This article by Tom Slater is worth reading in full, but I wanted to post these words in particular because they get to the heart, as I see it, of the current mayhem on the streets of certain British towns:
At the very least, elite identitarianism – with its crusades against whiteness and white privilege – has been a recruiting sergeant for a white-identitarian backlash.
Here is an excellent overview of the situation by Helen Dale.
This infernal dynamic is what will make tackling the new sectarianism in our midst so difficult. We have an elite that will almost certainly fight this identitarianism with more identitarianism – not to mention censorship. There’s already talk of clamping down on social media, perhaps even banning ‘Islamophobia’. The pundits are having another one of their McCarthyite spasms, demonising anyone who has ever criticised multiculturalism, mass immigration or Islamist extremism. All of which seems guaranteed to push these conversations to the margins, where blowhards can spew their bile unchallenged. All the while, the state will continue to ignore the myriad other forms of racial and religious sectarianism that have reared their head of late – not least the anti-Semitic, Islamist agitation that has been blighting Britain’s streets for 10 months now.
Those racist rioters must face the full force of the law. We must show our solidarity with the communities menaced by this violence. We also cannot allow the bigoted criminality of a tiny few to become a pretext to silence the concerns and corrode the freedoms of the many. But beyond the days and weeks ahead we also need a much, much bigger conversation about how to confront the racial thinking, ‘multicultural’ sectarianism and identity politics that have brought us to this point.
I also think that some, if not all, of the evil consequences of identity politics and the rest must be traced back to academia and what passes for intellectual activity. This situation has been brewing for years. There are a number of excellent studies about all this, but I think Cynical Theories, by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, is as good a place to start as ever.
Unpicking all this is going to take a great deal of work. Yes, reducing net immigration, particularly from certain parts of the world, is part of it, if only to give more time for those newly arrived (legally) on these shores to be assimilated. Restricting immigration is only part of it, even if I accept that my views on it are a good deal more libertarian than others on this blog. But far more work is also needed, in my view, to push back against the idea of turning everyone into members of a tribe. Tribalism, along with emotionalism, is the curse of our age. To that point, I also recommend this short book by Objectivist writer Nikos Sotirakopoulos, whose commentaries I follow.
And one way to start changing is not play the game, as so many in the MSM and political world do, of assuming that everyone has to be addressed as part of a “community”, with their self-appointed leaders. A person living legally in the UK is a British citizen, period. No need for hyphens, community tags, whatsoever. If you see newscasters, journalists, MPs or others engaging in this, call them out. Write to them (politely) to point this all out.
And we need to kill an entitlement culture, which I suspect is widespread among the wider public, if not more so, than those who have just legally arrived on these shores. The Welfare State – at least its modern manifestation – has played a part in creating an underclass of people who are prey to the temptations of violence and easy (usually wrong) solutions. In this regard I think of two books, written some while ago, that are worth re-visiting: Mind The Gap, by Ferdinand Mount (journalist and former policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher) and Life at the Bottom, by Theodore Dalrymple, aka Anthony Daniels.
Arguably providing the Welfare State has played a part in creating an overclass of people who are prey to the temptations of knowing better how the little people should run their lives, together with easy (usually wrong) solutions.
Who is going to tell Lady Bountiful that her efforts are not appreciated outside her social bubble?
Arguably providing the Welfare State has played a part in creating an overclass of people who are prey to the temptations of knowing better how the little people should run their lives, together with easy (usually wrong) solutions
Indeed. I remember reading somewhere that many of the Fabians and other statist advocates of the post-1945 welfare state carried the same mindset as those who ran the empire in Africa and India, and other places, with a similar paternalist mindset. At their best, they meant well and were often competent. Unfortunately, they suffered from the hubris that comes with such a mindset.
The possibility for assimilation has passed. Enough people were imported quickly enough around the end of the 20th century that enclaves were allowed to form that remove the pressures to assimilate. Islam also contains several memetic structures that work against assimilation.
