August 26, 2024 - 5:45pm
Robin DiAngelo, author of the bestselling book White Fragility, stands accused of plagiarising substantial portions of her doctoral thesis, including from minority academics, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
A new complaint filed with DiAngelo’s employer, the University of Washington, lists 20 examples of alleged plagiarism from her 2004 doctoral dissertation, “Whiteness in Racial Dialogue: A Discourse Analysis”, per the Free Beacon‘s Aaron Sibarium. According to the complaint, DiAngelo frequently lifted materials from secondary sources and passed their summaries and analysis off as her own. She is alleged to have paraphrased full paragraphs of other scholars’ work without using quotation marks, as well as lifting whole sentences without paraphrasing. In some cases, she failed to cite the original author in-text.
Further, two of the cases of alleged plagiarism relied on the works of Asian-American professors, a violation of DiAngelo’s credo that one must “always cite and give credit to the work of BIPOC people who have informed your thinking”, as the Free Beacon notes.
White Fragility argues that white people derail conversations about racism through their defensiveness, relying on DiAngelo’s two decades of experience running diversity seminars. The book received critical acclaim following its 2018 publication, and saw a surge in sales in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the subsequent uptick in interest in racial issues. Its argument became a major touchstone in the racial reckoning of that year, but the new allegations undermine the academic credentials which served as the foundation of DiAngelo’s lucrative career in antiracism.
The report comes after a year of new plagiarism allegations levelled at various high-profile academics, many of whom worked in fields related to race. In the most significant recent case, then-president of Harvard University Claudine Gay was accused of dozens of instances of plagiarism in her own academic work, and stepped down from her role soon after the allegations came to light. Other academics who rose to national fame in 2020 have also had public falls from grace. Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to be an Antiracist, failed to produce any significant research through his $43 million Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, and has been accused of mismanagement and employee exploitation.
Even prior to the new plagiarism allegations, DiAngelo’s work had fallen out of fashion on the Left as Democrats shifted their focus away from identity politics. The new party platform, written before Joe Biden stepped down, makes few mentions of race and racism. Black Lives Matter’s opposition to the Harris candidacy, largely over the perception that the DNC has undermined the will of black voters by failing to hold a meaningful primary, has had no apparent impact on the race. Further, Democrats have chosen not to explicitly emphasise Kamala Harris’s race or gender in the ongoing campaign, focusing instead on a more patriotic and unifying message.
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Subscribe…the worry that someone, somewhere might be enjoying themselves.
That riot at the betting shop certainly is in contrast to the stateliness of a the Morris Dance, whose beneficial effects on society are ignored by Ms Harrington.
https://www.google.com/search?q=morris+dancing+video&rlz=1C1CHWL_enUS1103US1103&oq=morris+dancing&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgCEAAYgAQyDAgAEEUYORixAxiABDIHCAEQABiABDIHCAIQABiABDIHCAMQABiABDIHCAQQABiABDIHCAUQABiABDIHCAYQABiABDIHCAcQABiABDIHCAgQABiABDIHCAkQABiABNIBCDc0MzFqMWo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:59f81b52,vid:RZjLATAUwao,st:0
Great piece. Ms. Harrington’s historical summary of the Fabians parallels that of the Boston Brahmins: Puritans become Unitarians who would birth the social justice movement and now the wokism industry. Still chosen, still at Harvard.. At least someone voted for Starmer.
Like Biden, he’s declared war on conservative and libertarian culture, that I’m sure about. He’s a poor politician and political leader but proven district attorney, as the Americans would see.
There’s a long tradition going way back of two strands of Englishness, on the one hand; the free ‘n easy, singing and dancing, inclined to drunkeness, flamboyant, fist fighting, sporting and promiscuous.
On the other hand; the communitarian, controlling, temperence minded, utilitarian, restrained and dogmatic.
Both these strands intertwined have worked well, on the whole, for Britain.
However, at times of extreme pressure for example, environmental, eg, bad weather leading to famine and disease, or cultural, eg, the Reformation or today’s mass immigration, they unravel and we turn against each other.
Fortunately we usually avoid civil war, preferring riots and minor rebellions to see us through.
This is how I view our present predicament. I just hope and pray we will come out the other side one day entwined again, because both sides are essential to our wellbeing.
Two tier Kier’s implementation of the classic definition of tyranny from the Stalin playbook : it’s for your own good.
If nothing else, this welcome sprinkling of historical context from Mary helps make sense of the otherwise seemingly paradoxical authoritarian impulse in progressivism and cancel culture. In common with authoritarians everywhere, ‘progressives’ and cancel culture enthusiasts simply don’t regard the unwashed masses as capable of discerning their own best interests. Hence, The Narrative has to be imposed on them from above, and no backtalk!
Maybe this also explains why the most ideologically committed websites rarely make provision for reader feedback (we don’t need any help with The Narrative, thanks: your task is to consume, so stay in your lane).
Any particular newspaper come to mind?
!
Today it’s greasy food. Tomorrow meat? The Fabian, holier-than-thou tend to be Vegan
Great article. If anyone didn’t follow the link to the Atherston Ball game i highly recommend it. In it I see an irrepressible spirit that I suspect Mr Starmer, like the Fabians of old, will find impossible to extinguish. And if they do it wouldn’t be all bad either. This tension was most expertly described by William Golding in what I consider his masterpiece, The Spire, which I also highly recommend.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5ykz4nr11no
What’s to debate? Starter hates the English, two tier everything sides with everyone but the English (who just happen to be racist and Nazis), free speech is virtually banned, he would rather his family die than use private health and supports the primacy of Davos WEF over parliament.
Is it any wonder that the option for ‘fun’ become more and more dark?
In the old days (I remember them from the early 1970s) buns often had two bars, the public and the lounge. We could have made the lounge bar non-smoking and solved part of the problem
The article reminds me of the catches of Purcell and his ilk, finally freed from the strangulation of Cromwell. These vocal pieces indulged themselves in every single part of the enjoyment of life, from the obvious, such as love, to the joys of farting, ribald sexual encounters, and awful puns on names (such as Inigo Jones). It was akin to taking the pressure off a compressed spring: and the results were often brilliant. Musically, many were superb contrapuntally too.
