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

The tabloids don't create anti-immigrant feeling but they do amplify it and they do legitimise that rhetoric in mainstream society, they make it much much easier for people to pull the old "I'm not racist but" move.

Thing is, the tabloids themselves don't really care about immigration that much, not really. You go into the office of any tabloid newspaper and there will be immigrants of all kinds working at all levels and in all kinds of jobs, and plenty of them. But fostering immigration panic is the surest means to an end - ie withdrawal from the EU - which they want for commercial and influence-based reasons that aren't really connected to immigration. It's irresponsible and it's dangerous, but if Brexit does happen then watch all these immigration headlines just melt away.

(And watch Human Rights become the new EU, almost immediately).

lex otm, matt dc otm.

i am sympathetic to what you say lg but i don't think the mode of response that focuses on the media etc is typically right-wing at all, much more aligned to classic forms of leftist structural analysis, cultural studies etc. the focus on mental health, as we've seen it, seems to me like a sleight of hand - pretending that you're talking about something deep in our society that we have to contend with (despite probably being someone who's never cared about mental health issues before) when in fact you're using it to place all of the blame on the individual with no further thought necessary

xps

(And watch Human Rights become the new EU, almost immediately).

"Human rights are for human beings"

i know "loners with a history of mental health issues", many of them, and none of them have committed political assassinations.

to me this seems like branding the person a "nutter". is anyone not capable of this kind of act, given a particular set of negative circumstances? it feels like othering them to say "no he did this not because of mental illness but because of his political views" when the views are clearly so wild and the act is so spurious and random.

I'm sure it's just me being slow, but I don't get what you're trying to say here, LG? You think that pointing out that mental illness is extremely misunderstood and wrongly identified with violent behaviour is... somehow pinning the blame on his mental illness? And I'm not sure who the "them" is in "it feels like othering them". And I'm not sure if you're saying that his views being wild means that he is necessarily mentally ill?

As I say, it might just be tiredness and poor reading comprehension on my part, but would appreciate if you could elucidate.

Also (and I'm not really arguing against anyone on this thread here) if it was "just" mental illness then you still need to ask why he chose to target this particular individual.

The court heard that moments after being held by two police officers following the shooting of Mrs Cox, Mr Mair stated: “I am a political activist” and that material “relating to extreme right wing and white supremacist organisations” was found at his home, along with newspaper articles about the MP.

After being repeatedly stabbed the MP was shot three times as she lay on the ground, Mr Cawthorne told the court.

He added: “The defendant continued to stab Mrs Cox as she lay fighting for her life. Whilst doing so the defendant was heard to say words to the effect of ‘Britain first, keep Britain independent, Britain always comes first, this is for Britain.”

Something I've been having difficulty adequately describing is, well, some sort of mistrust of the concepts of being mentally "well" and mentally "unwell", particularly when talking about stuff like this. As in, what is your description of these states? One definition of insanity could easily be "performs violent actions against others". In which case, sure, he's insane, but is this actually useful? This doesn't prove diminished responsibility of any sort.

As someone with a history of mental illness, would I forever be unable to write a will, because I am not "of sound mind"? Or would I be granted capacity because I am aware of my actions, I know the consequences, and I know who I am bequeathing stuff to?

xp - Ugh. Sorry for politicising this, guys!

One definition of insanity could easily be "performs violent actions against others". In which case, sure, he's insane, but is this actually useful?

It's not legal, that's for sure.

Well no, because the law tends to use "diminished responsibility" rather than "insanity", right? So I'm not talking about the law here, I'm talking about the discourse.

surprisingly today's Times has this pro-remain feature across the cover.

http://67.media.tumblr.com/c5afe033983f32f98fe2fc5f4239a6ea/tumblr_o8xmthBSBm1u5f06vo1_1280.jpg

The Times has come out in favour of Remain, don't you, er, read the papers?

