“the Little Circle of Manchester elites believed that the power of democracy, and even of free expression, should be limited to a small elect who were educated and intelligent enough to be entrusted with such power.“
The left never changes – “you deplorables shut up and listen while we tell you what’s good for you.”
The “Little Circle of Manchester” syndrome is alive and cloying to this day, exemplified by those in charge at the Whitworth Art Gallery who’ve created something called the Office of Arte Ùtil (the pseuds) to “use art for positive social change”.
I think it’s wrong to characterise them as evil, something they’d be more likely to think about those who don’t subscribe to their world view.
I’d call them misguided, and unaware of the damage they’re doing to the institutions they’ve wheedled their way into.
On the one hand, it’s perfectly true that certain groups in society were woefully under-represented in galleries and making provision for artists with something to contribute from any background can’t be argued against.
What can, and should be disputed at every available opportunity is the belief that art should be used for didactic social purposes. It’s quite simply to fall way short of understanding what great art is about – a never-ending reaching for the human soul at any time in history. It’s telling that they fail to understand that.
I think it’s wrong to characterise them as evil, something they’d be more likely to think about those who don’t subscribe to their world view.
I’d call them misguided, and unaware of the damage they’re doing to the institutions they’ve wheedled their way into.
On the one hand, it’s perfectly true that certain groups in society were woefully under-represented in galleries and making provision for artists with something to contribute from any background can’t be argued against.
What can, and should be disputed at every available opportunity is the belief that art should be used for didactic social purposes. It’s quite simply to fall way short of understanding what great art is about – a never-ending reaching for the human soul at any time in history. It’s telling that they fail to understand that.
That’s a bit simplistic. That was the standard view of democracy back then, found in such liberal luminaries as John Stuart Mill. Even today all sides tend to condemn the “masses”when they don’t deliver the “correct” results. How do you think the most militant Brexiteers would have reacted if Remain had one? Probably quite like militant Remainers did react, complaining that the people were duped, etc
No doubt true. We all think we’re right, but conservatives tend to empirical thinking. Their guiding star is “does it work?”
There can’t be much disputing that progressives tend to the theoretical. From Marxism to critical theory, high flown complex theories are applied to social issues. The difficulty understanding the theory is part of the attraction to its proponents, automatically making them part of an elite. The people subjected to the theory are reduced to numbers and the results are always catastrophic for them.
No doubt there are lots of examples where this doesn’t apply but, for me, it holds true as a rule of thumb.
No doubt true. We all think we’re right, but conservatives tend to empirical thinking. Their guiding star is “does it work?”
There can’t be much disputing that progressives tend to the theoretical. From Marxism to critical theory, high flown complex theories are applied to social issues. The difficulty understanding the theory is part of the attraction to its proponents, automatically making them part of an elite. The people subjected to the theory are reduced to numbers and the results are always catastrophic for them.
No doubt there are lots of examples where this doesn’t apply but, for me, it holds true as a rule of thumb.
The degree of vileness of any person or institution is measurable by the degree of stridency of their sanctimony. In India, the usurious money lenders are the most overtly religious and by far the most preachy. In the United States, the New York Times and the WaPo are the greatest enablers of the cancel culture while they view the entire world through their biased prisms. Journalism is long dead for these people – it’s simply a function of driving their agenda, no matter how disingenuously.
Yes, the hypocrisy is toe-curling; but then again, is being eligible to vote on the basis of nothing more than the attainment of a certain age…on what is prudent sovereign treasury management and prudent social / community policies…wise and in the best interests of society generally? Particularly when in certain parts the voting licence is given at age 16?
Just because something happens, doesn’t make it right! Quite a few murders take place (even in some places sanctioned by the legal system), does that make it right? I think not!
Once we reach the culmination of our Idiocracy, we might be able to answer that question. Who knows? Perhaps the elite have always been right in that the masses are simply incapable of self government. We’ll see.
Just because something happens, doesn’t make it right! Quite a few murders take place (even in some places sanctioned by the legal system), does that make it right? I think not!
Once we reach the culmination of our Idiocracy, we might be able to answer that question. Who knows? Perhaps the elite have always been right in that the masses are simply incapable of self government. We’ll see.
The “Little Circle of Manchester” syndrome is alive and cloying to this day, exemplified by those in charge at the Whitworth Art Gallery who’ve created something called the Office of Arte Ùtil (the pseuds) to “use art for positive social change”.
That’s a bit simplistic. That was the standard view of democracy back then, found in such liberal luminaries as John Stuart Mill. Even today all sides tend to condemn the “masses”when they don’t deliver the “correct” results. How do you think the most militant Brexiteers would have reacted if Remain had one? Probably quite like militant Remainers did react, complaining that the people were duped, etc
The degree of vileness of any person or institution is measurable by the degree of stridency of their sanctimony. In India, the usurious money lenders are the most overtly religious and by far the most preachy. In the United States, the New York Times and the WaPo are the greatest enablers of the cancel culture while they view the entire world through their biased prisms. Journalism is long dead for these people – it’s simply a function of driving their agenda, no matter how disingenuously.
Yes, the hypocrisy is toe-curling; but then again, is being eligible to vote on the basis of nothing more than the attainment of a certain age…on what is prudent sovereign treasury management and prudent social / community policies…wise and in the best interests of society generally? Particularly when in certain parts the voting licence is given at age 16?
Martin Bollis
1 year ago
“the Little Circle of Manchester elites believed that the power of democracy, and even of free expression, should be limited to a small elect who were educated and intelligent enough to be entrusted with such power.“
The left never changes – “you deplorables shut up and listen while we tell you what’s good for you.”
Last edited 1 year ago by Martin Bollis
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago
Next question: why has the Guardian shilled all these years for the Bolsheviks and Maoism, given that the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China were the two biggest and cruelest slave states in history?
Inquiring minds would like to know. Maybe Guardian editor Katharine Viner could help us there.
When Malcom Muggeridge revealed the mass murder caused by famine in the Ukraine in the 1930s he was sacked by The Guardian.
Orwell in his various essays describes the character of the middle class left Wing .In his essay ” Limits to Pessimism ” he says “the shallow self righteousness of the left wing intelligentia”. Orwell’s essay ” The lion and Unicorn ” describe the left wing middle class very well.
The LWMC
“Their negative, querulous attitude
Lack of constructive suggestions
Irresponsible carping
Live in a world of ideas with little contact with physical reality
Flabby pacifists up to 1935.Shrieked fro war 1935 -39 and cooled off when war started
Anti fascist during Spanish Civil war defeatist now
Severance from the common culture of the country
Take their cookery from Paris opinion from Moscow
Ashamed of their own nationality
Consider disgraceful about being English about being English. Snigger at every English institution from horse racing to suet puddings
All through the critical years chipping away at English moral, quasi pacifist, pro Moscow and anti British
Purely negative creatures.”
This is only one essy from 1940, there are far more with similar comments.
I’ve come across that mindset multiple times during my life. Really beggars belief. One such claimed that the caste system in India had been introduced by the English as they were so “class obsessed”. I also found they were often snobs who actively despised the (white) working class.
Question them and they fall apart because their knowledge and understanding is makes a shallow puddle seem deep.
I’ve come across that mindset multiple times during my life. Really beggars belief. One such claimed that the caste system in India had been introduced by the English as they were so “class obsessed”. I also found they were often snobs who actively despised the (white) working class.
Question them and they fall apart because their knowledge and understanding is makes a shallow puddle seem deep.
When Malcom Muggeridge revealed the mass murder caused by famine in the Ukraine in the 1930s he was sacked by The Guardian.
Orwell in his various essays describes the character of the middle class left Wing .In his essay ” Limits to Pessimism ” he says “the shallow self righteousness of the left wing intelligentia”. Orwell’s essay ” The lion and Unicorn ” describe the left wing middle class very well.
The LWMC
“Their negative, querulous attitude
Lack of constructive suggestions
Irresponsible carping
Live in a world of ideas with little contact with physical reality
Flabby pacifists up to 1935.Shrieked fro war 1935 -39 and cooled off when war started
Anti fascist during Spanish Civil war defeatist now
Severance from the common culture of the country
Take their cookery from Paris opinion from Moscow
Ashamed of their own nationality
Consider disgraceful about being English about being English. Snigger at every English institution from horse racing to suet puddings
All through the critical years chipping away at English moral, quasi pacifist, pro Moscow and anti British
Purely negative creatures.”
This is only one essy from 1940, there are far more with similar comments.
‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, doncha know’?
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago
Next question: why has the Guardian shilled all these years for the Bolsheviks and Maoism, given that the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China were the two biggest and cruelest slave states in history?
Inquiring minds would like to know. Maybe Guardian editor Katharine Viner could help us there.
Peter B
1 year ago
The Guardian today is no more responsible for things that happened 180 years ago than any of us are for the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s. In just the same way that children are not – and should not be – responsible for the decisions and any debts of their parents. The whole concept of hereditary guilt is just wrong. As is punishing a group of people for the actions of individuals (group punishment).
English law has always been quite clear about these matters. We need to fight back against ignorant and misguided people spreading this nonsense.
The only issue I have with the Guardian here is their double standards. If they support hereditary guilt and group punishment (they don’t seem particularly keen on older white men – but I’m not letting it bother me) they can’t be surprised if they eventually get judged against the same “standard”.
I totally agree with you about inherted sins, but, when I first read about the possible slavery links of the Guardian founder, I did rather think “ha, hoisted by your own petard”, and endulged in a little schadenfreude (my bad, I know).
I agree, these African leaders must be considered the first cause. We don’t know what might have happened if said leaders had refused to sell people; it’s possible that the Europeans would have done their own raiding and it’s also possible that they would have just said “dash it all, chaps, let’s go home”, and sailed off into the sunset.
That was my first thought, but there’s no accounting for what people will do for money; they might have hired locals to do the dirty work. But we’ll never know.
That was my first thought, but there’s no accounting for what people will do for money; they might have hired locals to do the dirty work. But we’ll never know.
Hear hear! But why is this not said out loud in the media? And why did Africans not invade, colonise and enslave Europeans? We all know the answer, of course… but no one has the backbone, guts and courage to say so?
Actually northern Africans (Algiers) did capture Christian Slaves(European) in the 18th/19th century… the bombardment of Algiers was a famous naval battle when lord Exmouth forced the Bey to release them
Yes, This slave-trade is often forgotten, along with the East African trade into the Middle East and Zanzibar. There were whole villages on the south west coast of England and in Ireland. Robert Davis reckoned that something like one million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries. Small compared with the Atlantic trade, but still significant. In Ireland the little harbour village of Baltimore, County Cork was attacked and. almost all the villagers were taken to a life of slavery in North Africa.
Some historians estimate as many as 17 million people were enslaved on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and c5 million African slaves were transported by Arab slave traders to other parts of the world between 1500 and 1900.
Arab slave traders raided Iceland and eastern Europe for ‘merchandise’; it’s on account of the captured and sold Slavs that we have the word slave. But what I miss in all this hubbub is that it was the British that ended a global curse that had existed as long as humanity.
Arab slave traders raided Iceland and eastern Europe for ‘merchandise’; it’s on account of the captured and sold Slavs that we have the word slave. But what I miss in all this hubbub is that it was the British that ended a global curse that had existed as long as humanity.
Yes, This slave-trade is often forgotten, along with the East African trade into the Middle East and Zanzibar. There were whole villages on the south west coast of England and in Ireland. Robert Davis reckoned that something like one million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries. Small compared with the Atlantic trade, but still significant. In Ireland the little harbour village of Baltimore, County Cork was attacked and. almost all the villagers were taken to a life of slavery in North Africa.
Some historians estimate as many as 17 million people were enslaved on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and c5 million African slaves were transported by Arab slave traders to other parts of the world between 1500 and 1900.
I think your question is an important one but don’t think it requires great courage to answer – Technology – from transport to weapons to agricultural cultivation (the latter dependent on the inescapable facts of geography)
And why did Africans not invade, colonise and enslave Europeans?
Oh, but they did, as @Andrew Wise has pointed out. And ‘everyone’ with a history book has known it. But in today’s ‘progressive’ circles, morality is wholly rigged against the Golden Rule and the Bible and the Europeans which promoted it. Oh, and Americans too.
Thomas Sowell’s book Conquest and Culture is quite good on this. Societies with active trading networks tend to develop faster than those without. Cross fertilisation of ideas, rudimentary counting, etc all being necessary for trade.
Trade involves transport of goods and the cheapest way of doing that is via water. Places with long, navigable rivers, deep into their interior, have tended to develop faster. Africa has relatively few.
For that matter, now that the world is 150+ years beyond this subject, why is the continent of Africa still living in the 19th century? Their main product produced continues to be extreme poverty.
Actually northern Africans (Algiers) did capture Christian Slaves(European) in the 18th/19th century… the bombardment of Algiers was a famous naval battle when lord Exmouth forced the Bey to release them
I think your question is an important one but don’t think it requires great courage to answer – Technology – from transport to weapons to agricultural cultivation (the latter dependent on the inescapable facts of geography)
And why did Africans not invade, colonise and enslave Europeans?
Oh, but they did, as @Andrew Wise has pointed out. And ‘everyone’ with a history book has known it. But in today’s ‘progressive’ circles, morality is wholly rigged against the Golden Rule and the Bible and the Europeans which promoted it. Oh, and Americans too.
Thomas Sowell’s book Conquest and Culture is quite good on this. Societies with active trading networks tend to develop faster than those without. Cross fertilisation of ideas, rudimentary counting, etc all being necessary for trade.
Trade involves transport of goods and the cheapest way of doing that is via water. Places with long, navigable rivers, deep into their interior, have tended to develop faster. Africa has relatively few.
For that matter, now that the world is 150+ years beyond this subject, why is the continent of Africa still living in the 19th century? Their main product produced continues to be extreme poverty.
I agree, these African leaders must be considered the first cause. We don’t know what might have happened if said leaders had refused to sell people; it’s possible that the Europeans would have done their own raiding and it’s also possible that they would have just said “dash it all, chaps, let’s go home”, and sailed off into the sunset.
Hear hear! But why is this not said out loud in the media? And why did Africans not invade, colonise and enslave Europeans? We all know the answer, of course… but no one has the backbone, guts and courage to say so?
Every anniversary of VE Day, without fail, some Guardian hack will pen an article insisting that anyone who shows any pride in Britain’s wartime past is jingoistic and somehow laying claim to glories that belonged to another generation. Yet many of those authors who push such miserabilist bilge, also insist we should all shoulder the guilt for anything bad done by this country in its imperial past.
Admiration for heroes in the comparatively recent past is backwards looking, yet we’re somehow on the hook for reparations to the colonised 200 years later? It doesn’t seem a consistent position.
Why should the statute of limitations for guilt should run so much longer than that of glory?
Pretty well all the ‘older white men’ in my part of North London are avid readers of the Guardian. The air is full of their mating calls: ‘The Gawdian says …’, ‘did you say that thing in today’s Gawdian?’ Its basic appeal is that it tells them that their behaviour doesn’t matter so long as they have the right opinions.
“The whole concept of hereditary guilt is just wrong.” Of course but it exists in several cultures such as in Pakistan and India where bonded labour still immiserates the lives of well over a million men, women and children working off the debts – but never ever managing to do so – of previous generations. This despite the fact that the practice has been supposedly outlawed.
I totally agree with you about inherted sins, but, when I first read about the possible slavery links of the Guardian founder, I did rather think “ha, hoisted by your own petard”, and endulged in a little schadenfreude (my bad, I know).
Every anniversary of VE Day, without fail, some Guardian hack will pen an article insisting that anyone who shows any pride in Britain’s wartime past is jingoistic and somehow laying claim to glories that belonged to another generation. Yet many of those authors who push such miserabilist bilge, also insist we should all shoulder the guilt for anything bad done by this country in its imperial past.
Admiration for heroes in the comparatively recent past is backwards looking, yet we’re somehow on the hook for reparations to the colonised 200 years later? It doesn’t seem a consistent position.
Why should the statute of limitations for guilt should run so much longer than that of glory?
Pretty well all the ‘older white men’ in my part of North London are avid readers of the Guardian. The air is full of their mating calls: ‘The Gawdian says …’, ‘did you say that thing in today’s Gawdian?’ Its basic appeal is that it tells them that their behaviour doesn’t matter so long as they have the right opinions.
“The whole concept of hereditary guilt is just wrong.” Of course but it exists in several cultures such as in Pakistan and India where bonded labour still immiserates the lives of well over a million men, women and children working off the debts – but never ever managing to do so – of previous generations. This despite the fact that the practice has been supposedly outlawed.
Peter B
1 year ago
The Guardian today is no more responsible for things that happened 180 years ago than any of us are for the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s. In just the same way that children are not – and should not be – responsible for the decisions and any debts of their parents. The whole concept of hereditary guilt is just wrong. As is punishing a group of people for the actions of individuals (group punishment).
English law has always been quite clear about these matters. We need to fight back against ignorant and misguided people spreading this nonsense.
The only issue I have with the Guardian here is their double standards. If they support hereditary guilt and group punishment (they don’t seem particularly keen on older white men – but I’m not letting it bother me) they can’t be surprised if they eventually get judged against the same “standard”.
John Le Huquet
1 year ago
The Guardian has form on not reporting on matters that dont fit in to their worldview. They said very little about the sexual exploitation of young white girls by predominantly men of Pakistani heritage. Had it been the other way round, white men exploiting young Asian girls, the paper would have gone into meltdown.
The child exploitation rings were not the result of “men”.
You might as well say they were the result of “humans”! Anyone suggesting that such crimes should be blamed on an entire gender, clearly has bigotry issues of their own & is in no position to correct someone else.
So, yes, misandry is an accurate description of this mindset.
More significant is the ideological position of these paedophile rings. The male & female supporters of this ideology maintain that Mohammed, who married a 61/2 to 7yr old little girl (Aisha), is the perfect moral example, so of course, these paedophile rings were not paedophile at all in their view. Now THAT is a serious problem.
When a Tory politician dared to point this out a few years ago he was simply sacked………
The child exploitation rings were not the result of “men”.
You might as well say they were the result of “humans”! Anyone suggesting that such crimes should be blamed on an entire gender, clearly has bigotry issues of their own & is in no position to correct someone else.
So, yes, misandry is an accurate description of this mindset.
More significant is the ideological position of these paedophile rings. The male & female supporters of this ideology maintain that Mohammed, who married a 61/2 to 7yr old little girl (Aisha), is the perfect moral example, so of course, these paedophile rings were not paedophile at all in their view. Now THAT is a serious problem.
When a Tory politician dared to point this out a few years ago he was simply sacked………
The Guardian has form on not reporting on matters that dont fit in to their worldview. They said very little about the sexual exploitation of young white girls by predominantly men of Pakistani heritage. Had it been the other way round, white men exploiting young Asian girls, the paper would have gone into meltdown.
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago
There simply isn’t room to list all the Guardian’s hypocrisies.
But just a flavour:
John Edward Taylor, the founder, witnessed the “Peterloo massacre”, and the papers current incarnation used the 200th anniversary of Peterloo to lay claim to the heritage of those who’d died in the name of “Democracy, liberty and fraternity”. Articles abounded, with the great and good of the G writing staff all wishing to associate themselves with the noble aims of the Perterloo “martyrs”, whilst at the very same moment they were explicitly engaged in a campaign to disenfranchise millions of ordinary voters who’d voted for Brexit.
The arguments that the Guardian’s “Peoples’ Ref” devotees used – that the “little people” were too ill-informed, too easily swayed by lies etc, were precisely the same arguments that had previously been used against universal suffrage: That working class people, or women, were not informed enough, not educated enough, not intellectually robust enough, to deserve the vote.
The hypocrisy was simply breath-taking. – Though utterly unsurprising.
Guardian Media Group, when it sold its 50% stake in Auto Trader to Apax Partners in 2008, used a tax-exempt shell company in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying corporation tax. GMG realised over £300 million in profit on that sale – yet paid not a sou in Corporation tax. This was all perfectly legal.
Over the years Guardian Media Group has invested hundreds of millions in offshore hedge funds. Keeping it under the radar and beyond the grasp of HMRC. Again, all perfectly legal.
Yet the Guardian loves nothing more than to thunder its disapproval of large multinationals – Starbucks, Apple, Vodafone etc – and the unnamed “super-rich” for not “paying their fair share.” Guardian hacks regularly get their knickers in a bunch over such tax avoidance strategies – though oddly never train their guns on their employers. Why do multinationals warrant such opprobrium whilst GMG escape any such criticism?
Any time a Guardian op-ed references the Daily Mail, it is a cast-iron certainty that the article – not to mention several dozen posters – will bring up the 1930’s Daily Mail “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” headline – as proof that the Mail is fascistic. It gets boring to point this out – particularly as I’m not a Mail reader myself – the stupid unthinking hypocrisy of Guardian posters imagining that their paper of choice is all things good and the Daily Mail is all bad.
The DM did indeed briefly support the British Union of Fascists, up until Kristallnacht, at which point they withdrew any such support and became virulently anti-fascist. The Guardian, on the other hand, was staunchly pro-Eugenics and supported the idea for a very long time after most civilised people had recognised it as an abomination.
If they’re going to insult a newspaper for what they endorsed 80+ years ago, they might want to pick their targets more carefully, lest they shoot themselves in the foot.
The Guardian has championed some indefensible causes in its past, yet always puts out the idea that they occupy the moral high ground. They lambasted any paper that they considered was not being anti-Trump enough, so I always like to remind them of Op-Ed praise they’ve previously heaped on other nationalists in their time… “Mr Ceausescu, has shown immense courage in asserting Romania’s independence from the Russians and encouraging Romania’s nationalism” … for instance!
The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there – and those who insist on judging the past by the acceptable norms of C21st activism, only make themselves look ignorant and foolish, particularly given the propensity of Guardian editorials to indulge in “Offence Archaeology” – to uncover minor indiscretions of public figures from 20 or 30 years ago and then use them to hound that person out of office – whilst at the same time giving a free pass to anyone from their own side of the political aisle. Charges of bullying against Bercow and Meghan Markle are airily dismissed, whilst similar charges are mercilessly pursued against Priti Patel and Dominic Raab.
The Guardian is RELENTLESSLY negative – about pretty much everything. Over the last 15 years it has got markedly worse. It was always sanctimonious but it at least tried to incorporate a broader spectrum of ideas and didn’t wrap itself in the flag of liberal victimhood. (I even remember when it occasionally published ‘positive’ stories – which seems a very long time ago now).
Any objectivity has vanished. Any hope has been dashed that a Guardian editorial might ever assess a policy on its merits, and stop judging a policy, an action, a statement based solely on who has espoused it and what tribe they belong to. Whether that be a political tribe or any of the other boxes into which “Liberals” seek to place us in their ‘hierarchy of victim-status’.
Their ongoing narrative is wholly at odds with reality. The Guardian has a dystopian worldview and narrative predicated on catastrophism – it seems almost as though they are willing such a future into existence.
The Guardian proudly trumpets “Comment is free… but facts are sacred”. Yet facts are so routinely ignored in favour of their preferred narrative that I wonder how the Editors still put out CP Scott’s dictum every day with a straight face.
This is an incredibly detailed indictment of the failings of the present day Guardian, and you include factual detail to support your argument. I thank-you for this reasoned and calm post.
This is an incredibly detailed indictment of the failings of the present day Guardian, and you include factual detail to support your argument. I thank-you for this reasoned and calm post.
There simply isn’t room to list all the Guardian’s hypocrisies.
But just a flavour:
John Edward Taylor, the founder, witnessed the “Peterloo massacre”, and the papers current incarnation used the 200th anniversary of Peterloo to lay claim to the heritage of those who’d died in the name of “Democracy, liberty and fraternity”. Articles abounded, with the great and good of the G writing staff all wishing to associate themselves with the noble aims of the Perterloo “martyrs”, whilst at the very same moment they were explicitly engaged in a campaign to disenfranchise millions of ordinary voters who’d voted for Brexit.
The arguments that the Guardian’s “Peoples’ Ref” devotees used – that the “little people” were too ill-informed, too easily swayed by lies etc, were precisely the same arguments that had previously been used against universal suffrage: That working class people, or women, were not informed enough, not educated enough, not intellectually robust enough, to deserve the vote.
The hypocrisy was simply breath-taking. – Though utterly unsurprising.
Guardian Media Group, when it sold its 50% stake in Auto Trader to Apax Partners in 2008, used a tax-exempt shell company in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying corporation tax. GMG realised over £300 million in profit on that sale – yet paid not a sou in Corporation tax. This was all perfectly legal.
Over the years Guardian Media Group has invested hundreds of millions in offshore hedge funds. Keeping it under the radar and beyond the grasp of HMRC. Again, all perfectly legal.
Yet the Guardian loves nothing more than to thunder its disapproval of large multinationals – Starbucks, Apple, Vodafone etc – and the unnamed “super-rich” for not “paying their fair share.” Guardian hacks regularly get their knickers in a bunch over such tax avoidance strategies – though oddly never train their guns on their employers. Why do multinationals warrant such opprobrium whilst GMG escape any such criticism?
Any time a Guardian op-ed references the Daily Mail, it is a cast-iron certainty that the article – not to mention several dozen posters – will bring up the 1930’s Daily Mail “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” headline – as proof that the Mail is fascistic. It gets boring to point this out – particularly as I’m not a Mail reader myself – the stupid unthinking hypocrisy of Guardian posters imagining that their paper of choice is all things good and the Daily Mail is all bad.
The DM did indeed briefly support the British Union of Fascists, up until Kristallnacht, at which point they withdrew any such support and became virulently anti-fascist. The Guardian, on the other hand, was staunchly pro-Eugenics and supported the idea for a very long time after most civilised people had recognised it as an abomination.
If they’re going to insult a newspaper for what they endorsed 80+ years ago, they might want to pick their targets more carefully, lest they shoot themselves in the foot.
The Guardian has championed some indefensible causes in its past, yet always puts out the idea that they occupy the moral high ground. They lambasted any paper that they considered was not being anti-Trump enough, so I always like to remind them of Op-Ed praise they’ve previously heaped on other nationalists in their time… “Mr Ceausescu, has shown immense courage in asserting Romania’s independence from the Russians and encouraging Romania’s nationalism” … for instance!
The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there – and those who insist on judging the past by the acceptable norms of C21st activism, only make themselves look ignorant and foolish, particularly given the propensity of Guardian editorials to indulge in “Offence Archaeology” – to uncover minor indiscretions of public figures from 20 or 30 years ago and then use them to hound that person out of office – whilst at the same time giving a free pass to anyone from their own side of the political aisle. Charges of bullying against Bercow and Meghan Markle are airily dismissed, whilst similar charges are mercilessly pursued against Priti Patel and Dominic Raab.
The Guardian is RELENTLESSLY negative – about pretty much everything. Over the last 15 years it has got markedly worse. It was always sanctimonious but it at least tried to incorporate a broader spectrum of ideas and didn’t wrap itself in the flag of liberal victimhood. (I even remember when it occasionally published ‘positive’ stories – which seems a very long time ago now).
Any objectivity has vanished. Any hope has been dashed that a Guardian editorial might ever assess a policy on its merits, and stop judging a policy, an action, a statement based solely on who has espoused it and what tribe they belong to. Whether that be a political tribe or any of the other boxes into which “Liberals” seek to place us in their ‘hierarchy of victim-status’.
Their ongoing narrative is wholly at odds with reality. The Guardian has a dystopian worldview and narrative predicated on catastrophism – it seems almost as though they are willing such a future into existence.
The Guardian proudly trumpets “Comment is free… but facts are sacred”. Yet facts are so routinely ignored in favour of their preferred narrative that I wonder how the Editors still put out CP Scott’s dictum every day with a straight face.
Last edited 1 year ago by Paddy Taylor
Derek Smith
1 year ago
Unserious racial grifters revealed to be unserious by serious racial grifters.
