We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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‘Class War’ pillocks do wonders for a Hipster business they hate Class War claims to represent a local community that is sick of rising house prices and an influx of wealth from overseas. However, Cereal Killer employs people from the local community, and many more residents come to the café to socialise and bond over a bowl or two of Coco Pops. The café remains defiant in the face of bullying and intimidation, and locals have since rallied behind it, with other businesses dropping off care packages for the owners. Moncrieff told me that footfall has actually increased since the attack.
The Fuck Parade was made up of a small core of balaclava-wearing pillocks and a lot of posers. People who rail against gentrification are, thankfully, the minority, and they have no right to speak for residents who are probably too busy enjoying new amenities and job prospects to protest.
Gentrification is not part of some conspiracy against the poor. Opportunities for people in Shoreditch to improve their lives are growing, and that is no bad thing. Fortunately, a bunch of idiots throwing cornflakes at a shopfront won’t change that.
– George Harrison
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Once passed the place at 11am on a weekday morning. The queue stretched well outside. I mean who would ever have thought you could make a go – and a good go at that – of selling cereal? And there are people who object!
Brilliant word that, “pillock”; it sounds like what it means.
These people are not pillocks, they are scum with violence and murder in their hearts. Tsarist Russia was full of them, and some got to run the place. And so were murdered perhaps 100,000,000 people.
The weird thing is, I’d be willing to bet money that most of the “working class” balaclava wearing thugs were in fact considerably more middle-class than the ostensibly privileged clientele of the cereal establishment. This kind of class warfare is almost always the province of middle class kids with daddy issues who decide one day that they “identify” with the lower classes and start hanging around in grungy parts of town to piss off their parents. From there it is a short leap to conclude that since genuine members of the lower orders are clearly borderline subhuman, they need a white-knight from the higher social classes to speak on their behalf. Enter these shining messiahs who’re willing to sully themselves with gutter trash because they’re just so freaking moral.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. Even the boilerplate socialism of the 1970’s was run by guys who pretended to be lower class than they really were. They’d make a big deal about how “their ‘da were a working chap, man and boy”. What they wont say is that by the time they came along, their old ‘da was senior shift supervisor for their whole factory and that by the standards of the 60s and 70s that was pretty damn middle class. Or something along those lines. Think Al Murray.
In my experience most people who were genuinely born to the lower classes are either so inured to it they are almost beyond help, or they spend all their time trying to get out in which case they are much too busy to wail about inequality. While many of the useful idiots of the left were indeed born to a low social class, very, very few of the ringleaders actually were.
A protest mob was wrong to target an east London cereal café while leaving a Versace store around the corner untouched, the owner has claimed. (The Times).
Twats. Well Versace was shot dead by a nutter, so with their logic what’s good enough for Vesace…….
No surprise that Putin’s boy Mr Keiser and his charming wife Rosa Klebb, celebrated the attack on this small business.
At a period years back when we lived on the edge of the “beltway” (Fairfax County) outside D.C., the “re-gentrification” of parts of D.C. began.
In one of the D.C. areas the initial “new” people were usually not too well to do “liberal” (U.S.)white couples who had the idea of “blending in” and helping others “improve” the neighborhood. Some were murdered for their trouble, as a warning to others not to come in and “take over” the place.
But, other residents balked at those tactics, perps were tagged by their own people. The changes moved on.
the Facebook event claims that the community is being torn apart by the influx of ‘Israeli scumbag property developers, …
“Israeli”, we all know what that is left-wing code-speak for. They are just Red fascists really.
I lived within walking distance of Brick Lane for a number of years, trapped between forests of those little yellow “Were you a witness to a murder” signs springing up as a result of drug gang turf wars, and the rise of the supremacist, misogynist and homophobic religion slowly dominating the area, no wonder I got out. And all these pillocks can find fault with is a bowl of cornflakes.
“The Fuck Parade was made up of a small core of balaclava-wearing pillocks”
I first read that as baklava. Wearking baklava is something we probably shouldn’t do. Besides, ski-mask is so much easier to spell. 😉
Jaded Voluntaryist,
I don’t know from what side of the pond you’re from, but it seems that Brits have a love affair with that Marxist term, “workingclass”. One can’t watch an interview with Ricky Gervais without him saying it 30 goddamned times.
