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The Modern Left now sees traditional —or conservative — values on social issues as an embarrassment. Credit: Leon Neal / Getty
Imagine you wrote a book warning of the dangers of drugs, only to find yourself labelled a ‘junkie’. Or perhaps one in which you argued the case for women’s equality and were immediately denounced as a ‘misogynist’. Then imagine that your accusers, before casting these aspersions, hadn’t even read the thing.
Well, something along those lines happened to me this week. My book, Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class, analyses the rupture between the British Left and working-class voters, and concludes that a contributory factor was the former’s increasing tendency towards authoritarianism and its habit of shutting down legitimate debate by dismissing opponents routinely as ‘fascists’, ‘xenophobes’, ‘racists’, and suchlike.
We see it all around us — this creeping despotism which seeks to engender an atmosphere in which any expression of unfashionable opinion is met with fierce condemnation. No longer, it seems, is the Left interested in winning hearts and minds or reconciling competing interests. Instead, every debate is viewed as a battle between good and evil, enlightened progressives versus reactionary bigots, tolerance against intolerance. It does leave one wondering why, if these people are so inherently right, they feel a constant need to wield pitchforks and hurl abuse at opponents rather than attempt to win them over through the power of argument.
Think kids are better off through being raised by two parents? Not terribly keen on Black Lives Matter? Support proper control of immigration? Don’t believe a man is a woman just because he says he is? Then, in the minds of many on today’s Left, you belong in the basket with all the other deplorables, and the debate should go no further. It is irrelevant that such views still hold currency across much of the land. Liberal-progressive types always know better.
But I digress. No sooner had the more fanatical among the Left got wind of Despised’s release than they were inveighing against it across social media. No matter that none of them had read so much as a single word of it yet; they apparently knew everything about it.
The Left shouldn’t touch the book with a barge pole, they warned. It was an apology for ‘fascism’, claimed some. Others portrayed it as a homage to Vichy France or a manifesto for a new style of ‘red-brown’ politics. All this because – horror of horrors – the synopsis contained a call for the Left to return to the “cultural politics of belonging, place and community”. That was enough for these people to know my secret and sinister motives in writing it.
That an entire chapter of the book is devoted to making the case for the Left to renounce its support for the soft totalitarianism we have seen emerge over recent years, and to renew its historical commitment to free expression and diversity of opinion — the very antithesis of fascism — mattered not a jot. I talk about all that ‘faith, family and flag’ stuff. So I am, by definition, a Blackshirt.
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SubscribeAn excellent article. Myself and all my family were ‘Labour’ once upon a time. But the goalposts have moved so far I find myself on a different field. I get the impression that a lot of voices BTL on Unherd have similarly been made politically homeless by the intolerance of the ‘left’.
With this mad ‘Conservative’ government in power, many of us on the right are also feeling politically homeless.
It is a Conservative government (unfortunately) but of course there are people who are much further to the right.
Conservative in name only.
Well there is nobody else at present. Certainly not Labour.
Have you looked at the SDP? Not SDLP, but good old SDP, very sensible, just like Paul E.
Well it could be worse we could have another Labour government . Look at the damage Blair did to Britain ? It’s now a prison state .
Freedom of speech and opinion is being curved and the Native British are branded Racist in their own land ‘ people are offended by the truth . The NHS is a joke . The Tories are just as bad and just as far left as labour
Sure thing. Just to clarify, I wouldn’t describe myself as being on the ‘left’ anymore; though not ‘right’ either. But like Paul Embery I would be called a ‘fascist’ within about 2 minutes of trying to discuss certain issues.
Yes & Labour ARE still Anti-semitic which is ”Acceptable” to marxists,fascists &similar Extreme Left&Right organisations..
Labour has done a deal with the Islamic group for vote banks as their demography has increased like anything. Hitler did it diring WW2 with the Grand Mufti of Jeusalem. Both hated the Brits and the Jews!
“Labour has done a deal with the Islamic group for vote banks as their demography has increased like anything.”Any evidence for that, apart from far-right internet chatter?People vote how they like. Moslems would be well advised to vote Labour rather than Conservative given the depth of anti-Moslem racism in the Tory party. But whether they do is up to them. There are some Moslem Conservatives.David Cameron appointed Baroness Warsi as the Tory party’s first Moslem chairman. But since resigning over foreign policy, she has many times pointed to racism in the Tory party. So have other Moslem Conservatives.
The so-called Right Wing is nothing more than the imaginary adversary of Socialists. They can call you far-right for the crime of not being a Socialist.
You are denounced as ‘far-right’ if you dare to say one single solitary sensible remark.
That is the point.
The Destroyers want to get rid of such civilization as there is and see all humankind utterly degraded, everywhere.
For them a failed state is not a bug, it is a sublime feature; the Happy Hunting Ground of their dreams.
Well said!
These people are not Socialists. They are (mostly middle class) intolerant authoritarians masquerading as progressives. They care not one jot for traditional Socialist ideas. They are consumed with a religious fundamentalism ISIS would be proud of.
In the U.S. White Supremacist and other groups are a real threat. You might care to read my other statements here.
I have been part of the “left” in the U.S. They aren’t antisemitic. Criticising Israeli policies isn’t antisemitism.
That being said, as a radical from my youth, I’m appalled and disgusted by the “cancel culture” and the looting both of which have destroyed lives.
Maybe it is time to walk away from the Democratic party and their violence ?
We have (maybe) reached the point at which the long pendulum swing of the 20th century away from duties and obligations that make any society and community, and toward individual rights and autonomy, might be about to start swinging back.
There are many expressions suddenly springing up of the new insurgency against the crazy universe of woke and the Jesuitical , Calvanistic (I know! it’s a bit mad to use the two but you get what I mean…they’re atheists but who manage to be religious nutters half the time) intolerance it has become.
Just adressing the book the trouble for the people who are the trouble within Labour is they just don’t like traditional working people and what they think, want and do.
They sneer about the *Traditional voter* as being a euphemism for *white, gammon and racist* , which it isn’t of course. Life and the ‘working class’ is far more variegated than the stupid soundbite labels these people try to pin on things.
The way you recognise facists these days isn’t shiny boots, and nifty Hugo Boss designed uniforms…it’s that they’re the ones always calling other people facsists
I would call You a fense sitter They are even worse
Speak for yourself. After Cameron and May.
I’m finally feeling comfortable being a Conservative again.
But we still have people who represent Cameron and May policies. I am glad about the Brexit which Cameron and May didn’t want but there are other things that are not right with the Tories. At this very moment the Law Society is working on hate speech legislation for the Tories which looks very ominous to me and could severely curb freedom of speech.
Yep copied from European Court of Justice &SNP in Scotland..politicising judiciary, Police,BBC,Civil service need a thorough rinsing of politicos, ironically the mess by SARS2 might do that by default!
Absolutely.
If the Law Society get their way, the tories might just as well hand Westminster over to krankie and the snp
Is that Jimmy krankie ?
Now all you need is a party to vote for; the current lot certainly aren’t.
F Parkinson
UKIP is still active and is not the extreme right that the MSM say it is. Go on line and read its manifesto: many policies have been adopted by the right and left.
Thanks
Labour and Tories are both as bad . They have both destroyed Britain . Wilson ‘ Blair ‘ Cameron ‘ may and Johnson for what good he is .
There was only Margaret Thatcher with a backbone in my lifetime
That is very true. They have been won over by Stonewall which is the sexual politics they represent. I very much believe in marriage but it is Stonewall who have vowed to end heterosexual marriage while the tories sit idly by and spout their policies. With the left dead maybe we will see some new parties coming forth.
Understandable, but have the Conservative really been conservative in any real way since 1980?
The traditional political left and traditional conservatives have both been pretty politically homeless for 30 or 40 years.
Cameron and May were useless, but I didn’t have much choice regarding casting a vote.
Boris is mad though. He was so terrorized by his neat miss at death, and my guess is found out he totally lacks the nerve to face that, and that realization that he is fundamentally a coward broke him. Now he is a mere husk being led about by SAGE on one side and Carrie on the other. The man is proven to be the mere glib popinjay I always suspected him of being, and now a hollow one at that, a sock puppet.
Like all the Torie supporters hey ? Vote for them or swap and Vote labour and that idiot Corbin ?
What do you regard as ‘mad’ about them?
The conservatives are not far right at all. They’re closer to Blairites. But of course any move to punish or deport criminals or terrorists, or to maintain borders or sovereignty, never before considered radical positions, gets you labelled a Nazi nowadays. Even Britain First get upset if you call them racist. The real far right exist but if Boris is a far right Nazi then then the real Nazis might need a new name.
I vote for nobody because honest people don’t go into politics
To conclude that, you have to focus on identity politics at the expense of everything else. Whether you (or your Father or granny) get an NHS hip replacement or struggles along in constant pain is less important than trans rights?? Whether you have rights at work or have them taken away by the bosses is less important than your mate at a match being allowed to throw a banana at a black player ‘as a prank’ without being prosecuted for racism?? And so on?
Don’t tar me with your prejudices: ie ‘ your mate at a match being allowed to throw a banana at a black player’… I went to a few football matches as a kid but gave up because of the violence – that was in the 70s. I don’t have any ‘mates’ who would throw bananas at people.
My family will be more or less well served by the NHS whether Labour or the Tories are in power, though neither party represents my views.
I’m very happy for trans people to have rights, but would like to live in country where people can ask questions about huge numbers of young people undergoing extreme (and costly) medical treatments without being subjected to some howling hate-filled mob.
Your comments suggest a person with a very simple ‘us and them’ view of the world; I would suggest things are more complex.
And so on…
That take with the* banana throwing football fans* shade cast is actually an example of why for the time being Labour is where it is…it’s so stupid, simplistic and lazy.
The whole kneeling to BLM thing is based on the view many have of football fans as racists who would enjoy throwing a banana at a black player.
Might have happened many years ago but not for two decades at least.
You need to get out more and stop being prejudiced against white people who in the main long ago stopped noticing skin colour, at least until BLM told them how evil they were.
From an outsider’s point of view the modern left more or less is fascism. Its roots lie in Communism, yes, just as did Oswald Mosley’s iteration. (Interestingly, he had a stained-glass hammer-and-sickle window installed in his house, still there when a TV show went over it in the Nineties or thereabouts). As with the Nazis, it operates by infiltrating and taking over businesses and other institutions, rather than destroying the leadership and installing its own as the Bolsheviks did. It has even taken to fielding black-shirted paramilitaries …
Of course, it will deny this vehemently and with lots of ideological hairsplitting; but it also refuses to study what it denies, so does not even realise where it is going.
Being called a fascist by that lot is merely ironic.
Exactly.
Indeed. Taking over business rather than destroying it was fascism 101. It was the only real distinction, in practice, between fascism and communism, and it was essentially a different means to the same end, rather than an end in itself. Ultimately, fascism is a thing of the left, one of the long list of sub-“isms” that communism spewed, like Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, etc.
People like Belloc said, a century ago, that communism and capitalism are two sides of the same coin – not both of the left, but that the left and right are mirrors or each other, accomplishing the same thing – the elite control the means of production which also gives them political control. So communism through the state controlling business directly, and capitalism by business taking over the state. You could easily add in fascism by the state indirectly taking over business. The point being that left and right in any of these is a distinction without a real difference, and a distraction.
I would go further and say that there is no Left or Right, but simply Socialists, (or whatever their name is this year: Marxists, Communists, Nazis, Progressives, Democrats, Fascists – add neo- to them as you please), and normal people; i.e. the majority of people who have no clue as regards the sinister intentions of the minority. They are easily fooled by names – ministry of truth, the people’s republic of , , ,
Antifa came from 1930s Germany where a Communist group were trying to take over the country with identical tactics as the Nazis. Their goal was a Marxist form of Fascism, and thus to differentiate themselves called them anti-Fascists. They exist today just as they were then!
From school decades ago: Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production (Land Labour, Capital)
Socialism the State control of the means of production.
Communism the State ownership of the means of production.
Socialism and fascism are two flavors of the same totalitarian state. The Nazis name came from ‘National Socialism’ shortened.