An excellent essay by Mary Harrington. We need reminding that the political and social currents that eddy about us, and which cause discomfort, have deep roots in history; especially with the advent of the Reformation. This change ushered in a form of Christianity that focused on the individual as distinct from a universal authority in the form of the Catholic Church, thereby laying the foundations of the human rights movement that so bedevils us today in the form of Woke authoritarianism and a preoccupation with minority rights at the expense of those of the majority – this in contrast to the long emphasis of obedience to the Catholic Church and the related stability of the social, cultural, economic and educational institutions it controlled and dominated.
What a miserabilist piece! Ms Harrington seems to have hoisted herself by her own petard, She says
but then goes on to promote the well-known myth that England used to be merry for the peasants.
if only they had a second ammendement
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
—C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock
Indeed. All must have prizes….
Fabulous. As usual, if it’s a recurrent human condition, CS Lewis will have described it – in beautiful, simple writing.
.. what happened. I thought wassailing was still a thing.. I see there is no ban on Halal slaughter.. the ultimate in animal cruelty
Is Starmerism not merely the extension of woke? Not only is nothing one finds amusing any more, but seeking amusement is shallow and frivolous. What better way to justify abolishing winter fuel payments than compulsory cold showers?
Phoney Tony’s education mantra was supposed to educate people to make correct choices. Now making the wrong choice will upset Nanny no end.
One can but hope five years of the nasal knights misery will convince everyone that anything is better than socialism
Starmerism an extension of woke. Woke an extension of fabianism. Fabianism an extension of puritans ( cromwell). A nearly straight line of provenance.
‘Nasal knight’
Fabulous.
Like ‘Keir Jong-Un’
This is about control, pure and simple. The govt is openly wading into waters where it has no business, seeking ever more dominion over individual habits, choices, and diversions. Starmer and others are not a political class, but rather, a wannabe ruling class who believe it is their divine right to dictate every aspect of human activity.
I’m not a smoker or a wanton consumer of the greasy, but that’s my decision, to be made as an adult living in an allegedly free society where individual liberty matters. Perhaps if govt spent more time, you know, governing, it would not busy itself with this sort of idiotic meddling. Provide for public safety, control the border, spend tax money wisely, all the basics of govt work. Instead, the PM and his ilk want to cover their failure, or refusal, to do the fundamentals with distractions like this.
I’m all for the freedom to smoke, but there are very predictable and nationally funded health consequences. The cost of that should very naturally be included in the price of the gaspers – otherwise the smokers’ ‘freedom’ is being funded by potentially unwilling co-partners, surely?
The only response I ever have to articles like this is what the h*ll is wrong with that guy and why is he where he is? But, then again, I could say that about much of the world’s “”leadership”.
Interesting article, I got the drift early on. Trying to ban things just sends them underground, costs more to police and wastes their time. They’re already failing to clamp down on burgalry, shoplifting and car theft plus plus.
We anticipate some social control but not two tier. Will Westminster grounds become smoke free? Cromwell was a nasty piece of work. I can see SKS’s head on a pike already.
Citizens typically anticipate social control where the rule of law is concerned, not where individual choices well outside of govt’s purview are involved.
2TK’s head on a pike. Can’t wait, and the sooner the better—for everyone.
Interesting and thought-provoking article. I think the discussion of Cromwell is especially apt. Starmer is indeed a modern-day Cromwell: simultaneously sanctimonious and mendacious, pretending to be for the people when he simply wants to control the people. In five years time we will be crying out for the modern-day Charles II – Boris Johnson. He would sweep the board. But whoever is the next Conservative prime minister, they should do what Charles II did and repeal, en masse, all the ghastly legislation this awful government imposes on us over the next five years. And while they are about it, they should repeal all the constitutional vandalism enacted by Blair.
The totalitarians always start by controlling food. Starmer is a little man, he thinks in small ways. Not a leadership bone in his body.
Throwing an eel at the police? Worth 3 years in prison, at least!
When life for the peasantry was nasty, British and short, a healthy diet was naturally a low priority.
“Starmer is already being decried as the sworn enemy of every pleasure of the flesh”.
Perhaps Starmer has taken a leaf out of Ayatollah Khomeini’s book:
“Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious. Islam does not allow swimming in the sea and is opposed to radio and television serials. Islam, however, allows marksmanship, horseback riding and competition.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khomeinism
It makes you wonder where Khomeini got the stuff about banning The Archers and Eastenders from since the Koran was written over 1000 years before radio and TV existed …
Might I correct the author on Foxhunting? The fox has no predator, and, as has been shown post ban, the fox population is out of any semblance of control, with often injured foxes, or foxes with eating problems due to old age and chronic mouth ailments, now in towns and cities: shooting foxes, and not just wounding them is difficult. Hunting kept down the ill and infirm and also rejected foxes. Few people realise that a Hound cannot in many cases catch or outrun a fox. Hunting was and is the best method of much needed fox population control.
That simply cannot be true. How can chasing round foxes with expensive horses and dogs possibly be as efficient and cost effective as shooting or poisoning ? It’s certainly a method which might have been vaguely practical hundreds of years ago. But not today.
And foxes certainly aren’t out of control round where I live. Badgers might well be. Muntjac are pushing their luck. Rabbits certainly are. But we don’t go round slaughtering these by cruel methods. Accidental roadkill seems to get the job done round these parts.
The hunters are footing the bill for the entire effort. The taxpayers pay nothing. You can’t get more efficient than that.
How will the fox die when it gets old?
It will become weak and very hungry and then either starve to death or it will be eaten alive by another creature when it’s too weak to resist. Most often a crow, slowly. That’s how most animals die in the wild.
Hunting was paid for by its participants. Not by the local council, who now have to fund pest control officers to do the work previously done for free.
These are facts. You might not like them. But downvoting them doesn’t stop them being facts.