I never said it was solely mental illness, I made it really clear I'm not saying that. my point itt is there are many reasons why someone may kill a stranger, and their own stated motivation is dubious too.

emily, maybe I read lex's post wrongly, but to me it feels like othering a mentally ill person who commits a violent crime to say "I know people with mental illness who don't do this".

That's what I mean, like as if it's saying "many people are mentally ill but only this man lets it affect him so badly as to kill" - there are a wide variety of mental illnesses and mental states, who knows how this person was feeling. I consider mental illness a legitimate reason for why someone might kill a stranger, I don't think that's the same as saying mental illness makes someone more likely to do so.

I mean we know this man had been seeking help for mental illness. does a murderer having political views mean he/she can't also be mentally ill? On this board people seem willing to accept that there are more reasons than one for why a person does something like this, but on Twitter there is a lot of one-note stuff about this happening solely because of fascism

The tabloids don't create anti-immigrant feeling but they do amplify it and they do legitimise that rhetoric in mainstream society, they make it much much easier for people to pull the old "I'm not racist but" move.

I'm not entirely sure they don't create anti-immigrant feeling. Maybe not out of absolutely nowhere, but they can be a substitute for right-wing 'mates down the pub' for people who don't have any. A close family member, who lives in a very white part of the UK and is a direct descendant of a Polish immigrant, was never overtly racist when I was younger (maybe towards 'the indians' idk we didn't have any) is totally anti-immigration now, for reason I'm not quite clear on other than there are lots of Polish people now in his town and his son can't get an unskilled job because 'they're all being taken by the Polish' - there are 99 reasons his son is unemployable, immigration ain't one of them - I think it really is a peg to hang up all his fears/grievances on. Wasn't there some article recently about how this guy saw his dad change from a liberal college professor to a raving racist after listening to Fox news for a few years?

sorry, i meant why are those we feel are being tainted by it unable to make that conclusion..

A lot of people have made that conclusion. It's not organic, it's being deliberately cultivated in an environment of economic hardship. Tell people that their job moving to a zero-hours contract, their failure to get on a housing waiting list or the closure of local council resources is because of immigration and a proportion will believe it.

I was discussing the referendum with this family member (Brexit of course) and he openly said he wasn't voting based on facts but that everyone was basing their votes on emotion, as they should be. Everyone gets to vote with their heart, not their head, and air their feelings. Thing is, these feelings have been manipulated in ways even beyond the ways that facts and statistics can be. They see the photo of legal EU immigrants hiding in the back of a van (...) and once they've felt that feeling, they can't un-feel it no matter how many times the retraction is re-tweeted.

Sorry I don't think I'm being particularly articulate

xp I think you're right that everyone here gets that "violent mentally ill people" is a subset of "mentally ill people" & one that deserves equal consideration/understanding but tbh I do think you have misread lex if you think he's saying that isn't the case. or certainly I read it much more as pointing out that mental illness is extremely misunderstood and wrongly identified with violent behaviour

Can people with mental illness not write a will?

I feel like tuomas on a thread about celebrities with some of this stuff.

emily, maybe I read lex's post wrongly, but to me it feels like othering a mentally ill person who commits a violent crime to say "I know people with mental illness who don't do this".

That's what I mean, like as if it's saying "many people are mentally ill but only this man lets it affect him so badly as to kill" - there are a wide variety of mental illnesses and mental states, who knows how this person was feeling. I consider mental illness a legitimate reason for why someone might kill a stranger, I don't think that's the same as saying mental illness makes someone more likely to do so.

Yeah, I think the point is that we're fighting against the prevailing discourse here. The prevailing discourse reads: mental illness is the cause, and the sole cause, let's just say that and be done with it. Oh, and also let's not lobby for better mental health services (why would you want to treat these MANIACS? They're evil monsters).

Also I don't think anything lex said suggested that someone would be at fault for *letting* mental illness affect them. That's a complete jump. I do agree with your last sentence, but again, I'm not arguing against that nuance. I'm arguing against a) that being applied to this situation in any major way (because all the evidence so far points towards it being a minor factor in a life that has been dedicated for YEARS to white supremacy), and b) again, the prevailing discourse. The media does imply that reciprocal relation, even if you are not doing so.