There’s no way this ends well.
The idea of equality before the law has immense intuitive appeal. It has inspired people of all colours across the world. Yet over the last thirty years or so, it has been denigrated as a Eurocentric relic. The currently dominant vision of a multi-ethnic society is more reminiscent of the “millets” of the Ottoman Empire. In many ways the millet system was benevolent for its time, but it could not hold. The Armenian millet ended with the genocide of the Armenians.
Rob Berbank is right. I got lost recently and ended-up in Bolton. It looked Islamabad on an overcast day – Islamaworse?
“Of course, the vast majority of Brits have zero sympathy with the rioters”
I’d be willing to bet far more support them than people like Tom believe.
I don’t have any issue with them.
Identity politics only seems to be a problem when whites start standing up for themselves.
I’ve already gone well past the point where I’ll vote for anyone I think will do something about these problems. And I don’t care what. Nothing is off limits to me anymore.
I’d be willing to bet far more support them than people like Tom believe.
I doubt most people are fine with throwing bricks at police, setting fire to hotels with people actually inside, etc.
“Nothing is off limits to me any more.”
You sound like you have bought into “riot ideology”. The point of Tom Slater’s article appears to be lost on oafs such as you.
I don’t think huge amounts of people support the rioting. More however have noticed the hypocrisy of much left-liberal and elite opinion and police behaviour over rioting. The picture of Starmer and Rayner bending the knee while BLM riots were going on is well known. Because they can’t resist posturing on twitter, you can usually find past tweets supportive of leftist riots on the profiles of journalists who are now almost calling for martial law. You can seem them outraged about property destruction today but saying it wasn’t important when minorities rioted in the past.We’ve all seen the police in Leeds running off from gypsy rioters a few weeks ago and how the council caved into gypsy opinion.So Starmer and the left have lost narrative control here, hence the two tier Kier narrative and memes flying around.
Regarding assimilation I think in many cases we are beyond that. If you take Harehills in Leeds where there was the gypsy riot a few weeks ago (and previous riots in the past), less than 20pc of the population is white British. It’s more likely they will end up leaving or being assimilated into multicultural slop than the other way around. And with a woke culture and crap education system, what are we supposed to be assimilating immigrants to?
Martin nails it, in my view, with this:
And with a woke culture and crap education system, what are we supposed to be assimilating immigrants to?
Exactly. Assimilation is a lot easier to do if the culture to which one is being assimilated into is confident, energetic and attractive. In the UK, there is this relentless culture of self-abasement that has been spread by parts of the MSM, and which has torn like a bushfire through universities, schools, libraries, the National Trust, the armed forces, police, judiciary, theatre and to an extent, the film industry (although there is something of a change going on, as woke ideology bombs at the box office).
I did not touch on the two-tier policing side, but I have no doubt that the way that appalling acts of intimidation have been inflicted on Jews, for example, without sufficiently severe punishment, is an indictment of the policing in the UK. And the mealy mouthed way that developments such as the Rotherham grooming gangs story were handled have bred enormous resentment.
As an aside, it is worth pointing out that nearly all of the mayhem seems to be taking place in the “Red Wall” seats that the Tories captured in 2019 but which reverted to Labour in July.
What struck me on the eve of the rioting was how much Kier Starmer, on his visit to Southport, resembled Theresa May on her visit to Grenfell Tower. There was the same disconnnect between the appearance of leaden going-through-the-motions on the part of the Prime Minister and a sullen audience withholding the slightest presumption of good faith.
“What struck me on the eve of the rioting was how much Kier Starmer, on his visit to Southport, resembled Theresa May on her visit to Grenfell Tower. There was the same disconnnect between the appearance of leaden going-through-the-motions on the part of the Prime Minister and a sullen audience withholding the slightest presumption of good faith.”
As an erstwhile colleague of mine was wont to say: “More of the same. Only better!”
