Consider Cllr Alan Hosker, leader of the Tory group on Burnley council and a county councillor for Lancashire. He writes "Regarding these riots all over our Country it's down to the Labour Government to get a grip. Migration is way out of control. Folk in our Country feel they are being 2nd class citizens watching migrants be put up in hotels first class medical services including first on housing list". How is this any different to the ranting of the sieg-heiling fash on social media?
With a better grasp of written English but with the same awful politics, the chair of the Police and Crime Commissioners' organisation for England and Wales put out a statement (now deleted) calling for "calm and honesty". Donna Jones, PCC for Hampshire says "The behaviour of some of those protesting has been extremely violent, highly distressing and absolutely criminal". Leaving aside the dubious claims that any of them could be described as "protest", the nod to the customary respectability of the mainstream sits awkwardly with the thumbs up she gives the far right's politics. Sympathetically, she amplifies the fash complaint of "two-tier policing". She wrote the violence was driven by "the desire to protect Britain's sovereignty; the need to uphold British values and in order to do this, stop illegal immigration". This is the root cause, and banging people up does not address this problem. With the implication there will be more disorder until it's sorted. There's a word for this: apologism. Jones gives succour to mobs who target mosques and shout racist abuse.
But where Tory politics are concerned this pair are small fry. They're only putting out their mixes of the tunes performed by leading figures. These arguments are not dissimilar to what Robert Jenrick was pushing at his campaign launch, or what Rishi Sunak has been pushing since he came to office. And appearing tough on immigration is now a hill for Tory leadership campaigns to die on. In her Saturday interview with the Telegraph, the paper chooses to highlight Kemi Badenoch's comments on "integration". She says,
They should be saying that we need a clearer strategy on integration, which we don’t have at the moment. Instead, we just pretend that everything is fine and it’s a few bad apples, which is sometimes the case. But if you want to have a successful multi-racial country, you need to make an effort to do that. You can’t just pretend that there are no tensions. And we’ve been seeing this not just between ethnic minorities and white British people, but it’s even between ethnic minorities. This is not normal.What a steaming pile. Integration is a byword for the deep unease some have about concentrated pockets of people from minority ethnicities in certain areas. It's a mix of fear and envy that mean Muslim communities, for instance, have greater ties of solidarity and commonality with their neighbours than the average elderly Daily Mail reader sat alone in their majority white village, small town, or suburb. If there are barriers "integrating" minority ethnicities into dominant norms and values, where is the evidence? What "British values" do Muslims, for example, find objectionable? Fairness? Respect? Freedom? The problem, and not one ever likely to be championed by Badenoch and her dreadful opponents are structural inequalities. Where are her concerns for black and minority ethnicity wage gaps? The persistent exclusion of people from whole sections of the economy? The poorer physical and mental health experienced by most minority ethnicities? The whipping up of rhetoric by her party that tells people that they're in this country under sufferance, regardless of whether they were born here or not? The evidence is quite clear. Minority ethnicities are discriminated against to sustain a racialised division of labour, and one that has persisted since the dawn of industrial capitalism. Badenoch doesn't want to believe in "institutionalised racism" because it's embedded in the inequalities and hierarchies she thinks are just fine and dandy.
Badenoch blames minority ethnicities for the problems they face. So does the far right. The only difference is she believes in intervening in, disciplining, and closely monitoring individuals and communities, while retaining them - above all Muslims - as handy scapegoats for when political occasion demands. The fascists just want them driven out in an orgy of violence and blood letting on the way to establishing a terroristic dictatorship. Neither side cares about the consequences of their arguments and actions because both seek to profit politically from division. It follows an anti-fascist politics can't take on "real concerns", it has to challenge and rebut them. And it also means, always and everywhere, making clear the links between the hateful rhetoric of the far right and the more restrained, but no less consequential, racism of the mainstream.
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10 comments:
This is the root cause, and banging people up does not address this problem.
Ob, but I think they'll find that it does. Because there doesn't seem to be that many of these street thugs, really - probably few enough that there are even prison cells available for them right now.
