tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51331766316619209432024-03-13T02:20:12.548+00:00A Free Left BlogThis is the official blog of Ben Cobley, author of 'The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity'. Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.comBlogger155125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-37540847809168449852021-06-19T06:07:00.001+01:002021-06-19T06:11:36.616+01:00A Response to a Response to my piece on The Lark Ascending<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">An Open Letter to Tom W Green, a composer and musician based
in Glasgow.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal">Dear Tom, </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thank you for alerting me to <a href="https://tomwgreen.medium.com/the-farts-ascending-classical-music-and-the-culture-war-7afe11a56233" target="_blank">your blogpost</a> entitled ‘The Farts Ascending: Classical Music and the Culture War’, albeit with a <a href="https://twitter.com/tomtomgreencomp/status/1405921182726098949?s=20" target="_blank">rather unfriendly tweet</a> saying that it was “partly in response” to my “<a href="https://unherd.com/2021/06/why-the-elites-hate-vaughan-williams/" target="_blank">nonsense article</a> that tried to concoct a culture war from RVW's The Lark Ascending”.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I read it with interest. In responding here, I would like to address a number of factual errors and
omissions you make which should be corrected.</p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>You call me “a right wing author”. This is untrue. I am actually of the left. I was a Labour Party member from 2010 to 2016 and still count myself of the left. My blog on which this letter is published is called <i>A Free Left Blog</i>. At no point have I said that I am no longer of the left. This assertion is at the core of your argument and should be corrected.</li><li>Understandably, you use the original title of <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">my piece</a>, ‘Why The Elites Hate Vaughan Williams’. However perhaps you are unaware that this was changed to ‘Why progressives don’t like The Lark Ascending’ a few days before you published your response? I had no part in deciding the original title and asked for it to be changed, which it was the day after the piece was published.</li><li>You talk about me invoking what you call “the usual pastoral nationalist platitudes about RVW’s biggest hit”. However you miss out how I was referring to such things as observation of how <i>others </i>receive it, which then helps to provoke some of the negative anti-nationalist response to the piece (or the ‘<i>wider world</i>’ of the piece as I describe it).</li><li>You say I make “a crude comparison between the musical phrases of the piece and the rolling English Countryside”. This comparison, albeit without capitalising the countryside in Teutonic fashion, was made by the late conductor Richard Hickox. I think you should make clear that you are criticising his interpretation rather than making out it is something I crudely came up with myself.</li><li>You mention that “Cobley has found a total of three people who dislike the piece”. This is an error. In the published piece there are mentions of/links to five people who have publicly expressed dislike, while others were edited out from the original version and still more I did not have space to include. This is an error that should be corrected.</li><li>You say that I am trying “to conclude that the instrumental piece is an actual representation of English conservatism in sound”. This is an error. I did not say anything to this effect and indeed you provide no evidence for it.</li><li>You say that, “to make the piece work as a nationalist symbol, every element must be reduced to a cheap signifier of the soil of England”. However I make no such claims. My conclusions about the piece have no mention of England. They are about the piece’s apparently special meaning to people experiencing or coming out of depression. I believe neither of the two people I quote on this are English, let alone invoking ‘the soil of England’.</li><li>You say I ignore how VW “wrote some profoundly disturbing (and brilliant) music, such as his 4th Symphony.” This is because the article is about the <i>Lark Ascending</i> on its 100th birthday. I certainly do not ignore this symphony more generally. I listen to it regularly, indeed far more than I do the Lark. As I said recently on Twitter, it is currently my favourite piece of his.</li></ol><p class="MsoNormal">Yours Faithfully,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ben Cobley</p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span><p></p>Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-90200100944928643362020-06-11T06:33:00.000+01:002020-06-11T06:33:12.040+01:00Black Lives Matter - how should we respond?<i>This article was posted yesterday, 10th June 2020, on the <a href="https://sdp.org.uk/sdptalk/black-lives-matter-how-should-we-respond/" target="_blank">SDPtalk</a> website.</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><p>Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a masterpiece of political marketing.</p><p>It’s a slogan with a campaign attached, linked to some pretty heavy racial ideology and propaganda. None of it can be criticised without appearing to oppose the idea that black lives do indeed matter.</p><p>BLM is a classic and effective piece of rhetorical blackmail. Either get on board or you’re a racist: that is the logic of it - a logic driven by fear.</p><p>It’s the perfect slogan, as befitting the powerful alignment between progressive liberal-left politics and the PR, media and advertising industries across the Anglophone world. There’s an immediate and powerful social block on even questioning this movement just from its name.</p><p>One of the great successes of the campaign is how it has got many institutions in our society applying this block themselves, promoting the organisation and even punishing insiders who publicly question and criticise any activities carried out under the BLM branding. Manx Radio <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-52936980">suspended</a> presenter Stu Peters for responding to the movement with the phrase ‘all lives matter’ and questioning the idea of ‘white privilege’ live on air. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52940249">Literature Wales removed</a> Western Mail journalist Martin Shipton from the Wales Book of the Year judging panel for comments criticising BLM on social distancing. In the mainstream broadcast media, the group has barely been challenged.</p><p>It appears that institutional Britain has broadly accepted that <em>political</em> support for Black Lives Matter is compulsory, seemingly without questioning it or being able to critically assess its goals.</p><p>There’s a sort of totalitarianism about this but not a totalitarianism of the state. Rather, we see a largely voluntary gathering of non-state and state actors to push its slogans and talking points using their public relations functions and broadcasting ability. This reflects a longstanding ritual in our society of ‘giving-way’ to progressive identity activists who present themselves and the groups they claim to represent as victims in need of special protection or favour.</p><p>It’s likely that very few people in institutional Britain have a clue what they are supporting when they back BLM, as <a href="https://twitter.com/England/status/1268935615170531328?s=20">the England football teams</a> did before the weekend’s protests and as <a href="https://twitter.com/YorkshireTea/status/1270047023669133316?s=20">Yorkshire Tea</a> has done since, despite the rioting and <a href="https://twitter.com/PMBreakingNews/status/1269720939807326216?s=20">attacks on police</a>.</p><p>However, as <a href="https://twitter.com/David_Goodhart/status/1269744644658728966?s=20">David Goodhart tweeted</a>, if you check out the Black Lives Matter UK <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/ukblm-fund">GoFundMe page</a> (which has raised a remarkable £775,000 in just seven days at the time of writing), what you find is disingenuous “far left nonsense”.</p><p>The BLM manifesto, seemingly copied and pasted from previous far left campaigns, tells us,</p><blockquote><p>“We’re guided by a commitment to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white-supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures that disproportionately harm black people in Britain and around the world.”</p></blockquote><p>It says it will spend the funds on political lobbying, “Developing and delivering healing practices in black communities”, whatever that means, and “Developing and delivering training, police monitoring and strategies for the abolition of police.” It also talks about wanting “reparations of black people dealing with generational trauma and institutional racism”.</p><p>It’s drivel, but dangerous drivel: trying to stir up grievance among their target groups and shame governments, business and individuals into giving them and other activists money: a kind of political protection racket.</p><p>I think our major institutions – and indeed many of us as individuals, let’s be honest – give way to this sort of stuff because we are weak and what we really stand for is not easily condensed into a simple slogan.</p><p>Supporting progressive identity activism gives us a quick ‘hit’ of that meaning and purpose we lack, making us appear in a positive light to those who dominate our public life and those who go along with this domination. The identity activists exploit this for all its worth.</p><p>Superficially this ‘virtue signalling’ makes life easier, while thinking for ourselves and going against the grain makes things harder.</p><p>However, going along with it doesn’t ultimately protect us. The demands keep on coming. For BLM is a campaign with no possible limits and no end in sight. They always want more and always have accusations of racism in their back pocket to use if you choose to resist.</p><p>Repeatedly giving way to activists has led to their domination of our major institutions, in which many now hold gatekeeper positions and are increasingly moving into top jobs where they can direct money and power to their own groups and away from others.</p><p>This is the way it’s going. We can see it in America with <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/06/06/leftists-are-in-firm-control-at-the-new-york-times-goodwin/?utm_source=twitter_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%2520buttons&utm_campaign=site%2520buttons">the New York Times</a> and other media outlets. We can also see it in our own BBC, many of whose presenters now openly propagate radical identity politics, seemingly not bothered by the damage they are doing to one of our country’s greatest creations and its reputation for impartiality. The BBC routinely gives BLM activists a platform to voice nebulous claims - claims which the corporation apparently lacks the inclination or the will to scrutise. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish activists from BBC presenters.</p><p>As they demand more and more favouritism (normally via the apparently harmless idea of ‘representation’), those taking on an activist role do immense damage to race relations. It may work for them personally in the short term, but it is a disaster for the cause they claim to be advocating for.</p><p>After all, racial favouritism in the form of conventional white-on-black racism is what this movement is meant to be opposing.</p><p>Favouritism is ultimately toxic for trust in organisations and society as a whole. By promoting more and more of it, to the extent that they and their causes appear untouchable, BLM activists, their celebrity fans and the weak and naive institutions that indulge them are creating the conditions for resentment to thrive.</p><p>Social Democrats must resist this and patiently explain to people what is going on whenever we get the chance – and encourage people to think for themselves rather than be browbeaten by activists.</p><p>Perhaps the saddest irony of BLM is that its programme, if implemented, would unite black and all other lives in the harm done to them.</p><p>We’re up against it - but that’s all the more reason to try.</p></div>Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-61058957505710884362020-05-02T07:47:00.000+01:002020-05-02T08:09:45.830+01:00A response to David LammyIn his recently-published book <i>Tribes</i>, the Labour MP David Lammy, newly-appointed as Keir Starmer's Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, makes a number of accusations against me based on a reading of my book <i>The Tribe</i>.<br />
<br />