It implies that only those engaged in subsistence living actually work. If anyone is actually going to have a movement, it should be to strike such fucktarded terms from common use (by voluntary agreement of course).
> the community is being torn apart by the influx of ‘Israeli scumbag property developers, Texan oil-money twats and homegrown Eton toffs’.
I was so impressed that they managed to jam so many ridiculous caricatures into one single sentence. There is almost not a single word in that sentence that doesn’t betray some SJW stereotype. They guys should write headlines for the Sun.
“Gentrification”
This is known as “urban renewal” in the states, and has been recognized as a political scam for many decades. In the guise of “helping the local commuinity”, crap businesses are bought out or strong-armed out using eminent domain, and newer more “posh” businesses crop up. The reason it’s a scam is that the local poor aren’t really helped at all, they’re merely forced to relocate outside the city, often to areas where public transportation is more spotty. Yes, the “community” is certainly revived, and so is the local tax base; hint-hint, nudge-nudge.
So, privileged class people lining up out the door to sit in a posh cafe and eat cold breakfast cerial? Are we really sure this isn’t a story first published by The Onion?
Thai I agree entirely. That’s why I scare quoted it then switched to the more accurate term lower class.
No it isn’t the same thing or the same dynamics at play. Gentrification in the UK is by and large benign and not actually state driven. CPOs (compulsory purchase orders… = eminent domain in the USA) is not what turned the once truly shitty Shoreditch into the rather nice Hispter haven it is today.
In the guise of “helping the local commuinity”, crap businesses are bought out or strong-armed out using eminent domain, and newer more “posh” businesses crop up
Where it happens in New Zealand there is
a) no government impulse in it
b) no eminent domain occurs
c) businesses follow the house buyers not vice versa.
Indeed your idea that forcing crap businesses out and the gentrification will follow sounds highly unlikely. “Posh” businesses set up in poor neighbourhoods merely go broke. Pawn brokers set up in a gentrifying suburb don’t need to be bought out, they move voluntarily to where their customers are.
For NZ readers, think how Ponsonby and Petone went from working class to better suburbs. That was gentrification quite like Shoreditch from what I can tell. It’s driven by people seeing a suburb close to inner city that was under-priced. Businesses follow, but only once the area is seen to be on the way up.
That’s what attracts the Class Action scum too, and what offends them. They also want to live inner city for a low price, and don’t like it when others also want the same thing.
Yes, what Chester wrote pretty much describes UK gentrification as well.
I’ve seen more of this kind of thing online recently – people from the UK spouting off about evil monied classes driving up property prices in London. What’s funny is the same people crying about rents moved to London from somewhere else, doing their part to increase demand.
J.V.
“very, very few of the ringleaders actually were [born to a lower social class]”
The transformation from posh child to proletarian leader occurs through a process called “class suicide”. Charming, isn’t it?
Cristina,
It’s kinda class suicide but it kinda isn’t. There are a wide range of policies that benefit the proletariat and the trust fund babies; many of these tend to be advocated by individuals who have undergone the charming transformation you refer to.
In any case, it’s unnecessarily limiting to try to understand why a posh child becomes a proletarian leader only through the lens of social class where class is denoted purely by wealth. This is not a path to fully or even largely understanding the dynamics at play. Which leads us to social caste, where status may be accrued by both monetary and/or other means explains this phenomenon much more thoroughly and completely.
Mencius Moldbug’s taxonomy of American castes – the very best on the subject and which I reproduce below – shows that a proletarian leader from a posh background tends to be a ‘Brahmin’. I strongly suspect that his descriptions (with a few mostly minor details being changed as necessary) aptly characterize the UK and most of the Western world generally to a large extent.
In democracy the eternal war is between optimates and vaisyas on the one hand and helots, dalits, and brahmins on the other (with a few very marginal exceptions).
