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It’s all America’s fault Naive Brits have been duped by its poisonous politics

Western society is on its knees (photo by Gav Goulder/In Pictures via Getty Images)

Western society is on its knees (photo by Gav Goulder/In Pictures via Getty Images)


March 30, 2021   6 mins

During the absolute doldrums of the first lockdown last spring, I tried watching the first Jack Ryan series on Amazon Prime. Forgive me, but there was a lot of television to watch and my social life wasn’t looking too good.

I normally quite like mindless action films full of explosions but this time I just couldn’t get past the second episode. There was nothing wrong with it; I’m sure it was fine — I just didn’t want the protagonists to win. We were, of course, supposed to see what drove some Middle Easterners to hate Americans, one having lost a brother in an air strike as a child; American entertainment has moved beyond the “reel bad Arab” caricatures of the 1980s.

I actively wanted them to win, though, and found myself muttering “What are you even doing in their country?” at the Yankees as they ran around some forsaken place in the desert. Before last year I never would have felt that way.

My father was a refugee in the United States. His parents had sent him and his older brother to North America in 1940 because they wanted their children to grow up free. They spent Christmas that year in Manhattan staying with family friends in the Upper West Side, where they were doted on by all the neighbours and friends who came to visit and showered the two English boys with kindness.

But then America was a country famous for its incredible generosity, the welcome it gave newcomers; once you crossed that ocean no king, tsar or Führer could bother you again. Many enjoyed similar welcomes; a friend of dad’s remembered arriving around the same time and being picked up by a New York taxi driver who told him in a broad Nu Yoik accent: “Don’t worry, son, Uncle Sam’s gonna look after you now.” He never forgot that.

To my generation, growing up in the Cold War, that sense of America The Protector still lingered. I remember as a child seeing US troops at Checkpoint Charlie and being aware that it was thanks to them that we didn’t have to keep our eyes down like the poor prisoners of East Berlin. As a British child, when you watched American films or American TV, you identified with the Americans against our common enemies around the world.

Like many people here, I considered 9/11 as an attack on us too, and not just because of the dozens of Britons killed; I was furious when the BBC aired a panel show a couple of days later in which various (mostly Muslim) guests and audience members shouted about how the Americans had it coming, in front of a distraught-looking American diplomat.

And yet a lot has happened since. There is now a feeling, and I suspect it is growing on the British Right, that America is no longer a force for good in the world — quite the opposite. “Civilisations die from suicide,” as Arnold Toynbee famously said, and the United States, or at least its Ivy League-educated elite, is the Rev Jim Jones of the West.

The overwhelmingly Atlanticist wing of the British Right is, I suspect, going to experience a long retreat — one that will slot right into the long history of anti-Americanism on the Right. America, after all, was a revolutionary society founded by Whigs, and the country’s Tories were largely driven out, to Canada or Britain.

Conservatism, as it began in France and England around the time of the French Revolution, was defined by throne and altar, and so some American intellectuals argued that the country didn’t really have an authentically native conservative tradition. Yet paradoxically America, while being a young country, also has the most ancient of constitutions, and the deepest political roots. It really has something worth conserving. For that reason, until now, it always resisted utopian and revolutionary ideas, while Europeans could never resist them.

The European Right once had a strong anti-American streak, viewing it as a country filled with mediocrity and an absence of high culture. Those on the extreme Right disliked it as a land of racial degeneracy and Jewish influence; Hitler in particular hated everything the United States stood for.

But as America’s empire grew, however, it was the Left who came to see the US as the chief enemy of the wretched of the earth. Perhaps the lone Yankeephobe among senior post-war British Conservatives was Enoch Powell, who was deeply hostile to the United States, which he blamed for the downfall of the British Empire. Powell wasn’t totally alone, although anti-Americanism was largely on the fringe. The Right-wing Monday Club had been in favour of joining the Common Market because it was opposed to American influence. In 1967 it argued that the choice was between being “first-class Europeans” or “second-grade Americans”. Club chairman Sir Victor Raikes even made the case for the withdrawal of American troops from western Europe so that the continent could instead defend itself.

Yet this quaint nostalgia for the world before 1914 could not live up to a reality where western Europeans have been incapable of defending themselves and still rely on American support. And as the Common Market failed to become the alliance of independent states the Conservative Right hoped for, so the Tories became increasingly Europhobic. By the late 1980s pro-Americanism was imbedded in the British Right; the country’s Right-wing tabloids also became zealously pro-American, while continuously writing in derogatory terms about the Germans and French.

It had become a mantra among conservative commentators that everything America did was better. They believed in freedom rather than euro-socialism, they still cared about defending the West against its enemies. America was richer and technologically more advanced. It even had higher fertility, the highest sign of confidence in the future. None of these things are entirely true anymore.

On the Left, meanwhile, a casual sort of anti-Americanism has long since been the norm, fed by Americans like Michael Moore who use their countrymen as punchlines for European audiences. It is assumed that most of the world’s problems are caused by the Great Satan, whether through the machinations of the CIA, FBI or capitalism in the abstract.

Yet the same liberal middle-class Europeans who despise “inauthentic” mass-produced American food also hold the most basic, globalised political opinions mass-produced in America. The most successful of these beliefs — the Coca-Cola of bad takes — is that America is a unique force for racism and oppression, exported by Americans who can make a living precisely because it isn’t true. But if European liberalism think America hegemony is oppressive, wait till they see what follows.

So while far more British people on the Right see themselves as pro-American, this barely makes any sense anymore. Certainly on issues of social democracy, relating to welfare and redistribution, most Europeans are more Left-wing than Americans, with the British somewhat closer to the US median. Yet on social justice issues — related to race, immigration, gender and sexuality — America is far more radical than the European norm. And in 21st century politics, those latter issues are more salient to people’s voting habits.

It was once a rather fond cliché to say that when America sneezes Britain catches a cold, but that idea seems less benign now that America’s politics has mutated into something genuinely toxic and destructive. Its elites are aren’t just misguided, they are deranged and malignant. With the country losing its Christian faith, they are driven by a new religious moral fervour towards the utopian goal of “equity”, equality of outcome transferred from the individual to the racial group, a project destined to stoke hatred and conflict.

And of all the people in the world, the British have the least immunity to these ideas, unprotected by any language barrier or recent cultural memory of utopianism. In France and Germany, American concepts at least have some linguistic hurdles before they come to spread and dominate; in central and eastern Europe, people recognise that purity spirals and cancel culture have obvious, dark comparisons with their own history. In Britain, however, we have an entirely naïve population.

Because our middle class desperately ape everything they read in the New York Times, or watch on Netflix, so America’s history and discourse is transferred onto ours, a form of cultural imperialism that our leaders are too conformist to resist. So we see nice, elderly Liberal Democrats voters in suburban Oxfordshire kneeling outside their homes in absurd imitation of American sportsmen protesting about a police shooting, the circumstances of which they are entirely, and wilfully, ignorant of. Would any of them protest police killings in Brazil, which dwarf the US rate? Would any of them care?

It’s not a thought-out belief with an understanding of the causes of a problem or the consequences of any proposed solution; it’s a meme, a fashion. It’s what anthropologists refer to as “prestige-biased group transmission”, when people imitate the fashions and mores of powerful groups without any understanding of whether these fashions will benefit them. It’s the same reason that my children are now being taught American history at school, the stories of Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks, as if it was theirs.

It’s tragic, because on a personal level Americans are still as warm and generous as they’ve always been; their earnestness and kindness sometimes shames me, coming from a country so filled with cynicism and nihilism-disguised-as-irony. But their political culture is poisonous, and America’s progressive fundamentalists are a bigger threat to Britain, and to Europe, than probably any other force on earth, bar climate change.

I still cheer for the Americans in the old films. But when it comes to the American religion being forced on us, I empathise more with the desert tribesman than with Jack Ryan: Yankees go home and get out of our lives.


Ed West’s book Tory Boy is published by Constable

edwest

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Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

The people in the photo kneeling on the beach holding a sign aren’t doing it because of anything to do with black lives and they’re not doing it because of Americans. They are virtue signaling, they’re trying to say something about themselves. Virtue signaling has no nationality. It’s simply the desire to draw attention to yourselves. Look at us, look how superior we are.

Jack Tarr
Jack Tarr
3 years ago

Members of the managerial/professional elite appear to be robotic. They almost all have the same mannerisms, tastes, fashions and of course prefabricated opinions. The higher up in the power structure people are, the less individuality they seem to have. Their ‘intelligence’ and ‘education’ is all about identifying sources of power and using low cunning, dishonesty and bullying of subordinates to achieve advancement to higher rungs of the ladder.
The ability to think and act for oneself is a prerequisite for entrepreneurs, but for cogs in the corporate machine, apparatchiks in government, or academics working in the dreary bureaucracies called ‘universities’, it is a liability.

