kids about anti-racism, the Left tear themselves apart because opposing immigration is racist, and all the low-paid jobs still get done without having to raise wages. They're undoubtedly cheering on Starmer and Rowley.
Excerpt from 'This Sceptred Isle.'
Reflections on the revolution in England:
It [London] isn’t hers now. It belongs mostly to the regime that propagandizes to her that her ancestors were evil and the structures that might have ordered her life are mere restraints to be overcome; and it belongs increasingly to the Islamic population of the city that — unlike the English ruling classes — have the confidence and cohesion to assert and defend their own mores and folkways and traditions. That many of those civics, a term I use very loosely here, are inimical to the English is irrelevant, because they know very well that the regime will protect them in those cases, and they know they have superior Aristotelian philia among themselves. Londonistan as a phenomenon is quite real: I had not seen this many women in hijabs since a brief stint working in Jordan decades ago, and I had never seen this many women in a niqab, ever. We should understand clearly what this signifies. The deliberate process that turned London across the past generation into a city in which the native-born population are a minority — for the first time, it should be noted, in two thousand years — is not malign because of any specific characteristics of the non-native population. The topic of Islam within the West is well covered elsewhere, and in any case a confident and rooted Christian society would neutralize the threats born of social opportunity. I saw a datum asserting that more British Muslims have joined ISIS and al-Nusra in the past fifteen years than have joined the British Army, and this is a massive problem if true, but ultimately one emergent from the flaws in host society, which fails to insist upon itself and its own values. That deliberate process of societal importation is malign, fundamentally, because the process is one in which the regime literally executes what Brecht proposed as mere satire in 1953’s Die Lösung:
After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
https://www.armas.co/p/this-sceptred-isle
There must be a connection between the problems with muslim immigrants in the UK (some of them) and what the plight of muslims in Gaza and the West Bank. No one seems to be making such a connection but it seems logical that given the role of the UK in setting up the situation that has existed for the last 70 years in Palestine there would be a motivation among some people with roots in that part of the world to get back by whatever means they can. The issues of Tommy Robinsons history being the most famous example. Sorting out Palestine and Israel might be the solution to both areas of order.
D J S
The Islamist history of animus towards non Muslims has a 1400 year history, so no. The tens of thousands of Christians being genocided in sub Saharan Africa won't be impressed with your "connection, I'm sure.
Here's a very good interview with Tommy Robinson where he explains his motivations in his own words. Not what you might have imagined.
https://youtu.be/jnhwBoFxaDI
And a short (10 min) excerpt: https://youtu.be/-_3r0_0BoFY
Of course the British government compensated the slave owners for emancipation, to the extent the bonds for this were only paid off during the Cameron premiership.
I hope this is a matter where my comments have been misread, as I rarely have disagreement with you Grey.
I think I have been consistent in rejecting the word "woke" as having any substance. It has been used as a bye word for those supporting rights based issues and movements, and the individual identities people have adopted that have been traditionally suppressed in the west. It is a lazy term with hidden bile as to maintaining a power structure that excludes others.
Chris suggested that those he sees as "woke" are equated with puritans. Yet, any analytical historical comparison would show suppression of ideas identities and difference is entwined with the puritan ethos. This would seem the antithesis to the promotion and protection of the rights of disempowered sectors.
It is so off the mark I have opined that for Chris to equate his use of "woke" with the Puritan movement requires cognitive dissonance.
This blog is now getting very invested in blame the victim mentality.
Let us look at a bit of history. Britain created an empire which included the enslavement of Africans, forced in chains from Africa to the Caribbean. Taking the wealth from the subcontinent and Africa. Then leaving the former colonies with very little infrastructure and training. Some immigration has been a direct result of British colonialism. The east African Indian population that are prominent in Ealing an example.
In the post War period, there was a labour shortage. Recruitment from the colonies was seen as the solution. Hence the Windrush generation and subcontinental. This was the '50s and '60's. All arrived in Britain legally and there children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are British. Then successive British governments used immigration to control inflation. Again, all arriving legally. In recent decades, failure to build wealth and safety in developing countries, you have seen an increase in refugees. The legitimate refugees have been processed legally. There are those that have not been processed, or have not been found legitimate. These unlawful migrants are an extremely small part of ''non-white' immigration in the post war period.