“Socialism the State control of the means of production……Socialism and fascism are two flavors of the same totalitarian state. “
Interesting discussion, but since this is a discussion about UK politics in general and the UK Labour party’s ill-advised deference to woke ideology in particular, and most of the means of production are currently in the hands of capitalists and would remain so under a Labour Government, it’s not terribly relevant.
BTW, 65% of the UK public, including a large proportion of Tory voters commuting by train from Kent and Surrey into their jobs in the City of London, support taking the railways back into public ownership, I guess that must mean that even Tories support the socialism which you regard as creating a totalitarian state?!
The idea that political thought is a kind of line with left-centre-right is just not correct. It’s more like a circle where everybody from 20 to the hours( left wing) and twenty past (right wing) can differ but at least argue/debate sensibly.
From 20- past to 20-to that starts to get impossible and at half past it’s impossible to tell the difference between left crazies and right crazies.
Orwell knew this and put it in his book.
What he didn’t have to incorporate was Social Media which is way too disproportionately filled by people inhabiting the minute 30 seconds either side of half-past…indistinguishable in their nastiness, invective,political beliefs and basically, narcissism.
Paul, you’re great and I’ve watched all your interviews in recent years on Triggernometry and the New Culture Forum etc. The cover of your new book is a classic – you should send a framed version of the original to Emily Thornberry. However, as Daniel Goldstein says below:
‘Seriously, Paul, I love what you do, but the time has come for people like us to leave the Labour Party and embrace free speech.’
It’s time to move on, to either start a new party or to join Farage or Laurence Fox. They are both much closer to your belief system than the current Labour Party, which will never be anything but anti-British and anti-worker. (Well, anti private sector worker and non-managerial public sector worker).
As you have said in interviews, the Labour Party would not accept you as a prospective MP despite the fact that you’ve given your life to them, so why should you give them any more of your life or time?
Thank you for quoting me! I like the sound of what Fox is doing. Of course, he’s hated by the mob too, which must be a good sign.
How about the SDP?
Who?
Don’t mention the SDP to me. They would almost be worse than labour if that was possible. The ones I spoke to were obsessed by young boys. When I brought it up they said “Well the Arabs had their whipping boys”. These were SDP canvassers for the election would you believe.
They blocked me for having a lighthearted pop at Galloway – so much for freedom of speech
When was this?
It was originally a Liberal Party, but is now quite different – more communitarian.
And yet as a poor working class Englishman you want me to vote for them?
I have watched you being interviewed on YouTube on various channels and you have admitted the Labour Party would never have you as a politician and you are 25 years a member and were/are a trade union official.
Why should I ever vote for a party like that because I know in my heart of hearts they hate me and my friends and my family and my class?
Where’s our representation?
Where’s our diversity quota?
Your Labour Party is I hope is finished because in my life has turned its back on us, demeans us, insults us, belittles us and is the party of the middle classes.
In one interview you mention Steven kinnock, what a bad joke, the son of an mp, rich upper middle class not working class, a new prince for a new aristocracy!
Sir Keira starmer is my mp and he is just the new aristocracy as well.
New labour worse than the old labour, labour even worse than new labour and on and on and on ad nasuem
Stephen Kinnock isn’t upper middle class. And he’s actually quite sympathetic to social conservatism.
Suppose his parents having rather more than a few bob in the bank and fat EU pensions may give him a leg up when they pass
I don’t recall him campaigning for a People’s Vote, because he accepted the referendum result. Just because someone has prominent parents, doesn’t mean they’re not worth listening to.
but it does give him a platform, finance and routes through to privilege not available to the working class which wrongly legitimises him in the media and establishments’ eyes
Since when has anyone on the right been opposed to finance and routes through to privilege?
Daniel is right, Stephen Kinnock talked sense over Brexit, unlike many.
It is perfectly reasonable to point out those on the left who denounce privilege but come from it
But apart from point-scoring, it doesn’t get you anywhere apart from indulging your hostility to anyone, from any background, who is on the left. Better to stick to the arguments, maybe? Which in this case are that Stephen Kinnock stuck to respecting the result of the Brexit referendum, Labour’s 2017 manifesto policy which got considerable support from the electors at the polls.
I did not know you were related to Stephen Kinnock. When I am lectured by a politician or public figure on privilege and I find that they owe their position and platform to privilege and wealth I am obviously going to call hypocrite. I am agnostic about privilege and wealth as such, it has always existed and always will. What I loath is those that are far more privileged and wealthy than me and the rest of the prols lecture us about our privilege
The constant Kinnock-bashing is very tiresome. We need better arguments than rallying against Stephen’s parents.
ChrisC’s tremendous chip on his shoulder is becoming very tiresome.
I’m sure you find it awkward to reflect that – for example – the financial crisis was created by rich investment bankers and hedge funds, while the Tories have ensured that much of the impact has fallen on people at the bottom of the pile who have no responsibliity for it.
But then I’m forgetting, we’re all “supposed” to be focussing on attacking the very people who critique the banksters, and celebrating that members of the parliamentary wing of the City of London have seized some traditionally Labour constituencies. The Independent did a useful job a couple of weeks ago by examining the backgrounds of those MPs; they are actually more privileged than the average MP, which is saying something in the age of Boris Johnson.
Hilariously, the Independent pointed out that one of the (non-Northern- Wall) Tory MPs who belongs to the “working class Conservatives” parliamentary group tells people that he went from being a lorry driver to Parliament. What he doesn’t mention is that the lorry driver job was during the gap year between Winchester College (fees £43,000 pa) and attending the same Cambridge college which his grandfather and father also attended, before heading into the City of London. All on merit, of course.
The 2008 – 2009 Bankers collapse was totally engineered to harvest the accumulated money of the productive people. That is how the elites do it, recession! See, they plant their little potatoes out to get the economy growing, nurture it, and then in season harvest the crop by the means of recession (too much to explain here)
Covid lockdowns are merely the same device. The 2009 one the elites harvested as much as 100 trillion globally, this one will be fatter! Note how the MSM IS where all policy is set. Every story is included or omitted to make the sheep do as desired. The rogue government exists by the ‘DONOR’ class who fund their lackeys so decode who can afford to win political campaigns. And when they fund your campaign they own your soul as surely as the devil owns one sold to him.
That no one went to prison (almost no one) for the 2009 thing is proof how corrupt the world is. That none will go to prison (or better the block) for this lockdown mess is terrible.
This is conspiracy theory where there are more straightforward explanations which don’t involve conspiracies.
Labours demise in 2019 was due to keir starmers Missive ”Reverse Brexit” he is more concerned with getting Jihadi brides into UK, They like Tories-Greens-Lib-dims-Snp-plaid ARE irrelevant especially North of M25
Or come to it.
The issue surely is that the working class need greater representation, and not Stephen’s fault for attempting to represent them.
Anyone who professes to be on the left and then campaigns to remain in the EU is no friend of the working class
I’m not sure that anyone on the left who campaigns for Brexit is acting in the best interests of the working class. As I see it, the whole Remain/Leave shtick was a battle between two different factions of the ruling class – one that believes they can get richer and have more status via protectionism and nationalism – and the other that believes globalism and open borders offers the best prospects.
The working classes are just their useful idiots, to be marched on stage as and when they need them. It’s not a fight that we really have any stake in.
I voted Remain in the referendum but if there had been a second referendum I would have abstained.
Not always you are right, but it will take an effort if you have parents like that.
He never once accepted the referendum result. With others, he tried for over 3 years in Parliament to block and delay its implementation.
Your dogmatic statements don’t bear much relationship to fact.
Try https://www.stephenkinnock…. which includes the statement “We need to leave….”.
Not much better than bribery against the interests of Britain. Blair went the same way I believe. I am not sure if they got to Cameron but I wouldn’t be surprised. Money seems to talk. So much for the good of our country.
His parents are both career EU politicians who are almost certainly millionaires, he has followed their hereditary vocation and is married to a former EU Prime Minister.
You couldn’t get more upper-middle class than that nowadays.
Yeah his parents joined the undemocratic EU Eurocrat gravy train and were bought against the interests of our country.
A member of the political establishment, sure (which possibly gives him a unique insight into politics). However, by the standard definitions, they are not upper-middle-class. David Cameron and Boris Johnson and UMC. Kinnock’s family are solidly (middle) middle-class. Also, didn’t miners do the same job as their parents? Nepotism does exist, for sure, but it isn’t exclusive to the UMC. Not everyone who speaks well is upper-middle-class, a fact lost on many people. Neil Kinnock was a product of social mobility, as far as I can tell. He has working-class roots, his children don’t.
I nwouldn’t say Stephen Kinnock, or any of his family are “upper middle class” In fact, I think they have no class at all. They are just slobs who have managed to get rich by one means or another.
You’re obsessed by class…come up for air!
He should be, his parents hold a “royal flush” of state pensions between them, a truly massive reward for abject failure.
One day someone will write a book about the EU gravy train and the high privelege they bestow on those who back them using the member countries contributions.
“They” can’t help it. They suckle corruption from their mothers teats, as they have done for centuries immemorial.
Not like his Eurocrat dad then.
I disagree with my dad on some things too.
And a staunch gravy train Remainer
Just out of interest, how do you define what Class you`re in?
Stop being rude you will be allocated the definition of your working class status when Mr. Kinnock or Mr. Hannan require your political services.
Starmer seems very in with Corbyn from the pictures. Why is he now wanting to distance himself. Did he bring anything up whilst he was so close to Corbyn?
There’s an unhealthy obsession with identity politics on this thread, which matches the unhealthy obsession with identity politics in some parts of the left.
Most of politics is about whether you have decent public services or whether you run them down. I know people on the right who favour the latter because “everyone who matters” goes private – though they won’t be telling the voters that when they canvass for the Tory party, of which they are active members, they only express those views to me across a dinner table.
It’s also about what rights you have at work, if you are an employee. Those on the right want ‘a poor working class Englishman’ loike you to have fewer rights. And if you join a trade union, they will really have it in for you. After all, people like you (and me) are supposed to have the freedom only to obey, while they have the freedom to do what they like in the economic sphere. Sick pay, holiday pay, pensions?…….. that’s sooooo socialist! They’ll cut those for people like you while the executives award themselves a 50% rise.
As for economic justice, their view is that if you end up on a zero hours contract, like an ever-increasing number, then that’s fine by them. Meanwhile, they want the taxes paid by millionaire bankers cut because it’s “unjust” that millionaires should pay 45% income tax while you pay 20%.
These are the realities while identity politics obsessives distract themselves with controversies over trans rights.
All is identity politics. That is the reason for the greatest movement of people in history, to divide the Western peoples so they cannot self rule to their group benefit as it is all sub groups and ‘communities’ and Nationalism has been made a dirty word. Like Rome when the tribes moved onto their empire’s lands. First it seemed like an economic boon, but not so much as we know.
If you work on “All is identity politics” then you end up with a distorted view. It’s as bad as “all is Return on Average Capital Employed”, “All is struggle against capitalism”, “all is the environment”. They all produce unbalanced viewpoints (VERY roughly, company managements of my acquaintance, far left groups, and the Green party).
Never kissed a Tory emblazoned on her one size fits all sweatshop produced garment. You are safe my dear, I have never kissed a pig. You can dress a pig in Armani but its always going to grunt and fart at the table.
In my youth there were rag days. The uni students handed out the rag week mag which consisted of adverts for local businesses and contained some some cracking jokes. Their “protest” (I dont even think they regarded it as such) that Summer when Hendrix and the summer of love were making way for the 70’s. Their wizard prank involved a statue of Queen Victoria. A pair of huge slippered feet, left and right, were covered in white emulsion paint and the footsteps from the plinth in the square on which Victoria had cast her beady eye over the decades she had been there were clearly marked to the local all night public convenience with the return set of feet leading back to her plinth. To top it off some wag had fashioned a toilet seat big enough and in scale to the size of her head and placed it around her neck with a speech bubble declaring “One had needed that for years”. That weekend it raised plenty of attention and on Monday morning, unusual for students they had cleaned the emulsion paint up from everywhere, not leaving a spec of paint. Even Vic herself got a wash and towel dried. That was about the extent of the Uni’s prank. No loud marchers taking a knee or beatifying some known American drug user who was killed more by his habit than the cops. No forcibly demanding that bystanders should repeat their chants and choruses. Not a sniff of violence, no arrests, no stand off. The students were raising money for their rag week, not protesting and disrupting the lives and travels of their host City. It was the same until the 80’s when a dark element of the Militant movement were used like flying pickets, causing violence and mayhem wherever they turned up.
