My new VDARE column is about Maurice Glasman, one of the most interesting leftist thinkers in recent years to emerge (and then get rapidly submerged as he made clear the full logic of his worldview). Lord Glasman served for the last half year as the idea man for the new British Labour Party boss Ed Miliband.
Glasman, who is almost utterly unknown in the U.S. media, articulated a new old-fashioned, pre-multiculti leftism for Labour of the kind that George Orwell might have approved of. Not surprisingly, last week he got stomped down for calling for a halt to mass immigration, but he had an interesting ride while it lasted.
Lord Glasman has found himself on the less privileged side of the central ideological divide of the 21st Century—a gap that sprawls across the more familiar ideological chasms of the 20th Century. The crucial question is no longer capitalism vs. communism, but globalism v. localism, imperial centralization v. self-rule, cosmopolitanism v. patriotism, elitism v. populism, diversity v. particularism, homogeneity v. heterogeneity, and high-low v. middle.
Barack Obama, for example, epitomizes the first side of these dichotomies, especially the high-low coalition. By being half-black, he enjoys the totemic aura of the low, but has all the advantages of the high. He has never, as far as anyone can tell, had a thought cross his mind that would raise an eyebrow at a Davos Conference.
In contrast to the President, Glasman is certainly an original thinker. But anybody on his side of these new dichotomies faces a tactical disadvantage.
Because globalists want the whole world to be all the same, they share common talking points, strategies, conferences, media, and so forth.
In contrast, because the localists want the freedom to rule themselves, they often don’t even realize who else is on the same side of this divide.
For example, to most Americans, "socialism" is a very foreign-sounding word. To a lot of Brits, however, socialism is what their grandfathers looked forward to while they fought WWII and then came home to create the National Health Service.
Read the whole thing there.
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90 comments:
The point about who are your allies is huge. Organic farming atheist leftist and homeschooling conservative Christians should be natural allies, but they can't come together (yet). Meanwhile, how are Hindu nationalists, Islamic fundamentalists, Russian nationalists and Tea partiers ever going to come together? It would be one heckuva conference though. For now, I'm stuck hoping China successfully throws a spanner into the globalization machine.
Glasman reminds me a bit of Thilo Sarrazin, the thinking German social democrat. Both were swiftly slapped down. But are they the tip of a larger iceberg of opinion in European social-democrat parties? Are lots of social democrats lying when they profess their love of open borders? If so, a tipping point could come at an unexpected speed and time.
Good point about Sarrazin.
Because globalists want the whole world to be all the same, they share common talking points, strategies, conferences, media, and so forth.
The globalists want the world's rent - all of it:
http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/gaffney-mason_rent-seeking-and-global-conflict-2006.html
"The point about who are your allies is huge."
Right, and the live and let live patriotism philosophy is too intellectually demanding. It requires a level of worldliness and idiosyncratic thought that I'm finally starting to achieve in my 50s, whereas globalism is the kind of thing that is perfectly comprehensible and appealing to 115+ IQ 21-year-olds.
And the point of live-and-let-live localism over globalism is that people with IQs below 115 count, too, and should have a say in their own cultures. So, it's practically hopeless in competition with globalism, which makes sense to the upper middle mass.
The Japanese are pretty smart guys and they haven't embraced this whole globalism thing. It is possible to maintain sanity if the will is there.
From a UK perspective, FDR and the New Deal Democrats were basically socialists. Certainly they were Social Democrats.
Steve Sailer:
"Right, and the live and let live patriotism philosophy is too intellectually demanding. It requires a level of worldliness and idiosyncratic thought that I'm finally starting to achieve in my 50s, whereas globalism is the kind of thing that is perfectly comprehensible and appealing to 115+ IQ 21-year-olds.
And the point of live-and-let-live localism over globalism is that people with IQs below 115 count, too, and should have a say in their own cultures. So, it's practically hopeless in competition with globalism, which makes sense to the upper middle mass."
Exactly right - especially since, thanks to the '60s cult of the Teenager, the current generation of 'world' (Western) leaders seem to have only the emotional development of teenagers. The result is that policies which appeal to high-IQ, emotionally immature types are irresistable. It's very easy for the IQ 115 Teen to ignore the interests of the IQ 95 guy who drives the school bus.
Great article Steve. Thanks.
..., last week he got stomped down for calling for a halt to mass immigration, ...
From this article:
Lord Glasman, Ed Miliband’s chief policy guru, wants a temporary halt to immigration to ensure British people are first in the queue for jobs...
His remarks follow a report he has written for the Labour leader and sparked fresh anger last night over the relaxation of border controls by the last Labour government that allowed more than five million immigrants to settle in Britain.
But:
Mr Miliband yesterday tried to distance himself from the remarks by claiming he had not read them.
A call for a "temporary" halt would seem to be pretty reasonable, all things considered, i.e. current state of the economy, and the fact that in recent years millions have arrived.
Yet the initial reaction of a prominent politician is to 'distance himself' from such a proposal.
>>"he expressed a belief that immigration to the UK should be completely halted."
Well, everybody knows, you can’t say that.<<
Hmm. There is no real broad visceral support for mass immigration in the UK, the way there is in the US. Surveys indicate the average Brit would restrict immigration to Japanese levels, a few thousand a year.
Whereas in the USA 'nativisism' is a dirty word and you argue about whether it's OK to enforce your immigration laws against illegal immigrants. The centre of opinion in the USA seems far to the 'Left' of the UK on immigration, probably for geo-historical reasons - not only were we homogenous (which the USA initially was too, to nearly the same extent), we are a small crowded island with almost nowhere to run. The few empty areas such as the parts of the Scottish Highlands not off-limits to development are both inhospitable, and would rapidly fill up in any serious case of white flight.