Yes, I.C. Clairly, the thugs attacking their neighbours are far right. And yes, far right political views are bad. The demonstration of this is that after an election delivered a clear result in Britain and Northern Ireland, rather than accept the result they riot and target legal and legitimate British of colour.
I go back to my original post. The commentators posting here seem to have a definition of what is British not held by the vast majority of Brits. The level in which communities have inclusively developed is obvious within Britain. The anti-racism counter marches (or anti-sectarian in NI) have shown the isolation and limited support of the far right.
The mass of support for their fellow Britons, and the British police and court system has enforce incitement laws has helped put the far right thugs back to their echo chamber. It is strange that this blog draws apologists for violence in a society most are not invested in.
"those celebrating the right to difference"
Try burning a "pride" flag, or painting over one of their other sacred symbols, and you'll soon feel the wrath of the woke puritans, they're not promoting difference so much as conformity to their quasi religious beliefs. "Puritans" is entirely appropriate and we need to be awake to the real danger inherent in their totalising "celebration".
"Recently we have seen statesmen such as Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, insist that his very nation is “post-national.”
Such a statement is the logical consequence of the proclivity of such leaders to proclaim that inclusivity, diversity, and equity is the replacement social identity. What portrays itself as a universalist compassion at the outset, is in fact the jaws of the Leviathan stretching wide enough to devour everything.
To reduce the existence of a nation to diversity and openness is to in time destroy that nation, as diversity without unity can only be decomposition. But our interpretation of the tune changes when we realise we are moving towards a system, a kind of meta-state, where everything is included and where all competing identities, including nations, must be swallowed up.
The globalist struggle is ultimately presented as a fight against intermediary identities such as nation, gender, family, and religion because they present an obstacle to the free individual, but in the final analysis, the “sovereignty of the individual” will be subsumed into the body of the Leviathan by the very
processes by which this sovereignty arose, and radical freedom will be transformed into totalitarian control."
https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/blog/identity-individual-and-the-state-versus-the-subsidiary-hierarchy-of-heaven/
The phrase "far-right" appears in your comment four times. I wonder if a) you'd like to define what you think "far-right" means, and b) why, as is implicit in your comment, being "far-right" is something one should avoid or repudiate in others.
"Far-right" means qualitatively further right than the standard neoliberal or old-school paternalist right (New Zealand's standard right would be National/ACT, and Britain's would be the Conservative Party). The far-right is generally associated with reactionary opposition to the Enlightenment and the Enlightenment's liberal and socialist offspring, a paranoia about a cultural "other" (particularly Jews, for whom the contemporary term 'globalist' is a code-word), an embrace of conspiracy theories, and appeals to imagined traditions that never existed in reality - especially in respect to the "nation."
As for why this stuff ought to be avoided - see the first half of the twentieth century. I have often wondered whether the re-emergence of this dark shadow simply reflects that only a small number of very old men and women now have an adult memory of 1945. But I am seriously disturbed at how the ostensible mainstream right seems to be embracing this, at least overseas. Luckily New Zealand's mainstream right is still wedded to garden-variety neoliberalism, while Winston Peters makes it impossible for anyone genuinely dangerous to get a foothold.
I'd be interested to know what the benefits of a totally homogeneous society are. Japan is pretty much homogeneous, and I can't see too many advantages's bringing from the actual homogeneity. And while complex mechanical systems may well less stable' complex biological ones may well be more resilient. After all, omnivores have advantages over both carnivores and herbivores I imagine. And from what I can gather, diverse societies are better fitted for meeting challenges, promote creativity and empathy, and are more adaptable. There are studies out there apparently. That leaves out the mundane advantage of better food.
Race is pretty much a social construct, the genetic differences between us are minor, and we have interbred like mad over thousands of years.
Thank you Barron. Saved me the trouble.
To be honest, I'm not a great fan of Starmer but his dad was a toolmaker, and his mother was a nurse. He is not a titled 'toff' as such, because his title was not inherited. He went to university and got a law degree and is I would have thought the model of social mobility – which conservatives pretend to admire and promote.