Now I am no longer a white, middle class, responsible, heterosexual, husband, employee and Father. I am a white supremacist, privileged racist, Christian, BLM and ANTIFA hater. They wont entertain debate or peaceful robust exchange of views. They prefer to have the latest trainers and designer wear, all removed when the shops are closed. Then punch you in the face for daring to make them see reason. At last, several of we indigenous old(er) men have joined together – should our City ever be subjected to the travelling looters who tag onto Uni “protesters” there will be opposition and equal force used to repel the troublemakers. A sympathetic whistle blower gives us the heads up about upcoming or planned events. This bandwagon needs derailing – the sooner the better. Time the streets were taken back,
Thank you, Paul, for daring to speak up for the more mature, and dare I say sane, among us.
“…..beatifying some known American drug user who was killed more by his habit than the cops”
George Floyd died because the cops knelt on his neck for 8 minutes and he suffocated.
He died because he robbed a shop and resisted arrest while high on fentanyl and methamphetamine.
And killing him in the street by kneeling on his neck for 8 minutes was absolutely the only way to subdue him? They couldn’t handcuff him for example?
Why are we arguing about this? America is a foreign country. Americans have to sort it out.
Maybe but it did affect our country.
I think you will find that the autopsy found no evidence of suffication. He had heart disease, hypertension and sickle cell trait. In addition to fentanyl and methamphetamine, the toxicology report from the autopsy showed that Floyd also had cannabinoids in his system when he died. So probably not the angel depicted in the murals.
Again, this sounds to me like myth-making to avoid confronting reality. But Arnold below has a good point.
You seem very clear on the cause of death. Consider, he was saying he couldn’t breath – a symptom of heart failure – while he was still on his feet.
We all agree it was wrong and that he was no saint. As you say maybe he could have been handcuffed. We don’t know of any scuffles that happened before this.
“killing him in the street by kneeling on his neck for 8 minutes was absolutely the only way to subdue him?”
That is not what happened.
Have you watched the collected footage of all the bodycams of all the cops involved? I have. It is not a pleasant experience. But, it makes utterly clear that the few minutes of video that sparked the explosion of protest, looting and violence was not representative at all. He was not suffocated by being knelt on. It was much, much more nuanced than that.
Sorry, but are you suggesting that there was no bad policing at play here at all and that George Floyd and other like him simply deserve their extrajudicial death sentences and we should just accept that?
Because that would be a pretty ludicrous assertion. Sam Harris’ tipping point podcast goes through this in depth – it may certainly not be institutionalised racism at play, but George Floyd and others like Tony Timpa did not deserve to die. They did not bring their own deaths on themselves. That was woefully inadequate police training.
Policing in America requires serious reform and training must improve, for the universal benefit of the overworked and maligned officers themselves on the ground, and for those they are meant to police. This, I think, is something many of us can agree on.
For sure there was terrible policing. Kneeling on anybody’s neck for 8 minutes while passers-by are begging them to stop.
But George Floyd was no Emmett Till. He was – in the words of a black American academic I read – a nasty violent man who me a nasty violent death.
Tony Timpa was a much worse case from what I have read – he wasn’t a violent criminal high on drugs when the police suffocated him. I can’t help thinking BLM chose the wrong poster boy.
On that, I think, we agree. George Floyd was certainly no saint by any definition of the word, and there does seem to be a rather understandable human urge to canonise those who met tragic ends however little they seem to have helped themselves in life.
What’s important, however, is that the root causes of these issues – bad policing, bad community outreach, bad role models amongst those living in these communities, bad incentives to escape their conditions, and a corrosive, self-perpetuating, and – above all – false white supremacy narrative – are seriously tackled over the next decade so regardless.
Yes we can agree on that but I would also say that the police have to protect themselves from drug crazy criminals with weapons and cannot afford to be sitting ducks.
Policing in America certainly does require serious reform.Currently it has more in common with the lynch mob than with a credible law enforcing agency.
Firebird, you are a sheep/parrot with no idea. I am from London many decades ago, moved to America after leaving home and know both sides of the Atlantic. USA cops are dedicated. They hold their badge to serve and protect very seriously. USA is a tough place, if policed by the PC gone mad, gently, gently, Bobbies the streets would be impossible!
The streets ARE “impossible” if you are murdered by a policeman who, having got you on the ground, could simply have handcuffed you and put you in a cell to simmer down. Or a policeman who shoots an unarmed person, in another case.
No – he died of a heart attack and was saying he couldn’t breathe before he left his car.
The following are some signs of a fentanyl overdose:
Loss of consciousness
Unresponsive to outside stimulus
Awake, but unable to talk
Breathing is very slow and shallow, erratic, or has stopped
Just a coincidence that a cop was kneeling on his neck for 8 minutes then?
I think you are trying to avoid facing up to reality. It would be a lot more realistic to say that yes there are some racist cops in America but it’s not a good reason for UK companies to be anxiously trying to appoint people to fill diversity quotas rather than appointing on ability.
While most people, I’m sure, would be appalled by this, I saw no evidence of racism here? I watched the video and did not hear the police saying anything racist.
Agreed, the restraint appeared appalling, but what makes you think it was racist?
Fair question, but it seems to happen a lot to black people over there.
Follow the data, not what ‘seems’ to be the case. Death by cop is proportionally almost equal between white/black.
And when Chauvin says he was applying minimal (if any) force to the neck, who can prove otherwise?
So no evidence that this was a racist incident then? Of course, it might have been, but I’ve seen nothing to suggest it was.
You sound like a broken record
Look at the statistics – proportionally more unarmed white than black killed by the police. Look at all the other statistics re violence – it is the white who are more at risk, plus, many of the perpetrators are themselves black policemen and the subsequent investigations are often by black officials. Too many people see justice in these cases as the outcome they want rather than a true appraisal of the events and scream foul if they do not get their way.
Bad policing is bad, but so is the use to which this death is being put, said use being nothing whatsoever to do with the value or otherwise of black, or any other, lives.
That is what I read as well. Whites are in greater danger than blacks because of the perception of the media about blacks.
Happens to lots of white and Hispanic people too
Black people in the US are caught in a trap. The right demonizes them and the left infantilizes them.
Agree.
Kneeling on the back of someone’s neck does not cause asphyxiation. I’ve spent much time in the States and there is, undeniably, a lot of racism, both white and black.
Exactly.
Or 8 out of 9 ads where the protagonist is black or mixed race when the black population is less than 4% in the UK – it’s no more than woke capitalism
George Floyd died because he was involved in an act of theft. Was out of his mind on illegal drugs and resisted arrest. When it goes to court this will be the judgement.
Get real. He died because a cop knelt on his neck for 8 minutes while he begged to be allowed to breathe.
One cop to be precise which was very wrong but I sense the marxists got in and made it something else.
True, but play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Well said, Paul.
Bravo. Great post.
Wonderful that they cleaned it up afterwards.
“You are safe my dear, I have never kissed a pig. You can dress a pig in Armani but its always going to grunt and fart at the table.”
Oh yes Paul – “Bravo. Great post. Well said. How mature!”
Not words I would use to describe misogynistic, body shaming, and name calling.
“Never kissed a Tory emblazoned on her one size fits all sweatshop produced garment. You are safe my dear.”
Not so sure about that, checked shirt beside her looks ready to do more than kiss her
And why on earth would any Tory want to kiss either of those two?
Ha ha. Maybe a Tory very, very heavily into S&M perhaps?
Or deeply disappointed with himself
Just the ‘M’ part.
Or a tory who had lost his white stick and guide dog.
Just because you’re mean – doesn’t mean you’re wrong 😉
Quite! My first thought on seeing that picture was “Lucky old Tories!”
Why do anything? For the experience, to be the first. I would kiss her, and be proud to.
I can answer that one, though it’s not a happy answer. It goes like this:
1) The arguments for progressive positions are widely available and scientifically and ethically indisputable.
2) It is the moral duty of people to inform themselves of those arguments. Any good person will do so without needing to be prompted.
3) Therefore, if you do not already know that progressives are right, you have either made the choice of not seeking out the truth or made the choice of rejecting the truth when you saw it. In either case, the only possible reason you might have done so is because the truth was inconvenient to you and you lack the moral integrity to accept inconvenient truths.
4) Therefore, anyone who does not already agree with progressive positions is someone who is impossible to persuade and it’s a waste of effort to try.
Or to put it more succinctly: they genuinely believe that anyone who disagrees with them is impervious to reason and morals. Given that, they see the torches and pitchforks as their only option.
“Scientifically and ethically indisputable”, “moral duty”, “…any good person…”. What utter manipulative drivel. Trollspeak through and through. But I guess you know that ““ you are here to stir up a fight not to engage in a discussion.
In Björkmanland there is no discussion to be had ““ “indusputable”(?!). Don’t you think the readers here know a calculated provocation when they see it?
Hasn’t Bjork put words into mouths ?
only into those that had nothing in them previously
Wow, that one really went over your head, didn’t it?
Mr Bjorkman isn’t saying this is what he believes, he is describing what those on the left believe; describing the internal logic which drives them to be so intolerant of dissent. And he has pretty much nailed it.
Funny that we are being accused as being intolerant by the intolerant.
Gosh! Do you mean it was a load of old irony?
I think you have completely misunderstood the point that Daniel is making. He is not trolling.
Calm down, Bjorkman’s describing not moralising.
I gather he is not an admirer of the comments section of UnHerd ““ although a frequent, often bombastic, user.
I agree, but also think his commentary is reasonable in the present instance.
Or put it anther way, if you don’t agree with them you are a “deplorable”
Very good, and nicely put. So reminiscent of true fascism/communism in its naked form.
So they’re a morally absolute cult, too certain of their own correctness? Yep, about right – they should have “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” wrote large on their party documentation
Insightful psychology.
I have a very different answer to this. This is about power, not about ‘being inherently right (or any other sort of right)’. There is no point in ‘winning people over through the power of argument’ because sincere argument might leave you discovering that the good arguments are on the other side, and changing your position, which would make this about truth and not power. That’s not what is happening here. This is about being able to express your own power, force people to profess faith in things they most certainly do not believe, whether or not your side is the side with the truth. Your side is the side with the power, and that is all that matters. Usually mob rule burns itself out after the mob has to go home, sleep, eat and do other things. With twitter, mob rule is a 24 hour a day, 365 days a year proposition, and those would-be-demagogues who thought they could really make a difference if only they could have a permanent mob surrounding them are going to get a chance to try.
Sabrina Huck and her ilk really are something else. Beyond a joke. Seriously, Paul, I love what you do, but the time has come for people like us to leave the Labour Party and embrace free speech. It’s no wonder that Huckster has “Labour for Free Movement” on her Twitter profile banner. Yep, let’s just open the doors to the world. As Douglas Murray suggests, these people will struggle to answer the question of “how many is too many?” The hard left really need to be crushed, but in the meantime I just hope they become irrelevant. This Huck woman is even complaining about Christmas being a white Christian celebration or some such nonsense. Beyond parody. A pseudo academic in her little ivory tower. Patriotism really does disturb their pathetic world view.
Better than a Voodoo celebration.
I think the woke left prefer Eid nowadays, although they wouldn’t be interested in Hannukah.
I was a pretty active member of the Labour party in London through the 1980s/90s, coming from a working class Merseyside family via grammar school and ‘plate glass’ university. The two most unpleasant, snobbish groups of people I have ever met in my life were the ‘Blair Babes’ of the Labour Party and senior trades union officials. If you look at the biogs of some of the Blair Babes, it’s not surprising:
Patricia Hewitt is the daughter of Sir Lenox Hewitt, Secretary of the Australian Prime Minister’s Department, and later chairman of Qantas, and Lady (Hope) Hewitt.
Margaret Hodge attended Oxford High School as a boarder.
Tessa Jowell was educated at the independent St Margaret’s School for Girls.
Harriet Harman was privately educated at St Paul’s Girls’ School. Her paternal aunt was Countess of Longford and her cousins include Lady Antonia Fraser.
etc.