Thailover is absolutely right about “Gentrification” in the frontier Colonies to the West of the Sceptred Isles. “Gentrification” — sounds so much nicer than “Urban Renewal,” doesn’t it? — especially if you know the skinny on the best of Chicago’s Urban Renewal projects, such as Taylor Homes, which were trashy high-rises built right next to the Dan Ryan Expressway to house some of the displaced, and were so foul and badly built that they were torn down I think 30 or so years later; or the infamous Cabrini Green on the Near North Side, which was an absolute hellhole.
As a matter of fact I think Taylor Homes must have been inspired by the end result of Cortland Homes — the project that Howard Roark dynamited.
(An artistic error, IMO, by the way. Now the all kinds of nogood lowlife scum such as “George Washington,” who writes or wrote for ZeroHedge, use that part of the novel to brand Ayn Rand a terrorist who approved of blowing up apartment buildings to get her point across. And to this day, the only way I can come to terms with that part of the plot is by reminding myself, “It’s only fiction.” This interferes not just with the moral of the story, but also with the enjoyment of reading it. Except for that, I really really like The Fountainhead, and nobody with half a brain could think A.R. was in favor of such things in real life — but it makes a great selling point for those with an anti-individualist agenda.)
If your categorisation system runs into things that are hard to define, could it not just be that your system doesn’t work? Don’t get me wrong, I’m open to the idea of social class as a function of values as well as birth and wealth. But I wasn’t at all taken with that example.
It seemed to me a rather tortured metaphor, with a large dose of subtextual racism, and an even bigger dose of needless pretention. But the biggest problem with it is the same problem the left wing white-knights have when they’re slumming. They assume that they know what it is like to live another person’s life. If you’re from the Hamptons it’s all good sherry and influence peddling. If you’re from Compton it’s all welfare and guerilla warfare. While these generalisations have a degree of truth they’re also one dimensional.
The fact that they think they understand what it is to be poor (when in fact they have no bloody idea) is one of the things that makes the do-gooding left so dangerous. They’ll force you to live out their solution to an imagined problem, and feel rightous for doing so.
It’s not really a metaphor at all. To use the term “racism” is I think taking it too far, but there are probably racial undertones to some of the categories. As far as pretension – that’s part of the fun!
The above three things (metaphor, racism, pretension) aren’t problems
Huh? Wait, so, unless one has lived the lives of every “type” of person one can’t make a valid taxonomy of American castes? I’m genuinely confused.
But yeah obviously generalizations are one dimensional. That’s why they’re called generalizations.
Just to be clear: the metaphor thing isn’t a problem cuz its not one, the racism thing isn’t a problem because i think that claim is unwarranted, and the pretension thing isn’t a problem cuz it’s part of da fun.
Frankly, yes.
It is one thing to say a person is demonstrably from the lower social classes. It is quite another to announce someone is from X caste based on ignorant imaginings about their worldview and experience.
I disagree with many libertarians who dismiss social class – it is a genuine problem. But it is a problem that is difficult to define because one can necessarily only speak to one’s own experience.
It is a subject that has been weighing on my mind. I’m one of the few people who has changed their social class. I’m very much of a lower class background (although there were short periods of a more middle class existence in my childhood). I’ve recently completed a PhD and started work at a university so I suppose I’m right at the beginning of officially being middle class. What this means in terms of values (and whether I agree with those values) is something I’ve been thinking about a great deal lately. Social class is a very real thing even if it is hard to define precisely. It is very hard to truly escape your background.
While we must necessarily try to understand the behaviour of those who would rule us, I think it also behoves us to acknowledge the limits of our own knowledge. I cannot tell you what it is like to come from the upper social strata nor will I try. Equally those from the upper echelons of society can tell me precisely nothing about what it means to be of the underclass. You can only speak to your own experience and a “taxonomy” of human class by definition could not be written by any one man.
I guess it comes down to the question of whether the “imaginings” at issue are A) ignorant (who says?) and B) accurate or inaccurate.
Absolutely. I don’t consider Moldbug’s taxonomy to be perfect or all-encompassing or without exceptions. It’s just that I have read about many (many!) taxonomies of modern Western social classes and social castes and his strikes me as the most apt in terms of characterizing how people acquire status in society.
Well, I hope we can politely agree to disagree on this.