I don’t think there is support for the riots but there is growing “understanding” at some level. There are a lot of people who are beginning to have thoughts that disquiet them and they simply wouldn’t have even considered just a few years ago. It is quite obvious that if you don’t fit the “special” groups the system hates you. People are sick of being told we are knuckle-draggers by our “betters”* over wokeism or Islam or “colonialism”.
You know if you tell people they are a bunch of racist, homophobic, transphobic, whatevers they might act like it eventually?
And no, I’m not going to say what I really sometimes feel in the dark watches of the night. But they are evil thoughts.
*And it is the patronising high-handedness that really pisses people off.
This discussion all seems a bit pointless. We all know that Labour will go further and faster than even the Tories on immigration. In 4-5 years at the next election things will have got a lot worse than they are now. The working class is under severe pressure and no one in authority gives a damn. What recourse do they have when no one listens to them or represents them. We can all sit in our nice houses and criticise them for doing whatever they can to get some attention (and I know some part of this violence is simply racist thuggery, I’m not excusing it). If Gov can’t get a grip on this or doesn’t want to then things are going to get really bad very soon. If you think the working class will stand idly by whilst they’re shit on then I can only say that I think that you are wrong.
This plus assimilation often works better when there’s greater wealth being produced (eg. 19th century America). Whereas most of the unprecedented immigration of the past two decades into Britain has mostly happened during economic stagnation and much of the ‘growth’ of these years comes from quantitative easing and dubious GDP stats. Genuinely insane social experiment.
I’d agree, just knowing what I’ve seen here in Minnesota.
I have some friends in Minneapolis who have owned their homes – nice old homes – and businesses for decades. They had a great life, in a comfortable and friendly (and prosperous) city.
The our pols decided to import 80,000 Somalis into the city – a city of about 420,000 (including the Somalis.)
Now, my friends’ lives are degraded daily. Their assets have been devalued. They cannot go outside comfortably. They cannot lock their cars without losing their windows. Their kids get beat up regularly. They are Kaffir in their own homes – homes which now have little resale value.
You don’t experience such things if you live in a nice condo in a more expensive part of the city, where the gov officials and well-paid commentators all seem to live. And so, our government sees no issue there, and our press writes about it not at all.
To those gov officials and our press, the complaints of the affected people prove them to be deplorables. Bigots. Oafs.
I remember shoveling the kids’ burnt toys into a dumpster at one such house after the Floyd riots. Yeah, what a racist complainer my friend was at that point.
I am reminded of Karl Popper’s thesis that democracy should be understood, not as ‘rule by the people’, but as a non-violent way of changing an unsatisfactory government.
The point is, apparently there are many Britons (and Irish) who believe that government can no longer be changed non-violently.
— As an aside, i bet that Rishi Sunak is mightily happy that he is no longer PM.
The pollsters YouGov did a poll on support for the riots and tweeted the results.
YouGov’s phrasing is often ambiguous and in some places almost illiterate (“Those taking place in recent protests peacefully”), but the overall pattern is clear. The UK public as a whole has quite a lot of sympathy with the protests when they are peaceful, but it strongly disapproves of rioting.
The tweet links to this article: “The public reaction to the 2024 riots”
Having seen what has happened in US cities since WW2 and French cities since the 1980’s I 100% support the direct action of the rioters.
This is the way it worked in the US.
If there is a large influx of non white population into a city and its 20% Asian / Chinese there is no impact on the quality of life, public safety or government services.
If there is a large influx of non white population into a city and its 20% Mexican / Central Americans there is some deterioration of the quality of life. Public safety is not so great, some increase in crime. And government services are not so great but generally works.
If there is a large influx of non white population into a city and its 20% Black the quality of life collapses. Huge increase in crime. And public services eventually pretty much collapse due to endemic political corruption.
There is no big US city which is 15%/20% plus black that is not high crime, utterly corrupt and deeply dysfunctional.
Its got nothing to do with race. It culture.