And if they despised those of us who got into grammar schools (which they absolutely did), imagine what they thought of people who couldn’t even manage that.
I wouldn’t describe any of those veteran ladies as ‘Blair Babes’.
So who would you describe as “Blair babes”?
The term was used for the younger 1997 intake of female Labour MPs.
Yep, they mingled pleasingly with the Union Jacks in Downing Street when he took office. Not bad for a British hating sell-out internationlaist bourgeois capitalist ‘leftist’ Europeanist, eh?
Politicans selected for TV. as vacuous as one could get. I listened to one recently admitted ‘babe’ on ‘Today’ at the time. She had only one thing to say, and repeated it, practically word-for-word in response to every question. Pre-programmed in advance of course.
So entirely unlike a right-wing Tory on ‘Today’ then?
There are no current ‘right-wing’ Tories. Like the term left ‘right’ refers to different in some ways contradictory things. But the modern Tory Party is communitarian and Liberal, in a way that formerly was not the case prior to Thatcher. Johnson makes noises but the Party has caved in to every fashionable leftist cause since Thatcher brought in the wets in the 80s.
Just to clarify. I am an not a Tory, have never either supported or voted for them (in fact I haven’t voted on anything, including Brexit, since about 1983 – a choice between 3 liberal, pro-European, parties is no choice at all). I used to be Scottish Old Labour Unionist (i.e. moderately socially conservative, while open to some left economic ideas) but that party is now dead. I, unfortunately, am still alive.
Of course there are “current ‘right-wing’ Tories”. Daniel Hannan (former MEP, no doubt he will get a constituency to select him for Parliament soon) described the existence of the NHS as “a sixty year mistake” in 2008. Dominic Raab is in the Cabinet a supporter of the IEA whose nostrums include slashing tax for the richest, abolishing the NHS, abolishing the minimum wage, and abolishing workers’ rights to redundancy payments. Right-wing enough for you?
Hannan’s comment about the NHS being a 60 year mistake, is correct. If indeed it was his comment.
So presumably he was not born in an nhs hospital, otherwise he would be a product of that 60 year mistake. 🙂
Dunno, but most of those people ensure they have as little to do with the great mass of the British people as possible. Remember the Tory MP who said that he’d rather die in a gutter than send his child to a state school?
Feel free to explain your hard-right support for abolishing the NHS to the northern wall ex-Labour conservative voters who feature so largely in this discussion. That should guarantee that Labour wins most of those seats back next time. That and Dominic Cummings breaking the lockdown by driving to Barnard Castle ‘to test his eyesight’, and Tory MPs for those northern wall constituencies voting against giving holiday-time food vouchers to parents of free-school-meals children whose family incomes have been cut by covid restrictions. Both of those issues are reported to have really cut through to newbie Tory voters, but supporting the abolition of the NHS should really nail it home.
Are they not just CINO abolitionists that virtue signal their neo-liberal destruction to their RINO neo-liberal friends across the pond.
I think you have put the “unfortunately” in the wrong place.
Would it not be better to write:
“…but that party, unfortunately, is now dead. I am still alive”
They might have been then.
Seems to confirm my above point
So you’d better let the Tories run the country instead. Sending your kids to a state school? How downmarket, you’re clearly not what those people call “People like Us”, the spending on your child will have fallen 8% in real terms, unlike the education of their own children. Relying on the NHS? – how eccentric, ‘everyone who matters’ can afford to pay for private treatment. Expecting to have rights at work? – rights are for the boardroom, not the workers.
Oh, but they’ll indulge in culture wars (enthusiastically assisted by idiots on the left) in order to throw you some crumbs while they look after themselves and their own kind.
That’s the reality, not the obsession with wokeness which is shared between some on the right and some on the left.
I do agree wokeness is on both sides of the divide. Unfortunately although on balance the tories have a few extra sensible people than the left have.
Why focus on the women? People can transcend their background. I worked with many of those people as well and wouldn’t lump them into one like this. There wasn’t a whiff of the snobbery you’ve suggested for this comp educated woman, just a focus on equality and getting things done.
re Margaret Hodge; in 2007, she commented on the severe shortage of public housing in her constituency, Barking and Dagenham –
‘we should look at policies where the legitimate sense of entitlement felt by the indigenous family overrides the legitimate need demonstrated by the new migrants’
for this remark, opprobium was heaped upon her and she was called a racist by Labour supporters and MPs.
Paul Embery knows B and D very well, and has commented on the bewilderment felt by many working class residents – it was a very settled commmunity – at the speed with which their neighbourhood changed as a result of mass immigration. They had no say in this.
A few years ago I was waiting for a council officer, in the foyer of the B and D housing department. It was utter chaos – individuals and families with suitcases, just arrived from the airport. I felt sorry for the over worked officers who had to deal with it all. And the indigenous families who were waiting, even longer, on the housing list.
Some discrepancy here.
JohnW implies that because of her education, Margaret Hodge is one of those who despises ordinary folk.
Frances Heywood records that Margaret Hodge bravely pointed out that indigenous folk were having their noses put out of joint by the demands created by new migrants. That would seem to disprove JohnW’s claim.
no need for the snide reply. I agreed with Margaret Hodge’s comment – whether or not she can be described as a Blair Babe. And it’s not a question of the indigenous folk ‘having their noses put out of joint’ – which suggests you think they should shut up and not complain – housing is a serious issue. Residents who have been on the waiting list for years and who have history in a locality and feel they have legitimate entitlement, are bound to feel angry when incomers claiming ‘need’ are given priority.
I happen to know Barking and Dagenham quite well, and as a former Labour voter, I am interested and impressed with much of what Paul Embery has to say.
Since you agree with Margaret Hodge (as do I), JohnW was clearly incorrect to state that because of her education Margaret Hodge is one of those who despises ordinary folk. That was my comment. It was not a “snide reply”.
Why is the left calling you a fascist?
I’d have thought the answer to that is obvious.
They don’t agree with some of your opinions and they call every dissenter a fascist.
This is what they consider to be mature and coherent political debate.
Absolutely!!!
They think anyone slightly to the right of the hard left is a fascist, the reality is they are worse than fascists
Agree.
Though not unique to the Left. When Ed Miliband called for energy bills to be capped, David Cameron called him a Marxist.
Miliband wanted energy bills to be capped while wanted to inflict yet more super-expensive’green energy’ on us. You can’t do both.
Yes indeed.
“This year we’ll cap them at this level.”
“Next year we’ll cap them at a higher level”
Given that the Tories adopted the idea, was it nonsense for them to call it “Marxist” when Ed Miliband suggested it, or do you believe that the Tory party turned Marxist?
I hate to say it but this is what happens when the exam factory enables students to gain a ‘C’ or above in English Literature having only read one chapter of the set text, watched every movie ever made of it and studied some key notes. Few have the stamina for reading an essay, let alone a book. This is why debate has departed the political arena and we are left with soundbites. This is how the media can manipulate public opinion with a misleading headline. Welcome to the age of Twitter.
Hi Paul. You should not be surprised that as a Conservative I agree with all you say. Not because it is ‘anti Labour’, and A point us scored. No, not at all, but because I actually miss the quality of debate that a modicum of tolerance once usually engendered.
Maybe we should join the Free Speech Union? As you say in your conclusion a broad front committed to free thinking and speech is sorely needed today.
Precisely. Where is the measured debate and discussion?
On this thread and in the unherd articles … it will leak out into the real world … but how to capture it for political movement is another story … 🙂
Spot on.
Good point. We need an active and effective opposition (surely any political system does) whether you agree with them or not.
There is a quote that does the rounds on Twitter. I think it was made up on Twitter but many people wrongly attributed it to Churchill. Regardless it is very apt in these circumstances. The quote it
“The fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists.”
The current strain of left wing activists in the UK (and USA) call themselves anti fascists while using the tactics use by fascists to stifle and silence any opposition to their own ideas.
I grew up in South Africa in the apartheid years and find the emphasis on race & identity shockingly familiar.
Yes, we spent years getting rid of racism by getting people to look beneath the colour of the skin and seeing what is underneath. Now the left only look at the colour of the skin and make sweeping generalisations. That is exactly what apartheid did!
Douglas Murray’s article has just reminded me that there was a strong victim narrative in the arguments for apartheid. “Everyone was so cruel to us Afrikaners, that the only solution is a system where we control everything”. This came through most strongly in the school History curriculum.
But it didn’t have the intended effect – all it has given me is a knee-jerk reaction against domination that is justified by claims of that person’s group having suffered in the past.
I suspect the same will be true of our kids who are being fed politicised lessons – the kids know who the “political” teachers are (because they try to stifle dissent from the kids) and quietly reject the politics _because_of_ the overbearing messenger.
Why are you commenting on an article by Douglas Murray under an article by Paul Embery? Good comment otherwise.
Laziness, I guess! But mainly because the comment is also a follow-up to David’s reply.
I think it might have been Reagan who said, perhaps in the 1970s, something like:
‘When fascism comes to America it will come in the guise of liberalism’
That quote sums it up better than mine.
Ronnie always had a great turn of phrase
Yes, it was he who said, watching a bunch of hippies waving banners reading ‘Make Love, Not War’:
“Most of them look as though they couldn’t do either”.
To be fair, they were quite rationally protesting the Vietnam War.
Fascism almost came to America this month in the guise of a President defeated in an election using Republican-controlled state legislatures to appoint Trump-supporting representatives to the Electoral College even though their States were won by Joe Biden. Only the final circuit-breaker – the refusal of State legislators to play along – prevented a Fascist coup against democracy.
In that case fascism had already been in power in the US under President Trump for 4 years?
Remember that Hilary Clinton called for Biden under no circumstances to concede defeat to Trump before the recent election.
She was talking about the period before all the postal votes were counted. So your comment is misleading. Trump has waited three weeks, and checked out whether he could get Republican state legislatures to send Trump representatives to the Electoral College even though Biden won the vote in their States, before (half-) conceding now that his attempt at a coup has failed.
Rubbish. There were legitimate concerns about voting irregularities which which have been addressed through legal channels. Whatever the outcome I am sure you would agree these needed to be addressed to remove any stigma of voter fraud. Perhaps the Republicans should now simply copy the Democrats inversion of democracy with smear and impeachment for the next 4 years?
Hmm, a communitarian, socially conservative party that has long advocated leaving the EU, recognises the sanctity of national sovereignty and importance of border and immigration control, roundly rejects the hugely damaging and distracting obsession with identity politics and seriously questions the stated aims of the BLM….?
Sounds to me like you’re pushing against a door nailed firmly shut when you’re desperately trying to appeal to your spiritual home, Labour, Paul, a lost cause now I fear, so if you’re looking for a not so new political home that shares pretty much all your values, from what I can tell, you could do a lot worse than look at the minute but growing SDP and put your undeniable talents and relatively high profile to good work there.
I remember being a founder member of the Williams/Jenkins version.
Time to finish the job.
We need proportional representation before any such party is a viable concept.
“Why is the Left calling me a fascist?”
Because you’re not a fascist.
Same reason that the Democratic Republic of Congo calls themselves Democratic
I started my working life aged 16 at Cortonwood Colliery. I don’t think any of my ex-workmates would recognise the Labour Party now.
I think they would recognise the Labour party campaigning for children on free school meals to be fed during the holidays, while the Tories are keener on tax cuts for bankers.
Yes, an entire ‘society’ can be summed up in two phrases.
Were Labour campaigning on the issue before Marcus Rushford? I don’t think so.
I’d be pretty sure they were. Certainly in favour of it, because it’s a socialist kind of principle, while hysterical Tories from privileged backgrounds denounced it.
If so, it doesn’t say much for their campaigning skills that Marcus Rashford had so much more success getting changes in six months than they have in however long.
The issue has only been around for 6 months – it’s about special arrangements during Covid, not a blanket policy of forever providing food vouchers to free-school-meals recipients during school holidays.
And yes, it’s easier for a figurehead like Marcus Rashford to whip up a Twitter storm among followers, who usually follow him because of the football rather than politics, than it is for a political party to do so. But with 16 major Government U-turns this year, I think you’ll find that most of them were due to Labour campaigning rather than non-political figures. There’s been a definite pattern this year of the Tories being in office but Labour making the weather.
Show us examples of the hysteria and the privilege of which you speak.