The Guardian is learning that if you suck up to bullies, it doesn’t make them leave you alone, it encourages them to see you as weak.
Roddy Campbell
1 year ago
It’s always a pleasure watching the revolution eating it’s children.
Roddy Campbell
1 year ago
It’s always a pleasure watching the revolution eating it’s children.
Andrew Horsman
1 year ago
It’s all very, very sad. The Guardian was once the home of serious, analytical, investigative journalism. It wouldn’t always get everything right, and yes it has always leaned leftwards. But at least it tried to be truthful. Now it’s trapped in corporate-sponsored, self-destructive narratives around white privilege, net zero, vaccine efficacy, safe spaces, gender ideology and all the rest of it that actively deny the value of freedom of expression of diverse and conflicting views and opinions in the pursuit of truth, usually in the name of “keeping everyone safe” or “preventing harm”.
They are suffocating the liberal democracy which their predecessors helped to found, from within. The tragedy is that the leadership at the Guardian, and other such formerly broadly liberal institutions, just cannot see it for what it is. They cannot perceive the gross harms that they are doing. From the outside, it is easy to see the inevitability of their disordered, bleak nihilism, grounded in the negative emotions of guilt, envy, and resentment, turning in on itself, as it has on historical slavery. But from the inside, it just doesn’t look like that.
So forgive them, for they know not what they do. They are not bad people. Those of us fortunate to be able to see through the reheated Marxian nonsense that is critical social and race theories should challenge ourselves to try and love those who have sadly got themselves tangled up in it all: to meet their negativity with positivity, to criticise them with a friendly smile and an open heart, to offer a helping hand out rather than a facepalm of rejection, and above all to try our level best to remain kind, gracious and humble rather than hurt, angry and self-righteous. A tough, perhaps impossible, standard to meet but it is something to aim for and it might just be the way we break the downward spiral of recrimination and anger and so get out of this chaotic mess we find ourselves in.
As a former regular Guardian reader, I can only second what you say about what the Guardian was and what it is now. At first it just made me a little sad to see this venerable newspaper devolving into another “rag”, but after a time I started to get angry – where now do we find a place for reasoned, honest argument from a Left perspective? I find it too difficult to forgive them, though, brcause, unlike you, I believe that they do know what they are doing, and they are prepared to ignore the consequences. They have allowed the lunatics to take over the asylum and what we now see is the result, to the detriment of political discussion in this country.
As a former regular Guardian reader I am saddened by what it has become but I am more angry than sad. I started buying The Guardian around the time of the Jonathan Aitken scandal and when it exposed his lies The Guardian had the sword of truth. For the next decade or so it was a credible and respected national newspaper and its circulation was holding up well despite the growth of the web. However, after it exposed the phone hacking scandal at the News Of The World and the PCC collapsed The Guardian became a law unto itself.
In the latter years of Alan Rusbridger’s editorship it sold the sword of truth in exchange for clicks by publishing anything by anyone it thought was a victim without caring whether what they wrote was true or fair. The Guardian wanted to dominate the global market for self-pity and it tried to do so by assembling the world’s largest collection of bad writers, mostly on freelance terms. Katharine Viner was largely responsible for this as deputy editor and then editor of its US and Australian outposts and tried to continue this as editor but it couldn’t afford to pay £320 every time anyone was offended by anything but by then The Guardian’s credibility and the goodwill of its print readership had been lost.
But The Guardian knew what it was doing. It knew that it was publishing statements without checking them, it knew that it was publishing statements that it knew were untrue and it knew that its system of self-regulation was a sham. It didn’t care because whilst The Guardian was portraying itself as changing from being a national newspaper to being a global website it was changing in another way: The Guardian went from being a newspaper to being a cult. It became cult-like in its output, its internal culture and its business model (trying to squeeze as much money as it could out of loyal supporters whilst always looking for new suckers). It even started to build its own Jonestown in the Midland Goods Shed where the faithful would assemble and listen to its leaders whilst drinking Guardian coffee but the plan was abandoned on cost grounds. Now it is drifting along looking for the next bandwagon to jump on even though it knows it damages any cause it supports because that’s what The Guardian does now.
The Guardian deserves to be destroyed because it has betrayed its readers, its history and some of its own journalists. It could and should have been destroyed years ago but no journalist or organisation was willing and able to do so even though lying is to The Guardian what phone hacking was to the News Of The World but done in plain sight. The Guardian is a dishonest, hypocritical, sanctimonious organisation which doesn’t deserve its air of moral superiority. It just persuades itself that the lies that it tells and the hatred that it peddles are morally justified.
As a former regular Guardian reader I am saddened by what it has become but I am more angry than sad. I started buying The Guardian around the time of the Jonathan Aitken scandal and when it exposed his lies The Guardian had the sword of truth. For the next decade or so it was a credible and respected national newspaper and its circulation was holding up well despite the growth of the web. However, after it exposed the phone hacking scandal at the News Of The World and the PCC collapsed The Guardian became a law unto itself.
In the latter years of Alan Rusbridger’s editorship it sold the sword of truth in exchange for clicks by publishing anything by anyone it thought was a victim without caring whether what they wrote was true or fair. The Guardian wanted to dominate the global market for self-pity and it tried to do so by assembling the world’s largest collection of bad writers, mostly on freelance terms. Katharine Viner was largely responsible for this as deputy editor and then editor of its US and Australian outposts and tried to continue this as editor but it couldn’t afford to pay £320 every time anyone was offended by anything but by then The Guardian’s credibility and the goodwill of its print readership had been lost.
But The Guardian knew what it was doing. It knew that it was publishing statements without checking them, it knew that it was publishing statements that it knew were untrue and it knew that its system of self-regulation was a sham. It didn’t care because whilst The Guardian was portraying itself as changing from being a national newspaper to being a global website it was changing in another way: The Guardian went from being a newspaper to being a cult. It became cult-like in its output, its internal culture and its business model (trying to squeeze as much money as it could out of loyal supporters whilst always looking for new suckers). It even started to build its own Jonestown in the Midland Goods Shed where the faithful would assemble and listen to its leaders whilst drinking Guardian coffee but the plan was abandoned on cost grounds. Now it is drifting along looking for the next bandwagon to jump on even though it knows it damages any cause it supports because that’s what The Guardian does now.
The Guardian deserves to be destroyed because it has betrayed its readers, its history and some of its own journalists. It could and should have been destroyed years ago but no journalist or organisation was willing and able to do so even though lying is to The Guardian what phone hacking was to the News Of The World but done in plain sight. The Guardian is a dishonest, hypocritical, sanctimonious organisation which doesn’t deserve its air of moral superiority. It just persuades itself that the lies that it tells and the hatred that it peddles are morally justified.
What a brilliant comment. I’m reading the biography of Elizabeth Gaskell, one of my favourite authors (“Wives and Daughters” is sublime!). She lived in Manchester, was horrified by the conditions of the English cotton mill workers and tried to raise public awareness about them through her writings, most obviously through “North and South”. I haven’t found out yet what her views were on the slaves who produced the cotton in America, and whether she included them in her social campaigning (I don’t think so though). Thus she could probably also be attacked now as a “white supremacist”. (How misguided!) There should never be a hierarchy of causes. One should not criticise for example someone who devotes themselves to looking after stray animals on the basis that they care more for animals than people and thus are in some way morally deficient – we can’t all solve everything and each of us must do our part with what is placed before us in our lives. However, what I do know is that Elizabeth Gaskell, who believed utterly in speaking the truth, and was full of fun and yet also intensely kind, would have echoed your comment – that we should approach everything and everyone including the writers at the Guardian, with both clear eyed truth, but also tolerance and understanding. The writers at the Guardian need to be called out in this way. We need everyone to see how dangerous these Identitarian Marxist ways of thinking are.
Haven’t watched the telly version of Wives and Daughters yet as I need to order the DVDs!! It looks great – Keeley Hawes (sp?) as Cynthia, Michael Gambon as the Squire, Francesca Annis as the silly stepmother… (I may have seen it years ago but can’t remember for sure). I gave the book to my 89 year old mother for Christmas and she is loving it – she’d only read North and South previously. ) x
I am sorry, I should have been more precise as I meant ‘North and South’, the BBC version with the late Tim Pigott-Smith and Daniela Denny-Ashe. Probably 10-15 years ago now!
I am sorry, I should have been more precise as I meant ‘North and South’, the BBC version with the late Tim Pigott-Smith and Daniela Denny-Ashe. Probably 10-15 years ago now!
Haven’t watched the telly version of Wives and Daughters yet as I need to order the DVDs!! It looks great – Keeley Hawes (sp?) as Cynthia, Michael Gambon as the Squire, Francesca Annis as the silly stepmother… (I may have seen it years ago but can’t remember for sure). I gave the book to my 89 year old mother for Christmas and she is loving it – she’d only read North and South previously. ) x
You make a brilliant point about the cotton mill workers who get overlooked in the race clamour. I daresay the Little Circle were relieved that their employees were too badly educated to have an amanuensis to detail their many hurts and miseries. When the race warriors point at us white folks and our exploitation of slaves how many people was that? Because the population in the Industrial Revolution lived hungry, cold lives. The spoils of slavery were enjoyed by a very tiny number of British people, while the masses toiled, not much better off than the southern slaves who produced the raw goods. Were the employees at John Edward Taylor’s mills enjoying better wages, an education for their children, safe working conditions, decent housing? I suspect not.
Thank you. I agree. I’ve been reflecting lately on how angry and let down I have felt over the past few years by people who I thought should know better. My conclusion is that pointing the finger at them and accusing them of ignorance, cowardice, or venality is not going to change their minds, it’s only going to make them dig their heels in further, and deepen the divisions. While there are some very good, decent people on the conservative right, they are never going to be able on their own to convince people who see themselves as left progressives to change their minds. Whereas the captured progressive left or technocratic centre won’t be able easily to ignore or dismiss carefully considered constructive criticism from a left or centre perspective that acknowledges their point of view, recognises that they have some legitimate grievances and ideas, and does not directly assault their ego by suggesting that they have some kind of mal-intent. Dissenting leftists and centrists need to overcome the fear factor and any historical prejudices they might hold, and accept that in today’s world they have some common causes with those on the right against the captured left. Those on the right need to do likewise. We can debate who should own the railways another day; for now we just need to win the argument that it’s not racist or patriarchal to make the trains run on time.
Not only is better for one’s own mental state, whatever one’s own politics, to be approaching “culture war” issues with the kind of mindset that assumes good intent of all involved, but I really do believe it is the only way that we are going to be able to break the spell of magical wokery that abounds about the kingdom. My feeling is that we might be closer than it might seem to turning the corner and regaining some sense of order & a better grasp on reality in our politics and culture if we can just keep being positive, amicable, and forgiving to those with whom we might disagree – hard though it may sometimes be to do so (and heaven knows that I have lost, and continue to lose, my rag at them on occasion!).
Yes you are so right – in the battle of ideas against dangerous wokism, we must also, (as you say) acknowledge their point of view, recognise they have some legitimate grievances.. and keep on being positive, amicable and forgiving.
Yes! A very sane and wholesome reminder. Who do you persuade with ad hominem denouncements? Especially an undifferentiated thing like: “The Left are all part of nihilistic cult” or “every conservative is an malevolent guardian of wealth and privilege”.
Even as a way to preach to the already converted and stir up energy it’s pretty negative, and to a large degree just isn’t true. Most people mean well and have significant good in them. Most among the more historically grounded sort of conservative can acknowledge a place for liberal and innovative forces, and most of the sane people to the left (they exist) can acknowledge the merit of forces that protect and conserve a great deal of what we have, and what has gone before.
Don’t call the statue-toppling, race-rioting extremists a fair representation of the Left, unless you think the most violent element among the Capitol breachers or Unite the Right marchers fairly represent the Right.
There has to be such a thing as an engaged moderate–I’m trying to be one. People will disagree over whether the present-day far-far left or far-far right represent a greater threat to our lives and liberty, but I want no part of either of them. Vote no on both! Love your enemy and reach out to your presumed opponent when you can.
I applaud your post, Mr. Horsman.
The problem is that what people believe is a reflection of who they are. It goes very deep and isn’t just a matter of changing someone’s mind. Mind set is formed very young and is a combination of nature and nurture.
You said were “born to extreme privilege though no fault of your own” elsewhere on these boards. And that your ancestors were “handsomely compensated” in 1837 in connection with the slave trade. Correct?
Can’t you see that the background (not merely genetic) you cherish has a measure of prevailing influence on your point of view?
Is it nature or nurture though? Yes, it is. Determinists and blank slaters notwithstanding, the “debate” is like arguing whether there’s more day or night at the equator.
Well to be : “born to extreme privilege through no fault of my own” does NOT equate to “high white privilege” (whatever that means) in my book. It is merely a statement of fact.
Incidentally I don’t “cherish” my background but rather just accept it for what it is.
Slightly baffled by your sentence “is it nature or nurture though?”
Surely it is quite simple, ‘You can’t put in what God left out’. QED?
Not demonstrated at all. No one has the wherewithal to discern an individual’s uppermost potential based on their lived outcomes alone. Lucky people who escape dreadful families and neighborhoods can go on to outperform those left behind, somewhat irrespective of their measured intelligence or outward pre-escape character. In fact, Identical twins brought up in different home environments, while eerily similar in personality often have remarkably different behavior and life outcomes. (e.g.: one becomes a drug addict, one doesn’t).
I admit that “blueblood of high white privilege” was a bit of cheap shot. But supporting your essentialist or determinist views with a racialist IQ proponent doesn’t help remove the sense of racialized privilege or self regard, sir.
What is privilege ? If one is shipwrecked in lifeboat being a fisherman hardened to cold water will increase one chances of survival, likewise a beduin in a plane crash in a desert.
Today being descended from a long line of landowners may not be much of an advantage but from a along line of upper middle class scholars such as the Huxleys, Wedgewood Benns, James Dyson, etc probably confers enhanced academic ability.,
Not demonstrated at all. No one has the wherewithal to discern an individual’s uppermost potential based on their lived outcomes alone. Lucky people who escape dreadful families and neighborhoods can go on to outperform those left behind, somewhat irrespective of their measured intelligence or outward pre-escape character. In fact, Identical twins brought up in different home environments, while eerily similar in personality often have remarkably different behavior and life outcomes. (e.g.: one becomes a drug addict, one doesn’t).
I admit that “blueblood of high white privilege” was a bit of cheap shot. But supporting your essentialist or determinist views with a racialist IQ proponent doesn’t help remove the sense of racialized privilege or self regard, sir.
What is privilege ? If one is shipwrecked in lifeboat being a fisherman hardened to cold water will increase one chances of survival, likewise a beduin in a plane crash in a desert.
Today being descended from a long line of landowners may not be much of an advantage but from a along line of upper middle class scholars such as the Huxleys, Wedgewood Benns, James Dyson, etc probably confers enhanced academic ability.,
Well to be : “born to extreme privilege through no fault of my own” does NOT equate to “high white privilege” (whatever that means) in my book. It is merely a statement of fact.
Incidentally I don’t “cherish” my background but rather just accept it for what it is.
Slightly baffled by your sentence “is it nature or nurture though?”
Surely it is quite simple, ‘You can’t put in what God left out’. QED?
You said were “born to extreme privilege though no fault of your own” elsewhere on these boards. And that your ancestors were “handsomely compensated” in 1837 in connection with the slave trade. Correct?
Can’t you see that the background (not merely genetic) you cherish has a measure of prevailing influence on your point of view?
Is it nature or nurture though? Yes, it is. Determinists and blank slaters notwithstanding, the “debate” is like arguing whether there’s more day or night at the equator.
But it is not fixed in place. Should parents give up when the children hit four because Freud or whomever says the personality is immovably formed?
I agree that were are not blank or fully erasable slates but experience and (to some extent) voluntary kinds of engagement with the world (behavior, mindset) can continue to work deep changes in people, for better or worse, throughout their lives.
But it is not fixed in place. Should parents give up when the children hit four because Freud or whomever says the personality is immovably formed?
I agree that were are not blank or fully erasable slates but experience and (to some extent) voluntary kinds of engagement with the world (behavior, mindset) can continue to work deep changes in people, for better or worse, throughout their lives.
I am sure not one can change their minds. Muggeridge stated Communism is an urban religion attractive to those with a grudge against their fellow man and civilisation. Muggeridge and Orwell understood the character of the left wing middle class. I think it boils down to lack of physical and mental toughness plus practical skills to enjoy the rough and tumble of life. Look at what degrees and sports they play. Has the labour Parties of Hampstead, Highgate and Islington ever included rugby playing engineers? Now compare Guardian types to rugby playing miners and those working in heavy industry or commercial trawling.
Those who have conquered fear can walk with the animals which was why George Adamson could walk with lions.On a physical level I think most Guardian types are fearful of tough practical men which is why they turned on traditional Labour/Democrat voting blue collar and manual workers and ignore plight of those who lived in squalid slums and worked in satanic mills. One cannot hate what one does not fear.
So the tough practical blokes also fear the “Guardian types”? Or the hatred is unidirectional?
Fear and hatred indeed strongly intersect but not without exception, I don’t think.
Can someone have contempt for something they don’t fear, or at least don’t fear much? Can someone love some person or thing they also fear, at least in part?
Making hate and fear interchangeable or inseparable takes it too far, in my opinion.
Mr. Horsman does not assert that their minds can’t be changed, but this: “My conclusion is that pointing the finger at them and accusing them of ignorance, cowardice, or venality is not going to change their minds, it’s only going to make them dig their heels in further, and deepen the divisions“.
Do you disagree with that? “Hey, Guardian types, stop hating and fearing me like a little coward and come listen to a tough practical man!”
Those who have conquered fear can walk with the wild animals; G Adamson and lions being a good example.
If one watches tough women, say those who run construction site canteens,market stalls, landladies of pubs in rough areas, farmers/land owners working with dangerous animals ( bulls, cows, sows, stallions, ), especially those who hunt and working alongside tough men, they invariably have a relaxed cheerful calm authoritative confidence which often is lacking from upper middle class urban professional mercantile types who appear brittle, nervous in the presence of the builder. Someone who can be thrown from a horse or knocked flying by an animal, or fall over, land in cold wet mud, laugh it off and carry on has mental and physical resilience and will therefore tend to be relaxed.
Fine. I’ve done building work so I know what you mean. But there is plenty of rage and fear in the average person who is quite physically unafraid. That’s the pushback or balancing act I was attempting.
If you assert a close correlation between fear and hatred–not without reason–then the hatred of many tradespeople for intellectually propped-up weaklings has an element of fear too. Or are you suggesting the hardy working folk are damn near devoid of both hatred and fear?
A muscled and tattooed ex-con who’s rarely worked (20 year sentence) might intimidate a rugged working man, but the ex-con is not therefore without his own hatred and fears.
Someone has passed the test is secure in the knowledge of what they have achieved, tend to be relaxed, have a sense of humour, can laugh at themselves. They are easy to work with because they largely lack fear, hatred and an inferiority complex .
The very tough skilled foremen with combat experience I have worked with respect scholarship; the truly top engineer but see through the inadequate very quickly. When insults are traded easily and everyone gives as good as they get, one has a good team. The phrase ” No insult meant” with the reply ” None taken ” has become rare.
That sounds wonderful. A far more positive and resilient bunch than many, probably most, I’d guess. I still don’t think Guardian readers fit so neatly into your hypersensitive weakling mold, nor that all tradespeople are hale fellows well-met. Many are, but I’ve worked with some real jerks and weasels too.
Thanks for a good exchange. No offense taken on this side of the pond.
I have worked with some exceptional foremen and engineers, the types who turned deserts into the vibrant cities and oil installations of the Middle East in the 1960s to 1980s. Working out of doors when temperatures hit 54 Centigrade is hard work. However, these foremen had fought in the jungles of Malaya and Borneo , in the mountains of the Radfan, Yemen and Oman before they entered the construction/oil industies. Many of the British supervisors/foremen on the oil installations were ex Parachute Regiment/Royal Marine Commandos/Special Forces and served overseas which is why the various Arab National Oil Companies employed them.
I doubt we will ever see their kind again. They had the ability to earn the respect competent tough competent men from all races and religions.
The Guardian was not common reading material.
I think you’ve idealized your own slice of the past, but I admit these manly men sound pretty impressive. What was common reading material among these hardboiled dudes?
Look at photographs of the Middle East pre WW2 and look at it now at it now. The men I worked with fought in the various conflicts and then built the modern infrastructure. The greater the challenge, the greater the attraction for them. They enjoyed listening to the experience of others of similar background such as a Kate Adey but had little time reading the opinions of those who lacked their worldliness.
In Britain, inherited wealth either induces people to seek a life of adventure or one of security and comfort; The Guardian is a temple for the latter. The Guardian is happy to sacrifice anyone who helps it to maintain a life of security and comfort.
Ok. Thanks for the example (Kate Adey) to help color your generalized claims.
Incidentally, I don’t love the Guardian, except that it is free and one can mine some worthwhile items there, from my American point of view.
Ok. Thanks for the example (Kate Adey) to help color your generalized claims.
Incidentally, I don’t love the Guardian, except that it is free and one can mine some worthwhile items there, from my American point of view.
Look at photographs of the Middle East pre WW2 and look at it now at it now. The men I worked with fought in the various conflicts and then built the modern infrastructure. The greater the challenge, the greater the attraction for them. They enjoyed listening to the experience of others of similar background such as a Kate Adey but had little time reading the opinions of those who lacked their worldliness.
In Britain, inherited wealth either induces people to seek a life of adventure or one of security and comfort; The Guardian is a temple for the latter. The Guardian is happy to sacrifice anyone who helps it to maintain a life of security and comfort.
I think you’ve idealized your own slice of the past, but I admit these manly men sound pretty impressive. What was common reading material among these hardboiled dudes?
I have worked with some exceptional foremen and engineers, the types who turned deserts into the vibrant cities and oil installations of the Middle East in the 1960s to 1980s. Working out of doors when temperatures hit 54 Centigrade is hard work. However, these foremen had fought in the jungles of Malaya and Borneo , in the mountains of the Radfan, Yemen and Oman before they entered the construction/oil industies. Many of the British supervisors/foremen on the oil installations were ex Parachute Regiment/Royal Marine Commandos/Special Forces and served overseas which is why the various Arab National Oil Companies employed them.
I doubt we will ever see their kind again. They had the ability to earn the respect competent tough competent men from all races and religions.
The Guardian was not common reading material.
That sounds wonderful. A far more positive and resilient bunch than many, probably most, I’d guess. I still don’t think Guardian readers fit so neatly into your hypersensitive weakling mold, nor that all tradespeople are hale fellows well-met. Many are, but I’ve worked with some real jerks and weasels too.
Thanks for a good exchange. No offense taken on this side of the pond.
Someone has passed the test is secure in the knowledge of what they have achieved, tend to be relaxed, have a sense of humour, can laugh at themselves. They are easy to work with because they largely lack fear, hatred and an inferiority complex .
The very tough skilled foremen with combat experience I have worked with respect scholarship; the truly top engineer but see through the inadequate very quickly. When insults are traded easily and everyone gives as good as they get, one has a good team. The phrase ” No insult meant” with the reply ” None taken ” has become rare.
Fine. I’ve done building work so I know what you mean. But there is plenty of rage and fear in the average person who is quite physically unafraid. That’s the pushback or balancing act I was attempting.
If you assert a close correlation between fear and hatred–not without reason–then the hatred of many tradespeople for intellectually propped-up weaklings has an element of fear too. Or are you suggesting the hardy working folk are damn near devoid of both hatred and fear?
A muscled and tattooed ex-con who’s rarely worked (20 year sentence) might intimidate a rugged working man, but the ex-con is not therefore without his own hatred and fears.
Those who have conquered fear can walk with the wild animals; G Adamson and lions being a good example.
If one watches tough women, say those who run construction site canteens,market stalls, landladies of pubs in rough areas, farmers/land owners working with dangerous animals ( bulls, cows, sows, stallions, ), especially those who hunt and working alongside tough men, they invariably have a relaxed cheerful calm authoritative confidence which often is lacking from upper middle class urban professional mercantile types who appear brittle, nervous in the presence of the builder. Someone who can be thrown from a horse or knocked flying by an animal, or fall over, land in cold wet mud, laugh it off and carry on has mental and physical resilience and will therefore tend to be relaxed.
So the tough practical blokes also fear the “Guardian types”? Or the hatred is unidirectional?
Fear and hatred indeed strongly intersect but not without exception, I don’t think.
Can someone have contempt for something they don’t fear, or at least don’t fear much? Can someone love some person or thing they also fear, at least in part?
Making hate and fear interchangeable or inseparable takes it too far, in my opinion.
Mr. Horsman does not assert that their minds can’t be changed, but this: “My conclusion is that pointing the finger at them and accusing them of ignorance, cowardice, or venality is not going to change their minds, it’s only going to make them dig their heels in further, and deepen the divisions“.
Do you disagree with that? “Hey, Guardian types, stop hating and fearing me like a little coward and come listen to a tough practical man!”
Yes you are so right – in the battle of ideas against dangerous wokism, we must also, (as you say) acknowledge their point of view, recognise they have some legitimate grievances.. and keep on being positive, amicable and forgiving.
Yes! A very sane and wholesome reminder. Who do you persuade with ad hominem denouncements? Especially an undifferentiated thing like: “The Left are all part of nihilistic cult” or “every conservative is an malevolent guardian of wealth and privilege”.
Even as a way to preach to the already converted and stir up energy it’s pretty negative, and to a large degree just isn’t true. Most people mean well and have significant good in them. Most among the more historically grounded sort of conservative can acknowledge a place for liberal and innovative forces, and most of the sane people to the left (they exist) can acknowledge the merit of forces that protect and conserve a great deal of what we have, and what has gone before.
Don’t call the statue-toppling, race-rioting extremists a fair representation of the Left, unless you think the most violent element among the Capitol breachers or Unite the Right marchers fairly represent the Right.
There has to be such a thing as an engaged moderate–I’m trying to be one. People will disagree over whether the present-day far-far left or far-far right represent a greater threat to our lives and liberty, but I want no part of either of them. Vote no on both! Love your enemy and reach out to your presumed opponent when you can.
I applaud your post, Mr. Horsman.
The problem is that what people believe is a reflection of who they are. It goes very deep and isn’t just a matter of changing someone’s mind. Mind set is formed very young and is a combination of nature and nurture.
I am sure not one can change their minds. Muggeridge stated Communism is an urban religion attractive to those with a grudge against their fellow man and civilisation. Muggeridge and Orwell understood the character of the left wing middle class. I think it boils down to lack of physical and mental toughness plus practical skills to enjoy the rough and tumble of life. Look at what degrees and sports they play. Has the labour Parties of Hampstead, Highgate and Islington ever included rugby playing engineers? Now compare Guardian types to rugby playing miners and those working in heavy industry or commercial trawling.
Those who have conquered fear can walk with the animals which was why George Adamson could walk with lions.On a physical level I think most Guardian types are fearful of tough practical men which is why they turned on traditional Labour/Democrat voting blue collar and manual workers and ignore plight of those who lived in squalid slums and worked in satanic mills. One cannot hate what one does not fear.
You make a brilliant point about the cotton mill workers who get overlooked in the race clamour. I daresay the Little Circle were relieved that their employees were too badly educated to have an amanuensis to detail their many hurts and miseries. When the race warriors point at us white folks and our exploitation of slaves how many people was that? Because the population in the Industrial Revolution lived hungry, cold lives. The spoils of slavery were enjoyed by a very tiny number of British people, while the masses toiled, not much better off than the southern slaves who produced the raw goods. Were the employees at John Edward Taylor’s mills enjoying better wages, an education for their children, safe working conditions, decent housing? I suspect not.