Whereas many Americans still have the flight option. SWPL Americans fleeing places like Washington DC are busy creating places like Asheville, North Carolina - safe liberal enclaves surrounded by defensive rings of gun-toting Republicans. There is no option like that for middle-class Brits.
This Judeo-Christian Brit sounds reminiscent of Michael Young, the late Lord Dartington. Anyway he's an improvement over your earlier crush Geoghegan (rhymes w/ "Reagan" ooohh!)
Back when you & Krugman were getting misty-eyed about the idyllic early 1960s I hoped for a "bloggingheads" team-up recitation of the Beveridge Report. Quite a few of us outside D.C./Manhattan are warming fast to a policy of "Aztlan in one country other than this one" since at least that is doable; but then you guys start radiating the fogey Pleasantville vibe and my mind wanders to Ireland/Singapore tax strategies. If Apple takes you up on the domain, how about WhatsTheMatterWithKansas.com? (probably Israelis)
in response to the Thilo Sarrazin cmments. Can you imagine the outrage if the situation was reversed?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,775043,00.html
Well Steve, the climactic moment for the British Labour Party came in 1979.
In that year, the incompetent and destructiv Callaghan government was turfed out by Maggie - and it stayed out of power for the next 18 years.Besides being a catastrophically foolish and unintellligent leader, Callaghan was the prisoner of the Trades Union movement (which in those days actually had some heft).At a time of rising inflation and economic turmoil, the stupid bastards of the Trade Union movement just bullied, bullied and bullied some more the Labour government in pursuit of selfish interests.In a wave of public sector strikes that saw garbage piled on the streets and the dead left unburied, the Labour governmrnt was turfed out and Maggie elected.
The irony was that Maggie destroyed the unions utterly to the extent that they are now a vestigial joke doomed to total exinction (a frther irony is that the unions are now fervent supporters of mass immigration).
The truth is that many Britons (including Labour voters) were grateful to Maggie for destroying the unions who rightly or wrongly were blamed for Britain's industrial decline.It is in this context that Murdoch's rabid support of Maggie, notably from The Sun, should be seen.
Anyhow, labour had a rough time of it in opposition.In 1983 Maggie was actually enormously unpopular with the British people as a whole, but the anti-Tory vote was split between Labour and the schismatic centrist SDP (a revolt against 'Bennery' - another story in itself).Labour lost the election of 83 and of 87 both fought on a socialist ticket.
By the 90s, the climate of opinion had changed.'Neo liberalism' was dominant everywhere, Labour kept on losing under socialism, continual defeat does strange things to a party - enter Blair.
Unlike the USA the 'right' of British politics (ie the business oriented Conservative Party), is pretty much dead set against immigration.For example throughout the Thatcher and Major years immigration was reduced to the barest amount needed necessaary to fulfil legal obligations.
Immigrationism is entirely a force of the 'left' inspired no doubt from some vestigially remembered college Marxism (although 'reserve army of unemployed' is forgotten).
Statistics tell us that in the past few years (a period of mass unemployment), the actual number of british born workers in employment fell markedly, whilst the numbers of immigrant workers increased massively.
Strangely enough, the British Trade Union movement has been completely silent on the issue, but tacitly is a very big supporter of uncontrolled mass immigration.Having no power these days, no prospect of power and only looming extinction in prospect, the unions are a sick joke.Their leadership is not composed of workers but of shrill, silly professional marxists who've never worked in their lives.
Sailer wrote:
"the old left-right paradigm is obsolescent."
Yes, but more accurately, it is time for anti-immigrationists (of which I am one) to ADMIT that anti-immigration is LEFTIST. Yeah, that is right--WE are leftists here. We VDARE readers are leftists. Trueleftism means supporting the will of the majority. And the majority in EVERY nation does not want mass immigration.
And the elites everywhere DO want mass immigration.
The majority wants other things like progressive taxation and universal healthcare-- IF they, the majority are the real beneficiaries of these policies. The majority does not want to pay taxes to benefit some other race, some other culture that is unlike themselves and yet lives among them.
THis is a universal trait of homo sapiens.
This is how the elite use immigration and multiculti to drive the population to the right on economics.
When we white anti-immigrationists, anti-multiculturalists admit this, then we will be on the path forward to making this nation better.
And that is what the elite fear--a public recognition of what real left is and what real right is.
Sailer wrote:
"In contrast to the President, Glasman is certainly an original thinker."
Not that original--I have been posting on the internet for years saying the same things (and getting banned on forums both "liberal" and "conservative".
Sailer wrote:
"Yet, as George Orwell repeatedly pointed out, Labour’s base of voters, the actual laborers themselves, have never been terribly cosmopolitan. In fact, they’ve never thought that much of Johnny Foreigner."
Of course they have not: the basis of leftism itself is the ability to localize control of government. The more localized govt control is, the more democratic and therefore the more leftist. Large scale govt is based on large scale voting districts. Large scale voting districts are INHERENTLY divisive of Labor/voters because they contain more factions. This is a natural animal instinct of all pack/social animals: we social pack animals naturally seek uniformity and homogeneity because this UNIFIES us against the enemy. The true enemy for homo sapiens is no longer the predator in the bush, but instead the true predator is the elite, the elite in the power towers and of course their tools, the cheap labor 3rd world immigrant.
-squire jons
Sailer wrote:
"[Blue Labor is]....
effectively disbanded … following an interview given by the controversial peer in which he expressed a belief that immigration to the UK should be completely halted."
Well, everybody knows, you can’t say that."
Agreed. But it may be instructive to ask why this is the case.
I have some guesses: Notice that the main parties cited in the article in question, the parties who are leaving the blue labor coalition, are academics. The fact is that academia has a culture that mandates that all those who speak out against multiculti within its ranks be destroyed. You cannot work in academia and be against immigration/multiculti. Again, it is instructive to ask why this is the case. Academic culture financially supported in the beginning, and still is supported in large part, by private grants donated by large nonprofit foundations such as the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundations. These nonprofit foundations are the genesis and basis of falseleftism. And they are controlled and funded by the rich.