Foxes are vermin,mangy and disgusting.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” ― C.S. Lewis, div > p > a”>God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)
They seem to manage keeping it going in Spain despite quite a few “leftist” govts since 1984 and there is still a lot of communal revelry in Scotland, N Ireland and Eire. So i guess its the old urge to carry on fiestas even if the names have changed. Starmer’s tomfoolery just shows a knee jerk control freak totalitarian mindset, and is against the ideas and aims of the original communitarian left. Sure they massacred priests and nuns in Asturias in 1932 but also knew how to party until one Francisco Franco called last orders. I doubt starmer has the nerve to do any direct massacres but is clearly willing and able to use fuel, food and healthcare as a weapon. Ymak shemo.
The Left does it for our own good. whatever the Left decides for us there is always more. The end result is always totalitarian slavery with economic failure. Great fun indeed.
What this misses, and I do believe is relevant, is that the Fabians were the only British proponents of eugenics; they were happy to explore all avenues in pursuit of improving the lower orders.
Yes – I noticed that omission. And the Fabian’s, as well as those adjacent like HG Wells, tended to be rationalistic as much as moralistic – eugenics being the rational, planned approach to human reproduction as opposed to laissez faire.
Greasy food ban? My doctor, in a recent presentation on diet and lifestyle, told the audience that all the warnings we had been given about saturated fats was now shown to be wrong and it is now the “low fat” stuff in the shops that should be avoided. I’m back on proper butter, whole milk, eggs, red meat and trying to avoid carbs, excessive sugar and seed oils. Life has improved!
Are you sure that was your ‘doctor’? Mine gives very few ‘presentations’ in front of audiences. Whoever it was, they were pulling your leg. Did you get an offer to buy a timeshare at the end of the show?
Starmer was born into the petite bourgeoisie and there’s no class more contemptuous in Socialist eyes, which might explain why he’s got a class axe to grind. I bet you his Socialist mates made him feel much more embarrassed about his class background than any right-winger ever did. We don’t care where you come from so long as your values are sound. Leftists are just obsessed with social class and taking the fun out of life.
Perhaps Starmer should bring forward Christmas to October like Maduro. The decorations will surely lift the gloom.
There is nothing more repellent than the glutinous self-justification of the sincere hypocrite, and the tyranny that arises from it.
This is Starmer to a T. A pompous, prating, popinjay, inebriated with the exuberance of his own self-righteousness. He will continue to impose his twisted moral world-view because he is convinced, not only that he is right, but that he occupies of a more refined moral plane than the rest of the grovelling demos. Therefore whatever he decides is not only good, but also for everyone else’s good as well; their aspirations, desires and preferences being both inferior and subordinate to his own.
The UK can look forward to much more of this, as barmy starmy and the mad marxist army lay waste to everything they touch.
Day by day the public are beginning to realise that giving this man such a huge majority was an act of extreme folly. I fear for the country.
Starmer is a puritanical secular atheist. See how he distanced himself from highly acclaimed social welfare projects when he discovered, having taken the opportunity to bask in their reflected glory, that they were started and run by the Church. Secular atheists have this in their blood- sheer envy of Christianity and the lust to control…however long it takes and by any means necessary. Watch out!
Absolute nonsense.
First, there’s no such thing as “secular atheism”, just atheism, and i’m an atheist. I’m here to tell you i couldn’t be more different in terms of politics, mindset or spirituality than Starmer.
If you think using such labels will help your argument, you’re mistaken.
He wasnt critiquing the LABEL but the tedious boring reality. No more rewards and fairies
I only caught the back end of this working class merriness. My dad liked nothing more than setting his dogs on other peoples dogs for the sheer enjoyment of the violence. Loved a good fight. And thoroughly enjoyed inflicting violence and emotional terror on his wife and children. What a man eh?
Come on Mary – there’s a case to be made against the puritan streak in socialist thinking – but it doesn’t involve harking back to what was, and in some places still is, simple brutality.
Quite. The article supposes that violence is fun for the people inflicting it, not the people or animals on the receiving end (although human tastes may vary).
Mary has forgotten to mention the much better known Shrovetide Football match played in Ashbourne, Derbyshire.
What a load of tosh. ‘Let me see if I can weave the Fabians into some austere form of modern day Calvinism’. Groan, just the latest attempt by this Author to have some special historical insight that keeps the subscriber base content.
So much she fails to mention difficult to know where to start – Salvation Army and the Temperance Movement; which side of the political spectrum got extended holidays and weekends; which Party allowed shop opening at weekends and changed Sundays for ever; which party introduced the Licensing Act in 2003 and allowed extended opening; which party has sought to ban smoking for people of a certain age; which Party crushed working men’s clubs as part of their crushing of working class culture and industries; etc etc
Author will be arguing seat belt laws and maximum speed limits all a Left wing conspiracy next.
Democracy would be in a far better place without the patrician guidance of NGOs or think tanks on the left and on the right.
Yes – I think Mary’s articles are going downhill. She’s trying to give all the things she dislikes a common cause – and ties herself in knots doing so. It’s her version of a common socialist failing (feminists ditto) of trying to make everything they happen to dislike the fault of capitalism (or patriarchy).
Society is a big complicated knot – but it doesn’t consist of just one piece of string – and you go badly wrong trying to pretend that it does.
Seem to recall that the ‘Evil Thatcher’ was in power when all day drinking was first allowed in the 1980s and pubs weren’t shut from 2:00 pm to 5:30. This said, many boozers disliked it, along with later opening hours, as the result was often a worse hangover. Also led to the demise of semi-legal drinking dens populated by literary degenerates, resting actors and the criminal classes. Rather sad that I never got to experience it all.
It wasn’t essentially a political or partisan piece ! You’re taking it far too seriously if you read it that way. I read it as being about the enduring nature of the English (and specifically the English) and our ambivalence to our suppressed violence and riotousness.