Thank you. I agree. I’ve been reflecting lately on how angry and let down I have felt over the past few years by people who I thought should know better. My conclusion is that pointing the finger at them and accusing them of ignorance, cowardice, or venality is not going to change their minds, it’s only going to make them dig their heels in further, and deepen the divisions. While there are some very good, decent people on the conservative right, they are never going to be able on their own to convince people who see themselves as left progressives to change their minds. Whereas the captured progressive left or technocratic centre won’t be able easily to ignore or dismiss carefully considered constructive criticism from a left or centre perspective that acknowledges their point of view, recognises that they have some legitimate grievances and ideas, and does not directly assault their ego by suggesting that they have some kind of mal-intent. Dissenting leftists and centrists need to overcome the fear factor and any historical prejudices they might hold, and accept that in today’s world they have some common causes with those on the right against the captured left. Those on the right need to do likewise. We can debate who should own the railways another day; for now we just need to win the argument that it’s not racist or patriarchal to make the trains run on time.
Not only is better for one’s own mental state, whatever one’s own politics, to be approaching “culture war” issues with the kind of mindset that assumes good intent of all involved, but I really do believe it is the only way that we are going to be able to break the spell of magical wokery that abounds about the kingdom. My feeling is that we might be closer than it might seem to turning the corner and regaining some sense of order & a better grasp on reality in our politics and culture if we can just keep being positive, amicable, and forgiving to those with whom we might disagree – hard though it may sometimes be to do so (and heaven knows that I have lost, and continue to lose, my rag at them on occasion!).
What is so strange is how many on the “liberal left” are hypersensitive to any perceived slight or micro-aggression against their preferred victim groups, yet are happy to wade in with genuine insults against any they deem ‘deplorable’.
They’d be the first to denounce any who’d think to pigeonhole someone whilst, almost in the same breath, constructing a fairly sturdy pigeonhole themselves and stuffing it with a well-fed pigeon.
“Now it’s trapped in corporate-sponsored, self-destructive narratives around white privilege, net zero, vaccine efficacy, safe spaces, gender ideology and all the rest of it”
When its readership largely consisted of poverty-stricken undergraduates the Guardian could afford to be on the side of the underdog. Nowadays, those undergraduates are senior civil servants, academics, lawyers etc – and they’re stinking rich. Stinking rich people don’t like to talk about class and inequality so the Guardian is now all about the narcissistic trivia of identity politics. It’s a fashion accessory for middle class people who live off the state, not a genuinely radical newspaper, as it once was.
As a former regular Guardian reader, I can only second what you say about what the Guardian was and what it is now. At first it just made me a little sad to see this venerable newspaper devolving into another “rag”, but after a time I started to get angry – where now do we find a place for reasoned, honest argument from a Left perspective? I find it too difficult to forgive them, though, brcause, unlike you, I believe that they do know what they are doing, and they are prepared to ignore the consequences. They have allowed the lunatics to take over the asylum and what we now see is the result, to the detriment of political discussion in this country.
What a brilliant comment. I’m reading the biography of Elizabeth Gaskell, one of my favourite authors (“Wives and Daughters” is sublime!). She lived in Manchester, was horrified by the conditions of the English cotton mill workers and tried to raise public awareness about them through her writings, most obviously through “North and South”. I haven’t found out yet what her views were on the slaves who produced the cotton in America, and whether she included them in her social campaigning (I don’t think so though). Thus she could probably also be attacked now as a “white supremacist”. (How misguided!) There should never be a hierarchy of causes. One should not criticise for example someone who devotes themselves to looking after stray animals on the basis that they care more for animals than people and thus are in some way morally deficient – we can’t all solve everything and each of us must do our part with what is placed before us in our lives. However, what I do know is that Elizabeth Gaskell, who believed utterly in speaking the truth, and was full of fun and yet also intensely kind, would have echoed your comment – that we should approach everything and everyone including the writers at the Guardian, with both clear eyed truth, but also tolerance and understanding. The writers at the Guardian need to be called out in this way. We need everyone to see how dangerous these Identitarian Marxist ways of thinking are.
What is so strange is how many on the “liberal left” are hypersensitive to any perceived slight or micro-aggression against their preferred victim groups, yet are happy to wade in with genuine insults against any they deem ‘deplorable’.
They’d be the first to denounce any who’d think to pigeonhole someone whilst, almost in the same breath, constructing a fairly sturdy pigeonhole themselves and stuffing it with a well-fed pigeon.
“Now it’s trapped in corporate-sponsored, self-destructive narratives around white privilege, net zero, vaccine efficacy, safe spaces, gender ideology and all the rest of it”
When its readership largely consisted of poverty-stricken undergraduates the Guardian could afford to be on the side of the underdog. Nowadays, those undergraduates are senior civil servants, academics, lawyers etc – and they’re stinking rich. Stinking rich people don’t like to talk about class and inequality so the Guardian is now all about the narcissistic trivia of identity politics. It’s a fashion accessory for middle class people who live off the state, not a genuinely radical newspaper, as it once was.
Andrew Horsman
1 year ago
It’s all very, very sad. The Guardian was once the home of serious, analytical, investigative journalism. It wouldn’t always get everything right, and yes it has always leaned leftwards. But at least it tried to be truthful. Now it’s trapped in corporate-sponsored, self-destructive narratives around white privilege, net zero, vaccine efficacy, safe spaces, gender ideology and all the rest of it that actively deny the value of freedom of expression of diverse and conflicting views and opinions in the pursuit of truth, usually in the name of “keeping everyone safe” or “preventing harm”.
They are suffocating the liberal democracy which their predecessors helped to found, from within. The tragedy is that the leadership at the Guardian, and other such formerly broadly liberal institutions, just cannot see it for what it is. They cannot perceive the gross harms that they are doing. From the outside, it is easy to see the inevitability of their disordered, bleak nihilism, grounded in the negative emotions of guilt, envy, and resentment, turning in on itself, as it has on historical slavery. But from the inside, it just doesn’t look like that.
So forgive them, for they know not what they do. They are not bad people. Those of us fortunate to be able to see through the reheated Marxian nonsense that is critical social and race theories should challenge ourselves to try and love those who have sadly got themselves tangled up in it all: to meet their negativity with positivity, to criticise them with a friendly smile and an open heart, to offer a helping hand out rather than a facepalm of rejection, and above all to try our level best to remain kind, gracious and humble rather than hurt, angry and self-righteous. A tough, perhaps impossible, standard to meet but it is something to aim for and it might just be the way we break the downward spiral of recrimination and anger and so get out of this chaotic mess we find ourselves in.
Jim Veenbaas
1 year ago
Every damn one of us with an iPhone is supporting slavery today – every single one of us.
That very point that came to mind while reading the article. It’s convenient to pretend that child labor and other forms of inhumane exploitation, plus our complicity therein (perhaps not “intentional support”), is some antique legacy. Or that we’ve exonerated ourselves by denouncing it or writing about it.
The path to self knowledge usually starts by admitting that one has been a bit of a cad. This process is easy for Europeans and for Catholics – we now we’re bad to the bone, if we relax our vigilance. Americans struggle with that, given their sunnier view of human nature.
The path to self knowledge usually starts by admitting that one has been a bit of a cad. This process is easy for Europeans and for Catholics – we now we’re bad to the bone, if we relax our vigilance. Americans struggle with that, given their sunnier view of human nature.
That very point that came to mind while reading the article. It’s convenient to pretend that child labor and other forms of inhumane exploitation, plus our complicity therein (perhaps not “intentional support”), is some antique legacy. Or that we’ve exonerated ourselves by denouncing it or writing about it.
True, and likewise everyone who buys cheap clothes in the high street. And I have severe doubts about some car washes I’ve used too.
Jim Veenbaas
1 year ago
Every damn one of us with an iPhone is supporting slavery today – every single one of us.
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
It seems to me it’s the racists who are constantly shouting about race. The Left is completely unhinged by its own incoherence. What on Earth is “editorial whiteness”?
It seems to me it’s the racists who are constantly shouting about race. The Left is completely unhinged by its own incoherence. What on Earth is “editorial whiteness”?
Howard Gleave
1 year ago
I shall cherish this exposé of Guardian hypocrisy and give it the widest possible circulation.
Howard Gleave
1 year ago
I shall cherish this exposé of Guardian hypocrisy and give it the widest possible circulation.
Alex More
1 year ago
Rinsed by its own purity spiral. The biter bit. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch
Alex More
1 year ago
Rinsed by its own purity spiral. The biter bit. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch
Saul D
1 year ago
We need the Guardian. We just need a better Guardian. It’s good to have a range of alternative views of a subject. Unfortunately, since the Snowdon reveal and then Viner as editor it’s become horribly myopic. It used to be able to present different sides of an argument, while still supporting a more leftish view. Now, any mention of a different point of view is banned (denier). The readers are lectured to avoid (or at least in self-imposed exile) from anything outside the Guardian canon – can’t go there it might be right-wing/ populist/ conspiracy/ skeptic/ wrong-think/ mansplaining, as if their readers don’t have the intellectual ability to cope with different opinions. It’s so much side-ism and name-calling and emotion, instead of fair discussion, so much so that they’ve driven away the intelligent readers that you used to get in their comment sections. Snide whinings and hand-me-down talking points, lacking incisive argument.
Saul D
1 year ago
We need the Guardian. We just need a better Guardian. It’s good to have a range of alternative views of a subject. Unfortunately, since the Snowdon reveal and then Viner as editor it’s become horribly myopic. It used to be able to present different sides of an argument, while still supporting a more leftish view. Now, any mention of a different point of view is banned (denier). The readers are lectured to avoid (or at least in self-imposed exile) from anything outside the Guardian canon – can’t go there it might be right-wing/ populist/ conspiracy/ skeptic/ wrong-think/ mansplaining, as if their readers don’t have the intellectual ability to cope with different opinions. It’s so much side-ism and name-calling and emotion, instead of fair discussion, so much so that they’ve driven away the intelligent readers that you used to get in their comment sections. Snide whinings and hand-me-down talking points, lacking incisive argument.
Samir Iker
1 year ago
There is no point in pointing out their hypocrisy.
They (the Guardian, and that entire class) have no shame, and their whole moral standpoint is:
“we know best despite having no evidence of being smart or knowledgeable, and you better filled what we say – which would not apply to us of course.”
Samir Iker
1 year ago
There is no point in pointing out their hypocrisy.
They (the Guardian, and that entire class) have no shame, and their whole moral standpoint is:
“we know best despite having no evidence of being smart or knowledgeable, and you better filled what we say – which would not apply to us of course.”
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Sarah Tisdall anyone?
SOLD OUT by the Guardian and its editor the late Peter Preston.
Lest we forget.
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Sarah Tisdall anyone?
SOLD OUT by the Guardian and its editor the late Peter Preston.
Lest we forget.
William Cameron
1 year ago
A Racist Guardian founded on slavery earnings and an Anti Women Labour Party ?
William Cameron
1 year ago
A Racist Guardian founded on slavery earnings and an Anti Women Labour Party ?
Tom Scott
1 year ago
Skeletons in cupboards? people who live in glass houses?
People never seem to learn about this until it comes back to bite them in the butt.
You would think that journalists in particular would understand this?
Hope it comes back to haunt them.
Tom Scott
1 year ago
Skeletons in cupboards? people who live in glass houses?
People never seem to learn about this until it comes back to bite them in the butt.
You would think that journalists in particular would understand this?
Hope it comes back to haunt them.
George Scipio
1 year ago
This sort of biased, vindictive, historically naive claptrap illustrates the cynicism behind the drive to replace objectivity in journalism with “moral clarity”, otherwise known as “I’m always right, you’re always wrong.” It advances the tired, shallow, old stereotypes of power and “whiteness” as justification for what at bottom is a job application. The answer to too much whiteness is apparently more blackness. It’s not about equality and progress at all. The outraged podcasters can take a hike. Found your own pure Guardian, history free and no doubt as morally pure as the driven snow. Call it “No More Nuance”.
Well said. Love all these “former readers” comments – all the virtuous ones who now only read stuff they agree with.
How pure, how neat.
I read papers from a number of countries. Of the English ones, I regularly read The Observer, the Daily Telegraph, the FT and The Times. Because I’m rather boring, I tend to agree more with the Times and the FT, but I enjoy the Guardian and the Telegraph most, largely because each of them is so tribally-furious in their competing rectitudes, and because there in consequence is much to disagree with in each paper. For me at least, it’s boring to read stuff that I agree with.
This article has a massive irony by-pass problem though.
Cherry-picked, sanctimonious and hypocritical, it’s no better than the paper its attacking and is unable to see this.
Of course, it knows its peanut gallery well. I enjoy Unherd very much, but its readership is one of the most one-sided thought bubbles in the UK.
The thought bubbles that people invest such time (not thought) in sealing off and furnishing tend to seem virtuous instead of vicious from the inside, don’t they? I appreciate your left-of-herd perspective and share many of your bubble-bursting views. The presence of pugnacious but reasonable and well-informed dissenters such as yourself and John Holland help to balance the “whole spectrum, center-right to hard right” norm here.
The thought bubbles that people invest such time (not thought) in sealing off and furnishing tend to seem virtuous instead of vicious from the inside, don’t they? I appreciate your left-of-herd perspective and share many of your bubble-bursting views. The presence of pugnacious but reasonable and well-informed dissenters such as yourself and John Holland help to balance the “whole spectrum, center-right to hard right” norm here.
Well said. Love all these “former readers” comments – all the virtuous ones who now only read stuff they agree with.
How pure, how neat.
I read papers from a number of countries. Of the English ones, I regularly read The Observer, the Daily Telegraph, the FT and The Times. Because I’m rather boring, I tend to agree more with the Times and the FT, but I enjoy the Guardian and the Telegraph most, largely because each of them is so tribally-furious in their competing rectitudes, and because there in consequence is much to disagree with in each paper. For me at least, it’s boring to read stuff that I agree with.
This article has a massive irony by-pass problem though.
Cherry-picked, sanctimonious and hypocritical, it’s no better than the paper its attacking and is unable to see this.
Of course, it knows its peanut gallery well. I enjoy Unherd very much, but its readership is one of the most one-sided thought bubbles in the UK.
George Scipio
1 year ago
This sort of biased, vindictive, historically naive claptrap illustrates the cynicism behind the drive to replace objectivity in journalism with “moral clarity”, otherwise known as “I’m always right, you’re always wrong.” It advances the tired, shallow, old stereotypes of power and “whiteness” as justification for what at bottom is a job application. The answer to too much whiteness is apparently more blackness. It’s not about equality and progress at all. The outraged podcasters can take a hike. Found your own pure Guardian, history free and no doubt as morally pure as the driven snow. Call it “No More Nuance”.
Ben Jones
1 year ago
The Guardian is a clever psyop, run by shadowy right-wing forces to stymie any notion of sensible progressive left-wing politics. What else explains the article suggesting HP Sauce is racist
I must confess that I have always had my suspicions about HP sauce. I am hoping that they do an indepth investigation into Gentleman’s Relish and its secretly sexist purveyers.
I must confess that I have always had my suspicions about HP sauce. I am hoping that they do an indepth investigation into Gentleman’s Relish and its secretly sexist purveyers.
Ben Jones
1 year ago
The Guardian is a clever psyop, run by shadowy right-wing forces to stymie any notion of sensible progressive left-wing politics. What else explains the article suggesting HP Sauce is racist
Charles Hedges
1 year ago
When Malcom Muggeridge exposed the mass murder caused by starvation in the Ukraine in the 1930s, The Guardian sacked him.
There was a Royal Navy patrol in the Persian gulf in the 1960s to stop slavery.
Mauritania still had legal slavery in the 1970s. A family friend was nearly enslaved but his rugby and fast running saved him before the manacles could be placed upon him.
Orwell in his variopus essays, such as” My Country Right or Left”, “The Lion and The Unicorn”, etc, describe the middle class left wing character very well”.
The left wing middle class survive on the sweat of the manual and blue collar classes plus inherited money. They lack the ability to innovate and solve problems which would reduce suffering. They lack the technical skills and toughness which would enable them to say, design and construct sewage systems in slums, improve irrigation, agricultural yield, etc . The consequences are self hatred and hatred of the technically skilled tough middle classes from which they come. Rugby playing Chartered Engineers who support Corbyn are thin on the ground. If one had to save people to recreate civilisation the vast majority of the left wing middle class, would not be chosen; physically tough engineers and craftsmen would.
As Orwell said he did not fear the dictatorship of the proletariat as he believed in the common decency of the ordinary man: he feared the dictorship of the intellectual.
No need to fear it, because the proletariat will never have a dictatorship to hold for long or surrender on the path to Utopia. Some among the revolutionaries that seize power or rise to prominence on behalf of The People become jealously guarded, oppressive elites of their own, causing many wonder whether the Bourgeoisie or Ancien Régime (etc.) were really so bad after all.
No need to fear it, because the proletariat will never have a dictatorship to hold for long or surrender on the path to Utopia. Some among the revolutionaries that seize power or rise to prominence on behalf of The People become jealously guarded, oppressive elites of their own, causing many wonder whether the Bourgeoisie or Ancien Régime (etc.) were really so bad after all.
Charles Hedges
1 year ago
When Malcom Muggeridge exposed the mass murder caused by starvation in the Ukraine in the 1930s, The Guardian sacked him.
There was a Royal Navy patrol in the Persian gulf in the 1960s to stop slavery.
Mauritania still had legal slavery in the 1970s. A family friend was nearly enslaved but his rugby and fast running saved him before the manacles could be placed upon him.
Orwell in his variopus essays, such as” My Country Right or Left”, “The Lion and The Unicorn”, etc, describe the middle class left wing character very well”.
The left wing middle class survive on the sweat of the manual and blue collar classes plus inherited money. They lack the ability to innovate and solve problems which would reduce suffering. They lack the technical skills and toughness which would enable them to say, design and construct sewage systems in slums, improve irrigation, agricultural yield, etc . The consequences are self hatred and hatred of the technically skilled tough middle classes from which they come. Rugby playing Chartered Engineers who support Corbyn are thin on the ground. If one had to save people to recreate civilisation the vast majority of the left wing middle class, would not be chosen; physically tough engineers and craftsmen would.
As Orwell said he did not fear the dictatorship of the proletariat as he believed in the common decency of the ordinary man: he feared the dictorship of the intellectual.
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
I now have this vision of all 1,200 Grauniad readers and their journalists, packed like sardines into a ship bound for a Gulf nation where they will be put to work in the boiling heat 20 hours a day….!
Has the Guardian reported on the deaths in Qatar during the construction of the World Cup facilities: numbers I have heard quoted are 6500?
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
I now have this vision of all 1,200 Grauniad readers and their journalists, packed like sardines into a ship bound for a Gulf nation where they will be put to work in the boiling heat 20 hours a day….!
AC Harper
1 year ago
Everyone has some self interest, which is often the foundation of attitudes and unthinkingly applied… so therefore hidden from self inspection. This happens in individuals and organisations made up of individuals. It explains why organisations drift from their original purpose and become vessels for careerists expectations.
As a consequence far more effort goes into defending the inconsistencies than rational reflection because who wants to invite criticism of their self interests?
In order to understand The Guardian you have to understand the following. The Guardian does not have principles: it has interests. When it is in its interests The Guardian acts according to its declared principles but when its interests are best served by acting against its declared principles it will do so. If its failure to act according to its declared principles is challenged by other publications or its readers it may then seek to present its actions as being in accordance with its declared principles (what Ashley Rindsberg rightly describes as The Guardian’s “moral contortionism“) but if it cannot do so without damaging its credibility or bringing more attention to its failings it remains silent.
The accusations of racism against The Guardian over its links to slavery and the podcast series about the subject may be a surprise to some but they shouldn’t be. The Guardian has had more than one go at establishing itself in America (an early one being its ill-fated “Operation Clark County” attempt to swing the 2004 US Presidential election against George W. Bush which is deserving of a revisit) but one issue illustrates The Guardian’s modus operandi well.
When Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer in Ferguson in 2014 The Guardian immediately seized upon it as proof of the chronic racism in American society and published hundreds of reports and opinion articles about the killing and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and many of those opinion articles were by black writers. When George Floyd was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020 The Guardian tried to do the same but it couldn’t muster a similar number of black writers to write opinion articles about it. When Tyre Nichols was killed by five black police officers in Memphis in 2023 The Guardian took a long time to even report the killing and even longer to find anyone to write an opinion article about it.
That’s because when The Guardian tries to establish itself in other countries it takes its self-serving interest-based mentality with it and pretends to care about other people. After the killing of Michael Brown The Guardian wanted black people to write emotive pieces about racism for $500 for 1000 words in hours on demand on freelance terms but would give few of them a salaried Guardian job which are mainly reserved for white women. By the time George Floyd was killed most of the black writers who had written for The Guardian didn’t want to write for them again and by the time Tyre Nichols was killed The Guardian had realised there wasn’t enough money in pretending to care about black people in America and most black writers had realised that The Guardian viewed them as potential cheap casual labour. The Guardian got more donations and clicks out of opposing Trump or defending Roe vs. Wade so The Guardian quietly slid off the back of the Black Lives Matter bandwagon which was getting too left-wing and uppity for the liking of its white staff.
The Guardian has used the same modus operandi in Australia (where it pretends to care about indigenous Australians), it would do the same in Canada if it was worth the expenditure and if it ever tried to establish itself in India it would pretend to care about Dalits. The people that The Guardian and its editors care about most are themselves and there is nothing that cannot be sacrificed when it is in their interests to do so. The Guardian sacrificed thousands of underage girls to the Muslim rape gangs that it knew about in the mid-2000s because it was in its interests to protect the public sector employers and the New Labour government that were failing to protect them but giving The Guardian millions of pounds annually to advertise public sector job vacancies.
In order to understand The Guardian you have to understand the following. The Guardian does not have principles: it has interests. When it is in its interests The Guardian acts according to its declared principles but when its interests are best served by acting against its declared principles it will do so. If its failure to act according to its declared principles is challenged by other publications or its readers it may then seek to present its actions as being in accordance with its declared principles (what Ashley Rindsberg rightly describes as The Guardian’s “moral contortionism“) but if it cannot do so without damaging its credibility or bringing more attention to its failings it remains silent.
The accusations of racism against The Guardian over its links to slavery and the podcast series about the subject may be a surprise to some but they shouldn’t be. The Guardian has had more than one go at establishing itself in America (an early one being its ill-fated “Operation Clark County” attempt to swing the 2004 US Presidential election against George W. Bush which is deserving of a revisit) but one issue illustrates The Guardian’s modus operandi well.
When Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer in Ferguson in 2014 The Guardian immediately seized upon it as proof of the chronic racism in American society and published hundreds of reports and opinion articles about the killing and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and many of those opinion articles were by black writers. When George Floyd was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020 The Guardian tried to do the same but it couldn’t muster a similar number of black writers to write opinion articles about it. When Tyre Nichols was killed by five black police officers in Memphis in 2023 The Guardian took a long time to even report the killing and even longer to find anyone to write an opinion article about it.
That’s because when The Guardian tries to establish itself in other countries it takes its self-serving interest-based mentality with it and pretends to care about other people. After the killing of Michael Brown The Guardian wanted black people to write emotive pieces about racism for $500 for 1000 words in hours on demand on freelance terms but would give few of them a salaried Guardian job which are mainly reserved for white women. By the time George Floyd was killed most of the black writers who had written for The Guardian didn’t want to write for them again and by the time Tyre Nichols was killed The Guardian had realised there wasn’t enough money in pretending to care about black people in America and most black writers had realised that The Guardian viewed them as potential cheap casual labour. The Guardian got more donations and clicks out of opposing Trump or defending Roe vs. Wade so The Guardian quietly slid off the back of the Black Lives Matter bandwagon which was getting too left-wing and uppity for the liking of its white staff.
The Guardian has used the same modus operandi in Australia (where it pretends to care about indigenous Australians), it would do the same in Canada if it was worth the expenditure and if it ever tried to establish itself in India it would pretend to care about Dalits. The people that The Guardian and its editors care about most are themselves and there is nothing that cannot be sacrificed when it is in their interests to do so. The Guardian sacrificed thousands of underage girls to the Muslim rape gangs that it knew about in the mid-2000s because it was in its interests to protect the public sector employers and the New Labour government that were failing to protect them but giving The Guardian millions of pounds annually to advertise public sector job vacancies.
AC Harper
1 year ago
Everyone has some self interest, which is often the foundation of attitudes and unthinkingly applied… so therefore hidden from self inspection. This happens in individuals and organisations made up of individuals. It explains why organisations drift from their original purpose and become vessels for careerists expectations.
As a consequence far more effort goes into defending the inconsistencies than rational reflection because who wants to invite criticism of their self interests?
Kate Heusser
1 year ago
The element that is missed from all the laudable investigations into how rich British people benefitted from the slave trade is the simultaneous exploitation of the British workers turfed off their land by Enclosure and herded into the ghastly mills, where ‘wages’ were paid in tokens only usable in the mill-owners’ shops, children as young as ten were deformed and maimed by working the machinery, while the younger ones – some from the age of four – were used to clear out lint and mend broken threads under working machines, at risk not only to life and limb from being hit, but also to their lungs from inhaling the cotton dust.
This isn’t just a ‘race’ issue; it’s a ‘rich’ issue. That needs to be acknowledged.
Kate Heusser
1 year ago
The element that is missed from all the laudable investigations into how rich British people benefitted from the slave trade is the simultaneous exploitation of the British workers turfed off their land by Enclosure and herded into the ghastly mills, where ‘wages’ were paid in tokens only usable in the mill-owners’ shops, children as young as ten were deformed and maimed by working the machinery, while the younger ones – some from the age of four – were used to clear out lint and mend broken threads under working machines, at risk not only to life and limb from being hit, but also to their lungs from inhaling the cotton dust.
This isn’t just a ‘race’ issue; it’s a ‘rich’ issue. That needs to be acknowledged.
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Did the US Government ever attempt to buy out its Slavers as we (UK)* had so successful done? If not why not?
An interesting question, Charles, I have seen no evidence that they did, but perhaps our US commentators may hve some information on that. As an aside, the payments made to the slaver owners was a phenomenal amount, it was about £20 million, which accounted for 40% of government expendature in that year. I suppose the government of the day thought it was worth the cost to get it over and done with, the West Indian slave owner still had a lot of clout, and there was no wish either to shed blood or to lose the West Indies, as the French would most likely step into the vacuum.
I’m not the historian you are Mr. S., even of my own North American “backyard”, but I’m quite sure that never happened. I imagine that was a contributing factor in Southern Lost Cause romanticism and the measure of resentment that lingers to this day. (Also, During Reconstruction, Northern reformers roared though the South and attempted, all at once, to raise blacks to positions of prominence and authority they could not have occupied in the North at that time).
I don’t suppose Northern industrialists who profited from plantation labor were made to return a single dollar though.
No, it did not because of the effectiveness of the Abolitionist Movement in fomenting a raging virulent moral panic about slavery. A moral panic that persists until the present time. Recent research has upped the estimated Civil War death toll to nearly a million people. A million people who died needlessly. Every other civilized country on the planet (that is every country other than Haiti) was able to end slavery without resorting to war. And yet every other country has (at least until the recent spread of the Americrazy BLM thing) healed and moved on but America cannot heal and people continue to die over the slavery issue. So, one million dead and the death toll continues to rise. And the UK looks across the pond and says, “Oh yes! Let’s get that going over here as well!”
If anything deserved to occasion a sense of moral urgency, which you characterize as a virulent panic, slavery sure fit the bill.
Suggesting that there is an uninterrupted moral panic in the US occasioned by Abolitionists is comparable in absurdity to those at the other extreme of the smudged historical viewfinder who pretend that the racial attitudes of the Antebellum period remain unimproved in present-day America. Both are insane bits of hyperbole.
I guess the South could have enjoyed their genteel plantation ways a lot longer if they’d been content to keep slavery at a standstill, and not push it so hard with each successive state being admitted to the Union. You know, the gradualist approach that would have eventually ended a system of large-scale human bondage without so much violence.
