There’s a foul, racialised undertone to this. The shock and horror some commentators reserve for ethnic-minority politicians who happen to hold more conservative views on immigration, asylum or multiculturalism has a whiff of ‘how dare you?!’ about it. They never accuse Braverman or Priti Patel of being ‘ungrateful’, but if we’re honest the vibe is not a million miles off. The unwitting implication is that it is somehow illegitimate for even second- and third-generation immigrants to be sceptical of mass migration or state multiculturalism. Those with an immigrant background must think the same, goes the unspoken logic, otherwise they are weird and inauthentic, perhaps trying to ingratiate themselves with golf-club racists.
This actually reminds us of one of the key problems with the ideology of multiculturalism – namely, the notion that ethnic minorities amount to homogenous blocs, with a specific culture and outlook, rather than individuals with minds of their own. Indeed, multiculturalism treats individuality as if it is something only white people do. This frankly racist idea has underpinned multicultural policy for many decades, justifying the state’s encouragement of cultural identities, and its funding of self-proclaimed ‘community organisations’, to be christened as the ‘authentic voice’ of this group or the other, all while ignoring the diversity that exists within those same groups.
This is part of a broader Progressive idea that the demographics of the speaker are one of the components of an idea. That is, according to Progressives, any syllogistic representation of an idea must include the demographics of the speaker in order to be fully evaluated. The truth or falsehood of an idea can vary by skin tone or gender.
You see this in the notion that minorities are homogenous blocs, as well as in the commonly held belief that certain words or phrases are offensive if the demographics of the speaker are not in the approved set for that word or phrase.
It’s all part of the same underlying belief system.
I’d have thought that first or second generation immigrants to who took the trouble to follow the rules, all the trouble and expense, and immigrate legally would be rather annoyed at some johnny come lately skipping the queue and demanding to be treated better than the people who followed the rules. I mean, #askmehowIknow.
And the real rum of it is that this is all about skipping the queue, cutting in line. In Britain the only sin greater than failing to applauding our brave healthcare workers is skipping the queue. Normal British “don’t make a fuss” sentiments always seems to go out the window when someone runs to the front and cuts in.
A winning slogan is “Britain welcomes immigrants. Please come, just don’t skip the queue.”
In the progressive mind, good little minorities are automatically the clients of virtuous progressives, and any who dare profess to contrary ideas and fail to kiss the asses of their betters…?
Anathema. To be scourged, excoriated, driven from the public square.
It’s the way they think. They don’t see the migrants as real people; they’re projections straight out of their overheated imaginations. This is why they put them on pedestals, and when they don’t conform to expectation, knock them off again.
Leftism/Progressivism are symptoms of a diseased mind, one that cannot process reality at all well. Which is why so many of their programs fail… As with Stalin and Hitler, two equally delusional leftist wannabe tyrants whose ideas about world conquest resulted in the worst slaughter of the 20th Century.
It must be frustrating for progressives when their presumptive coalition of imported minorities rather than focusing on debasing, defrauding and ultimately dethroning whitey prefer to concentrate on settling historical internecine differences albeit in an arena where both sides are the away team.
This is not at all in accordance with the programme and the ultimate penalty of being labelled white-adjacent will be rigorously imposed on any minority group who succeed in rising above their designated status of dependent victims.
Yes Frankfurt School, “Critical Theory”, Marxism is a very bad thing – it denies human individuality and treats people as members of racial and sexual groups, just as Classical Marxism reduced people to member of the economic “classes”.
The basic doctrine of Marxism is that people are divided between “exploited” and “exploiters”, “oppressed” and “oppressors” – and this has become the doctrine of, for example, the Democratic Party in the United States, who denounce even mildly questioning whether, for example, women, black people and homosexuals are “oppressed” – to deny that these groups are “oppressed” is to deny the basic doctrine of modern Marxism.
What is utterly bizarre is that many Big Business enterprises and rich individuals support “Critical Theory” Marxism, thus these Big Business enterprises and rich individuals dig-their-own-graves.
One can see this even in supposedly ANTI Marxist organisations – such as GB News, where for a man to use the word “shag” about a woman is considered vastly worse than a woman (or a homosexual) using the word “shag” about a man – because “woman are oppressed”.
If (if) they accept the doctrine that “woman are oppressed” or “black people are oppressed” or “homosexuals are oppressed” and thus that different rules must apply to them, there is no point in GB News, or the Conservative Party, existing – as they would have “internalised the ideology” of their Marxist enemies. They might as well run a “Pride” flag or a “Pan Africanist” flag, up the flag pole.
“Non ideological” “pragmatic businessmen” types are not really “free of ideology” – having no principles of their own, they end up slaves of the doctrines of their enemies, and thus digging-their-own-graves.
At a very fundamental level ‘progressives’ believe in ‘the blank slate’. That is that people are born as ‘blank slates’ and have their behaviours installed only by nurture.