Last edited 3 years ago by Jack Tarr
Sean Meister
Sean Meister
3 years ago
Reply to  Jack Tarr

Such is the power of midwits. They feel safe in the knowledge that they know best. After all they read Derrida at University (for their Sociology degree of course, 2:2 naturally) and work for the local council. They are the “new British man/woman”.
In reality they aren’t trailblazers: they are conformists of the highest order unseen amongst their IQ betters or, indeed, their lowers.

Jos Haynes
Jos Haynes
3 years ago
Reply to  Sean Meister

True, except they would have been awarded Firsts for their nonsensical degrees. Hardly anyone gets a 2:2 these days – it’s not the fashion.

clem alford
clem alford
3 years ago
Reply to  Sean Meister

You are so right. I have come across so many of these ‘woke’ folk working in the council. Usually Labour controlled ones.

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
3 years ago
Reply to  Sean Meister

Note quite. So hotly contested are genuine graduate jobs that big companies have the pick of the best qualified graduates who are interested in a business career. Oxbridge and Russell Group firsts and MBA’s top business schools are the norm, not the exception.

Simon Holder
Simon Holder
3 years ago
Reply to  Sean Meister

Indeed: the ‘useful idiots’, essential to the march of Left-wing oppression.

Michael Coulson
Michael Coulson
3 years ago
Reply to  Jack Tarr

Of course the odd case surfaces where someone climbs the greasy pole saying nothing out of turn, just behaving themselves and taking opportunities to advance their position. Then when they reach the very top they suddenly reveal their real self and the result can be astonishing and radical. Example? President de Klerk of South Africa

clem alford
clem alford
3 years ago

Good example Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer. Stabs Corbyn in the back and shits on the UK voters on Brexit.

Last edited 3 years ago by clem alford
Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  clem alford

Corbyn did that too though. If he’d had the backbone to fight for Brexit from a left wing perspective – like he has all of his eurosceptic career – Labour could have retained the Red Wall.

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
3 years ago

They get there because they’re effective. De Klerk certainly was.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago

FW: the South African Gorbachev.

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
3 years ago
Reply to  Jack Tarr

That’s a bit of sweeping generalisation which smells of groupthink.
My experience tells me that good people tend to get to the top because they’re good at what they do. In publicly listed companies managers have nowhere to hide, they’re accountable to their superiors who are in turn accountable to shareholders. Bad managers tend not to survive long in that environment nowadays. That’s why casually slagging off big business is misguided.
I never noticed any lack of individualism in those I worked with. If you consider entrepreneurs to be more individualistic, well maybe, but the ones I’ve encountered have two things in common: one is a greater appetite for risk and the second is a greater need for control, a symptom of which can be the inability to delegate. Neither of those qualities necessarily makes them better than good managers. Indeed, often to grow their businesses, they have to hire managers to do the things they can’t or won’t do.

Last edited 3 years ago by Deb Grant
Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Deb Grant

Depends what you mean by ‘good’ though. ‘Good’ nowadays tends to be good at virtue signalling, box ticking and judging by arbitrary characteristic and oppression points instead of ability or individual character.

Starry Gordon
Starry Gordon
3 years ago
Reply to  Deb Grant

You have a rather idealistic view of corporate life, I must say. You can succeed by being good at what you do if what you do is political manipulation. Eccentricity will be tolerated if it’s artfully played. I once worked for a man who wore brilliantly red suspenders; while his competitors and rivals were looking at his suspenders he picked their pockets and ate their lunch.

Michael Cavanaugh
Michael Cavanaugh
3 years ago
Reply to  Starry Gordon

But how did anyone see his red suspenders? Did he lift his skirts? (“picked their pockets and ate their lunch,” good one!)

Susannah Baring Tait
Susannah Baring Tait
3 years ago

Means braces.

rbl2552
rbl2552
3 years ago
Reply to  Starry Gordon

Deb Grant is talking about companies SHE actually worked for, and she stresses her own *experience*. Get it? Her comments are NOT “idealistic” when those comments are based on experiences through which she has lived. So you calling her “idealistic” for being positive is pretty lame. Indeed, may I say that you sound very “woke” in your unjustified rebuke, which Deb clearly, and I do mean CLEARLY does not deserve. And to accuse her of doing well because of “political manipulation?” Seriously? You had to resort to the cheapest shot of all? Who the flip are you to shoot down an honest and open human being with such disdain, when you have NO flipping idea what she or her company is like. ***And your “red suspenders” story sounds sound both apocryphal and fabricated. Indeed, even if true, it’s just a cartoon.

Starry Gordon
Starry Gordon
3 years ago
Reply to  rbl2552

I’m going by my experiences in large and not-so-large corporations. Since I was stuck in them if I wanted to make the kind of money I wanted to make given the kind of commercially marketable talents I had, I studied the methods of management and the behavior of the managers pretty closely directly from the source. No doubt there are some outliers, but businesses (over a certain size) seem to operate in very similar ways. Of course I’m speaking about a particular country with a particular culture, but I once read a book about what one might call enterprises or companies in the Soviet Union, and many of the practices were astonishingly similar, given the differences of culture and external political structure. I could go on about this at great length, but I don’t suppose it would be read since it seems it would lie athwart people’s favorite beliefs and fables. As for theory, I would recommend Machiavelli although y’all Brits have come up with some pretty good authors in this line yourselves. They are mostly taken to be satirists.
By ‘suspenders’ I mean straps which are attached to men’s pants at waist level and pass over the shoulders and hold the pants up. I suppose these may be called ‘braces’ over yonder. If the wearer wishes to show them he need only unbutton or take off his suit jacket. I am sorry anyone thinks I was writing fiction — I was not — but si non è vero, è ben trovato, no?

Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago
Reply to  Deb Grant

I believe the cream rose to the top as I was coming up, but things have changed. Corporations will sacrifice profit for a share of virtue signaling-evidently their shareholders are basking in the glow as well. These days successful people can be cancelled for a contribution to a cause that is not “approved” by the wokerati, such as Brandon Eich/Mozilla. Or Glenn Greenwald, who founded The Intercept to prevent himself being censored. He was forced to resign after being censored by the selfsame news website he founded. it’s going to get worse before it gets better…

Last edited 3 years ago by Tobye Pierce
Geoff H
Geoff H
3 years ago
Reply to  Tobye Pierce

Judging by what I see I think it’s going to get worse before it gets worse still.

Robin Lambert
Robin Lambert
3 years ago
Reply to  Jack Tarr

Creeping ” Unconscious bias” Employment Units,are Sinister & Orwellian,we can Joke,;but that is really Worrying trend..

Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago
Reply to  Jack Tarr

And the Wokesters are determined to destroy the entrepreneurs.

Juilan Bonmottier
Juilan Bonmottier
3 years ago

Well, yes and no.It undoubtedly has narcissistic, virtue signalling components. But it’s also a response to guilt and shame being heaped upon them -very powerful projections to hold without being shifted from one’s centre. I think the interesting question is why? Why this peculiar phenomenon -why has it taken such a grip on a particular segment of society (the chattering classes?). I’d like to hear some people on this. I suspect it has to do with the death of God/ religion, as so much of this type of behaviour is suffused with religious zeal. I think it probably links to the success of the long march through the institutions conducted by the radical left -but that still leaves me wondering why we are so susceptible to its influence at this point in our cultural history. This obsessional vision with ‘equality’ has some noble roots, but it’s being acted out in such self destructive and dismantling ways.

andy young
andy young
3 years ago

It’s simply because fanaticism will always beat reasonableness; reasonable people know that the world is more complex than you could ever imagine & that we blunder our way through it using the best predictive models we can, which are inevitably flawed, & thus there is NO CERTAINTY about anything. Which is waaay scary & means decision making is often really, really difficult
So someone who comes along & says “just behave like this, & everything will be just fine” (a big incomprehensible book of rules always helps) will always find an audience. Which is great until reality comes & bites them on the rear end (not allowed to use the correct colloquial term apparently).
At the moment we’re in peril of apathetically allowing the lunatics to take over the asylum, with the inevitable consequences for our collective bottom …

Last edited 3 years ago by andy young
Juilan Bonmottier
Juilan Bonmottier
3 years ago
Reply to  andy young

But fanaticism doesn’t always beat reasonableness -at least not consistently enough to have altered our history to make us all fanatics. I agree with you about the complexity though -but we used to try and grapple with complexity and reality, with modest success, so what’s happened?!

Geoff H
Geoff H
3 years ago

Unfortunately, you can only use reasonableness if both sides agree to it. This article gives a good outline why debate and reasoned argument is not on the wokeraties radar.
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres-why/
To them debate and reason are the tools of the Enlightenment (the cause of all unwokeness) and to use them means acceptance of the system they are trying to destroy – heresy as far as they are concerned.

Johnny Sutherland
Johnny Sutherland
3 years ago

Why this peculiar phenomenon -why has it taken such a grip on a particular segment of society

How about we’re all bored out of our skulls being stuck in lockdown.

If there had been other stuff going on in the world the death of George Floyd would never have been noticed.

