Originally Posted by British-Conservatism
You are a funny man.
I wrote a parody of multiculturalism like this a few years ago.
Best bit by far -
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I wrote a parody of multiculturalism like this a few years ago.
Best bit by far -
Can't say I disagree!
Oh my goodness, what a lot of hatred.
I joined this site yesterday in the hope to get involved in some adult discussion/debate regarding the recent disconcerting European election results. I have never really been too worried with the racist element in British politics or the protectionist values of parties like UKIP deeming the wider problem of globalisation and Miltonite laissez-faire economics to be the real demon problems facing contemporary man-kind. However , the results on Sunday draw my attention to the fact that these parties are in fact developing as a problem in British culture. I have , of course no problem with people airing their arguments and opinions and I in fact welcome such healthy discourse and very much enjoy the exchange of ideas. I have however in the space of 24 hours gotten a little taste of the flavour of this particular forum. This thread was bore of an intelligent if some what left leaning essay describing the posters views and analysis of the recent election results none of which have been discussed on any level at all. Instead petite point scoring and mild character asassinations have ensued and herein lies the problem with democracy. Sure, everybody is equal and everybody should have their say but the trouble is that not everybody speaks with the same tone or vocabulary which can lead to a clusterf*ck of a conversation.
I'm sure that this is the most 'cringeworthy' thing that some of you may have read and others will accuse me of pulling this out of a textbook. A couple of you may believe me to be living in a 'fantasy land' whilst I'm possibly deemed ' loony left' by another fair poster. Truth is I thank you all for concreting my resolve to keep my city as clean as possible from such misunderstanding and bigotry as is humanly possible. I'm not sure how active I'll be on this forum from now on considering the knee-jerk responses and comments I have read so far. I may instead choose to just enjoy this fantasy land that I so luckily find myself in whilst all the time remaining vigilant of the rising threat of ignorance and ignoble faux-patriotism that seems to be gaining popularity in some of the more under-developed egos around this Island.
I of course am more than aware of the problems with the insular Muslim communities ( amonst others ) that have sprung up so quickly in this country and am always prepared to discuss such problems. I do however deem it an extreme leap of faith to believe that these problems can be solved in the way that the BNP prescribe. We have gone too far in our society to allow anything akin to ethnic cleansing. Apart from the deep ethical problems that this would present the practicalities of such a solution are absurd and at the very least offer the promise of far-reaching bloodshed and violence on an scale not sen in Britain for hundreds of years.
The capitalists, politicians and social engineers of this world have done a wonderful job in dividing and conquering us. As we scrabble around blaming each other and fighting over the scraps from their table they enjoy the lions share of created wealth' happy in the knowledge that our feeble guns are pointed in the wrong direction and they are free to carry on regardless.
Left-wing I may be, In disagreement with me you may be but we should all be happy that these opposing attitudes are allowed to flourish. Keep Britain free, keep Britain fresh and keep Britain multi-coloured.
I look forward to the barrage of insult.
Interesting to see you took the example easiest to deflame. I don't know , maybe it's changed since you were last there.Where is the real London by the way? I'd very much like to see it.
Oh and that jokes been covered
You do need to get out more
BTW It was your socialist control freak friends who you laud to the sky for the totalitarian nightmare that is the EU who screwed the working class with their guilt trips and imposed "equality mission" you can't have it both ways Charlie boy
"That government is best which governs least."
"This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physician for all diseases and miseries".
"To be "matter of fact" about the world is to blunder into fantasy --and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful."
TANSTAAFL TANJ
I don't see any hatred. If you want to post pretentious claptrap you will get sarcasm in reply. You'll find plenty more on other threads - and not just from BNP supporters.
I prefer not to live in London. There's another thread here about the barbarously murdered French students who may well have thought - just like you - that South London was a cool place to live.
I've just been watching the news about the ethnics who stabbed to death a relative of some East Enders star, and about the mass protests against the wave of stabbings that took place at the same time.
In reply you tell us that you have some friends and nice neighbours. Bully for you. Nobody ever said that everybody in London was scum but it's still a bloody awful place.
Cobbett was right when he called it "The Great Wen"
Pretentious claptrap is an opinion, not an argument. I was merely offering a personal perspective on cosmopolitanism done well.