This idea is profoundly wrong and disproven… but it allows the progressives to ascribe ‘failure’ in life to oppression (racism, structural racism, sexism, the old favourite ‘class’) and success in life to nepotism (racism, ‘whiteness’). As a corollary ‘people’ may have their blank slates overwritten by the right kind of education and raised consciousness, people will become ‘perfected’, and we can all march forward to a glorious Utopia. This view of people is, at best, a ‘noble lie’. At worst, a march through a field of corpses to a totalitarian future.
So when an individual of the client group has the temerity to assert their individuality without the benefit of right kind of education and raised consciousness the progressives have to explain away why the individual succeeds without the benefit of their guidance. Unfortunately for the progressives the ‘blank slate’ is a totalising philosophy and must explain exceptions adequately, or the march to Utopia grinds to a halt.
It’s the same in the States. the unspoken assumption that people of any shade that isn’t white will support all the progressive socialist policies like immigration. It has surprised me how many have woken up and moved over to be more conservative from the ranks of those who even just a few short years ago where on the side of the democrats.
Imo. The US will explode. Trump will get in if everything is fair. If they fiddle with this election it will explode then. If not Trump will spend 4 years fixing a lot of things but it won’t be enough and there is no Trump replacement after his second term. It will go back to normal so will go down the pan until it blows up in 10 or 15 years instead. I hope I’m wrong but the pot is boiling and I’m surprised there isn’t more direct action now.
In the UK we will boil;d for as lot longer but we will go after the US shows the way. I’ll be dead by then as we are just a bunch of sheep but hard times make people change, we will change, too late for a peaceful transition though. Our masters are comfortable and don’t want to change.
Lord T,
The establishment (plus DJT) have gone gangbusters on Ron DeSantis.
This surprises me. The Florida deep state is obviously a very different beast to Washington but he has taken it on to the considerable benefit of his State and in the process turned it from purple to deep red.
He may be an insipid debater and below average communicator but actions surely speak louder than words. His efficient draining of the swamp that was the Broward County electoral system, willingness to defy the Borg when dealing with lockdowns and strong defence of state education rather than supinely accept a deviant curriculum will all have been noted by the electorate at large.
In a Trump-free environment he would be a serious serious player. As it is I’d love to see him as running mate and natural successor but sadly, for all his good points (as I see them, many others will differ) DJT’s stubbornness is an impassible roadblock.
From my part of the world in sunny south London, the systemic reduction of the population by stabbing has become an all too often occurrence.
Media is replete with images and videos of young men brandishing machetes and zombie knives in broad daylight, yet nothing is heard of these perpetrators being removed before an innocent becomes the target of their rage and the demographics record another sad drop.
Councils are happy to use CCTV to trace dog poop menaces or fly tippers, but somehow seem reluctant to bring these investigative powers to bear on the blade carriers, you can’t help but think maybe they’re in some sort of protected group.
Runcie.
I have been told by young relatives that as you say social media and particularly TikTok is packed with easily identifiable, which actually seems to be the whole point, young men brandishing blades and occasionally guns.
As law enforcement is remarkably good at detecting hurtful tweets it’s a shame a little of the enthusiasm they display when turning up en masse to detain or at the very least lecture (for non crime hate incidents) the perpetrators cannot be directed towards more clear and present dangers.
The dog poop guy isn’t likely to stab a cop and his number one priority is to go home at night. It’s simply safer to go after the low hanging fruit.
Besides, going after the dog poop guy will somehow lead to lower levels of teens sticking knives between ribs and Middle Easterners yelling Aloha Snackbar while sawing off heads or TV personalities grooming children. At least that the theory criminologists tell the law abiding so they’ll give up still more rights.
Us Australians are having similar problems. There is a referendum, called ‘The Voice’, to set up an indigenous ‘voice’ to Parliament. Presumably only Aborigines will be allowed to vote for reps to this body. All Australians are being asked to vote for a ‘vibe’ or a feeling, with little explanation as to how things will work. This racist body is supposed to unite us. The current trends suggest that the voice vote is not getting the necessary ‘yes’ support it needs, especially as some prominent Aborigines are against it.
Despite everything, I think most left-leaning voters still think of “multiculturalism” as “different outfits, foods, music, holidays, and maybe accents.”
I think most left-leaning activists on multiculturalism take more extreme implications like those described above.
I think the voters failing to notice the difference is most of why those activists stay in power.
Interesting assumption, or at least something that seems to me to be assumed here, is that the progressives being dismissive of individualist aspects of the members of minority groups, are not, never, members of those minorities. It’s all white liberals doing the overlording of the progressive left. But is this true? The Jesse Jacksons of the world are 1) the worst of the progressives and 2) undeniably members of a minority group (in the US). And such minority group racist, progressive members are in the minority among progressives…probably about proportionate to their numbers in the racial demographics of the progressives.