In the UK, gentrification is a Very Good Thing. It is a market driven, incremental process, not a state policy. And I have no time for people who sneer at hipsters from either end of the spectrum, because even though few of them realise it, they are capitalism’s aspirational bourgeois shock troops.
Shlomo Maistre, in the Dark Place, “the name of which I have no desire to call to mind”, where I was born, the posh children that become proletarian leaders say they committed “class suicide” as the way to transition from one to the other. I understand the narcissism and inaccuracy of such smugness.
I find the Mencius’ taxonomy very useful indeed.
Jaded Voluntaryist’
“You can only speak to your own experience and a “taxonomy” of human class by definition could not be written by any one man.”
Now you have me all confused. You are the researcher who takes a sample of, say, 80 people, a big one according to your standards, and extrapolates whatever you find about their learning process to the whole humanity.
And you say that is not possible to organize a useful caste system based on the observations of one man?
We’re not talking about measuring human performance Cristina, we’re taking about measuring human values. Pretty much the only way of deducing such an intrinsically personal thing is to ask people.
There is no ‘caste’ system, just a vast amorphous and dynamically adjusting bourgeoisie with a residual crust of vile smelling paleo-prole shit on the bottom and another crust of perfumed governmentalist shit on the top 😉
Let me get this straight. Some bloke thinks “that recurring cereal thing on Seinfeld was pretty funny, I’m going to try opening a cafe based on the idea.” And in response a bunch of cunts start smashing things while yelling “Kill the Jews!”?
I note that they also railed against Texans with money. I’d be willing to spend some of my money to fly one or two of said cunts to Texas, where they could try carrying on like that and see how long they lasted.
“We’re not talking about measuring human performance Cristina, we’re taking about measuring human values. Pretty much the only way of deducing such an intrinsically personal thing is to ask people.”
But, Jaded, surely you know that you can deduce the values from the observation of the behavior, among other means.
I’m not so sure about that Cristina but let’s suppose you could reliably infer personal values from overt behaviour. That isn’t what’s happened here. This is not some grand survey of human values conducted on a massive scale: it’s a screed posted on the internet by some bloke.
And I’m supposed to take it seriously as a sociological model of humanity? Please!
I’m not sure how else one can reliably deduce/infer/understand others’ personal values than by observing their actual behavior.
Yeah, things people write are notoriously unreliable sources of information (sarcasm).
And that’s not just some bloke! That is Mencius Moldbug: the grand Sith lord of neoreaction. He’s kind of a big deal.
It’s a taxonomy of American castes; not a sociological model of humanity.
“And that’s not just some bloke! That is Mencius Moldbug: the grand Sith lord of neoreaction.” 😀
I agree with Cristina that Moldbug’s taxonomy appears useful (although I think it is incomplete; I think it would benefit from the addition of one or two more castes). Schlomo, I would appreciate a link to the source; I’d like to read it in fuller context.
I therefore disagree with JV’s dismissal of the proffered American “caste” taxonomy. As I read it, there is very little in it which speaks to “measuring human values”; for the most part it is purely descriptive of actions and the qualifications for caste membership; it is certainly non-judgmental. And it seems pretty accurate to me, as far as it goes. It certainly does not say that changing castes is impossible (which suggests that the term “caste” might not be the best one to use, although nothing obviously better presents itself to me). And yes, it is entirely possible for one person to create a valid taxonomy by simple observation; there is no need to have “lived” in every caste to accurately describe its characteristics.
Oh, and to toss in my two cents on “gentrification”, Thailover is very much wrong about what the term means in the US, and subsequent posters here are correct. It is far from synonymous with “urban renewal”; in fact, in some respects the two are polar opposites. I lived in West Philadelphia in the late ’70s when gentrification there was just starting to take off. Yuppies were beginning to buy up (on the cheap) grand, lovely and architecturally interesting turn-of-the-century houses which had deteriorated into low-class multifamily apartments or even outright slums, and restoring their original character. In the process they were transforming the character of the neighborhoods, attracting like-minded young professionals and the business establishments they patronized (restaurants, trendy bars, etc.). It was very much a Good Thing, and there was absolutely no governmental involvement involved. In fact, during those same years the thuggish Philadelphia government was busy with true “urban renewal” projects, which involved razing whole lower-class neighborhoods (in the hope of driving out “undesirables”) and replacing them with depressing public-housing Projects such as Julie describes in Chicago. (And also with simply bombing them out.) Gentrification is private action, and is good; urban renewal is government action, and is bad. The difference is clear, and stark.