Multiculti-mass immigration is the primary tool of the rich when it comes to dividing Labor and lowering wages.
Another reason why BLue Labor is being destroyed is because the mass media would demonize anyone associated with it if Blue Labor is openly anti-mass immigration.
But again, Why? Because mass media is primarily funded by advertisements bought by big corporations. Why primarily owns and controls such corporations? The rich.
Any questions?
-squire jons
Climate Change may be the issue that crystallizes this conflict between the global and the local.
Despite the fond wishes of many on the right, increasing CO2 is causing the average temperature of the earth to rise. The arguments against the Greenhouse Effect may sound clever, but they are inconsistent with physics. Kind of like a late-1800s intellectual deducing that heavier-than-air craft cannot fly.
However, the extent of warming that's likely over the next century or so is very uncertain.
Unsurprisingly, a belief in more warming is highly correlated to a belief in the necessity for implementation of policies with global reach.
Unsurprisingly, adherents to the mainstream "lots-of-warming!" position see their advocacy of draconian, elite-driven measures as a consequence of the science.
Unsurprisingly, skeptics/deniers see the mainstream advocates' policy preferences as driving their interpretation of the science.
There's a chasm between the draconian measures that severe global warming would actually "require", and the programs that Greens say they want. It's hard to know how much of this gap is due to "PC makes you stupid," versus how much is disingenuousness. The plainiest example is the chirping of crickets when it comes to orders-of-magnitude expansion of nuclear power.
"Require" is in quotes, because a little thought will show that this is a classic "Who? Whom?" question. Globalist elites loathe seeing their favorite causes framed in this way.
"Right, and the live and let live patriotism philosophy is too intellectually demanding. It requires a level of worldliness and idiosyncratic thought that I'm finally starting to achieve in my 50s, whereas globalism is the kind of thing that is perfectly comprehensible and appealing to 115+ IQ 21-year-olds. "
I thought Chesterton did a good job with it, and his stuff's not that dense.
Realistically, the problem is as you describe: the global left are natural allies, but how are Christian conservatives and Islamic fundamentalists going to come together? They hate each other...
There's a sort of natural global leftism that has no counterpart on the right: nationalists in each country aren't natural friends, especially if the countries share a disputed border, compete for the same resources, etc.
That said there is Euronat, so who knows?
"And the point of live-and-let-live localism over globalism is that people with IQs below 115 count, too, and should have a say in their own cultures. So, it's practically hopeless in competition with globalism, which makes sense to the upper middle mass."
Popular revolts?
"And the point of live-and-let-live localism over globalism is that people with IQs below 115 count, too, and should have a say in their own cultures. So, it's practically hopeless in competition with globalism, which makes sense to the upper middle mass."
Popular revolts?
And the point of live-and-let-live localism over globalism is that people with IQs below 115 count, too, and should have a say in their own cultures. So, it's practically hopeless in competition with globalism, which makes sense to the upper middle mass.
The more you ponder HBD theory, the more the modern era feels like one giant power grab, on the part of the elites, in an attempt to re-institute feudalism.
His ideas aren't all that unfamiliar to Americans who know a bit of real history. He's pretty much the same as the real FDR. (Not the caricature of FDR that both "parties" like to use.)
Family first. An ordinary man should be able to support an ordinary family.
Government should defend the family from predatory capitalists; government shouldn't confuse and impoverish the family on all cultural and economic fronts.
All of this is strictly unthinkable for both of our "parties".
> "a level of worldliness and idiosyncratic thought that I'm finally starting to achieve in my 50"
Steve,
You need to finally start looking at the models of development of thinking developed by people like Bill Torbert, Otto Laske and perhaps Elliot Jaques.
They show how truly nuanced, dialectical or 'idiosyncratic' ways of thinking emerge in (a limited number of) people as they mature.
IQ is a poor proxy for these sophisticated models of cognitive maturation - the reality is, you need to look at both, not try to reduce it all to IQ.
Steve,
Could you explain this post of yours. Is it sarcasm? (If so, please explain.) Is it in earnest? (If so, please explain.) It sounds very interesting despite the fact I don't really understand it! You need to dumb it down just a little. Define some of the terms and phrases. I'm not a completely unsophisticated reader. Thanks!
"Right, and the live and let live patriotism philosophy is too intellectually demanding. It requires a level of worldliness and idiosyncratic thought that I'm finally starting to achieve in my 50s, whereas globalism is the kind of thing that is perfectly comprehensible and appealing to 115+ IQ 21-year-olds.
"And the point of live-and-let-live localism over globalism is that people with IQs below 115 count, too, and should have a say in their own cultures. So, it's practically hopeless in competition with globalism, which makes sense to the upper middle mass."
"It has always driven yuppie leftists mad with rage that they are expected to share their Labour Party with a bunch of working class laborers."
Shouldn't that be "It has always driven yuppie leftists mad with rage that they are expected to share their Labour Party with a bunch of white working class laborers"?
But are they the tip of a larger iceberg of opinion in European social-democrat parties? Are lots of social democrats lying when they profess their love of open borders?
Social democrats aren't necessarily that open-borderish. To a degree they have been but it doesn't run deep. And more nativist groups in Europe are not necessarily hostile to the social democratic state. The Euro left is quite different than the American left. The idea that European socialists necessarily share some kind of pernicious open borders agenda has been pushed on right-wing blogs by neocons and libertarians who want to avoid people looking to European social democracies as any kind of U.S. model.
Of course, it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as with the Norway killer who was a big fan of the U.S. right blogosphere.