Shame that the yanks can’t seem to get through their little disputes without needless violence, unlike “every other country” (barring Haiti you say) that had slavery–like Latin America! What a regional wonderland before the bad example of the US took hold. I was gonna vacation in Honduras until BLM ruined everything.
Would that the US wouldn’t leave so much violence and unrest in its wake (sincerely). I think we ‘Muricans actually learned quite a lot from the British Empire on that front, but we can’t seem to keep a stiff upper lip about it .
And racism, anti-semitism, sexism and ageism is still alive and well all over the world.The “us or them” mentality is fixed in the brain. The need for a scapegoat to project the disowned parts of the self onto hasn’t changed. The climate is changing faster than we are.
If anything deserved to occasion a sense of moral urgency, which you characterize as a virulent panic, slavery sure fit the bill.
Suggesting that there is an uninterrupted moral panic in the US occasioned by Abolitionists is comparable in absurdity to those at the other extreme of the smudged historical viewfinder who pretend that the racial attitudes of the Antebellum period remain unimproved in present-day America. Both are insane bits of hyperbole.
I guess the South could have enjoyed their genteel plantation ways a lot longer if they’d been content to keep slavery at a standstill, and not push it so hard with each successive state being admitted to the Union. You know, the gradualist approach that would have eventually ended a system of large-scale human bondage without so much violence.
Shame that the yanks can’t seem to get through their little disputes without needless violence, unlike “every other country” (barring Haiti you say) that had slavery–like Latin America! What a regional wonderland before the bad example of the US took hold. I was gonna vacation in Honduras until BLM ruined everything.
Would that the US wouldn’t leave so much violence and unrest in its wake (sincerely). I think we ‘Muricans actually learned quite a lot from the British Empire on that front, but we can’t seem to keep a stiff upper lip about it .
And racism, anti-semitism, sexism and ageism is still alive and well all over the world.The “us or them” mentality is fixed in the brain. The need for a scapegoat to project the disowned parts of the self onto hasn’t changed. The climate is changing faster than we are.
An interesting question, Charles, I have seen no evidence that they did, but perhaps our US commentators may hve some information on that. As an aside, the payments made to the slaver owners was a phenomenal amount, it was about £20 million, which accounted for 40% of government expendature in that year. I suppose the government of the day thought it was worth the cost to get it over and done with, the West Indian slave owner still had a lot of clout, and there was no wish either to shed blood or to lose the West Indies, as the French would most likely step into the vacuum.
I’m not the historian you are Mr. S., even of my own North American “backyard”, but I’m quite sure that never happened. I imagine that was a contributing factor in Southern Lost Cause romanticism and the measure of resentment that lingers to this day. (Also, During Reconstruction, Northern reformers roared though the South and attempted, all at once, to raise blacks to positions of prominence and authority they could not have occupied in the North at that time).
I don’t suppose Northern industrialists who profited from plantation labor were made to return a single dollar though.
No, it did not because of the effectiveness of the Abolitionist Movement in fomenting a raging virulent moral panic about slavery. A moral panic that persists until the present time. Recent research has upped the estimated Civil War death toll to nearly a million people. A million people who died needlessly. Every other civilized country on the planet (that is every country other than Haiti) was able to end slavery without resorting to war. And yet every other country has (at least until the recent spread of the Americrazy BLM thing) healed and moved on but America cannot heal and people continue to die over the slavery issue. So, one million dead and the death toll continues to rise. And the UK looks across the pond and says, “Oh yes! Let’s get that going over here as well!”
Last edited 1 year ago by Margaret F
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Did the US Government ever attempt to buy out its Slavers as we (UK)* had so successful done? If not why not?
(* Legislation of 1833 & 1837.)
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Picture yourself as the descendent of an enslaved woman and the lord of the plantation, her “master”–a very common branch on American family trees. Do you therefore bear the full burden of both the slave and the slaver’s suffering and guilt?
The current idea of complicity has ballooned into something that is incomprehensible in any useful way, an overwhelming and demoralizing mess. Yes, it’s better not to patronize companies with the worst labor practices (according to your own list). It would be better if we didn’t use, much less become “slaves” to devices built by children, or under other conditions of servitude. However, saying so seems to do almost nothing to help amend these abuses, even serving as a substitute for concerted action.
Let’s cut down on our complicity, acknowledging that there is no such thing as a plausible human life that is not somehow–however directly or at whatever comforting remove–complicit in immense suffering or at least “injustice adjacent”. You’d have to live in an actual bubble, and perhaps be an imbecile too, to remove knowledge of the suffering occasioned by your total dependency upon others.
And buying only the “most ethical” chocolate, coffee, booze, and electronics won’t protect us from being complicit in exploitation and injustice–nor the vicious, specific horrors those abstract nouns contain. We can’t be made to answer for or ever hope to avoid every remote wrong. And the sins of the fathers and mothers should not be imputed to their children in the way it is easy and in our lower nature to impute them. Let’s clean our own side of the street and each do our part; cut down on our “complicity footprints” and reduce preventable injustice (what a rousing call to action!).
But I hope we won’t imagine our respective parts consist mainly of finger-pointing or self-flagellation, whether public or private.
Last edited 1 year ago by AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Picture yourself as the descendent of an enslaved woman and the lord of the plantation, her “master”–a very common branch on American family trees. Do you therefore bear the full burden of both the slave and the slaver’s suffering and guilt?
The current idea of complicity has ballooned into something that is incomprehensible in any useful way, an overwhelming and demoralizing mess. Yes, it’s better not to patronize companies with the worst labor practices (according to your own list). It would be better if we didn’t use, much less become “slaves” to devices built by children, or under other conditions of servitude. However, saying so seems to do almost nothing to help amend these abuses, even serving as a substitute for concerted action.
Let’s cut down on our complicity, acknowledging that there is no such thing as a plausible human life that is not somehow–however directly or at whatever comforting remove–complicit in immense suffering or at least “injustice adjacent”. You’d have to live in an actual bubble, and perhaps be an imbecile too, to remove knowledge of the suffering occasioned by your total dependency upon others.
And buying only the “most ethical” chocolate, coffee, booze, and electronics won’t protect us from being complicit in exploitation and injustice–nor the vicious, specific horrors those abstract nouns contain. We can’t be made to answer for or ever hope to avoid every remote wrong. And the sins of the fathers and mothers should not be imputed to their children in the way it is easy and in our lower nature to impute them. Let’s clean our own side of the street and each do our part; cut down on our “complicity footprints” and reduce preventable injustice (what a rousing call to action!).
But I hope we won’t imagine our respective parts consist mainly of finger-pointing or self-flagellation, whether public or private.
Last edited 1 year ago by AJ Mac
David Yetter
1 year ago
The rational response to all the agita about slavery centuries past (as opposed to what is going on in Xinjiang, Mauritania, and in brothels throughout the world in the present day) has always been, and will always be: slavery (or variants like serfdom or slave-like castes) was a universal institution in nearly all societies from the rise of agriculture until the 19th century, when it was largely stamped out on the initiative of Europeans (esp. the British).
Singling out those of European ancestry as the sole villains in the story of slavery is, in fact, racism against Europeans, as it ignores the fact that the Kingdom of Benin and other slave-taking Africans were the main profiteers from the African slave trade; ignores Islamic slavery, which enslaved both sub-Saharan Africans and Europeans; ignores Aztec, Mayan,Tlingit and Haida slavery in the New World; ignores the slave-like castes in India; ignores the various regimes of slavery that existed in most countries of Asia, including Qing Dynasty China.
What is peculiar about Europeans (and Americans of European ancestry) is that in the 19th century, they decided that slavery and serfdom were moral abominations, not merely fighting a Civil War over the issue in the United States, but abolishing serfdom in Russia, abolishing the chattel slavery of Roma (Gypies) in Romania, and, the true heroes of the tale, in Britain not merely abolishing slavery in the Empire, but expending lives and treasure to send the Royal Navy to suppress the slave trade world-wide (over the objection of the indigenous African slave-traders).
America already paid reparations for slavery in the blood of Union soldiers. Britain already paid in the cost in treasure and the blood of sailors and marines of maintaining the West Africa Squadron. The woke can stuff it on this issue.
(On my side of the pond a case might be made for reparations for Jim Crow, red-lining and the racist administration of GI benefits after the world wars and Korea, but not for slavery qua slavery.)
Last edited 1 year ago by David Yetter
David Yetter
1 year ago
The rational response to all the agita about slavery centuries past (as opposed to what is going on in Xinjiang, Mauritania, and in brothels throughout the world in the present day) has always been, and will always be: slavery (or variants like serfdom or slave-like castes) was a universal institution in nearly all societies from the rise of agriculture until the 19th century, when it was largely stamped out on the initiative of Europeans (esp. the British).
Singling out those of European ancestry as the sole villains in the story of slavery is, in fact, racism against Europeans, as it ignores the fact that the Kingdom of Benin and other slave-taking Africans were the main profiteers from the African slave trade; ignores Islamic slavery, which enslaved both sub-Saharan Africans and Europeans; ignores Aztec, Mayan,Tlingit and Haida slavery in the New World; ignores the slave-like castes in India; ignores the various regimes of slavery that existed in most countries of Asia, including Qing Dynasty China.
What is peculiar about Europeans (and Americans of European ancestry) is that in the 19th century, they decided that slavery and serfdom were moral abominations, not merely fighting a Civil War over the issue in the United States, but abolishing serfdom in Russia, abolishing the chattel slavery of Roma (Gypies) in Romania, and, the true heroes of the tale, in Britain not merely abolishing slavery in the Empire, but expending lives and treasure to send the Royal Navy to suppress the slave trade world-wide (over the objection of the indigenous African slave-traders).
America already paid reparations for slavery in the blood of Union soldiers. Britain already paid in the cost in treasure and the blood of sailors and marines of maintaining the West Africa Squadron. The woke can stuff it on this issue.
(On my side of the pond a case might be made for reparations for Jim Crow, red-lining and the racist administration of GI benefits after the world wars and Korea, but not for slavery qua slavery.)
Last edited 1 year ago by David Yetter
Paul T
1 year ago
Is there a website which tracks commenters on Comment is Free? Some of them seem to be on there for 10 hours a day for years; Brian Braddock, Jess the Crip being two that immediately spring to mind. For an example of what hatred, real visceral hatred, looks like there can’t be anywhere that is worse than those comments which appear under Guardian cartoons. It is obscene.
Yet on controversial subjects with meaningful disagreement and legitimate diversity of opinion they usually won’t even allow comments. (Granted, when they used to allow more the tone was pretty corrosive).
Yet on controversial subjects with meaningful disagreement and legitimate diversity of opinion they usually won’t even allow comments. (Granted, when they used to allow more the tone was pretty corrosive).
Paul T
1 year ago
Is there a website which tracks commenters on Comment is Free? Some of them seem to be on there for 10 hours a day for years; Brian Braddock, Jess the Crip being two that immediately spring to mind. For an example of what hatred, real visceral hatred, looks like there can’t be anywhere that is worse than those comments which appear under Guardian cartoons. It is obscene.
Andrew Martin
1 year ago
Never mind the slave trade it is alleged by a journalist in the Mail, Stephen Glover if I am not correct that the Guardian offshored £22million from the sale of their part ownership of Auto trader. Did someone say they had morals?
Andrew Martin
1 year ago
Never mind the slave trade it is alleged by a journalist in the Mail, Stephen Glover if I am not correct that the Guardian offshored £22million from the sale of their part ownership of Auto trader. Did someone say they had morals?
Dominic A
1 year ago
Yesterday was a peak Guardian day for clueless hypocrisy – a handwringing article on fake news – ‘Why are Britons so susceptible to fake news – and what can we do about it?’….and the headline news for the day? Was it the earthquake; the Ukraine war; the third mysterious spy thing shot down over N. American airspace; the multiple UK strikes; the Peru unrest perhaps……….No, the most important ‘news’ was another potential revelation concerning the lockdown party at Downing Street held by an ex PM, two years ago (no-one was harmed in the making of that party).
Dominic A
1 year ago
Yesterday was a peak Guardian day for clueless hypocrisy – a handwringing article on fake news – ‘Why are Britons so susceptible to fake news – and what can we do about it?’….and the headline news for the day? Was it the earthquake; the Ukraine war; the third mysterious spy thing shot down over N. American airspace; the multiple UK strikes; the Peru unrest perhaps……….No, the most important ‘news’ was another potential revelation concerning the lockdown party at Downing Street held by an ex PM, two years ago (no-one was harmed in the making of that party).
George Sheerin
1 year ago
Whilst it seems that no sin in this world can exceed racism, may I tell how when I was a boy in the 1950s my Irish Catholic dad told me how at the Manchester Guardian, no Catholic was allowed to advance beyond senior clerk level in the hierarchy of its management structure. Later in the 1960s as an immigrant in this country and as new member of the Labour Party it was confirmed to me that this was indeed the case, but that it was about to be relaxed, so that I could feel safe in reading the paper or in applying for work there.
A great number of white men were too. As you’ve no doubt heard: Throughout the South and often in the North, the legal right to vote did not amount to actual enfranchisment for several decades. So in 1920, the tardy enfranchisement of women was instantly more real than what American black men had through ostensible voting rights since 1870.
Yes, that’s true. It’s true also that not all white men could vote. In many countries, the franchise was limited at first not only by race and sex but also by class (wealth, property, education), religion (no Catholics or Jews) and age (still no children). It took time to become universal for adult citizens (and now some people demand that we extend the franchise to include non-citizens). What we consider self-evident about democracy wasn’t self-evident to all of our ancestors. They worried, not entirely without reason, about “mobocracy.”
Yes sir. Even the United States, I believe, restricted voting to men with land holdings until big bad Andrew Jackson extended the franchise. And senators were appointed, not elected, until 1912. Mobocracy or rule by the rabble indeed was and remains a worry.
I think extending access to all adult demographics is “on the right side of history”. But why encourage every ill-informed eligible voter to participate just because he or she supports your candidate (both sides do this)?
Yes sir. Even the United States, I believe, restricted voting to men with land holdings until big bad Andrew Jackson extended the franchise. And senators were appointed, not elected, until 1912. Mobocracy or rule by the rabble indeed was and remains a worry.
I think extending access to all adult demographics is “on the right side of history”. But why encourage every ill-informed eligible voter to participate just because he or she supports your candidate (both sides do this)?
Yes, that’s true. It’s true also that not all white men could vote. In many countries, the franchise was limited at first not only by race and sex but also by class (wealth, property, education), religion (no Catholics or Jews) and age (still no children). It took time to become universal for adult citizens (and now some people demand that we extend the franchise to include non-citizens). What we consider self-evident about democracy wasn’t self-evident to all of our ancestors. They worried, not entirely without reason, about “mobocracy.”
A great number of white men were too. As you’ve no doubt heard: Throughout the South and often in the North, the legal right to vote did not amount to actual enfranchisment for several decades. So in 1920, the tardy enfranchisement of women was instantly more real than what American black men had through ostensible voting rights since 1870.
Judging someone for something they cannot change, such as color or birth sex, seems equally wrong. Hating someone because they are ugly or short, beautiful or tall, dumb or smart also falls in that pretty much unchangeable category.
Now hating a person for something they could change, like being circus fat or totally ignorant or profligate–instead of judging the behavior and trying to understand them–isn’t great, but might be a less vicious form of bigotry or prejudice.
Judging someone for something they cannot change, such as color or birth sex, seems equally wrong. Hating someone because they are ugly or short, beautiful or tall, dumb or smart also falls in that pretty much unchangeable category.
Now hating a person for something they could change, like being circus fat or totally ignorant or profligate–instead of judging the behavior and trying to understand them–isn’t great, but might be a less vicious form of bigotry or prejudice.
Strange how even categories of bigotry seem to have a shifting hierarchy of taboo and prevalence. I wonder if blacks or Indians other contemporary (50s and 60s) minority hires could have risen as high, let alone higher. Not that it matters much, but as someone from another generation and continent I’m genuinely curious.
Strange how even categories of bigotry seem to have a shifting hierarchy of taboo and prevalence. I wonder if blacks or Indians other contemporary (50s and 60s) minority hires could have risen as high, let alone higher. Not that it matters much, but as someone from another generation and continent I’m genuinely curious.
George Sheerin
1 year ago
Whilst it seems that no sin in this world can exceed racism, may I tell how when I was a boy in the 1950s my Irish Catholic dad told me how at the Manchester Guardian, no Catholic was allowed to advance beyond senior clerk level in the hierarchy of its management structure. Later in the 1960s as an immigrant in this country and as new member of the Labour Party it was confirmed to me that this was indeed the case, but that it was about to be relaxed, so that I could feel safe in reading the paper or in applying for work there.
Richard Craven
1 year ago
Nowadays the Guardian allies itself with a castration cult.
Richard Craven
1 year ago
Nowadays the Guardian allies itself with a castration cult.
M. Jamieson
1 year ago
I just don’t care if the Guardian, or any other organization or business, that has been around for a similar length of time, had indirect links to the slave trade.
All of us, all of us, participate in the economy as it exists, and unless we go off and live like the Amish without many ties to the outside community, or in the wilds alone, there is no way to opt out of the economy as it exists. Of course businessmen in the past had ties to dodgy enterprises. Just like they all do now, and for that matter, any of us who have investments and pensions or buy mass produced products of any kind have links to dodgy business, questionable employment practices, and all the rest.
Organizations like The Guardian bring this criticism on themselves, as they are quite happy to do so to others, but the underlying premise is just bs.
M. Jamieson
1 year ago
I just don’t care if the Guardian, or any other organization or business, that has been around for a similar length of time, had indirect links to the slave trade.
All of us, all of us, participate in the economy as it exists, and unless we go off and live like the Amish without many ties to the outside community, or in the wilds alone, there is no way to opt out of the economy as it exists. Of course businessmen in the past had ties to dodgy enterprises. Just like they all do now, and for that matter, any of us who have investments and pensions or buy mass produced products of any kind have links to dodgy business, questionable employment practices, and all the rest.
Organizations like The Guardian bring this criticism on themselves, as they are quite happy to do so to others, but the underlying premise is just bs.
Douglas McNeish
1 year ago
Appalling victim-blaming on the part of the Guardian. Rather that owning up to their on racist bias – conscious or unconscious – they choose, as so often the sanctimonious do – to double down on their virtue-signalung, while dismissing the claims of the podcaster critics. They would of course not let off any other institution under such accusations so lightly.
The dirty secret of many social justice warriors is that their exhibitionism seeks to conceal their guilt over past transgressions or privileges. Both seem to be at work with the superficially altruistic Guardian leadership.
Douglas McNeish
1 year ago
Appalling victim-blaming on the part of the Guardian. Rather that owning up to their on racist bias – conscious or unconscious – they choose, as so often the sanctimonious do – to double down on their virtue-signalung, while dismissing the claims of the podcaster critics. They would of course not let off any other institution under such accusations so lightly.
The dirty secret of many social justice warriors is that their exhibitionism seeks to conceal their guilt over past transgressions or privileges. Both seem to be at work with the superficially altruistic Guardian leadership.
James Sullivan
1 year ago
It would take a heart of stone not to find these moral contortions hilarious.
James Sullivan
1 year ago
It would take a heart of stone not to find these moral contortions hilarious.
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago
…. apologies for multiple postings – there was a delay in the comment appearing, and I was rather too impatient!.
The Guardian is RELENTLESSLY negative – about pretty much everything. Over the last 10 years it has got markedly worse. It was always sanctimonious but it at least tried to incorporate a broader spectrum of ideas and didn’t wrap itself in the flag of liberal victimhood. (I even remember when it occasionally published ‘positive’ stories – which seems a very long time ago now).
Any objectivity has vanished. Any hope has been dashed that a Guardian editorial might ever assess a policy on its merits, and stop judging a policy, an action, a statement based solely on who has espoused it and what tribe they belong to. Whether that be a political tribe or any of the other boxes into which “Liberals” seek to place us in their ‘hierarchy of victim-status’.
Their ongoing narrative is wholly at odds with reality. The Guardian has a dystopian worldview and narrative predicated on catastrophism – it seems almost as though they are willing such a future into existence.
The Guardian proudly trumpets “Comment is free… but facts are sacred”. Yet facts are so routinely ignored in favour of their preferred narrative that I wonder how the Editors still put out CP Scott’s dictum every day with a straight face.
Comment may be free, but if the comment on the Grauniad comments page is out of step with Grauniad orthodoxy it will not stay there for long. As an experiment, try posting a comment there supporting foxhunting and then count the seconds till it disappears.
Comment may be free, but if the comment on the Grauniad comments page is out of step with Grauniad orthodoxy it will not stay there for long. As an experiment, try posting a comment there supporting foxhunting and then count the seconds till it disappears.
The Guardian is RELENTLESSLY negative – about pretty much everything. Over the last 10 years it has got markedly worse. It was always sanctimonious but it at least tried to incorporate a broader spectrum of ideas and didn’t wrap itself in the flag of liberal victimhood. (I even remember when it occasionally published ‘positive’ stories – which seems a very long time ago now).
Any objectivity has vanished. Any hope has been dashed that a Guardian editorial might ever assess a policy on its merits, and stop judging a policy, an action, a statement based solely on who has espoused it and what tribe they belong to. Whether that be a political tribe or any of the other boxes into which “Liberals” seek to place us in their ‘hierarchy of victim-status’.
Their ongoing narrative is wholly at odds with reality. The Guardian has a dystopian worldview and narrative predicated on catastrophism – it seems almost as though they are willing such a future into existence.
The Guardian proudly trumpets “Comment is free… but facts are sacred”. Yet facts are so routinely ignored in favour of their preferred narrative that I wonder how the Editors still put out CP Scott’s dictum every day with a straight face.
Still happens to me even though all my comments have eventually posted, or been restored after removal. I do wish they would show both time submitted and time published, so that one’s “fresh-released” comment doesn’t appear to be 12 hours, or in your case 4 hours old. Even so, this forum is more balanced than most, with a seeming editorial approach of reducing contentiousness and profanity without stopping a whole lot from getting through, eventually.
Still happens to me even though all my comments have eventually posted, or been restored after removal. I do wish they would show both time submitted and time published, so that one’s “fresh-released” comment doesn’t appear to be 12 hours, or in your case 4 hours old. Even so, this forum is more balanced than most, with a seeming editorial approach of reducing contentiousness and profanity without stopping a whole lot from getting through, eventually.
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago
…. apologies for multiple postings – there was a delay in the comment appearing, and I was rather too impatient!.
As someone famous once said ‘beware the leaven of the pharisees’
j watson
1 year ago
Things are so bad for the Right currently that UnHerd had a civic duty to provide some temporary weekend medicinal relief with some ‘Red Meat’ Guardian bashing. Yah-Boo!
The Guardian is esteemed nationally and internationally for good reasons but I don’t quite feel it’s having its best period right now. Little bit too much ‘identity’ stuff for the palate. Nonetheless still a million times better than likes of ‘Daily Mail Hate Island’
I would say, less envy and resentment than an impregnable sense of their own moral purity and contempt for any views different to their own, particularly if coming from those they consider their social inferiors.
I would say, less envy and resentment than an impregnable sense of their own moral purity and contempt for any views different to their own, particularly if coming from those they consider their social inferiors.
Perhaps, but I’ve always found Daily Mail readers more genteel. A lot of Guardian readers seem driven by pure envy and resentment.
j watson
1 year ago
Things are so bad for the Right currently that UnHerd had a civic duty to provide some temporary weekend medicinal relief with some ‘Red Meat’ Guardian bashing. Yah-Boo!
The Guardian is esteemed nationally and internationally for good reasons but I don’t quite feel it’s having its best period right now. Little bit too much ‘identity’ stuff for the palate. Nonetheless still a million times better than likes of ‘Daily Mail Hate Island’
“the Little Circle of Manchester elites believed that the power of democracy, and even of free expression, should be limited to a small elect who were educated and intelligent enough to be entrusted with such power.“
The left never changes – “you deplorables shut up and listen while we tell you what’s good for you.”
The “Little Circle of Manchester” syndrome is alive and cloying to this day, exemplified by those in charge at the Whitworth Art Gallery who’ve created something called the Office of Arte Ùtil (the pseuds) to “use art for positive social change”.
Condescension Central.
Office of Arte Util. Actually that’s hilarious, beyond parody.
Office of Arte Util. Actually that’s hilarious, beyond parody.
I was going to quote the same sentence to the same effect.
They truly are evil people who seem only of seeing virtue in their evil.
I think it’s wrong to characterise them as evil, something they’d be more likely to think about those who don’t subscribe to their world view.
I’d call them misguided, and unaware of the damage they’re doing to the institutions they’ve wheedled their way into.
On the one hand, it’s perfectly true that certain groups in society were woefully under-represented in galleries and making provision for artists with something to contribute from any background can’t be argued against.
What can, and should be disputed at every available opportunity is the belief that art should be used for didactic social purposes. It’s quite simply to fall way short of understanding what great art is about – a never-ending reaching for the human soul at any time in history. It’s telling that they fail to understand that.
I think it’s wrong to characterise them as evil, something they’d be more likely to think about those who don’t subscribe to their world view.
I’d call them misguided, and unaware of the damage they’re doing to the institutions they’ve wheedled their way into.
On the one hand, it’s perfectly true that certain groups in society were woefully under-represented in galleries and making provision for artists with something to contribute from any background can’t be argued against.
What can, and should be disputed at every available opportunity is the belief that art should be used for didactic social purposes. It’s quite simply to fall way short of understanding what great art is about – a never-ending reaching for the human soul at any time in history. It’s telling that they fail to understand that.
That’s a bit simplistic. That was the standard view of democracy back then, found in such liberal luminaries as John Stuart Mill. Even today all sides tend to condemn the “masses”when they don’t deliver the “correct” results. How do you think the most militant Brexiteers would have reacted if Remain had one? Probably quite like militant Remainers did react, complaining that the people were duped, etc
No doubt true. We all think we’re right, but conservatives tend to empirical thinking. Their guiding star is “does it work?”
There can’t be much disputing that progressives tend to the theoretical. From Marxism to critical theory, high flown complex theories are applied to social issues. The difficulty understanding the theory is part of the attraction to its proponents, automatically making them part of an elite. The people subjected to the theory are reduced to numbers and the results are always catastrophic for them.
No doubt there are lots of examples where this doesn’t apply but, for me, it holds true as a rule of thumb.
No doubt true. We all think we’re right, but conservatives tend to empirical thinking. Their guiding star is “does it work?”
There can’t be much disputing that progressives tend to the theoretical. From Marxism to critical theory, high flown complex theories are applied to social issues. The difficulty understanding the theory is part of the attraction to its proponents, automatically making them part of an elite. The people subjected to the theory are reduced to numbers and the results are always catastrophic for them.
No doubt there are lots of examples where this doesn’t apply but, for me, it holds true as a rule of thumb.
The degree of vileness of any person or institution is measurable by the degree of stridency of their sanctimony. In India, the usurious money lenders are the most overtly religious and by far the most preachy. In the United States, the New York Times and the WaPo are the greatest enablers of the cancel culture while they view the entire world through their biased prisms. Journalism is long dead for these people – it’s simply a function of driving their agenda, no matter how disingenuously.
Beat me to it! Was just going to add: ca change plus ca change.
I was thinking ‘Hoist with their own petard, by gum!’
I was thinking ‘Hoist with their own petard, by gum!’
The fact that the Guardian building has its own dedicated branch of Waitrose kind of says it all, I think.
Yes, the hypocrisy is toe-curling; but then again, is being eligible to vote on the basis of nothing more than the attainment of a certain age…on what is prudent sovereign treasury management and prudent social / community policies…wise and in the best interests of society generally? Particularly when in certain parts the voting licence is given at age 16?