And the evidence for this great red Labour crusade for free meals for kids in the school hols is?
New Labour worshipped at the feet of the bankers. Parents should feed their own kids. (Unless they have been deprived of the right to work by senseless and wicked Covid restrictions).
Embery talks sense, therefore its clear Labour won’t listen
In Orwells’ 1984 all Outer Members of the Party had to join 2 Minutes Hate where on a daily basis they had to scream together at all sorts of imaginary external foes and internal traitors (other Outer Party members) projected to them on a telescreen by the Ministry of Truth. Today fiction is playing out in real life but it is via Twitter.
Regards
NHP
A bit like readers of the Daily Mail when Paul Dacre was editing it.
Remember the screaming headlines?
SMASH THE SABOTEURS (at the start of the 2017 election)
ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE – aimed at judges, and accompanied by hatred-filled biographies (“openly gay” in one case, until they edited) of these people who dared to point out that the law allowed elected MPs to influence Brexit rather than Boris’s cabal of cronies in the Cabinet.
A case of Left and Right resembling each other perhaps?
No. To compare a Daily Mail Headline with a bunch of momentum thugs creating a twitter storm is complete false equivalence. The former is a general headline anyone can ignore. The latter is a group of extreme political activists identifying and directly bullying in order to ‘cancel’ one individual. The Daily Mail Headline is an excercise in democracy (even if towards one end of the tollerance spectrum), the latter is akin to Two Minute Hate in 1984; it’s neither nuanced, balanced or rational – just mob rule.
Regards
NHP
Because the loudest ones on the Left are utterly unoriginal no-marks who think we can’t see the hypocrisy in their desperate attempt to occupy the moral high ground while being such uncharitable, vitriolic and downright nasty individuals.
Does anyone ever get called a Marxist for expressing an opinion even slightly to the left of centre?
Maybe the tiresomely mouthy ‘woke’ element on the left, and the vitriolically right-wing who are well represented in the comment columns of Unherd, have more in common than they imagine?! Let alone the more establishment Tories, who do not have Unherd commenters’ delight in controversy and are just interested in using the print media they 80% control to destroy anyone who isn’t one of their kind, so that they can carry on with their agenda of looking after the 1%.
Well, yes: Trump and some other Republicans have a tendency to call some of their opponents of their opponents communists.
There are unhinged and nasty people on both sides, of course. It seems to me logical that the closer one gets to the extreme ends of the political spectrum there will be a greater concentration of nasty people, because one aspect of being extremist is that you don’t care whether people want the “medicine” you are serving up or not.
These are people who are so convinced they know best that they will go to just about any lengths to implement their policies and tend to despise anyone who is less ruthless.
Apart from the fact that print media’s power has been waning significantly, why do you think most people read a particular newspaper? Don’t you think it’s possible that they choose a newspaper that chimes with their views?
If there was a secret editorial coup in the Daily Mail and the newspaper became more like the Guardian, what do you think its readers would do: become social justice warriors or stop buying the Daily Mail?
It is perfectly possible to access mainstream left-wing newspapers: the Mirror, the Guardian, the Independent. It’s just that fewer people want to read them. There’s no conspiracy.
Second, I think your “destroy” is not particularly appropriate. The attempts to destroy people (in the sense of destroying their careers and reputations) seem to be coming predominantly from left-wing activists these days.
latte-sipping bourgeois bohemians tapping furiously on their smartphones.
Spot on-what a wonderful image.
Yes, you beat me to it in expressing my enjoyment of the image.
The Left toss the ‘fascist’ barb with thoughtless abandon, using the term as a catch-all for more or less anything they don’t like.
Like ‘Marxist’ or ‘terrorist supporter’ from many on the Right, and their claque of media cheerleaders. It’s highly undesirable from both sides.
Sorry, but your example doesn’t come close to the insult of calling people fascists.
Why is the Left calling you a Fascist?
The answer is really very simple, once you embrace the idea that the Modern Left’s intolerance of opposition is the result of adult bodies being inhabited by the minds of children. For one reason or another, they’ve failed to go through the critical transitional process between childhood/adolescence and adulthood of rejecting the cozy reassurance of childhood’s false certainties and embracing the more complicated and less absolute nature of adult reality.
Can I “prove” this? No, of course I can’t, but can anyone prove that it’s wrong? I don’t think so.
There is a split in how Labour have reacted to the 2019 election defeat. Some have chosen to reject democracy. Others have decided to reject the working class that voted for the Conservatives. What few in Labour are prepared to do is reject neither and to instead ask why they lost the vote of the people for whom the Labour Party was created.
The collapse of the so-called “red wall” at the last UK general election may be a harbinger of better things to come. It’s not that the Tories are any better, but what matters is that the taboo of breaking with your tribal loyalty has been smashed. Let’s be honest here – Jeremy Corbyn did OK in his first general election, but that was really because people mistakenly saw him (at that point) as a return to Labour tradition. Nobody was voting for him per se, they were voting for Keir Hardie, Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan, just like most Labour voters have been doing for generations. The same is true of tribal Tory voters, who were really voting for Winston Churchill.
But that’s gone now. They’ve ditched their loyalty once, which will make it much easier to do it again, and from the newly detached perspective these once-Labour voters now occupy, it will be much easier to see the obvious truth that Hardie, Attlee and Bevan wouldn’t touch the woke politics of modern Labour with a barge pole. Without the spurious protection of these great names, the new left will never be able to sell their nonsense on its own merits. I just hope they haven’t yet accrued enough power to themselves to do away with the inconvenience of asking for electoral mandates. The left have always had a “you’ll thank us for this later” attitude when it comes to forcing their rubbish down people’s throats.
I’m not so sure it’s just the modern Left that despises the working classes. I think they have always done so because the working classes are usually ‘small c’ conservative people who believe in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. Today’s young left are certainly intolerant of anybody who doesn’t have their somewhat warped thought processes and despise anybody who voted for Brexit, as a matter of course. They also see nothing wrong with calling people racist, bigoted, xenophobic, transphobic etc for simply having different ideas, whilst parading around with banners reading ‘love trumps hate’! They don’t ‘do’ irony, of course!
Labour abandoned the working class in the 80s.
Paul Embery is a good bloke – too good to be wasting his time with Labour.
It’s refreshing to hear sense from someone on the left. I was born to working class parents, I grew up on a council estate and I am pretty sure the labour party no longer represents the ordinary man. They have enjoyed a level of support only because most “working class”, whatever that means, dislike the other parties. Last year I would’ve described myself as a benign Tory but following the abysmal handling of COVID I don’t think any mainstream party can represent me. There seems to be no leadership in politics just a bunch of self serving careerists and a fully politicised media.
What do I believe in? Equality of opportunity, a safety net for the unfortunate, a quality public health service and education system, but not ways to opt out of responsibility or have my children indoctrinated with nonsense. Is that bad now?
We can easily forget that there is a perspective that is not really interested in debate as such but revolutionary change. To this end it is legitimate to attempt to limit the impact or seriousness of your opponents’ views because they are seen to impede change. If you think you want to have a healthy exchange of views and debate, you need to realise that not everyone comes from the same perspective unfortunately. If you are seen as an obstacle to the change they want, you will be seen as justifiable target for abuse.
“They have enjoyed success so far only because they have too frequently been indulged.” This somewhat understates the case. They are not only indulged, they are enforced by organisations with everyday power. Employers sack and humiliate. Universities expel and make life hell. You business will be boycotted. Your past will be scoured for offense. If you appeal to the police, you find them on one knee. If you want to cry injustice, you will find the media inverts the truth.
The actors which in a healthy democracy should be mutually antagonistic – media, business, government, organs of the state – are working to one end with no respect for honesty or truth.
This is not a conspiracy, a word now used to belittle dissent. Much of the signalling is in plain sight. If you are in favour glamorous international politics and disposing of the little people’s money without their consent, you know your hobby horses; EU, Global Warming, Covid, BLM.
We are well down the path to fascism. This is what it feels like. Every week brings some new outrage to freedom, but most people I know, good, intelligent people, have an entrenched technocratic mindset which accepts the encroaching totalitarianism as a series of self-contained solutions to problems. A globally enforced Chinese-style Social Credit health passport? Just common sense, apparently.
Stephen, while I agree with quite a lot of that, it’s groupthink to lump EU, action on global warming, and action to combat Covid, with BLM. If your argument is about the Left closing down argument and being irrational, best not to do the same thing yourself!
My reasons for linking them are set out and require no speculation; “glamorous international politics and disposing of the little people’s money without their consent.” BLM is currently less operative internationally, but only because it has not got very far outside the US and UK. Since it demands action from “white” cultures, its scope is effortlessly international. What is the betting that the EU will champion the cause, if it is not doing so already? A core demand is “reparations”; therefore, it seeks to create redistributive funds which will be administered by international bureaucrats, who will be treated like royalty, since they have money to give away, and will be convinced they are doing God’s work, impervious to election results determined by less noble minds. This is the unaccountable dynamic I deplore.
It wasn’t just the aristocracy that went to the guillotine. The revolution eats its own in an effort to enforce purity. Hence Glenn Greenwald, Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan, etc.
The rot started in North America with the effluent spewing out of social “science” departments over there a few decades ago, but it soon spread to the UK.
Stopping the rot requires our academic institutions to girdle their loins and to face down the woke nutters amongst their students and staff – no sign of this happening unfortunately. Indeed, we have Edinburgh University spinelessly caving in over the naming of David Hume Tower and we have Oriel College Oxford intending to make the statue of Cecil Rhodes fall.
Get your pitchforks ready folks, we need to go over the top and confront this lunacy ourselves!
A nice summary of the current madness.
Sadly for the genuine soft-left, who want a traditionally rooted Labour Party to govern, they need to accept that it’s probably already too late for 2024.
Starmer will need to drive out the middle class illiberals, which means they will probably have to do worse in 2024 before they can re-grow.
A re-run of the 1980’s SDP is the only other alternative to oblivion.
But all will be well when Corbyn has taken the Labour Party that he doesn’t approve of to court to honour(!) the deal McCluskey they believe stitched together, in the grand tradition of Old Labour, behind closed doors to get him re-instated. Of course, they will reach some sort of face saving device to avoid such an occurance and can then get back to him defying the whip, his followers denouncing Starmer on social media and continuing the good work done in his name in driving out heretics like Embery from the party. After all, when you lose 2 elections but win the argument who, but the bigoted voters and the membership who try to represent their point of view, who must be called out and cancelled?
Bravo, Mr. Embery. Now that’s a book by a Socialist I’m prepared to buy. Doesn’t happen often”¦
Great stuff Paul. I’m still getting my head round being accused of being a ‘fascist’ in the South London Twitter jungle because I posted something mildly supportive of Brexit.
Yesterday I was called a ‘remainiac bedwetter’ on Unherd because I posted something supportive of the new covid vaccine. Apparently the approved view, on that thread, was that it’s all a global conspiracy to institute the new world order. Much of the comment there was from people who won’t hear a word against Trump.
It’s not only people on the Left who can be abusive and dogmatic.
Those at the extreme ends of the political spectrum have always been crazies. Nothing is new there.
I was struck by a recent piece in the Guardian that said dropping the word ‘woke’ into a conversation was an “easy way to determine where someone sits on the political spectrum”.
So worrying that there is perhaps an entire generation now that sees attitudes to US identity politics as the ‘political spectrum’, and has lost all sense of an economic base never mind social class. Perhaps this is inevitable, given the over-representation of the economically privileged on the liberal left and their separation from working-class people: this focus on individuals and who they are (rather than what they do and collective interests) acts as misdirection from (and a defence of) their very real privilege.
Perhaps it is because “the left” is no longer the left – or maybe it never was. There seems to be a tendency to conflate the terms “Working-Class” with “Left” with “Labour Party”. Labour is a Londoncentric party made up, or controlled by, Guardian-reading middle-class self-styled “Intellectuals”. So there….
I’m not sure that terms like left, right, working class etc are valid any more. The hard left are anti-Semitic, the hard right are anti-Muslim. What’s the difference? Likewise, working class used to mean blue collar workers living in rented accommodation. Now middle-class white collar workers are living in rented accommodation because they can’t afford the high cost of housing. Even freedom of speech is more strongly defended by the Conservative Party than id is by Labour and SDP. It was the latter two who wanted to bring in legislation to prevent the freedom of the press and the Tories who stopped it.
