Psychoactive Substances: Rolling UK Politics in The Neo-Con Era

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militant_(Trotskyist_group)

ah right

In fact, Corbyn is obviously only on there because he looks the beardy sociology lecturer part.

off topic, but some fantastic Militant tendency related photos can be found here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dave_sinclair_liverpool_photos/albums/72157602168852769/page1

Tim Farron is the new leader of some party or other

not so much a party as a book club

Hands up if you can name anyone else he was competing up against.

Going back to the Labour contest, if these lamers can't beat a "bearded voter repellant" like Corbyn, how exactly do they propose to beat Boris?

Norman Lamb!

http://bodley30.bodley.ox.ac.uk:8180/luna/servlet/detail/ODLodl~6~6~51843~105198:1987-31?sort=Shelfmark&qvq=w4s:/when/1987;sort:Shelfmark;lc:ODLodl~29~29,ODLodl~7~7,ODLodl~6~6,ODLodl~14~14,ODLodl~8~8,ODLodl~23~23,ODLodl~1~1,ODLodl~24~24&mi=31&trs=33

zoomable version with slightly less horrible url here: http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/p/5a090e3d-2139-4e1d-8a47-e7a82add1379

Richard Stanton still paying for his Brighton bomb comments 30 years later

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/11648447.Green_Party_select_candidate_who_said_Grand_Hotel_bombing_was__justifiable__to_replace_hired_killers_tweets_councillor/

Even the quotes about armed workers' brigades aren't as embarrassing as Harman working for a "civil liberties" group that lobbied parliament to drop the age of sexual consent to 10 in that same era.

Thanks for that Flickr link soref.

So, now then

That post of mine up there

Just to clear up a few things:

I wasn't drunk, but I was very tired and have recently been ill from sawdust inhalation (so ...?)

And what's more callous than cheering on as vulnerable people are stripped of benefits and doomed to homelessness?

Agree 100%, and this is one of many things that was missing from my post.

This is an unfair pile-on really in that Cardamon is fully aware that these feelings are wrong and pushes them out of his head, which is more than you can say for huge swathes of the population, including some working class people and even including some benefit claimants.

I'll take responsibility for the pile on tho because of poor phrasing and throwing down ugly matter in an ugly way

xxp I genuinely had no idea that 'chavs beat me up when I was a kid' was a common reason for people supporting benefit cuts. Does David Cameron have Korn to thank for his slim majority?

All I can say is, 'Chavs beat me up when I was a kid' is a very common reason for people supporting benefit cuts in my city

Fp'ed that Cardamon post, all that shite about dramatising a feeling or whatever seems like a poor excuse for just simply letting rip with what is currently a very prevalent type of UK class bigotry. I deleted my angry post this morning because I am trying cut down on being a dick, but I still find the sentiments in the op appalling and unjustifiable and am calmly registering my dislike of it for the record.

@Xelab considering my post was an angry post of the most self-righteous unthinking kind, you'd have been way within yr rights to post your own angry post; I also find the sentiments appalling and unjustifiable

The bullshit bit of the Cardamon post was the 'should we judge these attitudes too harshly?' bit

I agree with you I think. There's a vaguely liberal way of approaching toxic people which says 'We mustn't judge', but really works to justify their toxic thoughts and behaviours; which sounds like positive + constructive thinking but actually just leads back round to the status quo. Right? And you read something like that in my post?

What I'm actually in favour of is a sort of clinical emotional maths.

For example Mr Joe Bloggs (of Billinge) votes for the benefit cuts because his elderly aunty was mugged outside Kwik Save by a gang of teenagers, had savings stolen and bruises across her face for months, was afraid to leave the house afterwards. Mr Joe Bloggs is fucking fuming, long term, and says 'Aye fookin dead right' when he hears new benefits cuts being announced on Sky News because he associates 'benefits people' with 'muggers'.

'Understanding' the anger of Mr Bloggs isn't going to get us very far, because at the end of the day, we disagree with him. We know for certain that slashing benefits may not even touch the people who mugged his aunty but will definitely hurt people who are innocent of anything like that. We know the cuts to benefits and public services will make such muggings even more likely to happen, in fact. We can't honestly concede anything to his position, which is a pathological position.

Strategically though, this is the situation: the tories are tapping into the psychic torment of Joe Bloggs up and down the country, so how are we going to proceed? The pathology is a fact about a chunk of our population. What then is the move to play here?