Just because something happens, doesn’t make it right! Quite a few murders take place (even in some places sanctioned by the legal system), does that make it right? I think not!
In a world of moral relativity, it may be right by some.
In a world of moral relativity, it may be right by some.
Once we reach the culmination of our Idiocracy, we might be able to answer that question. Who knows? Perhaps the elite have always been right in that the masses are simply incapable of self government. We’ll see.
Just because something happens, doesn’t make it right! Quite a few murders take place (even in some places sanctioned by the legal system), does that make it right? I think not!
Once we reach the culmination of our Idiocracy, we might be able to answer that question. Who knows? Perhaps the elite have always been right in that the masses are simply incapable of self government. We’ll see.
The “Little Circle of Manchester” syndrome is alive and cloying to this day, exemplified by those in charge at the Whitworth Art Gallery who’ve created something called the Office of Arte Ùtil (the pseuds) to “use art for positive social change”.
Condescension Central.
I was going to quote the same sentence to the same effect.
They truly are evil people who seem only of seeing virtue in their evil.
That’s a bit simplistic. That was the standard view of democracy back then, found in such liberal luminaries as John Stuart Mill. Even today all sides tend to condemn the “masses”when they don’t deliver the “correct” results. How do you think the most militant Brexiteers would have reacted if Remain had one? Probably quite like militant Remainers did react, complaining that the people were duped, etc
The degree of vileness of any person or institution is measurable by the degree of stridency of their sanctimony. In India, the usurious money lenders are the most overtly religious and by far the most preachy. In the United States, the New York Times and the WaPo are the greatest enablers of the cancel culture while they view the entire world through their biased prisms. Journalism is long dead for these people – it’s simply a function of driving their agenda, no matter how disingenuously.
Beat me to it! Was just going to add: ca change plus ca change.
The fact that the Guardian building has its own dedicated branch of Waitrose kind of says it all, I think.
Yes, the hypocrisy is toe-curling; but then again, is being eligible to vote on the basis of nothing more than the attainment of a certain age…on what is prudent sovereign treasury management and prudent social / community policies…wise and in the best interests of society generally? Particularly when in certain parts the voting licence is given at age 16?
“the Little Circle of Manchester elites believed that the power of democracy, and even of free expression, should be limited to a small elect who were educated and intelligent enough to be entrusted with such power.“
The left never changes – “you deplorables shut up and listen while we tell you what’s good for you.”
Next question: why has the Guardian shilled all these years for the Bolsheviks and Maoism, given that the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China were the two biggest and cruelest slave states in history?
Inquiring minds would like to know. Maybe Guardian editor Katharine Viner could help us there.
When Malcom Muggeridge revealed the mass murder caused by famine in the Ukraine in the 1930s he was sacked by The Guardian.
Orwell in his various essays describes the character of the middle class left Wing .In his essay ” Limits to Pessimism ” he says “the shallow self righteousness of the left wing intelligentia”. Orwell’s essay ” The lion and Unicorn ” describe the left wing middle class very well.
The LWMC
“Their negative, querulous attitude
Lack of constructive suggestions
Irresponsible carping
Live in a world of ideas with little contact with physical reality
Flabby pacifists up to 1935.Shrieked fro war 1935 -39 and cooled off when war started
Anti fascist during Spanish Civil war defeatist now
Severance from the common culture of the country
Take their cookery from Paris opinion from Moscow
Ashamed of their own nationality
Consider disgraceful about being English about being English. Snigger at every English institution from horse racing to suet puddings
All through the critical years chipping away at English moral, quasi pacifist, pro Moscow and anti British
Purely negative creatures.”
This is only one essy from 1940, there are far more with similar comments.
I’ve come across that mindset multiple times during my life. Really beggars belief. One such claimed that the caste system in India had been introduced by the English as they were so “class obsessed”. I also found they were often snobs who actively despised the (white) working class.
Question them and they fall apart because their knowledge and understanding is makes a shallow puddle seem deep.
I’ve come across that mindset multiple times during my life. Really beggars belief. One such claimed that the caste system in India had been introduced by the English as they were so “class obsessed”. I also found they were often snobs who actively despised the (white) working class.
Question them and they fall apart because their knowledge and understanding is makes a shallow puddle seem deep.
The Guardian sacked Malcom Muggeridge in the early 1930s for reporting the mass murder caused by starvation in the Ukarine.
What about that Welsh chap, whose name unfortunately escapes me who was later killed/ murdered?
You could have googled it before you posted your comment.
Yes I could, but normally an informed commentator from UnHerd would get there first, but not on this particular occasion apparently.
Jawhol mein fuhrer
Yes I could, but normally an informed commentator from UnHerd would get there first, but not on this particular occasion apparently.
Jawhol mein fuhrer
Gareth jones
Thank you.
Thank you.
You could have googled it before you posted your comment.
Gareth jones
What about that Welsh chap, whose name unfortunately escapes me who was later killed/ murdered?
‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, doncha know’?
When Malcom Muggeridge revealed the mass murder caused by famine in the Ukraine in the 1930s he was sacked by The Guardian.
Orwell in his various essays describes the character of the middle class left Wing .In his essay ” Limits to Pessimism ” he says “the shallow self righteousness of the left wing intelligentia”. Orwell’s essay ” The lion and Unicorn ” describe the left wing middle class very well.
The LWMC
“Their negative, querulous attitude
Lack of constructive suggestions
Irresponsible carping
Live in a world of ideas with little contact with physical reality
Flabby pacifists up to 1935.Shrieked fro war 1935 -39 and cooled off when war started
Anti fascist during Spanish Civil war defeatist now
Severance from the common culture of the country
Take their cookery from Paris opinion from Moscow
Ashamed of their own nationality
Consider disgraceful about being English about being English. Snigger at every English institution from horse racing to suet puddings
All through the critical years chipping away at English moral, quasi pacifist, pro Moscow and anti British
Purely negative creatures.”
This is only one essy from 1940, there are far more with similar comments.
The Guardian sacked Malcom Muggeridge in the early 1930s for reporting the mass murder caused by starvation in the Ukarine.
‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, doncha know’?
Next question: why has the Guardian shilled all these years for the Bolsheviks and Maoism, given that the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China were the two biggest and cruelest slave states in history?
Inquiring minds would like to know. Maybe Guardian editor Katharine Viner could help us there.
The Guardian today is no more responsible for things that happened 180 years ago than any of us are for the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s. In just the same way that children are not – and should not be – responsible for the decisions and any debts of their parents. The whole concept of hereditary guilt is just wrong. As is punishing a group of people for the actions of individuals (group punishment).
English law has always been quite clear about these matters. We need to fight back against ignorant and misguided people spreading this nonsense.
The only issue I have with the Guardian here is their double standards. If they support hereditary guilt and group punishment (they don’t seem particularly keen on older white men – but I’m not letting it bother me) they can’t be surprised if they eventually get judged against the same “standard”.
I totally agree with you about inherted sins, but, when I first read about the possible slavery links of the Guardian founder, I did rather think “ha, hoisted by your own petard”, and endulged in a little schadenfreude (my bad, I know).
There’s no need to feel bad. Taking pleasure in deceit and hypocrisy being exposed is not schadenfreude, but a sign of virtue.
There’s no need to feel bad. Taking pleasure in deceit and hypocrisy being exposed is not schadenfreude, but a sign of virtue.
Agreed. Those responsible for the trade were the African rulers who sold their own people and the merchants who bought them.
I agree, these African leaders must be considered the first cause. We don’t know what might have happened if said leaders had refused to sell people; it’s possible that the Europeans would have done their own raiding and it’s also possible that they would have just said “dash it all, chaps, let’s go home”, and sailed off into the sunset.
I doubt it , disease would have killed the Europeans.
That was my first thought, but there’s no accounting for what people will do for money; they might have hired locals to do the dirty work. But we’ll never know.
“… there’s no accounting for what people will do for money”? What happened to the payroll department?
“… there’s no accounting for what people will do for money”? What happened to the payroll department?
That was my first thought, but there’s no accounting for what people will do for money; they might have hired locals to do the dirty work. But we’ll never know.
Thanks for the chuckle.
Ha! Someone had to pick the cotton.
I doubt it , disease would have killed the Europeans.
Thanks for the chuckle.
Ha! Someone had to pick the cotton.
Hear hear! But why is this not said out loud in the media? And why did Africans not invade, colonise and enslave Europeans? We all know the answer, of course… but no one has the backbone, guts and courage to say so?
Actually northern Africans (Algiers) did capture Christian Slaves(European) in the 18th/19th century… the bombardment of Algiers was a famous naval battle when lord Exmouth forced the Bey to release them
Yes, This slave-trade is often forgotten, along with the East African trade into the Middle East and Zanzibar. There were whole villages on the south west coast of England and in Ireland. Robert Davis reckoned that something like one million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries. Small compared with the Atlantic trade, but still significant. In Ireland the little harbour village of Baltimore, County Cork was attacked and. almost all the villagers were taken to a life of slavery in North Africa.
Some historians estimate as many as 17 million people were enslaved on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and c5 million African slaves were transported by Arab slave traders to other parts of the world between 1500 and 1900.
Arab slave traders raided Iceland and eastern Europe for ‘merchandise’; it’s on account of the captured and sold Slavs that we have the word slave. But what I miss in all this hubbub is that it was the British that ended a global curse that had existed as long as humanity.
You forgot about the ancient Jews of the Old Testament, enslaved by the Egyptians.
Arab slave traders raided Iceland and eastern Europe for ‘merchandise’; it’s on account of the captured and sold Slavs that we have the word slave. But what I miss in all this hubbub is that it was the British that ended a global curse that had existed as long as humanity.
You forgot about the ancient Jews of the Old Testament, enslaved by the Egyptians.
Most notably from Baltimore, Co Cork!
“They” must have fetched a handsome price given their unusual colouring!
Yes, This slave-trade is often forgotten, along with the East African trade into the Middle East and Zanzibar. There were whole villages on the south west coast of England and in Ireland. Robert Davis reckoned that something like one million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries. Small compared with the Atlantic trade, but still significant. In Ireland the little harbour village of Baltimore, County Cork was attacked and. almost all the villagers were taken to a life of slavery in North Africa.
Some historians estimate as many as 17 million people were enslaved on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and c5 million African slaves were transported by Arab slave traders to other parts of the world between 1500 and 1900.
Most notably from Baltimore, Co Cork!
“They” must have fetched a handsome price given their unusual colouring!
I think your question is an important one but don’t think it requires great courage to answer – Technology – from transport to weapons to agricultural cultivation (the latter dependent on the inescapable facts of geography)
And why did Africans not invade, colonise and enslave Europeans?
Oh, but they did, as @Andrew Wise has pointed out. And ‘everyone’ with a history book has known it. But in today’s ‘progressive’ circles, morality is wholly rigged against the Golden Rule and the Bible and the Europeans which promoted it. Oh, and Americans too.
Pray do tell because I don’t know why.
You’re not a DAR*by any chance?
(*Daughter of the American Revolution.)
You’re not a DAR*by any chance?
(*Daughter of the American Revolution.)
Thomas Sowell’s book Conquest and Culture is quite good on this. Societies with active trading networks tend to develop faster than those without. Cross fertilisation of ideas, rudimentary counting, etc all being necessary for trade.
Trade involves transport of goods and the cheapest way of doing that is via water. Places with long, navigable rivers, deep into their interior, have tended to develop faster. Africa has relatively few.
For that matter, now that the world is 150+ years beyond this subject, why is the continent of Africa still living in the 19th century? Their main product produced continues to be extreme poverty.
Actually northern Africans (Algiers) did capture Christian Slaves(European) in the 18th/19th century… the bombardment of Algiers was a famous naval battle when lord Exmouth forced the Bey to release them
I think your question is an important one but don’t think it requires great courage to answer – Technology – from transport to weapons to agricultural cultivation (the latter dependent on the inescapable facts of geography)
And why did Africans not invade, colonise and enslave Europeans?
Oh, but they did, as @Andrew Wise has pointed out. And ‘everyone’ with a history book has known it. But in today’s ‘progressive’ circles, morality is wholly rigged against the Golden Rule and the Bible and the Europeans which promoted it. Oh, and Americans too.
Pray do tell because I don’t know why.
Thomas Sowell’s book Conquest and Culture is quite good on this. Societies with active trading networks tend to develop faster than those without. Cross fertilisation of ideas, rudimentary counting, etc all being necessary for trade.
Trade involves transport of goods and the cheapest way of doing that is via water. Places with long, navigable rivers, deep into their interior, have tended to develop faster. Africa has relatively few.
For that matter, now that the world is 150+ years beyond this subject, why is the continent of Africa still living in the 19th century? Their main product produced continues to be extreme poverty.
Man’s inhumanity to man is colorless.
American?
We are all slaves to our sin.
We are all slaves to our sin.
American?
Well, the indentured Irish labourers who were shipped to the colonies were often treated just as badly as the African slaves.
British orphans were getting shipped to the colonies up to the 1970s. Many suffered all manner of abuse and most were little more than slaves.
British orphans were getting shipped to the colonies up to the 1970s. Many suffered all manner of abuse and most were little more than slaves.
I agree, these African leaders must be considered the first cause. We don’t know what might have happened if said leaders had refused to sell people; it’s possible that the Europeans would have done their own raiding and it’s also possible that they would have just said “dash it all, chaps, let’s go home”, and sailed off into the sunset.
Hear hear! But why is this not said out loud in the media? And why did Africans not invade, colonise and enslave Europeans? We all know the answer, of course… but no one has the backbone, guts and courage to say so?
Man’s inhumanity to man is colorless.
Well, the indentured Irish labourers who were shipped to the colonies were often treated just as badly as the African slaves.
Every anniversary of VE Day, without fail, some Guardian hack will pen an article insisting that anyone who shows any pride in Britain’s wartime past is jingoistic and somehow laying claim to glories that belonged to another generation. Yet many of those authors who push such miserabilist bilge, also insist we should all shoulder the guilt for anything bad done by this country in its imperial past.
Admiration for heroes in the comparatively recent past is backwards looking, yet we’re somehow on the hook for reparations to the colonised 200 years later? It doesn’t seem a consistent position.
Why should the statute of limitations for guilt should run so much longer than that of glory?
Pretty well all the ‘older white men’ in my part of North London are avid readers of the Guardian. The air is full of their mating calls: ‘The Gawdian says …’, ‘did you say that thing in today’s Gawdian?’ Its basic appeal is that it tells them that their behaviour doesn’t matter so long as they have the right opinions.
“The whole concept of hereditary guilt is just wrong.” Of course but it exists in several cultures such as in Pakistan and India where bonded labour still immiserates the lives of well over a million men, women and children working off the debts – but never ever managing to do so – of previous generations. This despite the fact that the practice has been supposedly outlawed.
I totally agree with you about inherted sins, but, when I first read about the possible slavery links of the Guardian founder, I did rather think “ha, hoisted by your own petard”, and endulged in a little schadenfreude (my bad, I know).
Agreed. Those responsible for the trade were the African rulers who sold their own people and the merchants who bought them.
Every anniversary of VE Day, without fail, some Guardian hack will pen an article insisting that anyone who shows any pride in Britain’s wartime past is jingoistic and somehow laying claim to glories that belonged to another generation. Yet many of those authors who push such miserabilist bilge, also insist we should all shoulder the guilt for anything bad done by this country in its imperial past.
Admiration for heroes in the comparatively recent past is backwards looking, yet we’re somehow on the hook for reparations to the colonised 200 years later? It doesn’t seem a consistent position.
Why should the statute of limitations for guilt should run so much longer than that of glory?
Pretty well all the ‘older white men’ in my part of North London are avid readers of the Guardian. The air is full of their mating calls: ‘The Gawdian says …’, ‘did you say that thing in today’s Gawdian?’ Its basic appeal is that it tells them that their behaviour doesn’t matter so long as they have the right opinions.
“The whole concept of hereditary guilt is just wrong.” Of course but it exists in several cultures such as in Pakistan and India where bonded labour still immiserates the lives of well over a million men, women and children working off the debts – but never ever managing to do so – of previous generations. This despite the fact that the practice has been supposedly outlawed.
The Guardian today is no more responsible for things that happened 180 years ago than any of us are for the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s. In just the same way that children are not – and should not be – responsible for the decisions and any debts of their parents. The whole concept of hereditary guilt is just wrong. As is punishing a group of people for the actions of individuals (group punishment).
English law has always been quite clear about these matters. We need to fight back against ignorant and misguided people spreading this nonsense.
The only issue I have with the Guardian here is their double standards. If they support hereditary guilt and group punishment (they don’t seem particularly keen on older white men – but I’m not letting it bother me) they can’t be surprised if they eventually get judged against the same “standard”.
The Guardian has form on not reporting on matters that dont fit in to their worldview. They said very little about the sexual exploitation of young white girls by predominantly men of Pakistani heritage. Had it been the other way round, white men exploiting young Asian girls, the paper would have gone into meltdown.
The common denominator is men.
American?
Misandry alert.
Nonsense, just a bit of banter!
Incidentally she opened the batting with “ You could have googled it before you posted your comment”.
So fair game don’t you think Ms Barrows?
Really? Or do you have evidence that shows women were equally involved in that exploitation?
The child exploitation rings were not the result of “men”.
You might as well say they were the result of “humans”! Anyone suggesting that such crimes should be blamed on an entire gender, clearly has bigotry issues of their own & is in no position to correct someone else.
So, yes, misandry is an accurate description of this mindset.
More significant is the ideological position of these paedophile rings. The male & female supporters of this ideology maintain that Mohammed, who married a 61/2 to 7yr old little girl (Aisha), is the perfect moral example, so of course, these paedophile rings were not paedophile at all in their view. Now THAT is a serious problem.
When a Tory politician dared to point this out a few years ago he was simply sacked………
The child exploitation rings were not the result of “men”.
You might as well say they were the result of “humans”! Anyone suggesting that such crimes should be blamed on an entire gender, clearly has bigotry issues of their own & is in no position to correct someone else.
So, yes, misandry is an accurate description of this mindset.
More significant is the ideological position of these paedophile rings. The male & female supporters of this ideology maintain that Mohammed, who married a 61/2 to 7yr old little girl (Aisha), is the perfect moral example, so of course, these paedophile rings were not paedophile at all in their view. Now THAT is a serious problem.
When a Tory politician dared to point this out a few years ago he was simply sacked………
Nonsense, just a bit of banter!
Incidentally she opened the batting with “ You could have googled it before you posted your comment”.
So fair game don’t you think Ms Barrows?
Really? Or do you have evidence that shows women were equally involved in that exploitation?
But the phenomenon under discussion is self-righteous hypocrisy.
The common denominator is children
American?
Misandry alert.
But the phenomenon under discussion is self-righteous hypocrisy.
The common denominator is children
So did all the other ‘woke’ folk eg. the police!
The common denominator is men.
So did all the other ‘woke’ folk eg. the police!
The Guardian has form on not reporting on matters that dont fit in to their worldview. They said very little about the sexual exploitation of young white girls by predominantly men of Pakistani heritage. Had it been the other way round, white men exploiting young Asian girls, the paper would have gone into meltdown.
There simply isn’t room to list all the Guardian’s hypocrisies.
But just a flavour:
John Edward Taylor, the founder, witnessed the “Peterloo massacre”, and the papers current incarnation used the 200th anniversary of Peterloo to lay claim to the heritage of those who’d died in the name of “Democracy, liberty and fraternity”. Articles abounded, with the great and good of the G writing staff all wishing to associate themselves with the noble aims of the Perterloo “martyrs”, whilst at the very same moment they were explicitly engaged in a campaign to disenfranchise millions of ordinary voters who’d voted for Brexit.
The arguments that the Guardian’s “Peoples’ Ref” devotees used – that the “little people” were too ill-informed, too easily swayed by lies etc, were precisely the same arguments that had previously been used against universal suffrage: That working class people, or women, were not informed enough, not educated enough, not intellectually robust enough, to deserve the vote.
The hypocrisy was simply breath-taking. – Though utterly unsurprising.
Guardian Media Group, when it sold its 50% stake in Auto Trader to Apax Partners in 2008, used a tax-exempt shell company in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying corporation tax. GMG realised over £300 million in profit on that sale – yet paid not a sou in Corporation tax. This was all perfectly legal.
Over the years Guardian Media Group has invested hundreds of millions in offshore hedge funds. Keeping it under the radar and beyond the grasp of HMRC. Again, all perfectly legal.
Yet the Guardian loves nothing more than to thunder its disapproval of large multinationals – Starbucks, Apple, Vodafone etc – and the unnamed “super-rich” for not “paying their fair share.” Guardian hacks regularly get their knickers in a bunch over such tax avoidance strategies – though oddly never train their guns on their employers. Why do multinationals warrant such opprobrium whilst GMG escape any such criticism?
Any time a Guardian op-ed references the Daily Mail, it is a cast-iron certainty that the article – not to mention several dozen posters – will bring up the 1930’s Daily Mail “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” headline – as proof that the Mail is fascistic. It gets boring to point this out – particularly as I’m not a Mail reader myself – the stupid unthinking hypocrisy of Guardian posters imagining that their paper of choice is all things good and the Daily Mail is all bad.
The DM did indeed briefly support the British Union of Fascists, up until Kristallnacht, at which point they withdrew any such support and became virulently anti-fascist. The Guardian, on the other hand, was staunchly pro-Eugenics and supported the idea for a very long time after most civilised people had recognised it as an abomination.
If they’re going to insult a newspaper for what they endorsed 80+ years ago, they might want to pick their targets more carefully, lest they shoot themselves in the foot.
The Guardian has championed some indefensible causes in its past, yet always puts out the idea that they occupy the moral high ground. They lambasted any paper that they considered was not being anti-Trump enough, so I always like to remind them of Op-Ed praise they’ve previously heaped on other nationalists in their time… “Mr Ceausescu, has shown immense courage in asserting Romania’s independence from the Russians and encouraging Romania’s nationalism” … for instance!
The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there – and those who insist on judging the past by the acceptable norms of C21st activism, only make themselves look ignorant and foolish, particularly given the propensity of Guardian editorials to indulge in “Offence Archaeology” – to uncover minor indiscretions of public figures from 20 or 30 years ago and then use them to hound that person out of office – whilst at the same time giving a free pass to anyone from their own side of the political aisle. Charges of bullying against Bercow and Meghan Markle are airily dismissed, whilst similar charges are mercilessly pursued against Priti Patel and Dominic Raab.
The Guardian is RELENTLESSLY negative – about pretty much everything. Over the last 15 years it has got markedly worse. It was always sanctimonious but it at least tried to incorporate a broader spectrum of ideas and didn’t wrap itself in the flag of liberal victimhood. (I even remember when it occasionally published ‘positive’ stories – which seems a very long time ago now).
Any objectivity has vanished. Any hope has been dashed that a Guardian editorial might ever assess a policy on its merits, and stop judging a policy, an action, a statement based solely on who has espoused it and what tribe they belong to. Whether that be a political tribe or any of the other boxes into which “Liberals” seek to place us in their ‘hierarchy of victim-status’.
Their ongoing narrative is wholly at odds with reality. The Guardian has a dystopian worldview and narrative predicated on catastrophism – it seems almost as though they are willing such a future into existence.
The Guardian proudly trumpets “Comment is free… but facts are sacred”. Yet facts are so routinely ignored in favour of their preferred narrative that I wonder how the Editors still put out CP Scott’s dictum every day with a straight face.
This is an incredibly detailed indictment of the failings of the present day Guardian, and you include factual detail to support your argument. I thank-you for this reasoned and calm post.
Fantastic comment.
A masterful evisceration, thank you.
Presumably “knickers in a bunch” is the Scotch version of ‘knickers in a twist’?
Surely Scotchmen do not wear knickers, because kilts….
‘They’ probably do now thanks to the SNP and its gender tosh.
‘They’ probably do now thanks to the SNP and its gender tosh.
Aye
Surely Scotchmen do not wear knickers, because kilts….
Aye
Brilliant, worthy of Orwell.
I think you’re being much to kind to them.
This is an incredibly detailed indictment of the failings of the present day Guardian, and you include factual detail to support your argument. I thank-you for this reasoned and calm post.
Fantastic comment.
A masterful evisceration, thank you.
Presumably “knickers in a bunch” is the Scotch version of ‘knickers in a twist’?
Brilliant, worthy of Orwell.
I think you’re being much to kind to them.
There simply isn’t room to list all the Guardian’s hypocrisies.
But just a flavour:
John Edward Taylor, the founder, witnessed the “Peterloo massacre”, and the papers current incarnation used the 200th anniversary of Peterloo to lay claim to the heritage of those who’d died in the name of “Democracy, liberty and fraternity”. Articles abounded, with the great and good of the G writing staff all wishing to associate themselves with the noble aims of the Perterloo “martyrs”, whilst at the very same moment they were explicitly engaged in a campaign to disenfranchise millions of ordinary voters who’d voted for Brexit.
The arguments that the Guardian’s “Peoples’ Ref” devotees used – that the “little people” were too ill-informed, too easily swayed by lies etc, were precisely the same arguments that had previously been used against universal suffrage: That working class people, or women, were not informed enough, not educated enough, not intellectually robust enough, to deserve the vote.
The hypocrisy was simply breath-taking. – Though utterly unsurprising.
Guardian Media Group, when it sold its 50% stake in Auto Trader to Apax Partners in 2008, used a tax-exempt shell company in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying corporation tax. GMG realised over £300 million in profit on that sale – yet paid not a sou in Corporation tax. This was all perfectly legal.
Over the years Guardian Media Group has invested hundreds of millions in offshore hedge funds. Keeping it under the radar and beyond the grasp of HMRC. Again, all perfectly legal.
Yet the Guardian loves nothing more than to thunder its disapproval of large multinationals – Starbucks, Apple, Vodafone etc – and the unnamed “super-rich” for not “paying their fair share.” Guardian hacks regularly get their knickers in a bunch over such tax avoidance strategies – though oddly never train their guns on their employers. Why do multinationals warrant such opprobrium whilst GMG escape any such criticism?
Any time a Guardian op-ed references the Daily Mail, it is a cast-iron certainty that the article – not to mention several dozen posters – will bring up the 1930’s Daily Mail “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” headline – as proof that the Mail is fascistic. It gets boring to point this out – particularly as I’m not a Mail reader myself – the stupid unthinking hypocrisy of Guardian posters imagining that their paper of choice is all things good and the Daily Mail is all bad.
The DM did indeed briefly support the British Union of Fascists, up until Kristallnacht, at which point they withdrew any such support and became virulently anti-fascist. The Guardian, on the other hand, was staunchly pro-Eugenics and supported the idea for a very long time after most civilised people had recognised it as an abomination.
If they’re going to insult a newspaper for what they endorsed 80+ years ago, they might want to pick their targets more carefully, lest they shoot themselves in the foot.
The Guardian has championed some indefensible causes in its past, yet always puts out the idea that they occupy the moral high ground. They lambasted any paper that they considered was not being anti-Trump enough, so I always like to remind them of Op-Ed praise they’ve previously heaped on other nationalists in their time… “Mr Ceausescu, has shown immense courage in asserting Romania’s independence from the Russians and encouraging Romania’s nationalism” … for instance!
The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there – and those who insist on judging the past by the acceptable norms of C21st activism, only make themselves look ignorant and foolish, particularly given the propensity of Guardian editorials to indulge in “Offence Archaeology” – to uncover minor indiscretions of public figures from 20 or 30 years ago and then use them to hound that person out of office – whilst at the same time giving a free pass to anyone from their own side of the political aisle. Charges of bullying against Bercow and Meghan Markle are airily dismissed, whilst similar charges are mercilessly pursued against Priti Patel and Dominic Raab.