In the UK (and Western European context) Eastern Europeans, Hindu Indians, Chinese, Far Easterners South Americans cause few if any problems. Sub Saharan Africa’s do cause problems but not to a very serious degree. Afro-Carafibans can cause lots of problems. But North Africans, Middle Eastern and Muslim Asians cause severe social disruption, crime and civil unrest. They are unassimalatable.
Again its culture not race.
The huge difference between what happened in the US and what is happening in Europe is that the millions of blacks who moved to the big cities after WW2 were all US citizens. It was an internal population movement. All the profoundly disruptive new populations in Europe over the last 5 decades are all recent imports. Brought in for purely ideological reasons by the stupid bein pensan, left wing parties, or for sinister social engineering reasons. To deliberately disrupt society for the political ends of a small minority. The hard left.
Anyone who knows the early years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1960’s knows exactly how this will play out. We are living in the early days of sustained salafi sectarian violence. And this will not be like dealing with Christian sectarianisms , This will be just like the battle with Communism. There will be a zero sum fight. You can either have a secular liberal democracy or a large muslim minority. 10%+ You cannot have both. The numbers in the UK are now the same as France. About 2/3’rd of Muslims are basically salafi. They want a muslim supremist state. The want the majority to conform to their religious and cultural beliefs. The muslims in France have been a lot more up front about this but 5 salafi MPS were just elected. They are radical islamists who want an islamisised UK. That’s what they say. And they mean it.
Anyone who remember Belfast in the 1970’s and 1980’s knows what is coming next. And it wont be random beheading, mass stabbing of children and unfocused riots in response. It will get a lot more serious. And bloody.
Prepare for the Rivers Of Blood because its only just started. Its not like we weren’t warned by those who saw how this played out elsewhere.
The average British citizen might not support throwing bricks at cops now, but eventually they’ll wake up to the fact that those same cops are the fist of the system they’re angry at and each and every police officer made a choice to be there and makes the same choice every day. Once that realization sets in, things are really going to get sporty. It’s one of the reasons I laugh when I see a car with a Gadsden Flag sticker right next to a TBL sticker. Who do they think will be doing the treading on them, some bureaucrat or politician?
Natalie Solent (Essex)
August 6, 2024 at 9:29 pm
“The pollsters YouGov did a poll . . . ”
Curious: I know that in the USA, if you limit your news sources to the elite-sponsored MSM, you do not see a very accurate or complete picture of things that are occurring here.
So I wonder if, over there, do the people even have a good view of what rioting is taking place, and what is driving it? Is this poll reflective of an informed populace, or is it reflective of how information is limited and deployed?
We’re in a new Age of Non-Information, and polls change as the info changes.
bobby b,
Having spent years blogging about examples of BBC bias and misleading reporting from the UK media, it seems odd to say this, but I think British people currently have better access to news than Americans do. The Daily Mail is the most read newspaper website in the UK, and it isn’t bad if you don’t mind the RANDOM capital letters in the HEADLINES. The Telegraph, to which I subscribed when the Times stopped allowing commenters to be anonymous, is the most-read of the “quality” papers. Its political position is weird. Some of the writers could equally well appear in the Guardian, particularly when it comes to reporting about Trump, others are very right wing indeed. The commenters are modern right wing. Any commenter saying that they have right wing views while belonging to group that is not stereotypically right wing gets a lot of upvotes. The Independent, now online-only, covers stories that break the narrative surprisingly often – a pity the website is choked with pop-up adverts. The Guardian has gone downhill because it no longer allows reader comments on most stories, but it still is pretty good on more neutral subjects. The BBC is running scared, which has improved it.
Edit: and, of course, social media is taking over. Much of the news coverage of the riots starts on Twitter. The Telegraph has picked up a lot of stuff posted by Twitter randos that the BBC etc. didn’t want to cover.
Cool. Thank you for the analysis.