It seems to me that we need a new centrist party that is neither right nor left, but one that looks at the problems within society and lays out an achievable manifesto to solve them. I don’t mean just big issues such as global worming, but smaller ones such as crumbling infrastructure, too many cars on the road, and lack of affordable housing.
I have been lucky to work in many countries during my career and I have noticed this: most of the people I met only want food on the table, a roof over their head, preferably one they own, good health, and a happy family life. Any party that works to provide these things whilst allowing honest and open debate without fear of retribution will be on to a winning formula.
All good sensible points, bar one. The hard left isn’t antisemitic. I honestly don’t believe that. The pro Israel lobby has backed the entire debate into a corner where any word against Israel is shouted down as “antisemitic”. From Starmer down, the whole Labour party is now terrified of being called anti-Jewish. Meanwhile the Tories know it’s mendacious mud-slinging, but it serves their purpose so they’re happy to encourage it.
Very interesting but not surprising! They have been indulged because we are a tolerant society which is ironic considering their own intolerance. “The only serious option now is to take them on”…… too little too late I fear.
I weep for the Labour Party of Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, Dennis Healey, Jim Callaghan, Neil Kinnock and John Smith. They were empathetic politicians who, like you Paul, knew and loved the true heart of the Party.
Like you Christian people also get the same treatment – and not just from the Left but we’re not moving anywhere either.
For the traditional Labour party that is a shame. If the falling of the “Red Wall” to Tories- in what was once solid Labour -told us anything, it is that the ordinary electorate are frankly unimpressed by the whole woke navel gazing indulged in by the Corbynista Left. They are the Tories greatest asset
“¦and the Tories should be mindful of that”¦
Actually Adam I suspect it was the Brexit issue that was the deciding factor. And Corbyn has always been hostile to the EU, as were Tony Benn and Michael Foot before him. The Tories spent 35 years catching up and deciding that Foot and Benn were right on Brexit! – ironic.
The Tories never decided that Brexit was a good idea, and they still don’t think it is a good idea. They are reluctantly allowing Brexit because they are pragmatists.
Nigel Farage in his various guises gave the Tories’ voters and party members the platform that they needed to force the Conservatives to do this.
Like Farage and his policies or not, there can be no doubting that he is one of the most effective politicians of his time.
Well argued, Paul. I used to vote Labour but am so repulsed by the modern left, with its dogmatism, fashionable shibboleths and obsession with race/identity and (not being a traditional Tory voter) feel I’ve been left in the political wilderness. It upsets me that the party my working class, patriotic parents and grandparents voted for all their lives now despises them and their values. It’s unforgiveable (bit dramatic, but that’s how I feel).
We need to differentiate between the cultural Left and the economic Left. I am economically progressive and socially more conservative. There are no political parties representing me and at every election cycle, I am forced to choose between the national and the social. If you are against multiculturalism AND neoliberalism, you find yourself stuck in a political blackhole, it’s depressing.
I believe you might feel at home in the current iteration of the SDP. And let’s see what Farage and Fox come up with.
What seems to give these people the most power is the terrified businesses who react to a level of condemnation on twitter that I could probably knock up myself given the interest and a spare afternoon. Many of these are consumer branded businesses who have decided that share price is maximised by doing anything to avoid trouble on there, thus making it easy for these people to hound those they dislike out of jobs or business.
I’d say they need to grow a pair but they don’t really; they couldn’t care less about any of these causes but they don’t see a profit in telling them to go **** themselves. Plus it keeps their employees quiet. It’s all so cynical but it’s how they behave.
During the 18 months I spent as a member of local CLP, I was struck by how the majority of members were what my dear departed father would call middle-class do-gooders. Doctors, academics, teachers, nurses, lawyers, social workers all eager to tell the struggling poor what they needed rather than listen to the legitimate concerns of working class voters. If you can label someone as racist or bigoted or ignorant then that justifies ignoring them.
It would clarify the discussion considerably if the author would give us a less imprecise definition of ‘the Left’. As a person often described as an ‘extreme Leftist’, I don’t recognize any element of his gravamen as forming part of my world-view.
I agree with most of what you’ve written, Paul.
A couple of points:
– While many comments here assume that the more left-wing Labour members are, the keener they are on ‘woke’ identity politics, that’s not my impression from talking to actual Labour party members (something which I suspect most of the commentators don’t regularly do because so many of them are fanatical right-wingers). I’ve observed that many Momentumites are much more interested in traditional Labour concerns, such as inequality and social justice, than in ‘wokeness’. Conversely, I suspect that some of the woke obsessions are actually displacement activities for those who were happy with Blairism’s partial abandonment of Labour’s traditional concerns about inequality. Peter Mandelson’s statement that New Labour was intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes (the second part is often omitted in quotations) was an example of that.
– Secondly, while Paul you criticise the Left for an obsession with wokeness and an intolerance of dissent (and I agree with you), the Left are not the only people obsessed with it. Unherd is full of right-wing contributors, and commenters, who are obsessed with it. They even dragged ‘Rhodes must fall’ into a discussion of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine on another Unherd thread this week, apparently because they felt that was more important than 50,000 people dying and the economy being on its knees before it recovers when the vaccine becomes available. Most of real-world “politics” is about the fact that the NHS is under-resourced, the boss has a 20% pay rise while you and your colleagues face another year of a pay freeze, spending on education has fallen by 8% per child in real terms in recent years while VAT revenue is foregone on public school fees, the roads are full of potholes and privatised rail tickets are often extortionate, and so on. Ordinary life for most people is about your own job, your children’s education, your Father being on a too-long waiting list for treatment, and so on; it’s not about trans people (how many trans people do you know? None, I bet in most cases). I suggest that the obsession with wokeness is a displacement activity for the Right: most commenters on this site don’t actually feel like constructing an argument that the NHS should be under-resourced, bosses should have pay rises at the expense of everyone else, spending on state school pupils should be cut while the kids in classes of 8 get subsidised.
The distinction between left and right has been breaking down for a few decades. Here is surely its final collapse. The situation is as farcical as portrayed by the Pythons in Life of Brian, but dominated now by a single vanguard of politically correct, soulless, technocrats, educated by the system into believing that they are doing politics properly. These people are not the left, they are cogs in a system. If we revolt against this system and these people get in the way, it is simply testament to the extent to which they have no idea where they are in relation to actual political and historical forces.
Excellent perceptive article. By the way, regarding the picture – lucky Tories! Looking at the creature in the frame would encourage any man to become a misogynist.
Until establishment organisations, government, the civil service, big business, schools, universities etc cease appeasing and pandering to these so-called progressives, their intolerance will grow and spread.
To me, I am sorry to say, woke, the left, LGBT etc. all mean the same thing. They have become the collective face of the left with a few others. The battle has really become between honest people and the dishonest people. It is no longer about left and right. If I get a choice of MP I will vote for the best person regardless of their party. As it is I have a tory MP who is against most things I believe in. It would be great if we could return to independents which was how it started.
I just love the cover of the book. It should be accompanied by Paul releasing a single called ‘Ride A White Van’ by T-BREXit.
I should think that, apart from their parents, neither of those 2 handsome fillies in the picture above have neither kissed nor been kissed by anyone, even a tory.
“Fascist” has become a marker-word that is quite useful, in that (like “cisnormative”, “problematic” “toxic masculinity” and “cultural appropriation”) almost always mark the speaker as an idiot who has nothing of interest to say. So, it has utility in helping one avoid wasting time.
It is not that these words never have legitimate and contributory meanings, but that in the vast majority of cases, they serve no other informative or discursive purpose. The only serve this useful purpose of marking the speaker/writer.
It is a problem, of course. Idiots, like “deplorables,” are not easily won over by labelling them. Ultimately, just with the extreme right, engagement is the only solution – but my goodness it is painful. I try periodically on the Guardian comments page. The idiot-ratio is just so high there.
I do remember reading once about a pre-war literary critic who said that he never read a book before reviewing it, in case doing so prejudiced him. Fancy that, left wing woke folk becoming so bourgeoise as to copy his approach.
Those were the days!
Sounds like a reader of a right-wing newspaper and/or a surfer of right-wing sites who gets all their views of the left from that viewpoint. And vice-versa of course.
Seems further complicated here in the US as they now seem to be aligned with very large corporations and extremely rich individuals. Like other life-long left-leaning people here who also think the idea of truth is fairly important and freedom (once a cause of the left of politics) is also, I feel rather homeless politically now. Should we just recognize that this sort of approach so well described in the article is a fairly standard form of authoritarianism /fascism that the world has seen several times before, and not what we always referred to as ‘left’ ideology?
David, I’m a fellow Yank (Oregon), and it doesn’t seem that complicated to me that the “Left” would be OK with alignment with plutocrats. When your mantra is no longer anything like “working class solidarity”, but rather along the lines of “diversity, multi-culturalism, and intersectionality”, there is no longer any good reason to spurn capitalists. Indeed, corporate executives and others of the wealthy tend to be of the same basic social stratum as much of the contemporary Left, in being expensively schooled – I chafe at calling them “well-educated” – and dealing with words and numbers rather than with people not in their sphere. It seems a natural fit to me. I would also point out how Woke so many of the companies are becoming.
I think I agree, but to me that is not ‘Left’. They are right wing authoritarians, insisting on conformity and group-think, using ‘Left’ as a way to disguise their thinking. Or they just really have no idea what they are about.
If you mean by not “Left” that the traditional leftist concern for workers is almost entirely absent from the current crowd which claims to be the Left, I agree. That’s what I meant by my distinction between the working class solidarity vs. the multicultural, diverse, and intersectional segments.
However, I object somewhat to your use of Fascist to describe them. First, because it’s been rendered meaningless by so-called leftists. And second, they don’t seem so much Fascist or other type of totalitarian – including both National Socialist and Communist – as nihilistic to me. They’re willing to destroy our present civilization – but to what end? At least the totalitarians mentioned above had ultimate goals in mind – the establishment of a supreme government over the lives of all for the good of all, or Germany taking its rightful place as head of the world, or a worldwide brotherhood of the working man and woman. But what do our current Woke see as their ultimate aim?
Yes, ‘fascist’ is not specific and a pretty useless term, unless it includes Stalinism etc. so totalitarianism is far better. I am not sure they have any particular aim, but are just trying to fit in and feel like they belong to something.
Tom, I agree, but my point was that they are not ‘Left’ in any normal definition. They are perhaps confused people espousing an authoritarian view where others must confirm with their way of thinking or be considered inferior, and the basic tenants of democracy and freedom of choice are less important than that conformity. That is more like fascism to me, and they should be called that. Maybe then some well-meaning people might stop and think a bit.
Some months back there was a report on BBC about a survey of UK Muslim folks and amongst other things, it claimed that 50% of respondents think violence against gay people is acceptable. Who knows how many were surveyed and how reliable it is, but for BBC to publish, and bearing in mind how homosexuality is not accepted generally in Islam, it would be legitimate news.
I have posted about this a number of times but I am the opposite to the author in that because he is ‘unfortunate’ to be “white straight male”, (from an accusation of being ist’or ‘phobic’ I mean, he was lucky not to be tarred and feathered, now lynch mobs are back. (I saw him in a video but if I’m wrong, apologies).
When I say about this survey online no one comments because they’ve tied themselves up in knots. If you accuse me is islamaphobia then by definition you are homophobic.
Now you can look at the data and challenge the conclusions made, which I would listen to, but no one ever has a go at me, or has a sensible debate about it, just silence.
I take issue with”Islam” on this and other points but individual muslim folks I respect and treat the same as everyone else and Just how I would expect to be treated
But shut this down, people grow to resent each other. And that is the way this will go. Others will grow to hate and develop an Ism.
It is counter productive.
There is no reason why the author cannot say the above and be treated differently or called a phobe. It’s a legitimate question for anyone to ask. You don’t need to like Julie Garland or anything (stereotyping for self deprecating humour).
Judy Garland! Maybe they should just teach kids about her instead of having LGBT lessons. Repeated viewing of The Wizard of Oz is bound to have an effect.