The Guardian is RELENTLESSLY negative – about pretty much everything. Over the last 15 years it has got markedly worse. It was always sanctimonious but it at least tried to incorporate a broader spectrum of ideas and didn’t wrap itself in the flag of liberal victimhood. (I even remember when it occasionally published ‘positive’ stories – which seems a very long time ago now).
Any objectivity has vanished. Any hope has been dashed that a Guardian editorial might ever assess a policy on its merits, and stop judging a policy, an action, a statement based solely on who has espoused it and what tribe they belong to. Whether that be a political tribe or any of the other boxes into which “Liberals” seek to place us in their ‘hierarchy of victim-status’.
Their ongoing narrative is wholly at odds with reality. The Guardian has a dystopian worldview and narrative predicated on catastrophism – it seems almost as though they are willing such a future into existence.
The Guardian proudly trumpets “Comment is free… but facts are sacred”. Yet facts are so routinely ignored in favour of their preferred narrative that I wonder how the Editors still put out CP Scott’s dictum every day with a straight face.
Unserious racial grifters revealed to be unserious by serious racial grifters.
Couldn’t agree more.
Couldn’t agree more.
Unserious racial grifters revealed to be unserious by serious racial grifters.
The Guardian is learning that if you suck up to bullies, it doesn’t make them leave you alone, it encourages them to see you as weak.
They are the bullies. And very stupid ones at that.
Well said.
They are the bullies. And very stupid ones at that.
Well said.
The Guardian is learning that if you suck up to bullies, it doesn’t make them leave you alone, it encourages them to see you as weak.
It’s always a pleasure watching the revolution eating it’s children.
It’s always a pleasure watching the revolution eating it’s children.
It’s all very, very sad. The Guardian was once the home of serious, analytical, investigative journalism. It wouldn’t always get everything right, and yes it has always leaned leftwards. But at least it tried to be truthful. Now it’s trapped in corporate-sponsored, self-destructive narratives around white privilege, net zero, vaccine efficacy, safe spaces, gender ideology and all the rest of it that actively deny the value of freedom of expression of diverse and conflicting views and opinions in the pursuit of truth, usually in the name of “keeping everyone safe” or “preventing harm”.
They are suffocating the liberal democracy which their predecessors helped to found, from within. The tragedy is that the leadership at the Guardian, and other such formerly broadly liberal institutions, just cannot see it for what it is. They cannot perceive the gross harms that they are doing. From the outside, it is easy to see the inevitability of their disordered, bleak nihilism, grounded in the negative emotions of guilt, envy, and resentment, turning in on itself, as it has on historical slavery. But from the inside, it just doesn’t look like that.
So forgive them, for they know not what they do. They are not bad people. Those of us fortunate to be able to see through the reheated Marxian nonsense that is critical social and race theories should challenge ourselves to try and love those who have sadly got themselves tangled up in it all: to meet their negativity with positivity, to criticise them with a friendly smile and an open heart, to offer a helping hand out rather than a facepalm of rejection, and above all to try our level best to remain kind, gracious and humble rather than hurt, angry and self-righteous. A tough, perhaps impossible, standard to meet but it is something to aim for and it might just be the way we break the downward spiral of recrimination and anger and so get out of this chaotic mess we find ourselves in.
As a former regular Guardian reader, I can only second what you say about what the Guardian was and what it is now. At first it just made me a little sad to see this venerable newspaper devolving into another “rag”, but after a time I started to get angry – where now do we find a place for reasoned, honest argument from a Left perspective? I find it too difficult to forgive them, though, brcause, unlike you, I believe that they do know what they are doing, and they are prepared to ignore the consequences. They have allowed the lunatics to take over the asylum and what we now see is the result, to the detriment of political discussion in this country.
As a former regular Guardian reader I am saddened by what it has become but I am more angry than sad. I started buying The Guardian around the time of the Jonathan Aitken scandal and when it exposed his lies The Guardian had the sword of truth. For the next decade or so it was a credible and respected national newspaper and its circulation was holding up well despite the growth of the web. However, after it exposed the phone hacking scandal at the News Of The World and the PCC collapsed The Guardian became a law unto itself.
In the latter years of Alan Rusbridger’s editorship it sold the sword of truth in exchange for clicks by publishing anything by anyone it thought was a victim without caring whether what they wrote was true or fair. The Guardian wanted to dominate the global market for self-pity and it tried to do so by assembling the world’s largest collection of bad writers, mostly on freelance terms. Katharine Viner was largely responsible for this as deputy editor and then editor of its US and Australian outposts and tried to continue this as editor but it couldn’t afford to pay £320 every time anyone was offended by anything but by then The Guardian’s credibility and the goodwill of its print readership had been lost.
But The Guardian knew what it was doing. It knew that it was publishing statements without checking them, it knew that it was publishing statements that it knew were untrue and it knew that its system of self-regulation was a sham. It didn’t care because whilst The Guardian was portraying itself as changing from being a national newspaper to being a global website it was changing in another way: The Guardian went from being a newspaper to being a cult. It became cult-like in its output, its internal culture and its business model (trying to squeeze as much money as it could out of loyal supporters whilst always looking for new suckers). It even started to build its own Jonestown in the Midland Goods Shed where the faithful would assemble and listen to its leaders whilst drinking Guardian coffee but the plan was abandoned on cost grounds. Now it is drifting along looking for the next bandwagon to jump on even though it knows it damages any cause it supports because that’s what The Guardian does now.
The Guardian deserves to be destroyed because it has betrayed its readers, its history and some of its own journalists. It could and should have been destroyed years ago but no journalist or organisation was willing and able to do so even though lying is to The Guardian what phone hacking was to the News Of The World but done in plain sight. The Guardian is a dishonest, hypocritical, sanctimonious organisation which doesn’t deserve its air of moral superiority. It just persuades itself that the lies that it tells and the hatred that it peddles are morally justified.
As a former regular Guardian reader I am saddened by what it has become but I am more angry than sad. I started buying The Guardian around the time of the Jonathan Aitken scandal and when it exposed his lies The Guardian had the sword of truth. For the next decade or so it was a credible and respected national newspaper and its circulation was holding up well despite the growth of the web. However, after it exposed the phone hacking scandal at the News Of The World and the PCC collapsed The Guardian became a law unto itself.
In the latter years of Alan Rusbridger’s editorship it sold the sword of truth in exchange for clicks by publishing anything by anyone it thought was a victim without caring whether what they wrote was true or fair. The Guardian wanted to dominate the global market for self-pity and it tried to do so by assembling the world’s largest collection of bad writers, mostly on freelance terms. Katharine Viner was largely responsible for this as deputy editor and then editor of its US and Australian outposts and tried to continue this as editor but it couldn’t afford to pay £320 every time anyone was offended by anything but by then The Guardian’s credibility and the goodwill of its print readership had been lost.
But The Guardian knew what it was doing. It knew that it was publishing statements without checking them, it knew that it was publishing statements that it knew were untrue and it knew that its system of self-regulation was a sham. It didn’t care because whilst The Guardian was portraying itself as changing from being a national newspaper to being a global website it was changing in another way: The Guardian went from being a newspaper to being a cult. It became cult-like in its output, its internal culture and its business model (trying to squeeze as much money as it could out of loyal supporters whilst always looking for new suckers). It even started to build its own Jonestown in the Midland Goods Shed where the faithful would assemble and listen to its leaders whilst drinking Guardian coffee but the plan was abandoned on cost grounds. Now it is drifting along looking for the next bandwagon to jump on even though it knows it damages any cause it supports because that’s what The Guardian does now.
The Guardian deserves to be destroyed because it has betrayed its readers, its history and some of its own journalists. It could and should have been destroyed years ago but no journalist or organisation was willing and able to do so even though lying is to The Guardian what phone hacking was to the News Of The World but done in plain sight. The Guardian is a dishonest, hypocritical, sanctimonious organisation which doesn’t deserve its air of moral superiority. It just persuades itself that the lies that it tells and the hatred that it peddles are morally justified.
What a brilliant comment. I’m reading the biography of Elizabeth Gaskell, one of my favourite authors (“Wives and Daughters” is sublime!). She lived in Manchester, was horrified by the conditions of the English cotton mill workers and tried to raise public awareness about them through her writings, most obviously through “North and South”. I haven’t found out yet what her views were on the slaves who produced the cotton in America, and whether she included them in her social campaigning (I don’t think so though). Thus she could probably also be attacked now as a “white supremacist”. (How misguided!) There should never be a hierarchy of causes. One should not criticise for example someone who devotes themselves to looking after stray animals on the basis that they care more for animals than people and thus are in some way morally deficient – we can’t all solve everything and each of us must do our part with what is placed before us in our lives. However, what I do know is that Elizabeth Gaskell, who believed utterly in speaking the truth, and was full of fun and yet also intensely kind, would have echoed your comment – that we should approach everything and everyone including the writers at the Guardian, with both clear eyed truth, but also tolerance and understanding. The writers at the Guardian need to be called out in this way. We need everyone to see how dangerous these Identitarian Marxist ways of thinking are.
What did you think of the ‘Telly’ version a few years ago?
Haven’t watched the telly version of Wives and Daughters yet as I need to order the DVDs!! It looks great – Keeley Hawes (sp?) as Cynthia, Michael Gambon as the Squire, Francesca Annis as the silly stepmother… (I may have seen it years ago but can’t remember for sure). I gave the book to my 89 year old mother for Christmas and she is loving it – she’d only read North and South previously. ) x
I am sorry, I should have been more precise as I meant ‘North and South’, the BBC version with the late Tim Pigott-Smith and Daniela Denny-Ashe. Probably 10-15 years ago now!
Definitely haven’t watched that!
You should if you ever get the chance.
Richard Armitage played an excellent ‘Mill owner’.
Much of the ‘North’ was filmed around the splendid Glasgow Necropolis, a suitably grim location.
You should if you ever get the chance.
Richard Armitage played an excellent ‘Mill owner’.
Much of the ‘North’ was filmed around the splendid Glasgow Necropolis, a suitably grim location.
Radio 4 version was brilliant
Definitely haven’t watched that!
Radio 4 version was brilliant
I am sorry, I should have been more precise as I meant ‘North and South’, the BBC version with the late Tim Pigott-Smith and Daniela Denny-Ashe. Probably 10-15 years ago now!
Haven’t watched the telly version of Wives and Daughters yet as I need to order the DVDs!! It looks great – Keeley Hawes (sp?) as Cynthia, Michael Gambon as the Squire, Francesca Annis as the silly stepmother… (I may have seen it years ago but can’t remember for sure). I gave the book to my 89 year old mother for Christmas and she is loving it – she’d only read North and South previously. ) x
You make a brilliant point about the cotton mill workers who get overlooked in the race clamour. I daresay the Little Circle were relieved that their employees were too badly educated to have an amanuensis to detail their many hurts and miseries. When the race warriors point at us white folks and our exploitation of slaves how many people was that? Because the population in the Industrial Revolution lived hungry, cold lives. The spoils of slavery were enjoyed by a very tiny number of British people, while the masses toiled, not much better off than the southern slaves who produced the raw goods. Were the employees at John Edward Taylor’s mills enjoying better wages, an education for their children, safe working conditions, decent housing? I suspect not.
Excellent point, well said.
Excellent point, well said.
Thank you. I agree. I’ve been reflecting lately on how angry and let down I have felt over the past few years by people who I thought should know better. My conclusion is that pointing the finger at them and accusing them of ignorance, cowardice, or venality is not going to change their minds, it’s only going to make them dig their heels in further, and deepen the divisions. While there are some very good, decent people on the conservative right, they are never going to be able on their own to convince people who see themselves as left progressives to change their minds. Whereas the captured progressive left or technocratic centre won’t be able easily to ignore or dismiss carefully considered constructive criticism from a left or centre perspective that acknowledges their point of view, recognises that they have some legitimate grievances and ideas, and does not directly assault their ego by suggesting that they have some kind of mal-intent. Dissenting leftists and centrists need to overcome the fear factor and any historical prejudices they might hold, and accept that in today’s world they have some common causes with those on the right against the captured left. Those on the right need to do likewise. We can debate who should own the railways another day; for now we just need to win the argument that it’s not racist or patriarchal to make the trains run on time.
Not only is better for one’s own mental state, whatever one’s own politics, to be approaching “culture war” issues with the kind of mindset that assumes good intent of all involved, but I really do believe it is the only way that we are going to be able to break the spell of magical wokery that abounds about the kingdom. My feeling is that we might be closer than it might seem to turning the corner and regaining some sense of order & a better grasp on reality in our politics and culture if we can just keep being positive, amicable, and forgiving to those with whom we might disagree – hard though it may sometimes be to do so (and heaven knows that I have lost, and continue to lose, my rag at them on occasion!).
Yes you are so right – in the battle of ideas against dangerous wokism, we must also, (as you say) acknowledge their point of view, recognise they have some legitimate grievances.. and keep on being positive, amicable and forgiving.
Yes! A very sane and wholesome reminder. Who do you persuade with ad hominem denouncements? Especially an undifferentiated thing like: “The Left are all part of nihilistic cult” or “every conservative is an malevolent guardian of wealth and privilege”.
Even as a way to preach to the already converted and stir up energy it’s pretty negative, and to a large degree just isn’t true. Most people mean well and have significant good in them. Most among the more historically grounded sort of conservative can acknowledge a place for liberal and innovative forces, and most of the sane people to the left (they exist) can acknowledge the merit of forces that protect and conserve a great deal of what we have, and what has gone before.
Don’t call the statue-toppling, race-rioting extremists a fair representation of the Left, unless you think the most violent element among the Capitol breachers or Unite the Right marchers fairly represent the Right.
There has to be such a thing as an engaged moderate–I’m trying to be one. People will disagree over whether the present-day far-far left or far-far right represent a greater threat to our lives and liberty, but I want no part of either of them. Vote no on both! Love your enemy and reach out to your presumed opponent when you can.
I applaud your post, Mr. Horsman.
The problem is that what people believe is a reflection of who they are. It goes very deep and isn’t just a matter of changing someone’s mind. Mind set is formed very young and is a combination of nature and nurture.
Nature always TRIUMPHS over nurture.
Ludicrous. I would have thought a blueblood of self-announced high white privilege such as yourself would have a more nuanced view.
Experience and Hans Eysenck have taught me otherwise.
Incidentally what is all this “self-announced high white privilege” tosh?
You sound like an old scold.
You said were “born to extreme privilege though no fault of your own” elsewhere on these boards. And that your ancestors were “handsomely compensated” in 1837 in connection with the slave trade. Correct?
Can’t you see that the background (not merely genetic) you cherish has a measure of prevailing influence on your point of view?
Is it nature or nurture though? Yes, it is. Determinists and blank slaters notwithstanding, the “debate” is like arguing whether there’s more day or night at the equator.
Well to be : “born to extreme privilege through no fault of my own” does NOT equate to “high white privilege” (whatever that means) in my book. It is merely a statement of fact.
Incidentally I don’t “cherish” my background but rather just accept it for what it is.
Slightly baffled by your sentence “is it nature or nurture though?”
Surely it is quite simple, ‘You can’t put in what God left out’. QED?
Not demonstrated at all. No one has the wherewithal to discern an individual’s uppermost potential based on their lived outcomes alone. Lucky people who escape dreadful families and neighborhoods can go on to outperform those left behind, somewhat irrespective of their measured intelligence or outward pre-escape character. In fact, Identical twins brought up in different home environments, while eerily similar in personality often have remarkably different behavior and life outcomes. (e.g.: one becomes a drug addict, one doesn’t).
I admit that “blueblood of high white privilege” was a bit of cheap shot. But supporting your essentialist or determinist views with a racialist IQ proponent doesn’t help remove the sense of racialized privilege or self regard, sir.
[rendered (even more ) irrelevant]
C’est la vie!
Indeed.
Indeed.
C’est la vie!
What is privilege ? If one is shipwrecked in lifeboat being a fisherman hardened to cold water will increase one chances of survival, likewise a beduin in a plane crash in a desert.
Today being descended from a long line of landowners may not be much of an advantage but from a along line of upper middle class scholars such as the Huxleys, Wedgewood Benns, James Dyson, etc probably confers enhanced academic ability.,
Not demonstrated at all. No one has the wherewithal to discern an individual’s uppermost potential based on their lived outcomes alone. Lucky people who escape dreadful families and neighborhoods can go on to outperform those left behind, somewhat irrespective of their measured intelligence or outward pre-escape character. In fact, Identical twins brought up in different home environments, while eerily similar in personality often have remarkably different behavior and life outcomes. (e.g.: one becomes a drug addict, one doesn’t).
I admit that “blueblood of high white privilege” was a bit of cheap shot. But supporting your essentialist or determinist views with a racialist IQ proponent doesn’t help remove the sense of racialized privilege or self regard, sir.
[rendered (even more ) irrelevant]
What is privilege ? If one is shipwrecked in lifeboat being a fisherman hardened to cold water will increase one chances of survival, likewise a beduin in a plane crash in a desert.
Today being descended from a long line of landowners may not be much of an advantage but from a along line of upper middle class scholars such as the Huxleys, Wedgewood Benns, James Dyson, etc probably confers enhanced academic ability.,
Well to be : “born to extreme privilege through no fault of my own” does NOT equate to “high white privilege” (whatever that means) in my book. It is merely a statement of fact.
Incidentally I don’t “cherish” my background but rather just accept it for what it is.
Slightly baffled by your sentence “is it nature or nurture though?”
Surely it is quite simple, ‘You can’t put in what God left out’. QED?
You said were “born to extreme privilege though no fault of your own” elsewhere on these boards. And that your ancestors were “handsomely compensated” in 1837 in connection with the slave trade. Correct?
Can’t you see that the background (not merely genetic) you cherish has a measure of prevailing influence on your point of view?
Is it nature or nurture though? Yes, it is. Determinists and blank slaters notwithstanding, the “debate” is like arguing whether there’s more day or night at the equator.
Experience and Hans Eysenck have taught me otherwise.
Incidentally what is all this “self-announced high white privilege” tosh?
You sound like an old scold.
Ludicrous. I would have thought a blueblood of self-announced high white privilege such as yourself would have a more nuanced view.
But it is not fixed in place. Should parents give up when the children hit four because Freud or whomever says the personality is immovably formed?
I agree that were are not blank or fully erasable slates but experience and (to some extent) voluntary kinds of engagement with the world (behavior, mindset) can continue to work deep changes in people, for better or worse, throughout their lives.
Nature always TRIUMPHS over nurture.
But it is not fixed in place. Should parents give up when the children hit four because Freud or whomever says the personality is immovably formed?
I agree that were are not blank or fully erasable slates but experience and (to some extent) voluntary kinds of engagement with the world (behavior, mindset) can continue to work deep changes in people, for better or worse, throughout their lives.
I am sure not one can change their minds. Muggeridge stated Communism is an urban religion attractive to those with a grudge against their fellow man and civilisation. Muggeridge and Orwell understood the character of the left wing middle class. I think it boils down to lack of physical and mental toughness plus practical skills to enjoy the rough and tumble of life. Look at what degrees and sports they play. Has the labour Parties of Hampstead, Highgate and Islington ever included rugby playing engineers? Now compare Guardian types to rugby playing miners and those working in heavy industry or commercial trawling.
Those who have conquered fear can walk with the animals which was why George Adamson could walk with lions.On a physical level I think most Guardian types are fearful of tough practical men which is why they turned on traditional Labour/Democrat voting blue collar and manual workers and ignore plight of those who lived in squalid slums and worked in satanic mills. One cannot hate what one does not fear.
So the tough practical blokes also fear the “Guardian types”? Or the hatred is unidirectional?
Fear and hatred indeed strongly intersect but not without exception, I don’t think.
Can someone have contempt for something they don’t fear, or at least don’t fear much? Can someone love some person or thing they also fear, at least in part?
Making hate and fear interchangeable or inseparable takes it too far, in my opinion.
Mr. Horsman does not assert that their minds can’t be changed, but this: “My conclusion is that pointing the finger at them and accusing them of ignorance, cowardice, or venality is not going to change their minds, it’s only going to make them dig their heels in further, and deepen the divisions“.
Do you disagree with that? “Hey, Guardian types, stop hating and fearing me like a little coward and come listen to a tough practical man!”
Those who have conquered fear can walk with the wild animals; G Adamson and lions being a good example.
If one watches tough women, say those who run construction site canteens,market stalls, landladies of pubs in rough areas, farmers/land owners working with dangerous animals ( bulls, cows, sows, stallions, ), especially those who hunt and working alongside tough men, they invariably have a relaxed cheerful calm authoritative confidence which often is lacking from upper middle class urban professional mercantile types who appear brittle, nervous in the presence of the builder. Someone who can be thrown from a horse or knocked flying by an animal, or fall over, land in cold wet mud, laugh it off and carry on has mental and physical resilience and will therefore tend to be relaxed.
Fine. I’ve done building work so I know what you mean. But there is plenty of rage and fear in the average person who is quite physically unafraid. That’s the pushback or balancing act I was attempting.
If you assert a close correlation between fear and hatred–not without reason–then the hatred of many tradespeople for intellectually propped-up weaklings has an element of fear too. Or are you suggesting the hardy working folk are damn near devoid of both hatred and fear?
A muscled and tattooed ex-con who’s rarely worked (20 year sentence) might intimidate a rugged working man, but the ex-con is not therefore without his own hatred and fears.
Someone has passed the test is secure in the knowledge of what they have achieved, tend to be relaxed, have a sense of humour, can laugh at themselves. They are easy to work with because they largely lack fear, hatred and an inferiority complex .
The very tough skilled foremen with combat experience I have worked with respect scholarship; the truly top engineer but see through the inadequate very quickly. When insults are traded easily and everyone gives as good as they get, one has a good team. The phrase ” No insult meant” with the reply ” None taken ” has become rare.
That sounds wonderful. A far more positive and resilient bunch than many, probably most, I’d guess. I still don’t think Guardian readers fit so neatly into your hypersensitive weakling mold, nor that all tradespeople are hale fellows well-met. Many are, but I’ve worked with some real jerks and weasels too.
Thanks for a good exchange. No offense taken on this side of the pond.
I have worked with some exceptional foremen and engineers, the types who turned deserts into the vibrant cities and oil installations of the Middle East in the 1960s to 1980s. Working out of doors when temperatures hit 54 Centigrade is hard work. However, these foremen had fought in the jungles of Malaya and Borneo , in the mountains of the Radfan, Yemen and Oman before they entered the construction/oil industies. Many of the British supervisors/foremen on the oil installations were ex Parachute Regiment/Royal Marine Commandos/Special Forces and served overseas which is why the various Arab National Oil Companies employed them.
I doubt we will ever see their kind again. They had the ability to earn the respect competent tough competent men from all races and religions.
The Guardian was not common reading material.
I think you’ve idealized your own slice of the past, but I admit these manly men sound pretty impressive. What was common reading material among these hardboiled dudes?
Look at photographs of the Middle East pre WW2 and look at it now at it now. The men I worked with fought in the various conflicts and then built the modern infrastructure. The greater the challenge, the greater the attraction for them. They enjoyed listening to the experience of others of similar background such as a Kate Adey but had little time reading the opinions of those who lacked their worldliness.
In Britain, inherited wealth either induces people to seek a life of adventure or one of security and comfort; The Guardian is a temple for the latter. The Guardian is happy to sacrifice anyone who helps it to maintain a life of security and comfort.
Ok. Thanks for the example (Kate Adey) to help color your generalized claims.
Incidentally, I don’t love the Guardian, except that it is free and one can mine some worthwhile items there, from my American point of view.
Ok. Thanks for the example (Kate Adey) to help color your generalized claims.
Incidentally, I don’t love the Guardian, except that it is free and one can mine some worthwhile items there, from my American point of view.
Look at photographs of the Middle East pre WW2 and look at it now at it now. The men I worked with fought in the various conflicts and then built the modern infrastructure. The greater the challenge, the greater the attraction for them. They enjoyed listening to the experience of others of similar background such as a Kate Adey but had little time reading the opinions of those who lacked their worldliness.
In Britain, inherited wealth either induces people to seek a life of adventure or one of security and comfort; The Guardian is a temple for the latter. The Guardian is happy to sacrifice anyone who helps it to maintain a life of security and comfort.
I think you’ve idealized your own slice of the past, but I admit these manly men sound pretty impressive. What was common reading material among these hardboiled dudes?
I have worked with some exceptional foremen and engineers, the types who turned deserts into the vibrant cities and oil installations of the Middle East in the 1960s to 1980s. Working out of doors when temperatures hit 54 Centigrade is hard work. However, these foremen had fought in the jungles of Malaya and Borneo , in the mountains of the Radfan, Yemen and Oman before they entered the construction/oil industies. Many of the British supervisors/foremen on the oil installations were ex Parachute Regiment/Royal Marine Commandos/Special Forces and served overseas which is why the various Arab National Oil Companies employed them.
I doubt we will ever see their kind again. They had the ability to earn the respect competent tough competent men from all races and religions.
The Guardian was not common reading material.
That sounds wonderful. A far more positive and resilient bunch than many, probably most, I’d guess. I still don’t think Guardian readers fit so neatly into your hypersensitive weakling mold, nor that all tradespeople are hale fellows well-met. Many are, but I’ve worked with some real jerks and weasels too.
Thanks for a good exchange. No offense taken on this side of the pond.
Someone has passed the test is secure in the knowledge of what they have achieved, tend to be relaxed, have a sense of humour, can laugh at themselves. They are easy to work with because they largely lack fear, hatred and an inferiority complex .
The very tough skilled foremen with combat experience I have worked with respect scholarship; the truly top engineer but see through the inadequate very quickly. When insults are traded easily and everyone gives as good as they get, one has a good team. The phrase ” No insult meant” with the reply ” None taken ” has become rare.
Fine. I’ve done building work so I know what you mean. But there is plenty of rage and fear in the average person who is quite physically unafraid. That’s the pushback or balancing act I was attempting.
If you assert a close correlation between fear and hatred–not without reason–then the hatred of many tradespeople for intellectually propped-up weaklings has an element of fear too. Or are you suggesting the hardy working folk are damn near devoid of both hatred and fear?
A muscled and tattooed ex-con who’s rarely worked (20 year sentence) might intimidate a rugged working man, but the ex-con is not therefore without his own hatred and fears.
Those who have conquered fear can walk with the wild animals; G Adamson and lions being a good example.
If one watches tough women, say those who run construction site canteens,market stalls, landladies of pubs in rough areas, farmers/land owners working with dangerous animals ( bulls, cows, sows, stallions, ), especially those who hunt and working alongside tough men, they invariably have a relaxed cheerful calm authoritative confidence which often is lacking from upper middle class urban professional mercantile types who appear brittle, nervous in the presence of the builder. Someone who can be thrown from a horse or knocked flying by an animal, or fall over, land in cold wet mud, laugh it off and carry on has mental and physical resilience and will therefore tend to be relaxed.
So the tough practical blokes also fear the “Guardian types”? Or the hatred is unidirectional?
Fear and hatred indeed strongly intersect but not without exception, I don’t think.
Can someone have contempt for something they don’t fear, or at least don’t fear much? Can someone love some person or thing they also fear, at least in part?
Making hate and fear interchangeable or inseparable takes it too far, in my opinion.
Mr. Horsman does not assert that their minds can’t be changed, but this: “My conclusion is that pointing the finger at them and accusing them of ignorance, cowardice, or venality is not going to change their minds, it’s only going to make them dig their heels in further, and deepen the divisions“.
Do you disagree with that? “Hey, Guardian types, stop hating and fearing me like a little coward and come listen to a tough practical man!”
Yes you are so right – in the battle of ideas against dangerous wokism, we must also, (as you say) acknowledge their point of view, recognise they have some legitimate grievances.. and keep on being positive, amicable and forgiving.
Yes! A very sane and wholesome reminder. Who do you persuade with ad hominem denouncements? Especially an undifferentiated thing like: “The Left are all part of nihilistic cult” or “every conservative is an malevolent guardian of wealth and privilege”.