(I do see a moral distinction between people who have actually been mugged/attacked/victimised and politicians who make use of those experiences; and also between people who have actually had those experiences and respond 'illogically', and people who invoke or pretend to those experiences rhetorically, to puff up an illogical and self-serving argument; I can often sniff out whose terrible chav stories are real and who's bullshitting, likewise with horror stories about 'large groups of asian lads' etc etc)

he associates 'benefits people' with 'muggers'.

I'm still struggling with this connecting of benefits to crime. I don't know who you're hanging about with but how many people actually think this way, seriously? Where are you hanging about? I just don't get it.

Strategically though, this is the situation: the tories are tapping into the psychic torment of Joe Bloggs up and down the country

They aren't though, Osborne said it himself, it's about people getting up in the morning and passing their neighbour's house who still have their curtains drawn, i.e., they're still lazing about in their kip until they roll out of bed at noon to watch Jeremy Kyle or the Real Housewives of New Jersey or whatever, not that they're out mugging aunties or murdering Goths, do you actually have any contact with real people or what?

Er, there are probably some drawbacks to buying in to George Osborne's mastery of the national psyche.

Nick Clegg was the person who came up with blinds-drawn skivers as a THING. Clearly he's not working from home in a room with huge south-facing windows.

(xp) The point was that the populist anti-benefits rhetoric from politicians, like Osborne, is about fecklessness not violence.

I was going to say that. I've never seen anyone make that connection (to violence) before.

'Alarm Clock Britain' was Clegg's slogan wasn't it? Ah, what times, what memories. Longest time for the Liberals in government since Lloyd George, you know.

I'm still struggling with this connecting of benefits to crime.

Would you struggle with a link of poverty to crime?
Would you struggle with a link of poverty to benefits?

join the dots

I don't think anyone's saying all people on benefits are criminals. However, it's likely that a high proportion of violent and anti-social crime takes place in areas of deprivation where a high proportion of people are on benefits.

I think cardamon is saying making these links and playing on those fears generates support for the cuts.

tbh I think I do recognise what Cardamon is talking about. I have heard this kind of thing, both from Tories and working class ex-Labour presumably now UKIP types. Although the Tories would just see Council Estate = On Benefits = Criminal = Scum, the working class people I've heard this kind of thing from are sometimes living on council estates (or maybe have previously) but they are working and see scroungers and layabouts as a problem and often they are associating them with crime on the estate. One of the people I've heard come out with this his own brother is an ex-junkie alcoholic who is on benefits and probably does the odd bit of petty crime so I can sort of see where he gets the idea from.

In no way condoning these attitudes, they are not my own, just to be clear.

Maybe Tom D. doesn't talk to many people from outside London? I don't really hear this from anyone here, but go back to the Midlands and it's all over the place.

Things are probably somewhat different in London, I'd agree- an idea borne out by the election results.

Seems this sort of thinking has deep roots, unfortunately, in a way that can't really be combatted by the labour party 'reconnecting' or somehow pitching its message a bit better. If ordinary people are easy prey to politics of kicking-down resentment these days, it's because people are more inclined to see social life as consisting of individual conflict (and not to notice, or care, about larger structural issues) and to view the idea of 'community' in a strictly exclusionary sense.

The sort of attitudes that have been building up over decades, basically. Probably inherent in consumer capitalism, and indivisible from it.

the slow but sure enforcement of values based on extreme meritocracy has a lot do with this too, i think

Guessing rich people are lovely, except you just don't get to meet them. Don't know if anyone else here does, but if they do please report.

the working class people I've heard this kind of thing from are sometimes living on council estates (or maybe have previously) but they are working and see scroungers and layabouts as a problem and often they are associating them with crime on the estate.

Sure, but the original claim is that "may kick my head in" was a higher reason to hate dolies than any other, which still seems like nonsense.

(Also of course unemployment benefit is 3% of actual welfare)

I don't think anyone's saying all people on benefits are criminals. However, it's likely that a high proportion of violent and anti-social crime takes place in areas of deprivation where a high proportion of people are on benefits.

I think cardamon is saying making these links and playing on those fears generates support for the cuts.

First two statements are obvious tbh. Who is making these links and playing on those fears though? I don't think even IDS has done that? Maybe it's something that's going on wherever cardamon lives? Bringing up the murder of the goth girl in Lancashire in his original post was straight up bullshit however, remind me to keep away from sawdust in the future.