I don’t think this implicit assumption, if it is one (comments?), by those here is an issue…this site tends to have broad, open minded thinkers, so if this assumption is indeed there and not explicitly part of this thread, no big deal!
My larger point is: the progressives themselves miss this! They have the attitudes described in the OP and comments here, but perhaps don’t see it as another dimension of their consistent and awful racism (and a lot of other “isms”).
Multiculturalism is a leftist ideology
The left hates individualism.
And individuals.
Yes – Frankfurt School Marxism promotes hated between racial groups, just as it promotes sexual conflict. It does this for the purpose of destroying Western “capitalist” society.
Frankfurt School Marxism, which is where “Multiculturalism”, teaches that people are not individuals – that we are just members of groups – “the oppressed or the oppressors” “the exploited or the exploiters” this Marxism 101. And it teaches that each person must have the opinion of their group – otherwise they are “class traitor”, “race traitor”, or “traitor to their gender”.
Anyone who is shocked that “multiculturalism” is based upon and promotes racism, most likely does not know, or will not publicly admit, that it is from Frankfurt School Marxism.
As for the Big Business types and “conservatives”, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, who go along with all this – well they are digging their own graves, and it is very hard to care about that.
It is really pointless to try and work with people who will not even use the name of the enemy. People who will not even admit what they are fighting have no chance what-so-ever of defeating the “Critical Theory” Frankfurt School Marxists.
Shutting your eyes to the Marxists does not make the Marxists disappear – they are still there, no matter how tightly you keep your eyes shut.
John,
DeSantis is still a US politician. He may be more conservative but he is still from the swamp and he won’t fix the issue.
Runcie,
Like all bullies Plod only attacks those it knows are safe targets. They are not going to get stabbed by an Anti-Woke tweeter or a fly tipper. They have not been the Sweeney for quite some time.
“At bottom Progressives believe that people are born a blank slate….”.
Not really, at least it is not really very important to them – all that Progressives really believe in is POWER, unlimited POWER.
That is true of Marxist Progressives, Pragmatist Progressives (Richard Ely types), Henri Saint-Simon or Klaus Schwab Progressives, any form of Progressive.
They want unlimited power over other people – the philosophical justifications they give for their power lust are of very little importance to them.
This is why trying to reason with Progressives is pointless – “the weaknesses in your theories are ….” they do not care what the logical errors in their theories are, as their theories are just a fig leaf to cover lust-for-power – “the consequences of your policies would be because…”, they do-not-care that the consequences of their policies are bad.
The Progressives have been operating in that slack space where nobody really pays attention to their activities, because it’s not impinging on their own lives. It’ll change, once enough of the repercussions come clear:
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/oakland-county/2023/09/29/transnational-gangs-conducting-high-end-burglaries-in-oakland-county-sheriff-bouchard/71006220007/
Enough of this happens, enough “normies” get robbed or assaulted? The backlash is going to be ‘effing huge.
The Progressives are going to really, really regret getting everyone’s undivided attention. Which is what they’re going to have, when all the inherent contradictions in their policies and ideology become clear to everyone out there. Gods of the Copybook Headings can be heard warming up, offstage, if you listen carefully…
Kirk – what “backlash” is even possible now?
Future historians, if there are any future historians (as opposed to Collectivist propagandists), may conclude that the “backlash” was on January 6th 2021 – when perhaps as many as a million people (of these only a tiny proportion went on to the Capitol building) went to Washington, to protest against an obviously rigged election, an election that declared that “81 million people” voted for Mr Joseph Biden – a person who had declared, in a televised “Townhall” that eight year old children should have trans sexual “rights”.
As these million or so people went unarmed their protest was irrelevant – other than to give a perfect propaganda opportunity to their Government and Corporate enemies, and to give their enemies an excuse for a “crack down”.
Again what “backlash” is even possible now?
What is to stop the government and corporate establishment rigging future elections? Or firing anyone who expresses dissent – on race, or sex, or (indeed) dissent on anything?
We live in age where medical doctors and medical scientists are punished (dismissed from their positions, or forced to resign by a campaign of harassment) for telling the truth “spreading disinformation” on Covid Early Treatment (the “discredited” treatments work) or about the toxic injections – indeed people are given the “Nobel Price for Medicine” for producing injections that have injured and killed many people.
Yes you can dissent Kirk – as long as you are prepared to live in a cardboard box on the street and beg for food.
Is their any “backlash” in the military to the Frankfurt School of Marxism “Woke” indoctrination? What would happen to you, personally, if you stood up publicly and told your senior officers that what they were pushing was a load of Marxist garbage?
Would things go well for you after such a public statement?
I am not claiming any moral superiority – every day I hear and see evil, and I do nothing against it.