Can people with mental illness not write a will?

I could write a will, but I would have to be "of sound mind" for it to not be contested by another party (in a hypothetical situation where I had anything of value to leave and multiple parties wanted it). "Of sound mind" does not necessarily mean "completely and utterly certifiably sane", it means being able to understand what you are doing and the consequences thereof. My point was to draw attention to the fact that being mentally ill does not mean you are not legally and morally culpable. You may be, or you may not be. I think I made it very badly. Very badly indeed.

i always wonder if our obsession with deciding just how guilty or responsible people are for their actions is a cultural thing and related to broadly "religious" ideologies - criminals, disabled people, children, people with mental health issues all face the same kind of filtering based on what they "deserve" rather than what they've done

not articulating clearly through toothache haze but basically if we dealt with people who have done harmful things, even horribly harmful things, with a bit more humanity and a bit more regard to prevention rather than retribution then maybe the unsolveable philosophical conundrum of exactly how "responsible" people are for their actions wouldn't seem quite such a big deal

I thought you were quite clear and interesting to read emily, I'm just a someone with very limited knowledge.

Yeah, I think the point is that we're fighting against the prevailing discourse here. The prevailing discourse reads: mental illness is the cause, and the sole cause, let's just say that and be done with it. Oh, and also let's not lobby for better mental health services (why would you want to treat these MANIACS? They're evil monsters).

if the prevailing discourse was "mental illness is the cause" then a logical next step would be to lobby for better mental health services. the point i'm making itt is that people saying "no this is entirely about fascism" come across as completely lacking in compassion, and fail to point the finger at the variety of circumstances which might lead someone to be in the kind of mental place that leads to you assuming a specific white mp must die to fix the problems in the world.

all the evidence so far points towards it being a minor factor in a life that has been dedicated for YEARS to white supremacy

i would say the fact this man believed he had to shoot and murder a stranger clearly shows he does have mental problems of some nature. as abhorrent as fascism is, it isn't particularly common for fascists to murder people in the uk, or indeed for anyone to just walk up to a stranger and kill them. it is pretty rare.

not sure we know enough about this person to say what is and isn't a minor factor in their lives. there's a pretty massive difference between someone having fascist views or even murderous views, and someone actually killing someone.

i just generally find the certainty about this person's motivation to be pretty strange. i've read a decent amount of books about people who commit these kind of acts of violence, and usually it is pretty hard to pinpoint motivations or reasons, probably because each person is different.

not articulating clearly through toothache haze but basically if we dealt with people who have done harmful things, even horribly harmful things, with a bit more humanity and a bit more regard to prevention rather than retribution then maybe the unsolveable philosophical conundrum of exactly how "responsible" people are for their actions wouldn't seem quite such a big deal

i agree with this entirely - a lot of what i'm saying itt is that any responses that remove the possibility of many reasons for this man's violent action is p reactionary and callous. i mean, just because fascism is an actual political problem does that mean someone citing fascist reasons for a murder must be of sound mind? if he said jesus told him to kill someone would we say the problem was christianity?

like to me a lot of the response to this feels like people are insisting that a killer is not in any way of unsound mind, so that they can take him at face value and say that his "reason" for killing is just a normal common thing, and that the killing itself is representative of something generally popular or supported by society.

The nature and extent of his mental health issues will come out in the wash. He wasn't sectioned on arrest and his brother claims the only thing he has ever been treated for is OCD but whether that is correct isn't yet clear. Sam Kriss is pretty otm here though:

The victim was an MP noted for her advocacy for Syrian migrants. Her killer was a neo-Nazi, who bought gun-making instructions from an American white supremacist group, reportedly shouted ‘Britain First!’ after the murder, and gave his name in court as ‘death to traitors, freedom for Britain.’ You can call his ideology an epiphenomenon of his madness if you want; plenty have. Since 1945, happy and content people have tended not to be outright Hitlerists. (In fact, they tend to not be interested in any kind of politics whatsoever.) But there is no mental illness known to medical practice that turns its sufferers into violent fascists; fascism as a political ideology is not independently created, swastikas and all, every time something goes clunk in the brain. Go back to your Lacan: the mind is not a self-contained system; nothing in the psyche is ever a pure interiority. This fascism is coming from somewhere, and the fog over Britain is full of it.