I think you’re talking about a Channel 4 survey, not a BBC one (I can’t seem to attach the link, but it’s easy found)
It doesn’t say that 50% of Muslims support violence against homosexuals.
But it does reveal attitudes that most in the West would consider seriously homophobic and misogynistic. 50pc think homosexuality should be illegal. Most worrying 30pc refuse to condemn violence against those who offend their thin-skinned prophet.
There is a need to overhaul the more backward aspects of this religion, and throw our support behind the moderate voices
When the economy collapses and we have the biggest Slump in human history, will these Leftie loons find any more time, energy or even mental focus for taking part in their ochlocratic hate-fests and cancel-campaigns?
[Cf: the state the banks are in, plus eleven years of frenetic Quantitative Easing debasing all currencies, plus the horrendous indebtedness of governments, plus – now – the fallout from 9 months of Lockdown.]
Won’t they be running around diligently trying to find something to eat; and won’t the hunt for human basics (food, shelter, genuine safe spaces) make them TRULY ‘woke’ at last?
The trouble is that the centre / moderate left philosophers, idealists, academics and elites can’t bring themselves to vote conservative to protect democracy but will cling to the ship that is taking down their values and bemoan it because of old fashioned bias. The workers though know a life boat when they see it even if land is out of sight.
I think your metaphor is taking in water and listing badly to starboard. The workers have been sold a punctured dinghy with HMS Populism painted on the side.
Why have the “liberal” left become so authoritarian? The answer is simple, their views and arguments have no merit, they do not stand up to scrutiny, they have descended into the realms of lunacy. I was a young socialist many years ago a revolting one I may add, but our prime motivator was truth and common sense, we would argue for hours against anyone who had the stamina to join the discussion and we had some valid points to make….there existed at that time REAL POVERTY which had come about through no fault of those affected, but through flaws in the capitalist system. Over the years I and most of my comrades came to realise that the abuses of totalitarianism far outweighed anything in a free Capitalist society and if we did not amend our ideas we risked making conditions many times worse for the poor, or removing freedom of speech and freedom of thought to achieve our ends. Most of us could not be a party to that, but it seems that path is now being trodden by those in society who wish power at any price, they are the enemy of the people no matter what tag they wear.
I love Paul Embery.
Ninety five percent of what leaves his mouth makes complete sense, but he is way, way too wedded to the moribund concept of the Labour Party itself as the de facto unique representative of the working classes plus, and this is actually far more important, he associates trade unions, a tradition he is long steeped in and clearly almost blindly loyal to and the monetary and undue concomitant political influence they still wield within the party itself, as somehow the unique justification for this and thus the ONLY means for achieving any of the perfectly sensible and decent aims that he espouses.
And that, for me, scabies and genitalmen, is your ‘other’ 5% right there.
Yes. This is true.
Right:
– Children are better off if they are raised by two parents. We don’t like Black Lives Matter. We are for the proper control of immigration. We don’t believe a man is a woman just because he says he is.
Left:
– OK. F***ck you, you’re a f***cking fascist, racist, xenophobe, sexist.
Right:
– This is creeping despotism which seeks to engender an atmosphere in which any expression of unfashionable opinion is met with fierce condemnation!
Left:
– OK. F***ck you, you’re a f***cking fascist, racist, xenophobe, sexist.
Right:
– Why are you insulting? Why are you giving up the discussion? The Left is no longer interested in winning hearts and minds!
Left:
– OK. F***ck you, you’re a f***cking fascist, racist, xenophobe, sexist.
Right:
– We need a united front for all mainstream politics – and even society as a whole – to resist those who consider it their mission to suppress open debate and dissent as a means of ensuring ideological hegemony in our public life!
Left:
– OK. F***ck you, you’re a f***cking fascist, racist, xenophobe, sexist.
It like a Left-Right dialogue.
Right thinks they are the center of the Universe. Surprise – the world doesn’t revolve around the Right. Right think so because it is their own selfish nature.
But the Left should not convince the Right of anything. Why did the Right decide that the Left wants dialogue?
The Right thinks that the Left should convince them. That the Left should impose its views on them. But it is precisely there that totalitarianism and dictatorship.
No! In society, there are 10% of the left, there are 10% of the right, there are 80% people, with vague views, and it is assumed that they are inclined towards good. Left is to convince 80% people, to convey to 80% people their position, their platform, their idea. And 10% Right – f***ck you, you’re a f***cking fascist, racist, xenophobe, sexist.
One small problem with Mr. Embery’s thesis: he finds himself at the bottom of the slope, looking into the abyss and he only wants to go partly back up the slope. By which I mean, he wants to find a better way to implement socialist policies. “… how extraordinary it is that a book written by someone rooted in the labour movement and making a straightforward call for the Left, … to combine socialist economics with a much better focus on social solidarity and the politics of belonging.” Isn’t this exactly the sort of stuff that have gotten us to where we are?
I’m probably wrong, over-simplifying Mr. Embery’s views since he sounds eminently reasonable and open to facts and reason–clearly no longer a man of the modern Left.
That would suggest that Tony Blair’s policies were socialist.
Of the three main forms of totalitarian socialism that blighted the 20th centuary, fascism is by far the least repugnant.
National Socialism lauded race above all else with dire consequences, Soviet Socialism put the Party first and dissenters into the gulag, fascism put the State first and whilst violent and oppressive didn’t go to the extremes of those other two European socialist regimes; there were many Jews in Italy’s fascist government and religion, private property and to a lesser extent freedom of conscience was tolerated.
Fascism, developed by left wing socialists and revolutionaries (Mussolini in Italy, Mosley the ex-Labour government minister and Fabian in the UK) was always of the left. Trotsky and Bukharin were also fascists, at least according to the Union of Soviet Socialists Political Committee, and we all know that they were socialist revolutionaries; so whilst being a socialist is not synonymous with being a fascist, being a fascist is synonymous with being a socialist. Many in the Labour Party are today still advocating Fascism’s economic policy, The New Deal and a recent Labour leader waxed lyrical bout Fascism’s philosophical underpinnings, The Third Way.
Those calling the author a fascist are potentially far more dangerous than real fascists; they exhibit a truly terrifying intellectual vacuousness, a more than little nihilistic approach to the Nation State and the people within it, as well as an infantile spitefulness towards those who only mildly disagree. They claim the moral certainty of the Puritan without the moral compass of the devout and the political conviction of the Bolshevik without the powers of deductive reasoning.
Are they themselves fascists? No not really, they are something with the potential to be far more terrible; ill-educated, ego-maniacal and fundamentally mean-spirited they have nothing that is good to offer.
Labour could start by throwing Corbyn out along with his Momentum echo chamber and fellow trouble makers. Not content with losing 3 elections on the trot, they are now bent on making Labour totally unelectable in future. Labour is in danger of becoming just another left faction like SWP, forever condemned to preach to the converted and waste its energy on futile social justice campaigns that nobody could care less about.
I’m one of those who has become politically homeless. I would never vote Tory in a million years so will probably either abstain or spoil my ballot paper in disgust.
Actually they have lost four elections in a row. Let’s hope that run is extended.
As a Tory I am delighted to see the left stuck in this rut; just as I am delighted that the thing in the photo would never kiss me. My concern is that the moderate right is not doing very much to stand up to and reverse the trend of increasing wokism. If the left remains captured by woke and the moderate right is too scared to expose it for the totalitarian menace it is and squash it, that only leaves the far right (the real fascists) who will be in tune with a significant majority of the population on the issue and that really is scary.
or the Reclaim Party or the Reform Party, neither of which are far right but just concerned with wokism!
Well written and said Paul,all the best for your book. I think you should be looking to your old Brexit Colleague Nigel Farage to help you with this. (or Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party). The sensible thinking people who aren’t afraid, so that excludes the establishment and a lot of the current Conservative party, need to get together and form a party that pushes this agenda -Anti-Wokism- to the top of the agenda. Left to advance, uncontested at the very top will mean their way of thinking will get into our laws and thus restrict all of our lives! We all should not underestimate these Marxists/Fascists!!!
on Centre left ¢re SDP are worth a look. I am Independent myself Socially conservative, Economically i am left of centre on Rail &Royal mail etc
.. On the new Right laurence Fox Reclaim party and Richard Tice Reform party could make splashes at next may local Elections…Brexit referendum.. i worked with Conservative home&Labour Leave.. I hope Voters dont fall for the Usual 4 Card trick at By elections. Lib-lab-Cons-greens are So Last decade &Woke?…
“Why is the left calling me a fascist?”
“Because you’re there.”
Whatever any of us may personally dislike about Labour, the only thing stopping them winning the next election is immigration. Sort out their position on that single issue by giving the majority of people the immigration they want (moderate number of skilled professionals who are a good cultural fit), and Labour would have no problem. The biggest fear of the Conservative party is that Labour figure this out.
Paul Embery keep doing what you are doing
What? Pissing in the wind. As myself and others point out below, he will never change the Labour Party, so he needs to join or start something else.
“But a Left that is these days far more concerned with personal autonomy…”. The one line in the article I disagree with. They care nothing for personal autonomy, as personal autonomy includes the right for people to express and hold opinions that differ from theirs, and they don’t believe in that – at all.
Paul, you make some good points in this piece, but you haven’t addressed the way that the far left and far right are nourishing each other. One’s fanatical position gives rise to an equal and opposite reaction.
You say that “the debate is viewed as a battle between good and evil, enlightened progressives versus reactionary bigots”. The authoritarian left are absolutely full of ridiculous zeal, but the reactionary bigots aren’t an imaginary enemy. Where do you think global populism has sprung from ?
There is no winning through “power of argument” with either of these groups. Centrist political groups need to find a way to lower the temperature and wrest control from the fringes, otherwise these people, left and right, will keep triggering each other into irrational frenzies.
Precisely.
Stop talking about “the Left”, Paul. You are actually talking about the Centre: the BBC, the Guardian, the majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party, quite possibly some Tories too. If we had a real Left in this country – and we haven’t had one for nigh on a century – it would not treat working-class opinion with such disrespect. But it wouldn’t necessarily rubber-stamp the views you express: it would be prepared to talk directly to people it didn’t agree with and if necessary challenge their opinions.
I think Mr Embery is doing a bit of a snow job on the left, saying they were traditional guardians of free speech. I disagree. My political memory goes back to the seventies and even then it was always the left who were howling down those they disliked – remember Enoch Powell? Bernard Levin compiled a list of over 100 events that were cancelled through thuggery, and in every case the howlers were on the left. Even when the howlees were left, their silencers were not EDL or young Tories, but those even more left.
But he brings up some good points. The left has long since forsaken its roots to chase the more fashionable arts graduate demographic, losing their grounding in reality in the process, and of course their tolerance of other opinions.
As he says, their behaviour has all too often been met with gelatinous acquiescence by those who should be standing up to it. Like Trendy Hendy, the Headmaster of Eton, or Vice Chancellor Toope of Cambridge Uni. Alas I don’t consider Boris’ backbone to be sufficient to the task of taking them on.
The late Roger Scruton said the fact that the left cannot debate rationally actually points to a serious lack of confidence. If they had the intellect and arguments to win the debate, presumably they would, well, win the debate. That they merely shut it down tells one all one needs to know about both.
Um, I think the SNP is the party you want to join.
Left wing, rooted in a particular place?
Are you having a laugh? The SNP are everything that Paul Emberry and others are railing against- ultra liberal globalists in thrall to the EU. They are mass immigration fanatics and are currently trying to push a so called “Hate crime bill” through the wee diddy parliament in Edinburgh that would destroy free speech in Scotland.
Throughout their history they have been known as the tartan Tories and unfortunately some of us are old enough to remember them walking across the chamber of the House of Commons to bring in Margaret Thatcher and her uber liberal free market pals for 18 years.
All Social Democrats in England and Wales, please beware the SNP they are not your friends.
Yes, I am having a laugh
Ok, no problem. It’s just that up here in Scotland there are lots of SNP supporters who actually believe that they are a true alternative to old style working class labour (seriously), despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary
The SNP: Nationalist with quasi-fascist authoritarian leanings?
Quasi-fascist? I would say that the SNP are pretty much the most authoritarian party in Europe right now. Not even Orban or Law & Justice in Poland are bringing in laws to police what people say in their own homes.