Roosevelt and his heirs were not socialists, they were capitalist revisionists. Their aim was to preserve capitalism while mitigating its worst feature (the concentration of wealth)by a policy of re-distribution via government spending. After an initial honeymoon, his system led to an unwieldy, centralized welfare-warfare state. The system also etiolated the power of its socially conservative Catholic and Southern supporters. Their loss of influence and the rise of Jewish power led to a cultural revolution and the cultural morass we find ourselves in. Meanwhile the capitalists and bankers found the new welfare-warfare state much to their liking and the globalism and multi-culturalism that goes with it even more to their liking (all that cheap labor and easy money!)
The old Capitalism is deader than a doornail, the Rooseveltian replacement teetering; the question is what next?
Trueleftism means supporting the will of the majority.
So essentially none of the leftist movements in history were actually leftist at all? But the American Founders were "leftist"? I think your definition is irrational.
From the perspective of the monarchs of Europe, all the post 17th century political movements were "leftist". That's a useless definition for modern purposes though.
Elites have grown to be way too strong. What Greenspan said and was quoted here while ago was disturbing. Even Aristotle knew the crucial importance of the middle class. My definition of a democratic state is one where no-one has balls to mess with the middle class.
The majority wants other things like progressive taxation and universal healthcare-- IF they, the majority are the real beneficiaries of these policies. The majority does not want to pay taxes to benefit some other race, some other culture that is unlike themselves and yet lives among them.
THis is a universal trait of homo sapiens.
This is how the elite use immigration and multiculti to drive the population to the right on economics.
This is the old libertarian line about how a multicultural country must be hostile to the welfare state, because the majority won't want to pay for welfare for the "others".
The fact that it is completely and conclusively disproved by history never seems to bother the libertarians in the slightest. As America has gone from a white country to a multicultural wonderland, the welfare state has exploded in size.
If what you say were correct, the old white America should have had universal healthcare. Instead is was a small government paradise.
"The more you ponder HBD theory, the more the modern era feels like one giant power grab, on the part of the elites, in an attempt to re-institute feudalism."
Which is why I've always referred to the open borders neocons/big business wing as "neofedualists."
One hopes now that a leading liberal like Glasman has said it that it's now acceptable for everyone to say. The dam has been broken.
This is how the elite use immigration and multiculti to drive the population to the right on economics.
Maybe you've just awoken from a half-century long nap, but the population has not moved to the right on economics.
His views mirror most of the liberals in the US prior to Bill Clinton's presidency, strictly because they cared about the interests of the working class. It was obvious that mass and unchecked migration had a downward effect on wages and living standards, and that was a bad thing. Now, the post-modern left gladly sell-out the laborers in a manner that would make titan of industry Jack Welch proud.
The survival of the Northern European welfare state is dependent upon a fair degree of national solidarity.
No, the survival of the Northern European nations- like all other nations- is dependent upon national solidarity. And the welfare state erodes that as part of its very nature. Because the state's interests are inherently different from those of the people.
Immigration is bad for the people. It is good for the state. The state taxes the old people to pay for the new peoples because it makes the state that much stronger.
It is no coincidence that the welfarist parties are the staunchest immigrationists, and restrictionism gets what little hearing it does on the right.
Welfare is the domain of the church- which doesn't have guns. The state should keep its filthy hands away from it. (Stalin: "How many divisions has the Pope?" Me: "As many as he needs... and one more than you, now.")
I challenge "Squire Jons" (majuscules mine) and other "leftists" to come up with a welfare system that doesn't include the state, which H.L. Mencken called the enemy of every good man.
I don't think they have the imagination!
I will say this for immigration to the UK: 20 years ago the service industry in London was completely hopeless. Have you tried to deal with a native English waitress or hotel worker? Surly, ugly and incompetent. Now all those positions seem to be staffed by hot, friendly Russians and other Eastern Europeans. Is there any way England can stop chain migration from Pakistan but let the cute Slavs stay? It would improve the English gene pool immeasurably.
<>
Great passage that sums up a lot about life today.
Does it also indicate that you're becoming a fan of the locavore food-and-eating scene? And the of monetary-reform, local-currencies movement? I hope so. They're both pretty interesting and inspiring. The Paleo eating-and-exercise movement's a related development, it seems to me -- a grass-roots rejection of globalist health advice, an embrace of evo-bio, a determination to look after yourself and let a lot of other things go ...
The raw-milk controversy is a fun flash-point issue. Big bad FDA vs. little-guy organic farmers; top-down health officials vs. everyday people who want to eat traditionally, etc.
They may all soon turn into NPR, do-goodin', one-size-fits-all bureacracies of their own, but for the moment they strike me as pretty fresh, fizzy, and genuine.
Even in Ireland ...
Unsurprisingly, a belief in more warming is highly correlated to a belief in the necessity for implementation of policies with global reach.
Steve's talking about how difficult it is to 'splain our side to upper class youngsters. How complicated is "globalism is just soft honkey imperialism, and in a hundred years we'll be kvetching over how we stole the Aborigines' kids, er, I mean, the world, under cover of utopianism and global warming?"
Realistically, the problem is as you describe: the global left are natural allies, but how are Christian conservatives and Islamic fundamentalists going to come together? They hate each other...
Principles/values. Everyone the ruling classes are stomping on can get behind freedom of speech and self-rule and freedom of association and the right of secession.
re: "Despite the fond wishes of many on the right, increasing CO2 is causing the average temperature of the earth to rise." xXx
BS flows from xXx. Read the literature: the increased temperature came before the increased CO2. The oceans are out gassing CO2 as the earth warms. Don't want to read the literature then read the following book that was just published that explains for the intelligent layman the facts and science: Bass Ackwards: How Climate Alarmists Confuse Cause with Effect HERE
Dan Kurt
I can't understand why any ordinary working class Briton would support the Labour party. It was Labour that threw Britain's doors wide open to non-white immigration, causing all of the U.K.'s problems today. Rich Britons can retreat to the comfortable sinecures of their country estates. The working English poor cannot. The Labour party, the party of the ordinary working class Briton - my A**.
