The strange times we live in are very evident every day. Statues being attacked in the UK by a small minority of far-left nutjobs, Black Lives Matter protestors crying in the street over the number of black people being killed by police - not worrying to much that this is in another Country altogether.
Politicians emoting along with them and no one attempting any rational debate because of fears of being accused of racism or nazism...maybe even both. Business culture in particular has adopted woke madness in the extreme, with gender neutral toilets in offices where there are no trans people and this past week huge long prose pieces by CEO's saying about how their company is so inclusive but others can do better.
It made me recall a time in the past when this was just starting out. Michelle Obama, then First Lady of the USA, became concerned about an event in Africa.
Members of a militant organisation, Boko Haram, had kidnapped 276 girls from a school in Chibok, Nigeria, on 14 April 2014.
Afterwards Michelle Obama posted an image of herself on social media, posing with a white sheet of paper that said: "#BringBackOurGirls". She received wild applause and attention from the whole media, celebrities and business leaders - remind you of anything?
This was part of a wide social media campaign, David Cameron and world leaders gave it their backing. Her husband, then President of the USA sent a literal handful of advisors to Nigeria to see what they could do. The answer was nothing - so much for the powerful USA President and his tough can-do wife.
Soon the hashtag dropped away and the girls were forgotten about until a few years later when the Nigerians bought some of them back off Boko Haram. Michelle Obama switched to raising some money for educating African children and stopped answering questions about the girls.
The lesson is even the best wishes and most potent hashtags achieve so little. People feel better sharing and get angry and emotional- but it does not do anything. The realities were the US could not take on Boko Haram in Nigeria if the Nigerians did not want them too.
Fast forward to today and we see how much further this emoting has taken the world and how different the reactions in the West. Now marching and demonstrating are common place and emoting is everything. No one thinks about what has gone before - lockdown too soon! Lockdown too late! only today's trendy view matters.
The interesting part to me is that Western politicians have started bending to knee to the mob - see Keir Starmer just this week for example. I see as I write this that a social media campaign by a footballer, Marcus Rashford, has changed Government policy in a few short hours. It makes Black Mirror look a bit tame by comparison. Russia and China seem less susceptible to this nonsense. Does this now mean Western Democracy is mob rule by proxy? I can see some definite downsides to this revolution.
24 comments:
Before you all develop hypertension getting angst about the Woke, perhaps an insight to how the system copes with campaigners
I was one of 30 involved in an area that was high profile in the media for a long time. It still gets the odd airing.
At the time the pressure on the government from our group, the public and the vested interests was such that our group was consulted by government advisors. This was an important case, they said. The law is not clear and there should be a test case to settle the matter. So we found a case to start off in the local county court. We lost.
Government advisors came back. This was an important case. The law is not clear and there should be an appeal of test case to settle the matter. So back to the a circuit judge and we lost.
Government advisors came back. This was still an important case, but there was a need to take it higher so we'll arrange for the case to go to the Supreme Court.
What about the High Court and the Court of Appeal first, we asked, as this is the normal route. Too important they said. What about legal representation as you need a QC? So they found a pro-bono for us. What about costs if we lose? So it was arranged that no costs would be payable either way.
So off to the Supreme Court and our case was tagged along with another similar case and ... we lost. Shame said the advisers but at least the law has been clarified (to the benefit of the vested interests)
The campaign group thought about going round the system again on another point but we told - first one was free.
What we learned as a group is that issues are sorted in dark corners of government and the courts. You have to understand who is manipulating who and where the interests really lie. And to get real change you have to have big pockets behind you.
We allowed the marxists and post-modernists to take over our institutions - starting with academia, public sector and finally the corporate sector.
We've polluted the minds of an entire generation.
Now we reap what we've allowed to be sown.
So off to the Supreme Court and our case was tagged along with another similar case and ... we lost. Shame said the advisers but at least the law has been clarified (to the benefit of the vested interests)
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It's all about vested interests. You after all are just arguing for one set of vested interests over the rights of another set.
Anon @ 9:03 - fascinating (would love to know more! ... to get you in front of the Supreme Court is no farting around)
the courts are indeed a playground: in my own (energy) neck of the woods, there is the enttertaining case of Tempus Energy (in reality, a Gina-Miller like woman) vs the European Commission (yup!) in the EC"J", which brought the whole of Europe's electricity capacity mechanisms to a halt when she obtained the initial ruling in her favour, resulting in suspension of said schemes
[her case against the EC was that it should never have allowed the UK to have its capacity mechanism in the first place]
how does a lone actress pull off something like this? well of course it transpires she was fronting for Greenpeace and a couple of other green NGOs (funded partly by, errr, the EC)
anyhow, after a few months the EC"J" mysteriously sees the error of its ways and lifts the ban on capacity mechanisms, everyone lives happily ever after, except for Mrs TempusEnergy who was sued into bankruptcy by every man and his dog, & hung out to dry by Greenpeace et al
WTF? Obviously it's all a big game
Yes wokism has infected us to the point where you have to think twice before opening your mouth with any vaguely political opinions. I think it must have felt a bit like this in the USSR.
I think it really got going before the Obamas. It was Blair where I first really realised what was happening but in truth academia was infected even before that.
I think it is a widespread state of anxiety/low level panic/impotence amongst a large part of the populace.
We see things happening that we did not want and do not approve of (Brexit - not enough brexit, coronavirus, economic catastrophe, the end of furlough, a nasty right wing govt that is happy starving childres, a soggy left wing govt that you will be asked to pay for ... could go on for some time).
Through each persons eyes bad stuff is happening and they are not in control.
So you - some of us - kick off.
I do not think this is a new thing but i think that it is more visible and the barriers to entry are lower.
And so are the costs. If you are coming to the end of another short term contract and are renting, why not go protesting in summer?
Well.
The BBC is setting the agenda again, isn't it.
The Left/Remain couldn't win by the ballot box nor the courts and so are making the country ungovernable.
Andrew
The Left and Remain lost the votes and refuse to accept the results.
All the violence is their fault. Please don't bring us into it.
It is outrageous (because of all we've been through, are going through and are about to go through) to import an incident which happened 4000 miles away so as to foment racial disharmony in order to empower the failed Left.
It feels as though Corbyn had won.
Ek
Was trying to make the point that in their own eyes, a lot of people from all parts of the spectrum on any spectrum you think of are feeling done down and that someone else has somehow done them out of something and they want it back.
a corking read (the redoubtable John Gray) linked by Guido today:
https://unherd.com/2020/06/the-woke-have-no-vision-of-the-future/
"woke activists demand public confession and repentance from their victims. Like the communist elites, woke insurgents aim to enforce a single worldview by the pedagogic use of fear ... The rejection of liberal freedoms concludes with the tyranny of the righteous mob ... it is time to consider how to strengthen the enclaves of free thought and expression that still remain, so they have a chance of surviving in the blank and pitiless world that is being born"
(get that last sentence)
even more chilling is this
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-itself
Semi-OT, but a wonderful Christopher Caldwell pice at Claremont - and if you substitute Thatcher for Reagan, it still reads pretty well, though Reagan was much worse on immigration, and the racial problems which produced the Civil Rights Act in the US had to wait for Blair and the Human Rights Act.
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-price-of-the-1980s/
The borrowing power of the Baby Boom generation was invested in avoiding the choices that the confrontations of the 1960s had placed before the country. What the debt paid for was social peace, which had come to be understood as synonymous with the various Great Society programs launched by Lyndon Johnson in the two years after the Kennedy assassination. We should understand the Great Society as the institutional form into which the civil rights impulse hardened, a transfer from whites to blacks of the resources necessary to make desegregation viable. Desegregation was, as we have said, the most massive undertaking of any kind in the history of the United States. Like any massive undertaking, it required endurance, patience, and prohibitive expense. Almost everyone who did not benefit from it was going to be made poorer by it. Now it was being presented to the public as the merest down payment on what Americans owed.
The best evidence we have is that it was too much for most Americans from the beginning. The rhetoric that brought Reagan two landslides was, among other things, a sign that Americans were unwilling to bankroll with their taxes the civil rights and welfare revolution of the 1960s and the social change it brought in its train.
In retrospect, we can see that by acquiescing in the ouster of Richard Nixon after the previous landslide, those who voted for him had lost their chance to moderate the pace of that change. With the removal of Nixon, promoters of the Great Society had bought the time necessary to defend it against “backlash,” as democratic opposition to social change was coming to be called. In the near-decade that elapsed between Nixon and Reagan, entire subpopulations had become dependent on the Great Society. Those programs were now too big to fail. They were gigantic. Once debt was used as a means to keep the social peace, it would quickly run into the trillions.
Failing to win a consensus for the revolutions of the 1960s, Washington instead bought off through tax cuts those who stood to lose from them. Americans would delude themselves for decades that there was something natural about this arrangement. It was an age of entitlement.
And while we're knocking down 200-year-old statues of men in tights China is doing UK colonialism x10.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8433623/MARK-ALMOND-fist-fight-Himalayas-spark-nuclear-war-engulfs-world.html
The upshot of this will not be an obesity crisis* as brought by Coca-Colonisation... not for the west anyway.
*A condition that no-one was forced to endure during these times of plenty btw.
I though 2008 was bad, how unlucky to live in a time of economic meltdown and the worsening of life prospects for the first time in generations. Well, now we have this, blowback from 2008 and a pandemic, all with a Government too weak and inept to put up a fight against anarchy. sigh.
"all with a Government too weak and inept to put up a fight against anarchy"
It must be said Cameron did the same thing in 2011, the police left big chunks of London to the bad boys. But CCTV and phone stuff meant a lot of bad boys went to jail, and a lot of arrests were made very quickly.
"By 15 August 2011 around 3,100 people had been arrested, of whom over 1,100 had appeared in court" - that was within a few days of the riots, how many arrests have been made for these demos? Not many I imagine. That doesn't bode well.
However it's early days yet, 4.5 years to next election. I wonder if the calculation was that this was an attempt to change the government by mob - and that they had better things to do than give the rioters a scrap and possibly a new martyr.
nonymous said...
Before you all develop hypertension getting angst about the Woke, perhaps an insight to how the system copes with campaigners
I was one of 30 involved in an area that was high profile in the media for a long time. It still gets the odd airing.
At the time the pressure on the government from our group, the public and the vested interests was such that our group was consulted by government advisors. This was an important case, they said. The law is not clear and there should be a test case to settle the matter. So we found a case to start off in the local county court. We lost.
Government advisors came back. This was an important case. The law is not clear and there should be an appeal of test case to settle the matter. So back to the a circuit judge and we lost.
===================================================
Proof positive. All you have to do is shout the loudest and the government listens to you, even if what they are listening to is deeply opposed by most of the country.
I give you XR
I give you BLM
I give you Stonewall.
Sick to the back teeth of single issue pressure groups being pandered to and appeased by those we elect. Of course one expects it from Labour whose only politics now, since they abandoned the working class (for failing them AGAIN) is Identity Politics, a curse on the West.
Anon 9:06am is 100% correct. We are paying our universities to train kids to attack society, and all our institutions are infested with parasites.
We need a 100 Cummings working behind the scenes to deal with this.
andrew said...
Ek
Was trying to make the point that in their own eyes, a lot of people from all parts of the spectrum on any spectrum you think of are feeling done down and that someone else has somehow done them out of something and they want it back.
7:53 pm
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Yes. Our country. We would like it back. Happily it survives in rural areas. London is lost, as will all the major cities be soon. Last time I set foot in London I nearly got straight back on the next train out.
@Nick
8:14pm. Yes. Sent a shiver up my spine that did, as he is so clearly correct. John Gray always on the money.
CityUnslicker said...
I though 2008 was bad, how unlucky to live in a time of economic meltdown and the worsening of life prospects for the first time in generations. Well, now we have this, blowback from 2008 and a pandemic, all with a Government too weak and inept to put up a fight against anarchy. sigh.
11:31 am
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Wrote to our (very good) MP y'day on this very matter, pointing out that if the govt went Woke they might as well go now. They'll lose the Red Wall seats, all working class folk who voted Tory last time, and all older people such as myself who loathe woke, knowing how damaging and destructive it is to society.
What would I do?
Well I would start by defunding the Humanities depts of Academia who are promoting this, and in reality, working against society and those who fund them. Academia now toxic, viz this in Cons Woman y'day
https://conservativewoman.co.uk/a-window-on-the-world-of-leftie-lecturers/
JULIA Hartley-Brewer conducted a fascinating and revealing interview with Dr Kojo Koram last Friday. A lecturer in race and empire at Birkbeck, University of London, Dr Koram could hardly contain his enthusiasm for the illegal removal and submersion of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol. He pointedly refused to condemn the violence and, at one particularly surreal moment, even claimed that vandalising the statue was both educational and supported by the majority of the British public. It was astonishing: a learned academic not only condoning but celebrating mob rule.
The problem with defunding humanities courses is that they are cheap to run, and the student fees from such courses subsidise the expensive courses in science, engineering, technology and medicine.
Don Cox
How does Germany do it, Don ?
We're down the rabbit hole as far as money is concerned. For STEM let's just print away.
It's got to be cheaper than the Common Purpose crap that's dragging us all down - including energy supply.
@Unknown 9:20am
If the eventual cost is the destruction of our country and society, then so be it. I leave you with this. It's happened before...
The Fall of Rome.
‘‘The trembling senate were unable to guard against the secret conspiracy of their slaves and domestics, who either from birth or interest were attached to the cause of the enemy. At the hour of midnight, the Salarian gate was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. 1163 years after the foundation of Rome, the Imperial city, which had subdued and civilised so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia.’
Gibbon
"Well I would start by defunding the Humanities depts of Academia"
"The problem with defunding humanities courses is that they are cheap to run, and the
student fees from such courses subsidise the expensive courses in science, engineering,
technology and medicine."
I agree that the former needs doing, but not at the cost of the latter. Hmm, so how to do
it?
Suggestion:-Tuition fees are a ticking hot potato that will go off when Govt has to admit how many
student loans are going to be written off at eye-watering cost to the taxpayers. Between
the student loan co data and HMRC data, there exists a lot a high resolution information
about each and every institution and course. Assuming we keep the same repayment terms for
the students, how about we get Student Loan Co to advance to the institution fees for each
course that are based on the expected repayment?
Anon 10:53pm
Agreed - some certification and QA of courses is needed. Quite what benefit do we get from Gender Studies for example?
Elby - one of the little-noticed features of the last few years is that Gender Studies has vanished from the undergraduate syllabus, and only 4 universities offer it as a postgrad - Oxford, York, Lancaster and SOAS.
https://www.hotcoursesabroad.com/study/course/uk/ma-transnational-queer-feminist-politics-special-reference-middle-east/57464824/program.html
The Oxford one features the lecturer who expressed on twitter her fears that white males might be the ones to discover a coronavirus vaccine.
But ... the Women's Studies infection is out there, evolving and becoming more toxic, in a Human Resources department near you.
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