As an example, I can recall watching reports of rioting English football fans in Europe in the 1990s and having a mixture of both revulsion and a bizarre feeling of pride that someone, somehow was making our presence known and a recognition that what they were doing was part of our national communal heritage. Same when I ran into some Leeds fans at a match in Monaco – appalling, crass behaviour, but you couldn’t fault their loyalty to their team (quite what the rather quiet locals made of their chants about Man United isn’t known). Decent people, awful behaviour. Perhaps that’s part of being English.
Go on – be a killjoy and report me for thought crime ! Of course, my offence here was back in the 1990s, so I’m probably safe now.
Didn’t Shakespeare say in Hamlet that England was a country of ‘topers’ ie drunks?
And mental cases.
Probably. Didn’t The Clash say in This is England that ours is a country of 1,000 stances?
I must admit to similar feelings when that young scamp Charlie Perry stuck a firework up his bottom outside Wembley Stadium in the summer of 2021. After enduring the first of those godawful lockdowns, at least someone still had it in him, I thought to myself. I remain of the opinion that we should erect a statue of him on the Fourth Plinth, complete with puffs of red smoke and trumping noises to tell the time every hour, on the hour. Far better than the alienating, abstract tripe they normally bung there for the chattering classes to admire.
At least Ms Rayner, as The Hon. Member for Shameless, seems to have some sense of Merriment.
More, I suspect, than she lets on.
Smuggling will increase, home brew will flourish, and politics will increasingly reflect Thuringia. This authoritariansim is a key hallmark of the 4th turning. Beyond Merrie England aspects we can see censorship rising. Expect digital ID and CBDCs to emerge more forcibly, alongside other forns of financial repression. If you believe the theory the high water mark will be 2028 – 2030. Things can only get worse with resolution anticipated 2032.
Uhuh, I don”t understand. I thought the aim of UnHerd was to push politics towards towards those found in Thuringia.
There’s an argument that today’s Labour are New Puritans, as implied by this article. More concerned that someone, somewhere, is having fun rather than being socially virtuous.
And yet I haven’t heard of any government criticism of the Notting Hill Carnival. I wonder why?
Magic Skin.
When the Lord Protector enforces measures to completely abolish the use of cannabis then we can know he’s gone full-on Fabian. Otherwise he’s just a snob.
Or perhaps we shouldn’t be fully sure until he’s banned the use of chewing tobacco. The sort that the use of which by certain ‘communities’ has stained the streets of parts of London red and caused the local tax payers extra expense to have the local authority clean up the expectorated residue. After all, the NHS’s own guidelines say the use of any tobacco can be potentially harmful.
After Cromwell, what? Charles II and Samuel Pepys.
Come on, Starmer’s no Cromwell. No one ever accused Cromwell of being a fence sitter or flip flopping. Or doubted his competence. Policies certainly, but not ability to deliver.
Betel nut juice, not tobacco. Filthy habit
Oh for a new Restoration. A British-supporting monarch would help. Charles seems as woke as his sister is sensible.
Any chance Unherd might mention Starmer’s crack down on journalists with the recent arrests of Sarah Wilkinson and Richard Medhurst? I don’t expect so. Keep up the identity stuff though.
“Of course, England’s merriment had already been significantly curbed by the time the bourgeois, top-down movement for clean living and socialist government known as “Fabianism” emerged in the late Victorian era, amid George Bernard Shaw’s progressive circle”.
See also John Carey’s “The Intellectuals and the Masses” which examines attitudes such as Starmer’s
Bernard Russell found the popular and successful Arnold Bennett so vulgar to his exquisite sensibilities that he could not bear to be in the same room. The enthusiasm for eugenics amongst the Webbs, George Bernard Shaw and D, H. Lawrence, amongst others, stems from the same patrician “Fabianrsque” disdain for the lower orders
Eugenics was later rebranded as transhumanism by Julian Huxley (after the you-know-whos spoiled it for the nice eugenicists in the 30s and 40s). And now it’s very popular with 2-tiers’ WEF mates.
Mary’s back – yay!
Yes, when I hear a non-Brit starting to pontificate on how polite and nice the English are, and how charming they find the genteel tea-drinking and whatnot, I always feel obliged to interject that the English are basically a violent lot and we need all of these rituals, traditions, manners and convoluted social rules in order to exist in a semi-civilised fashion without killing each other.
Cue shock and horrified “tell me it ain’t so!” looks. It is so, this merrie Englishwoman merrily continues – just look at the sports the English invented and still like: fox-hunting, rugby, horseracing.
Is there anything that embodies the downright violent and primeval, thinly disguised as a genteel social ritual like the mud-and-blood-and-broken-bones-and-best-frocks-and-hats of the Grand National?
I think the non-Brits have been lying to you. Down this end of the world (Australia) we don’t view them in that light at all. We believe it’s totally fake.
Hahaha, yes I completely believe that but the reason that Aussies are able to see straight through it is because you know us Brits and our BS so well.
Well we’re not too much removed.
Isn’t that because you’re descended from Brits whose violence was too much even for their countrymen?
Correct, as usual.
A useful pointer might be the Duke of Wellington’s comment about the men who made up the bulk of his army;
“I’m not sure about the enemy, but they scare the hell out of me”.
Nothing has changed since then.
Wales, the final frontier. The Welsh Assembly has boldly gone where no assembly has gone before. The Assembly has been Labour since the beginning of time (as we know it, Jim). People are poorer, fatter, more prone to suicide – certainly not healthier. The NHS is the worst in the galaxy.
Industry has been pushed away. More and more money has been spent on the culture and the language as a diversion from the realities of life. At least the singing and the dancing at the Eisteddfod keeps people off the streets. But as Ms Harrington says, these are not the people who would be on the streets anyway. Eisteddfod = Middle Class.
This just shows that there are two groups – the Middle Classes and The Rest. The Rest can sit in their homes getting more and more unfit while the Middle Classes run around in ever-decreasing circles doing good work for the ‘poor’ – organising food banks, etc. As they are running around in this fashion, their houses are being burgled and the increasingly Middle Class police sit in front of their computers. Could the police, in fact, work from home?
Unfortunately, this is Reality (capital ‘R’).