find it hard to bridge the yawning chasm between the two truths "happy and content people have tended not to be outright hitlerists" and "there is no mental illness known to medical practice that turns its sufferers into violent fascists"

Mental health issues may make some people more vulnerable to external propaganda. It is fairly straightforward.

I agree with that completely.

Jo Cox’s bereaved husband says mainstream politicians are legitimising extremist anti-immigrant views: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jo-cox-s-bereaved-husband-says-mainstream-politicians-are-legitimising-extremist-anti-immigrant-a7088831.html

pretty sure Fascism is a mental illness tbh

It's just really strange how often it afflicts those who would most benefit from fascist policies...

Mental health issues may make some people more vulnerable to external propaganda. It is fairly straightforward.

― On a Raqqa tip (ShariVari), Saturday, June 18, 2016 5:49 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As does loneliness, of course.

Mail On Sunday is pinning its colours to the mast for Remain tomorrow, possibly on principle and possibly just to annoy Dacre. Follows The Times today and the Financial editor of The Telegraph yesterday. Sunday Times is pushing for Leave.

The Economist is firmly Remain, though that is not surprising:

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21700637-vote-leave-european-union-would-diminish-both-britain-and-europe-divided-we-fall

I'm surprised the Murdoch papers were allowed to call their own editorial line on this.

The Times has always had it's independence in making editorial decisions. Murdoch accepts it because its The Times.

Ah right.

Can someone explain to me the MIGRANTS TAKE ALL NOBELS IN BRITAIN headline from that Daily Express collage up thread?

That struck me too. Migrants, coming over here, doing all our award winning science...

I didn't know you could take a Nobel. This changes everything.

By journalist Martin Fletcher

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClOh9iXWMAAmVoZ.jpg

Perfect.

Anders, who had wanted to be part of the power elite, was now one of the soldiers of World of Warcraft..

I can't link to it directly, but under this blogpost there is a comment by Phil (Edwards) that I thought was interesting, wrt "mental illness" and far-right politics and the relationship between the two

http://barthsnotes.com/2016/06/17/some-notes-on-claims-about-thomas-mair/#comments

(it's the third comment down, or ctrl-f "phil")

I was surprised by that Mail on Sunday decision, perhaps it's because Geordie Grieg just wants the British right to become a place where everyone just goes to parties all the time and has to deal with Dacre thundering away next door.

Which way is the Telegraph declaring?

I'm assuming the FT is firmly in the Remain camp.

The Economist is firmly Remain, though that is not surprising:

saw a Leave:EU poster at Vauxhall last night that was quite obviously patterned after The Economist's ads, and grasping for The Economist's gravitas.

Which way is the Telegraph declaring?

Can see them going Remain with concomitant spluttering into G & Ts in golf club bars the length and breadth of the country.

Corbyn v good on Marr - immigrants do not put pressure on services, but govt under-funding. A late corrective on politicians who 'understand people's concerns'. Also good on looking at the issue of exploitative wages imposed on newly arrived migrants.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3648681/THE-MAIL-SUNDAY-COMMENT-Vote-Remain-safer-freer-prosperous-yes-GREATER-Britain.html

Not quite sure how the Mail on Sunday has the cheek to print the words "Those who would have you believe in the plucky Little England of the past are selling a dangerous illusion" in its editorial, but still.

In town today, lots of Remain campaigners, absolutely no Brexiters at all.

xp MoS has a different editor than the DM - they don't get on and often they work against each other. Private Eye have been covering it for ages.
MoS ran a story about Neo Nazis in the Leave camp a few weeks ago.

Best part of that article is the comments - full of outraged DM readers vowing to cancel their subscriptions.