I sometimes think that people are generally acting rationally, but in reaction to insufficient or incorrect information, which makes me think the better of them. A lot of what happens here in the US happens as a result of this. Meaning, there is hope, if the right information could find its way clear. People are not generally bad – they just cannot make the right decisions (meaning, of course, MY decisions) because they don’t know any better.
But, I also see indications – such as your comment – that people are receiving the same information that I receive, and simply choosing poorly (again, meaning not how I would choose.) That lessens my hopes, and makes me re-read Paul Marks’ comments.
If y’all are receiving good and abundant information, and your polling still reflects weak support for conservative thought, then I can understand Paul’s pessimism, even in the face of the optimism I sometimes feel here in the US (where people hardly ever see contrasting views and have little reason to think critically.)
As for social media, I think it ends up heavily silo’ed. The Twitter algorithm shows me mostly people who think like me (if I’m in “following” mode, which is most comfortable.) I have to make the conscious decision to switch to “for you” mode to see woke thought, and it’s hostile and takes an effort. I think most people are choosing comfort, and so most are unfamiliar with contrasting thought.
Bobby b,
What we’re being told on this side of the Pond is it’s a bunch of Right Wing racists rioting as an overreaction to a stabbing. That’s about it.
But the same MSM types have totally been silent on the rioting in Ireland and the torching of the immigrant centers.
“A person living legally in the UK is a British citizen” – no. There are millions living in the UK who are *not* British citizens. A citizen is a specific legal state, it does not mean “resident” or “present”. There are 15,000 Chinese students at my local university. Are you *really* asserting that they are British citizens?
Many of the recent immigrants come from troubled if not exactly war torn countries. The second generation have grown up in tight knit communities and are disproportionately tied to their culture, not ours. The phrase “fighting aged men” is accurately used to describe over 90% of the boat people but it also could be used to describe the hundreds “defending their mosques”.
Watching the events of the past few days all of this has come home to me. These people are fighters, most of the white population is not. They are not afraid to carry and use weapons, not guns admittedly, but knives clubs etc to a previously unknown extent. That worries and scares the living daylights out of me but not apparently our politicians.
I keep hearing that we don’t need weapons because we cannot realistically expect to fight against our country’s military.
But what you’re seeing now – especially made clear in the two-tier justice system demonstrations – is that the army that you will truly need to fight is going to be made up of millions of fighting-age immigrants.
I’m amazed, though, that the enablers of such a system – the progressive governments that are bringing these new armies into our countries – believe that they will have control over these armies – believe that these immigrants will fight FOR their progressive cause and then cede control back to them once the fight is over. They won’t. The Progs will then lose to the immigrants. But being murdered by people in government who will then commit their own suicide stills leaves you dead. I’d rather live.
Conservative nationalists are going to need to retreat from the urban centers which the immigrants are starting to fill, and let them war amongst themselves for a bit. Once resources to them are cut off or depleted, they will come out after us. And then the real fight begins.
And our militaries and police will largely be a nullity in this process.
Chance of this happening? I’d guess less than 5%. 95% chance that things just keep smoldering. But you buy insurance for risks that come in at 5% probability. Thus, weapons.
Jonathan,
That’s only half the problem, the other half is that on arriving in Britain an immigrant will find a large, well established enclave of his own countrymen so that assimilation is entirely unnecessary.
We all know the correct form of words that should have been said, “Clearly there are strong feelings on both sides and the government is keen to address those issues.” and similar pablum, none of it sincere. Instead Starmer has informed the white working class that they live in an occupied country and if they know what’s good for them they will not bother the occupiers.
Some seem to think Starmer evil, I think he is a bloody idiot who has no idea of the forces he is playing with. The same goes for the police, who, on their present behaviour will end up like the RUC, living in fortified barracks and patrolling in armoured personnel carriers.
The harder you crack down, the more likely it is that things will get blown up.
There was a very good piece on Matt Goodwin’s substack this morning.
Sunak probably knows that much of the pressure for all this mayhem happened on his watch and that of the Tories since 2010 and under Blair/Brown.
