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How students turned on the working class Activists have betrayed what’s left of the proletariat

Fighting student idealism. Credit: William L.Rukeyser/Getty


November 17, 2022   7 mins

Every idealistic student dreams of changing the world. In 1848, they actually succeeded. In urban capitals across Europe, revolutions broke out that year — with students playing a key role in many uprisings. That year launched a political alliance that has held for many subsequent social transformations: between young, radical bourgeois intellectuals — whether still studying or recently-graduated — and the industrial working class.

But that alliance is now faltering, and the search is on for a new one between young radical intellectuals and the wider masses. And whatever form it takes, it’s far from clear that it will follow the progressive lines that have characterised youth politics for the last two centuries.

The politics of students, and of that ambiguous class of 20-somethings whose lifestyle remains studenty even after graduation, has been a meaningful force for change ever since young people began flocking to higher education. For a new wave of higher-education institutions was, as historian Sheldon Rothblatt argues, inseparable from the class politics that emerged with that era.

In France, for example, the grandes écoles were founded after the French Revolution, and sought to shape a post-revolutionary elite to govern the country according to Enlightenment principles. These were the youth whose presence on the streets in 1848 was so conspicuous. In Prussia, meanwhile, a newly-powerful industrial bourgeoisie saw education as a key means of constructing a widespread national identity, which would serve their interests against the entrenched Prussian aristocracy.

Such institutions served as crucibles of national identity, finishing schools for the bourgeoisie — and also as a stretch of time in which young, idealistic, middle-class youth absorb high-minded ideas while remaining relatively free of economic and political obligations. It should come as no surprise, then, that such young people have often used that time to develop utopian visions, which they then seek to realise in the wider world.

Such youthful radicalism was, in the 19th century, a fertile breeding-ground for nationalism, liberalism and revolutionary fervour alike. Half a century later and somewhat further east, too, students and young elite radicals played a key role in the revolutions that brought down the Tsar, and brought the Soviet Union into being (and some of their number into power).

But today’s utopians appear actively hostile to more place-bound constituencies, whose causes they championed in earlier ages. Most now prefer a borderless and often identity-driven form of youth activism that came of age with the internet, in the dominant mass student-activist cause of my youth in the late Nineties: the Jubilee 2000 campaign. This sought to persuade Western nations and international institutions to forgive the unpayable debts owed by the world’s poorest countries. Forget helping the poor in your own country, in other words: the proper scale for idealism is now planetary.

In aid of this planetary scope, too, all intellectual traces of a link between centres of power and feelings of national solidarity have become increasingly deprecated. This consensus is now well-entrenched in higher education, with institutions and youthful activists in lockstep: just this week, the Quality Assurance Agency, which monitors academic standards, recommended “decolonisation” across the board — even in science and maths.

And supporters argue that this change is driven by students themselves. But it’s less universally well-supported by ordinary Britons outside rarefied social and political circles. When, last week, Streatham MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy loudly applauded a Cambridge Union vote in favour of Britain paying reparations for past imperial depredations, the response from the general public was cynical. At the more polite end were accusations that “a prominent subset of the elite want to take money away from working Britons and give it to governments who openly hate us”. At the less polite end, responses were more along the lines of “Fuck off, you fucking grifters”.

Is this simply the latest front in what the historian and political theorist Peter Turchin calls, “the problem of an excess of educated men”? With too many would-be rulers, and not enough positions for them all to fill, Turchin argues, the result is invariably a large number of disgruntled also-rans who combine intellectual firepower with strong senses of entitlement and grievance. In Turchin’s view, this “over-production of elites” helped precipitate the uprisings of 1848, as well as the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Young scions of an emerging bourgeoisie, without obligation to land-holding aristocrats and eager for a slice of political power, joined forces with the new urban poor and industrial proletariat to demand political reforms.

While the 1848 uprisings were swiftly put down, they had long-term consequences including much that we take for granted in the modern political settlement. (Arguably the long-term consequences of Soviet Russia also include a great deal we take for granted in the modern student-activist outlook.) Most remaining systems of serfdom were swept away, while (significantly from the perspective of bourgeois youth interest) governments crafted a series of political compromises with the emerging middle class and their working-class allies.

In Paris, the legacy of 1848 for workers included a shorter working day, a minimum wage and a guaranteed right to work; in Germany, the revolts spurred the move toward freedom of the press, jury trials, and expanded suffrage. Over the longer term, the same political changes also solidified Europe’s nation-states into more or less the political forms we have today, as the romantic idea of national fellow-feeling spread outward from the new graduate intellectual class to the masses.

In the process, many young activists also did well for themselves. And the cynical response to calls for “reparations” suggest others see in this campaign something like the same professed desire to help others while also accruing personal power and influence. Someone, after all, must be tasked with purging those libraries of reactionary classics such as Shakespeare, and administering funds designated for “reparations”. Who better than those who campaigned for the change?

If such efforts no longer command much support from the masses, the hinge moment for this slow coming-apart of the radical coalition was another uprising in Paris. In May 1968, the stones were once again torn up by students fired by something like the liberalising energy of their 1848 predecessors. Or intra-elite competition, perhaps: after all, this was a baby-boom generation reaching adulthood in far greater numbers than their elders. The result was, once again, social upheaval — followed by accession of many revolutionaries to the elite, where many of the 1968 revolutionaries ended up as politicians and other establishment figures.

But if the student activists of 1968 were still demanding liberalisation, like their predecessors in 1848, the world had changed around them. The grievance that triggered the riots captures just how far. The precipitating factor wasn’t poverty, or even political idealism, but individual desire: specifically, a ban on students spending the night in each others’ dorms.

The riots triggered a general strike that nearly brought down the French government. But at root, 1968 was a sexual revolution, that only took on the cause of the industrial proletariat as a kind of afterthought.

Since 1968, student idealism has continued on that rarefied trajectory. As the West has de-industrialised, so youth politics has lost interest in the industrial working class, and instead turned either to pursuing the individualistic politics of identity, or expanded beyond the “national” polities first forged in the student politics of the 19th century toward global issues such as poverty or climate.

In my own youth, I wholeheartedly embraced this planetary vision. The Jubilee 2000 campaign made a tremendous impression on me at the time, fuelling my youthful idealism about the power of the internet to network people worldwide for the good of humanity. Looking back, though, I’ve come to wonder if it doesn’t serve more to illustrate how the digital age has changed the dynamic of intra-elite competition that’s characterised student activism since universities emerged as formative institutions for the industrial bourgeoisie.

Drop the Debt campaigners of my acquaintance now sport OBEs and comfortable berths in the 21st-century NGOcracy, much as many soixante-huitards before them ended up at the heart of the liberal French establishment. The organisations themselves are still going, not to mention paying the salaries of activists, researchers, fundraisers and so on.

Meanwhile, it’s far from clear whether the campaign achieved much to ease the burden of debt in the long term. Tens of millions signed the petition. There were concerts. Bono got involved. And over $100bn of debt was forgiven. In the early 2010s, David Golding of Debt Justice made a celebratory video showing how ordinary people in Zambia had benefited from this forgiveness. But last year, The Economist reported that in 2020 Zambia, a key beneficiary of Jubilee 2000, was once again as indebted as ever. The only difference is that this time Zambia’s creditors aren’t the IMF, but an opaque web of international lenders including China and Saudi Arabia, largely immune to moral pressure from well-meaning Western campaigners.

None of this is to say that activists were wrong exactly, in calling for debt cancellation. It’s more to suggest that political idealism meshes at best uncomfortably with the fallen nature of humankind. And with that in mind, where a utopian scheme seems likely to run aground on the disappointing complexities of reality, the principal beneficiaries of such utopianism — however well-intentioned — may end up being those who appoint themselves to realise that utopia in the world. And as this grows starker, without delivering any obvious benefits to the masses whose lives may be up-ended by another bout of student radicalism, it’s hard to see the time-honoured coalition between progressive radicals and the working class holding up.

The great unanswered question for today’s students, then, is this: where is the mass support today for the rarefied post-1968 brand of idealism that’s come to dominate youth politics? Even the soixante-huitards acted in a coalition of sorts with France’s industrial proletariat; but the post-national orientation of student activism today feels more like a revolution against what’s left of that proletariat, than anything calculated to serve working-class interests.

The counterpoint might be: well, the industrial age is behind us now, so who cares? It’s not like the masses have disappeared, but who knows what the new political poles are. And today’s students are making a big gamble, when they assume that even a post-industrial working class will rally behind the middle-class activist call for more post-nationalism, more identity politics, and more skimming of funds from the real economy for redistribution on moral grounds such as “reparations”.

It’s long been taken for granted that youth politics only ever gets more liberal. But when post-nationalism, globalism and so on is now an overtly elitist project, a truly radical youthful counter-elite would be one that mobilised mass revolutionary support by swinging back in the other direction. In this uncertain moment, perhaps the only subversive move would be to draw a line under the liberalising project begun in 1848, and seek mass support for a politics of limits.


Mary Harrington is a contributing editor at UnHerd.

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J Bryant
J Bryant
2 years ago

Another fine article from Mary Harrington. I do wonder, however, if it’s possible to overthink students’ behavior and motivations.
Most students are naturally idealistic and energetic. They are revolutionaries in search of a cause. It is, I think, the rare student who reviews history in the way Mary Harrington has done and forms their own conclusions about what political/social cause might be most appropriate or most effective for our modern world.
The reality is a cause is usually served up to eighteen-year-old idealists pre-packaged. In the modern era that cause is so-called progressivism. It is superficially appealing and, so far, has a tide of “educated opinion” behind it. I’m not even convinced students are looking to their future employment when they sign up for the latest, trendy ideology. They are, in effect, hitching their wagon to history, and if they stick with the dominant ideology they’ll likely benefit from it in the years to come, even if they are not initially thinking in such self-serving terms.
I am fully convinced that the idea of an excess of educated “elites” is correct. We raise the expectations of a generation of young people at our peril if we are not willing or able to fulfill those expectations.

polidori redux
polidori redux
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

“Most students are naturally idealistic and energetic.”
Up to a point. They are mostly crowd-followers. Well I was anyway.

