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

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

it doesn't shock because of how easy it is to imagine a Blair government doing same

Naaah, Tony Blair would probably tell people he was going to shit all over due process, and smile hopefully while doing it.

Backing the UK off Syria was probably the best thing Ed Miliband did in opposition and I hope when Parliament convenes on Monday to interrupt Cameron's hols discuss the matter, EM gets a chance to at least yell at the SOB.

This barely registers as egregious in the context of the last twenty years of British military policy. The vote in 2013 was over whether to conduct airstrikes against the Assad government in light of the alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians. This is not what was done, even if you don't buy the argument that lending three pilots to Canada doesn't constitute direct military intervention.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33578174

really wondering what Murdoch's play is here

So, the FSA was too soft on bankers and too light-touch, and after the crash was replaced with the FCA. Whose chief exec has just been fired by Osborne for being too tough on bankers and "too much of a consumer champion". Osborne now wants a more ... light-touch approach.
https://next.ft.com/61f867fa-2c76-11e5-8613-e7aedbb7bdb7

I despair

this is brutal. and unsustainable. and utterly depressing.

Are you talking about the 40% budget cuts or Labour deciding it's okay to feed everyone earning under £18k into a car crusher if that's what the public want?

those fucks are all in this together

Can't believe I'm cheering on the Lords now. Today alone they've blocked both the right-to-buy from housing associations and take one of EVEL. Guess that's what a huge majority comprised of 200 pissed-off Labour lords, 100 furiously incandescent LibDems and 140 cross-benchers with no love for the current government gets you.

xp - both, Matt

bitter nat digression here but I wonder how no voters are managing to contort their minds into thinking they did the right thing as we face a decade (plus?) of tory rule, an ineffectual/pointless labour opposition, and the braying schadenfreude of middle england as the social costs of punitive austerity become more and more vivid.

I think they contort it by looking at Greece (and especially the Germany-Greece dynamic) and extrapolating from that what Osborne would do to Scotland. The currency issue has become even starker since the referendum because of that whole show, I think.

ah, fair enough, I suppose. need a more robust plan, currency union a certain dud.

I keep hearing people praising Osbourne's very clever act of stealing Labour's clothes, lol I am sure that took a lot of effort.

The "guilty No voters" rhetoric feels very uncomfortable to me. A No vote wasn't an vote for a Tory Gov't, it was a vote for a united country. There are still children in poverty south of the border and I still don't feel it's a morally strong position to look after your own and leave them to it, even if we have a horrible Government only because of pockets of England. I mean, this argument has been done to death in various threads so I don't see how rehashing it is going to do any good, but it's a done deal and I don't think bitterness will accomplish anything - tbh I think it almost undoes a lot of the good work that independence supporters have managed since the referendum.

imo the polity of the rUK will forever be tory, or at best you'll get blairite labour every few decades if youre extremely lucky. imo this was foreseeable last september, and is a certainty for the next several decades, ie the meaningful tranche of most scottish adults' lives, especially my glaswegian brethren who don't live long anyway.

i no longer live in scotland, and am not politically involved, so im quite happy to be bitter and know that it has no consequence. it is obviously not politic for pro-independence activists and groups to be divisively derisive of the majority of scottish voters.

the No vote sure as hell wasn't a vote against an eternity of right wing governance

that was a big part of what it was, especially amongst the 10% or so that swung in the closing month.

It wasn't necessarily a vote *for* either. I ended up spoiling my ballot paper because I couldn't reconcile my complicity in terrible nationwide governance with my guilt over the sections of society that would benefit from the continued presence of Scotland's (theoretically) traditional gravitational pull to the left, i.e couldn't vote with my head and my heart at once

maybe it's easier to despise the UK and everything it represents from England