Juilan Bonmottier
Juilan Bonmottier
3 years ago

I think the lockdown is an accelerant but not the cause.

Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
3 years ago

Oh I don’t know….. Trump Derangement Syndrome was already dominating American political discourse, uni campuses were already rioting and deplatforming Ben Shapiro, Milo and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Antifa were already giving journalists brain injuries, milkshaking conservatives and generally being a nuisance. It has been going on for a while and the Democrats are now utterly in thrall to it.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

I don’t think guilt and shame have anything to do with kneeling with signs. Anyone who truly felt shame would take some sort of concrete action. Tutoring minority students, for example.
Kneeling with signs is a public display of virtue. it’s what some do in place of anything actually helpful. Ask anyone doing this what they are doing to change a situation that they believe exists. You’ll find the kneeling with signs to be the extent of their interest in the issue. Suggest that they actually do something concrete and they get offended as if that’s not their job.

Juilan Bonmottier
Juilan Bonmottier
3 years ago

Not really -when enough guilt and shame are projected into minds not strong enough to endure the projection there is often a rather unthinking, paralysed, ‘go along with it’ sort of response because the attack is so panic inducing and demoralising. Shame goes to the soul of a person. A lot of people fell to their knees, issued apologies, vowed to reform themselves etc… not really understanding why -it’s a very powerful projection. It’s like a desperate act of contrition. This is the only available ‘concrete action’ of people brought so low by the attacks that it’s totally demoralised them. Bear in mind the attack says that white people are so shameful that they can do nothing good but surrender their agency.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

People experiencing guilt and shame usually hide. They do not advertise. After all, the intent of people holding signs is for others to see it. And interestingly since you mentioned it, the kneelers’ sign doesn’t say anything about apologies or vows to reform themselves. In fact, the action element you’re assuming is noticeably absent. Which is interesting and may invest your comment with a slightly different and quite relevant take. In that because their sign specifically does not take ownership of what they see as a problem, it simply mentions that something matters, are they then pointing the finger at others as culprits of some kind while exempting themselves from any responsibility? Hmmm, possibly.
the sign as it is simply says black lives matter , something there isn’t any disagreement on. Would you think it odd if they walked around with signs that said “Night follows day”? But this isn’t concrete action. That would involve an actual call or vow to action which is never part of these virtue signals.
“This is the only available ‘concrete action’ of people brought so low by the attacks that it’s totally demoralised them. “
No, I’ve mentioned several concrete actions sloganeers could take. The fact is that a photo op with a sign is much less time consuming.

Last edited 3 years ago by Annette Kralendijk
Juilan Bonmottier
Juilan Bonmottier
3 years ago

You don’t think that falling to one knee and holding up the BLM sign says anything about apologies or vows to reform. Really? Falling to one knee is a classic symbol of repentance and subjugation and the slogan ‘Black Lives Matter’ carries with it an implicit accusation that in the past they have not. In carrying the sign you are saying you agree with that idea. I think you misunderstand my point about shame -the point of shame is that it renders the shamed speechless, powerless and without agency -that’s what shame does. It silences and brings someone low due to the sense you’ve done something wrong. That’s the whole point of the hard left’s angle on this -shame people into feeling demoralised, worthless and useless. If you’re white in this, you’re not supposed to have your own thoughts or perform actions -you just fall behind the sign, get in line, fall to your knees and follow the BLM dictat -no questions, no debate. The whole point of it is it renders it impossible to take concrete action -concrete action is not what is wanted by the movement -your submission is what is wanted. I put ‘concrete action’ into inverted commas for a reason -I know it’s not concrete action really but BLM doesn’t want white concrete action -it wants submission.

Last edited 3 years ago by Juilan Bonmottier
Tom Krehbiel
Tom Krehbiel
3 years ago

You make some good points. However, on the subject of kneeling: to what are the blacks who take a knee submitting?

Juilan Bonmottier
Juilan Bonmottier
3 years ago
Reply to  Tom Krehbiel

That’s a good point -two types of kneeling? One in solidarity/ one in subjugation?

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

“You don’t think that falling to one knee and holding up the BLM sign says anything about apologies or vows to reform.”
it clearly doesn’t. Vows by whom to reform what? Where is the apology? Do you apologize to people from a kneeling position? I’ve apologized many times in my life but never on my knees. Kneeling is a sign of subservience, not of apology.
“the slogan ‘Black Lives Matter’ carries with it an implicit accusation that in the past they have not”
yes, this is a slogan, precisely. Who are they accusing in your view? You are reading quite a lot into these peoples actions which is undoubtedly the goal of the sloganeering. But the three words black lives matter is neither an apology for anything nor an accusation towards anyone. Does sloganeering make you feel demoralized? Do you find it shaming? I have to say, it has never once made me feel that way.
Concrete action is never impossible. Regardless of what anyone says.

Last edited 3 years ago by Annette Kralendijk
Juilan Bonmottier
Juilan Bonmottier
3 years ago

I think you think I am a sort of apologist for this kneeling, or the slogans, or the movement or those who do it. In which case you misinterpret what it is that I am saying. It ought to be clear from what I’m writing that I am not a fan. But I think you are not comprehending the motives of others who have been influenced by this movement and who profess support for it. I am sure they have largely been manipulated, but being dismissive of them doesn’t help matters -trying to understand what drives the take up of such a movement might. I’m not sure about your last sentence. If you don’t understand about the demoralising aspect of things try Yuri Bezmenov’s warning to America (1984) – it’s on youtube. A significant part of BLM is about demoralising the culture through guilt and shame. I would have thought this was obviously the case really.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

I’m not dismissive of them. I think people should be able to carry whatever signs they want and kneel in public whenever they want to. But I’m not ready to canonize people who are virtue signaling quite so easily.
I don’t believe that people who carry signs around and kneel in public have “taken up a movement’, though, perhaps that’s where we diverge. They are just carrying signs and kneeling. It’s cheaply bought nobility so to speak.
They don’t tote signs around their homes and spend time kneeling at home. It’s the public nature of their action that makes it relevant to them. Without photographers or other people around, there would be nothing for them at all in doing this. Is that taking up a movement in your view? And what precisely is the movement?
I don’t agree that anyone has been demoralized into doing this, they choose to do it freely. There’s no pressure to kneel in public with signs and the vast majority of people would not even consider doing so.

Juilan Bonmottier
Juilan Bonmottier
3 years ago

You are very dismissive of them! I don’t begrudge it a bit. I feel much the same way myself. But if you really feel there’s no pressure to kneel in public with signs perhaps you’re not thinking about people less strong willed than you. They believe they have taken up a movement (for good or bad reasons). I, like you, don’t believe in that movement one iota. Add into the mix group psychology and the power of the mob, average intelligence being what it is, absence of curiosity in people to grapple with complexity -it’s a powerful and compelling mix for many. I guess to my mind it’s helpful to thinking to hold onto the old adage of not attributing to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. The thrust of the radical left is always to impute malice (racist, homophobe, sexist, transphobe etc..) -that’s the shaming aspect – and in my experience that’s where the divisiveness is fomented.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

If there is pressure to kneel in public and hold signs, wouldn’t more people be doing it? I feel zero such pressure, do you feel any?
Believing that one has taken up a movement by performing pointless actions like this is not the same thing as taking up a movement. If you disagree, explain how they are taking up a movement. Unless it’s a movement promoting kneeling sign holders doing photo ops.
I have no idea if people who do these things are stup*d or not. But I do know that they want people like you and me to believe they are highly invested in something. They are not and we should not credit them with being so. I have friends who are deeply invested in the lives of our young people and they volunteer every week to specifically help minority kids who are behind in reading catch up to their peers. These are not their own children, they don’t even know the kids’ parents. THAT’s taking up a cause. These sign holders are trying to buy their virtue on the cheap. We should be unwilling to grant it to them. Let’s see them actually do something beyond virtue signal for the cameras. If we do not do this, if we accommodate the virtue signaling, it will only continue as will the absence of concrete action that actually does indicate someone’s investment in a cause.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

If there is pressure to kneel in public and hold signs, wouldn’t more people be doing it? I feel zero such pressure, do you feel any?
Believing that one has taken up a movement by performing pointless actions like this is not the same thing as taking up a movement. If you disagree, explain how they are taking up a movement. Unless it’s a movement promoting kneeling sign holders doing photo ops.
I have no idea of the intellect of people who do these things. But I do know that they want people like you and me to believe they are highly invested in something. They are not and we should not credit them with being so. I have friends who are deeply invested in the lives of our young people and they volunteer every week to specifically help minority kids who are behind in reading catch up to their peers. These are not their own children, they don’t even know the kids’ parents. THAT’s taking up a cause. These sign holders are trying to buy their virtue on the cheap. We should be unwilling to grant it to them. Let’s see them actually do something beyond virtue signal for the cameras. If we do not do this, if we accommodate the virtue signaling, it will only continue as will the absence of concrete action that actually does indicate someone’s investment in a cause.