Richard Parker
Richard Parker
2 years ago
Reply to  polidori redux

I reckon you’ve both got valid points. Most students are more James Dean, less Ernesto Guevara – for which let us be thankful. And yes, on honest reflection, plus ça change…

Chris W
Chris W
2 years ago
Reply to  polidori redux

Couldn’t agree more. When I was a student, we didn’t have a clue what to do so we followed everyone else around in circles.
BUT student organisers may have become savvier today. If they (the organisers) have any sense, they will realise that agitation and demonstration are not enough – the main thing is to organise their herds to vote, vote, vote. We didn’t do that.

Andrew Wise
Andrew Wise
2 years ago
Reply to  Chris W

They are not interested in voting – why bother with a democratic approach when you can get big corporates to ban everything you are against anyway – Eventbright today, numerous examples of advertisers pulling spend from twitter, the Murdoch press etc.
Way more effective in achieving your goals than voting

Andrew Wise
Andrew Wise
2 years ago
Reply to  Chris W

They are not interested in voting – why bother with a democratic approach when you can get big corporates to ban everything you are against anyway – Eventbright today, numerous examples of advertisers pulling spend from twitter, the Murdoch press etc.
Way more effective in achieving your goals than voting

0 0
0 0
2 years ago
Reply to  polidori redux

Indeed. They do so because either it’s the thing to do or they have nothing else to do with their free time. In fact, I knew more than a few guys who joined “The Movement” in the late Sixties because the word was out that it was a great way to meet chicks and possibly get laid.
Under the theory that idealism almost inevitably leads to cynicism (or worse), I take most such movements “cum grano salis.”

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
Reply to  polidori redux

Followers indeed, which is why we have so many hysterical male students harassing professional women about their feminist beliefs with labels of transphobic and TERF.

Richard Parker
Richard Parker
2 years ago
Reply to  polidori redux

I reckon you’ve both got valid points. Most students are more James Dean, less Ernesto Guevara – for which let us be thankful. And yes, on honest reflection, plus ça change…

Chris W
Chris W
2 years ago
Reply to  polidori redux

Couldn’t agree more. When I was a student, we didn’t have a clue what to do so we followed everyone else around in circles.
BUT student organisers may have become savvier today. If they (the organisers) have any sense, they will realise that agitation and demonstration are not enough – the main thing is to organise their herds to vote, vote, vote. We didn’t do that.

0 0
0 0
2 years ago
Reply to  polidori redux

Indeed. They do so because either it’s the thing to do or they have nothing else to do with their free time. In fact, I knew more than a few guys who joined “The Movement” in the late Sixties because the word was out that it was a great way to meet chicks and possibly get laid.
Under the theory that idealism almost inevitably leads to cynicism (or worse), I take most such movements “cum grano salis.”

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
Reply to  polidori redux

Followers indeed, which is why we have so many hysterical male students harassing professional women about their feminist beliefs with labels of transphobic and TERF.

Peter Johnson
Peter Johnson
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

The irony of course is that if you agree with your professors, your university President, the Mayor and the Prime Minister you aren’t a progressive activist – you are an apple polisher, a brown nose, a card carrying member of the Regime. I am waiting for young people to start rebelling again – which will now take the form of them being conservatives – or maybe class based socialists.

0 0
0 0
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter Johnson

Yep. What goes around…comes around.

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
2 years ago
Reply to  0 0

History strikes me more like Brownian motion on top of a tide, rather than a merrygoround.

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
2 years ago
Reply to  0 0

History strikes me more like Brownian motion on top of a tide, rather than a merrygoround.

David Yetter
David Yetter
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter Johnson

Or anarcho-syndicalists. My own commitments are politically shaped by Locke, the American Founders, Burke and Acton, economically by Hayek, and morally by the Holy Orthodox Church, but I still have a romantic attachment to the Left we had in America before the American Left was simultaneously crushed by moneyed interests and corrupted by the Comintern.

0 0
0 0
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter Johnson

Yep. What goes around…comes around.

David Yetter
David Yetter
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter Johnson

Or anarcho-syndicalists. My own commitments are politically shaped by Locke, the American Founders, Burke and Acton, economically by Hayek, and morally by the Holy Orthodox Church, but I still have a romantic attachment to the Left we had in America before the American Left was simultaneously crushed by moneyed interests and corrupted by the Comintern.

Steve Elliott
Steve Elliott
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Can’t help thinking that some students have too much time on their hands. I studied Engineering in the early 70’s and I don’t remember there being many gaps in the schedule.

Rob N
Rob N
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

Absolutely. Even in my time (80s) University was, for most subjects, only marginally about the subject. We had lots of time for socialising, clubs and pontificating. Fantastic time.

However Blair hugely boosted the number of undergraduates and as a result the number of mickey mouse courses, inadequate lecturers and incapable students vastly increased. Consequently they (students and lecturers) all have to find a different way to show how vital, different and ‘special’ they are. Thus they join cults such as JSO, trans, XR etc where only they know the ‘truth’. And are supported and encouraged by the retired who also still want to feel special and that the world needs them. The world doesn’t need them.

I suspect that Tony Blair knew this cultism would be the result, as having too many would be Chiefs can only result in cults, and saw it as one of his greatest achievements.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

The norm today is for everyone to go to college. Even the term ‘vocational training’ is barely spoken. I am convinced that all these DEI and CRT positions were created to employ the massive numbers of sociology, black studies, ethnic studies, women studies majors who otherwise would be working as a barrister in Starbucks. Even Michelle Obama, who wasn’t able to make it at a law firm (even though she was an affirmative action student at both Princeton & Harvard Law) eventually became ‘a diversity executive’ at a Chicago Hospital just prior to Obama becoming President. Back in the early 2000’s she was making $125k and then her salary was seemingly bumped to $300k after Senator Obama landed $2 million from the federal got to the hospital (read the New Yorker article of 2009 which lays this out). Massive amounts of education and investment were put into Michelle only for her to become a ‘diversity counselor’ and a woman who nevertheless expressed much bitterness about her life even while residing in the White House. These DEI positions are ‘empty parking spots’ and as the economy worsens they be the first to go…folks at Twitter just found that out.

Nigel Bruce
Nigel Bruce
2 years ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

I know what baristas do in Starbucks but why do they need to employ barristers 🙂

Nigel Bruce
Nigel Bruce
2 years ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

I know what baristas do in Starbucks but why do they need to employ barristers 🙂

Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

Yes – my main concerns were getting my law exams and getting laid. Didn’t have the time to be bothered about anything else

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

You’ve hit the nail on the head. So many of these students today now live on trust funds and/or are bankrolled by wealthy parents and grand parents. Whereas in my time, college was a means to make a better living.

Steve Elliott
Steve Elliott
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

I was lucky. I went to university when I had a grant and there were no tuition fees to pay. When they brought in tuition fees I thought that at least if students had to pay for the course that there would be an incentive to study hard and make the most of it, study side and social side. That doesn’t seem to have happened although I know that there are many hard working students. I don’t want to tar them all with the same brush.
The other thing with tuition fees is that I thought it would allow students to put pressure on Universities to up their game and improve tuition but that doesn’t seem to have happened either. I know that the standard of tuition in some Universities is pretty dire.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

Well you can thank John Major and his ludicrous expansion of the University system for that one, and NOT the demented Blair for once!

M. Jamieson
M. Jamieson
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

It almost seems to be the opposite. They see the university degree as a product they have bought, so believe they should receive the product whatever crappy work they do.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

Well you can thank John Major and his ludicrous expansion of the University system for that one, and NOT the demented Blair for once!

M. Jamieson
M. Jamieson
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

It almost seems to be the opposite. They see the university degree as a product they have bought, so believe they should receive the product whatever crappy work they do.

Rob N
Rob N
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

Absolutely. Even in my time (80s) University was, for most subjects, only marginally about the subject. We had lots of time for socialising, clubs and pontificating. Fantastic time.

However Blair hugely boosted the number of undergraduates and as a result the number of mickey mouse courses, inadequate lecturers and incapable students vastly increased. Consequently they (students and lecturers) all have to find a different way to show how vital, different and ‘special’ they are. Thus they join cults such as JSO, trans, XR etc where only they know the ‘truth’. And are supported and encouraged by the retired who also still want to feel special and that the world needs them. The world doesn’t need them.

I suspect that Tony Blair knew this cultism would be the result, as having too many would be Chiefs can only result in cults, and saw it as one of his greatest achievements.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

The norm today is for everyone to go to college. Even the term ‘vocational training’ is barely spoken. I am convinced that all these DEI and CRT positions were created to employ the massive numbers of sociology, black studies, ethnic studies, women studies majors who otherwise would be working as a barrister in Starbucks. Even Michelle Obama, who wasn’t able to make it at a law firm (even though she was an affirmative action student at both Princeton & Harvard Law) eventually became ‘a diversity executive’ at a Chicago Hospital just prior to Obama becoming President. Back in the early 2000’s she was making $125k and then her salary was seemingly bumped to $300k after Senator Obama landed $2 million from the federal got to the hospital (read the New Yorker article of 2009 which lays this out). Massive amounts of education and investment were put into Michelle only for her to become a ‘diversity counselor’ and a woman who nevertheless expressed much bitterness about her life even while residing in the White House. These DEI positions are ‘empty parking spots’ and as the economy worsens they be the first to go…folks at Twitter just found that out.

Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

Yes – my main concerns were getting my law exams and getting laid. Didn’t have the time to be bothered about anything else

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

You’ve hit the nail on the head. So many of these students today now live on trust funds and/or are bankrolled by wealthy parents and grand parents. Whereas in my time, college was a means to make a better living.