"people believe mean things about demonized social groups" = yeah ok i think we get that
"you can understand why people believe these things, because of their everyday experiences of people from these groups" = mistaking the distorting lenses of prejudice for a simple cause and effect process

the point is always that the demonized social group is already demonized, and any confirmation of prejudice that people gain from their personal experience requires the prejudice to already be in place

also, there are quite a different set of assumptions and experiences made about "benefits scroungers" by people from different social classes and regions. plenty of working class people hate scroungers but it's rarely because they think of them as terrifying, exotic feral beasts

perhaps ironically, there's something coming close to Stalinist about the neoliberal 'strivers versus skivers' rhetoric - the idea that you're either a useful cog or a rusty ratchet in the works

there are quite a different set of assumptions and experiences made about "benefits scroungers" by people from different social classes and regions.

^^^

there's something coming close to Stalinist about the neoliberal 'strivers versus skivers' rhetoric

oh, totally.

http://pxhst.co/avaxhome/4d/ea/001cea4d_medium.jpeg

Osborne's just issued a 5 year plan to improve productivity tbf

Who is making these links and playing on those fears though? I don't think even IDS has done that?

The media, alongside government, demonise the poor. Everything from biased coverage of the Tottenham Riots, to rhetoric around 'hoodies', to scaremongering news reports about violence on 'rough' council estates, to films like Eden Lake, all perpetuate the idea that people on benefits are somehow violent by nature. The (il)logic behind this is that if you cut benefits then fewer people will be on benefits, hence lowering violent crime. No one's going to stand up in parliament and say 'people on benefits are dangerous', but it's an implication that's reinforced again and again.

all perpetuate the idea that people on benefits are somehow violent by nature.

More likely to commit crime maybe, but violent?

... by nature? Forgot to add.

i think the problem/mistake is caused by the blurring of scroungers (not gonna keep putting scarequotes around this, y'all know what i don't mean) and chavs and working class people as represented in these strands of the media

none of the stuff dl lists is based on "LOOK OUT, HE'S ON JOBSEEKERS", all of it is general fear/hatred/othering of the poor, the young, the urban *cough cough*

if you're far enough away from these people then they probably all look the same, but i can't think of any specific constructions that equate scroungers with scary pitchfork wielding avatars of the lynchmob

and of course some people may not pick up on those nuances. fuck them to hell.

ok I take it back, damnation can be a progressive force

case by case basis :)

there's only so much time and emotional energy to expend on trying to educate yr oppressor imo

of course, but it's not always your oppressor that needs educating. I think moral condemnation of the powerful or those who respect you enough to listen can be effective, but otherwise I favour carrots over sticks, even if they are less fun to wield

xps of course people don't pick up on the nuances. it's like Bush getting mixed up between Iraq and Afghanistan. for many, it's just a big smoosh of undesirable povvo scum, right?

http://www.gdprice.com/j/00137.JPG

when i'm visiting my hometown i'll quite often hear a conflation of 'junkies' // people who get everything handed to them on a plate while the rest of us get nothing // people who will stab you and mug you with no remorse, with little heed to the various contradictions that appear there. but i'm unconvinced that this is part of the same homogeneous mass that is the general vilification of 'scroungers' (indeed many of the people making this conflation are on benefits themselves). we're a sophisticated and nuanced society, we can hate a variety of homogeneous groups of people for a variety of fake reasons.

xxp I genuinely had no idea that 'chavs beat me up when I was a kid' was a common reason for people supporting benefit cuts. Does David Cameron have Korn to thank for his slim majority?

― Blandford Forum, Wednesday, July 15, 2015 12:06 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm still laughing at this two days later, but anyway, continue...

safe space

Late as ever, I think I'm just about coming round to see part of the objection to that post - yes I wd agree that most of the anti-benefits rhetoric, the stuff pumped out from above, and the attitudes pumped around down here by people taken along by it ... the majority of that rhetoric is about 'strivers vs skivers', hard work vs 'getting it handed to you', rather than about terrible feral yobs

Also what nv says:

also, there are quite a different set of assumptions and experiences made about "benefits scroungers" by people from different social classes and regions.

This rings true to me, something like:

'People who have never met anyone on benefits but reckon they're worthless and need a kick, or even worse, a helping hand such as making them pick litter'
'People who have some sort of shared life with people on benefits, see them as opponents, or as someone to distance yourself from at all moral costs'
'People who are themselves very poor and may be in receipt of a benefit who target other people in receipt of other benefits'

So apparently new libelous demagogue leader made an arse of himself on c4 news due to his being a god bothering dick who doesn't like gays or abortion

Not to mention Cameron not telling Parliament about 'embedded' British combatants in Syria, the action that same Parliament voted against.

WTF? This is some Bush-level shit.

yup, fairly egregious, yet somehow feels like water off a ducks' back. tories in power for the next decade, probably more, is a real horrendous thing to face. it's just going to be one thing after another after another