David Platzer
David Platzer
3 years ago

Kneeling may be caused by fear more than virtue signalling or guilt, especially for someone caught in a demontration or a riot who feels it necessary to be obey or be in the position of an aristocrat in the French or Russian revolutions or a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. I was appalled when, last year, the Royal Society of Literature posted “Black Lives Matter” on its site. Until then I had never seen anything in the way of a political statement from the Society. I assume it came from fear of not being on the safe side in what seems to be a tornado. To me it seems not unlike the behaviour of people who felt obliged to collaborate in countries that were occupied by the Nazis in the 1940s. It is tragic that Britain who escaped that horrendous choice in that period is now falling into this one.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  David Platzer

No one kneels for a photo op on a beach out of fear.

David Platzer
David Platzer
3 years ago

I was writing in general not about the solemn family on the beach.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  David Platzer

In general it’s virtue signaling.

Beth Branson
Beth Branson
3 years ago

An even better (and studiously ignored) suggestion is to ask the kneelers to open the doors of their homes to the blacks whose lives they believe matter. As you suggest, there will be no response. The sign is the thing, not action.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Beth Branson

Yes, the movement as Julian calls it that they are investing in is a kneeling with signs movement. Not a thing to do with anyone else’s lives. It’s about them, no one else. And the sad part is that they are teaching their children to do this.

Don Gaughan
Don Gaughan
3 years ago

For many dogma driven political and religious belief systems, the members have a wilful myopia and dismissal rationales for truths and reality that contradicts their core creeds.The left and their usual political theatre of hyped up angry protest mobs in the streets , with the sinless always virtuous outraged ” victim” group taking a stand and threatening impoverishment/ cancellation of the always evil powerful denounced target is a deceptive emotional manipulation to promote their agenda.
Its baffling how so many people in the free democracies of the west were the badic human right of free speech and tolerance of diferring views were widely held principles become intolerant malicious violators of that right and oppresively impose their dogma on their fellow citizens ,in the name of human rights and social justice.
The politically corect woke progressives seemed so irrational , self contradictory and truthless, one did not think they would last long or get far, a joke more than a real threat.
They now control and dominate much of our public institutions and the public info sphere and are in the seat of govt.
The inmates are very much in control of the asylum, and the steps to liberate ourselves from the deranged progressive tyranny need to be taken.

Michael Cavanaugh
Michael Cavanaugh
3 years ago

You ask a very good question. Perhaps comparing UK & US could shed some peculiar light. If one does not believe in the first instance that race is essential and real, and thus does not respond well to the Nazis’ flattery of the Master Aryan Race, why in the world would one respond favorably to the CRT line about racial guilt? They are the same line, just with polarities reversed. There has to be a whole long history of racial gaslighting, yet to be written; but it must have something to do with the question: how in the world could Leonard Bernstein throw the cocktail party for the Black Panthers in 1970, as described by Tom Wolfe? How is Radical Chic even possible (long before its recent instantiation)? It is not only racial. Mick sings in “Sympathy for the Devil:” “I shouted out, ‘Who killed the Kennedys?’ when after all it was you and me.” No, it was not YOU and ME. One sees this also, in the US, when the punditburo wrings hand over mass shootings: WE are all responsible, WE must do something. No, WE did not shoot anybody. But whence comes a ready acceptance of collective guilt? This is a definite mind-set; it must have causes. It must have origins. Was there a time in the UK before the virtue-signaling described above could just not have happened? (Is Mick just parodying the US, or is there something broader at hand?) Are there any differences between the current proposals for reparations in the US, and talk of UK reparations to India?  It is hard to credit that either Tommy or GI Joe bought the notion of collective guilt when Hitler applied it to the Jews. What changed, and when?

Juilan Bonmottier
Juilan Bonmottier
3 years ago

I think you have a good point -there is a lot of seizing upon the single incident as totemic at the moment -i.e ALL men are responsible in some vague way for the death of Jenny Everard, or for domestic violence. Radicals, on the left and right, always argue for collective guilt and responsibility (‘rape culture’ etc… when any proper common sense analysis of reality would demonstrate that there is no such thing). Some people don’t seem to want to grapple with the fact that there are bad actors out there who are not in any meaningful way representative of the wider culture. I do feel that it boils down to psychological traits in certain individuals that tend to splitting and polarisation as a defence against painful aspects of their own realities. Unprocessed, these extend to the wider world.

Geoff H
Geoff H
3 years ago

But it’s also a response to guilt and shame being heaped upon them -very powerful projections to hold without being shifted from one’s centre.
That’s a good point, but I prefer the term ‘gaslighted’, which I think is a more accurate portrayal of what is actually happening. People haven’t a clue what it is they are supposed to have done (which is nothing), they just know they have been accused of it with such fervour that it must be true. They are apologising but not knowing what for, hoping it will make it all go away and they can go back to being Mr and Mrs Average with 2.4.

Gerald O'Connell
Gerald O'Connell
3 years ago

Or maybe just showing a bit of solidarity?

Charles Knapp
Charles Knapp
3 years ago

The proof of that pudding will be in the eating. Although we will never know, if this family does something concrete that will have a cost to them to help the economically marginalized, then you would be correct and they would be displaying solidarity.

If, as many assume, this photograph is a “one and done” activity with nothing following on, then it certainly seems to qualify as the virtue signaling that tells others “I’m the good one, please move on.”

Words are cheap but we seem to be moving toward a performative society where it’s what we say or wish to believe that others are obligated to accept. “My truth” trumps reality … unless you are white, white adjacent, white passing etc but even then only if you have not mastered the woke lingo – if you have, you get to lecture everyone else and make money besides.

Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago
Reply to  Charles Knapp

A la Meghan Markle.

Simon Baggley
Simon Baggley
3 years ago

Regards what ? – as West stated more people are killed in Brazil by the police than USA – did they kneel in solidarity before Floyd was killed

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
3 years ago
Reply to  Simon Baggley

It’s all about power & money. That’s what ‘The Kneeling Kaepernick’ wanted and got in the end. It has nothing to do with principle.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
3 years ago

Solidarity with what? Against being killed by the police? Do you know that a couple of months before Floyd, a white man was killed in the same manner, chocked to death by being kneeled on by a policeman. Did we hear anything about that incident? Did his family get 27 million compensation. Don’t remember, do you?

Last edited 3 years ago by Stephanie Surface
Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
3 years ago

The exploitation of Floyd has been organized. The affair is tragic for all directly concerned but the efforts to dismantle society over the affair is worrisome. Perhaps it becomes the trigger point for a real social collapse.

Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago

Doesn’t fit the narrative. Since the press is only really good at suppressing info they don’t want you to know-we hear nothing about white deaths unless the perp was white, and then it’s still less of a loss. Look at the recent tragedy in Colorado.

William meadows
William meadows
3 years ago

Points for sticking your head above the parapet.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

Showing solidarity would mean actually taking some sort of action. Volunteering to tutor minority students for example. Helping a minority community plant a community garden. Kneeling and signs are about the kneeler with the sign.

Jake C
Jake C
3 years ago

Why “minorities ”

Middle class English ppl should tutor the poorest and worst performing academic group in UK .the white working class kids

hugh bennett
hugh bennett
3 years ago

…GEE … these are little kids on a beach.They just don`t look a happy family do they ? get the bucket, spades and footballs out and let those kids run and smile ! Seriously, many of these wokefolk are rearing a broods of neurotic chicks, that is what also concerns me. Just look at the mothers face. Children, the future, are most relaxed, happy, and content if they know that there is someone there to cheer them up!

Edward Stag
Edward Stag
3 years ago

Good on the little boy for remaining on his feet, he clearly has avoided the brainwashing from his parents.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Edward Stag

Yes. Imagine teaching your children that kneeling to other people is a good thing.

Kate H. Armstrong
Kate H. Armstrong
3 years ago

Never! My father taught ‘Straight back and arrogant head .. Maude Gonne at Howth Station waiting for a train. All the Olympians … a thing never seen again’. (WB Yeats). My father taught ‘never bow your neck to those who claim superiority. They will always walk on it’. Ergo I, and in turn, my children have been taught self-respect and the essential need to be well informed. NEVER accept the word of the overtly brainwashed.

Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Edward Stag

So far…..

Jonathan Nash
Jonathan Nash
3 years ago

I wonder that they don’t appreciate how much of a caricature they present – in every detail.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
3 years ago
Reply to  Jonathan Nash

Do you think it’s really a spoof photo?
All it’s missing is the Golden Labrador.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

I wondered about that. You could change out the sign relatively easily.

Elise Davies
Elise Davies
3 years ago

Imagine the photoshopping opportunities inherent in that sign? Hopefully nobody will take advantage of their earnest narcissism

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Elise Davies

Yes.
I came out for the photo op and all I got was this st*pid sign.
or how about
Kneeling with a sign. The most we could do.

Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago

Exactly why it’s so meaningless!

Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago

Sadly, no.

Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago
Reply to  Jonathan Nash

That’s the gob-smacking feeling I get each time I see something like this. This kind of submission is cringe inducing.