Steve Elliott
Steve Elliott
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

I was lucky. I went to university when I had a grant and there were no tuition fees to pay. When they brought in tuition fees I thought that at least if students had to pay for the course that there would be an incentive to study hard and make the most of it, study side and social side. That doesn’t seem to have happened although I know that there are many hard working students. I don’t want to tar them all with the same brush.
The other thing with tuition fees is that I thought it would allow students to put pressure on Universities to up their game and improve tuition but that doesn’t seem to have happened either. I know that the standard of tuition in some Universities is pretty dire.

Andrew Horsman
Andrew Horsman
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

I’m coming to the conclusion that the sad truth behind all of the “movements” of the last few years – me too, BLM, XR, all of the “grassroots” covid saftyist groups, anything with “4all” in its title, and many more – are all either deliberately seeded, or rapidly exploited and infiltrated, by people with a financial or political interest in keeping the very rich very rich and the rest of us weak, scared, demoralised and divided. The “progressive utopian students” are, to them, just a large reservoir of impressionable, easily manipulated “useful idiots” who they can easily incite to do their bidding. It sounds cynical, it sounds conspiratorial, and it is both of those; but human history suggests that one should always “follow the money” and that a certain type of powerful people, motivated by fear and greed, will go to extraordinary ends to maintain and extend their interests. One thing for sure is that don’t play fair or care about anyone but themselves.

The unifying themes behind all of the movements are: more digital and tech dependence, more surveillance, less individual agency, more shame, more guilt, more anger, more globalised centralised control, more “unity” in which all interests supposedly converge into a mass formation “for the greater good”. They consolidate rather than distribute power. There is of course an historical rhyme.

The tragedy, of course, is that the enlightened progressivism on which all of this is based requires the individual spirit to burn brightly, and for truth to trump power. These movements suffocate and deface the individual (in the case of “masks4all”, literally so), and they deny objective truth. They have to do that because they are based on, if not outright falsehoods, then gross generalisations that cannot be applied to most individual cases. The terrified billionaires, warlords, and dictator class and their lieutenants (you know, the sort that have to do the dirty business of standing for and winning elections in places where the inconvenient legacy of liberal democratic institutions irritatingly persists) knows this but the dissociated cognitive dissonance that allowed them to get to where they got to in the first place prevents them from consciously acknowledging it. No wonder they all appear so robotic, so fixated, so inhuman when they appear in public talking about the fourth industrial revolution or a climate catastrophe or whatever mad plans they’ve got next. They know that, any given moment, they could all be found out, the game could be up, and it could all come crashing down very quickly. They saw what happened in Bucharest in December 1989 and don’t want that to happen to them.

So what’s to be done? One thing is just ignore them. Get on with your life, get outside, eat good food and be good to the people you love. Another thing is to ridicule them, laugh them out of court. If they do try and force themselves on you in some way, peacefully resist and accept some temporary personal losses or costs. Don’t do what they want, whether that’s refusing to put pronouns on your email, not signing up for a smart meter, using paper money, or politely declining any half-baked novel pharmaceuticals that you don’t think you really need. As the European elites found in 1848, they ultimately need the public’s consent; and it only takes a relatively small honest minority committed to living and thinking and speaking as truthfully and as independently and as fearlessly as we can to disempower them.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Horsman

just ignore them – yes indeed…and to that end, stop donating to colleges & universities & institutions that encourage and abet such insanity. Boycott products of companies that become ‘woke’. Resist the conformity these twits are seeking. Fight these god awful DEI/CRT impulses.

Last edited 2 years ago by Cathy Carron
B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

Not the point, I don’t count any of those movements as student movements. Xr and jso are funded by the CEF, based in LA, global offices, funded by big oil. They might target students as well as everyone else they can get their hands on but they are not student movements. Just stop oil had 26 activists on the ground in London blocking the roads. That’s nothing. They can’t muster the numbers because they are not mass movements and so rely on generating as many press hits as possible by causing disruption. Therefore targeting universities as the problem simply promotes the division these movements seek to sow. This article is promoting the idea that somehow the universities are an enemy of the working class. Division.

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

Not the point, I don’t count any of those movements as student movements. Xr and jso are funded by the CEF, based in LA, global offices, funded by big oil. They might target students as well as everyone else they can get their hands on but they are not student movements. Just stop oil had 26 activists on the ground in London blocking the roads. That’s nothing. They can’t muster the numbers because they are not mass movements and so rely on generating as many press hits as possible by causing disruption. Therefore targeting universities as the problem simply promotes the division these movements seek to sow. This article is promoting the idea that somehow the universities are an enemy of the working class. Division.

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Horsman

Absolutely cracking comment, personally think you’ve absolutely hit the nail on the head.

Vici C
Vici C
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Horsman

Nail on the head. Though I don’t share your belief it can be cracked. They start brainwashing them in primary school. Lost, already.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Horsman

just ignore them – yes indeed…and to that end, stop donating to colleges & universities & institutions that encourage and abet such insanity. Boycott products of companies that become ‘woke’. Resist the conformity these twits are seeking. Fight these god awful DEI/CRT impulses.

Last edited 2 years ago by Cathy Carron
B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Horsman

Absolutely cracking comment, personally think you’ve absolutely hit the nail on the head.

Vici C
Vici C
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Horsman

Nail on the head. Though I don’t share your belief it can be cracked. They start brainwashing them in primary school. Lost, already.

Mark M Breza
Mark M Breza
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Huh, so Blue Collar workers don’t want their children to be educated students because they will hate their parents. Think the whole thing through before tarnishing . Why do all the immigrants go to the USA just so their children will be schooled by the system you seem to hate ?

Last edited 2 years ago by Mark M Breza
polidori redux
polidori redux
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

“Most students are naturally idealistic and energetic.”
Up to a point. They are mostly crowd-followers. Well I was anyway.

Peter Johnson
Peter Johnson
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

The irony of course is that if you agree with your professors, your university President, the Mayor and the Prime Minister you aren’t a progressive activist – you are an apple polisher, a brown nose, a card carrying member of the Regime. I am waiting for young people to start rebelling again – which will now take the form of them being conservatives – or maybe class based socialists.

Steve Elliott
Steve Elliott
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Can’t help thinking that some students have too much time on their hands. I studied Engineering in the early 70’s and I don’t remember there being many gaps in the schedule.

Andrew Horsman
Andrew Horsman
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

I’m coming to the conclusion that the sad truth behind all of the “movements” of the last few years – me too, BLM, XR, all of the “grassroots” covid saftyist groups, anything with “4all” in its title, and many more – are all either deliberately seeded, or rapidly exploited and infiltrated, by people with a financial or political interest in keeping the very rich very rich and the rest of us weak, scared, demoralised and divided. The “progressive utopian students” are, to them, just a large reservoir of impressionable, easily manipulated “useful idiots” who they can easily incite to do their bidding. It sounds cynical, it sounds conspiratorial, and it is both of those; but human history suggests that one should always “follow the money” and that a certain type of powerful people, motivated by fear and greed, will go to extraordinary ends to maintain and extend their interests. One thing for sure is that don’t play fair or care about anyone but themselves.

The unifying themes behind all of the movements are: more digital and tech dependence, more surveillance, less individual agency, more shame, more guilt, more anger, more globalised centralised control, more “unity” in which all interests supposedly converge into a mass formation “for the greater good”. They consolidate rather than distribute power. There is of course an historical rhyme.

The tragedy, of course, is that the enlightened progressivism on which all of this is based requires the individual spirit to burn brightly, and for truth to trump power. These movements suffocate and deface the individual (in the case of “masks4all”, literally so), and they deny objective truth. They have to do that because they are based on, if not outright falsehoods, then gross generalisations that cannot be applied to most individual cases. The terrified billionaires, warlords, and dictator class and their lieutenants (you know, the sort that have to do the dirty business of standing for and winning elections in places where the inconvenient legacy of liberal democratic institutions irritatingly persists) knows this but the dissociated cognitive dissonance that allowed them to get to where they got to in the first place prevents them from consciously acknowledging it. No wonder they all appear so robotic, so fixated, so inhuman when they appear in public talking about the fourth industrial revolution or a climate catastrophe or whatever mad plans they’ve got next. They know that, any given moment, they could all be found out, the game could be up, and it could all come crashing down very quickly. They saw what happened in Bucharest in December 1989 and don’t want that to happen to them.

So what’s to be done? One thing is just ignore them. Get on with your life, get outside, eat good food and be good to the people you love. Another thing is to ridicule them, laugh them out of court. If they do try and force themselves on you in some way, peacefully resist and accept some temporary personal losses or costs. Don’t do what they want, whether that’s refusing to put pronouns on your email, not signing up for a smart meter, using paper money, or politely declining any half-baked novel pharmaceuticals that you don’t think you really need. As the European elites found in 1848, they ultimately need the public’s consent; and it only takes a relatively small honest minority committed to living and thinking and speaking as truthfully and as independently and as fearlessly as we can to disempower them.

Mark M Breza
Mark M Breza
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Huh, so Blue Collar workers don’t want their children to be educated students because they will hate their parents. Think the whole thing through before tarnishing . Why do all the immigrants go to the USA just so their children will be schooled by the system you seem to hate ?

Last edited 2 years ago by Mark M Breza
J Bryant
J Bryant
2 years ago

Another fine article from Mary Harrington. I do wonder, however, if it’s possible to overthink students’ behavior and motivations.
Most students are naturally idealistic and energetic. They are revolutionaries in search of a cause. It is, I think, the rare student who reviews history in the way Mary Harrington has done and forms their own conclusions about what political/social cause might be most appropriate or most effective for our modern world.
The reality is a cause is usually served up to eighteen-year-old idealists pre-packaged. In the modern era that cause is so-called progressivism. It is superficially appealing and, so far, has a tide of “educated opinion” behind it. I’m not even convinced students are looking to their future employment when they sign up for the latest, trendy ideology. They are, in effect, hitching their wagon to history, and if they stick with the dominant ideology they’ll likely benefit from it in the years to come, even if they are not initially thinking in such self-serving terms.
I am fully convinced that the idea of an excess of educated “elites” is correct. We raise the expectations of a generation of young people at our peril if we are not willing or able to fulfill those expectations.