Most people who use food banks are NOT real poor people who wouldnt be seen dead at em. The people who use food banks are well educated ex- uni students who now live in squats,intend to be Van Dwellers and plan NEVER to earn enough money to repay their student debt.
Funny. I’m sat on a sun lounger reading ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’. The final chapters sum up Two Tier perfectly.
I’m beginning to loath socialists. Their hatred of the working class, the people they claimed to represent is clearly visible.
I love how smoking and fast food is seen as something to crackdown on. But oddly illegal migration and people drowning in the channel is fudged with talk of a task force.
Looking at Two Tier he looks like he could do with taking up smoking! He could stand to lose a few pounds.
Maybe he’s the one with a fast food problem and what we are seeing is his struggle with food made into policy.
See also John Carey’s “The Intellectuals And The Masses”, featuring epic, epicene snobbery from the likes of GBS, Bertrand Russell and D.H. Lawrence.
Meyron Magnet too – “the dream and the nightmare”
Absolutely. It’s a truly illuminating, insightful and entertaining read. I’d also recommend strongly John Carey’s autobiography, The Unexpected Professor. All the recommendations from his book review days are well worth tracking down too.
I recommend Theodore Dalrymple’s book ‘Life at the Bottom’ if you want to understand how sanctimonious Fabian meddling can ruin the lives and futures of those it purports to improve.
Good article but it makes me want to stick up for another kind of English sobriety (than the prissy Fabian kind) that existed when I was young in the 1950s. I’m talking about its lower middle class; its petite bourgeoisie. They are the great missing centrepiece of the bayeux tapestry of Englishness. It is they who, in the early to mid 20th century, when mass-mediated national stereotypes were first being projected worldwide, perhaps took self-effacement to an extreme; seeing this as merely what good manners dictated. In my young days in the ‘60s this lower middle class, white-collar stock was perhaps England’s model of decency and sobriety. Most would have missed out on a university or polytechnic education and so missed out too on The System needing to be smashed and vengeance needing to be wreaked on trade union picket line crossers etc. These were people bored quite quickly by political opinions – including even their own – and least prone to fashionable dysphorias. But they weren’t the kind to become television producers or media people so their story never got told. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/englishness-as-a-brand
I miss these people dearly as well. They had an American generational counterpart across the Atlantic. My grandparents were paid up members.
As I’ve gotten older and more conscious and thoughtful of how history and life events shape individuals and generations; I’ve often suspected that their aversion to “drama” was shaped by an ex excess of it in their youth – The Great Depression followed by World War II would tend to do that.
I’m not sure which is worse, the lack of large numbers of people people forged in fire or the fire it takes to forge them.
At any rate, long may their memory be cherished, by those that knew them and passed on to those too young to have.
Very interesting thoughts.
Nice post. I’m somewhat younger than you I believe and would position my upbringing as somewhere in the no man’s land between upper working class and lower middle class, but recognise so much of what you say as part and parcel of my parents’ world view and cultural values: diligent, modest, unpretentious.
Selwyb Lloyd’s abolition of Resale Price Maintenance wiped out a whole class of small shopkepers in market towns, self-employed, responsible, civic minded men (like Mrs. Thatcher’s father) who ran their own businesses and had time to be JPs and Borough Councillors (until the Heath/Walker reorganisation of local government into unwieldy units distant from those they serve).
Bourgeois life is wonderful. You get to bake cakes and grow roses. That’s for me.
It was always the hidden contract enfolded in a National Health Service funded from central taxation that, in return for universal healthcare “free” at the point of use, the government would be entitled to tell you how to live your life. I’m surprised that its taken so long to come into the light. After some perfunctory remarks about wanting to save thousands of lives, Sir Keir moved swiftly to the real point: we must save “our” NHS.
I see your point but it comes back to the question, ‘Does fat make you fat?’
The government is proposing an answer to climate change but is also stifling discussion. So what if the answer is wrong? We had a forced answer to COVID, fully backed by scientists but was it right?
I don’t understand how a group of politicians with various backgrounds can impose an answer in any form.
I find it impossible to believe that any politician is genuinely concerned about how much someone does or does not weigh, what they eat and how much they smoke.
What about the freedoms of those who don’t want or don’t use the NHS (even though they are force to pay for it) ? Are they worth nothing ?
It’s actually the same, broken funding model as the BBC, isn’t it ? Forced to pay whether you use it or not. And told how to live you life into the bargain.
Starmer’s “point” is anyway nonsense. Smokers pay a huge amount in taxes and by dying early arguably save the NHS money. Tends to reduce obesity too. Instead of bleating on about supposedly “avoidable deaths” (death hardly being “avoidable” for anyone), he’d be better off focusing on the quality of life. But that’s socialism for you – quantity over quality every time.
So you’re ruling out any car crashes or things falling unexpectedly on you from above? Or have you arranged private A&E cover so as not to trouble the NHS? Smokers don’t ‘arguably’ or otherwise save the NHS money, btw. Oh, and you can (obviously!) ‘avoid death’ any number of times before it clutches you in its claw.
What makes me uncomfortable is that this article could have been written two decades ago in exactly the same terms about banning smoking in pubs, clubs and restaurants.
Or seven decades ago when c**k-fighting was banned.
(A further encroachment on merriment is that Unherd’s software refuses to let me refer to male poultry.)
Oh! How I miss public hangings!
Why not start a local group? There’s people in every city, town and village waiting to socialise with like-minded souls. A workshop might be popular.
I truly believe that if public hangings were brought back they would get huge merry crowds of picnicking families,catering vans,music and general jollity. I say this because the Pride day in my city the bus I got on to go two stops was jam packed with families,”normal” straight Mums and dads with SMALL CHILDREN + probably the same people especially the Blokes who go on about Jimmy Saville etc. I asked one bus passenger that I was squashed in close proximity to what Pride.was about and seems it’s got NOTHING TO DO WITH SEX or variants of forms of Sexual Activity which I thought,silly me,was the total defining factor.or point of GAY and Pride was about saying I’m not ashamed of my depravity im proud of my alternative way of being loving. It’s just a day out in the sunshine exactly like an old time church social,it felt that way.