His knighthood was given to him for services to law and justice. You could probably get one if you did some service. Anyway, I imagine his working class credentials are just as good as yours or anyone else's for that matter.
All the problems? Research has shown that immigrants commit crimes at a much lower rate than the native born. And have done for the last 150 years. Certainly almost all of them have committed fewer crimes than Tommy Robinson.
"Why are there distinct races to begin with?" - well, there aren't. Race does not exist as a scientific category. Racism is a social construct based on the false belief of race. Further, skin colour is a very small genetic component with no correlation to any other trait.
As with many NZ demonstrations there will be a collection of different reasons that people join the mob. In Britain it will be those who don't like muslims or blacks and those who see immigrants of any kind as potentially taking the jobs of locals. Those who don't like the Indian dairy owner doing well, and those who see every Muslim as a potential terrorist. Hard economic times just inflame the situation. Starmer's standing army is trying to put a patch over a weeping sore. Keep the peace but don't address the basic issues of economic stability, housing and meaningful employment.
IMO although the Puritans enforced their beliefs by the military and the law, their actions were born from religious fanaticism not unlike what is happening in modern day Iran and Afghanistan. The same but different. The common denominator being one section of a community inflicting their beliefs on the other part of the community. Although I am a Presbyterian I don't practice and despise the violence and upheaval religion has caused throughout history.
And 1200 "academics" signed a letter opposing the Listener 7. It doesn't mean they are right; just the academic version of Covid.
I've listened to Starkey intensely and what I do not detect is racism. Yes, he's an unabashed conservative and yes, very invested in his English culture but none of that labels him any of the woke ism's that are issued to shut him up.
Indeed he has rightly noted, that carrying a St George Cross flag is a sin in progressive law, but a St Andrews Cross or Dragon perfectly acceptable and to be proud of. Which of course marries nicely with the woke decree of loathing anything white and or English.
The problem is Starkey is far too articulate and will not back down that has got the progressive establishment off side. And his very public cancellation.
But he is right and he won't go away, and they hate that!
Concerning Islamic people in London, I read that many had expensive accommodation, either hotels or their own houses in the 1970s. A nursery maid was chastised for smacking a young Arab male where they were living in one floor of a hotel. The child had dirtied himself and wiped his bottom on the curtains. The rule was that females do not assume precedence over males of any age. There were many rich Asians who bought properties in London and left their children living in them attending school. They might have what were considered noisy parties affecting the neighbours and could not be limited in their behaviour.
I understood that much of the wealth was oil money.
Becoming rich seems to affect every race with those 'afflicted' by this magic then tending to assume haughty behaviours that do not result in a harmonious civil society either in their own country or when residing elsewhere. Many Islamic immigrants may have fled a deteriorating society; we are seeing ours unroll around us in NZ/AO. It is disheartening for us, and no doubt their society and way of life broken too causes them distress also.
That's very unpleasant to read DS. A warning is necessary, and you should heed your own. We need to be thinking and seeking and not threatening or harming others as soon as we are angered.
Cann told police following his arrest that he went into the city with a friend to view the protest. He insisted he held no animosity towards police and that his own nephew was an officer. He confirmed he was on medication, but had also been smoking cannabis. He told police he was not a racist and that he lit the firework with a cigarette he was smoking. The court was told he had 26 convictions for 170 offences, reports the Mr Aldous said Bailey had been caught on camera picking up a can and throwing it with the contents spilling out and was heard shouting along with the chants of "refugees not welcome here"
[ ]
Judge Robert Linford then rounded on Cann telling him that according to his police interview he discussed with them "about the better use of taxpayers' money and why people were having to pay to keep these people in this country after committing such heinous crimes."
Judge Linford then launched a stinging rebuke,saying: "So let's look at how the taxpayer have been funding your activities over the last 38 years - let's see what you've cost the country: you've got 10 aliases, four fictitious birth dates, you're 51 years of age, you've been convicted of 170 offences, you been convicted of theft, arson, taking cars, handling stolen goods, obtaining by deception, burglary, dangerous driving and possessing bladed articles. In all over the years that you've been visiting the criminal justice system you've received sentences totalling 357 months in prison, many of them concurrent. "In other words, nearly 30 years. That Mr Cann is what you've been costing this country and you sit there in that interview and saw fit to be critical of others. You have no right whatever to say who should or should not be in this country."