Even as a way to preach to the already converted and stir up energy it’s pretty negative, and to a large degree just isn’t true. Most people mean well and have significant good in them. Most among the more historically grounded sort of conservative can acknowledge a place for liberal and innovative forces, and most of the sane people to the left (they exist) can acknowledge the merit of forces that protect and conserve a great deal of what we have, and what has gone before.
Don’t call the statue-toppling, race-rioting extremists a fair representation of the Left, unless you think the most violent element among the Capitol breachers or Unite the Right marchers fairly represent the Right.
There has to be such a thing as an engaged moderate–I’m trying to be one. People will disagree over whether the present-day far-far left or far-far right represent a greater threat to our lives and liberty, but I want no part of either of them. Vote no on both! Love your enemy and reach out to your presumed opponent when you can.
I applaud your post, Mr. Horsman.
The problem is that what people believe is a reflection of who they are. It goes very deep and isn’t just a matter of changing someone’s mind. Mind set is formed very young and is a combination of nature and nurture.
I am sure not one can change their minds. Muggeridge stated Communism is an urban religion attractive to those with a grudge against their fellow man and civilisation. Muggeridge and Orwell understood the character of the left wing middle class. I think it boils down to lack of physical and mental toughness plus practical skills to enjoy the rough and tumble of life. Look at what degrees and sports they play. Has the labour Parties of Hampstead, Highgate and Islington ever included rugby playing engineers? Now compare Guardian types to rugby playing miners and those working in heavy industry or commercial trawling.
Those who have conquered fear can walk with the animals which was why George Adamson could walk with lions.On a physical level I think most Guardian types are fearful of tough practical men which is why they turned on traditional Labour/Democrat voting blue collar and manual workers and ignore plight of those who lived in squalid slums and worked in satanic mills. One cannot hate what one does not fear.
What did you think of the ‘Telly’ version a few years ago?
You make a brilliant point about the cotton mill workers who get overlooked in the race clamour. I daresay the Little Circle were relieved that their employees were too badly educated to have an amanuensis to detail their many hurts and miseries. When the race warriors point at us white folks and our exploitation of slaves how many people was that? Because the population in the Industrial Revolution lived hungry, cold lives. The spoils of slavery were enjoyed by a very tiny number of British people, while the masses toiled, not much better off than the southern slaves who produced the raw goods. Were the employees at John Edward Taylor’s mills enjoying better wages, an education for their children, safe working conditions, decent housing? I suspect not.
Thank you. I agree. I’ve been reflecting lately on how angry and let down I have felt over the past few years by people who I thought should know better. My conclusion is that pointing the finger at them and accusing them of ignorance, cowardice, or venality is not going to change their minds, it’s only going to make them dig their heels in further, and deepen the divisions. While there are some very good, decent people on the conservative right, they are never going to be able on their own to convince people who see themselves as left progressives to change their minds. Whereas the captured progressive left or technocratic centre won’t be able easily to ignore or dismiss carefully considered constructive criticism from a left or centre perspective that acknowledges their point of view, recognises that they have some legitimate grievances and ideas, and does not directly assault their ego by suggesting that they have some kind of mal-intent. Dissenting leftists and centrists need to overcome the fear factor and any historical prejudices they might hold, and accept that in today’s world they have some common causes with those on the right against the captured left. Those on the right need to do likewise. We can debate who should own the railways another day; for now we just need to win the argument that it’s not racist or patriarchal to make the trains run on time.
Not only is better for one’s own mental state, whatever one’s own politics, to be approaching “culture war” issues with the kind of mindset that assumes good intent of all involved, but I really do believe it is the only way that we are going to be able to break the spell of magical wokery that abounds about the kingdom. My feeling is that we might be closer than it might seem to turning the corner and regaining some sense of order & a better grasp on reality in our politics and culture if we can just keep being positive, amicable, and forgiving to those with whom we might disagree – hard though it may sometimes be to do so (and heaven knows that I have lost, and continue to lose, my rag at them on occasion!).
What is so strange is how many on the “liberal left” are hypersensitive to any perceived slight or micro-aggression against their preferred victim groups, yet are happy to wade in with genuine insults against any they deem ‘deplorable’.
They’d be the first to denounce any who’d think to pigeonhole someone whilst, almost in the same breath, constructing a fairly sturdy pigeonhole themselves and stuffing it with a well-fed pigeon.
“Now it’s trapped in corporate-sponsored, self-destructive narratives around white privilege, net zero, vaccine efficacy, safe spaces, gender ideology and all the rest of it”
When its readership largely consisted of poverty-stricken undergraduates the Guardian could afford to be on the side of the underdog. Nowadays, those undergraduates are senior civil servants, academics, lawyers etc – and they’re stinking rich. Stinking rich people don’t like to talk about class and inequality so the Guardian is now all about the narcissistic trivia of identity politics. It’s a fashion accessory for middle class people who live off the state, not a genuinely radical newspaper, as it once was.
As a former regular Guardian reader, I can only second what you say about what the Guardian was and what it is now. At first it just made me a little sad to see this venerable newspaper devolving into another “rag”, but after a time I started to get angry – where now do we find a place for reasoned, honest argument from a Left perspective? I find it too difficult to forgive them, though, brcause, unlike you, I believe that they do know what they are doing, and they are prepared to ignore the consequences. They have allowed the lunatics to take over the asylum and what we now see is the result, to the detriment of political discussion in this country.
What a brilliant comment. I’m reading the biography of Elizabeth Gaskell, one of my favourite authors (“Wives and Daughters” is sublime!). She lived in Manchester, was horrified by the conditions of the English cotton mill workers and tried to raise public awareness about them through her writings, most obviously through “North and South”. I haven’t found out yet what her views were on the slaves who produced the cotton in America, and whether she included them in her social campaigning (I don’t think so though). Thus she could probably also be attacked now as a “white supremacist”. (How misguided!) There should never be a hierarchy of causes. One should not criticise for example someone who devotes themselves to looking after stray animals on the basis that they care more for animals than people and thus are in some way morally deficient – we can’t all solve everything and each of us must do our part with what is placed before us in our lives. However, what I do know is that Elizabeth Gaskell, who believed utterly in speaking the truth, and was full of fun and yet also intensely kind, would have echoed your comment – that we should approach everything and everyone including the writers at the Guardian, with both clear eyed truth, but also tolerance and understanding. The writers at the Guardian need to be called out in this way. We need everyone to see how dangerous these Identitarian Marxist ways of thinking are.
What is so strange is how many on the “liberal left” are hypersensitive to any perceived slight or micro-aggression against their preferred victim groups, yet are happy to wade in with genuine insults against any they deem ‘deplorable’.
They’d be the first to denounce any who’d think to pigeonhole someone whilst, almost in the same breath, constructing a fairly sturdy pigeonhole themselves and stuffing it with a well-fed pigeon.
“Now it’s trapped in corporate-sponsored, self-destructive narratives around white privilege, net zero, vaccine efficacy, safe spaces, gender ideology and all the rest of it”
When its readership largely consisted of poverty-stricken undergraduates the Guardian could afford to be on the side of the underdog. Nowadays, those undergraduates are senior civil servants, academics, lawyers etc – and they’re stinking rich. Stinking rich people don’t like to talk about class and inequality so the Guardian is now all about the narcissistic trivia of identity politics. It’s a fashion accessory for middle class people who live off the state, not a genuinely radical newspaper, as it once was.
It’s all very, very sad. The Guardian was once the home of serious, analytical, investigative journalism. It wouldn’t always get everything right, and yes it has always leaned leftwards. But at least it tried to be truthful. Now it’s trapped in corporate-sponsored, self-destructive narratives around white privilege, net zero, vaccine efficacy, safe spaces, gender ideology and all the rest of it that actively deny the value of freedom of expression of diverse and conflicting views and opinions in the pursuit of truth, usually in the name of “keeping everyone safe” or “preventing harm”.
They are suffocating the liberal democracy which their predecessors helped to found, from within. The tragedy is that the leadership at the Guardian, and other such formerly broadly liberal institutions, just cannot see it for what it is. They cannot perceive the gross harms that they are doing. From the outside, it is easy to see the inevitability of their disordered, bleak nihilism, grounded in the negative emotions of guilt, envy, and resentment, turning in on itself, as it has on historical slavery. But from the inside, it just doesn’t look like that.
So forgive them, for they know not what they do. They are not bad people. Those of us fortunate to be able to see through the reheated Marxian nonsense that is critical social and race theories should challenge ourselves to try and love those who have sadly got themselves tangled up in it all: to meet their negativity with positivity, to criticise them with a friendly smile and an open heart, to offer a helping hand out rather than a facepalm of rejection, and above all to try our level best to remain kind, gracious and humble rather than hurt, angry and self-righteous. A tough, perhaps impossible, standard to meet but it is something to aim for and it might just be the way we break the downward spiral of recrimination and anger and so get out of this chaotic mess we find ourselves in.
Every damn one of us with an iPhone is supporting slavery today – every single one of us.
That very point that came to mind while reading the article. It’s convenient to pretend that child labor and other forms of inhumane exploitation, plus our complicity therein (perhaps not “intentional support”), is some antique legacy. Or that we’ve exonerated ourselves by denouncing it or writing about it.
Ha! And I don’t have one.
However my forebears were handsomely compensated in 1837.
Oh pleeeze.
“Oh pleeeze(sic)” what exactly?
The path to self knowledge usually starts by admitting that one has been a bit of a cad. This process is easy for Europeans and for Catholics – we now we’re bad to the bone, if we relax our vigilance. Americans struggle with that, given their sunnier view of human nature.
You have a point, I think. But the path to higher knowledge surely involves fewer convenient generalizations–as a rule I mean.
You have a point, I think. But the path to higher knowledge surely involves fewer convenient generalizations–as a rule I mean.
“Oh pleeeze(sic)” what exactly?
The path to self knowledge usually starts by admitting that one has been a bit of a cad. This process is easy for Europeans and for Catholics – we now we’re bad to the bone, if we relax our vigilance. Americans struggle with that, given their sunnier view of human nature.
I don’t own an iPhone.
True, and likewise everyone who buys cheap clothes in the high street. And I have severe doubts about some car washes I’ve used too.
That very point that came to mind while reading the article. It’s convenient to pretend that child labor and other forms of inhumane exploitation, plus our complicity therein (perhaps not “intentional support”), is some antique legacy. Or that we’ve exonerated ourselves by denouncing it or writing about it.
Ha! And I don’t have one.
However my forebears were handsomely compensated in 1837.
Oh pleeeze.
I don’t own an iPhone.
True, and likewise everyone who buys cheap clothes in the high street. And I have severe doubts about some car washes I’ve used too.
Every damn one of us with an iPhone is supporting slavery today – every single one of us.
It seems to me it’s the racists who are constantly shouting about race. The Left is completely unhinged by its own incoherence. What on Earth is “editorial whiteness”?
Don’t ask.
Don’t ask.
It seems to me it’s the racists who are constantly shouting about race. The Left is completely unhinged by its own incoherence. What on Earth is “editorial whiteness”?
I shall cherish this exposé of Guardian hypocrisy and give it the widest possible circulation.
I shall cherish this exposé of Guardian hypocrisy and give it the widest possible circulation.
Rinsed by its own purity spiral. The biter bit. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch
Rinsed by its own purity spiral. The biter bit. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch
We need the Guardian. We just need a better Guardian. It’s good to have a range of alternative views of a subject. Unfortunately, since the Snowdon reveal and then Viner as editor it’s become horribly myopic. It used to be able to present different sides of an argument, while still supporting a more leftish view. Now, any mention of a different point of view is banned (denier). The readers are lectured to avoid (or at least in self-imposed exile) from anything outside the Guardian canon – can’t go there it might be right-wing/ populist/ conspiracy/ skeptic/ wrong-think/ mansplaining, as if their readers don’t have the intellectual ability to cope with different opinions. It’s so much side-ism and name-calling and emotion, instead of fair discussion, so much so that they’ve driven away the intelligent readers that you used to get in their comment sections. Snide whinings and hand-me-down talking points, lacking incisive argument.
We need the Guardian. We just need a better Guardian. It’s good to have a range of alternative views of a subject. Unfortunately, since the Snowdon reveal and then Viner as editor it’s become horribly myopic. It used to be able to present different sides of an argument, while still supporting a more leftish view. Now, any mention of a different point of view is banned (denier). The readers are lectured to avoid (or at least in self-imposed exile) from anything outside the Guardian canon – can’t go there it might be right-wing/ populist/ conspiracy/ skeptic/ wrong-think/ mansplaining, as if their readers don’t have the intellectual ability to cope with different opinions. It’s so much side-ism and name-calling and emotion, instead of fair discussion, so much so that they’ve driven away the intelligent readers that you used to get in their comment sections. Snide whinings and hand-me-down talking points, lacking incisive argument.
There is no point in pointing out their hypocrisy.
They (the Guardian, and that entire class) have no shame, and their whole moral standpoint is:
“we know best despite having no evidence of being smart or knowledgeable, and you better filled what we say – which would not apply to us of course.”
There is no point in pointing out their hypocrisy.
They (the Guardian, and that entire class) have no shame, and their whole moral standpoint is:
“we know best despite having no evidence of being smart or knowledgeable, and you better filled what we say – which would not apply to us of course.”
Sarah Tisdall anyone?
SOLD OUT by the Guardian and its editor the late Peter Preston.
Lest we forget.
Sarah Tisdall anyone?
SOLD OUT by the Guardian and its editor the late Peter Preston.
Lest we forget.
A Racist Guardian founded on slavery earnings and an Anti Women Labour Party ?
A Racist Guardian founded on slavery earnings and an Anti Women Labour Party ?
Skeletons in cupboards? people who live in glass houses?
People never seem to learn about this until it comes back to bite them in the butt.
You would think that journalists in particular would understand this?
Hope it comes back to haunt them.
Skeletons in cupboards? people who live in glass houses?
People never seem to learn about this until it comes back to bite them in the butt.
You would think that journalists in particular would understand this?
Hope it comes back to haunt them.
This sort of biased, vindictive, historically naive claptrap illustrates the cynicism behind the drive to replace objectivity in journalism with “moral clarity”, otherwise known as “I’m always right, you’re always wrong.” It advances the tired, shallow, old stereotypes of power and “whiteness” as justification for what at bottom is a job application. The answer to too much whiteness is apparently more blackness. It’s not about equality and progress at all. The outraged podcasters can take a hike. Found your own pure Guardian, history free and no doubt as morally pure as the driven snow. Call it “No More Nuance”.
Well said. Love all these “former readers” comments – all the virtuous ones who now only read stuff they agree with.
How pure, how neat.
I read papers from a number of countries. Of the English ones, I regularly read The Observer, the Daily Telegraph, the FT and The Times. Because I’m rather boring, I tend to agree more with the Times and the FT, but I enjoy the Guardian and the Telegraph most, largely because each of them is so tribally-furious in their competing rectitudes, and because there in consequence is much to disagree with in each paper. For me at least, it’s boring to read stuff that I agree with.
This article has a massive irony by-pass problem though.
Cherry-picked, sanctimonious and hypocritical, it’s no better than the paper its attacking and is unable to see this.
Of course, it knows its peanut gallery well. I enjoy Unherd very much, but its readership is one of the most one-sided thought bubbles in the UK.
The thought bubbles that people invest such time (not thought) in sealing off and furnishing tend to seem virtuous instead of vicious from the inside, don’t they? I appreciate your left-of-herd perspective and share many of your bubble-bursting views. The presence of pugnacious but reasonable and well-informed dissenters such as yourself and John Holland help to balance the “whole spectrum, center-right to hard right” norm here.
The thought bubbles that people invest such time (not thought) in sealing off and furnishing tend to seem virtuous instead of vicious from the inside, don’t they? I appreciate your left-of-herd perspective and share many of your bubble-bursting views. The presence of pugnacious but reasonable and well-informed dissenters such as yourself and John Holland help to balance the “whole spectrum, center-right to hard right” norm here.
Well said. Love all these “former readers” comments – all the virtuous ones who now only read stuff they agree with.
How pure, how neat.
I read papers from a number of countries. Of the English ones, I regularly read The Observer, the Daily Telegraph, the FT and The Times. Because I’m rather boring, I tend to agree more with the Times and the FT, but I enjoy the Guardian and the Telegraph most, largely because each of them is so tribally-furious in their competing rectitudes, and because there in consequence is much to disagree with in each paper. For me at least, it’s boring to read stuff that I agree with.
This article has a massive irony by-pass problem though.
Cherry-picked, sanctimonious and hypocritical, it’s no better than the paper its attacking and is unable to see this.
Of course, it knows its peanut gallery well. I enjoy Unherd very much, but its readership is one of the most one-sided thought bubbles in the UK.
This sort of biased, vindictive, historically naive claptrap illustrates the cynicism behind the drive to replace objectivity in journalism with “moral clarity”, otherwise known as “I’m always right, you’re always wrong.” It advances the tired, shallow, old stereotypes of power and “whiteness” as justification for what at bottom is a job application. The answer to too much whiteness is apparently more blackness. It’s not about equality and progress at all. The outraged podcasters can take a hike. Found your own pure Guardian, history free and no doubt as morally pure as the driven snow. Call it “No More Nuance”.
The Guardian is a clever psyop, run by shadowy right-wing forces to stymie any notion of sensible progressive left-wing politics. What else explains the article suggesting HP Sauce is racist
I must confess that I have always had my suspicions about HP sauce. I am hoping that they do an indepth investigation into Gentleman’s Relish and its secretly sexist purveyers.
Indeed. Although, for the Grauniad, there’s probably a set of traffic lights on the A303 that’s racist too.
Indeed. Although, for the Grauniad, there’s probably a set of traffic lights on the A303 that’s racist too.
I must confess that I have always had my suspicions about HP sauce. I am hoping that they do an indepth investigation into Gentleman’s Relish and its secretly sexist purveyers.
The Guardian is a clever psyop, run by shadowy right-wing forces to stymie any notion of sensible progressive left-wing politics. What else explains the article suggesting HP Sauce is racist
When Malcom Muggeridge exposed the mass murder caused by starvation in the Ukraine in the 1930s, The Guardian sacked him.
There was a Royal Navy patrol in the Persian gulf in the 1960s to stop slavery.
Mauritania still had legal slavery in the 1970s. A family friend was nearly enslaved but his rugby and fast running saved him before the manacles could be placed upon him.
Orwell in his variopus essays, such as” My Country Right or Left”, “The Lion and The Unicorn”, etc, describe the middle class left wing character very well”.
The left wing middle class survive on the sweat of the manual and blue collar classes plus inherited money. They lack the ability to innovate and solve problems which would reduce suffering. They lack the technical skills and toughness which would enable them to say, design and construct sewage systems in slums, improve irrigation, agricultural yield, etc . The consequences are self hatred and hatred of the technically skilled tough middle classes from which they come. Rugby playing Chartered Engineers who support Corbyn are thin on the ground. If one had to save people to recreate civilisation the vast majority of the left wing middle class, would not be chosen; physically tough engineers and craftsmen would.
As Orwell said he did not fear the dictatorship of the proletariat as he believed in the common decency of the ordinary man: he feared the dictorship of the intellectual.
No need to fear it, because the proletariat will never have a dictatorship to hold for long or surrender on the path to Utopia. Some among the revolutionaries that seize power or rise to prominence on behalf of The People become jealously guarded, oppressive elites of their own, causing many wonder whether the Bourgeoisie or Ancien Régime (etc.) were really so bad after all.
No need to fear it, because the proletariat will never have a dictatorship to hold for long or surrender on the path to Utopia. Some among the revolutionaries that seize power or rise to prominence on behalf of The People become jealously guarded, oppressive elites of their own, causing many wonder whether the Bourgeoisie or Ancien Régime (etc.) were really so bad after all.
When Malcom Muggeridge exposed the mass murder caused by starvation in the Ukraine in the 1930s, The Guardian sacked him.
There was a Royal Navy patrol in the Persian gulf in the 1960s to stop slavery.
Mauritania still had legal slavery in the 1970s. A family friend was nearly enslaved but his rugby and fast running saved him before the manacles could be placed upon him.
Orwell in his variopus essays, such as” My Country Right or Left”, “The Lion and The Unicorn”, etc, describe the middle class left wing character very well”.
The left wing middle class survive on the sweat of the manual and blue collar classes plus inherited money. They lack the ability to innovate and solve problems which would reduce suffering. They lack the technical skills and toughness which would enable them to say, design and construct sewage systems in slums, improve irrigation, agricultural yield, etc . The consequences are self hatred and hatred of the technically skilled tough middle classes from which they come. Rugby playing Chartered Engineers who support Corbyn are thin on the ground. If one had to save people to recreate civilisation the vast majority of the left wing middle class, would not be chosen; physically tough engineers and craftsmen would.
As Orwell said he did not fear the dictatorship of the proletariat as he believed in the common decency of the ordinary man: he feared the dictorship of the intellectual.
I now have this vision of all 1,200 Grauniad readers and their journalists, packed like sardines into a ship bound for a Gulf nation where they will be put to work in the boiling heat 20 hours a day….!
Has the Guardian reported on the deaths in Qatar during the construction of the World Cup facilities: numbers I have heard quoted are 6500?
Gosh it was said to be a mere 400 in Athens, a few years ago, so that really is astonishing.
Gosh it was said to be a mere 400 in Athens, a few years ago, so that really is astonishing.
Has the Guardian reported on the deaths in Qatar during the construction of the World Cup facilities: numbers I have heard quoted are 6500?
I now have this vision of all 1,200 Grauniad readers and their journalists, packed like sardines into a ship bound for a Gulf nation where they will be put to work in the boiling heat 20 hours a day….!
Everyone has some self interest, which is often the foundation of attitudes and unthinkingly applied… so therefore hidden from self inspection. This happens in individuals and organisations made up of individuals. It explains why organisations drift from their original purpose and become vessels for careerists expectations.
As a consequence far more effort goes into defending the inconsistencies than rational reflection because who wants to invite criticism of their self interests?
In order to understand The Guardian you have to understand the following. The Guardian does not have principles: it has interests. When it is in its interests The Guardian acts according to its declared principles but when its interests are best served by acting against its declared principles it will do so. If its failure to act according to its declared principles is challenged by other publications or its readers it may then seek to present its actions as being in accordance with its declared principles (what Ashley Rindsberg rightly describes as The Guardian’s “moral contortionism“) but if it cannot do so without damaging its credibility or bringing more attention to its failings it remains silent.
The accusations of racism against The Guardian over its links to slavery and the podcast series about the subject may be a surprise to some but they shouldn’t be. The Guardian has had more than one go at establishing itself in America (an early one being its ill-fated “Operation Clark County” attempt to swing the 2004 US Presidential election against George W. Bush which is deserving of a revisit) but one issue illustrates The Guardian’s modus operandi well.
When Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer in Ferguson in 2014 The Guardian immediately seized upon it as proof of the chronic racism in American society and published hundreds of reports and opinion articles about the killing and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and many of those opinion articles were by black writers. When George Floyd was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020 The Guardian tried to do the same but it couldn’t muster a similar number of black writers to write opinion articles about it. When Tyre Nichols was killed by five black police officers in Memphis in 2023 The Guardian took a long time to even report the killing and even longer to find anyone to write an opinion article about it.
That’s because when The Guardian tries to establish itself in other countries it takes its self-serving interest-based mentality with it and pretends to care about other people. After the killing of Michael Brown The Guardian wanted black people to write emotive pieces about racism for $500 for 1000 words in hours on demand on freelance terms but would give few of them a salaried Guardian job which are mainly reserved for white women. By the time George Floyd was killed most of the black writers who had written for The Guardian didn’t want to write for them again and by the time Tyre Nichols was killed The Guardian had realised there wasn’t enough money in pretending to care about black people in America and most black writers had realised that The Guardian viewed them as potential cheap casual labour. The Guardian got more donations and clicks out of opposing Trump or defending Roe vs. Wade so The Guardian quietly slid off the back of the Black Lives Matter bandwagon which was getting too left-wing and uppity for the liking of its white staff.
The Guardian has used the same modus operandi in Australia (where it pretends to care about indigenous Australians), it would do the same in Canada if it was worth the expenditure and if it ever tried to establish itself in India it would pretend to care about Dalits. The people that The Guardian and its editors care about most are themselves and there is nothing that cannot be sacrificed when it is in their interests to do so. The Guardian sacrificed thousands of underage girls to the Muslim rape gangs that it knew about in the mid-2000s because it was in its interests to protect the public sector employers and the New Labour government that were failing to protect them but giving The Guardian millions of pounds annually to advertise public sector job vacancies.
Very insightful.
Very insightful.
In order to understand The Guardian you have to understand the following. The Guardian does not have principles: it has interests. When it is in its interests The Guardian acts according to its declared principles but when its interests are best served by acting against its declared principles it will do so. If its failure to act according to its declared principles is challenged by other publications or its readers it may then seek to present its actions as being in accordance with its declared principles (what Ashley Rindsberg rightly describes as The Guardian’s “moral contortionism“) but if it cannot do so without damaging its credibility or bringing more attention to its failings it remains silent.
The accusations of racism against The Guardian over its links to slavery and the podcast series about the subject may be a surprise to some but they shouldn’t be. The Guardian has had more than one go at establishing itself in America (an early one being its ill-fated “Operation Clark County” attempt to swing the 2004 US Presidential election against George W. Bush which is deserving of a revisit) but one issue illustrates The Guardian’s modus operandi well.
When Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer in Ferguson in 2014 The Guardian immediately seized upon it as proof of the chronic racism in American society and published hundreds of reports and opinion articles about the killing and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and many of those opinion articles were by black writers. When George Floyd was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020 The Guardian tried to do the same but it couldn’t muster a similar number of black writers to write opinion articles about it. When Tyre Nichols was killed by five black police officers in Memphis in 2023 The Guardian took a long time to even report the killing and even longer to find anyone to write an opinion article about it.
That’s because when The Guardian tries to establish itself in other countries it takes its self-serving interest-based mentality with it and pretends to care about other people. After the killing of Michael Brown The Guardian wanted black people to write emotive pieces about racism for $500 for 1000 words in hours on demand on freelance terms but would give few of them a salaried Guardian job which are mainly reserved for white women. By the time George Floyd was killed most of the black writers who had written for The Guardian didn’t want to write for them again and by the time Tyre Nichols was killed The Guardian had realised there wasn’t enough money in pretending to care about black people in America and most black writers had realised that The Guardian viewed them as potential cheap casual labour. The Guardian got more donations and clicks out of opposing Trump or defending Roe vs. Wade so The Guardian quietly slid off the back of the Black Lives Matter bandwagon which was getting too left-wing and uppity for the liking of its white staff.
The Guardian has used the same modus operandi in Australia (where it pretends to care about indigenous Australians), it would do the same in Canada if it was worth the expenditure and if it ever tried to establish itself in India it would pretend to care about Dalits. The people that The Guardian and its editors care about most are themselves and there is nothing that cannot be sacrificed when it is in their interests to do so. The Guardian sacrificed thousands of underage girls to the Muslim rape gangs that it knew about in the mid-2000s because it was in its interests to protect the public sector employers and the New Labour government that were failing to protect them but giving The Guardian millions of pounds annually to advertise public sector job vacancies.
Everyone has some self interest, which is often the foundation of attitudes and unthinkingly applied… so therefore hidden from self inspection. This happens in individuals and organisations made up of individuals. It explains why organisations drift from their original purpose and become vessels for careerists expectations.
As a consequence far more effort goes into defending the inconsistencies than rational reflection because who wants to invite criticism of their self interests?
The element that is missed from all the laudable investigations into how rich British people benefitted from the slave trade is the simultaneous exploitation of the British workers turfed off their land by Enclosure and herded into the ghastly mills, where ‘wages’ were paid in tokens only usable in the mill-owners’ shops, children as young as ten were deformed and maimed by working the machinery, while the younger ones – some from the age of four – were used to clear out lint and mend broken threads under working machines, at risk not only to life and limb from being hit, but also to their lungs from inhaling the cotton dust.