C**k fighting was banned in England in 1835 by the Whigs under Lord Melbourne.
And two decades before that about seat belts and crash helmets. And before that about pub licensing hours. And before that about public hanging. And before that about bear baiting and c**k fighting.
Some of the left’s ideas aren’t bad. They just never know when to stop
Hopefully I’m too old to live to see the day when a pub declines to serve me because the chip in my wrist tells them I’ve already had the two pints I’m allowed.
Just to clarify:
Seat belt (1983) and crash helmet legislation (1973) came in under the Conservatives; pub-licensing came in during WWI temporarily and then was fixed in 1921 under a Liberal government; bear baiting and c**k fighting were put a stop to by the Whigs under Lord Melbourne in 1835.
Not left-wing ideas at all.
Really interesting. Having grown up in the era of last orders at 11pm (or 10pm in country pubs), I’d assumed it was always that way. When in fact restrictive licening hours were more like a 75 year aberration (1921-1988). And it seems that pre-1921, premises/landlords may have needed no licences at all (happy to be corrected on the history here).
Interesting also that it was Nancy Astor behind the 1921 Licencing Act. Coincidental that she was American and this happened around the same time as US Prohibition ?
I missed out public hanging which was stopped by the Conservatives under Disraeli in 1868.
The idea of a clearly overweight Two Tier standing in front of us and telling us he knows what’s best from lifestyle point of view is blatant hypocrisy.
“Put the fork down Kier and then and only then can you lecture me on lifestyle choices”.
Vote Starmer to bring back British Restaurants serving Soylent Green!
That is his,or his controllers, actual plan. He’s checking in with HQ this week,he’s visiting “Joe Biden” the most powerful man in the world Hardee har har.
It’s a very interesting essay and I was fascinated by some of the history related above, but I don’t quite get how describing violence-as-fun helps in any way to defend the idea that we are entitled to legitimate enjoyment irrespective of what the government thinks. If anything, this extreme provides a case for government suppression of enjoyment itself as an explicit objective.
Of course, the Left has no shortage of judgemental puritans who would love nothing better than to confiscate every last morsel of enjoyment from our lives, but they have never been able to admit this openly, and instead have always been forced into the various strategies of trying to impose their ideas upon us, ostensibly, for our own good. It’s one of the more obnoxious hypocrisies of the Left: the snobbery towards the lower orders clearly on display at the same time as the co-called social conscience that claims to want to help them.
But I’m still confused: violence, outdoor smoking and fatty foods are merely positions on the same enjoyment spectrum, according to the article? I’m not sure what the conclusion here really is, beyond a general recognition that Labour is returning to authoritarian leftwing form at a rate that is surprising even the most cynical of us.
Good post. The author seems unable to distinguish between fun and actual brutality. And this weakens her case against left wing Puritanism. Banning dancing, and banning burning cats alive for the sheer fun of it are just not the same thing.
And I don’t think the recent ‘Far Right’ rioting was done for reasons of ‘fun’.
God,violence, outdoor smoking and fatty food. Heaven!
In the good old days of Merrie England, if someone’s merriment rendered them incapable of working, they would join the Parish poor, though not the “deserving” poor (who would receive top-up benefits from Lady Bountiful). But these days, too much “merriment”, i.e. greasy food and smoking, means that the merry-maker is given expensive treatment by the taxpayer-funded NHS and spends the rest of his/her life on taxpayer-funded benefits.
Thank you Mary. Yes, the house of pleasure has many rooms, stuffy attics and dark cellars.
In a doublethink world freedom is considered too oppressive
“for many, violence is less “the language of the unheard”, as Martin Luther King put it, than just fun.”
Theres nothing more “fun” than harassing and bellowing at the dumb, stupid authorities. It’s exhilarating, sometimes meaningful and mostly fun. Maybe the mental health problems are due to there not being enough fun.
When I was a kid I was in a metal band (in the late 00s). We use to make a ton of ‘noise’ while people smashed into one another, it was madness but I was convinced as a ‘smarter’ than average working class kid that it was healthy. Why? Because we enjoyed it, we were wracking off our demons to our friends and the culture we were in were supportive. I’ve actually never been happier than when I was a teenager thrashing on my guitar. My life is more ordered now but it lacks that chaos and energy.
However, now I’m a classical musician proper and though I find it more sensible and deep as a form of expression I still admire the spirit, defiance and energy of heavy metal and dance music.
But sadly, my generation and those below have nothing to give in this time of need. Metal is dead, music is dead. In many ways I accept I am simply writing for posterity at this point, or at least trying to write for now on the understanding that no one really cares.
Great contribution to the debate. More please.
Look, I know it is hard to do the whole bread and circuses thing when the bread is both overpriced and overprocessed and the circuses are terribly written remakes made by Disney but come on! Is actively making the food more expensive and people more miserable really that good of an idea?
I think labour want revenge on the 80% of the electorate who didn’t support them. They can’t understand the idea of treating others as they may wish to be treated themselves. Theirs is an exclusive autarkic ideology and only the true believers deserve life and liberty – the rest of us – 80% or so in UK are “the problem”. The same attitude characterised absolute monarchs, modern third world despots and many Roman Emporers. These extractive systems tend not to thrive as they sow the seeds of their own demise by making everyone an “enemy”.
Indeed, malice towards opponents is the default Labour stance.
Malice towards rivals, opponents and enemies is a almost universal human stance!
Deplorables?
This really is a pretty silly analysis. Do you ever actually speak to anybody who votes Labour? So these are a bunch of power mad despots who simply want to control everybody’s life rather than having a political view of a better society. We may disagree with them about that but we’re certainly missing a trick if we don’t even understand the motivations of people who do want the state to protect people – or if you will, sometimes act as a nanny. And that we saw with covid 80% of the population are not very likely to be on the libertarian side, and most people now are very anti-smoking.