And when this riot season is over, there won't be much in the way of beer-fuelled rampages, and for a while we won't hear from the gullible fools who carried them out. We would stop hearing their pathetic side of the picture entirely then, if not for the large amounts of dark money - not a little of it dug out of the ground in Russia, I suspect - being poured into ensuring that well-heeled serpents keep right on blowing these fash-whistles. But for a while, they will be short on foot soldiers to prick up their potato-ears at the sound.
Hardly surprised to hear top PCCs signing this ghastly tune; the PCCs were brought into existence as a Tory gimmick, and this is the Tory Party's politics now. Playing catch-up to Farage, for as long as he is trailed through the muck in front of them.
But why does this rhetoric work so well with a large number of people? We keep saying class should be the mobilising interest and class struggle should be the focus. However it seems englishness, hatred of foreigners, hostility to Islam and refugees mobilises more individuals to take action. These are seen as express their subjective and objective interests far more than abstract appeals to class.
No left wing group could bring so many people on to the streets across so many towns and cities. Yet the far right can, and the only effective opposition seems to be young Muslim men defending their communities. The clear links you call for don't seem to be heard.
Phil, I believe Muslims and other minority communities are not monolithic, and experiences differ widely, but the failings of multicultural ideology and lack of integration in SOME communities is a problem, and it’s one that underpins those structural inequalities you raise. It’s far from the only problem behind these events, and it’s absolutely no excuse for acts of violent criminality. But, glossing over problems because of the ideological discomfort of acknowledging them only leaves them to the far-right.
Immigration to the UK over the last 75 years has been driven by groups attracted to [THE RELATIVE TO WHERE THEY CAME FROM] benefits that stem from a more modern, tolerant, liberally social and liberally economic environment, where the rule of law that is to practical intents secular. I’m not arguing that the UK is a utopian dream, but revealed preferences show that relative to many other places it is no dystopia either.
So, it is a problem if some immigrant groups regress to pre-modern (or however you wish to gloss it) ways that hold back the very places they left. I think it’s fantastic that some groups have a strong positive sense of community, it’s great that they retain strong family ties, and their private worship habits and dietary patterns are mostly none of my business. But the attitudes and tolerance some have towards other groups, to gender equality, sexual equality, other religions etc... are deeply problematic vis-a-vis the conditions that attracted them in the first place, and they cause problems for their own communities and wider society. Self-imposed failure to integrate is a major root of the structural inequality that faces some communities. The UK recently had it’s first ethnic Asian PM, it was of no hindrance to his political career that he was teetotal and vegetarian, or that he was a practising Hindu, what I think was probably more telling is that BOTH of his parents were highly integrated into, indeed respected and valued members of, the wider community he grew up in.
«It's a mix of fear and envy that mean Muslim communities, for instance, have greater ties of solidarity and commonality with their neighbours»
Many immigrant groups tend to have a sense of complicity, nepotism and clientelism often as defensive mechanisms given the difficulties of living in a foreign culture and power structure (or out of some cultural or religious traditions) in particular those of chinese, pakistani, maronite background (which are organized by ancestral village background, not even by region or language), but also those of italian and irish background in the USA, turkish background in Germany, etc. Unfortunately it is easy to mistake complicity, nepotism and clientelism for "solidarity" or "multiculturalism".
Similarly there is much "solidarity" among the community of public school and Oxbridge alumni for example, I guess it is heartwarming to some :-).
It is also quite easy to romanticize sentimentally the "noble savages" from poor countries. :-)
«than the average elderly Daily Mail reader sat alone in their majority white village, small town, or suburb.»
Even worse: sat alone in an 85% majority white country despite our world being 85% majority "people of colour".