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I disagree with the judge and the only reason I can give is that of Jon Haidt's Righteous Mind, about intuitions (the elephant) and reasoning (the rider). Morality it seems, stems from evolutionary experience; in which case I place a high value on group loyalty, what's more I have a lot of empathy for people down the bottom. Someone (like John Key) would treat the nation like a company, he favours "migration" because: "you think what it takes for someone to uproot and come here?"
One additional thing: it is all very well to typecast the woke as Puritans. But hanging Oliver Cromwell on them? What of the Levellers and the Diggers, you know, Puritans crushed by Cromwell? Or the fact that after 1660, Non-Conformist Protestants (heirs to the Puritans) were socially and politically marginalised for two centuries by your "Merry England"? You couldn't go to University or hold a crown office if you weren't subscribed to the Anglican Church. Isaac Newton would have lost his job if his non-Trinitarian views had ever been widely known.
Of course your view of "homogeneous" and " heterogeneous" societies is somewhat undermined (as are many comments to this blig) when you factor in that riots also occurred in Northern Ireland, which is almost 98% white.
This would suggest the riots were instigated by far right groups not wishing to accept the democratic results. Not the underclass that some seem to view as exclusively white and feral, but extremists spurred on by Russian misinformation to disrupt democracy and western society.
Just putin' it out there.
YouTube have now blocked that Peterson/Tommy Robinson discussion from their search engine, deleted and disabled comments and attached a trigger warning. It had over four million views already but they've even disabled the view tally now. It's still there though so catch it while you still can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnhwBoFxaDI&rco=1
"Try burning a pride flag" - your own flag? Or some else's?
So people celebrating their unity, rights and place on society, along with their friends supporters and allies, should be subject to your hate theatrics?
Such action is entirely designed to hate and denigrate a sector in society and attacking their right to celebrate and to public safety. And then consider them Puritans for not wishing such bile?
As for Jordan Peterson, he has been described as "the stupid person's view of an intellectual". He is an unregistered psychologist that specialized in addiction before flying to Russia for treatment on his barbiturates addiction. His theological comments have been rightly ridiculed as unresearched, fringe and incoherent.
And yet academics, commentators and casual readers have all found his comments over the years as racist and ill-informed.
And no, it is no more illegal to carry the cross of st.George than the Saltire. The carrying of it in far right rallies has misused that flag for white nationalism, but all you need to see it at international sport when England plays as an entity and the St.George is waving to cheer black and South Asian English playing football, rugby or cricket.
David, obviously you have no understanding of history. Andalusia and Babylon were great learning centers where Islamic, Christian and Jewish scholars pre-empted the Renaissance. The Syriac church within Islamic territory was perhaps the largest Christian sect. The Ottoman Court for most part included Christian and Jewish administrators (every now and then a Sultan would get sectarian) and Akbar had religious centers for all major religions to meet and debate ideas.
First a warning to Chris Trotter. Then blatant roundabouting and confusing the issue and questionable points controverting. Almost confabulation. A lot of conning here. Perhaps you don't want us to have a reasoned exchange of opinions DS. Yours are more like little farts released within a quiet lecture.
Tommy Robinson? You mean Stephen Yaxley Lennon? – the word 'convicted' appears 26 times on his Wikipedia page. Defamation only three times mind which I guess is a bit of an improvement. Why on earth would anyone believe anything that man said?
Thanks DS, you'll note Chris used small "p" puritans - presumably to encompass the modern puritanical left; the woke. We see it with Academia hounding those not subscribing to woke orthodoxy today. For example the "how dare you" reaction to those suggesting that Maori folklore is not science.
I think Starmer & Co are terrified of the Islamists. Islamophobic?
I see the Starmer thought police are now going to make "misogyny" illegal; how is that going to work? Exceptions for religiously motivated oppression of women?