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago

We know nothing about that image beyond the fact that it is purchased by Unherd from Getty Images. So why project your own indifference to the struggles of others on to those depicted in it? Just because you have no empathy, and so cannot conceive of being concerned with long-standing and systematic discrimination against human beings not part of your social group, why do you assume self-serving motives for the actions of others? Is it because you yourself are incapable of actions derived from any other source?

Kelly Mitchell
Kelly Mitchell
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

This sort of strident judgementalism is so typical of the CSJ mentality.

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago
Reply to  Kelly Mitchell

Judgements don’t use question marks.

Jonathan Weil
Jonathan Weil
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Token question marks. “Just because you have no empathy, why do you…?” Sounds like a pretty damning judgement to me!

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago
Reply to  Jonathan Weil

‘The people in the photo kneeling on the beach holding a sign aren’t doing it because of anything to do with black lives and they’re not doing it because of Americans.’
Annette has the opportunity to defend herself against my ‘judgements’.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

If I thought it was necessary, I would. You’re as entitled to your own views as anyone else, aren’t you? Perhaps you should carry around a big sign that reads simply “Empathy”. That way we would all know how much empty you have.

Last edited 3 years ago by Annette Kralendijk
Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago

Sure, we’re entitled to our views. And we’re not obliged to defend them, although I think it betrays a certain lack of engagement if we won’t. Engagement is probably a better indication of empathy than a sign!

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

“Engagement is probably a better indication of empathy than a sign!”
Bingo. My point precisely. Care to give your thoughts on what sort of engagement the folks holding signs might consider to be a better indication of their feelings than a sign? I gave a couple of examples above if you want to plagiarize.

Last edited 3 years ago by Annette Kralendijk
Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago

You twist my point slightly – but your assumption appears to be that making a public protest excludes taking other actions. Or that making a public protest without other actions automatically makes that protest insincere. Why do you make these assumptions?

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Where did I say anyone was making a protest?

Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago
Reply to  Jonathan Weil

And when did you stop beating your wife?

Wilfred Davis
Wilfred Davis
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Judgements don’t use question marks.’

So I’m not judging you for virtue-signalling?

Robin Banks
Robin Banks
3 years ago
Reply to  Kelly Mitchell

What is CSJ?

Simon Baggley
Simon Baggley
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

It is no more than virtue signaling – it’s an empty and vacuous gesture that does nothing for oppressed people around the world as how could it

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago
Reply to  Simon Baggley

The first step to tackling oppression is to raise awareness and acknowledge it. Of course we can and should do more, but why is doing something worse than doing nothing?

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Kneeling on a Cornish isn’t going to achieve anything but ridicule.

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago

Perhaps not, but if so it says something about them and about those ridiculing them.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Yes it says most of ‘us’ are prescient enough to spot the beach bums as ‘posers’.

Paul N
Paul N
3 years ago

Technically they may be “posing” for a shot. Maybe they are trying to raise awareness of the issue. Maybe it’s just in the hope of stock photo royalties. Or maybe just possibly it’s a very very small seaside demo. But the motivations of these four subjects and their photographer are not particularly relevant.
It’s still quite possible for people to join a BLM demo (even in the UK) to protest what they perceive as racially motivated injustice. You may not share their perception, but that does not mean they are all merely “virtue signalling” – a cheap and dismissive jibe, which (ironically) may itself be parroted in a form of virtue signalling within the anti-anti-racist community.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Paul N

Yes, this is pointless behavior unless there are cameras around. Assuming they don’t carry signs around at home or in their backyards, the assumption must be that this is for public consumption. Okay we have seen your sign,

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

I haven’t ridiculed anyone kneeling on a beach with a sign. I simply noted that their actions are about themselves. Since you say it says something about them, it seems you agree.

Last edited 3 years ago by Annette Kralendijk
Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago

All our actions are to some extent about ourselves, but you are denying that such actions could possibly be about anyone or anything else. What evidence do you have for that?

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

The total lack of evidence in the photo.

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago

This isn’t about the photo.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

How would you know their actions without it?

Franz Von Peppercorn
Franz Von Peppercorn
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

You are not engaging in any real discussion here. This performance morality is just that – a performance. Their act does nothing. The entire piece about how people outside America only choose to display this kind of virtue regarding US politics and not other countries and you missed that too.

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago

But BLM and similar protests are not just about ‘US politics’. That is where this article is wrong and deceitful. The protests are also about very real and documented discrimination in this country and elsewhere. Of course there is an ‘availability bias’ in the expression of these things, but that doesn’t mean that the problems do not exist or that people do not genuinely wish to see them tackled.
If Mr West was really interested in the transfer of bad political habits from the US he would have something to say about the current UK government and PM’s lying, avoidance of scrutiny and lack of integrity.

Robin Lambert
Robin Lambert
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

BLM iS Racist &Marxist you idiot….toad of Woke hall

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

“The protests are also about very real and documented discrimination in this country and elsewhere.”
Are you claiming that discrimination is legal in the UK? Or are you saying that it’s not but it won’t be prosecuted? Either is quite a claim. Have a few examples of either legal discrimination or known discrimination that the legal system ignored?

Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
3 years ago

I imagine that ‘BAME people aren’t as rich as white Britons’ counts as discrimination to this person, rather than the acknowledgment that ‘privilege’ is built up over generations and is also sometimes down to culture and individual temerity. 4 generations ago my family were all dirt poor farm workers who left school at 14, 2 generations ago secretaries and manual workers with a couple of O-levels, today semi-skilled office workers, some with uni degrees. It doesn’t happen overnight even just to get as far as that.

Jake C
Jake C
3 years ago
Reply to  Cheryl Jones

The poorest people in the country with worst social economic mobility is the white working class

Franz Von Peppercorn
Franz Von Peppercorn
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

They clearly are about US politics. I mean how many times does it need to be pointed out that there were no protests about cop killings in Brazil (which took the brunt of the transatlantic slave trade).

Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Because it takes the place of actually doing something, while providing a false sense of accomplishment.

Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Tobye Pierce

But also perhaps ‘look at me look at me I’m ‘good’, don’t pick on me, pick on THEM!’

Terry M
Terry M
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

“The first step to tackling oppression is to raise awareness and acknowledge it.”
No, the first step is to be honest about the situation. So-called oppression is almost always mere whining by those with too little ambition to do things for themselves.

Beth Branson
Beth Branson
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Skin color is not a social group! My kin and kindred spirits, who share my cultural values, are my social group! Compassion for other’s struggles can co-exist with a disgust for the divisive, regressive and racist nature of defining people by their skin color. Empathy can intertwine with a withering critique of collectivism. ‘Poverty Matters.’ makes more sense.

Chris Scott
Chris Scott
3 years ago
Reply to  Beth Branson

Exactly! My wife’s family’s skin colours range from porcelain white to milk chocolate brown and they all share the same cultural values, conservative; they are actually more conservative than traditional English liberal me. Can the racial politics/CRT of the left explain this anomaly? No, it will ignore it.

Last edited 3 years ago by Chris Scott
Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago
Reply to  Beth Branson

We can belong to social groups without being ‘defined by’ them. To recognise that black people are disadvantaged is not to define them – the ‘defining’ has already taken place, consciously or unconsciously, by society.

Chris Scott
Chris Scott
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Not all black people are oppressed, just as not all white people have ‘privilege’. To condemn an entire racial group is the very essence of racism. There are, undoubtedly, acts of racism but to see racism everywhere a la ‘reds-under-the-bed’ is ludicrous and counterproductive. It alienates decent-minded people who actually oppose racism. One wonders what the real agenda is of those who support or profess their observance of CRT. Not all black people wish to be infantalised and seen as victims and they see little difference in a policeman assuming they are a crime risk and a white wokester assuming they share the same philosophy. It all comes down to preconceptions i.e, prejudice. And I for one are more likely to listen to a black person explain racism than it being funnelled through a white persons mouth.

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Scott

Watch out – your straw men are on fire!

Chris Scott
Chris Scott
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Straw men! See Candice Owen on the Tucker Carlson Tonight show last night. She said it more succinctly.

Last edited 3 years ago by Chris Scott
Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Scott

So tired of the attitude that insists on infantilizing blacks. According to the Wokesters, they are incapable of getting an ID, finding a polling station or speaking correct English. Application tests must be dumbed down because they are incapable of actual competition. They behave as if they are children! It’s an insulting and racist assumption that allows them to feel superior and “helpful” at the same time. It’s not only wrong but infuriatingly offensive.

Franz Von Peppercorn
Franz Von Peppercorn
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

You’ve again missed the whole point of the piece. Read it again.