We have a big problem with obesity in this country, and most of the people who harp on about freedom also believe this to be the case. Of course I’m very doubtful that these measures will be effective in any way and the state is not very efficient.
There is much to contest politically without making ridiculous comments and frankly alienating persuades swathes of ordinary people who do vote Labour (or indeed Liberal Democrat!).
The invoking of the white working class by many right wing people, who frankly often view them with complete distaste, is a bad faith transactional move.
Most labour voters I know are just “they’re not Tory-ites”. That’s all.
Most anti-capitalists I speak to don’t seem concerned about a better society but rather making everyone as financially bad off as they are.
Kill a lot of us off. Some are in favour of that. Sir Lord Saint A for one.
I am concerned because I love cheese and I eat a lot of it. It’s the main form of protein I consume. I don’t like meat very much but I love cheese. I’m not vegetarian or concerned about animal rights. I just like cheese,many forms of it. Now,a lot of cheeses are high fat and because whatever law they draw up will be supposedly based on specious scientific “facts” ie percentages and such thus healthy cheese will get the same rating as a KFC or a McWhopper and make my main form of sustenance unaffordable to me (and many others,). It’s a plot to starve us. Or “nudge” us into eating bug protein. If you listen in to BBC Farming Today they often report updates on active research projects going.on right now in British Universities (funded by Bill Gates I expect) to find how to make this “protein” into forms acceptable enough to pass for the public to buy. Of course if they make all other options in affordable anyway they will have achieved their aim. England WAS merry once as the great activist William Cobbett.believed.I think that state education right from.the start had an agenda to instil in us an idea that our pre-industrial society was por,and hungry and dirty and miserable but “progress” and “industrial manufacture” saved us. Without over glamorizing medieval life they had it pretty good. A smart canny peasant or serf could do his apportioned days of work on the Lord’s land and work on his own land,yes,serfs had land,and do at least alright and there was a no work holiday practically every week and The Church AT THE TIME objected to removing all the Saints Days because it would make peoples lives more miserable,not for religious reasons. A lot of the Catholic churches antagonism to Galileo and all them people (I’m not Catholic) was not about Science,it was a genuine and warranted concern at the destruction of the whole support system of society,same.as is happening now. It was about 50 years between Henry VIII destroying the monasteries and the first (old) Poor Law being brought in to offer shreds of Cold Comfort. In Bristol where I live the Augustinians baked thousands of loaves of bread EVERY DAY and gave them to everyone who came to the distribution point thus they fed the poor,they WERE the Social Welfare of the day. Hal took that away and put nothing in its place. Which I think is wickeder than anything he did to his wives. And started the death progress of Merrie England
As to its objective, the morally reforming zeal of Sir Keir, Yvette and others could be seen as of a part with the accusations Thomas Cromwell’s visitors listed in the Comperta against the lives the religious of the monastic institutions actually lived. The ‘fun’ of merrie England could be seen in the sexual relations that the visitors accused the religious of. As well as in the wine-bibbing and other pleasures.
Despite the exaggerations and giving allowance in any century for human nature in with its psychologies and pathologies, the need was for the doctor, not the executioner. As Christ declared in the Gospels, the sick need a physician. The reportedly poor state of the buildings likewise needed cure, not demolition.
It could be argued, if all these behaviours were fun, no wonder they were swept away: where there is no fervour there can be no security. Yet Henry’s objective wasn’t cure, but the need for his control. The need to extract wealth. The earlier example of the abolition of the monastic institutions in Sweden provided an inspiration.
Thus even the institutions that adhered to their rule were extirpated. To ease the process, the senior religious were pensioned off; the Tudor golden handshake. And given their social connections, soon found other positions.
If today’s equivalent of the medical function of the monasteries lies in the NHS, while it being an equivalent of the state religion, it must be saved from the deleterious habits of the people. Their smoking, drinking, their sexual habits that would otherwise result in the need for mother-and-baby homes. Where there is no fervour there is no security. Expect a Comperta Caseus.
Mainly cheese? Well, you’re obviously an ill-educated, right-wing, bigoted fool. Of course, living outside London may largely explain your ignorance. Tofu and wine good; cheese and beer bad.
Tofu – beneath contempt
Wine, cheese and beer – utterly wonderful!
Yes, yes, yes!
Beer – providing it’s real ale served in a cask and ‘kept’ by someone who knows what they’re doing
Wine – anything but rosè, which is just pop
Cheese – again, anything provided it’s not been mixed with a fruit or otherwise contaminated
Good, dark rose (as in a shade lighter than red) such as Bandol, or Tavel, is a thing of delight, depth, wonder and revelation.
Ha ha ha. Very true.
Well, I believe he said his main source of protein was cheese. Presumably he eats other things.
The Reformation came along with the rise of a new urban middle class: small businesspeople who drank small (i.e. weak) beer not strong ale, kept careful accounts rather than trusting in a greater power, whether spiritual or social, and knew they had only their own industry to rely on, not the charity or the perceived obligations of others. These people were ripe for Puritanism. Now we have the rise of a new university-educated international middle class: committed to individual physical and mental health of the sort that will allow them to survive the ups and downs of a 24-hour competitive labour market. Like the earlier lot, they’re imposing the extremes of their own world view on the rest of us. Still, as someone else mentioned: after Cromwell came the Merry Monarch and Pepys. Roll on 2032.
I recommend a book I read last year “The Tyranny of Merit” by Michael Sandell.
Thanks for explaining what small beer is. I remember a scene in one of Margaret Rutherford’s Miss Marple movies where she offers Inspector Craddock a “small beer” and the bottle looked to be at least 16 oz.
Even if you are not a Catholic you sound like one! It’s a start. As a Catholic I believe our country will never be ‘merrie’ again until we return to being ‘Mary’s dowry’.
Got a point.