Malcolm Knott
Malcolm Knott
2 years ago

I think student activism was adequately summarised by a friend of mine in the pithy remark, ‘When you’re young you’re stupid.’

Robert Kropla
Robert Kropla
2 years ago
Reply to  Malcolm Knott

I had an uncle who, although a member of the military establishment and a dedicated Cold Warrior, held fairly liberal views and was always open to discussion of the pros and cons of various of my youthful activist endeavours. I’m an old man now and he is long gone but I’ll always remember his warmth and wit and his own pithy assessment of the state of the world: “if you’re not a communist at age twenty you have no heart; if you’re still a communist at age forty you have no head.”

Andrew F
Andrew F
2 years ago
Reply to  Robert Kropla

I am sorry, but this frequently quoted statement about communism is pure nonsense.
If you are Communist at 20 you are either uneducated and you don’t know crimes of this vile creed or you know them but ignore them, so you have no heart.

Andrew F
Andrew F
2 years ago
Reply to  Robert Kropla

I am sorry, but this frequently quoted statement about communism is pure nonsense.
If you are Communist at 20 you are either uneducated and you don’t know crimes of this vile creed or you know them but ignore them, so you have no heart.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
2 years ago
Reply to  Malcolm Knott

Yes, so much for “young intellectuals”. Sort of an oxymoron.

Robert Kropla
Robert Kropla
2 years ago
Reply to  Malcolm Knott

I had an uncle who, although a member of the military establishment and a dedicated Cold Warrior, held fairly liberal views and was always open to discussion of the pros and cons of various of my youthful activist endeavours. I’m an old man now and he is long gone but I’ll always remember his warmth and wit and his own pithy assessment of the state of the world: “if you’re not a communist at age twenty you have no heart; if you’re still a communist at age forty you have no head.”

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
2 years ago
Reply to  Malcolm Knott

Yes, so much for “young intellectuals”. Sort of an oxymoron.

Malcolm Knott
Malcolm Knott
2 years ago

I think student activism was adequately summarised by a friend of mine in the pithy remark, ‘When you’re young you’re stupid.’

Aidan Barrett
Aidan Barrett
2 years ago

Eric “Longshoreman Philosopher” Hoffer prophecized this dystopian scenario two generations ago! https://lovelycountryblog.wordpress.com/2017/02/28/eric-hoffer-on-intellectuals-1970/

Richard Parker
Richard Parker
2 years ago
Reply to  Aidan Barrett

Hoffer is much neglected and forgotten: I also think he deserves a renaissance and a bigger readership.

FacRecte NilTime
FacRecte NilTime
2 years ago
Reply to  Aidan Barrett

Excellent essay, thanks for flagging it

Andrew McDonald
Andrew McDonald
2 years ago
Reply to  Aidan Barrett

Great link, many thanks.

Philip May
Philip May
2 years ago
Reply to  Aidan Barrett

Hi Aiden

I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of thanks for that link from Hoffer.

Richard Parker
Richard Parker
2 years ago
Reply to  Aidan Barrett

Hoffer is much neglected and forgotten: I also think he deserves a renaissance and a bigger readership.

FacRecte NilTime
FacRecte NilTime
2 years ago
Reply to  Aidan Barrett

Excellent essay, thanks for flagging it

Andrew McDonald
Andrew McDonald
2 years ago
Reply to  Aidan Barrett

Great link, many thanks.

Philip May
Philip May
2 years ago
Reply to  Aidan Barrett

Hi Aiden

I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of thanks for that link from Hoffer.

Aidan Barrett
Aidan Barrett
2 years ago

Eric “Longshoreman Philosopher” Hoffer prophecized this dystopian scenario two generations ago! https://lovelycountryblog.wordpress.com/2017/02/28/eric-hoffer-on-intellectuals-1970/

Jack Tarr
Jack Tarr
2 years ago

More simply, the professional/managerial elite (including their apprentices, students) lost interest in the working classes when powerful unions were broken.
Communist societies essentially consist of a proletariat ruled by a professional/managerial elite, unfettered by an upper class (who are those who have made fortunes by owning the means of production; traditional aristocrats and hereditary landowners; or a combination of both of these). This is perhaps why the upper middle classes are often emotionally attached to the idea of communism, if only as a model for a future ideal society.
A working class with powerful unions represented a power base which could be exploited. Working class militancy was a threat to capitalists and traditional aristocrats, and therefore a means of ridding the professional/managerial elite of their own controllers.
As soon as powerful unions were defeated by Thatcher et.al., the professional/managerial elite dropped the working class like a hot spud. This manifested itself in the Labour Party by the Blair leadership, which grovelled to big business and dumped the idea of redistributing capital.

Sam Hill
Sam Hill
2 years ago
Reply to  Jack Tarr

Well indeed. The article says, ‘But when post-nationalism, globalism and so on is now an overtly elitist project, a truly radical youthful counter-elite would be one that mobilised mass revolutionary support by swinging back in the other direction.’ But today’s post-Blair students really aren’t interested in the working class, they are interested in being globalists, irrespective of what globalism does to a classic working class.
We don’t really have a working class anymore, or at least not in any sense my grandparents would recognise because we don’t have an economy or a society that promotes one. Students didn’t betray the working class, rather the working class shrivelled away.
I was one of the last pre-Blair year students and there’s no doubt in my mind that the post-Blair universities brought a sea change in the student body. It was very, very fast. The student concerns of my years were effectively about anti-globalisation. We believed (I feel correctly) that globalisation was destructive, exploitative and corporatist. We saw -isms as being about the a priori moral condemnation of people on the basis of characteristics they can’t control and their actual material loss. We could handle relationship with each other without beckoning in authority to police us. Euroscepticism was not at all unheard of. Politically my generations lost big, hard and fast.
Within a few years students were hard diversity evangelists and corporatists in training and revelled in it. The working and coping classes were all a bit passe to an 18 year old with a big loan to spend.
It’s not the students’ fault of course – the situation and environment they face is hardly their fault. But anyone who thinks that today’s students will have the sort of outlook on the world of students 25+ years ago needs to get real.

Jack Tarr
Jack Tarr
2 years ago
Reply to  Sam Hill

Be wary of the idea that “we don’t have a working class anymore”. This has been a staple of bourgeoise “thought” since the Blair era. There were many articles then expounding the thesis that “we are all middle class now”, based on such “evidence” as “there are more lecturers than coal miners” and similar rubbish.
Yes, there may not be too many coal miners now but there are very many lorry and bus drivers, care workers, sewer workers, agricultural workers, road repair people, people on supermarket tills and construction workers. It is because these people exist, and are inportant, that we have upward pressure on wages. Training of e.g. HGV drivers has long been neglected, which is why there is now a shortage of these workers.
It is perhaps because the over-verbalised haute bougeosisie mistake vocal power for existence, that we have a shortage of workers for essential if humble jobs.

Jack Tarr
Jack Tarr
2 years ago
Reply to  Sam Hill

Be wary of the idea that “we don’t have a working class anymore”. This has been a staple of bourgeoise “thought” since the Blair era. There were many articles then expounding the thesis that “we are all middle class now”, based on such “evidence” as “there are more lecturers than coal miners” and similar rubbish.
Yes, there may not be too many coal miners now but there are very many lorry and bus drivers, care workers, sewer workers, agricultural workers, road repair people, people on supermarket tills and construction workers. It is because these people exist, and are inportant, that we have upward pressure on wages. Training of e.g. HGV drivers has long been neglected, which is why there is now a shortage of these workers.
It is perhaps because the over-verbalised haute bougeosisie mistake vocal power for existence, that we have a shortage of workers for essential if humble jobs.

Andrew F
Andrew F
2 years ago
Reply to  Jack Tarr

You clearly know nothing about how real communism works.
Managerial and professional “elites” have no significant power.
Power rests with communist aparatus and security services.
Based on personal experience of 26 years under such system.

Sam Hill
Sam Hill
2 years ago
Reply to  Jack Tarr

Well indeed. The article says, ‘But when post-nationalism, globalism and so on is now an overtly elitist project, a truly radical youthful counter-elite would be one that mobilised mass revolutionary support by swinging back in the other direction.’ But today’s post-Blair students really aren’t interested in the working class, they are interested in being globalists, irrespective of what globalism does to a classic working class.
We don’t really have a working class anymore, or at least not in any sense my grandparents would recognise because we don’t have an economy or a society that promotes one. Students didn’t betray the working class, rather the working class shrivelled away.
I was one of the last pre-Blair year students and there’s no doubt in my mind that the post-Blair universities brought a sea change in the student body. It was very, very fast. The student concerns of my years were effectively about anti-globalisation. We believed (I feel correctly) that globalisation was destructive, exploitative and corporatist. We saw -isms as being about the a priori moral condemnation of people on the basis of characteristics they can’t control and their actual material loss. We could handle relationship with each other without beckoning in authority to police us. Euroscepticism was not at all unheard of. Politically my generations lost big, hard and fast.
Within a few years students were hard diversity evangelists and corporatists in training and revelled in it. The working and coping classes were all a bit passe to an 18 year old with a big loan to spend.
It’s not the students’ fault of course – the situation and environment they face is hardly their fault. But anyone who thinks that today’s students will have the sort of outlook on the world of students 25+ years ago needs to get real.

Andrew F
Andrew F
2 years ago
Reply to  Jack Tarr

You clearly know nothing about how real communism works.
Managerial and professional “elites” have no significant power.
Power rests with communist aparatus and security services.
Based on personal experience of 26 years under such system.