I heard about the French student. A great shame indeed. I never once said that London is completely safe, there's no where on this Earth that can make that claim. Thousands of students French and otherwise don't get stabbed everyday here, that of course is not newsworthy.
I've just been watching on the news about the white supremacist who shot dead a security guard at Washington's Holocaust memorial museum, what's your point?
My post was not intended to be a reply to these issues, I don't know where you got that from, that was a point that had not been raised nor a question that was asked of me, i repeat it was merely a personal observation of successful cosmopolitanism.
I have a serious question for you to hopefully take this discourse back on-topic.
Do you really believe that inner-city violence is a race and not a class issue?
If that surprises you, you clearly don't know Washington.
The first time I went there my American host (who loaned me his car) said "As you drive through North Capitol on the way home don't stop at any traffic light or you may be mugged"
A few months before my visit an elderly Brit tourist mistook his Metro stop, emerged in an off-limits ghetto, and was immediately murdered.
Another bloody awful place.
It doesn't suprise me, another thing I never said.
A Response Well well, I would never have believed that my analysis would create such debate. Apart from a couple of posts, however, it is disappointing that the majority of contributers to the debate have taken up space without offering much. Nevertheless, I shall set out to deal with some of the more engaging challenges and comments.
Defining our terms
Firstly, I think jimbo09's question relating to terms does raise a more important point, touched on by egon_Beardsley among others. A few terms clearly do need some analysis, because words and phrases are contested, and I believe a great deal of our language has created the problems we currently in politics.
There is, of course, the fundamental challenge to binary notions of Left and Right in politics. Ultimately, I would argue that Left conceives of a high degree of individual responsibility and control over life (and conceives of the individual as ultimately capable of self-regulation) and Right is the opposite - that people require regulation, rules and these need enforcement.
Yet, I also agree that the world doesn't operate on this simple binary. 'Economic liberalism', focuses on the freedom of the individual to make economic choices, yet that certainly doesn't qualify it as a Left-wing ideology. The need for the criminal legal protection of property, for example, and the enforcement of contracts, mean that there is a strong coercive element which bears more relation to Right-wing, authoritarian principles. (From Hobbes and Montesquieu, to Bentham, Mill and Ricardo, this is relatively clear).
But who does economic liberalism actually address? Those, of course, with the means to take part in it. It follows, therefore, that the working class of Britain - of whom the White are most definitely the majority, if not the only inhabitants - are largely left out of the 'freedoms' of economic liberalism. Yet, at the same time, they are the ones who suffer the brunt of the criminal law, and effectively remain unrepresented by a political class that doesn't address their lives.
Far from being Right or Left myself, I am trying to provide an analysis. I do not see any serious challenge to these ideas as yet in this discussion, though I look forward to any questions which will provide a better understanding.
The rise of the far-Right
The Right that I refer to in my original article - the BNP, and the authoritarian politics of various political parties across Europe - can reasonably be described as fascist. Of course the definition is not settled, yet the consequences of various government systems and ideologies can be pointed out. They tend to be authoritarian, totalitarian and monolithic ideologies - based on the premises of force, coercion and the 'rating' of people.
Eugenics arose out of early globalism and the slave trade, and can reasonably be referred to as a fascist ideology. Nazism likewise, being based on the dominance of one particular 'race' and giving internal legitimacy to ethnic cleansing. From the rule of the Hutus in Rwanda to Apartheid in South Africa, ideologies based on race generally have force, control and propaganda at their heart. This, I say, is what makes them far-Right.
How the far-Right fills a Left-wing void
As explained, I believe that the White working class, therefore, have fundamentally been left behind by an exclusive form of mainstream politics which doesn't address them, and even punishes them. So, the question is how does the far-Right fill this void?
Well, my answer to this is through the clever use of forms of propaganda. By use of that word, I ask readers not immediately to add a negative connotation to it, but recognise, rather, its power in political discourse. The BNP, in my view, has a very powerful and clever use of information technology which means its message is spread widely, quickly and efficiently. Its website is thriving, with regular updates and forums, they release new leaflets on an almost daily basis which they get local activists to distribute, and they mounted a very strong campaign during the European Elections.