If skin colour is a really important category and disparate impact is a really important argument, that means the whole of the UK is institutionally racist and an "apartheid" regime (and it has been even more brutally so for several dozen thousand years previous) and will remain so until it has the same skin colour distribution ad the rest of the world. Curiously nobody is protesting that China or India have 99.9% people of colour instead of having a 15% white minority (and make it practically impossible to immigrate legally, as both the indian and chinese governments have a "no work visas" policy for foreigners), and curiously nobody seems to be protesting that even if India and China both have 18% of the world population 18% of the population of India does not have a yellow skin colour and 18% of the population of China does not have a brown skin colour.
:-)
«Where are her concerns for black and minority ethnicity wage gaps? [...] The whipping up of rhetoric by her party that tells people that they're in this country under sufferance, regardless of whether they were born here or not? [...] The evidence is quite clear. Minority ethnicities are discriminated against to sustain a racialised division of labour»
I was under the perhaps mistaken impression that from 2004 to 2018 around 6-7 million white eastern europeans immigrated and being white they never suffered “wage gaps” or rhetoric that “they're in this country under sufferance, regardless of whether they were born here or not”; So probably I just imagined the "Leave" campaign against massive EU immigration from 99% white countries.
Was a “racialised division of labour” the purpose or the effect of that imaginary massive eastern european white immigration? It is hard for me for me to imagine that white blonde blue eyed eastern europeans are a different race from the white celtic and germanic majority inhabitants of most of the UK as I do not believe in the right-wing myth of an "aryan" race or a "slavic" race. :-)
It seems astonishing to me that both woke-wing and right-wing talking points focus on immigration of "people of global majority", as if several millions of low-wage whites had not immigrated in recent years and there had not been a huge controversy about EU "free movement" of those low-wage whites.
In my imagination "race" (as skin colour) matters very little nowadays to our oligarchs/employers/landlords, but cheaper wages and higher rents matter a lot, regardless of the skin colour of the immigrants. Perhaps if white wages were 1/10th of those of "people of global majority" (instead of vice-versa) all the endorsement and enforcement of "wokeism" by corporate HR departments and corporate media and politician would be very different. :-)
> However it seems englishness, hatred of foreigners, hostility to Islam and refugees mobilises more individuals to take action.
> No left wing group could bring so many people on to the streets across so many towns and cities. Yet the far right can
This really isn't such a complicated equation. Especially since there isn't even a single "group" bringing these out - that's part of why it's been so (temporarily) effective. We've just been watching flash mobs of violent racists popping organically out of the social media ether, like precipitate from a saturated solution of mindless grievance, catalysed by the very worst of "influencers". And the quality of the action which they have taken appears self-destructive at best.
Racists are, on average, stupid. There's evidence for it (much as somebody has probably bothered to gather evidence that the sky is blue and water is wet). Stupid people more readily resort to violence. Men are on average less intelligent than women, better built physically for spur-of-the-moment violence, and more mentally unbalanced towards enacting it. None of this is a surprise to anyone, surely? Everyone knows that young males are the most reckless and volatile members of any society; and the dregs who are susceptible to nationalist and far right rhetoric are the most volatile of the lot.
So if you want to get a mindless, dangerous mob onto the street, then a good bet is to appeal to the dumbest and most violent people around, using the most simplistic uniting-yet-incendiary rhetoric available. Rhetoric that draws a simple black-and-white view of the world, which lets the lowliest and least intelligent feel included and valued, whilst encouraging them to offer their own bodies and futures as sacrifice to the passions of tribal violence and conquest, for the benefit of people other than themselves. When has nationalist rhetoric in empire-building cultures been made for anything other than that?
And here we are.
The low calibre and poor judgement of the animals flooding the streets in the last week - as well as those openly egging them on, on social media - has been plain to see for anyone watching it unfold. Only about one in a hundred of them (if that!) had any coherent thoughts about covering their own tracks. They went out and openly challenged the monopoly of the state on violence, apparently without having any plan or endgame. Plod had a very difficult line to hold against them in these days, and still does for the moment, but will be banging them up at leisure for months to come.
The left wing can't bring out flash mobs of young fools in a murderous frenzy, intent on giving themselves years in prison, because leftist rhetoric (in decaying capitalist societies, at least) typically appeals to people who have some ability to think and act in their own best interests. They make poor expendable foot soldiers for rabble-rousers!