Jack Tarr
Jack Tarr
2 years ago

More simply, the professional/managerial elite (including their apprentices, students) lost interest in the working classes when powerful unions were broken.
Communist societies essentially consist of a proletariat ruled by a professional/managerial elite, unfettered by an upper class (who are those who have made fortunes by owning the means of production; traditional aristocrats and hereditary landowners; or a combination of both of these). This is perhaps why the upper middle classes are often emotionally attached to the idea of communism, if only as a model for a future ideal society.
A working class with powerful unions represented a power base which could be exploited. Working class militancy was a threat to capitalists and traditional aristocrats, and therefore a means of ridding the professional/managerial elite of their own controllers.
As soon as powerful unions were defeated by Thatcher et.al., the professional/managerial elite dropped the working class like a hot spud. This manifested itself in the Labour Party by the Blair leadership, which grovelled to big business and dumped the idea of redistributing capital.

AC Harper
AC Harper
2 years ago

You could argue that in the UK the intellectual activists of the previous century have now been diluted by the Tony Blair ‘everyone should have a degree’ concept. While universities still have a brighter than average student base the semi-intellectuals are perhaps more motivated by typical youth concerns – behaving to excess and gaining status with their peers. Hence the concern with ‘identity politics’ or ‘climate change’ which are just other social clubs to join.
I hope the ‘real’ intellectuals despair because the world is becoming too fragile to bear too much discontent. We need just enough discontent…

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
2 years ago
Reply to  AC Harper

“Just enough discontent.” I like that. As a matter of fact, I’m stealing it.

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
2 years ago
Reply to  AC Harper

“Just enough discontent.” I like that. As a matter of fact, I’m stealing it.

AC Harper
AC Harper
2 years ago

You could argue that in the UK the intellectual activists of the previous century have now been diluted by the Tony Blair ‘everyone should have a degree’ concept. While universities still have a brighter than average student base the semi-intellectuals are perhaps more motivated by typical youth concerns – behaving to excess and gaining status with their peers. Hence the concern with ‘identity politics’ or ‘climate change’ which are just other social clubs to join.
I hope the ‘real’ intellectuals despair because the world is becoming too fragile to bear too much discontent. We need just enough discontent…

Matt M
Matt M
2 years ago

It’s not like the masses have disappeared, but who knows what the new political poles are.

It seems to me that we are currently uni-polar. The Woke pole has the momentum and the troops. The other side hasn’t even got its boots on. Where there should be a solid traditionalist base – The Tory party, the CoE, the military, the police etc – there is either silence or wholesale capitulation to the Woke message.

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
2 years ago
Reply to  Matt M

Except the woke destroying themselves by insufficient woke-ism, trying to out compete their rivals.

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
2 years ago
Reply to  Matt M

Except the woke destroying themselves by insufficient woke-ism, trying to out compete their rivals.

Matt M
Matt M
2 years ago

It’s not like the masses have disappeared, but who knows what the new political poles are.

It seems to me that we are currently uni-polar. The Woke pole has the momentum and the troops. The other side hasn’t even got its boots on. Where there should be a solid traditionalist base – The Tory party, the CoE, the military, the police etc – there is either silence or wholesale capitulation to the Woke message.

Richard Abbot
Richard Abbot
2 years ago

To believe in progress and utopia is like believing in Santa Claus. Harmless enough, so long as you grow out of it.
But to construct the whole of society around such insane notions seems to me to be inviting a hard reckoning with reality.
With any luck I will live to see it.

Richard Abbot
Richard Abbot
2 years ago

To believe in progress and utopia is like believing in Santa Claus. Harmless enough, so long as you grow out of it.
But to construct the whole of society around such insane notions seems to me to be inviting a hard reckoning with reality.
With any luck I will live to see it.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
2 years ago

The young “intellectuals” cited here strike me as a generation of know-nothing narcissistic Mrs. Jellybys. It would do them – and thus society – a lot of good, and provide a real education, if all students were required to work in the labor-requiring production side of their chosen fields of study in order to complete their degrees and graduate. Once they know first hand how the sausage is made, they wouldn’t be so eager to give away free meals.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
2 years ago

The young “intellectuals” cited here strike me as a generation of know-nothing narcissistic Mrs. Jellybys. It would do them – and thus society – a lot of good, and provide a real education, if all students were required to work in the labor-requiring production side of their chosen fields of study in order to complete their degrees and graduate. Once they know first hand how the sausage is made, they wouldn’t be so eager to give away free meals.

Alan Hawkes
Alan Hawkes
2 years ago

Could someone please answer this question:
when mathematics is decolonised, what will 2+2= ?

David Green
David Green
2 years ago
Reply to  Alan Hawkes

Anything you like, it is your truth that matters!

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
2 years ago
Reply to  Alan Hawkes

£4B in reparations.

David Yetter
David Yetter
2 years ago
Reply to  Alan Hawkes

Whatever the Party needs it to be at any given moment: 5 if Winston Smith needs to be broken, 4 if a weapons system for the war with EastAsia (with whom we’ve always been at war) needs to be built.

Graeme McNeil
Graeme McNeil
2 years ago
Reply to  Alan Hawkes

4.
Anything else you are struggling with?

Andrew F
Andrew F
2 years ago
Reply to  Alan Hawkes

I gave you up tick, so it is 4, when I write…

David Green
David Green
2 years ago
Reply to  Alan Hawkes

Anything you like, it is your truth that matters!

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
2 years ago
Reply to  Alan Hawkes

£4B in reparations.

David Yetter
David Yetter
2 years ago
Reply to  Alan Hawkes

Whatever the Party needs it to be at any given moment: 5 if Winston Smith needs to be broken, 4 if a weapons system for the war with EastAsia (with whom we’ve always been at war) needs to be built.

Graeme McNeil
Graeme McNeil
2 years ago
Reply to  Alan Hawkes

4.
Anything else you are struggling with?

Andrew F
Andrew F
2 years ago
Reply to  Alan Hawkes

I gave you up tick, so it is 4, when I write…

Alan Hawkes
Alan Hawkes
2 years ago

Could someone please answer this question:
when mathematics is decolonised, what will 2+2= ?

Sean V
Sean V
2 years ago

Always amazed that Dylan wrote this song when he was only 23.

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
“Rip down all hate,” I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

A self-ordained professor’s tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

In a soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I’d become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My pathway led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

Bob Dylan
My Back Pages

Sean V
Sean V
2 years ago

Always amazed that Dylan wrote this song when he was only 23.

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
“Rip down all hate,” I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

A self-ordained professor’s tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

In a soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I’d become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My pathway led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

Bob Dylan
My Back Pages

ben arnulfssen
ben arnulfssen
2 years ago

The central features of “progressive thinking” as force-fed to the young, are self-righteous indignation, unthinking condemnation and the inability to think independently.

ben arnulfssen
ben arnulfssen
2 years ago

The central features of “progressive thinking” as force-fed to the young, are self-righteous indignation, unthinking condemnation and the inability to think independently.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
2 years ago

“forgive the unpayable debts owed by the world’s poorest countries. Forget helping the poor in your own country” Jaqueline Merrill in Philanthropy Daily Feb 2022: Dickens’ sharp critique of telescopic philanthropy was highly germane when he was writing Bleak House, when about one-seventh of philanthropic funds collected by London charitable organizations were directed to overseas philanthropies. Dickens judged that these organizations were blameworthy for neglecting the English poor and attempting to do good in far-away places that they little understood.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
2 years ago

“forgive the unpayable debts owed by the world’s poorest countries. Forget helping the poor in your own country” Jaqueline Merrill in Philanthropy Daily Feb 2022: Dickens’ sharp critique of telescopic philanthropy was highly germane when he was writing Bleak House, when about one-seventh of philanthropic funds collected by London charitable organizations were directed to overseas philanthropies. Dickens judged that these organizations were blameworthy for neglecting the English poor and attempting to do good in far-away places that they little understood.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
2 years ago

My problem is with the worldview of the writer, with its middle-class students, its bourgeoisie, its masses., etc.
I believe that it is much better to understand the modern world as composed of three layers: educated gentry, commoners, and subordinates.
Thus activist students would be experienced as privileged and conceited members of the educated gentry. Subordinates, such as “oppressed peoples” of all kinds, would be experienced as the political clients of the educated gentry.
And commoners? Who they? Exactly. Such people really do not fit into Mary Harrington’s privileged world.
As speaking of serfdom, what is a corporate or government salary worker but a serf? And what is someone on welfare or assistance but a slave? Back in 1000, in Britland, a peasant could go to their lord and ask to become a slave. “Head for food” they called it. Has anything changed on the “head for food” front?

Chris W
Chris W
2 years ago

No, no, no. Today there are millions of educated people who might also call themselves commoners – like what I do. I am not gentry, nor am I subordinate – so what am I?

Chris W
Chris W
2 years ago

No, no, no. Today there are millions of educated people who might also call themselves commoners – like what I do. I am not gentry, nor am I subordinate – so what am I?

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
2 years ago

My problem is with the worldview of the writer, with its middle-class students, its bourgeoisie, its masses., etc.
I believe that it is much better to understand the modern world as composed of three layers: educated gentry, commoners, and subordinates.
Thus activist students would be experienced as privileged and conceited members of the educated gentry. Subordinates, such as “oppressed peoples” of all kinds, would be experienced as the political clients of the educated gentry.
And commoners? Who they? Exactly. Such people really do not fit into Mary Harrington’s privileged world.
As speaking of serfdom, what is a corporate or government salary worker but a serf? And what is someone on welfare or assistance but a slave? Back in 1000, in Britland, a peasant could go to their lord and ask to become a slave. “Head for food” they called it. Has anything changed on the “head for food” front?

Simon James
Simon James
2 years ago

Or save yourself a lot of personal hassle and just join the Bruderhof, or a similar community, while everyone else goes to hell in a handcart.

Simon James
Simon James
2 years ago

Or save yourself a lot of personal hassle and just join the Bruderhof, or a similar community, while everyone else goes to hell in a handcart.

0 0
0 0
2 years ago

“… political idealism meshes at best uncomfortably with the fallen nature of humankind.”
And it was ever thus. Alas, there is no free lunch in this life 

0 0
0 0
2 years ago

“… political idealism meshes at best uncomfortably with the fallen nature of humankind.”
And it was ever thus. Alas, there is no free lunch in this life 

Douglas McNeish
Douglas McNeish
2 years ago

The next step will perhaps be a subversive undermining of the nation in the name of global and planetary causes such as post-colonialism and de-carbonisation. India and other non-Western industrial powers will be exempt from the latter of course, and China from both.