Replace the “N” in the middle with a “D” and you are there. The SDP and Blue Labour now inhabit much the same ground. Time to recognise the realities and start joining them up. This would a very welcome and much overdue realignment.
SDP! Communitarian, left leaning economically while culturally more conservative. The proper middle not the laughable libdems.
Absolutely! Hang together or hang separately.
I enjoyed the article and will read the book. It may speak to my condition very little in present day British politics does.
The author seems to be living in some sort of Kafkaesque fantasy. Blairites in the Labour Party are the ones who stabbed Jeremy Corbyn in the back, and lost him the election, by forcing him, against his better judgement, to accept another referendum on the EU.
By supporting the Blairites who were hell bent on staying in the EU, they cost Labour the election by forcing long standing Labour supporters to vote for Boris in order to get Brexit.
Miliband did the same thing by not offering Labour supporters a referendum, forcing them to vote for Cameron just to get a chance to leave the EU.
We could have had a soft Brexit under Labour if it wasn’t for these hard core remainers.
The Labour Party was created by the likes of Keir Hardy, people who went to work at the age of 12 years of age, in his case, down the mines and were influenced by Methodism. Hardie said Samel Smiles ” Self Help ” was manual for socialism. Until the early 1960s the Labour Party comprised tough practical, patriotic, down to earth people with a bawdy sense of humour. Ernie Bevin was described by Churchill as the working class John Bull. Callaghan served in WW2 as a RN CPO and was a Sunday School teacher.
The Labour Party is now dominated by effete, ineffectual and impractical middle class arts graduates who despise trade and industry. If one looks at the photographs of the women in this article in is obvious they have not worked out of doors in all weathers on the markets or on farms.
If one looks at the expansion of education post 16 years of age it has been dominated by arts subjects, very little applied science and engineering. Engineers solves problems and if they get it wrong, people die. Those who work out of doors have to learn to cope with the elements. The Labour Party was formed by people who create civilisations; cultivators and craftsmen. The present Labour Party comprises those who are like the 3rd and later generations of a family whose lifestyle is paid for by dividends produced by those who actually create the wealth of the firm. The wealth of the Webbs came from a Grandfather who built huts for the Crimean War.
None of the above comments are new. they were made by Orwell and Muggeridge from 1933 onwards.
Orwell said ” Patriotism is the preference for one’s culture without the desire to impose it on others. Nationalism is the belief in the superiority of one’s culture and the desire to impose it on others. ” The Ernie Bevins had no desire to impose their culture on others and had the fighting spirit to stop others imposing their culture on them.
The Labour Party has elected itself the priests of the new religion and have declared as they are morally intellectually superior to others and therefore have the right to impose their views on others.
When one looks at the1930s, the working class rejected Communism and Nazism because they had the robust common sense to see they were creeds for bullies. Whereas many middle class intellectuals being feeble were attracted to the worship of power, like moths to a light .
The greatest defence of freedom are the stought hearted robust yeoman embued with common sense with a bawdy sense of humour; the greatest threat comes from the effete ineffectual Trahison des Clercs worshipping power and using a modern day Inquisition to obtain it.
No idea if your points are, er, on point Paul, but your piece would be so much more compelling with links to each of your particular gripes–they are, mostly specific enough to be identifiable to particular writers/media. Without citations, it just looks like a bit of a moany rant.
It is very true what Embery writes. The left can no longer be called left in an adult working class sense. It has been hijacked by a bunch of weirdos. I raised an issue over illegal immigration and the need by government to get this mass illigal immigration siuation under control as described by Immigration Watch. I was immediately attacked for even asking questions on the issue. I was accused of being a xenophobe and racist bigot yet I have a Chinese wife and have an academic background in South Asian studies!! I think Mark Steyn puts it succinctly in his lectures on Multiculturalism. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
What is the difference between Socialism and National Socialism other than the word National?
Very little. I once believed that National Socialism/Fascism allowed for – at least to some extent – free enterprise in the economic sphere. However I read something quite recently which seemed to demonstrate that pretty much every area of economic life – down to the corner shop – was controlled by the Nazis. And, of course, Mussolini defined fascism as the merging industry and the state.
Perhaps if she improved her personal hygiene and became a bit less annoying she would have more luck.
If this is to change it has to start with schools, our children are soon fed this during their educational life.
Conservatives are so far to the left they are now occupying the space once reserved for the moderate left.
The only option the fanatical left feel now is they have to fight to remain left if the Conservatives hence this self flagellation and jumping on anyone of the left who isn’t being seen to do the same.
I say ignore them and their ill conceived cause will soon naturally due out, and everyone else can get on with doing what they are doing.
Blair stopped fighting the Torries and became the most successful labour PM.
Once Labour realise its not a fight against the Torries but an interview to lead the country then they may get back in power. The same applies to the Torries too.
“Conservatives are so far to the left they are now occupying the space once reserved for the moderate left”
I don’t recall the moderate left:
– calling for Britain to leave the EU (though Michael Foot and Tony Benn did, in 1983 – apparently Tories now think they were right)
– giving a £42500pa tax cut to someone paying income tax on £1m pa
– closing a thousand Sure Start centres
– running down the NHS so that, whereas 95% of cancer patients were starting treatment with 62 days of diagnosis, by 2019 that target was being missed. Ditto max 4hr waiting times in A+E.
– cutting spending on state education by 8% in real terms while ensuring that charitable status for public schools keeps the £100million subsidy going
But the “so far to the left” Tories have done all of those
Some months back there was a report on BBC about a survey of UK Muslim folks and amongst other things, it claimed that 50% of respondents think violence against gay people is acceptable. Who knows how many were surveyed and how reliable it is, but for BBC to publish, and bearing in mind how homosexuality is not accepted generally in Islam, it would be legitimate news.
I have posted about this a number of times but I am the opposite to the author in that because he is ‘unfortunate’ to be “white straight male”, (from an accusation of being ist’or ‘phobic’ I mean.) , He was lucky not to be tarred and feathered, now lynch mobs are back. (I saw him in a video but if I’m wrong, apologies.
When I Isay about this survey online, no one comments because they’ve tied themselves up in knots. If you accuse me of islamaphobia then by definition you are homophobic.
I don’t rate the bbc much for bias reasons but if they report On negative coverage of Islam, then it must be significant.
Now you can look at the data and challenge the conclusions made which I would listen to, but no one ever has a go at me, nor has a sensible debate about it.. just radio silence.
And if I cannot say when I feel threatened won’t I theoretically Have a potential to avoid a group, which could end up as the start of a descent into an ism. I won’t but it’s a point worth considering. Shutting down beeeds resentment which can develop in ways not great for certain people.
I do take issue with”Islam” on this and other points, but individual muslim folks I respect and treat the same as everyone else.
It works the other way too but if we debate things, we learn more and respect each other’s position and points of agreement and disagreement.
So white straight male had the right to say what I did w/o backlash. But he can’t ca he?
And that’s not good for Muslims, gays nor Christians.
This type of accusation is demeaning, infair and completely inaccurate. Problems need to be discussed because if groups are shut down it festers and causes more prejudice not less.
I am gay, so as a British taxpayer, and given the number of Muslims here, I have a right to be very concerned about that. I as a Christian and gay obviously think my deity is the true one, all others heresy and Muslims think theirs is the true deity. That ‘M
The answer has been obvious to me for a very long time – The centre left and centre right libertarian leaning voters have already split from the traditional parties that now lean toward authoritarianism (same thing with Independence supporting voters in Scotland). The authoritarians will either be kicked out of Labour, SNP and the Conservatives, or new parties will be formed.
The left/right axis no longer suffices.
it’s coming!
Used to be on the left now I am a libertarian. Like Paul I don’t like identity politics and leftist intolerance. Unlike Paul I came to the realisation that all forms of socialism are a crock of shit. If market economies are to improve, that needs to come from within the market itself. State imposed solutions either don’t work, are gamed by insiders, or expand the wealth and power of elites at the expense of the rest of us.
By labeling those who name call him fascist authoritarian he is making the same mistake they are in just using the term as an insult. The particular strand of puritanism he identifies is driven by the irrational wisdom of the crowd which, while very negative, cannot be defined as authoritarian. It can feel authoritarian when you’re on the receiving end but that does not make it so. Furthermore many of the concerns of the working class regarding the Labour Party that Paul identifies would be better described as more authoritarian (in a none pejorative sense) rather than the lazy labelling of fascism.
He is calling them authoritarian not because of their woke views, but because of their aggressive, often violent, refusal to allow anyone to express different ones. I think authoritarian is the best adjective for that. Care to suggest a better one?
I believe the (blue collar working class) simply lost its power due to the loss of blue collar workers and their unions. Many of these ended up in universities who lowered academic standards to allow extra low level customers in. Once there, blue collar is driven out of most to fit the establishment culture. How better to show your conformity than telling your betters that you despise your blue collar roots and all that goes with it? Especially if you are not that smart. Interesting that Marx’s main concern was for the industrialised working classes, yet so called Marxists despise them.
The labour movement have always been left wing thugs, why should anybody expect better???
Similar reaction to the time Nick Cohen written “Whats Left. How the left lost it’s way”.Watching Yasmin Alibhai-Brown slag it off on TV before admitting she had not read it.
A great article by Mr Embery bearing a torch for those in the uk who traditionaly voted left but were socialy conservative (small c) keep up the good work.
Incidently remember Coal not Dole !
Where are the voices from so called left in regard to proposed mine in Cumria ? 500 jobs for the area ( well paid i would think & not minimum wage neo liberal amazon salaries) the only comments from liberal left are Outrage at proposed site but no real discourse on effect on jobs. Surely there could be a grown up debate about envoirment & employment – comprimise –
Im sure there could be a good outcome.
Instead of shrill voices of liberal left condeming the site what about the future of working people of that area or dont they count ?
I agree with the author in his point that Labour both (Centre Right and Left wings) talk like aliens and hide behind labels. At the same time the brief Corbyn* hiatus they preach economics that is in many ways more right than the likes of Trump/Bannon and Boris/Cummings. albeit detached from Cummings and Bannon they will likely/did go back to deficit worrying against most economic advise.
* He was terrible in other ways too & I had no confidence they had the discipline to run an economy.
There is no liberal centre party anymore and frankly it is more like to be GOP or Conservatives at this stage.
BTW loved the incongruity of the below…. I assume he was mocking the readers on here? Who would agree with both without a flicker?
“I’m unlikely to lose any sleep over the brickbats chucked by petulant student revolutionaries and latte-sipping bourgeois bohemians tapping furiously on their smartphones.”
“It does leave one wondering why, if these people are so inherently right, they feel a constant need to wield pitchforks and hurl abuse at opponents rather than attempt to win them over through the power of argument.”
Yes it is tu quoque to point out the hypocrisy above but populist sounding off to a ready audience who won’t agree with your socialist views on unHerd strikes me as less the full shilling mentality that the author claims. I guess everyone wants an audience who listens to their gross generalisations.
Do we see this ‘creeping despotism’ of the left all around us, Paul? I don’t. But I don’t really do Twitter. I joined Labour in 1984. Hell I thought we let down the miners. I thought Blair’s wars a disgrace. I voted Corbyn and Starmer. I’ve been a member of Labour Clubs and Working Men’s Clubs and never felt the need to self censor in any left wing discussion. If you are of the left you know the aim is to bring about a better society/world than the current one. Build on our strengths- but recognise where those strengths appear as oppressive or exclusionary to others.
The German “Nationalsozialisten” party was in many ways a combination of nationalistic politics and socialist economics, that didn’t end well.
Maybe Embery’s critics have a point.
‘Think kids are better off through being raised by two parents? Not terribly keen on Black Lives Matter? Support proper control of immigration? Don’t believe a man is a woman just because he says he is? Then, in the minds of many on today’s Left, you belong in the basket with all the other deplorables, and the debate should go no further. It is irrelevant that such views still hold currency across much of the land. Liberal-progressive types always know better.’
I’ve seen similar attitudes from adherents on the other side of all of those debates. This type of mentality isn’t new, and it’s not exclusive to the left. You only have to look at the comments about the woman in the photo to see that.
I’m amazed “the left” is bothered to have an opinion on you. You seem to be a bit of a bore.
Great insight.