No doubt because the press, with it's agenda setting ability, pushes into all arenas the blaming of immigration for all our country's (neoliberalism caused) problems. Perhaps the only potential counter weight to that, fostering a class based perspective on the UK's problems, could have been bigger union membership and activity. But that's also been squished by the right with the support of the press.
"blaming of immigration for all our country's (neoliberalism caused) problems."
Between 2008 and today the average real wage has fallen by 8%, the average real property price in the south-east has risen by 60-80%, and population has grown by 9 million people (6-7 million of which whites), from 62 million to 71 million. What would happened to wages and housing costs in the same years if other thing being equal there had been no such increase in the white (and "people of global majority") population?
From the point of view of incumbent workers and tenants/upgraders, whether native or older immigrants, there are some common considerations:
* If planning had been done to accommodate in advance 9-10 new residents, by creating most jobs in less congested "left behind" areas, building lots more new houses in those areas, stimulating high-value-added industries, those 9-10 people could have immigrated and wages would would not have fallen and housing costs would not have exploded.
* Such planning is, in the short-to-medium term, politically impossible because all the governments of the past 45 years have been representing the interests of employers and incumbent property owners.
* Therefore the only simple variable that can be influenced is immigration, using various excuses.
Put another way, the instinct of many incumbent workers and tenants/upgraders is that immigrants are "scabs" (the famous "reserve army" of proletarians, several billions strong). That's not very internationalist, but also not racist (also because it is "impossible" to be racist against whites, according to "wokeism").
"bigger union membership and activity."
But that is... COMMUNISM! :-)
"But that's also been squished by the right with the support of the press."
With the massive support of the large block of property owners, because their property profits (entirely redistributed from the lower classes) are much bigger than any feasible wage increases (which would have to be redistributed from the upper classes, which is far harder than redistributing from the lower classes).
«Between 2008 and today the average real wage has fallen by 8%, the average real property price in the south-east has risen by 60-80%, and population has grown by 9 million people (6-7 million of which whites), from 62 million to 71 million. What would happened to wages and housing costs in the same years if other thing being equal there had been no such increase»
Note that a common type of internationalist would point out that asking "What would happened to wages and housing costs" should have been written "What would happened to wages and housing costs [of existing UK residents]".
Because they would point out that the 9-10 million (or more) immigrants also matter to internationalists: while the wages and housing costs of existing UK residents may have gone down 8% and up 60-80% respectively, the wages of the 6-7 million immigrant whites have gone from eastern european levels to UK levels, 100-200% higher, and those of the "people of global majority immigrants have gone from global labour market levels to UK levels too, 800% higher; their housing costs have also increased a lot, but by doubling-up (sleeping 4-8 to a room) not as much as otherwise. So overall the living standards of those 9-10 million immigrants have increased hugely.
A quote showing how much doubling-up has increased the "productivity" of landlords:
https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/v3uks9/renters_squeezed_by_higher_housing_costs_and/ib1egjz/
“I once worked with a Pole. He was the senior developer on my team. He said when he came to the UK he started as a builder and lived in a studio flat with 10 other eastern european immigrants, all working on the same site as him. Grim.”
So turns out that not only is Bliss an expert in what motivates everyone's politics, he also seems to have a deep inside knowledge of a number of different cultures. Maronite? Apparently "it is easy to mistake complicity, nepotism and clientelism for "solidarity" or "multiculturalism" and the former are in his view rampant in these various communities he mentions. Of course both could be true at the same time, or at least, elements of the two might co-exist in any culture. Certainly they do in mainstream British culture. But, let's divide people up into groups that we can label and categorise and generalise about. Like Middle England, or Workers, or Leftoids, or whatever suits the current catch-all explanation for everything. There was me thinking t it was all about property. The rambling paragraph about the skin colour of the Chinese and Indians was disturbing. not only was it impossible to grasp what idea was being projected, it came across as...a bit racist frankly.
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