"And migrants bring their cultures with them. Indeed, progressive supporters of migration argue that it is beneficial because the resulting diversity enriches the host country. And perhaps it really is true that migrants bring only the nice bits of their original cultures, such as tasty food. But if they bring everything else, as well, what happens when that includes being habituated to the kind of extreme misogyny the West spent futile trillions trying to expunge from Afghanistan? Then it must surely follow that the kind of misogyny normalised in places such as Afghanistan will no longer be irrelevant to British policy, and British women, but will find expression here as well."
Mary Harrington: https://unherd.com/2024/08/the-truth-about-extremist-misogyny/
The wokesters at "BBC Radio London invited a cleric who is pro-stoning and has excused jihadism to give his take on the riots and introduced him as a 'highly respected imam'. "
"Haddad ‘believes that criticising suicide bombing is wrong because to do so would be to “nullify” “defensive jihad”’. He says it is a duty of Muslims to engage in jihad and ‘fight everyone until they establish the law of Allah’."
The progressive approved Far Right?
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/21/why-is-the-bbc-heaping-praise-on-islamists/
UK Left to allow Muslim prisoners to [in effect] punish dissidents? What is chilling is the lack of follow up but that might have amounted to othering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh6W9LIR7HQ&t=1s
Meanwhile (and at last), NZ Initiative's report on academic freedom has a section on White nationalist flyers at the University of Auckland (October 2019).
Duncan grieve on The Project (or 7 Sharp) said "when the lights come on the rats scurry away". Hayden Donnell of Mediawatch calls populists "Nazis". The bailey part of the argument is anti-semitism and (the occasional) Nazi salute; the motte part is majority nationalism within an imposed system of multiculturalism.
I find it peculiar many in this blog citing Islamic extremism as some sort of counter-balance to the white nationalist racist thuggery that rioted and destroyed neighborhoods and small businesses. Almost as if you find anyone out of the 6 million Muslims in Britain that has an extremists view, then an attack on the local minimart owner can be excused or explained. I have not read one comment linking any victim of the violence to any such views. Indeed, the excuse for the brutality and savagery was the actions of a non-Muslim in South Port.
If there is a wish to understand racism, religious sectarianism and Islamophobia, perhaps it is better for many of the contributors to ponder the motivation behind their posts. How attacks upon British South Asians and other non-white Britons can have justification because within the world's 1.9 Billion Muslims some have actions and views we disagree with is beyond me.
"The wokesters at "BBC Radio London invited a cleric who is pro-stoning and has excused jihadism to give his take on the riots and introduced him as a 'highly respected imam'. "
And were roundly criticised for it. If it had been a conservative outlet, and an extreme right wing interviewee day a whining about being "cancelled".
The wokesters* at Fox News interview Kyle Rittenhouse, who not only seemingly believes he is entitled to kill people but actually did so. Crickets from you though.
*Someone who's done something I don't like. I feel just as entitled to use it as you do.
Why would you publish a link to an article on someone with cerebral palsy? I did finally find it – wouldn't trust the source as far as I could throw them.
Come to think of it, if they are allowing gangs to run the prisons and there's something wrong with the prison system – which has been under Tory control for how many years now?
Tommy Robinson? You mean Stephen Yaxley Lennon?
Proves he's fake dunnit? A real working class person looks more like Byron Clark and Bomber Bradbury.
Chris Bishop wants to get people out of cars and into apartments, people demanding "frills" are holding them up. That he can even say that (without challenge), is because open borders is the sacred position of the left.
"Proves he's fake dunnit? "
Nope – he took the name from a football hooligan, in order to hide his identity and crimes. Succeeded until 2010. So obviously he was fake enough not to want publicity.
"because open borders is the sacred position of the left."
Seems to me it's a sacred position of the right, considering they're the people who – round the world – employ migrants because "(insert nationality here) don't want to work.
Recent figures pertaining to the numbers of women killed by men have been highlighted in Australia and the UK, along with the levels of violence towards women.
Taking action towards to eliminate misogyny would seem responsible government. Your attempt to defer from the urgent need to legislate protection is of concern.
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