Laird,
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/05/castes-of-united-states.html
Yeah, I kind of agree. I would argue that the notion of personal values comes into play to some extent, though, in terms of characterizing how different groups of people gain status in their community/caste. But yeah – not much at all regarding “human values” more broadly – let alone measuring them.
Agreed.
True. In fact, Mencius specifically mentions that children of Helots often become Dalit.
Thanks for the link, Shlomo. I’ll check it out.
Thanks also for the reference to “neoreaction”, a word (philosophy?) I hadn’t before seen. Looking it up lead me to this, a veritable smorgasbord of hyperlinks to interesting things. I suspect I’ll be spending hours in that thicket!
Jaded Voluntaryist said,
“Thai I agree entirely. That’s why I scare quoted it then switched to the more accurate term lower class.”
Yay, someone who agrees with me. Admittedly, “workingclass” it’s a very petty pet peeve of mine, and about the sixth or seventh time the aforementioned Gervais mentions being from a “workingclass background” or “workingclass parents” I’m ready to throttle his neck, lol.
Perry said,
Ah, OK. I was going more by claims on how the improvement in the area aids the locals. Well, yes and no. It’s a double-edged blade. Increases on property values may help those who own the land who wish to sell for a windfall and relocate, but not so good for poor renters, though the increase in local jobs is a postive of course. It may also force some people to sell when they can’t afford the sudden increase in property taxes, but hopefully they’ll sell for a profit. ‘Pros and cons of change really.
Laird,
I’ll take the liberty of making a few brief notes, as this is a subject I know a thing or two about.
1. The grand Sith Lord of neoreaction is Mencius Moldbug. The essential idea of Reaction is – inherently – order. As Moldbug once said:
2. Moldbuggery is largely how I was converted from libertarianism to the dark side.
3. Nick Land (a famous British philosopher) is the second in command of the movement (insofar as it’s a movement, which is another story) and I will forever appreciate him for having added my weblog to his blogroll.
4. There are a few minor differences (of emphasis and assumptions) between neoreaction and reaction. I’m not a neoreactionary; if I had to dirty myself with a mere label, then I’d go with Reactionary.
Thanks, Shlomo. I have a passing acquaintance with Moldbug, having sampled some of his writing (he is prolific in the extreme, and his prolixity puts mine to shame). I find him interesting, insightful, infuriating and tedious, in roughly equal parts. I simply hadn’t been aware of the “neoreactionary” label before.
Several things. Cereal Killer is owned by two Northern Irish Brothers from considerably less posh background than the wannabe class war protesters. \from what I’ve read they stock a wide range of imported cereals, chiefly from the USA. They have proved popular with homesick American expats and people curious about cereals people see in the Movies or American TV and have been mentioned in several tourist guides. You never now what niche will thrive in retail, but it could only really be successful in London with it’s large population base. The reason they were attacked was because they had attracted sneering coverage from Channel 4 news as an example of Hipster Gentrification.
You’d think such stores would be independent stores would be spared, what with so many lefties moaning about corporate chains and clone town UK etc. But I suppose publicity matters more than logic.
Of course the real problem is the soaring cost of housing and rent in London. which has driven gentrification into overdrive.
What with Londons recent and continuing rapid rise in population there are only two solutions. Widescale demolition of low rise Victorian and Edwardian housing to replaced by high rise apartments and/or relaxation of green belt planning rules. Only this will reduce the pressure on housing prices. Problem is no one wants to do either of those. Problem is one will have to give and the letting go of the green belt will be easier.
JV was spot on about the protesters:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3259726/Cereal-caf-riot-leader-protested-against-working-class-priced-London-lives-600-000-flat-built-site-former-council-block.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3258234/Truth-rabble-bringing-fear-streets.html
[Posted direct weblink because the html tag function isn’t working on my system.]