The SNP is happy to assist in national deconstruction with repeated referenda until the desired outcome is achieved. And the EU with the separation of Northern Ireland by the trade back door.

Elsewhere, the deconstruction of the British nation is funded generously by obscure funds under the various progressive banners of human rights for mass inward migration to dilute age old communities that are the bedrock of any society’s survival.

As the writer points out, the educated elites see roles for themselves in this post-national global transformation, with added guidance from the WEF. For them, the indigenous proletariat is simply irrelevant.

Douglas McNeish
Douglas McNeish
2 years ago

The next step will perhaps be a subversive undermining of the nation in the name of global and planetary causes such as post-colonialism and de-carbonisation. India and other non-Western industrial powers will be exempt from the latter of course, and China from both.

The SNP is happy to assist in national deconstruction with repeated referenda until the desired outcome is achieved. And the EU with the separation of Northern Ireland by the trade back door.

Elsewhere, the deconstruction of the British nation is funded generously by obscure funds under the various progressive banners of human rights for mass inward migration to dilute age old communities that are the bedrock of any society’s survival.

As the writer points out, the educated elites see roles for themselves in this post-national global transformation, with added guidance from the WEF. For them, the indigenous proletariat is simply irrelevant.

Andrew E Walker
Andrew E Walker
2 years ago

It is impossible to decolonise that which has never been colonised. There is no evidence anywhere, and Miss Harrington fails to provide any, that any form of intellectual inquiry has been the subject of colonisation.

Andrew E Walker
Andrew E Walker
2 years ago

It is impossible to decolonise that which has never been colonised. There is no evidence anywhere, and Miss Harrington fails to provide any, that any form of intellectual inquiry has been the subject of colonisation.

Eric McCoo
Eric McCoo
2 years ago

The media has move from class, income based politics to business friendly pro immigration, pro women, gay politics. In my view it’s entirely deliberate.
Contemporary liberals are sneering class warriors who despise working people and their interests.

Eric McCoo
Eric McCoo
2 years ago

The media has move from class, income based politics to business friendly pro immigration, pro women, gay politics. In my view it’s entirely deliberate.
Contemporary liberals are sneering class warriors who despise working people and their interests.

Eric McCoo
Eric McCoo
2 years ago

In the late ’90s Naomi Klein and George Monbiot were leaders of the anti capitalist anti globalisation movement.
Both drifted to the much more lucrative pro business global warming cause. Big oil were originally anti climate science until Enron realised it could make more money fighting the coal industry and carbon credits.

Eric McCoo
Eric McCoo
2 years ago

In the late ’90s Naomi Klein and George Monbiot were leaders of the anti capitalist anti globalisation movement.
Both drifted to the much more lucrative pro business global warming cause. Big oil were originally anti climate science until Enron realised it could make more money fighting the coal industry and carbon credits.

chris sullivan
chris sullivan
2 years ago

Excellent essay thanks Mary – I know plenty of smart young people who are ‘dropping out’ due to the overwhelming complexity of facilitating any kind of meaningful change – they often gravitate to animal rights which at least is a clear and addressable fight….

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago
Reply to  chris sullivan

You’re a gullible nutter that agreed with someone saying that cows in this country are strung up by the feet and have their throats cut, after being r*ped and dragged along the ground, oat milk article. If you think this is excellent, I’m glad I called it out as absolute pants. Goes to show you’re one of the people they can fool all of the time.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time. But you can’t fool all of the people, all of the time. Quote my dad, don’t know where he got it from, it’s famous though I think…

Last edited 2 years ago by B Emery
chris sullivan
chris sullivan
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

wow your erudite learning is just frightening…

chris sullivan
chris sullivan
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

wow your erudite learning is just frightening…

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago
Reply to  chris sullivan

You’re a gullible nutter that agreed with someone saying that cows in this country are strung up by the feet and have their throats cut, after being r*ped and dragged along the ground, oat milk article. If you think this is excellent, I’m glad I called it out as absolute pants. Goes to show you’re one of the people they can fool all of the time.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time. But you can’t fool all of the people, all of the time. Quote my dad, don’t know where he got it from, it’s famous though I think…

Last edited 2 years ago by B Emery
chris sullivan
chris sullivan
2 years ago

Excellent essay thanks Mary – I know plenty of smart young people who are ‘dropping out’ due to the overwhelming complexity of facilitating any kind of meaningful change – they often gravitate to animal rights which at least is a clear and addressable fight….

Eric McCoo
Eric McCoo
2 years ago

Short summary. The Green lobby is substantially funded by the oil industry and their foundations.

Left wing NYT best seller Naomi Klein

“Large parts of the movement aren’t actually fighting those interests – they have merged with them,” she writes in the Financial Times.

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Well I don’t know what to make of this one.
First let me clear something up because there is some confusion over these reparations. The reparations are supposed to come from the profits of big oil companies. Quote:
Leaders of island nations have already called on countries to pay for climate reparations by taxing big oil. Oil industry lobbyists are likely to try to water down any agreements to this effect.
Source: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Hundreds-Of-Fossil-Fuel-Lobbyist-To-Attend-COP27.html
So the students are voting to take on big oil. Big Oil, not the working classes. Sounds fair to me, the oil companies have caused all kinds of awful pollution in developing countries, sounds fair they should pay to clean it up. Big oil is a friend of big oil, not the people, so go for it Cambridge kids.
Just for clarification I haven’t been to university.
Occupy was also a student movement against big banking, good on this lot too.
I found this article very hard to follow to be honest, I don’t think students are enemies or that they have ‘betrayed’ the working class. We have all been betrayed by big oil, big pharma, big banking. Not students. In the UK when a student protest kicks off, like occupy, normally the press go round, deride the kids for their middle England origins, everyone ignores them until they get bored and then it disappears ready for the next one. I honestly can’t think of student protest in the UK over the last 20 years where that hasn’t been the case, or of a student movement that actually produced a major change in government policy. And yes students go on to do all types of jobs but look at our mps, we have quite a rare mix! Universities will always be at the forefront for new thinking, that’s kind of the point of them, whether that thinking is good or not, that’s the point of the debates at Cambridge, to draw these issues out and find the floors in new thinking. Or at least I think it is, closest I can get is watching on you tube, rees mogg did one for brexit that was excellent. They will also always be targets for people with money to push their own agendas, that is the problem if anything, that is up to the university to maintain balance, I understand some are better at this than others. Just started reading burning the books by Richard Ovenden of the bodleian library quote:
‘The sound of a warning vibrates through this book. Ovenden sets us straight about the great library of Alexandria: it was not destroyed by fire, but rather neglect. He calls it a “cautionary tale of the danger of creeping decline, through the underfunding, low prioritisation and general disregard for the institutions that preserve and share knowledge”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/10/burning-the-books-by-richard-ovenden-review-knowledge-under-attack
Its very dangerous to pitch these institutions as enemies of the working class, they are important, part of our history. Richard Ovenden I believe the book says went to a state grammar school and is a champion for grammar schools and of providing opportunity for less privileged kids. Not a working class enemy then.
As far as I can tell in the press there’s quite a ruckas at some universities trying to grapple with these new ideas, not ALL the students get sucked into the latest trendy thinking.
There was an article a while ago bashing kwasi and graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, plenty joined in, I know most of these kids are privileged right, but the only reason they are so well educated is because they are privileged! I slept better with rees mogg as business secretary because I knew he had been very well educated. I was genuinely excited about Kwasi as chancellor when he said they wouldn’t hike corporation tax I nearly fell off my chair I was like finally, here’s a really clever bloke that understands, praise the Lord we might just make it. It wasn’t students or graduates from any one university that stopped this, that had very little if nothing to with it. We really need to be careful painting universities as the root of all evil and pitching them as enemies of the working class. Division again.
So no, the students are not ‘coming’ for the working class, they will be lucky to get the chance anyway, the energy crisis is coming for everyone.
Another class war headline, disappointing.

Last edited 2 years ago by B Emery
CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

Miss Emery have you seen the 2009 film AGORA starring Rachel Weisz?

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Hello, no I haven’t do you recommend it?

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

Just had a read up, church vs true knowledge type deal?
Book of dust by Phillip pullman paints an excellent picture of how universities get caught up between a number of different interests and its a hard path to tread to keep everyone happy. Guess that’s what I’m trying to say, it’s the competing and monied interests that cause the problems, and get the wrong person at the top and all kinds of things go wrong?

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

“Happens every time “!

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

“Happens every time “!

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

Yes, Its about the situation in Alexandria in the early fifth century, during the conflict between traditional Paganism and militant Christianity. It centres around the life of HYPATIA (born c. 350–370; died 415 AD)who was a renowned neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician.
During this ‘conflict’ the great Library/Museum was severely but not terminally damaged.

(The film was a financial flop, but so what!)

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Thank you, I will actually check it out 🙂
I feel that’s what’s happening with our universities right now, they are being shredded and torn apart by all this too. I don’t know if they can survive the assault this time when so few will stand up for them, it makes me sad to see so many people bashing what are effectively some of this countries greatest achievements. The bodleian collection itself should be considered a national treasure, as should the knowledge it contains, if we tear these institutions apart what happens to that knowledge? It’s taken centuries to build these things and the institutions that turn the people out that can interpret and disseminate all that knowledge then do something useful with it. I haven’t been to the bodleian but I would cut off a finger to spend a week in there with all those lovely old books or guys like this, proper eccentric academics that Oxford and Cambridge have been home to for centuries, and should bloody well continue to be:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PfYYraMgiBA
Trying to start some weird class war between the working class and universities is just ridiculous. Its not what this is about. Sorry Mr Stanhope I’m not directing this at you, just the world in general.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

No offence taken Miss Emery I can assure you.
However John Major’s asinine dilution of the the University concept has done irreparable damage. Before his idiotic interference we had ‘quality’, now we have ‘quantify’. Standards have dropped, and many so called ‘degrees,’ are simply worthless.