I don't think it is a matter of IQ, or elites/corporations, or anything like that (though they probably matter on the margins).
Rather it is emotionalism. The problem is women, who love internationalism and the like. Seriously look at HGTV "Househunters International" ... women love anything global, foreign, because it is "glamorous." Even Third World hellholes. The change you are looking at is female support for globalism, because it is Upper-Class. It is not natural for men to find their own people/history/interests awful, but women do this all the time. Think Paris fashions, etc.
"Immigration is bad for the people. It is good for the state."
I like that sentence. It needs repeating.
OT
http://ampedstatus.org/who-rules-america-an-investment-manager-breaks-down-the-economic-top-1-says-0-1-controls-political-and-legislative-process/
Winning GOP strategy. Raises taxes just a little on the lower members of top 1%. But raise it considerably on upper half of top 1%. And raise it higher yet on the top 0.01%--mostly Democratic Wall Streeters.
"Rather it is emotionalism. The problem is women, who love internationalism and the like. Seriously look at HGTV "Househunters International" ... women love anything global, foreign, because it is "glamorous." Even Third World hellholes. The change you are looking at is female support for globalism, because it is Upper-Class. It is not natural for men to find their own people/history/interests awful, but women do this all the time. Think Paris fashions, etc."
Heh, I've seen that Househunters International. Alot of the episodes are these wealthy/upper middle class American couples gushing about the culture in Mexico or Nicaragua or some other country where all the poor folk are trying to bug out.
Of course Glasman is Jewish, as is Miliband who hired him. 45 comments so far and no mention of that. I wonder why. (Steve does mention that in his column.)
Contrast that with the post the other day, where some Canadian nobody advocated increased immigration to Canada. Where are all those commenters for whom that guy's Jewishness was so very important?
anon:
"I will say this for immigration to the UK: 20 years ago the service industry in London was completely hopeless. Have you tried to deal with a native English waitress or hotel worker? Surly, ugly and incompetent. Now all those positions seem to be staffed by hot, friendly Russians and other Eastern Europeans. Is there any way England can stop chain migration from Pakistan but let the cute Slavs stay? It would improve the English gene pool immeasurably."
He he, too true. Recently I was reminded about what the old Britain was like, when I left London for a holiday up in a remote part of Northern Scotland, where the cafes were still staffed by actual Scots. You could spend an hour waiting for your toasted cheese sandwich (£4.95 for cheese & onion in 2 slices of bread) to arrive.
Here in London, friendly Turks cook me a delicious bacon & tomato sandwich with chips in mere moments - and it costs less than that toastie did, too.
We sure do have a lot of murders, though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI3wbITyziI&feature=share
How most Jews view American conservatives and why sucking up to AIPAC won't work.
I'm surprised that no one has commented on the update to the Statesman article that Steve links at the end of his VDARE piece:
UPDATE, 12.26 20 July: Maurice Glasman has now sent me a response via email. Here it is in full:
I overstated the position [on immigration]. I was not talking about what should happen.
I want most importantly to reiterate my full and total support for immigrant communities in Britain. I have worked long and hard with people of all backgrounds, trying to build a common life, and have spent many years campaigning for a living wage for all workers in London, including for those from the most vulnerable migrant communities.
We all make mistakes. And this is mine. I just hope that it does not detract from the energy and real goodness of the work. I will do all I can too to strengthen frayed relationships.
In other words, "I don't want to lose my place amongst the EU's political elite over such a meaningless, silly thing like principles. Let's pretend I never said anything bad about immigration at all. Pleeeeeeease???"
Of course Glasman is Jewish, as is Miliband who hired him. 45 comments so far and no mention of that. I wonder why.
What are you, an anti-Semite?
As for friendly Russians and eastern Europeans, I've never once read an account of either place as "friendly." Quite the opposite, actually. So maybe they're all so friendly because they're happy to be out of Russia and eastern Europe.
Simon, last I heard, DC was turning more SWPL, not less.
The Ashville environs are heaven, btw.
Okay, I'll try it again without the expletives. Anon, (before reading Steve's piece) I was going to simply point out that both surnames are Jewish, without any further commentary. But now I'm going to point out that in the American context, they're very much the exception that proves the rule.
Btw, who fired Glasman?
Marshall Auerback connects the dots--
as we all recognize, US workers have been semi-permanently replaced by low cost foreign workers. Prior to these great advances, displacement of the current labor force could only have occurred through workers immigrating into the country... This process will continue until the US embraces a much more aggressive fiscal policy to promote employment growth (eg. a job guarantee program), highly unlikely given the current political configuration in the US or a political revolution of sorts.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/01/marshall-auerback-chinese-trade-policy-must-focus-on-social-consequences.html
Controlling immigration and the trade deficit are both a hell of lot more important than controlling the budget deficit (which always moves in sync with the unemployment rate). Except for Donald Trump, I can't think of a political figure of either party that understands this.
"Rather it is emotionalism. The problem is women, who love internationalism and the like. Seriously look at HGTV 'Househunters International' ... women love anything global, foreign, because it is 'glamorous.' Even Third World hellholes. The change you are looking at is female support for globalism, because it is Upper-Class. It is not natural for men to find their own people/history/interests awful, but women do this all the time. Think Paris fashions, etc."
Exactly.
Since women generally buy lots of stuff when they travel to all these exotic locales, I wonder if it's not some sort of nesting/gathering instinct gone terribly awry.
Those sad-sack limeys who say they love foreigners because they bring them their crappy cheese sandwiches a little faster just reinforces my view of the English as a nation emasculated fops.
Hmm. There is no real broad visceral support for mass immigration in the UK, the way there is in the US.
There is no broad support for mass immigration in the US.
Surveys indicate the average Brit would restrict immigration to Japanese levels, a few thousand a year.