I must say I’ve been struck by how wooden and awkward Starmer looks. There’s no sense of leadership. It’s all cliches.
Identity Politics, “Woke” or “Critical Theory” Frankfurt School Marxism, has done what it was designed to do – set people at each other’s throats, in order to justify Collectivism, justify Tyranny (special police units, censorship and persecution, trials with predetermined outcomes…. and that is just what the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has been threatening over the last couple of days, “Two Tier policing and Two Tier justice – from Two Tier Keir”).
It goes back a long way – for example the British Home Office had Marxist academic advisers as far back as the 1970s.
These riots seem rather artificial to me, definitely more than a whiff of false flag. It strikes me that Reform did quite well in the election, and the “blob” has plenty of reason to want to discredit the “far-right”.
We know that the “security services” have previously infiltrated groups like left-wing ecological pressure groups and in some cases the undercover officers incited violence and were ring-leaders in more radical protests and actions than were previously taken by such groups. It seems to me this is all from a standard playbook, along with the government’s promises to punish punitively (10 year prison sentences for involvement in rioting).
The government and the police don’t give a f*ck about peaceful protesters. Neither do the muslim invaders who are prepared to be as savage as their religion and culture dictate. Arcane discussions about identity politics, assimilation and all the other nonsense you folks bring up are all besides the point and convinces me the UK is lost (as are France and Germany).
Henry Cybulski: Arcane discussions about identity politics, assimilation and all the other nonsense you folks bring up are all besides the point and convinces me the UK is lost (as are France and Germany).
Well you think they are arcane subjects, but that’s not true. A fish rots from the head: if you have crappy ideas, you get crappy results. As for what else “you folks bring up” (welfarism, loss of confidence in the rule of law, nihilism and slow economic growth) they all interlink with the mayhem we see.
You don’t need to shout about the menace that radical Islamism poses to the UK – I have been a contributor to this blog for 23 years, pretty much since 9/11.
I can recall, under Tony Blair, how people quipped that the police had become the militant wing of the Guardian newspaper. As I said, this rot has been spreading for years.
Go and read the Tom Slater article. Digest what it says, because as a one-stop guide to our current discontents, it is excellent. And look up the other books I mention.
My patience is getting thin with people who shout a lot and who dump on those who try and explain how we got here and dismiss this effort as “arcane”. Give me a break.
Alex
These riots seem rather artificial to me, definitely more than a whiff of false flag.
I have seen lots of folk on social media trying to excuse all this, so my guess is that the bulk of this, while partly organised, is also quite “organic” in nature.
I have no doubt that the sort of radical agitators – who get involved in such mayhem – are involved. The police probably have a lot of names.
All I’ll say is long live Tommy Robinson:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/08/06/big-picture-on-current-status-and-origin-of-u-k-riots-by-tommy-robinson/
Henry: speak for yourself.
Nice try chump; you who told me to read the Tom Slater article and certain books you mentioned.
Henry, I am familiar with Robinson, who by the way has been sunning himself in the Med. while all the mayhem has been going on. That he says some occasionally true things (such as on the Rotherham case and shameful behaviour of part of the police and the legal system) does not really get me past much of his agenda. Despite denials, he appears also to be a fan of conspiracy theories and related hokum.
The best that I could say about TR is that he is a mixed bag, but there is too much about how he presents himself that damages the things he claims he is trying to promote. Reminds me a bit of Donald Trump or, for that matter, Nigel Farage.
What does Tommy Robinson sunning himself in the Med have do with anything? He had planned a vacation with his family and he took a vacation with his family.
As for the conspiracy theories he is supposedly a big fan of, the article you link essentially just outline Robinson asking certain supposedly delicate questions. It was basically a smear job.
“asking questions”. Oh well.