This isn’t just a ‘race’ issue; it’s a ‘rich’ issue. That needs to be acknowledged.
The element that is missed from all the laudable investigations into how rich British people benefitted from the slave trade is the simultaneous exploitation of the British workers turfed off their land by Enclosure and herded into the ghastly mills, where ‘wages’ were paid in tokens only usable in the mill-owners’ shops, children as young as ten were deformed and maimed by working the machinery, while the younger ones – some from the age of four – were used to clear out lint and mend broken threads under working machines, at risk not only to life and limb from being hit, but also to their lungs from inhaling the cotton dust.
This isn’t just a ‘race’ issue; it’s a ‘rich’ issue. That needs to be acknowledged.
Did the US Government ever attempt to buy out its Slavers as we (UK)* had so successful done? If not why not?
(* Legislation of 1833 & 1837.)
An interesting question, Charles, I have seen no evidence that they did, but perhaps our US commentators may hve some information on that. As an aside, the payments made to the slaver owners was a phenomenal amount, it was about £20 million, which accounted for 40% of government expendature in that year. I suppose the government of the day thought it was worth the cost to get it over and done with, the West Indian slave owner still had a lot of clout, and there was no wish either to shed blood or to lose the West Indies, as the French would most likely step into the vacuum.
They sent William Tecumseh Sherman instead.
ie: They went for the most EXPENSIVE option in terms of both blood & treasure, and ‘we’ got off comparatively cheaply!
ie: They went for the most EXPENSIVE option in terms of both blood & treasure, and ‘we’ got off comparatively cheaply!
I’m not the historian you are Mr. S., even of my own North American “backyard”, but I’m quite sure that never happened. I imagine that was a contributing factor in Southern Lost Cause romanticism and the measure of resentment that lingers to this day. (Also, During Reconstruction, Northern reformers roared though the South and attempted, all at once, to raise blacks to positions of prominence and authority they could not have occupied in the North at that time).
I don’t suppose Northern industrialists who profited from plantation labor were made to return a single dollar though.
No, it did not because of the effectiveness of the Abolitionist Movement in fomenting a raging virulent moral panic about slavery. A moral panic that persists until the present time. Recent research has upped the estimated Civil War death toll to nearly a million people. A million people who died needlessly. Every other civilized country on the planet (that is every country other than Haiti) was able to end slavery without resorting to war. And yet every other country has (at least until the recent spread of the Americrazy BLM thing) healed and moved on but America cannot heal and people continue to die over the slavery issue. So, one million dead and the death toll continues to rise. And the UK looks across the pond and says, “Oh yes! Let’s get that going over here as well!”
If anything deserved to occasion a sense of moral urgency, which you characterize as a virulent panic, slavery sure fit the bill.
Suggesting that there is an uninterrupted moral panic in the US occasioned by Abolitionists is comparable in absurdity to those at the other extreme of the smudged historical viewfinder who pretend that the racial attitudes of the Antebellum period remain unimproved in present-day America. Both are insane bits of hyperbole.
I guess the South could have enjoyed their genteel plantation ways a lot longer if they’d been content to keep slavery at a standstill, and not push it so hard with each successive state being admitted to the Union. You know, the gradualist approach that would have eventually ended a system of large-scale human bondage without so much violence.
Shame that the yanks can’t seem to get through their little disputes without needless violence, unlike “every other country” (barring Haiti you say) that had slavery–like Latin America! What a regional wonderland before the bad example of the US took hold. I was gonna vacation in Honduras until BLM ruined everything.
Would that the US wouldn’t leave so much violence and unrest in its wake (sincerely). I think we ‘Muricans actually learned quite a lot from the British Empire on that front, but we can’t seem to keep a stiff upper lip about it .
And racism, anti-semitism, sexism and ageism is still alive and well all over the world.The “us or them” mentality is fixed in the brain. The need for a scapegoat to project the disowned parts of the self onto hasn’t changed. The climate is changing faster than we are.
So evolution is slower than climate change, how extraordinary!
So evolution is slower than climate change, how extraordinary!
Thank you for answering the question and the interesting follow up.
If anything deserved to occasion a sense of moral urgency, which you characterize as a virulent panic, slavery sure fit the bill.
Suggesting that there is an uninterrupted moral panic in the US occasioned by Abolitionists is comparable in absurdity to those at the other extreme of the smudged historical viewfinder who pretend that the racial attitudes of the Antebellum period remain unimproved in present-day America. Both are insane bits of hyperbole.
I guess the South could have enjoyed their genteel plantation ways a lot longer if they’d been content to keep slavery at a standstill, and not push it so hard with each successive state being admitted to the Union. You know, the gradualist approach that would have eventually ended a system of large-scale human bondage without so much violence.
Shame that the yanks can’t seem to get through their little disputes without needless violence, unlike “every other country” (barring Haiti you say) that had slavery–like Latin America! What a regional wonderland before the bad example of the US took hold. I was gonna vacation in Honduras until BLM ruined everything.
Would that the US wouldn’t leave so much violence and unrest in its wake (sincerely). I think we ‘Muricans actually learned quite a lot from the British Empire on that front, but we can’t seem to keep a stiff upper lip about it .
And racism, anti-semitism, sexism and ageism is still alive and well all over the world.The “us or them” mentality is fixed in the brain. The need for a scapegoat to project the disowned parts of the self onto hasn’t changed. The climate is changing faster than we are.
Thank you for answering the question and the interesting follow up.
An interesting question, Charles, I have seen no evidence that they did, but perhaps our US commentators may hve some information on that. As an aside, the payments made to the slaver owners was a phenomenal amount, it was about £20 million, which accounted for 40% of government expendature in that year. I suppose the government of the day thought it was worth the cost to get it over and done with, the West Indian slave owner still had a lot of clout, and there was no wish either to shed blood or to lose the West Indies, as the French would most likely step into the vacuum.
They sent William Tecumseh Sherman instead.
I’m not the historian you are Mr. S., even of my own North American “backyard”, but I’m quite sure that never happened. I imagine that was a contributing factor in Southern Lost Cause romanticism and the measure of resentment that lingers to this day. (Also, During Reconstruction, Northern reformers roared though the South and attempted, all at once, to raise blacks to positions of prominence and authority they could not have occupied in the North at that time).
I don’t suppose Northern industrialists who profited from plantation labor were made to return a single dollar though.
No, it did not because of the effectiveness of the Abolitionist Movement in fomenting a raging virulent moral panic about slavery. A moral panic that persists until the present time. Recent research has upped the estimated Civil War death toll to nearly a million people. A million people who died needlessly. Every other civilized country on the planet (that is every country other than Haiti) was able to end slavery without resorting to war. And yet every other country has (at least until the recent spread of the Americrazy BLM thing) healed and moved on but America cannot heal and people continue to die over the slavery issue. So, one million dead and the death toll continues to rise. And the UK looks across the pond and says, “Oh yes! Let’s get that going over here as well!”
Did the US Government ever attempt to buy out its Slavers as we (UK)* had so successful done? If not why not?
(* Legislation of 1833 & 1837.)
Picture yourself as the descendent of an enslaved woman and the lord of the plantation, her “master”–a very common branch on American family trees. Do you therefore bear the full burden of both the slave and the slaver’s suffering and guilt?
The current idea of complicity has ballooned into something that is incomprehensible in any useful way, an overwhelming and demoralizing mess. Yes, it’s better not to patronize companies with the worst labor practices (according to your own list). It would be better if we didn’t use, much less become “slaves” to devices built by children, or under other conditions of servitude. However, saying so seems to do almost nothing to help amend these abuses, even serving as a substitute for concerted action.
Let’s cut down on our complicity, acknowledging that there is no such thing as a plausible human life that is not somehow–however directly or at whatever comforting remove–complicit in immense suffering or at least “injustice adjacent”. You’d have to live in an actual bubble, and perhaps be an imbecile too, to remove knowledge of the suffering occasioned by your total dependency upon others.
And buying only the “most ethical” chocolate, coffee, booze, and electronics won’t protect us from being complicit in exploitation and injustice–nor the vicious, specific horrors those abstract nouns contain. We can’t be made to answer for or ever hope to avoid every remote wrong. And the sins of the fathers and mothers should not be imputed to their children in the way it is easy and in our lower nature to impute them. Let’s clean our own side of the street and each do our part; cut down on our “complicity footprints” and reduce preventable injustice (what a rousing call to action!).
But I hope we won’t imagine our respective parts consist mainly of finger-pointing or self-flagellation, whether public or private.
Picture yourself as the descendent of an enslaved woman and the lord of the plantation, her “master”–a very common branch on American family trees. Do you therefore bear the full burden of both the slave and the slaver’s suffering and guilt?
The current idea of complicity has ballooned into something that is incomprehensible in any useful way, an overwhelming and demoralizing mess. Yes, it’s better not to patronize companies with the worst labor practices (according to your own list). It would be better if we didn’t use, much less become “slaves” to devices built by children, or under other conditions of servitude. However, saying so seems to do almost nothing to help amend these abuses, even serving as a substitute for concerted action.
Let’s cut down on our complicity, acknowledging that there is no such thing as a plausible human life that is not somehow–however directly or at whatever comforting remove–complicit in immense suffering or at least “injustice adjacent”. You’d have to live in an actual bubble, and perhaps be an imbecile too, to remove knowledge of the suffering occasioned by your total dependency upon others.
And buying only the “most ethical” chocolate, coffee, booze, and electronics won’t protect us from being complicit in exploitation and injustice–nor the vicious, specific horrors those abstract nouns contain. We can’t be made to answer for or ever hope to avoid every remote wrong. And the sins of the fathers and mothers should not be imputed to their children in the way it is easy and in our lower nature to impute them. Let’s clean our own side of the street and each do our part; cut down on our “complicity footprints” and reduce preventable injustice (what a rousing call to action!).
But I hope we won’t imagine our respective parts consist mainly of finger-pointing or self-flagellation, whether public or private.
The rational response to all the agita about slavery centuries past (as opposed to what is going on in Xinjiang, Mauritania, and in brothels throughout the world in the present day) has always been, and will always be: slavery (or variants like serfdom or slave-like castes) was a universal institution in nearly all societies from the rise of agriculture until the 19th century, when it was largely stamped out on the initiative of Europeans (esp. the British).
Singling out those of European ancestry as the sole villains in the story of slavery is, in fact, racism against Europeans, as it ignores the fact that the Kingdom of Benin and other slave-taking Africans were the main profiteers from the African slave trade; ignores Islamic slavery, which enslaved both sub-Saharan Africans and Europeans; ignores Aztec, Mayan,Tlingit and Haida slavery in the New World; ignores the slave-like castes in India; ignores the various regimes of slavery that existed in most countries of Asia, including Qing Dynasty China.
What is peculiar about Europeans (and Americans of European ancestry) is that in the 19th century, they decided that slavery and serfdom were moral abominations, not merely fighting a Civil War over the issue in the United States, but abolishing serfdom in Russia, abolishing the chattel slavery of Roma (Gypies) in Romania, and, the true heroes of the tale, in Britain not merely abolishing slavery in the Empire, but expending lives and treasure to send the Royal Navy to suppress the slave trade world-wide (over the objection of the indigenous African slave-traders).
America already paid reparations for slavery in the blood of Union soldiers. Britain already paid in the cost in treasure and the blood of sailors and marines of maintaining the West Africa Squadron. The woke can stuff it on this issue.
(On my side of the pond a case might be made for reparations for Jim Crow, red-lining and the racist administration of GI benefits after the world wars and Korea, but not for slavery qua slavery.)
The rational response to all the agita about slavery centuries past (as opposed to what is going on in Xinjiang, Mauritania, and in brothels throughout the world in the present day) has always been, and will always be: slavery (or variants like serfdom or slave-like castes) was a universal institution in nearly all societies from the rise of agriculture until the 19th century, when it was largely stamped out on the initiative of Europeans (esp. the British).
Singling out those of European ancestry as the sole villains in the story of slavery is, in fact, racism against Europeans, as it ignores the fact that the Kingdom of Benin and other slave-taking Africans were the main profiteers from the African slave trade; ignores Islamic slavery, which enslaved both sub-Saharan Africans and Europeans; ignores Aztec, Mayan,Tlingit and Haida slavery in the New World; ignores the slave-like castes in India; ignores the various regimes of slavery that existed in most countries of Asia, including Qing Dynasty China.
What is peculiar about Europeans (and Americans of European ancestry) is that in the 19th century, they decided that slavery and serfdom were moral abominations, not merely fighting a Civil War over the issue in the United States, but abolishing serfdom in Russia, abolishing the chattel slavery of Roma (Gypies) in Romania, and, the true heroes of the tale, in Britain not merely abolishing slavery in the Empire, but expending lives and treasure to send the Royal Navy to suppress the slave trade world-wide (over the objection of the indigenous African slave-traders).
America already paid reparations for slavery in the blood of Union soldiers. Britain already paid in the cost in treasure and the blood of sailors and marines of maintaining the West Africa Squadron. The woke can stuff it on this issue.
(On my side of the pond a case might be made for reparations for Jim Crow, red-lining and the racist administration of GI benefits after the world wars and Korea, but not for slavery qua slavery.)
Is there a website which tracks commenters on Comment is Free? Some of them seem to be on there for 10 hours a day for years; Brian Braddock, Jess the Crip being two that immediately spring to mind. For an example of what hatred, real visceral hatred, looks like there can’t be anywhere that is worse than those comments which appear under Guardian cartoons. It is obscene.
Yet on controversial subjects with meaningful disagreement and legitimate diversity of opinion they usually won’t even allow comments. (Granted, when they used to allow more the tone was pretty corrosive).
Yet on controversial subjects with meaningful disagreement and legitimate diversity of opinion they usually won’t even allow comments. (Granted, when they used to allow more the tone was pretty corrosive).
Is there a website which tracks commenters on Comment is Free? Some of them seem to be on there for 10 hours a day for years; Brian Braddock, Jess the Crip being two that immediately spring to mind. For an example of what hatred, real visceral hatred, looks like there can’t be anywhere that is worse than those comments which appear under Guardian cartoons. It is obscene.
Never mind the slave trade it is alleged by a journalist in the Mail, Stephen Glover if I am not correct that the Guardian offshored £22million from the sale of their part ownership of Auto trader. Did someone say they had morals?
Never mind the slave trade it is alleged by a journalist in the Mail, Stephen Glover if I am not correct that the Guardian offshored £22million from the sale of their part ownership of Auto trader. Did someone say they had morals?
Yesterday was a peak Guardian day for clueless hypocrisy – a handwringing article on fake news – ‘Why are Britons so susceptible to fake news – and what can we do about it?’….and the headline news for the day? Was it the earthquake; the Ukraine war; the third mysterious spy thing shot down over N. American airspace; the multiple UK strikes; the Peru unrest perhaps……….No, the most important ‘news’ was another potential revelation concerning the lockdown party at Downing Street held by an ex PM, two years ago (no-one was harmed in the making of that party).
Yesterday was a peak Guardian day for clueless hypocrisy – a handwringing article on fake news – ‘Why are Britons so susceptible to fake news – and what can we do about it?’….and the headline news for the day? Was it the earthquake; the Ukraine war; the third mysterious spy thing shot down over N. American airspace; the multiple UK strikes; the Peru unrest perhaps……….No, the most important ‘news’ was another potential revelation concerning the lockdown party at Downing Street held by an ex PM, two years ago (no-one was harmed in the making of that party).
Whilst it seems that no sin in this world can exceed racism, may I tell how when I was a boy in the 1950s my Irish Catholic dad told me how at the Manchester Guardian, no Catholic was allowed to advance beyond senior clerk level in the hierarchy of its management structure. Later in the 1960s as an immigrant in this country and as new member of the Labour Party it was confirmed to me that this was indeed the case, but that it was about to be relaxed, so that I could feel safe in reading the paper or in applying for work there.
I believe black men got the vote in America before all women, so perhaps sexism is just as bad.
And quite right, too!
Actually, more than a few American suffragists were outraged by the very idea of black men getting the vote before white women.
A great number of white men were too. As you’ve no doubt heard: Throughout the South and often in the North, the legal right to vote did not amount to actual enfranchisment for several decades. So in 1920, the tardy enfranchisement of women was instantly more real than what American black men had through ostensible voting rights since 1870.
Yes, that’s true. It’s true also that not all white men could vote. In many countries, the franchise was limited at first not only by race and sex but also by class (wealth, property, education), religion (no Catholics or Jews) and age (still no children). It took time to become universal for adult citizens (and now some people demand that we extend the franchise to include non-citizens). What we consider self-evident about democracy wasn’t self-evident to all of our ancestors. They worried, not entirely without reason, about “mobocracy.”
Yes sir. Even the United States, I believe, restricted voting to men with land holdings until big bad Andrew Jackson extended the franchise. And senators were appointed, not elected, until 1912. Mobocracy or rule by the rabble indeed was and remains a worry.
I think extending access to all adult demographics is “on the right side of history”. But why encourage every ill-informed eligible voter to participate just because he or she supports your candidate (both sides do this)?
Yes sir. Even the United States, I believe, restricted voting to men with land holdings until big bad Andrew Jackson extended the franchise. And senators were appointed, not elected, until 1912. Mobocracy or rule by the rabble indeed was and remains a worry.
I think extending access to all adult demographics is “on the right side of history”. But why encourage every ill-informed eligible voter to participate just because he or she supports your candidate (both sides do this)?
Yes, that’s true. It’s true also that not all white men could vote. In many countries, the franchise was limited at first not only by race and sex but also by class (wealth, property, education), religion (no Catholics or Jews) and age (still no children). It took time to become universal for adult citizens (and now some people demand that we extend the franchise to include non-citizens). What we consider self-evident about democracy wasn’t self-evident to all of our ancestors. They worried, not entirely without reason, about “mobocracy.”
A great number of white men were too. As you’ve no doubt heard: Throughout the South and often in the North, the legal right to vote did not amount to actual enfranchisment for several decades. So in 1920, the tardy enfranchisement of women was instantly more real than what American black men had through ostensible voting rights since 1870.
Judging someone for something they cannot change, such as color or birth sex, seems equally wrong. Hating someone because they are ugly or short, beautiful or tall, dumb or smart also falls in that pretty much unchangeable category.
Now hating a person for something they could change, like being circus fat or totally ignorant or profligate–instead of judging the behavior and trying to understand them–isn’t great, but might be a less vicious form of bigotry or prejudice.
And quite right, too!
Actually, more than a few American suffragists were outraged by the very idea of black men getting the vote before white women.
Judging someone for something they cannot change, such as color or birth sex, seems equally wrong. Hating someone because they are ugly or short, beautiful or tall, dumb or smart also falls in that pretty much unchangeable category.
Now hating a person for something they could change, like being circus fat or totally ignorant or profligate–instead of judging the behavior and trying to understand them–isn’t great, but might be a less vicious form of bigotry or prejudice.
Strange how even categories of bigotry seem to have a shifting hierarchy of taboo and prevalence. I wonder if blacks or Indians other contemporary (50s and 60s) minority hires could have risen as high, let alone higher. Not that it matters much, but as someone from another generation and continent I’m genuinely curious.
I believe black men got the vote in America before all women, so perhaps sexism is just as bad.
Strange how even categories of bigotry seem to have a shifting hierarchy of taboo and prevalence. I wonder if blacks or Indians other contemporary (50s and 60s) minority hires could have risen as high, let alone higher. Not that it matters much, but as someone from another generation and continent I’m genuinely curious.
Whilst it seems that no sin in this world can exceed racism, may I tell how when I was a boy in the 1950s my Irish Catholic dad told me how at the Manchester Guardian, no Catholic was allowed to advance beyond senior clerk level in the hierarchy of its management structure. Later in the 1960s as an immigrant in this country and as new member of the Labour Party it was confirmed to me that this was indeed the case, but that it was about to be relaxed, so that I could feel safe in reading the paper or in applying for work there.
Nowadays the Guardian allies itself with a castration cult.
Nowadays the Guardian allies itself with a castration cult.
I just don’t care if the Guardian, or any other organization or business, that has been around for a similar length of time, had indirect links to the slave trade.
All of us, all of us, participate in the economy as it exists, and unless we go off and live like the Amish without many ties to the outside community, or in the wilds alone, there is no way to opt out of the economy as it exists. Of course businessmen in the past had ties to dodgy enterprises. Just like they all do now, and for that matter, any of us who have investments and pensions or buy mass produced products of any kind have links to dodgy business, questionable employment practices, and all the rest.
Organizations like The Guardian bring this criticism on themselves, as they are quite happy to do so to others, but the underlying premise is just bs.
I just don’t care if the Guardian, or any other organization or business, that has been around for a similar length of time, had indirect links to the slave trade.
All of us, all of us, participate in the economy as it exists, and unless we go off and live like the Amish without many ties to the outside community, or in the wilds alone, there is no way to opt out of the economy as it exists. Of course businessmen in the past had ties to dodgy enterprises. Just like they all do now, and for that matter, any of us who have investments and pensions or buy mass produced products of any kind have links to dodgy business, questionable employment practices, and all the rest.
Organizations like The Guardian bring this criticism on themselves, as they are quite happy to do so to others, but the underlying premise is just bs.
Appalling victim-blaming on the part of the Guardian. Rather that owning up to their on racist bias – conscious or unconscious – they choose, as so often the sanctimonious do – to double down on their virtue-signalung, while dismissing the claims of the podcaster critics. They would of course not let off any other institution under such accusations so lightly.
The dirty secret of many social justice warriors is that their exhibitionism seeks to conceal their guilt over past transgressions or privileges. Both seem to be at work with the superficially altruistic Guardian leadership.
Appalling victim-blaming on the part of the Guardian. Rather that owning up to their on racist bias – conscious or unconscious – they choose, as so often the sanctimonious do – to double down on their virtue-signalung, while dismissing the claims of the podcaster critics. They would of course not let off any other institution under such accusations so lightly.
The dirty secret of many social justice warriors is that their exhibitionism seeks to conceal their guilt over past transgressions or privileges. Both seem to be at work with the superficially altruistic Guardian leadership.
It would take a heart of stone not to find these moral contortions hilarious.
It would take a heart of stone not to find these moral contortions hilarious.
…. apologies for multiple postings – there was a delay in the comment appearing, and I was rather too impatient!.
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The Guardian is RELENTLESSLY negative – about pretty much everything. Over the last 10 years it has got markedly worse. It was always sanctimonious but it at least tried to incorporate a broader spectrum of ideas and didn’t wrap itself in the flag of liberal victimhood. (I even remember when it occasionally published ‘positive’ stories – which seems a very long time ago now).
Any objectivity has vanished. Any hope has been dashed that a Guardian editorial might ever assess a policy on its merits, and stop judging a policy, an action, a statement based solely on who has espoused it and what tribe they belong to. Whether that be a political tribe or any of the other boxes into which “Liberals” seek to place us in their ‘hierarchy of victim-status’.
Their ongoing narrative is wholly at odds with reality. The Guardian has a dystopian worldview and narrative predicated on catastrophism – it seems almost as though they are willing such a future into existence.
The Guardian proudly trumpets “Comment is free… but facts are sacred”. Yet facts are so routinely ignored in favour of their preferred narrative that I wonder how the Editors still put out CP Scott’s dictum every day with a straight face.
Comment may be free, but if the comment on the Grauniad comments page is out of step with Grauniad orthodoxy it will not stay there for long. As an experiment, try posting a comment there supporting foxhunting and then count the seconds till it disappears.
As well it should!!
What about Capital Punishment?
Just wait until the next Labour government changes the name of my old army mob to The Brigade of Guardians…
Off course the Guards are perfectly positioned should a Coup d’ état be required.
Off course the Guards are perfectly positioned should a Coup d’ état be required.
Just wait until the next Labour government changes the name of my old army mob to The Brigade of Guardians…
What about Capital Punishment?
As well it should!!
Comment may be free, but if the comment on the Grauniad comments page is out of step with Grauniad orthodoxy it will not stay there for long. As an experiment, try posting a comment there supporting foxhunting and then count the seconds till it disappears.
The Guardian is RELENTLESSLY negative – about pretty much everything. Over the last 10 years it has got markedly worse. It was always sanctimonious but it at least tried to incorporate a broader spectrum of ideas and didn’t wrap itself in the flag of liberal victimhood. (I even remember when it occasionally published ‘positive’ stories – which seems a very long time ago now).
Any objectivity has vanished. Any hope has been dashed that a Guardian editorial might ever assess a policy on its merits, and stop judging a policy, an action, a statement based solely on who has espoused it and what tribe they belong to. Whether that be a political tribe or any of the other boxes into which “Liberals” seek to place us in their ‘hierarchy of victim-status’.
Their ongoing narrative is wholly at odds with reality. The Guardian has a dystopian worldview and narrative predicated on catastrophism – it seems almost as though they are willing such a future into existence.
The Guardian proudly trumpets “Comment is free… but facts are sacred”. Yet facts are so routinely ignored in favour of their preferred narrative that I wonder how the Editors still put out CP Scott’s dictum every day with a straight face.
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Still happens to me even though all my comments have eventually posted, or been restored after removal. I do wish they would show both time submitted and time published, so that one’s “fresh-released” comment doesn’t appear to be 12 hours, or in your case 4 hours old. Even so, this forum is more balanced than most, with a seeming editorial approach of reducing contentiousness and profanity without stopping a whole lot from getting through, eventually.
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Still happens to me even though all my comments have eventually posted, or been restored after removal. I do wish they would show both time submitted and time published, so that one’s “fresh-released” comment doesn’t appear to be 12 hours, or in your case 4 hours old. Even so, this forum is more balanced than most, with a seeming editorial approach of reducing contentiousness and profanity without stopping a whole lot from getting through, eventually.
…. apologies for multiple postings – there was a delay in the comment appearing, and I was rather too impatient!.
Sheryllynne eh.
??
To be fair and balanced has anyone perchance seen the short Nature Video entitled “Pavement Apes of New York “?
No.
Is not this a derogatory, racist term?
It can be construed as such, but I didn’t think so at the time.
what does racist actually mean? please do define ?
Nicky, I know that you know what it means.
As someone famous once said ‘beware the leaven of the pharisees’
Things are so bad for the Right currently that UnHerd had a civic duty to provide some temporary weekend medicinal relief with some ‘Red Meat’ Guardian bashing. Yah-Boo!
The Guardian is esteemed nationally and internationally for good reasons but I don’t quite feel it’s having its best period right now. Little bit too much ‘identity’ stuff for the palate. Nonetheless still a million times better than likes of ‘Daily Mail Hate Island’
Actually, at the moment, I would put both papers on thje same level as far as disinformation and fuelling hatred goes.
Perhaps, but I’ve always found Daily Mail readers more genteel. A lot of Guardian readers seem driven by pure envy and resentment.
I would say, less envy and resentment than an impregnable sense of their own moral purity and contempt for any views different to their own, particularly if coming from those they consider their social inferiors.
I would say, less envy and resentment than an impregnable sense of their own moral purity and contempt for any views different to their own, particularly if coming from those they consider their social inferiors.
Actually, at the moment, I would put both papers on thje same level as far as disinformation and fuelling hatred goes.
Perhaps, but I’ve always found Daily Mail readers more genteel. A lot of Guardian readers seem driven by pure envy and resentment.
Things are so bad for the Right currently that UnHerd had a civic duty to provide some temporary weekend medicinal relief with some ‘Red Meat’ Guardian bashing. Yah-Boo!
The Guardian is esteemed nationally and internationally for good reasons but I don’t quite feel it’s having its best period right now. Little bit too much ‘identity’ stuff for the palate. Nonetheless still a million times better than likes of ‘Daily Mail Hate Island’