Whereas in the USA 'nativisism' is a dirty word and you argue about whether it's OK to enforce your immigration laws against illegal immigrants. The centre of opinion in the USA seems far to the 'Left' of the UK on immigration....
You couldn't be more wrong about the US.
The more you ponder HBD theory, the more the modern era feels like one giant power grab, on the part of the elites, in an attempt to re-institute feudalism.
The goal is nothing at all like feudalism, which involved reciprocal obligations, being governed by people whom you knew, and (in D.S. Wilson's terms) "bidirectional control".
The idea that European socialists necessarily share some kind of pernicious open borders agenda has been pushed on right-wing blogs by neocons and libertarians who want to avoid people looking to European social democracies as any kind of U.S. model.
Oh, bullshit.
The idea that they share an open-borders agenda comes from WHAT THEY DO IN OFFICE.
Roosevelt and his heirs were not socialists, they were capitalist revisionists. Their aim was to preserve capitalism while mitigating its worst feature (the concentration of wealth)by a policy of re-distribution via government spending.
I agree with you about the worst feature of capitalism. Tawney's "Religion and the Rise of Capitalism" is a must-read.
However, you should think about the fact that Roosevelt's New Deal was designed to produce a concentration of wealth that businessman-capitalists could only dream of.
Check the figures indicating the amount of wealth the government-capitalists had at their disposal after the New Deal was put into effect.
The government did not re-distribute wealth through government spending. It re-distributed wealth -- to itself -- through taxation.
Immigration is bad for the people. It is good for the state.
That is exactly right.
The immigrants are clients of the State, agents of the State, part of an expanded State.
Raises taxes just a little on the lower members of top 1%. But raise it considerably on upper half of top 1%. And raise it higher yet on the top 0.01%--mostly Democratic Wall Streeters.
Really, in times like this, you should think about James Bowery's proposal to tax wealth and issue citizens' dividends.
Of course Glasman is Jewish, as is Miliband who hired him. 45 comments so far and no mention of that. I wonder why. (Steve does mention that in his column.)
The Glassmans are a breed apart. In Maryland, some of them actually ... farm! Senator Barry Glassman spoke at my aunt's funeral (she was a member of the House of Delegates), and he certainly isn't looking for multiculti points on his web page:
http://www.barryglassman.com/pictures.php
Leftists use shaming words to denigrate anybody who disagrees. Racist, sexist, homophobe, etc. Problem is, conservatives are so afraid to be called those things they get scared. It will only continue until conservatives start to shame liberals back. Liberals still like to claim they are for the common man (obviously they're not). Conservatives need to point out that their policies hurt Americans and to be aggressive in shaming them for their uncaring of American workers. Turn the tables, and show no fear.
As for friendly Russians and eastern Europeans, I've never once read an account of either place as "friendly."
My travel experiences say that Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Slovakians, and Czechs are indeed friendly.
Svigor wrote:
As for friendly Russians and eastern Europeans, I've never once read an account of either place as "friendly."
Hunsdon said:
On my last European trip, the friendliness, courtesy and efficiency I was shown by Aeroflot staff in Moscow vastly exceeded those same traits as displayed in Paris. My travels in the FSU really opened my eyes about many of the pretty lies I'd been taught as a child of the Cold War.
I despise Moscow, mostly because it reminds me of New York---too big, too crowded, too many rats in the cage---, but the places I've been to in Ukraine and Central Asia (mostly Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan) have struck me as friendly. The media, of course, loathe and despise Russians and Muslims. The Central Asian Muslims I met were almost uniformly "just plain folks" and I felt at home with them. YMMV.
"Yes, but more accurately, it is time for anti-immigrationists (of which I am one) to ADMIT that anti-immigration is LEFTIST. Yeah, that is right--WE are leftists here. We VDARE readers are leftists. Trueleftism means supporting the will of the majority. And the majority in EVERY nation does not want mass immigration.
And the elites everywhere DO want mass immigration.
The majority wants other things like progressive taxation and universal healthcare-- IF they, the majority are the real beneficiaries of these policies. The majority does not want to pay taxes to benefit some other race, some other culture that is unlike themselves and yet lives among them.
THis is a universal trait of homo sapiens.
This is how the elite use immigration and multiculti to drive the population to the right on economics."
Yep.
Right on - hence why SOCIALISM WORKS in places like Finland, and used to work in Norway or Sweden or Holland.
Also, folks, please note that the GOP is very tough on immigration come election time, but in reality, it is a wedge issue - just like any other wedge issue in American politics, it gets ignored after an election.
I wrote about it back in 2009 and it is high time others recognized how the elites are playing us for fools with this GOP vs Dems crap and wedge issues fight to the death while economic, geopolitical and strategic decisions both parties march in lock step.
http://americangoy.blogspot.com/2009/01/there-is-no-right-wing-there-is-no-left.html
It is all kabuki.
Vide the default - this will never be allowed to happen, it is just political posturing, much ado about nothing.
Worse, it is what Naomi Klein called "Disaster Capitalism", the manufacturing of crisis, to better "privatize" our social security (the mammon monster needs ever more money, and screwing people out of their 401k's is NOT enough).
George Selgin mocking local currencies.
Immigration is bad for the people. It is good for the state.
Yes.
Read this essay from Mexican President Vincent Fox's aide. It's a good explanation of why elites want more immigration. Essentially they want to dilute the power of the people with large numbers of poorly educated, malleable immigrations.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/back706.html
I was fairly impressed by Steve's understanding of Britain until I got to "It has always driven yuppie leftists mad with rage that they are expected to share their Labour Party with a bunch of working class laborers. For example, Lynsey Hanley denounced Glasman in The Guardian in a column entitled Labour must bury working-class conservatism, not praise it. [April 19, 2011]"
Lynsey Hanley is the reverse of a yuppie leftist. Her book "Estates, an intimate history", about public housing in Britain ("Estates" = "Projects" in the US, I think) derives from her own experience of growing up on, and continuing to live in, council estates in Britain. There is not a more authentically "working class" writer in Britain.