If you manage to get into the Bodleian make sure you visit the Radcliffe Camera as well!

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Thank you, I do see your point, I think that is a problem with our schools from the bottom up regarding the dropping of standards. I went to help in my daughters class last year, she started last September, having spent an enormous amount of time through lockdown teaching her to write it only took a month of school for it to all slip backwards, the damage that tablets and television is doing is clearly visible too, some of the children couldn’t really string a sentence together, one girl is very disruptive and knocked out another one’s tooth with a stone, then there’s 3 boys that cause all kinds of trouble, they have two different teachers spilt over the week and expectations you can’t help but feel are low, the ones that haven’t had the time spent with them on reading and writing mean the ones that have are waiting for the rest to catch up. They had to shut a couple of times last year due to covid so that caused disruption to their education again. We have a family friend that’s a teacher, she has just resigned, they have one that likes to throw chairs across the room. She had 40 in a class and said some days she just felt like crowd control. It’s supposed to be you know a good small village school my daughters at so I dread go think what the average ones are like. We are considering pulling her out next year and home educating her to be honest. I understand there has been an explosion in barely useful degrees, and the quantity waters down the quality, I think the state schools are barely fit for purpose at the moment, we have a massive skills shortage in IT and maths, education is not providing kids with the skills they need for the modern world, or a great foundation for any further education to be honest. Apprenticeships for jobs that exist already I feel would be better to promote than these degrees that don’t lead to a job offer. One things for sure, state education needs something major.

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Thank you, I do see your point, I think that is a problem with our schools from the bottom up regarding the dropping of standards. I went to help in my daughters class last year, she started last September, having spent an enormous amount of time through lockdown teaching her to write it only took a month of school for it to all slip backwards, the damage that tablets and television is doing is clearly visible too, some of the children couldn’t really string a sentence together, one girl is very disruptive and knocked out another one’s tooth with a stone, then there’s 3 boys that cause all kinds of trouble, they have two different teachers spilt over the week and expectations you can’t help but feel are low, the ones that haven’t had the time spent with them on reading and writing mean the ones that have are waiting for the rest to catch up. They had to shut a couple of times last year due to covid so that caused disruption to their education again. We have a family friend that’s a teacher, she has just resigned, they have one that likes to throw chairs across the room. She had 40 in a class and said some days she just felt like crowd control. It’s supposed to be you know a good small village school my daughters at so I dread go think what the average ones are like. We are considering pulling her out next year and home educating her to be honest. I understand there has been an explosion in barely useful degrees, and the quantity waters down the quality, I think the state schools are barely fit for purpose at the moment, we have a massive skills shortage in IT and maths, education is not providing kids with the skills they need for the modern world, or a great foundation for any further education to be honest. Apprenticeships for jobs that exist already I feel would be better to promote than these degrees that don’t lead to a job offer. One things for sure, state education needs something major.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

No offence taken Miss Emery I can assure you.
However John Major’s asinine dilution of the the University concept has done irreparable damage. Before his idiotic interference we had ‘quality’, now we have ‘quantify’. Standards have dropped, and many so called ‘degrees,’ are simply worthless.

If you manage to get into the Bodleian make sure you visit the Radcliffe Camera as well!

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Think I came across Hypatia in Ovid Metamorphoses I believe? I actually spend my spare time nerding over ancient history, cos I’m cool 🙂 so I am genuinely intrigued, thank you.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

Ovid died some four centuries before Hypatia, but you will certainly enjoy studying the Classical World!
Had she not been a pagan Hypatia would probably have been be one the greatest heroines all time. She was just unlucky with her timing.

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Foolish miss emery! Didn’t think that through did I 🙂 good of you to be patient with me though, I did Latin and class civ. gcse and a level through home school with a tutor, would have loved to do classics but it wasn’t to be, life was a bit complicated. She’s actually mentioned in Mr Ovendens book, having had a look at it again, that’s where I heard of her. Is it Ovaltine time yet?

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

Just about, a rather cold, wet day here in Arcadia!

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Grim here also! Had to light the fire. May I ask, do you think the universities are staging an assault on the working class? I just think it sounds ridiculous….

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

No, off course not.
They’re “staging an assault.’ on the Establishment, otherwise known as the Tory Party.

ps. Bovril tonight.

Last edited 2 years ago by CHARLES STANHOPE
B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Old school meal in a mug 🙂 So do you think all the universities have gone too far left? Are people really aggressively funding the extreme left stuff in our universities do you think?
I’d be disheartened to think that there aren’t at least a few academics throwing books at each other over all these issues, bringing some balance. Brexit proved this extreme left stuff isn’t taking too much of a hold I think, despite the media pressure. For your entertainment, Nigel Farage being a hit with the kids recently, fist bumps and everything. Goodnight Mr stanhope!
KSI: ‘Influencers could have major impact on MILLIONS of votes’ says Nigel Farage – YouTube
Will add, to the world in general, I know you’ve had enough me anyway but thinking of farage, there was an article last week portraying Young Conservatives as nutters, just as this article portrays students as nutters coming for the working class, week before it was the just stop oil lot being used as an example of young people’s crazy behaviour and half of them were old! It’s a tiny movement. This is really unhelpful for promoting sensible discussions on what is really going on with young people at the moment, you know the 95% of kids not throwing milk unherd, kids not in the 26 that participated in the just stop oil protests unherd. Those kids. The majority. You got nothing on them. The piece on the Young Conservatives last week said they weren’t capable of intelligent solutions. Great, you needn’t have bothered writing the article for all the useful insight that provided. I declare this article also pants. I might be done now.

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Old school meal in a mug 🙂 So do you think all the universities have gone too far left? Are people really aggressively funding the extreme left stuff in our universities do you think?
I’d be disheartened to think that there aren’t at least a few academics throwing books at each other over all these issues, bringing some balance. Brexit proved this extreme left stuff isn’t taking too much of a hold I think, despite the media pressure. For your entertainment, Nigel Farage being a hit with the kids recently, fist bumps and everything. Goodnight Mr stanhope!
KSI: ‘Influencers could have major impact on MILLIONS of votes’ says Nigel Farage – YouTube
Will add, to the world in general, I know you’ve had enough me anyway but thinking of farage, there was an article last week portraying Young Conservatives as nutters, just as this article portrays students as nutters coming for the working class, week before it was the just stop oil lot being used as an example of young people’s crazy behaviour and half of them were old! It’s a tiny movement. This is really unhelpful for promoting sensible discussions on what is really going on with young people at the moment, you know the 95% of kids not throwing milk unherd, kids not in the 26 that participated in the just stop oil protests unherd. Those kids. The majority. You got nothing on them. The piece on the Young Conservatives last week said they weren’t capable of intelligent solutions. Great, you needn’t have bothered writing the article for all the useful insight that provided. I declare this article also pants. I might be done now.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

No, off course not.
They’re “staging an assault.’ on the Establishment, otherwise known as the Tory Party.

ps. Bovril tonight.

Last edited 2 years ago by CHARLES STANHOPE
B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Grim here also! Had to light the fire. May I ask, do you think the universities are staging an assault on the working class? I just think it sounds ridiculous….

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

Just about, a rather cold, wet day here in Arcadia!

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Foolish miss emery! Didn’t think that through did I 🙂 good of you to be patient with me though, I did Latin and class civ. gcse and a level through home school with a tutor, would have loved to do classics but it wasn’t to be, life was a bit complicated. She’s actually mentioned in Mr Ovendens book, having had a look at it again, that’s where I heard of her. Is it Ovaltine time yet?

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

Ovid died some four centuries before Hypatia, but you will certainly enjoy studying the Classical World!
Had she not been a pagan Hypatia would probably have been be one the greatest heroines all time. She was just unlucky with her timing.

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Thank you, I will actually check it out 🙂
I feel that’s what’s happening with our universities right now, they are being shredded and torn apart by all this too. I don’t know if they can survive the assault this time when so few will stand up for them, it makes me sad to see so many people bashing what are effectively some of this countries greatest achievements. The bodleian collection itself should be considered a national treasure, as should the knowledge it contains, if we tear these institutions apart what happens to that knowledge? It’s taken centuries to build these things and the institutions that turn the people out that can interpret and disseminate all that knowledge then do something useful with it. I haven’t been to the bodleian but I would cut off a finger to spend a week in there with all those lovely old books or guys like this, proper eccentric academics that Oxford and Cambridge have been home to for centuries, and should bloody well continue to be:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PfYYraMgiBA
Trying to start some weird class war between the working class and universities is just ridiculous. Its not what this is about. Sorry Mr Stanhope I’m not directing this at you, just the world in general.

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Think I came across Hypatia in Ovid Metamorphoses I believe? I actually spend my spare time nerding over ancient history, cos I’m cool 🙂 so I am genuinely intrigued, thank you.

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

Just had a read up, church vs true knowledge type deal?
Book of dust by Phillip pullman paints an excellent picture of how universities get caught up between a number of different interests and its a hard path to tread to keep everyone happy. Guess that’s what I’m trying to say, it’s the competing and monied interests that cause the problems, and get the wrong person at the top and all kinds of things go wrong?

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

Yes, Its about the situation in Alexandria in the early fifth century, during the conflict between traditional Paganism and militant Christianity. It centres around the life of HYPATIA (born c. 350–370; died 415 AD)who was a renowned neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician.
During this ‘conflict’ the great Library/Museum was severely but not terminally damaged.

(The film was a financial flop, but so what!)

R Wright
R Wright
2 years ago

While not a very good film and somewhat ahistorical I still enjoyed it because very little media focuses on the later Roman Empire which I am a sucker for

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  R Wright

Sorry for the slow reply but I initially missed your comment.
I completely agree, it wasn’t brilliant, but at leat it was an attempt to cover this much neglected, yet fascinating period!
(The Roman Army was still wearing First century kit, as you probably noticed!)