I want to give a concrete example of why this has such an effect. In one community that I work in, a middle-aged woman who works as a checkout assistant told me why, although she dislikes the BNP, they are the only ones 'listening' to her. She lives in a predominantly White working class area, and there is a very mixed inner city area quite close by, where she says there are a lot of problems. During the European Elections, the only communication from political parties she received was a leaflet from the BNP. This leaflet, far from being full of fascist and racist undertones, spoke about giving the local community back control over its streets.
Through the cynical use of local issues, and focusing on areas where the other political parties were either too lazy or unconcerned to target, the BNP spreads itself as a party of the people. And, with Nick Griffin's PR campaign to come across as reasonable – as leaked to the national press when he ordered all candidates to refrain from discussion about race – its easy to forget the hateful ideology of the party. Yet, of course, background research shows us that it is, indeed hateful: from the ban on non-Whites entering the party to its condemnation of 'non-natural homos', and, of course, its dangerous race-based dogma, we can see that not all is as it seems.
This, fundamentally, is also why people should not be so quick to jump to judgment of the people that do not vote, or who are simply not being engaged by the mainstream political parties (for the reasons above). The issue is much broader than this – it is a fundamental failure of modern politics, based on economic liberalism.
And, as correctly suggested by uclanlecturer, people do not merely vote for the BNP out of simple disillusion, they are voting for a party that says it will represent them, thereby consciously engaging in democracy. They are not ignoramuses – they have simply been disregarded by pretty much everyone else.
How can the rise of the Right be challenged?
Well, in my view – and it is mine, not a copy and paste job, but is based on years of experience as a community education practitioner – we must start by dealing with how not to challenge it. Contra the contribution of prober, we shouldn't be banning anything. By banning people like the BNP – who operate, as I suggest above, in a very cynical manner through the careful use of propaganda – all we will create are legitimate feelings of persecution on the part of supporters of that party. More than this, we will also alienate people who also feel like they have been excluded from the system – keep in mind the 65% of non-voters – who sympathise with these feelings of exclusion.
But just to challenge the BNP on the basis of its view is not enough either. A line-by-line challenge of its appalling manifesto – and those which are even more extreme of far-Right parties across Europe – would be easy to undertake. Yet, its not the BNPs views which have the power – its the propaganda machine which it operates. So, at least part of the answer to challenge the BNP must be to address the legitimate concerns of the working class – and, this time, not merely on the basis of race – and to directly communicate with these communities.
Yet, even this, I would argue, is not enough. Where the BNP takes hold, it doesn't merely stop, but enters its own educational programmes – through ongoing leafleting and informal meetings – where its fascist race-based ideology truly gets propounded and repeated. Indeed, it is nothing short of indoctrination, and young people I am currently working with have told me about these strategies. They are creating the forums for the replication of their ideology.
So, how can this be challenged? Well, in my view, this comes to the heart of the debate. We are fundamentally talking about the need for new forums of debate which provide an alternative in the communities which have been so badly forgotten by mainstream politics. The aims of these forums need to be based on civic society – the need for people to be engaged with, and have responsibility over, their lives and their communities. The methods should be focused on supporting community members to fundamentally pose with, and deal with, issues that really are important to them.
By this, I mean nothing less than a programme of community renewal based on principles of truly socialist values. We need to trust people and give them an alternative, not to patronise them and force them into the hands of parties that prey on false hope and then use these people for the pursuance of their own political ends.
A couple of closing remarks
Debates such as this are easy to be thrown off track. As egon_Beardsley legitimately points out, it is slightly frustrating that the main issues raised in this conversation have been trifling – challenging each others' characters or sincerity and simple mud-slinging. Yet even this isn't surprising.
We are at a time for politics in Britain and Europe where large numbers of people are switched-off of a politics that doesn't represent them. A huge number of people are not represented and its therefore no surprise that cynicism reigns. This cynicism of progressiveness – and I use this word consciously – is simply another example of the failure of modern politics.
I call on those who believe that change is possible to begin making things happen. For those who say its not possible, then don't get in the way, or, if you do, explain why. If you don't agree then that's also fine. But simplistic personality clashes are too unimportant to get in the way of this important debate.
And, finally, those who are disdainful – and I include in this the intellectual elitist remarks of people such as uclanlecturer – I urge you to take a look at the world around you and not to operate in a vacuum. My comments are not politically-motivated but based on experience – and, if politics is truly about the people, then its the world around us that really is important beyond everything else.
Thank you for this interesting opportunity.
Steven Allen
11 June 2009
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