Glasman was educated at the universities of Cambridge, York and Florence, but is now a senior lecturer in some joke subject at London Metropolitan University. No non-Brit could possibly know how bad that is. An LMU degree is literally worse than no degree. The company I work for would consider an applicant without a degree who wanted to qualify part-time while working, but one with an LMU degree goes straight in the bin. I assume that the staff of such a rubbish uni must be rubbish themselves, so that's all I need to know about Glasman.
Although here's a piece of trivia: Glasman went to the same London school as Samuel Gompers.
The first wave of mass immigration to Britain came in the 1950s and 1960s and was overseen by the old imperialist elites of the Conservative party, who felt they were doing the decent thing by their old colonial subjects by allowing them into the 'mother country'. The working class people of (mainly) England were of course never consulted, and never have been since. There was relatively little immigration between the 1960s and Blair's accession to power in 1997, when any pretence at controlling or limiting immigration was abandoned. The economy was fairly strong in those days and there was a huge and prolonged feel-good factor surrounding New Labour's victory (hard to imagine now, but there was), so this was largely done on the quiet and they were able to get away with it.
Voices began to be raised in the 2000s, but immigration continued virtually unchecked, and on a truly vast scale. The New Labour elite were archetypal champagne socialists for whom immigration meant exotic restaurants, cheap nannies and builders, and to hell with the icky white English people (by contrast, the N. Irish, Scots and Welsh - the latter two traditional Labour strongholds - were well looked after) whose country was being methodically destroyed. Much of N. Labour's project was clearly political - they have rarely commanded a strong vote in England so the replacement of the English with docile foreigners who were either apolitical or loyal to the party that had let them in, and whose presence en masse would drive ever increasing numbers of English people to flee abroad, made perfect political sense - an object lesson in dissolving the people and electing a new one. Another major plank of their assault on England was to 'regionalise' (balkanise) it out of existence - textbook divide-and-rule - while recognising Scotland, Wales and N.I. as indivisible nations and reinforcing their national identities. Labour was effectively waging war on England and the English people (there is much more I could write but will forbear).
They've only been partly successful, of course - we persist wearily on while they bide their time in opposition, waiting for their next chance to unleash a demographic onslaught on us - but a lot of damage has been done. My sense is that opposing mass immigration is marginally more permissible here than in the US - there is still a general feeling of being some kind of an ethnic entity rather than a 'proposition nation' - but it's still highly likely to see you demonized as a racist. I'm from the rural backwaters of the west and these areas are likely to remain ours for some time yet, but most of the cities, and especially London, are zero-trust multuculti anthills which are only going to get worse. The future doesn't look bright.
BritRob
From Civilisation: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson.
page 290
However, if the Muslim population of the UK were to continue growing at an annual rate of 6.7 per cent (as it did between 2004 and 2008), its share of the total UK population would rise from just under 4 per cent in 2008 to 8 per cent in 2020, to 15 per cent in 2030 and to 28 per cent in 2040, finally passing 50 per cent in 2050.
note 95 on page 345
Calculated from figures in the UK Labour Force Survey and the United Nations Population Prospects middle projection. see also ' Muslim Population "Rising 10 Times Faster than Rest of Society" ' , The Times, 30 January 2009.
"The centre of opinion in the USA seems far to the 'Left' of the UK on immigration...."
"You couldn't be more wrong about the US."
The media distortions about the USA into the EU must be extreme. Nothing unifies Americans across the political spectrum to shut down congressional phone lines like a bill that involves amnesty or citizen privileges for illegals. Some of those calls are obviously from self-identifying liberals. H1B visa immigration is extremely unpopular when people learn about it. Some politicians are even broaching the topic of a limiting legal immigration until there are enough jobs for citizens.
Right on - hence why SOCIALISM WORKS in places like Finland, and used to work in Norway or Sweden or Holland.
Then how come socialism never worked in the US when it was more racially homogenous, but we are moving in that direction now that it is turning into a Tower of Babel?
non de guerre:
"Those sad-sack limeys who say they love foreigners because they bring them their crappy cheese sandwiches a little faster just reinforces my view of the English as a nation emasculated fops."
I find that mildly offensive.
MiserableOldBrit:
"Glasman was educated at the universities of Cambridge, York and Florence, but is now a senior lecturer in some joke subject at London Metropolitan University. No non-Brit could possibly know how bad that is. An LMU degree is literally worse than no degree. The company I work for would consider an applicant without a degree who wanted to qualify part-time while working, but one with an LMU degree goes straight in the bin"
I was going to argue you were being unfair, but:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2011/may/17/university-league-table-2012
Glad to see my place of employment is a good way higher up!
Have you tried to deal with a native English waitress or hotel worker? Surly, ugly and incompetent. Now all those positions seem to be staffed by hot, friendly Russians and other Eastern Europeans.
Sour faced Eastern blocker chicks cheerier than chirpy Essex girls... Christ... What a concept...
I agree with Londoner. That's pretty much how it is, and Labour have even admitted it.
Opposing immigration is much more acceptable in the UK than US. If David Cameron were to propose his immigration cap in our country, he'd be demonized as a racist/xenophobe/white supremacist. You might think it funny that someone as blandly cosmopolitan could be called a white supremacist, but in the US anything is possible. In our country, especially over the past 10 years, the media and the politicians have flipped the lid. At this point, pretty much everything is racist. It's hard to describe the degree to which insanity has gripped America, particularly on racial issues.
"Really, in times like this, you should think about James Bowery's proposal to tax wealth and issue citizens' dividends."