Irene Ve
Irene Ve
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Here are some numbers to consider,
Statistics from gov.uk, “Percentage of state school pupils aged 18 getting a higher education place, by ethnicity” in 2020; Chinese 71.7%, Asian 53.1%. Black 47.5%. Mixed 39.0%, White 32.6%”. White pupils had the lowest entry rate between 2007 and 2020”.
If you understand what these numbers mean, there is only one clearly disadvantaged group currently here on the UK – the Whites.
I suspect situation in the US is somewhat similar, but you can check it yourself.
My son is academically successful mixed race boy, he is very angry with identity politics because no matter what his true level is, everyone will suppose that he is there as a result of affirmative action. Do you understand that affirmative action is humiliating because it assumes that minorities cannot get there based on their merit?
Do not speak on behalf of my son, you and you ilk have already ruined quite a bit of his future.

Last edited 3 years ago by Irene Ve
Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago
Reply to  Irene Ve

Those are encouraging statistics, but there are others, such as income, wealth and imprisonment, that tell different stories.
I am sorry that you and your son feel that attempts to combat systemic discrimination have had negative consequences for him, but I think that you and others who might judge him have a misunderstanding of how such policies work.
I sincerely hope that he will continue to have the opportunities he deserves to demonstrate his abilities.

Irene Ve
Irene Ve
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

I know that religious people like you are deaf to voice of reason, but just one last thought to share with you.
You do understand that what you are promoting is essentially anti-Darwinism: punishing the most productive members of society, rewarding the failure, encouraging proliferation of the least fit. Many a socialist regime tried this and failed.
I am truly happy that the movement you represent started in the US about 10 years earlier than it has started finding some ground here. This lucky time gap should be just enough for us to observe the US going down thus saving Europe from the same destiny.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Irene Ve

Well, it’s too late for that. What do you think Angela Merkel’s flinging the doors to Europe open to thousands of Muslim migrants, mostly young men, was if not catastrophic virtue signaling?

Irene Ve
Irene Ve
3 years ago

And that was exactly the reason why I voted for Brexit 🙂 And why millions of others here in the UK voted the same.
now jokes aside, Merkel made that blunder, if I remember correctly, after a big scandal, when she was saying in front of the camera to a little girl from a family of unsuccessful refugee applicants, that she should go back to where she came from. The girl was crying, and Merkel was cornered by the media, accusing her of being a fascist, into that exact blunder of opening the doors of Europe to whoever wanted to get there. Since then, Europe has somewhat sobered/toughened up in that regard.
Hopefully.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Irene Ve

I hope so. And congratulations on Brexit.

Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Sometimes disparities in income, wealth and imprisonment are down to the individual’s own bad choices. Stop infantilising people based on skin colour and treat people as individuals not rolled into some arbirtrary ‘group’ it’s ridiculous. If you are a criminal you go to jail, end of. If you want to be a famous rapper, you’ll probably fail. If you work hard at school and try to improve your situation there is NOWHERE better to do it than in countries like the UK.

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago
Reply to  Cheryl Jones

It’s perfectly possible to believe that both individual and group factors are relevant. If the average outcomes of a group are worse than those of another (irrespective of the fact that there are good and bad outcomes within every group) then we should look for reasons for that. If those reasons are groundless prejudice or discrimination then it benefits everyone to put that right because it represents a waste of talent and resources.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

“If the average outcomes of a group are worse than those of another (irrespective of the fact that there are good and bad outcomes within every group) then we should look for reasons for that.”
why?

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago

Because, and I quote myself, ‘If those reasons are groundless prejudice or discrimination then it benefits everyone to put that right because it represents a waste of talent and resources.’

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

How could a groups average be due to groundless discrimination? Or discrimination of any kind? Unless you’re claiming that some people in a group are subject to prejudice thus bringing down the average, but others in the same group are not, this makes zero sense.

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago

On the contrary – it makes perfect sense! That is how averages work!

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

So you do believe that systemic discrimination affects some people in a group but not others?

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago

It will affect some more than others, of course. The problem is that for any particular individual it is difficult to measure because it would have to be compared with the counterfactual: ie: what would have happened without the discrimination – which is clearly impossible. So you have two choices: 1) ignore the problem or 2) compare averages across different groups who are similar apart from the characteristic you think is being discriminated against.
Even if the results of the latter show discrimination you aren’t going to easily identify which individuals have suffered more or less from it because you don’t know who would have achieved what without the discrimination. Such is the nature of social policy in general.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Ignore what problem? You haven’t identified a problem. You can’t equalize everting among humans. In any groups of people you will have some do better than others. It doesn’t matter whether it’s school or employment or sports or parenting. This is simply fact. There isn’t any way around it. You can have two people treated exactly the same and one will do better than the other.

Last edited 3 years ago by Annette Kralendijk
Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago

The ‘problem’ is that there is evidence that among all the factors that determine why one person ‘does better than another’, the colour of their skin is one. Most people would regard this as an irrelevant factor, and one that has damaging consequences for society as a whole. In which case we might look for ways of offsetting that factor for the benefit of our society.
All of these steps require evidence to demonstrate their existence or effectiveness, but that is the underlying reasoning.

Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago
Reply to  Irene Ve

Exactly right. Affirmative action is insulting and hurts everyone.

Beth Branson
Beth Branson
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Hmmm… I find this puzzling. How, exactly do we ‘define’ ourselves, if not by our value system? As far as conscious or unconscious perceptions of others – it is in our nature to judge strangers. (Our very survival depends on our canny judgements) Appearance is usually the first aspect of the screening process. Other factors swiftly take over, in a complex matrix of defining ‘friend or foe’. I don’t disagree that some ‘black’ people in some situations are disadvantaged. Lots of people struggle. Why plunk people in that skin color box? Minority status is a tricky situation but there is a remedy and it is NOT multi-culturalism nor paternalism. Common values – a pluralistic community – a certain determined toughness – ambition… all go a long way in creating a life.

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago
Reply to  Beth Branson

What is ‘in our nature’ is not a guide to how we should act, although it must be recognised as sometimes making rational choices more difficult. It is not rational to deny talented people of minority identity an equal chance to make the best of their abilities. To avoid this as a society we may need to introduce policies that counteract our irrational individual prejudices.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

“It is not rational to deny talented people of minority identity an equal chance to make the best of their abilities.”
Harvard does it all the time.

Beth Branson
Beth Branson
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

EVERYTHING humans do, rational or emotional or carnal or spiritual or ___ is ‘in our nature’. We cannot do otherwise!
And I completely agree – everybody should have equal opportunity to thrive and succeed. I’m impressed you didn’t say ‘equal outcome’ – although you’re approaching it with the threat of dictating outcomes via policy. Freedom and equal opportunity must be ferociously defended, and true racism condemned. But if I don’t like the way a person behaves, or think they aren’t right for specific employment, and that person happens to be black, that doesn’t make me racist. btw – just today in NYC a man (who happens to be black) knocks down a 65 year old woman (who happens to be yellow) then stomps on her head 3 times then kicks her in the body, yelling anti-Asian statements. Two security guards (who happen to be black) watch the whole thing, do nothing then close the door. What is the rational response to this? How should I use this information in my judgements / pre-judgements? Do the bleeding blm hearts who lump everybody together according to skin color identify with this brute and those cowards?

Last edited 3 years ago by Beth Branson
Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago
Reply to  Beth Branson

‘EVERYTHING humans do, rational or emotional or carnal or spiritual or ___ is ‘in our nature’. We cannot do otherwise!’
I’m sure you don’t really believe that. Because it would make you a complete determinist and deny all individual and collective choice. It is true that what we do has to be compatible with our nature, but there are plenty of alternative paths we can take that are.

Beth Branson
Beth Branson
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Of course I believe it! That’s why I wrote it. I can no more escape my humanity than I can become a cat. The choices we make, the ‘alternative paths’ you mention are all a part of our nature. Murder and rape are human nature. Aberrant and repulsive behaviors, but our nature nonetheless. Adopting children and donating kidneys are human nature. Storytelling and myth creation and atheism are human nature. We are human, and everything we do, think, feel, and choose is our nature. Maddeningly circular, I realize. And perhaps we are at a semantic impasse.

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago
Reply to  Beth Branson

I think it becomes circular only if you ignore two facts. Firstly, we don’t and cannot know exactly and in full what is ‘in our nature’ and what isn’t – so it is reasonable to at least attempt to improve our individual behaviours if we believe these are damaging. Secondly, what is ‘in our nature’ individually may be open to mitigation by collective action. Presumably the fact that murder and rape are in our nature wouldn’t lead you to think that they should be exempt from legal punishment?

Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

‘Privilege’ takes generations to build up, if at all, and requires a degree of give and take, personal temerity and cultural assimilation. Today’s SJW’s are screaming ‘What do we want? UTOPIA! When do we want it? NOW’ when I think they KNOW that flies against reality (this is THE most tolerant and well-off generation in all of human history) and human nature itself. That is why I think their cries for social justice are so disingenuous. Why on earth would a first generation Somalian immigrant with little English, no skills and a background of violent conflict be of ‘equal’ income and attainment immediately? However an educated Ugandan immigrant, who likes British culture, is law-abiding and polite, would probably get on just fine and pay that forward to their kids. ‘Equality’ (whatever that really means) attained in less than a generation.