TR has been vocal in, for example, likening the Muslim population (with hardly any caveats I can read) to an invading army. Yes, he’s denied he is a racist (and a lot of the worries people have about Muslims, or at least Islamism, to be more precise, is about the ideas of such folk) but when I look at the now defunct English Defence League, and so on, there is a braying hostility towards Muslims across the board that I see from him and his supporters. And we end up with the dreadful scenes of past days.
And now I see people are seeking to make him more respectable. He was on the Jordan Peterson podcast the other day. (Peterson, by the way, is getting increasingly religious. He has been a force for good in some ways.)
Robinson has spent several spells in prison for a variety of offences, including mortgage fraud.
Some of what he says is true, but a lot is done with such hysteria that what value there is gets lost.
Sorry JP, the Muslim population didn’t start out as an invading army but over time it has become just that. And you folks are dealing with the consequences of that invasion.
As for Robinson spending several spells in prison you mention one reason and ignore his political persecution. The guy has had more skin in the game than you have had. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Then there’s your swipe at Jordan Peterson for interviewing Robinson. Quelle horreur! Peterson even found religion. My god what has the world come to?
Sorry JP, the Muslim population didn’t start out as an invading army but over time it has become just that.
I don’t think of Muslims as an “it”. They aren’t a collective mass. I know a few very Westernised ones. Goodness, thousands of them died in the First World War fighting for the British Army. I went to Belgium to see war graves a few years ago. There are tens of thousands of Muslim soldiers at rest there. Think about it.
As I said in the original post, there must be a pushback against talking about Muslim people – or indeed anyone else (Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Jedi Knights (okay, kidding)) as part of some undifferentiated blob, who think and act as one, whether benevolently or otherwise. First and foremost, they must be talked about, and addressed, as individual people. If they are citizens of the UK, I call them British individuals. Language matters. As Slater writes, every time people don’t get the language right, it fuels the fire.
Two hundred years ago, London was torn apart, and people were killed, in the Gordon Riots, as they were called at the time, involving the murder of Catholics and the destruction of their property. The fear of “Popery” was very strong at the time. Innocent people were hurt, killed and had their livelihoods ruined. There have been countless examples across history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Riots
I don’t think being jailed for mortgage fraud counts as political persecution, unless you can prove it. All else is innuendo.
Peterson can interview whom he wants, and he is very influential. He’s hit or miss. I am not religious, and I find some of the ways he argues to be mistaken, but there it is. He seems very keen on the “life is about suffering” approach, which I am not.
In case anyone wonders, I a free speech absolutist, and always have been. JP has been treated abominably at times by places such as Cambridge University, and now there is absurd crap out there from commentators in the UK calling for Elon Musk’s X to be shut down. That’s not going to do any good, and betrays a sinister mindset. As for TR, he has full free speech rights: better that we know what he says and thinks than keeps it under wraps. The old JS Mill case for free speech, that it makes our arguments better by testing them, is evergreen.
So there are plenty of reasons to dislike established narratives. But, and it is a big but, I really don’t see Robinson as some sort of positive force in the main, and I am wary of those who think he is.
I don’t think of Muslims as an “it”. They aren’t a collective mass.
There have been armed gangs of Asian, presumably Muslim, males sometimes numbering in the hundreds in the streets of northern and midland towns and cities in recent days. They have been seen in numerous online videos, albeit rarely in the mainstream media. They certainly identify as a collective. Some even have a name for themselves, the Muslim Defence League. I thought we were supposed to frown on that sort of thing.
Like you I know, work with and occasionally (they often still tend towards privacy, something I am happy to respect) socialise with well assimilated, westernised and thoroughly decent Muslims. They are not the problem. The men on the streets of “their” towns, behaving as if attack is the best form of defence, are. The lack of clear evidence of police intervention is also a problem.
Jonathan Pearce said:
There is something here that I find darkly amusing, and it covers both Farage and Trump. People like Jonathan focus on the optics, the trivialities of these men, and decry them because they’re outre, bombastic, populist… Whatever. They don’t like them, because… They are “not their sort”, not conventional.