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  R Wright

Sorry for the slow reply but I initially missed your comment.
I completely agree, it wasn’t brilliant, but at leat it was an attempt to cover this much neglected, yet fascinating period!
(The Roman Army was still wearing First century kit, as you probably noticed!)

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Hello, no I haven’t do you recommend it?

R Wright
R Wright
2 years ago

While not a very good film and somewhat ahistorical I still enjoyed it because very little media focuses on the later Roman Empire which I am a sucker for

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

Just so you know, taxes on big oil are paid by oil consumers. That is, you and me.

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Right mate I get you. But its a bit disingenuous to pitch the students at Cambridge who are debating whether to levy reparations from oil profits as all out enemies and BETRAYERS of the working class. If say the debate was shall we tax the people directly to pay reparations that might have been a bit closer the mark. But still stretching it. Let’s say OK they do want to tax big oil and big oil then hike their price to make up for it. OK so that tax who is it passed on to? EVERYONE. Not just the working class. If anything this would hurt business more than anything. So is it an assault on business then? No, it’s neither. Its tenuous to call it either. I fail to see how a Cambridge debate that ended in an idea to tax big oil amounts to an all out assault on the working class specifically. Plus taxing it wouldn’t necessarily get passed on as increase, the higher they put their prices the more profit they would make and therefore the more tax they would have to pay. So it might not necessarily result in what you say. This article pitches the universities against the working class in a really weird and messed up way. It makes it look like universities are the deliberate cause of these problems when actually they are also the victims of being shredded apart by multi national corporate interests. And no one can see it or see the value of them. We might as well jump over the cliff now.

si mclardy
si mclardy
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

I missed the debate at cambridge to tax the oil companies, but here in the USA it does seem like the universities are producing alot of chiefs and no Indians.

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago
Reply to  si mclardy

I have to say I’m not clued up on American Universities, I get you. We have a problem with graduates not finding jobs too and our education system in general has gone down hill, so we do have problems, just not sure that it’s a class war problem really, especially students v the working class I think that’s bordering on ridiculous, personally.

Andrew F
Andrew F
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

I think you don’t appreciate that so many students taking certain political positions like open borders, pro BLM, pro green policies are, effectively, in class war with Western working class.
Problem is that being able to complete proper degree course requires IQ of at least 115.
Therefore idea that 50% of population can study at degree level is nonsense.
Probably about 25% max.
So we ended up with proliferation of courses in idiocy subjects like gender studies, African studies etc.
In London many beer bars are staffed by graduates of such courses.

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew F

Go check out the post for the result of the latest Cambridge debate. Not ‘so many students’ taking those positions you describe. In fact they are in the minority.
You’re kind of contradicting yourself. More people have started going to university so the working class representation will have gone up. So working class interests would be better represented and therefore have more protection.
The explosion in graduates is separate debate to an extent. As is what subjects should be offered. If you read my posts above I recognise both these issues.
If the press start pitching the universities as working class enemies, the first universities to be targeted would be the most affluent ones. As this one targets Cambridge. Now what I’m trying to say is this is a dangerous road to go down. Especially in the times we’re heading into. If the press amped this up and directed the anger of working class people suffering exploding bills and blackouts at universities that have absolutely nothing to do with these issues, what do you think would happen? Nothing good, I can tell you. These universities at the top produce some great minds, we need these people, there is little to no evidence that these students would collectively and deliberately start a class war especially using the oil reparations debate as an example, this has no logic attached to it what so ever. Dangerous. Propaganda.

Last edited 2 years ago by B Emery
B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew F

Go check out the post for the result of the latest Cambridge debate. Not ‘so many students’ taking those positions you describe. In fact they are in the minority.
You’re kind of contradicting yourself. More people have started going to university so the working class representation will have gone up. So working class interests would be better represented and therefore have more protection.
The explosion in graduates is separate debate to an extent. As is what subjects should be offered. If you read my posts above I recognise both these issues.
If the press start pitching the universities as working class enemies, the first universities to be targeted would be the most affluent ones. As this one targets Cambridge. Now what I’m trying to say is this is a dangerous road to go down. Especially in the times we’re heading into. If the press amped this up and directed the anger of working class people suffering exploding bills and blackouts at universities that have absolutely nothing to do with these issues, what do you think would happen? Nothing good, I can tell you. These universities at the top produce some great minds, we need these people, there is little to no evidence that these students would collectively and deliberately start a class war especially using the oil reparations debate as an example, this has no logic attached to it what so ever. Dangerous. Propaganda.

Last edited 2 years ago by B Emery
Andrew F
Andrew F
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

I think you don’t appreciate that so many students taking certain political positions like open borders, pro BLM, pro green policies are, effectively, in class war with Western working class.
Problem is that being able to complete proper degree course requires IQ of at least 115.
Therefore idea that 50% of population can study at degree level is nonsense.
Probably about 25% max.
So we ended up with proliferation of courses in idiocy subjects like gender studies, African studies etc.
In London many beer bars are staffed by graduates of such courses.

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago
Reply to  si mclardy

I have to say I’m not clued up on American Universities, I get you. We have a problem with graduates not finding jobs too and our education system in general has gone down hill, so we do have problems, just not sure that it’s a class war problem really, especially students v the working class I think that’s bordering on ridiculous, personally.

si mclardy
si mclardy
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

I missed the debate at cambridge to tax the oil companies, but here in the USA it does seem like the universities are producing alot of chiefs and no Indians.

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Right mate I get you. But its a bit disingenuous to pitch the students at Cambridge who are debating whether to levy reparations from oil profits as all out enemies and BETRAYERS of the working class. If say the debate was shall we tax the people directly to pay reparations that might have been a bit closer the mark. But still stretching it. Let’s say OK they do want to tax big oil and big oil then hike their price to make up for it. OK so that tax who is it passed on to? EVERYONE. Not just the working class. If anything this would hurt business more than anything. So is it an assault on business then? No, it’s neither. Its tenuous to call it either. I fail to see how a Cambridge debate that ended in an idea to tax big oil amounts to an all out assault on the working class specifically. Plus taxing it wouldn’t necessarily get passed on as increase, the higher they put their prices the more profit they would make and therefore the more tax they would have to pay. So it might not necessarily result in what you say. This article pitches the universities against the working class in a really weird and messed up way. It makes it look like universities are the deliberate cause of these problems when actually they are also the victims of being shredded apart by multi national corporate interests. And no one can see it or see the value of them. We might as well jump over the cliff now.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

Miss Emery have you seen the 2009 film AGORA starring Rachel Weisz?

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
2 years ago
Reply to  B Emery

Just so you know, taxes on big oil are paid by oil consumers. That is, you and me.

B Emery
B Emery
2 years ago

Well I don’t know what to make of this one.
First let me clear something up because there is some confusion over these reparations. The reparations are supposed to come from the profits of big oil companies. Quote:
Leaders of island nations have already called on countries to pay for climate reparations by taxing big oil. Oil industry lobbyists are likely to try to water down any agreements to this effect.
Source: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Hundreds-Of-Fossil-Fuel-Lobbyist-To-Attend-COP27.html
So the students are voting to take on big oil. Big Oil, not the working classes. Sounds fair to me, the oil companies have caused all kinds of awful pollution in developing countries, sounds fair they should pay to clean it up. Big oil is a friend of big oil, not the people, so go for it Cambridge kids.
Just for clarification I haven’t been to university.
Occupy was also a student movement against big banking, good on this lot too.
I found this article very hard to follow to be honest, I don’t think students are enemies or that they have ‘betrayed’ the working class. We have all been betrayed by big oil, big pharma, big banking. Not students. In the UK when a student protest kicks off, like occupy, normally the press go round, deride the kids for their middle England origins, everyone ignores them until they get bored and then it disappears ready for the next one. I honestly can’t think of student protest in the UK over the last 20 years where that hasn’t been the case, or of a student movement that actually produced a major change in government policy. And yes students go on to do all types of jobs but look at our mps, we have quite a rare mix! Universities will always be at the forefront for new thinking, that’s kind of the point of them, whether that thinking is good or not, that’s the point of the debates at Cambridge, to draw these issues out and find the floors in new thinking. Or at least I think it is, closest I can get is watching on you tube, rees mogg did one for brexit that was excellent. They will also always be targets for people with money to push their own agendas, that is the problem if anything, that is up to the university to maintain balance, I understand some are better at this than others. Just started reading burning the books by Richard Ovenden of the bodleian library quote:
‘The sound of a warning vibrates through this book. Ovenden sets us straight about the great library of Alexandria: it was not destroyed by fire, but rather neglect. He calls it a “cautionary tale of the danger of creeping decline, through the underfunding, low prioritisation and general disregard for the institutions that preserve and share knowledge”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/10/burning-the-books-by-richard-ovenden-review-knowledge-under-attack
Its very dangerous to pitch these institutions as enemies of the working class, they are important, part of our history. Richard Ovenden I believe the book says went to a state grammar school and is a champion for grammar schools and of providing opportunity for less privileged kids. Not a working class enemy then.
As far as I can tell in the press there’s quite a ruckas at some universities trying to grapple with these new ideas, not ALL the students get sucked into the latest trendy thinking.
There was an article a while ago bashing kwasi and graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, plenty joined in, I know most of these kids are privileged right, but the only reason they are so well educated is because they are privileged! I slept better with rees mogg as business secretary because I knew he had been very well educated. I was genuinely excited about Kwasi as chancellor when he said they wouldn’t hike corporation tax I nearly fell off my chair I was like finally, here’s a really clever bloke that understands, praise the Lord we might just make it. It wasn’t students or graduates from any one university that stopped this, that had very little if nothing to with it. We really need to be careful painting universities as the root of all evil and pitching them as enemies of the working class. Division again.
So no, the students are not ‘coming’ for the working class, they will be lucky to get the chance anyway, the energy crisis is coming for everyone.
Another class war headline, disappointing.

Last edited 2 years ago by B Emery