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago
Reply to  Cheryl Jones

‘…an educated Ugandan immigrant, who likes British culture, is law-abiding and polite, would probably get on just fine…’
The ‘would probably’ is the point here. They certainly should do – but do they in comparison to a white person with the same characteristics?

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

No two people will ever be exactly the same. Sorry just the way it is.

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago

The relevant comparison is not between the outcomes for different people, but as far as it is possible between those for the same person under different (unprejudiced) circumstances. You are perfectly at liberty to argue that this comparison is an impossible task – but would you still do so if you believed you were being denied employment simply because you were female or because you had a non-Anglo-Saxon name?

Elaine Hunt
Elaine Hunt
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Probably better. Because ,,you know, ,,diversity is desirable

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago
Reply to  Elaine Hunt

Ensuring that everyone can fulfil their talents to the maximum possible is likely to lead to more diversity, not less!

michael harris
michael harris
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Two emissaries now on this thread from the ranks of the MOPE (most oppressed people ever). The rest of us do seriously empathise and suggest you take up the violin and play mournful tunes.

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago
Reply to  michael harris

Why do you feel that the ‘othering’ of those who disagree with you is justified or helpful?

michael harris
michael harris
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

I see your ‘others’ Mr Mope and raise you two Kurds.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

The same question could be asked of you, could it not?

Last edited 3 years ago by Annette Kralendijk
Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago

Oh, it could be asked – but I am not calling anyone an ’emissary’, or referring to ‘the rest of us’.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Well, yes you actually are. Who else do you mean by “those of us who disagree with you”? Who do you mean when you say someone is “othering” others?

Diarmid Weir
Diarmid Weir
3 years ago

You misquote me. There was no ‘us’ in my comment. No ‘us’ and no ‘them’. Creating that division is ‘othering’.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Well, yes there was actually. “Those who disagree with you” is them.

Franz Von Peppercorn
Franz Von Peppercorn
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Dude you are full of cliches. What does “othering” even mean here? Did someone disagree with you?

I’m going to blow your mind here and say that American blacks are one of the world’s most culturally dominant groups, which is why in fact you get such concern about them and not say a Brazilian. Or a Yemeni child.

michael harris
michael harris
3 years ago

Yup, Franz my man, those who cling to their ‘oppression’ are mostly looking for an angle to get a leg up on others.
My ancestors (perhaps!) shafted your ancestors so I should give you lotsa money. So you’ll be the latest one to make a buck off their misery.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Well, I know a few things about it beyond that it appears here. It’s a photo of four people, three of them kneeling, on a beach. They are holding a sign and they are being photographed. There appears to be no one in the photo who disagrees with what the sign says.

Pauline Ivison
Pauline Ivison
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

Calm down dear

Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid Weir

We know what it’s meant to represent. That’s why it exists.

Alex Wilkinson
Alex Wilkinson
3 years ago

Narcism and guilt. Not proper guilt like they’ve actually done something bad, but faux, cringey, self-regarding guilt for something no-one’s responsible for: race.

Sean Meister
Sean Meister
3 years ago

Social conformity is a powerful driver for those of midwit intelligence (105-120). These people are easily manipulated and mislead with verbose but ridiculous theories (ie: all of Critical Theory/Post-Modernism). I have yet to see any evidence of this type of “virtue signalling” from those with extreme high-outlier intelligence (unless it’s for cynical career reasons) or indeed of those with low-average intelligence.

Kathy Prendergast
Kathy Prendergast
3 years ago
Reply to  Sean Meister

That’s an interesting theory; I’ve long wondered why I seem to be stubbornly immune to the Cult of Wokeness and have generally thought it’s just my own oppositional nature. But maybe there’s more to it than that? I’ve never put much stock in IQ tests, but still, in every test I’ve ever taken the results have ranged from 125 to 135.

Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago
Reply to  Sean Meister

I wish that were true, but most of this started in universities, where the IQ average is probably above 120. I wouldn’t discount cynical career reasons either, but waaaay too many smart people have bought into this.

Franz Von Peppercorn
Franz Von Peppercorn
3 years ago

What determines what is the virtue? Obviously these people are self virtuous and self righteous, but why has the killing of a black man in the US enraged them? Why not Brazil as Ed suggests? The answer is American cultural imperialism – Ed is correct on that.

Beth Branson
Beth Branson
3 years ago

‘American cultural imperialism’? Last I checked, America didn’t force James Dean’s Levis and white t-shirt on you. McDonalds wouldn’t survive across the pond if you all didn’t flock to the Big Mac. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.

Franz Von Peppercorn
Franz Von Peppercorn
3 years ago
Reply to  Beth Branson

I wasn’t really talking about James Dean. Did anybody read the article? If you’d prefer another term the problem is American cultural hegemony. Which, funny enough, is what they accuse of “whites” of having.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

So you’re complaining to Americans that you consume too much American culture? Doesn’t that seem like something that’s within your own control? And that of others who do the same?
My guess is that your real heartburn is that people want to consume American culture to the extent that they do. But then you’re complaining to the wrong people.

Franz Von Peppercorn
Franz Von Peppercorn
3 years ago

Did you read the article Annette? This whole thread is largely off that topic. What Ed was saying (in the article you didn’t read) was that US ideologies are harmful to Britain and that British conservatives should be moving away from total support for the US. The clue was in the title (It’s all America’s fault
Naive Brits have been duped by its poisonous politics) but maybe you didn’t read that either. This has nothing to do with re-runs of Friends.

Last edited 3 years ago by Franz Von Peppercorn
Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

yes, that was my point. Ed is complaining that Brits consume too much American culture, too many American ideas. As though that wasn’t totally within their control. What gave you away was the reference to “American cultural hegemony”.
Do you believe that calling people dupes is a really great persuasive tactic?

Last edited 3 years ago by Annette Kralendijk
Franz Von Peppercorn
Franz Von Peppercorn
3 years ago

The American ideas aren’t watching friends. It’s a specific introduction of critical race theory from the US into European countries, and largely Anglo sphere . People not watching friends won’t stop that.

Beth Branson
Beth Branson
3 years ago

You are correct – the title is illuminating. It’s America’s fault for being so damn American and asserting their American-ness. The British are in no way responsible for their own political mess. Nor are they responsible for Levis.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

We don’t know that they are enraged. They don’t look enraged, in fact, they look quite cowed. We don’t know if they were behaving the way they were because someone was taking a photo. We also don’t know that the killing of a black man In the US has anything to do with their behavior. Can we determine that they do not know or care about black lives in Britain? That would seem to make them a bit less virtuous, would it not? And if it’s just about the US then would it not it require modification of their sign to add the word American before the word black?
What we know is that their sign says some lives matter. Those of black people. We don’t see anyone in the photo disagreeing with them. It’s sort of like walking around telling people, you know, children matter. Or animals matter. Okay, and? As to what determines what the virtue is, in this case, the people kneeling in the beach are self determining their own virtue. And then advertising it.

Last edited 3 years ago by Annette Kralendijk
Franz Von Peppercorn
Franz Von Peppercorn
3 years ago

They don’t look cowed. The taking of the knee etc is clearly related to the George Floyd incident, as you know, and that’s pertinent to the debate here.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

On the contrary, they look very cowed. Like they might break into tears at any moment, brave souls that they are. They haven’t said a word about George Floyd. And taking the knee long predates George Floyd. Are you sure you’re as up on American culture as you think you are?

Franz Von Peppercorn
Franz Von Peppercorn
3 years ago

The kneelers are probably in the U.K. that’s the implication of the article.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago

And?

Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago

Except you’re not allowed to say that All Lives Matter to these people.

Chris Scott
Chris Scott
3 years ago

It’s because they speak a foreign language in Brazil which means any one of the hundreds of mainly black men killed by Brazilian law enforcement agencies, according to the BBC, can’t be easily marketed in the Anglosphere; additionally, because there are so many, who do you chose?

Franz Von Peppercorn
Franz Von Peppercorn
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Scott

That doesn’t hold up. The George Floyd insanity spread across Northern Europe. Not just the Anglo sphere.

Chris Scott
Chris Scott
3 years ago

But why hasn’t the deaths of thousands of black men in Brazil provoked the same kind of outrage across Northern Europe? Or for that matter on the African continent.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Scott

Indeed, where is the outrage at the dozens of black men killed on the streets in Chicago every month. Some black lives apparently do not matter. As much.

Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago

Many more blacks-often children-are killed in Chicago alone every month, mostly by other blacks. Perhaps that photo op is not so effective for their cause? If they really cared about black lives they’d be rallying in Chicago every weekend and marching on the courthouses demanding change. No one with power represents those poor people. That’s why their BLM chant is empty. Only some Black lives really matter to them. Their actions prove that they don’t really care-they just want to appear empathetic without any cost. Back to the justice signaling proto again.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Tobye Pierce

Yes, they want a photo op. Then they’ve done their bit and off they can go, feeling very superior.