Things like joy, contentment, or even satisfaction and gratitude are alien concepts to these types of people, or at least things that they can’t really feel sustained basis, due to their overactive super ego slapping them down whenever they achieve something or elevate themselves which prevents them from feeling such things to sustained extent, usually born out of some childhood trauma. The things the only seem to really be capable feeling on a sustained basis are concededness, inadequacy, and fearfulness. They’re conceitedness comes from the fact that they believe out of virtue of there place on the pecking order and having the “proper” beliefs somehow makes Superior to everyone who doesn’t have what they have. Their feelings of inadequacy come from a chronic feeling that somehow they’re not good enough for one reason or another and are constantly suffering from mental agony as a result. Finally The thing defines them probably the most is fear, fear of losing their job, fear of losing their social position, fear of not getting the next upcoming promotion or raise, or the fear of being found wanting by their peers, and all this fear is constantly hanging over them like a sword of Damocles. These type of people dominate management positions in Large corporations, government bureaucracies, non-profits and union, and schools. The result of all this is that we’re dominated by a of dangerous neurotics who are obsessed with advancing themselves and don’t really care about the damage they do as long as they maintain their place on the pecking order, results don’t matter to them and only perceptions matter to them. No wonder Western societies in such an awful shape right now, good examples of these type of peoples are of course Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak, and in America Kamala Harris and Obama.
Another excellent essay, imo, from Mary Harrington. We can rely on her to provide an interesting history lesson as a backdrop to the UK prime minister’s proposed crackdown on eating greasy food. Of course, she doesn’t address the (to me) really interesting question: why is Starmer focusing on these minor issues when the nation faces much graver issues?
Which will include healthy cheese as it’s not about discrimination,ie loathing chav dining choices,it’s based on science,or maybe The Science so it’s about levels and percentages of fat in foodstuffs and it’s complete nonsense but I expect theyve got a line-up of “scientists” ready to explain it to us.
As Charlton Heston almost said: if they want to take away my cheese they’ll have to wrest it from my cold, dead hands.
I’ll fight for my Cheddar,Brie and Double Gloucester.
Add Roquefort and Bleu d’Auvergne to that list…
Best get stockpiling it. On a recent visit south, I filled my boots on spirits ahead of the hike in Scottish minimum alcohol pricing.
Alternatively, if you’re middle class, you could go on a cheese making course and learn how to make your own. Not too much effort, apparently, and the results can be rewarding.
Tyrannies 8n general seem obsessed with trivial actions, pretend words are violence, and institutionalize actual crime. Why expect differently from 2tier?
I’m sure Champagne Socialist will be able to explain, in usual pretend obsessed fashion.
I don’t think ‘explaining’ is really in his repertoire. Before you can explain something you first have to understand it.
That’s pretty much my point.
Prefacing with “I’m sure…” usually means it’s a forlorn hope.
Takes up too much time. I have a zillion opinions of lots of things I I know nothing about,as im sure some regulars have clocked. It takes up too much time fact checking and researching.stuff. And as in always right about everything,why bother!
Because he has zero chance of fixing the graver issues….
Because he lacks the determination to fix the graver issues.
I doubt he recognises the larger, more important issues. He’s dealing with symptoms not causes (in common with previous governments) and appears to have no inkling of the possible consequences flowing from his actions.
I think he’s just seriously constipated. Just look at the picture above.
Vegetarian, you know. Mustn’t have boiled his breakfast chickpeas for long enough…
She also paints a rather too flattering picture of the Fabians – who were as weird in their enthusiasm for spiritualism as they were repulsive in their apologia for Stalinism and their endorsement of eugenics and sterilisation as ‘solutions’ for poverty.
The serial entryism of the busybodying middle class from the Webbs to the Blairites – has been the great tragedy of the Labour Party.
oh look a person eating greasy food. ignore the boatloads of immagrants
Theyve all come here to get jobs in greasy food outlets. Which according to.labourites and human rights activists makes them heroes. For “doing the jobs we wont do”. I don’t buy or eat junk food so why would I want to f*****g sell it.
I’m a science and technology guy. Instead of banning tasty food, I would find ways of making it better for us. If this means GMOs and lab-grown meat, then more power to the experimenters.
Oh yuk. Vomit. Puke.
It’s like cleaning your fridge while your house is burning down.
Look over there,oldest conjurors trick in the book
Two tier can’t focus on bigger real issues because he hasn’t a clue what to do or the brains to be creative or the charisma to lead and unite the country. That’s why he is playing the tyrant of Stasi Starmer, DEIing the English into submission, banning free speech, overturning court rulings on NCHI, blacking up the BBC, to distract and draw fire by tarring dissenters as racist, extremist Nazis. We’ve seen his best ideas; GBE, robbing pensioners and pay per mile: how long will it take those master plans to repay the £500Bn debt of Covid and 2008?
Socialists believe in controlling others, for, they believe, the common good, though they invariably create dystopias. Socialism is state control.
That’s what socialism IS.
Modern leftists are of course socialists. They’re not liberal democrats. They don’t believe in freedom.
The Utopia is poor, grey, miserable, sterile and silent. Sounds awesome, where do I sign?
Starmer wanted harder, longer, lockdowns. Government control resulting in less fun. There are some who argue that the ‘pandemic’ and all the controls was just ‘practice’.
It was a test – to see how far they could go. Turned out to some of our surprise and definitely theirs – ALL THE WAY!
Well that’s what has happened anytime someone tried socialism in its pure form. As counterweight to excesses of the “devil take the hindmost” mindset a bit more equality at the expense of a bit less freedom is sometimes the best plan. Howeverit can never be the only plan. Socialism – be it comintern internationalism or the somewhat twisted National Socialism of UKs labour party – is dangerous in any form. Like opiates it has short term effectiveness to relieve ills but is not effectiv eon its own and causes harm or death if used continually or in pure form.
I don’t see the short term effectiveness.
I’m not sure they are anti-their fun. Only anti-your fun. And of course they want to get what they want and they want somebody else to pay for it.
That really goes without saying.
Hearing on 5live this morning the huge number of billionaires leaving Britain for Dubai,or shipping their money out,at least. It’s so trite to say “Tax the Rich” but when theyve all Fucked Off who is going to be paying all this tax. Guess!