Well, sad to say, all the assholes who are “their sort” are traitors to the mass of public interest. They’re sweet-smelling rogues who’ve been steadily selling “the rest of us” out for the last many decades. Sure, Farage is an outrageous asshole, but where’s the excoriation for all those “nice sorts of people” who signed you Brits up to give away your sovereignty to Brussels? Who opened up your borders, and brought in all those nice foreign sorts, while crushing your fellow native Britons under taxes to pay for it all, which resulted in, oddly enough, the current fertility rates being what they are…
Y’all are a bunch of idiots, frankly. You’ve fallen in love with the dulcet tones of those who are out to destroy you and yours, and now find that the only people who will fight them aren’t worthy of your respect or aid because they sound like braying donkeys to your ears… Mostly because you don’t like what they’re saying, how they’re saying it, or the way they deliver it.
It really goes beyond idiocy. You’re all credulous fools, suckers, rubes… Too stupid to make out that the people you’ve been listening to have sold you out, and are fitting you up for shackles as we speak. You go on and on about how Farage and Trump are uncouth bastard populists you don’t like and won’t listen to, but the sad fact is, the only alternative out there you do like is effectively on the opposite side from your own interests.
So, you’ll go to your graves saying “Gee, I just couldn’t vote for that strange orange man…”
Truth is truth. Doesn’t matter what package it comes in, or who delivers it. Farage may be an asshole and a nutter, but he was right about one damn thing: The whole of the EU project in the UK was illegitimate and so is the EU. All that the EU represents is a coup by the bureaucrats of Europe on the electorates of all their various nations; they do not have anyone’s actual best interests at heart, and remain untouchable by the actual voters, behind a screen of carefully-selected failed national politicians whose retirements are dependent on the EU bureaucracy.
Objecting to the messenger is stupidity on ice; you should rather be looking at the message, and the actions of said messenger. Trump talks a lot of crap about a lot of things, most of what he says is actually strategic misdirection, bombastic verbiage weaponized. You have to look at what he did, and what he does. He talked about pulling out of NATO in 2016; did he do that? No, he did not: He actually effectively pushed the European allies into doing what the hell they’d promised they would.
People should really pay a lot more attention to the things these assholes do, as opposed to what they say. Look at Obama; ran on a platform of “unity and togetherness”, did he not? Where are we with race relations after his tenure…? Oh; yeah… Pretty much back where we were at during the 1960s, ‘cos that’s what he actually did. Tore up progress, and fostered tons of racial animosity while he was at it.
Meanwhile, everyone loves his ass as “The Lightbringer”. WTF? How stupid are most of you people, anyway?
Kirk, if you think that people who engage in conspiracy theories, rant and rave, get arrested, jailed, are associated with insurrections, and all the rest of it, are pushing the needle towards freedom, equality before the law, free market capitalism, scientific progress, and so on, then I wish you all the joys. If you think that people who consider these behaviours to detract from any such genuine progress are just being overly fastidious, or are snobs, well, live with that illusion.
One of the the things I have noticed about the current “politics of resentment”, particularly as it comes from part of the “Right”, is this never-ending assumption that anyone who does not buy into this worldview is an elitist, a snob, educated at a top university, lives in a gated community, and is cut off the views of “normal people”. This becomes as much an echo chamber as that which such critics claim to be attacking.
Very tedious it is. The failings I see in the likes of Farage or Trump are not minor things, such as whether Trump has an orange face or that TR gets certain people we dislike to clutch their pearls. It is more substantial than that. To suggest otherwise, and to dismiss such concerns as little more than snobbery is, itself, a form of bullying. I grow weary of it.
You British have a real problem. I’ve read Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech. He was absolutely right, just forty years ahead of his time. And bien-pensants like you, Johnathan, mock those in the streets who are fighting against the forces selling out their country and relegating them to dhimmi status. You, personally, have one Hell of a lesson to learn, but you WILL learn it because you will have no other choice.