Agreed. Base the dividend program on Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend program. There'd be more bang for the buck if the payouts were limited to registered voters (sorry felons and illegals!) and paid out quarterly instead of (per Alaska) annually.
http://www.pfd.state.ak.us/index.aspx
I stand corrected on eastern European friendliness. Though I don't think of Poland or the Czech Republic as eastern Europe.
One of the biggest problems I have with Whiskey's women-blaming vis-a-vis immigration is that it assumes the elite gives the people what they want, which is of course absurd. They do what they want to do.
Plus, it has no predictive power. If it did, Japan would've been flooded with non-yellow immigrants by now, since Japanese men are such a pack of "betas." Same with China. The Japanese and Chinese elite don't want Japan or China flooded with foreigners (and in the case of China, there's no economic incentive), so they aren't.
Simple. I don't see much to applaud in Whiskey's covering fire for our traitorous elite.
Reply to Londoner:
I agree with 90% of what you say. But it was actually THE LABOUR PARTY IN THE LATE 1940'S that began opening Britain to non-white immigration, not the conservatives. They do it every time they get in power. Tony Blair was just a particularly obvious and egregious example of this.
Recent anonymous - yes you're absolutely right, the Windrush came in 1948 or thereabouts didn't it. I suppose Britain was still an empire rather than a state in those days so the British govt felt it owed a duty to the working men of Africa, India and the Caribbean as much as it did to the working men of Britain itself. Still stupid though, and it would have been easy to have learned from and avoid repeating the mistakes of the last rulers of Rome if there had but been the will.
That said, the Tories were back in power within a few years and did very little if anything to limit, still less reverse migration from the ex-colonies. They were, and remain, too secure from its effects in their country estates. Labour is still worse though, and can count itself amazingly lucky that its white (ex-)working class base hasn't completely abandoned it for the BNP - although this might yet happen.
Side note: something like 500,000 jobs were created in Britain over the past two years - of which EIGHTY PERCENT were taken by foreigners. The number of British workers in employment actually FELL. These figures are astounding. Both labour and conservative actively want us to be replaced by foreigners in the employment market, if not altogether.
Svigor:
"I stand corrected on eastern European friendliness. Though I don't think of Poland or the Czech Republic as eastern Europe."
I think you have a good point - Eastern Europeans can be hospitable in their own homes, but in terms of service ethic as waiters, cleaners etc they tend to be pretty horrible (even the Finns!). The 'friendly, efficient Easterners' we Brits are now used to are almost 100% Polish Catholics, with small numbers of other middle-European Catholic nationalities.
Regime defectors, nice!
Thanks for covering this Blue Labour topic Steve; I heard it being cursed and castigated in the Guardian but hadn't had it explained until now.
Look at this comment from a New Statesman reader:
Personally I find Blue Labour to be a pretty disgusting ideology.
It blames the problems of today on areas way we have made progress, rather than areas where we haven't made progress.
It's also factually incorrect. It blames immigration for depressing wages, yet immigration only replaced the 2 million people who were long term unenemployed. If those people had gone into the job market, then it would have had the same effect on wages.
It's a backwards ideology that is the brainchild of a few weirdos and should be ignored.
Pure genius.
american goy wrote:
"Right on - hence why SOCIALISM WORKS in places like Finland, and used to work in Norway or Sweden or Holland."
Agreed. But let's called it 'economic leftism' instead of socialism. That way the words trip fewer word filters of the drones around here.
This idea that diversity kills off economic leftism is a very very important one. The elite have used it for hundreds of years. This idea was the basis of the founding of the USA. Now I am going to use another word: factions.
And factions can be used in place of diversity. Factions is a broader word, but encompasses the same content, and more.
When you understand how the elite use factions in the populace, and how they increases factions in the populace, then you understand the most fundamental concept of politics.
-squire jons
Londoner:"I suppose Britain was still an empire rather than a state in those days so the British govt felt it owed a duty to the working men of Africa, India and the Caribbean as much as it did to the working men of Britain itself."
I don't think this is quite right. Britain had a severe labour shortage as it tried to reconstruct after WWII while paying off Uncle Shylock. As Britain had looked to its empire for a lot of its soldiers in WWII (IMO the greatest achievement of the British Empire was to mobilize a quarter of the world to fight the Axis) it was natural to look to it for labour. And who better than English-speaking British subjects from the West Indies? Certainly preferable to culturally-alien Europeans who had never known democracy.
To be fair to Glasman, his proposed immigration restriction is more honest than Cameron's. The largest component of immigration to the UK is from the EU, over which the UK government has no control whatsoever. Glasman says that's got to be stopped. In contrast, Cameron's "tough" restrictions apply only to legal immigration from outside the EU - already the smallest component.
As a child of the Soviet Block, I am confused by the area being described as "friendly" by the visitors. Did things change THAT much in the past 15 years? Are they just pandering to the rich westerners?
During that first fresh-of-the-plane year, I remember being constantly shocked by how nice, patient and warm middle class Americans were. Also, my parents kept feeling paranoid and saying that "they are all up to something" because Americans smile all the damn time. Now I smile all the damn time, and older people at family parties always ask me what's there to smile about.
It's also factually incorrect. It blames immigration for depressing wages, yet immigration only replaced the 2 million people who were long term unenemployed. If those people had gone into the job market, then it would have had the same effect on wages.
So the commentator's (on New Statesman) logic is that it's a good idea to pay poor White people unemployment benefits to avoid them going to wage competition, but at the same time force wage competition by bringing vast numbers of foreign people in?
Even though (even if we assume the wage competition would be identical) this would have the same effect as the other except a) imposing a larger tax burden (don't worry - that's what sovereign debt is for!), and b) leave the long term unemployed vulnerable and dependent on this system, removing the ability for them to have a normal life orientated around work that would allow them to approve thier station, and c) everyone in contempt for the long term unemployed White people as lazy people (and long term unemployed second generation assimilated Black people and even poor Muslim communities to some extent).
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