Natalija Svobodné
Natalija Svobodné
3 years ago

I think more likely they are victims of a very poor education system, who have been taught what they should think not how to think (reason and deduct)

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
3 years ago

I cannot speak for the US, but for UK you are spot on.

Terry M
Terry M
3 years ago

Worse here than in the UK. Teachers, and people more generally, have been cowed into mouthing the progressive mantras by coercion, cancel culture, and violence (see summer 2020 et seq). The so-called ‘tolerant progs’ are the most intolerant of any group I can remember.

clem alford
clem alford
3 years ago

Quite so. Nowadays when told someone is educated. I ask, whose education and what kind of education?

Natalija Svobodné
Natalija Svobodné
3 years ago

if PC was not really about protecting anyone, and really all about expressing one’s own moral superiority, PC credentials would be akin to what economists call a ‘positional good’
Positional good…Generally any coveted goods, which may be in abundance, that are considered valuable or desirable in order to display or change one’s social status when possessed by relatively few in a given community… In this case the goods are “Morality” And they think they are very special, paragons of virtue.

https://iea.org.uk/blog/the-economics-of-political-correctness?fbclid=IwAR3OCp4wjKu9p-9_XSoNFpNgDMGJ2yN0nBq8G53AqmbBZEsV5vTlwoPFTDE

Last edited 3 years ago by Natalija Svobodné
R Malarkey
R Malarkey
3 years ago

Like having a Communist membership card in Eastern Europe circa 1980.

Lee Floyd
Lee Floyd
3 years ago

How many of these people have we all seen, wandering around Cornwall?

Kate H. Armstrong
Kate H. Armstrong
3 years ago
Reply to  Lee Floyd

None from the perspective of this, quite engaged in community (scouts, choir, church and youth involvement perspective) family. Cornish youth appears to have an advantage on the rest of the UK. That is: the comprehension that Cornwall is FREE, unique and communitarian.

John Nutkins
John Nutkins
3 years ago

Good point.

Starry Gordon
Starry Gordon
3 years ago

The U.S. is a highly religious society (in comparison to Europe) and in such a culture virtue signaling is a common practice, not only to advertise one’s own goodness but to reassure the faithful and admonish the wicked. It has been going on since the Puritans got here. Black lives matter in America more than in Brazil because unlike Brazil America (the U.S., that is) is the city set upon a hill, the exceptional and exemplary nation, which must be improved and purified. It’s not just to draw attention to oneself but to affect one’s community; hence signaling. Not that we don’t have plenty of attention addicts, too, but they’re different.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Starry Gordon

You seem to be missing a few bits of world history. Have there ever been better virtue signalers than the French? Even the Germans, who seem like they would be poor candidates for virtue signaling, like to do it. Witness Ms Merkel’s flinging the doors to the EU open to hundreds of thousands of poor, unemployed young men of distinctly non European background. Virtue signaling on a scale that an American could only dream of. Unless he or she were a democrat, of course.

Last edited 3 years ago by Annette Kralendijk
Last Jacobin
Last Jacobin
3 years ago

You seem to have got to the point of believing any action not taken purely and obviously for self interest and that is known about by others is by definition virtue signalling. Including your comment and my reply.

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Last Jacobin

It’s sort of like p*rno, Mark. People know virtue signaling when they see it.

Last edited 3 years ago by Annette Kralendijk
Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago

God protect the USA from the likes of Angela Merkel.

Starry Gordon
Starry Gordon
3 years ago

Well, when you’re running the Holy Roman Empire you’ve got to go the extra mile, league, or kilometer. But the French? I thought they kicked out all the Calvinists long since. As St. Oscar said, ‘The French don’t care what you do as long as you pronounce it correctly.’ Don’t tell me they, too, have now fallen prey to the American disease. What are the grim details of this débâcle?

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Starry Gordon

Oh the French have been virtue signaling long before it was ever a thing in the US. Perhaps we caught it from them. In fact, their insistence on language purity is a form of virtue signaling.
Of course, you’ve likely heard the story of De Gaulle’s withdrawal of France from the NATO military command with accompanied demands for the removal of all US military personnel. Virtue signaling?
or perhaps the 2019 G7 meeting in Biarritz where Macron announced without warning that the summit should focus on the ’emergency’, the international crisis of climate change. “Our house is burning. Literally,” Macron squeaked in a tweet, even as he elsewhere accused Bolsonaro of lying to him about Brazil’s effort to combat climate change. Virtue signal much?
How about when Macron announced at Davos that he plans to close all of France’s coal-fired power plants by 2021. Do you know what percentage of its power France gets from coal?
And then of course there was all the French elite virtue signaling over Ms. Merkel’s forced open European borders. How did that virtue signaling work out?

Tobye Pierce
Tobye Pierce
3 years ago
Reply to  Starry Gordon

Establishment religion has become unfashionable among the woke, and I think they feel the loss of structure. All this is a replacement of religion for many people.

Starry Gordon
Starry Gordon
3 years ago
Reply to  Tobye Pierce

It _is_ the religion. It even has an apocalyptic end-of-days scenario. Plus, because it makes few or no transcendental claims about supreme beings, you can combine it with other religions, unlike the Abrahamic religions whose god(s) is/are jealous. Go to church on Sunday, gas to work on Monday, contribute to the Environmental Defense Fund on Tuesday, take the knee for five minutes on Wednesday — what’s not to like? New and improved! Get with the program!

Terry M
Terry M
3 years ago
Reply to  Starry Gordon

Virtue signalling is simply performance virtue. True virtue has humility, which is sorely lacking amongst these types.

Robin Lambert
Robin Lambert
3 years ago

SARS2 has made ”Star for 15 minutes” Worse with Zoom &virtual ‘Political interviews’ Wokeism is as pernicious As USA McCarthyis of 1950s but he died of Alcoholism soon after…

John McCarthy
John McCarthy
3 years ago

Yes, like Starmer and
Rayner in that infamous photo!

Last edited 3 years ago by John McCarthy
Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago

I can tell at a glance that they are upper-middle-class East Coast Democrats. What they are doing in that photo is despicable.

thaisfmcorreia
thaisfmcorreia
3 years ago

Would any of them protest police killings in Brazil, which dwarf the US rate? Would any of them care?
Hypocrisy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
3 years ago

As a Brit, when I’ve visited Canada, New Zealand and Australia – it was always a bit like going to your cousin’s house. You spend time being jealous of their stuff (Australia’s beaches! The Canadian mountains and pristine wilderness! New Zealand’s kooky coolness!) and feel a bit smug about what Britain has (check out just how much history per square centimetre we have, ha!). Basically, you’re instantly on the same wavelength and feel related.
America was always a bit different. Sure, you felt related and couldn’t really get away from the music, the trends, and the culture all washing over to Britain. Yet America was the arm of the family that had really taken it to a whole new level. The uncle that’s been married five times, lived in a trailer, lived in a mansion – been and done all the extremes. Kind of fascinating but appalling at the same time. But always something to be admired in some way. A country you always felt inclined to follow – even if you grumbled a bit, trying to maintain a bit of the old British superiority (it’s colour, not color).
Now I look at America and I don’t think it’s worth following. For the first time, I feel pity for it. It seems lost, tired, unsure of its purpose. Britain seems like that too – but instead of looking to America for future direction, this is the time for Britain to stop hanging so much off the hem of America’s trousers, grow a pair and carve its own path. As the author says, unquestioningly following the US this time could have some really dark consequences.

Last edited 3 years ago by Katharine Eyre
kathleen carr
kathleen carr
3 years ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

George Bernard Shaw did say England and America are two countries separated by a common language. According to writers such as Thomas Paine even in the 18th century German was the most common language in Colonial America and the present day America is a combination of lots of people who arrived in the last 150 years and generally nothing to do with Britain.Except their political elite (especially the presidents ) who usually have links with Britain and I think British middle-classes like to fool themselves that Britain is still important and has close links with America wheras in reality America has policies best suited to their own interests.

Andrew Thompson
Andrew Thompson
3 years ago
Reply to  kathleen carr

Or President Biden who classes himself as ‘Irish’ even though he’s probably never been to the ‘Auld country’ just like all of his ancestors going back several generations. I did read once there were around twice as many Irish in New York as there are Irish in the whole of Ireland. Go figure.

maddrell3
maddrell3
3 years ago

That’s down to the Great Hunger, though.

David Owsley
David Owsley
3 years ago

If they have ever eaten a potato they are Irish American.

George Stone
George Stone
3 years ago

Do you have to use these Americanisms? i.e.’go figure’

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  George Stone

Warning! Chip on shoulder showing.

Starry Gordon
Starry Gordon
3 years ago
Reply to  George Stone

“Go figure” is almost certainly from Yiddish (gay vays, ‘go (and) know, go figure (it out)’. See Mr. Safire if you doubt me.

Robin Lambert
Robin Lambert
3 years ago

Biden has less ”Irish Ancestry” than myself,after the New York postal Fraud vote!

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago