Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts

Saturday, August 31, 2019

Pour cowslip dew into my cup; a puritan am I!



Morris dancing is a mostly English tradition of highly stylized folk dance. It is definitely old -- Shakespeare's Dauphin mockingly compares the English preparations for war to a Whitsun morris dance. But like most things in the English folk tradition, it is not as ancient as we like to pretend: it goes back centuries, not millennia. I think I am correct in saying that without exception, present-day Morris sides all go back only to the Victorian folk revival; there are no places where there is a continuous tradition going back to the fifteenth century. Almost certainly it wasn't an ancient pre-Christian fertility dance, but it's quite fun to pretend that it was. Everyone involved seems to agree that on one level its quite silly: beery men with bells on their fingers and toes and waving hankies in the air -- but its also colourful and fun and almost always involves good tunes. The idea of a lot of groups of people taking a lot of trouble to keep up a tradition which is on the surface a bit ridiculous seems a properly English thing to be doing.

Every few years someone in the unfolkie media spots that a few Morris sides perform with black make-up on their faces.

I am not sure whether anyone is really (as opposed to theoretically) offended by the sight of fat white people with boot polish on their faces waving handkerchiefs in the air. (I thought that all the most important philosophers of the age were agreed that there was no such thing as giving offence or if there was it didn't matter?) But I am completely certain that no serious harm is done to the Tradition if the flanneled fools leave the boot polish off. I didn't see a single black face side at Sidmouth; I think all the Border groups have taken to painting their faces red or blue or green. Which definitely offends no-one and is actually more fun.

The etymological fallacy is just as much a fallacy when applied to folk traditions as when applied to -- well -- etymology. A word means what you mean by the word, and what other people understand you to mean by the word -- not what Simon Heffer says the word "originally" meant. Grammar nerds may or may not be correct in saying that at one time decimate meant "to reduce by one tenth": but right now it means "to lay waste to" because that is how people use it. They are both wrong and offensive when they claim that wog is not "really" a racial slur because it "originally" meant Worshipful Oriental Gentleman.

Blackface Morris may not originally have had anything to do with making fun of black people. I am inclined to think it did not. The boot polish represents the fact that the people who invented the dances were coal miners, or chimney sweeps, or people who didn't want their wives to spot them Morris dancing after curfew. But it doesn't make a blind bit of difference what it originally meant. What matters is what "white men doing song and dance routines in black make up" means right now.

Yes, there is some evidence that prick and cunt were at one time perfectly neutral medical terms for those particular parts of the body. No, that doesn't mean it's fine to say them kids TV.

"Blacking up" means a great deal more than "I am playing the role of a person of a different race from the one I happen to be." It means something morel like "I am well aware of the whole patronizing black-minstrel tradition and the whole sorry history of white people appropriating black people's art and I don't give a damn. My right to wave hankies in the air with black boot polish on my cheeks is more important."

God knows, it's not a great idea for a European person to pretend to be an Asian person either. There was a Doctor Who story in which that happened: I forget the title, but I understand that it still polarizes opinion. But "yellowing up" does not carry the same cultural baggage as "blacking up". I think that's why Johnny Depp got away with playing a Comanche where he would never in ten million years have got away with playing a Negro.



I don't think that it follows that you can merely add the suffix -up to the name of a particular group and take that as incontrovertible proof that no-one outside that group can represent a member of that group on stage or screen. I don't know if Christians can ever properly understand what it is to be Jewish. Probably they can't. I don't know if  Jews can convincingly play Christians. (I might be inclined, like Laurence Olivier, to ask "if they have ever considered acting, darlingBut I am pretty certain that it is not helpful to accuse Kenneth Brannagh of "Danishing-up" or "wearing Dane-face" to play Hamlet.

There are exceptions and special cases and everything is a negotiation. Yes, I understand, you are constructing an authentic historical re-enactment of a festival in fifteenth century Shropshire and you want the Morris dancing to be exactly the way it was then, period instruments and period shoes and period face paint and all. No, that isn't at all the same thing as some big beery guys doing a country dance on a windswept Devon seafront. Yes, I get that your movie about the antebellum South included a loving recreation of a minstrel show; no that doesn't make the Black and White Minstrel show perfectly okay. If a lady can play King Lear, Prospero, or Hamlet, then a white man can probably have a go at Othello. But probably not with boot polish.

"But then won't all the racists just gravitate to the historical re-enactment events?" Aye, there's the rub. I came across a YouTube stream in which a fellow was working his way through the complete songs of Stephen Foster, Camptown Races and Hard Times Come Again No More and all. He explained that since this was partly an historical endeavor, he was singing the songs as Foster wrote them, while acknowledging that some of the language was offensive. Sure enough the comments section filled up with white people saying how wonderful it was to hear Oh Sussanah! with the n-word intact and how great it was to be standing up to the force of political correctness etc etc etc.

A man in the Guardian -- where else? -- went a bit further. He managed to go from "blacked-up Morris dancing has quite definitely had its day" to "the whole idea of folk music is inherently racist." This seems to be a caricature of a liberal position, the sort of thing that the sort of people who read the Daily Telegraph imagine that the sort of people who read the Guardian would think Yet here it is in, er, black and white:

But former Green councillor and parliamentary candidate Ian Driver has been campaigning for years against the way Broadstairs folk week supports blacked-up morris dancers. He calls the festival “institutionally racist” and says the organisers are all white and the acts are 90% white even though there is African-Caribbean, Hispanic and Eastern European folk music which would better represent the local area.

It is entirely true that from an ethnomusicological point of view, a traditional Afro-Carribean drum performance "is" folk music whereas Richard Thompson singing Meet on the Ledge is not. This is precisely as interesting a distinction as the pub bore who explains that there shouldn't be a Star Trek panel at the Science Fiction convention because there is no proper scientific rationale for warp drive. Yes: by one definition science fiction means "stories based on solid scientific conjecture". And those definitions might be quite helpful if you are writing your thesis. But what people at the science fiction convention are interested in is "stories about robots and space ships and aliens and shit, and, incidentally, dragons and swords and magic as well."

The line between folk music and not-folk music is very wobbly and entirely arbitrary. No-one raises their eye-brows if someone sings a Johnny Cash number or some blues tunes at Sidmouth; Jackie Oates includes a John Lennon cover in her set. But folk festivals play the kinds of music which the kinds of people who go to folk festivals want to hear; and there is a pretty broad consensus of what kind of music that is. There is a clear connecting line between English, Scottish and Irish folks songs; and between them and Canadian and Appalachian traditions; and between that and the singer-song-writers who were influenced by that tradition. The people who want to hear Nick Hart singing Child Ballad 10 demonstrably also want to hear Ralph McTell singing Streets of London. They mainly don't want to hear Dakhabraka's high octane purist baiting sound clash. And I suspect that man singing John Barleycorn with a violin in his ear would be laughed off the stage at WOMAD. A huge festival like Glastonbury represents a much wider range of taste.

Would it be a good idea if everyone had much broader tastes? Yes. Would it be a good idea for folkies to sometimes listen to something other than folk music? Maybe. Is it unhealthy to only read superhero comics? Probably. Would it be a good idea to insist on seminars on Racism in Mansfield Park at Comicon and panels about the Anti-life Equation at the Jane Austen Conference? Actually, that might be a really cool idea: get everyone to step outside their comfort zones. I'd like to imagine that that comic book nerds "get" Jane Austen better than the Eng. Lit. profs. "get" comic books, but I think it would probably be the other way round. Is it rather more important for white people to listen to non-white music and read non-white literature than the other way round? Yes, definitely: because everything you read or listen to or think about is part of "white culture" except when you make a conscious effort for it not to be. That's what "privilege" means. Is it institutionally racist for straight white middle class home makers to mainly read books about straight white middle class home makers or at any rate the kinds of books which straight white middle class home makers tend to like? That sounds an awful lot like political correctness gone. an attempt at political hyper-correction.

Not too long ago I mentioned to a friend that I was bingeing on Karl Ove Knaugsgaad, who they happened not to have heard of. I described the books, and they respond "Ohhh...Fathers and sons... It's a bit straight white male, isn't it?"

To which my only available response was to point to myself and say "Er...Hello."




I'm Andrew. I write about folk music, God, comic books, Star Wars and Jeremy Corbyn.

Or consider supporting me on Patreon (by pledging $1 for each essay)




Sunday, August 25, 2019

3D6




1:
Some of my socialist friends have a bad habit of confusing "is" with "ought". Because the Church of England ought not to have any formal influence over secular life, they assert that the Archbishop of Canterbury is a person of no significance. Because the Queen ought not to have any political influence, they assert that she does not have any. 

2:
Mr Nigel Farage is an extremely clever man; and unlike Mr Boris Johnson, he doesn't bother to hide it under a thin veneer of stupidity. (I don't think that Mr Donald Trump is as stupid as he seems, but then I don't think that anybody could possibly be as stupid as Mr Donald Trump seems.)

3:
When the duly elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom resigns, the Queen invites another of our democratically elected representatives to take over the role; on condition that he or she can command the confidence of the House of Commons. Mr Callaghan replaced Mr Wilson; Mr Major replaced Mrs Thatcher; Mr Brown replaced Mr Blair; Mrs May replaced Mr Cameron; and Mr Johnson replaced Mrs May. The People elect their MPs, and the MPs choose a Prime Minister from among their number. That's the system. It might be better; it might be worse.

4:
It is very dangerous to say "It is undemocratic for Mr Johnson to be Prime Minister having secured the confidence of a plurality of MPs but without a General Election". 

It is almost equally dangerous to say "It is undemocratic for Mr Trump to be President of the United States, having won the electoral college but not the popular vote." 

Both results show up idiosyncrasies in the two countries respective constitutions. As I understand it, the American system was designed and the discrepancy between "Electoral College Delegates" and "Popular Vote" was written in as a feature; whereas the British system evolved over centuries and the capacity for the Prime Minister to change without a popular mandate is a bug which only becomes apparent under stress.

But Mr Johnson is not the product of a coup. Mr Johnson is the product of the outworking of our unwritten constitution in the relatively unusual circumstances of an all-but-hung parliament. To call it a coup is to say that representative democracy is not real democracy; it is to say that direct democracy is the only true democracy; it is to say that there is such a thing as the popular will which is distinct from and maybe contrary to the results of the constitutional democratic process. 

It is that kind of thinking which got us into the present mess. 

5:
Everyone quotes that essay in which George Orwell complained that people (already, in 1944) were hurling the word Fascist at anyone and anything without regard for what it really meant. Fewer people quote the bit where he says that it's pretty clear what people mean by the term:

"By Fascism they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'."

Well: I think that all fascists are bullies, but I don't think that all bullies are fascists. I think that all fascists are racists, conservatives and authoritarians, but I don't think that all racists, conservatives and authoritarians are fascists. 


A judge was once asked to define pornography, and replied "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." This was not very helpful. 


But it would also be unhelpful to say "Since we can't agree on a definition of pornography, dirty books obviously don't exist." 

6:
Boris Johnson is not a Fascist. 


Boris Johnson is not a conservative, or a liberal, or anything else. I doubt very much if Boris Johnson has a set of political beliefs in the way that Margaret Thatcher and Harold Wilson presumably did. 



Boris Johnson, like Tony Blair, is an artificial construct with no purpose except to become Prime Minister. In 2016, he claimed to be 50/50 on the European Question; but he has chosen to portray himself as a kamikaze Leaver for personal electoral advantage. (Jeremy Corbyn once said, under pressure from an interviewer, that he was 70/30 on the Question; a form of moderation and nuance which the right-wing media still attempts to portray as equivocation.)

It is not clear whether the entire political landscape is reducible to "Boris Johnson believes in Boris Johnson" or whether the Johnson-construct is being deployed on behalf of persons or organisations who do have a recognizable political ideology. 


7:
The Left use the word "Orwellian" to describe the Right; and the Right use the word "Orwellian" to describe the Left. If either of them had taken the trouble to read Nineteen Eighty-Four they would know that Orwell was describing how political power always and necessarily works. The Party is indifferent to individuals and ideology; the Party exists only to keep itself in power.

Orwell also liked a nice cup of tea, and thought that pub landlords ought to keep a supply of second class stamps behind the bar. In Animal Farm, Trotsky is presented as one of the good guys.

8:
I grew up in the 1980s: everyone called Mrs Thatcher a Fascist, but she pretty obviously wasn't. She wasn't even particularly Right Wing by today's standards but that's the responsibility of that nice Mr Overton. Americans might be surprised to consider how strongly Mr Reagan's friend supported socialized medicine and how firmly opposed she was to allowing private citizens to own guns. She personally supported the death penalty provided she didn't have to take responsibility for restoring it; she was a big fan of corporal punishment but it was abolished on her watch. And she was a supporter of the European Union, although she thought it badly needed reform. If you had asked her how much she liked it, I like to imagine that she would have said "Seven out of ten."  

9:
The Right say that the Left call everyone they don't like Fascists. The Right call everyone they don't like Communists. The far Right are probably best thought of as performance artists, acting out a parody of a Left which mainly exists in their own minds. ("We think that you think that everyone you don't like is Hitler, so we will say that everyone we don't like is Stalin. That'll show you!") Rupert Murdoch's front pages, which literally depicted Boris Johnson as the Unconquered Sun are best understood as caricatures of what the editor imagines communist propaganda to be like.

10:
I was quite shocked to hear Mr Enoch Powell's infamous Rivers of Blood speech when it was reconstructed on Radio 4 a while back. I had previously only known it by reputation, and had somehow absorbed the idea that "it made some fair points about immigration and integration in unnecessarily provocative language."

The speech is in fact nakedly racist. It takes racism for granted; as a premise and a starting point. Granted that no-one would want a black person living next door to them or indeed on the same street and granted that no-one would want to rent property to a black person, then it follows that the 1965 Race Relations Act (the one which made "No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish" signs illegal) was as oppressive to white people as slavery had been to black people. This is literally what he said. This is what people who defend Powell as a conviction politician who spoke his mind are defending. 


But for all that Powell was a parliamentarian and a constitutionalist. He had complicated ideas about national identity and how it worked. Not great ideas: his theory of the Virtuous Institutions was only slightly more useful that Mr Norman Tebbit's Cricket Test. But he would not have understood the idea that a Popular Will existed separately from the Crown and the Commons and the Lords.

His essays on the New Testament are still well worth reading. 


11:
Mr Farage has described Mrs May's compromise European withdrawal agreement as "the greatest betrayal of any democratic vote in the history of our nation." He specifically compared it to the treaty of Versailles.

This is very strange language for a British politician to use. An Englishman might very well see Versailles as a disastrous misjudgment: if only we had been more magnanimous after the catastrophe of the First World War than perhaps the rise of Hitler and the greater catastrophe of the Second World War might have been averted. But to describe it as a betrayal: isn't that specifically what the Nazis believed? Wasn't that indeed the whole point of the Third Reich (and the actual reason that they had little skulls on their helmets)?

And then we see Mr Farage walking onto platforms at rallies with air raid warnings playing in the background. This is not how British politicians behave. Give Mr Corbyn his due, he doesn't come on stage to hammers and sickles and the strains of the Internationale. Mr Farage is consciously portraying himself as the Little Guy who will stand up to the bullies and and get his revenge on the politicians who betrayed us in Brussels. 

12:
Folk music is the kind of music listened to by people who say that they like folk music. Science fiction is the kind of literature read by people who say that they like science fiction. Fascism is the ideology espoused by people who identify as fascists.

13:
There are no substantive arguments in favour of Brexit: or if there are, Mr Johnson and Mr Farage are not interested in making them.

The European Union is a very complicated collection of trade agreements and tariffs and employment practices and mutual immigration procedures which a non-specialist can't really have a very strong opinion on. Until twelve months ago no-one without a 2:1 in PPE had the faintest idea what the World Trade Organisation even was.

The entire adventure rests on the theory that the People's Will was irrevocably expressed through a binary referendum in 2016. The principal at stake is not how much ice you legally have to include with a mail-order kipper. The principal at stake is which is supreme: the People's Will or the Constitution. 

Let the United Kingdom split in three; let violence and civil war return to Ireland; allow Britain to suffer Greek levels of inflation and 80s levels of unemployment; all that, says Mr Johnson, would be preferable to saying that Parliament has the right to go against the Popular Will. 

We are too willing to concede this principal. We are too willing to say "Of course the Will of the People should prevail; but the People were misinformed; the votes were badly counted; there was some cheating and corruption; and anyway we know more now than we knew then: so perhaps the Will of the People has changed. Let's ask them."

If democracy means a mechanism by which citizens can sack their leaders and appoint new ones, then I am all in favour of democracy. If it means that the Will of the People is always to be obeyed without question, not so much.

Yes, apparently it really is order to buy a mail-order kipper.

14:
Insert well-known quote from Ibsen's "Enemy of the People" in this space.

15:
Pseudo-Dawkins has been known to wonder out loud whether people who believe in the miracle at Cana or the Prophet's night journey ought to be allowed to vote in elections.

16:
So: there is a job vacancy for a British Hitler. Not an evil goose-stepping Jew-exterminating Hitler, but an heroic Hitler, a Hitler who personifies the Popular Will, who will strike a blow against the bureaucrats who betrayed the country, make the trains run on time, and generally Make England Great Again.

But the Establishment -- the elite, the people who hold the real power, the school teachers and Guardian journalists and nurses and lawyers; not the poor oppressed billionaires who run newspapers and shit in golden toilets -- will never permit a Man of the People to Make England Great Again.

The Speaker of the House of Commons is opposed to the people. The Judiciary are enemies of the people. The House of Commons are traitors. If we are going to overcome the corrupt establishment who betrayed us at Versailles, we are going to have to do it extra-constitutionally.

And that's a problem, because at the head of the British constitution sits the Queen and the one thing you definitely aren't allowed to do is speak one single word against the Queen. Even actual republicans, like Tony Benn, were very reluctant to say anything personally against Her Majesty. In 2015, Jeremy Corbyn stood politely to attention during the singing of the National Anthem while those around him were mouthing the words. Civilization very nearly came to an end there and then.

17:
On August 12th, Mr Farage made a speech during which he pointed out that the Queen Mother had a relatively unhealthy lifestyle (she smoked, drank gin, and was overweight) but still lived to be 101. So, said Mr Farage, let us hope that our present Queen who appears to live a much healthier lifestyle will survive even longer -- perhaps forever -- because that way Charles will never be King.


Because that way Charles will never be King. 

As long as it is impossible to criticize the Monarch, you can't go too far in asserting the Will of the People over and above Parliament. The Queen has very little personal power, but the whole Constitution depends on the idea of the Crown. Jeremy Corbyn is the leader of the Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition: one day soon he will kiss the Queen's hand become her First Minister. You can't deny his legitimacy without denying Hers. If you set Parliament against People then you set People against Monarch. Oliver Cromwell understood this. 

But the Queen is now over 90. It is not too unkind to suppose that her reign may not carry on indefinitely.



So it is clear why someone positioning themselves as The Man of The People would want to lay the groundwork for attacking the next Head of State and the next Head of State but one while still appearing to praise our present Queen, may god save her. 



So how did the newspapers, even the ever so slightly republican and leftish newspapers, report the speech: 


Not "Nigel Farage criticizes Prince Charles".

Not "Nigel Farage hints that he may not accept the legitimacy of the next titular Head of State".

Oh no. To a man, they report "Nigel Farage says the late Queen Mother was fat."

18:
Farage incorrectly referred to the Queen as "Her Royal Highness" as opposed to "Her Majesty." He believes that Prince Harry is third in line to the throne (after Prince Charles and Prince William) whereas in fact he is number six. 






I'm Andrew. I write about folk music, God, comic books, Star Wars and Jeremy Corbyn.

Or consider supporting me on Patreon (by pledging $1 for each essay)





Friday, February 01, 2019

The Rhetorical Strategies of Sensible Liberals.

1: Why don't politicians ever answer the question?

"Why don't you pay your staff better wages?" is a perfectly good question for a journalist to ask a businessman.

You could ask it deferentially, as it would have been asked in the days when the sun never set on Lord Reith and adverts weren't allowed. "Of course, some people might think that you don't pay your staff well enough. What would you like to say to them?" Or you could frame it as an accusation, in the modern manner of a Paxman and Humphries: "Come on! Isn't it the truth that you don't pay your staff nearly enough to live on!" But it's still a fair question.

The trouble with fair questions is that they usually have fair answers. The businessman under interrogation would have half a dozen to chose from. 

"I pay neither more nor less than is standard in this industry." 

"People come to my shops because my prices are so cheap. If I increased wages I'd have to increase prices, and then I'd go out of business and everyone would be out of a job." 

"The people you say I pay low wages to are kids who have just left school or immigrants who have just arrived in town and are still finding their feet. They quickly move on to much better jobs, often within my company." 

"I get twenty applications for every one job I advertise, so I can't be as bad as all that."

And doubtless a good interviewer could think of five good follow-up questions to any one of those responses. ("If paying your staff enough to live on would put you out of business, isn't there something very wrong with the whole system?")

There was a time, long, long ago, when this was what political broadcasting was like. Fair question; fair answer; fair follow-up question. Debate, we used to call it. Argument. A series of connected statements intended to establish a proposition. No-one's mind ever got changed, but everyone came away with a slightly better understanding of the other fellow's point of view. 

It was excruciatingly boring.

About a third of Monty Python's original output involved satirizing this kind of TV interview: the never-ending tedium of smug, middle aged males asking each other respectful questions:

"Good evening minister, may I put the first question to you? In your plan A Better Britain For Us  you claimed that you would build eighty eight thousand million billion houses in the Greater London area alone. In fact you've built only three in the last fifteen years. Are you a bit disappointed with that result." 

"No, no, not really.."

So everyone remembers exactly where they were on the day Jeremy Paxman asked Michael Howard if he had threatened to overrule the head of the prison service. It was a perfectly fair question. Michael Howard refused to answer it. So the arch-integrator asked him again. And again. And again.  

From that day onward, political interviews were no longer about arguments. Political interviews were now a spectator sport. The skillful journalist is a gladiator who goes into the arena with a quiver of questions to which no politician under any circumstances could possibly give a direct answer. And he asks them. And he asks them again. And again. And again. The more times he asks the question, the more decisively he is deemed to have won the interview.

2: Why don't politicians ever answer the question?

Here is Guardian columnist Owen Jones interviewing Tim Martin, who owns 936 pubs. (Really; nine hundred and thirty six. I looked it up.)


All my prejudices tell me that I should take the side of an articulate, well educated liberal journalist against a blokish, populist barkeep. I agree with all of Jones' points. Rich people should pay poor people enough to live on; bar-staff should be allowed to unionize; Brexit is an effing stupid idea.

But Jones' tactics mean that I end up sympathizing with Martin. I suppose this is what a football fan must feel like when his team are so unsporting that he finds himself cheering for the other side. It's like watching a barrister ask leading questions, bamboozle the jury, and twist the witness's words. You end up hoping the guy in the dock gets away with murder, just so you can say "Har-har, not so clever now, are you?"

"Do you consider yourself to be part of the elite?" would have been a not uninteresting question, and I imagine that Martin could have provided us with a not uninteresting answer. "When I talk about the elites, I am talking about an intelligentsia of intellectuals—in the media, the civil service and higher education—who maintain a liberal line on social and economic issues. This has nothing to do with wealth or privilege. To say that I am part of the very elites I criticize because I am rich is at best a non-sequitur and at worst a play on words...." To which Jones could have replied: "But the idea of a liberal elite is a conspiracy theory, and a pretty anti-Semitic conspiracy theory at that..."

But Jones doesn't ask questions: he makes assertions; assertions calculated to rile his opponent. And he doesn't pause for an answer--he just goes straight into the next assertion. He isn't the journalist trying to find stuff out. He is the accuser, telling the bad man to his face what he have all longed to say to him...

"You are part of the elite, you are a very wealthy man and you pay your own staff poverty wages."

Everything depends on that loaded phrase "poverty wages". Jones is presumably correct that some Wetherspoons bar staff are paid only £8.05 an hour. This is 67p more than the legal minimum wage, but 95p less than what the Living Wage Foundation calculates that you actually need to live on. "Why do you pay your staff 11% less than the living wage?" might have been a question. "You pay your own staff poverty wages!" is an emotive roar. The only possible response is "Oh no I don't!" and the only possible counter-response is "Oh yes you do!" 

And this is pretty much what happens. Martin calls Jones "silly", "rude" and "childish"; he insinuates that he is drunk. Jones repeats the question, and repeats it again, and repeats it again, until he is pretty much just saying "Poverty wages! Poverty wages!" over and over. Martin walks away from the interview.

What kind of answer did  Jones expect?  Did he think that Martin was going to burst into tears and send a giant turkey round to his scrivener's house in time for supper? 

The footage of Martin getting cross, insulting Jones, and walking out of the interview has been pasted all over the Internet. But it isn't clear what anyone thinks has been proved. That rich businessmen do not perceive themselves as exploiting their own staff? That if you ask people leading questions in emotionally loaded language, they won't answer them? That if you repeat the same question over and over, people tend to walk away?

3: Why don't politicians ever answer the question?

Here is a clip of James O'Brien debating with a Seventh Day Adventist clergyman, who has phoned in to his radio show to say that he agrees with Tim Farron about homosexuality being a sin.



"What did Jesus say about homosexuality?" might, at first glance, appear to be a fair question for a non-religious talk-show host to ask a god-bothering homophobe. The fair answer would be "Nothing directly, but he did say that marriage is between one man and one woman for life." To which the fair counter-response would be "So why do Christians interpret the 'man and woman' part so inflexibly, while being so willing to make exceptions regarding the 'for life' part?" 

In fact, "What did Jesus say about homosexuality?" barely qualifies as a question at all. O'Brien knows the answer, and the audience knows that he knows. He thinks that when he asks "What did Jesus say about homosexuality?" his victim will naively answer "Nothing whatsoever", allowing him to reply "Ha-ha! Gotcha! Then you have absolutely no grounds for saying that homosexuality is sinful! Bet you didn't see that coming!" Which is why he is put out when the clergymen refuses to give the expected answer. It forces him to deviate from his planned line of attack.

It's a naughty way of arguing. O'Brien doesn't really think that homophobia based on direct quotations from the Gospels would be valid, but that homophobia based on quotations from the Epistles is somehow less so, and neither does anyone else. Perhaps, hidden behind the question is an un-examined bifurcation between "spirituality" (nice) and "organized religion" (nasty); between "faith" (good) and "the church" (bad). Perhaps O'Brien thinks, or thinks that we think, that all the nice bits in Christianity come from Jesus and the nasty bits all come from Paul.  

The remarkable thing about the interview is not that O'Brien asks the same question twenty seven times. What is remarkable about that this interview is that O'Brien asks the caller the same question twenty-seven times after he had already answered it.

Here he is, answering the question.


Tell me the things which Jesus said about homosexuality. 

I'm trying to do that. 

Just tell me the things which Jesus said. Tell me the things which Jesus said... 

I'm trying to get a word in. What I am trying to say about the Bible is that it is God-inspired; and there are many people who contributed to the Bible and Paul is relevant, because he wrote most of the New Testament. So trying to excise Paul's teaching is like trying to excise the whole Bible. You can't do that. Paul made it clear...

Here he is, answering it again:

So you're not going to tell me what Jesus said? 

Well, if you'd let me get a word out...In first Corinthians, a god-inspired book... 

And here he is, answering it yet again:

So lets do it one more time my brother, what did Jesus say about homosexuality?

And I've answered the question

Remind me what he said? What were the words?


Let me make a point. Let me answer the question...

WHAT DID JESUS SAY ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY?

When Paul wrote the letters, in the New Testament, GOD WAS SPEAKING THROUGH HIM.... There other people than Jesus who wrote passage and scriptures in the Bible which were God inspired so it was God who spoke through Paul when he wrote that.

The caller may not be that good at handling O'Brien's badgering, but the substance of his answer is perfectly clear. If I had been briefed to defend his position in a debating society, I would have said: "Yes: I agree with the implication of your question. Jesus himself said nothing directly about homosexuality. However, my client believes that the whole Bible is the literal word of God and the Bible does say that homosexuality is sinful, for example, in some of the teachings of St Paul."

There are a number of interesting ways of going forward from that point. Had I been arguing on O'Brien's side, I might have said "If Tim Farron believes, as you do, that the infallible word of God teaches that homosexuality is a grievous sin, how could be possibly have stayed on as the leader of a party that campaigns for the rights of gay and lesbian people?" Or perhaps a more general question: "How can we use the Bible to make the law in a modern secular democracy where not everyone is a Christian--and where not all Christians take the Bible as literally as you do?" Instead, O'Brien attempts to go back to first principals and makes assertions about the Biblical canon: he claims that some parts of the Bible ought not to be in the Bible.

Borish Jonson was prepared to make fun of Muslim women in a national paper; and he was prepared to ask if the Koran (or "Scripture" as he quaintly called it) really mandated all Muslim women to wear burkhas; but even he wasn't stupid enough to say "Well, may be Koran isn't really the word of God, or maybe that bit doesn't count, have you thought of that?" (Salman Rushdie famously got himself into a spot of bother when he suggested that there were some verses in the Koran that didn't count.) Yet O'Brien is quite happy to say that the book of Corinthians is "just a letter written by someone who never met Jesus". Did he imagine that the caller would respond "Gad Sir, I believe you are right! The Bible is not the Word of God at all! I shall go home and re-examine my life!"

This embarrassing exchange has, as they, say "gone viral". "James O'Brien destroys a homophobic caller with one simple question", apparently.  I don't think James O'Brien does any such thing. I think James O'Brien makes himself look bad the homophobic caller look good.

4: No, I must press you, why don't politicians ever answer the question?

It's quite an achievement to make me feel sorry for a homophobic fundamentalist who thinks that Sunday falls on a Saturday. But to make me feel sorry for a right-wing Tory MP takes a kind of genius. 

Here is the same radio host talking to Brexit enthusiast and 1950s cartoon character Jacob Ress-Mogg:


O'Brien uses very much the same technique on Rees-Mogg as he did on his Christian caller. Take an arguably sensible question. Express it in loaded terms which the interviewee could not possibly be expected to answer. Repeat the loaded question over and over. Continue until the opponent leaves. Claim victory; post on YouTube. Rinse and repeat. 

Rees-Mogg thinks that Brexit will be economically good for Britain; O'Brien correctly says that every businessman and economist thinks it will be bad. So the substantive question is "Why do you think all those economic experts are mistaken?" Rees-Mogg's substantial answer is "I believe that these economic experts are mistaken because they have frequently been mistaken in the past".

But O'Brien frames the question as "What do you know which these experts do not know?"; and each time Rees-Mogg gives a substantive answer he dismisses it as a red herring and repeats the question. It's as if he is playing a game and setting the rules and the victory conditions off the top of his head. Rees-Mogg must come up with a piece of factual information available to himself but not to the experts. If Rees-Mogg cannot produce such a piece of factual information, O'Brien will declare himself the winner of this game of political Calvinball. But the premise of the question ("you can only be skeptical about expert opinion on the basis of factual knowledge") is entirely bogus. Rees-Mogg's response ("you can be skeptical about expert opinion if that opinion has been proved wrong in the past") is perfectly valid.

Once again, the Internet has given O'Brien the victor's laurel for comprehensively "shutting down" Lord Snooty. And once again I feel that the person on the right side has comprehensively and embarrassingly lost the argument.

5: Why don't politicians ever answer the question? Yes or no? It's a simple enough question?

Finally, here is a Channel 4 News reporter asking Jeremy Corbyn whether he believes that Britain will be economically better off outside the E.U. than it would have been if it had remained inside it. 

Clip of Jeremy Corbyn Interview

Again, "Do you believe that Britain will be better off outside the E.U?" looks at first glance like a fair question. But it is clearly a trap. Corbyn knows it is a trap; and the interviewer knows that he knows. They stumble through all the standard steps of the "why-won't-you-just-answer-the-question/why-do-you-keep-interrupting-me" dance. The point of dramatic tension is not "Will Corbyn fall into the trap?" but "How elegantly will he evade it?"

If Jeremy says "Yes, I do think Britain will be better off outside the E.U" then follow up question will be "Then why on earth did you campaign for Remain?" and tomorrow's headlines will read "Even remonaner Corbyn admits it--we'll be better off once we leave the E.U". But if he says "No, I think we would have been better off staying inside the EU" the follow up will be "Then how can you possibly contemplate leaving?", and the headlines will be "Traitor Corbyn claims Brexit will make us worse off."

Once again, the substantive content of Corbyn's answer is by no means un-sensible. "There is no point in asking me what I think would have happened if we had stayed in the E.U, because the decision to leave has already been made. What matters now is ensuring that we are as well off on the outside as we can possibly be." To which we would expect the follow-up question "Why should the voters believe that you would run the post-Brexit economy better than Theresa May?" 

But instead of challenging him on that substantive point, Channel 4 contracts full-blown Paxman-disease. It needs to hear the exact words "Yes, we would have been better off remaining in Europe", and only those exact words will satisfy it. It is happy to spend an entire interview relentlessly chasing the answer it is quite definitely not going to get.

I don't think Corbyn handles the pursuit particularly elegantly; but his judgement call is sound. Better for people to take the piss out of you for not answering the question than to offer the Tory press free ammunition.

6: Just tell me why politicians don't ever answer the question? I'll sing the words if you like...
It is great fun to say that the Prime Minister is a robot; and it is certainly true that she spent most of the last election replying "I will provide a strong and stable government" regardless of the question she had actually been asked. But it is unfortunately true that as long as journalists see themselves as scalp collectors; and as long as they ask the unanswerable in order to trap their victim, then robotically ignoring the question will remain the best policy



I enjoyed the video where the crazy conspiracy man tells Buzz Aldrin that he lied about having walked on the moon, and Buzz Aldrin simply turns around and punches in the gob. Idiots like that I cannot help thinking sometimes need to be punched in the mouth. If punching people is what politics is going to consist of from now on, I hope it is mainly the idiots who get punched. But I don't think that in the long term punching people is the best possible way of doing things.


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Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Kolston Kult Komes Klean

During my visits to the Deep South I visited the old Colonial Mansions in Greenville, Savanna and Charleston also Georgia. 

Not all the so-called slaves had a rough time. They had a roof over their head and were fed. 

During the war we lost our house in the blitz. We lived in a village hall sleeping on the floor and in air raid shelters up to our knees in water. We would have swapped these conditions for what I saw of the conditions of the so-called slaves in the Deep South. 

My advise to those of you who are trying to get rid of the name Colston: if you do not like it, move home. 

Edward Colston's contribution to Bristol was immense.

Letter, Bristol Evening Post, 18/11/2018

Thursday, September 27, 2018

Sausages or Dog Shit?

"I checked it very thoroughly" said the computer "And that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is." 

The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy



I have almost nothing to say about Brexit. And here it is.

To start with, it's a silly word. So let's put quotation marks around it. "Brexit". 

Foreigners sometimes ask "Why are you doing it? Why is Britain -- England -- seceding from the European Union? Why would a tiny little country say that it doesn't need the great big continental mainland and can do perfectly well all on its own?" 

I reply "We are doing it because the bin-men all went on strike in 1979." 

That isn't the whole truth, of course. We are also doing it because the leader of the opposition made a poor decision about his wardrobe on a cold Autumn day in 1981. And because a South American dictator launched an expedition against the last few acres of the British Empire in 1982. 

The suicidal 2016 European referendum was simply the logical end point of a right-wing slope which Britain has been sliding down since before I was allowed to vote. There have been individual progressive victories since 1979, of course, but all the ideological ground has been conceded to the Right. I do not think that The People are any less socialist or any more conservative than they were in 1945. Many of The People think that paying taxes to pay for hospitals is a good idea. But then they always have done. They don't call it Marxism, they call it Fairness or Sharing. On the other paw, many of The People don't see why they should give so much of their hard-earned wages to the Government to fritter away. But many of the People have always thought that, too. God knows, no-one ever won an argument. We simply all agreed to take it for granted that The Left were funny and unpatriotic and silly. It would be political suicide for any politician to talk about socialism or the redistribution of wealth or anything more radical than Sure Start nursery schools. That kind of talk will bring the country to a standstill (winter of discontent, winter of discontent) and anyway it's insulting to our glorious dead (donkey jacket, donkey jacket.) 

"Brexit" is simply the latest move by the Right to wind back the post-war-Liberal-Consensus. "Brexit" is not a political theory you are persuaded of, but a holy mystery you are initiated into. "Brexit" is "Brexit"! Question ye not the details of "Brexit"! Have faith in "Brexit"! For the faithful, the endgame is not trade deals with former imperial colonies outside of the European free trade zone. It is not even bendy passports and blue bananas. The prize which is now within reach is a gallows in Wandsworth prison, a cane in every classroom, and the Black and White Minstrels on the television.

That is the answer to your next question. I do not think that Tony Blair was no different from Margaret Thatcher. I do not think Tony Blair was no different from David Cameron. I do not even think that Centrism leads necessarily to egomania and wars fought on the basis of personal intuition. The fact that we had a crazy Centrist Prime Minister doesn't prove that Centrism drives you crazy. Blair did some liberal things and some illiberal things. But I do not support Centrists even when they come bearing gifts. Centrism doesn't halt the slide to the right. Centrism doesn't want to halt the slide to the right. Centrism says we're moving in the right direction but going a bit too quickly. I support Jeremy Corbyn because he is the first politician in my lifetime who would, in power, start to move things (slowly, tentatively, sensibly) back to the Left. I would not follow some hypothetical Centrist Messiah because he happened to be an Anti-"Brexit"-Centrist-Messiah. Those kinds of pacts are never a good idea. Christopher Marlowe wrote a very good play about that kind of thing. 


I do not think it is possible to stop "Brexit". I think that the best we can hope for is a "Brexit" that does as little harm as possible; a form of words which allows us to tell the referendum cultists "You see, we did come out of Europe; 'Brexit' did mean 'Brexit' after all" while retaining some semblance of a functional economy. "Brexit" in name only, as the fellow said. That appears to be what both Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May are working towards. Because neither of them are lunatics. 


I do not support a second referendum.  The best option would be not to have had a referendum in the first place. 

The second best option would have been for the sane side of the argument to have said "We deny the legitimacy of this Referendum. Referenda are not how parliamentary democracies work. We regard Referendums as purely advisory. We will not necessarily abide by the results."

The third best option would have been for the sane side to have fought a decent and compelling referendum campaign and put the issue to bed for another 43 years. But that's a problem because the sane side is always going to feel boring and wriggly and evasive where the mad side is always going to sound dynamic and exciting and committed. The sane side will always come out sounding like that slimy lawyer who keeps saying "Objection, your honour" and trying to introduce pedantic little facts into the argument, where the mad side is quite free to shout "Millions of Turks flooding through the channel tunnel! Give us back our conkers." 

But we decided not to go with any of the sensible options, and we are where we are. 


Once you have jumped off a cliff, your options are severely limited. This is the main reason that jumping off cliffs is widely regarded as not being a great idea. The choice, as I see it, is between growing a pair of wings and reversing gravity, or facing the fact that we are going to be hitting the ground relatively soon and doing something to mitigate the bump. 

Jeremy Corbyn is a sensible man and sensible people sometimes change their minds. He is also a sensible politician and sensible politicians sometimes do what the majority of their party want them to do, even though they would rather have done something else. So it is possible that, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow (the day after that would be a bit too late) Jeremy might say something like this. 


"As you know, I supported 'remain' because although I think that the EU is flawed, I think that we should remain members and try and fix the flaws. And as you know, when 'leave' won the referendum by a small majority, I said that we should abide by the result but work towards a 'Brexit' that does as little harm as possible. But I have listened to you members who elected me, and I am very happy to change my mind and say that we should try and halt the whole process. Accordingly, we will fight the next election with a clear manifesto commitment to reverse article 50, and with a clear set of principles about the reforms and improvements we want to push for."


This would be sensible, pragmatic and democratic. It would also be politically suicidal. The press would crucify him. The Labour leavers would defect to UKIP. The Labour remainers would say that he didn't really mean it. The BBC would say it was all about the Jews. Labour would lose the election; the cause of socialism would be lost for the next 40 years; and the Tory hard right and the Labour Centrists would see themselves as vindicated. 

Scenarios in which Corbyn steps aside and Chuka Umunna fights the next election on a Remain platform; or in which Tony Blair returns from the Isle of Avalon in a swan-shaped barge crash into the same rocks. They wouldn't win.

I would very much like a socialist Labour Party to fight the next election on an anti-"Brexit" platform and for them to romp home with an overwhelming majority. I would also very much like a unicorn. 



So then: the last best hope is a Second Referendum. 

I don't believe in The People; I just believe in people. I don't believe that there is such a thing as The Will of the People; I just believe that people have opinions, different ones, some good some bad, some sensible, some silly. I don't believe that a vote taken on one particular day can possibly have the kind of Scriptural force that the "Brexit" fundamentalists ascribe to it. But if you treat referendums as really, really, big, really, really, expensive opinion polls, then they are obviously of some value. They force the government to engage with what Public Opinion actually is, as opposed to what they think it is or would like it to be. 

The really, really big opinion poll which we had on 23 June 2016 told us that slightly less than a third of the population agreed with Europe, slightly more than a third of the population disagreed with Europe, and slightly less than a third of cats who expressed a preference didn't express a preference either way. 

The People Spoke, and The People Said "We don't know."

If the referendum had been about abolishing Prince Charles, it would certainly have come out with seventy or eighty per cent saying "Gawd Bless Your Royal Highness" with the balance split between "Orf With His Head" and "I'm sorry, why are we even talking about this?" When the Irish asked the people about legalizing abortion, it went two thirds "Yes we should " and one third "No we shouldn't" which might not be overwhelming but is pretty decisive. The Irish wrote into their Constitution that you have to have a Referendum to Amend that Constitution; and they know exactly what Amendment they are voting on before they vote. We haven't even got as far as having a Constitution yet.

Please, please don't call it a People's Referendum. That makes it sound as if the last one was a kangeroos' referendum. It also makes it sound as if we believe in the daft idea that there is a thing called The People who have a thing called a Will, which is what got us into this mess to begin with. Let us rather call it the Purely Advisory Referendum Which Will Allow The Government To Accurately Gage Public Opinion Before Making Their Own Decision Which They Will Take Full Responsibility For. 

Having had one Bloody Stupid Referendum, there is no objection in principal to having a Second Bloody Stupid Referendum. The True Believers will say "I suppose you are going to ask over and over until you get the right answer?" To which I reply "Yes, and if the first answer was manifestly stupid, then asking again and again until you get a sensible one is obviously the right thing to do." 

"Do you want sausages or dog poo for your supper." 
"Dog poo." 
"No, listen, I am going to ask you again, sausages or dog poo?" 
"Dog poo." 
"I am going to ask you one last time, do you want sausage or dog poo?" 

"Are you sure you want to go through with this?" is not a ridiculous question to ask before making a big decision. I believe that is how they treat euthanasia patients in jurisdictions where assisted suicide is legal. They don't say "I am sorry, you have booked your ticket to Switzerland, now we have to kill you." They, say, at each stage of the process "Are you quite sure about this?" I believe about a third of people get as far as the clinic and then decide to carry on being alive after all. I am sorry to have used such a morbid metaphor. If I need another one I will go back to the dog shit.


So, the question is, what is the question? 

We could rerun the 2016 vote and see if The People have come to their collective senses. (Clue: They haven't.) 


"Three years ago we asked you if you wanted to Leave the European Union or Remain in the European Union. Because this is such an important question, we are giving you the opportunity to change your mind: 

𐄂Carry on as we are and LEAVE the European Union.
𐄂Revoke article 50 if they will let us and REMAIN in the European Union." 


But we already know that the country is split down the middle on the issue, and the result will be 50/50 plus or minus 5% either way. If Leave gets 55% again, we're stuffed. If Remain gets 55% this time, then we have two advisory votes, one narrowly saying "Jump" and another one narrowly saying "Don't Jump". I suppose we could average them out and do nothing. (Do you remember that bit in Dune where Paul can see all the possible outcomes of all his actions, and all the possible outcomes of all those outcomes, on to infinity, and decides to do nothing at all, and realizes that that's still a choice, with its own consequences?) Those of us who enjoy political schadenfreude would get to see the Leavers saying "But the vote was too narrow to mean anything" and the Remainers saying "You lost! Get over it".

So, then: we must be voting on the actual Deal; whatever compromise Mrs May eventually comes up with. So the Question looks something like this: 


"Mrs May has cleverly worked out a damage limitation exercise, in which we leave Europe technically, but agree to stick to some of their rules and get some of the trade advantages we would have had if we had stayed. Do you vote to

𐄂ACCEPT Mrs May's Clever Compromise or
𐄂REJECT Mrs May's Clever Compromise and..."


...and what? And leave with No Deal? That is what the Incredibly Far Right have wanted all along: Britain as a mighty island with no tax, no welfare state, no pesky human rights. Singapore with chips instead of noodles. 

Or is the idea that we might reject Mrs May's Chequers compromise but ask her to go back to the negotiating table and start all over again? And what then? A third referendum on the third deal? 

Which leaves us with the only remotely sensible possibility:


"Chequers. It's bad, but it could be worse. What do you reckon?

𐄂LEAVE under the terms of the Chequers Agreement
𐄂LEAVE with no deal at all! Go it alone! This fortress built by nature for herself! Cry ho for England, Boris and St Cecil!" 
𐄂This is a stupid idea. Let's give the whole thing up and REMAIN if they will still have us, which frankly, I wouldn't if I were them."


I do not think that it is a foregone conclusion that, faced with a choice of Bad Deal / Terrible Deal / Remain the majority of people would chose to Remain. All of the press, most of the Tory party, some of the Labour party and that nice Mr Putin want us very badly to leave. The populist press and Nigel Farage will represent anything less than No Deal as a betrayal as bad as the betrayal when Judas Iscariot betrayed Robin Hood to William of Orange at Runnymead. I think that a three way referendum is the shortest possible path to No Deal, which is the worst possible outcome.

Rest assured: if we have Another Referendum I will do the Decent Thing. But I think that "Brexit" is now inevitable, that negotiating the least worst deal possible is the least worst strategy available and that playing Fantasy Referendum has a very high chance of making things considerably worse.

And yes, I know what the gentleman in the third row wants to say. "Brexit" will be so disastrous that it doesn't matter whether Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson or Alan Sugar is the next Prime Minister. Once all those lorries are queued up in the English channel no-one in this country will be able to have nice things ever again. My English teacher used to tell me that we didn't need to worry about our exams or our career very much because there would certainly be a nuclear war before the millennium. (Do you ever wonder how I got to be where I am today? That is how.) Hadn't we seen Threads? Apocalyptic thinking has its appeal. Eat drink and be existential because we are all going die. I think it's still worth talking about having the least worst apocalypse possible. But if I were going to Armageddon I wouldn't start from here.







Sunday, August 26, 2018

Libertarian Bell

Some times, at folk music festivals, after the main act has finished, there is a "sing-around" in a pub, where the punters are asked to sing a song of their own choosing. (People like this, because they fondly imagine that pub singing of this kind is where folk music began.) When it comes to my turn, I generally pass and say that I cannot sing. A nice man always says "Come on, Andrew, everyone can sing a little bit." So last time this happened I tried to sing/recite "Don't Go In Them Lions Cage Tonight".
Since then, he has stopped asking me.
A number of my Patreon supporters have said that they wished I wrote more about politics.
So this is me, writing more about politics.
I fully expect it to have the same affect as the folk song in the pub.

1: Introduction
M'learned friend drew my attention to the following essay in the Economist, a right-leaning British periodical.
A philosophy lecturer from Sussex University, Kathleen Stock, wrote an essay for the same magazine. She took issue (from a rather dry, philosophical standpoint) with the proposition that people who were anatomically male could be said to "really" be female. She didn't say they definitely couldn't be; but she thought there could be unintended consequences of re-defining what "female" meant.
Some of the students at Sussex University were outraged by the article, which they felt was prejudiced against transexual people. The Student Union issued a statement condemning the lecturer.
The writer of the present article, one Claire Fox from something called the Institute of Ideas, is outraged by the students' outrage and condemns their condemnation. She thinks that nowadays it is progressives who are trying to police what can and can't be said, and that modern liberalism contains a dangerous streak of authoritarianism.

Matters quickly escalate, and before long things are blasphemous and taboo and everyone is being denounced, vilified and damned.
Here is Ms. Fox:
The Sussex Students’ Union denounced (Kathleen Stock) as a transphobe. In the union's original statement, it declared “we will not tolerate hate on our campus.” “Trans and non-binary lives are not a debate.”

These key tropes —“we will not tolerate” and “this is not a debate”—  are now frequently deployed to curtail discussion of issues deemed to be taboo, invariably to “protect” people deemed vulnerable from speech deemed hateful. This secular version of blasphemy follows a sacred script, written by those who consider themselves liberals. Dare to query it and you’ll be damned.

M'learned friend, who drew my attention to the article, said that he knew I didn't like the phrase "political correctness" but that the state of play at Sussex University was analogous to the situation which prevailed in the UK before the Catholic Emancipation Act — when  only people who were prepared to sign up to the Articles of the Church of England were allowed to study at University.
I felt that this was a little bit on the strong side.

2: Political Correctness Goes Mad In Dorset
You wouldn't say "Jewish Conspiracy" if what you meant was "I'm afraid Mr Levi and Mr Cohen are going to vote together to kick me off the PTA". You wouldn't say "He has a wonderful sense of rhythm" if what you meant was "he is a talented percussionist". And you wouldn't say "elf and safety gone mad" if what you meant was "are you quite sure there is really some regulation which says I can't have a glass of water?" So why say "Political Correctness" if what you mean is "prevailing orthodoxy", "self-censorship" or even "over-politeness"?
There is no such thing as Political Correctness: it is a fictional concept, invented by conspiracy theorists who think that a secret society of Jewish intellectuals in Frankfurt are plotting the overthrow of civilization as we know it. 
Are there such things as prevailing orthodoxy, self-censorship and over-politeness? Of course there are. Just try saying "The Queen is terrible at her job", "There is no need to respect our servicemen" or "I am a big fan of Gary Glitter" and see how far you get.
Are there things which you just can't say nowadays? I seriously doubt it. Most of the things which you just can't say are said all the bloody time. "You can't say that trans women are not women": no; and if you do, you will be asked to write a long think piece in the Economist. "You can't complain about religious dress": no, and if you do, you will be paid a huge sum of money to write a column in the Daily Telegraph and be interviewed in every news outlet in the country. "You can't talk about immigration", no, and during the EU referendum campaign neither side wanted to talk about anything else.
In practice "You will be damned, denounced, vilified and treated like a non-conformist prior to 1829" actually seems to mean "Someone in the Guardian will write a rude article about you, and the University of Sussex Student Union will pass a jolly stiff resolution."
I will not be locked up if I speak against the royal family and the army and in favour of pedophiles. No-one will come and smash my printing press. But the chorus of disapproval would make Sussex University's motion of censure against their philosophy teacher seem like the mild rustling of programmes at the back of the auditorium.

3: The Great Farron Flip Flop
Here is Ms Fox again:
I still consider myself a liberal in the Enlightenment sense of the word. But I have to admit that being a liberal these days is confusing.....
.....In contrast, today’s so-called progressive liberals are often intolerant, calling for official censure against anyone perceived as uttering non-progressive views.
Far from being a challenging paradox, the idea of "illiberal liberals" is a rhetorical cliche, on a level with "if you are so keen on socialism why don't you go and live there?" and "if men evolved from monkeys how come there are still monkeys?"
"Liberal" in the old-fashioned British sense means someone who believes that it is the job of government to make wise laws which maximize individual freedom. "Liberal" in the modern American sense means simply "of the left" or "progressive" or simply "socialist". The extreme right use it as a cuss word to describe anyone who isn't on the extreme right. 
So if I talk about illiberal liberals then I am saying nothing more than "People who are liberal in the American sense are not always liberal in the British sense", which we knew already. The same person might very well want to improve the standards of education for everyone but be prepared in so doing to curtail the freedom of rich people to educate their children privately. Ms Fox's essay is predicated on a piece of word play.

3: Arooga! Arooga!
A cursory look at the coverage of the so-called “Free Tommy” brigade, centered around the alleged censorship of Tommy Robinson, a notorious anti-Islam campaigner, reveals how liberals shun defending the free-speech rights of the unpalatable. Yes, I find many of Mr Robinson’s views odious, but a pick’n’mix attitude to free speech betrays liberalism, not Mr Robinson, and worse, it adds to the myth that “free speech” is a “right-wing” cause. 
This paragraph should set off a major klaxon. A story about a man being sent to jail for contempt of court has morphed into a story about a man being denied freedom of speech because other people don't like his views.

I certainly don't like Tommy Robinson's views, if they even count as "views". He believes in "the right of English people to their own country over and above people from elsewhere" and has a massive bee in his bonnet about their being more Muslim folk in this country than there used to be, or as he puts it "the struggle against global Islamification." But he was sent to prison for taking photographs inside a court, which is not allowed in the UK;  and for live-streaming photographs of defendants in a case where the judge had imposed reporting restrictions. There will be no prizes for guessing the ethnicity or faith background of the defendants in question. 
You could, I suppose, say that "free speech" by definition includes the freedom to make comments which are prejudicial to an ongoing trial after you have been told not to; in which case it is literally true that anyone punished for contempt of court has had their freedom of speech curtailed. Similarly, you might say that a citizen forced to pay compensation to another citizen after defaming them; or a civil servant prosecuted for breaching the Official Secrets Act have had their freedom of speech inhibited. But how is any of this connected with students snarling at a philosophy lecturer about an article they didn't like? Is there some connection between the ancient British law of contempt and the recent emergence of these illiberal liberals?
Ms Fox appears to think that liberals (British sense) should have sided with the Free Tommy campaign because what was at stake was an individual's freedom of speech. She suggests that these liberals adopted a "pick and mix attitude to free speech". This appears to mean that she thinks that freedom of speech is indivisible: that if you defend it in one case you have to defend it in every case. If you believe in the freedom of the press to hold the government to account you must logically also believe in the freedom of a far-right podcaster to make prejudicial comments about a trial  and also, presumably, the freedom to shout "fire!" in a crowded theater. It is possible that Ms Fox, a libertarian, does believe in the absolute and unqualified freedom to say whatever you like whenever you like regardless of context. But this is not something which either kind of liberal has ever been in favour of.  
"The British contempt laws are not compatible with Article 19 of the universal declaration of human rights " might be a perfectly feasible position. "Tommy Robinson shouldn't have been punished for taking photos inside a court because liberals" not so much.
I doubt very much if Ms Fox really believes that Tommy Robinson's imprisonment had anything to do with freedom of speech. I think that the paragraph is best understood as a kind of mating cry to People Who Are Not Liberals (In The American Sense). I think that People Who Are Not Liberals (In The American Sense) will hear "Free Tommy....censorship....Tommy Robinson....liberals....free speech....free speech....free speech." And they will instantly pick up the message: "It's okay. I'm on your side."

4:  Bound to Lose, Bound to Lose, You're Bound To Lose
The writer says that liberals (American sense) didn't defend Tommy Robinson because they found his views "unpalatable". She also talks about free speech being tossed aside "to silence those labelled as intolerant" and says that liberals want to prevent speech which is "deemed" hateful, and to censure views which are "perceived" as non-progressive.

Labelled, deemed, progressive. She cannot bring herself to say that people like Tommy Robinson really are intolerant and hateful; merely that illiberal liberals label them and perceive them as such. And she thinks that "liberals" (American sense) merely find him "unpalatable"  as if disapproving of ethnonationalism were a matter of taste, like preferring Irish whiskey to Scotch. 
But this unleashes a massive can of unstated assumption worms. Are liberals only being illiberal in cases where they try to silence a perfectly harmless person who they have falsely labelled or deemed intolerant? Or are they also illiberal when they try to silence someone who really is intolerant and hateful? Or is there in fact no such thing as intolerance and hatred? Is the claim "Some of the people you accuse of being witches are not witches at all: be very careful before you proceed". Or is the claim "Stop hunting witches, you silly children: there is no such thing."

A case could probably be made that some students at Sussex unfairly took against what was intended to be a dry, logical essay on how we define terms like "male" and "female". But Claire Fox's essay is illustrated with pictures of demonstrators holding up placards saying "No platform for fascists". Are we to take away the message: "Careful now. Perhaps the people you want to de-platform are not really fascists at all?" Or is it "If you would refuse a platform to anyone, even a literal fascist, you are no true liberal."
Not allowing a fascist to speak in your meeting hall; and refusing to appear at a meeting to which a fascist has been invited seems to be a pretty moderate form of censorship. I would not be in favour of saying "no platform for people who supported the bedroom tax" or "no platform for people who think Mrs Thatcher was quite right about the coal mines" or "no platform for people who think Corbyn has it wrong about trade unions." That kind of stuff we can and should debate. But your British National Parties and Britain Firsts and English Defense Leagues? You should certainly be free to join that kind of club. I would take a dim view of anyone who tried to stop you. I disagree with what you say but will defend to the point of mild inconvenience your right to say it. But don't think I am going to help you say it or facilitate your saying it. Don't expect me to appear at your meeting or let you borrow my hall.

And don't expect me to be your friend.

Don't you think it is a little bit suspicious that the Right is saying that it is dangerously illiberal of the Left to refuse to share a platform with people whose views they don't like while at the exact same moment they denounce, vilify and damn the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition because he has, in the past, shared a platform with people whose views they don't like?


5: H.P Sauce is the Great British Sauce
I suppose that at one time "identity politics" had a meaning. It described the kind of thinking which says "I support Labour because I am a Labour supporter; I am a Labour supporter because my father and my grandfather before me supported Labour": your political affiliation was part of who you were. But like Political Correctness and Liberal, the term "identity politics" has become a right-wing snarl word. At this moment, a nasty group of fans are boycotting Marvel and trying to set up their own company because they see comic books like Ms Marvel, Moon Girl and Ultimate Spider-Man as being full of "identity politics". What they mean  — literally the only thing they mean — is that Ms Marvel's parents are from Pakistan and she is a cultural Muslim; that Moon Girl is African American and Miles Morales is Hispanic. The tendency to use "identity" to mean "non-white" and indeed "non-white and therefore bad" reached its ludicrous end point last week when someone literally and without irony said that sales of mayonnaise were falling because young people preferred "identity condiments".

6: Conclusion: In Which The Various Threads of The Argument Are Drawn Together, And Pigs Fly
How far should intolerance be tolerated is a good question.
One answer would be "Always, without qualification, and without question: if you are tolerant of immigrants cooking unfamiliar food, then you must be equally tolerant of newspapers saying that those same immigrants should be put down like cockroaches."
Another answer would be "Never, without compromise: the slightest suggestion that someone has criticized a fellow citizen's dress, religion or sexuality must be stamped on without mercy."
In between there are many shades of grey. Fifty or more. Most of us, whether we call ourselves liberal or not, fall into that grey area.
But the Economist essay is not talking about shades of grey. The Economist essay seems to envisage a situation where the poor reasonable souls who calmly explain to transsexuals that they might want to think a little bit more systematically about the philosophy of gender are SILENCED and PROSECUTED by the intolerant left. And yet only last week I read that someone had taken the trouble to walk along Crosby sea front sticking cocks on all the statues along with the slogan "women don't have penises". Someone stuck a cock on the statue of Colston in Bristol yesterday, although sadly on his plinth, not his crotch. Just imagine: someone took the trouble to draw this thing, and then spent money on getting it printed, and then distributed roles of stickers to all their friends; and then someone must have gone out with stickers in their pocket, deliberately looking for places to display them. Imagine being that person. Imagine caring enough about other people's bits to think it worthwhile.
Statue of Edward Colston, Bristol, 25 Sep 2018

An article that said "Hey! Both sides! Take it down a notch!" might possibly have been worth writing. But anyone whose response to this kind of thing is "Gosh! Aren't liberals a problem!" needs to take a long hard look at their values. 
I think that from 1945 to about 2000, there was a broad "liberal" (American sense) consensus across all political parties. Fascists were no platformed by default. People like Katie Hopkins and Tommy Robinson existed, but they were mostly marching behind black flags in out of the way drill halls, not being invited to speak on mainstream talk shows and being lauded by the President of the U.S.A. Enoch Powell wasn't prosecuted or imprisoned as a result of the so-called "rivers of blood" speech, but he was kicked out of the Conservative Party and remained on the political sidelines for the rest of his life. But the rise of Trump and Farage has allowed the intolerant and the hateful  the kinds of people who compare refugees with rats and cockroaches and call black people semi-savages, and think that slavery wasn't too bad and anyway the South never supported slavery  to express their views in public.
And when decent folk in all political parties refuse to engage with them we get articles in the Economist saying "why has the left become so intolerant all of a sudden."

7: Conclusion, in which the exegete cleverly deconstructs the article's major premise and leaves the stage to massive cheers.
You probably noted that Ms Fox specifically says that she is quoting from the Sussex Student Union's original statement.
If you go to the Student Union's website, you will find that the original statement is not there.
You will instead find the revised statement, which merely states that the Union is "in solidarity" with trans and non-binary students, and that they "strongly disagree" with the views of Dr Kathleen Stock."
I can, if I wish, read Dr Stock's dull essay on the Economist magazine's website.
I can, if I wish, read Claire Fox's screed about the intolerant toleratti.
But I cannot find out what the Student Union originally said about Dr Stock.
Because someone has persuaded or compelled them to remove it.
I look forward to a future essay in the Economist asking why the Sussex University Student Union have been denied their freedom of speech in this regard.



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