As you can see from the passage below, Lammy calls my book "conspiratorial", saying that I "chastised" his words in responding to the Grenfell Tower disaster "as an example of identity politics' most flagrant excesses".<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dWqG9FmD95M/Xq0FimVffiI/AAAAAAAAAm4/0K01pqPgZ9Ete0Ig4AYnw9uamyuk7IoxwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Lammy%2B06-2%2B-%2Bseems%2Bto%2Bbe%2Bfirst%2Bbit%2Bof%2Bsection%2Bon%2Bmy%2Bbook.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="680" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dWqG9FmD95M/Xq0FimVffiI/AAAAAAAAAm4/0K01pqPgZ9Ete0Ig4AYnw9uamyuk7IoxwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Lammy%2B06-2%2B-%2Bseems%2Bto%2Bbe%2Bfirst%2Bbit%2Bof%2Bsection%2Bon%2Bmy%2Bbook.png" width="320" /></a></div>
However, if you read the passage from my book that he quotes afterwards, I think you will find none of that.<br />
<br />
I certainly didn't set out to chastise him or anyone else in the book.<br />
<br />
Rather, I was seeking to <i>describe </i>how progressive identity politics (or the identity politics of the 'liberal-left' as I describe it in the book) has become so utterly normal that a senior politician can respond to a deadly fire by putting not just skin colour, but gender, front and centre of how he responds to it and what he demands of the state and wider society in its response.*<br />
<br />
I put Lammy's response to the Grenfell Tower disaster at the start of <i>The Tribe</i> because it was a good example of how people on the progressive liberal-left now <i>see the world</i> through this framework of identity; through the prism of good and bad identity groups; victims and oppressors.<br />
<br />
As I wrote in the Preface of the book,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I wanted to look at how the liberal-left operates on a daily basis, through the voices of its major figures, in the words of its activists and supporters, and through the practices of 'institutions of diversity' like the Labour Party, the Guardian and the BBC. I critique what is said and done, sometimes forcibly. However, the point is not to blame individuals but to extract examples of typical, customary practices - and show how they fit together.</blockquote>
This is the opposite of the 'conspiratorial' approach that Lammy condemns me for. Rather, I was trying to show how the system of diversity and its base of knowledge about identity-based oppression is "a form of society," which "brings people together and gives us a way of relating to each other."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oXLebu-t7go/Xq0L54OH7wI/AAAAAAAAAnE/oJ0gES7UZl0_F8IsywlSJJd_Jxur6v1rgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Lammy%2B05-2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="680" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oXLebu-t7go/Xq0L54OH7wI/AAAAAAAAAnE/oJ0gES7UZl0_F8IsywlSJJd_Jxur6v1rgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Lammy%2B05-2.png" width="320" /></a>Lammy actually gives a great demonstration of this at work in the passage to the right here, in which he accuses me of "white fragility" based on the theory of an American academic who runs diversity workshops - so reducing my work to an emotional state based on my skin colour - a textbook example of identity politics assigning negative traits to unfavoured groups.<br />
<br />
However, more interesting is the sort of half-confession that follows in which he describes how he "didn't make an intentional decision to analyse Grenfell along racial lines"; and that, "as someone who is black, my experience of the world is unavoidably shaped by race."<br />
<br />
Like his accusation of 'white fragility', this is an expression of racial determinism; of apparently necessary submission to certain responses based on one's skin colour (contradicted by his academic who has gone the other way). If he didn't make "an intentional decision", it must have been something else - a determinism of identity in which our thoughts are not not intentional, but prescribed by the world; a consequence of experience "unavoidably shaped" by such things as skin colour and gender.<br />
<br />
In this sort of account, <i>how we act</i> is determined by <i>who we are</i> rather than who we are shaped by how we act.<br />
<br />
Our agency and ability to think and decide for ourselves are gone.<br />
<br />
For me, this little passage of Lammy's is a really good personalised account of how 'the system of diversity' works. It appears to be an honest attempt to describe accurately what was going on in his mind and in his world when he appeared in front of the cameras at Grenfell. And what was going on was that he wasn't thinking so much about the event as slipping into a conditioned response; of submitting to the same way he responds to other events, of allocating his response to what he describes as <i>his own</i> experience.<br />
<br />
In the process he was shedding his capacity to decide for himself, to evaluate this particular event on its own merits. For him, simply because the vast majority of victims at Grenfell were not white-skinned people of British ethnicity, then it fitted the same old stories about victimhood and oppression, of good identity groups who need protection and representation against the bad identity groups who oppress them.<br />
<br />
He could slip into this response without even thinking.<br />
<br />
This is what I mean by 'the system of diversity' at the basic, existential level. It is something we fall into, that is easy and available; comforting even. It tells us stories which are simple and familiar, which provide easy answers to often difficult questions.<br />
<br />
It's not a conspiracy, but a way of life.<br />
<br />
<br />
* <i>I think we can see similar things going on now with the political (and also institutional, state) response to the Covid-19 virus - with many liberal-left politicians and activists claiming it as an example of systemic racism at work given that people of non-white British ethnic backgrounds appear to be more affected.</i>Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-84745054911603457652020-02-21T17:34:00.000+00:002020-02-23T07:08:17.427+00:00On race and racism in everyday life – or how the race ideologues are winning <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Public, political and institutional discourse can often
appear strangely detached from ordinary, everyday life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On identity politics, now a specialist area for me,
there was a time when my own everyday life seemed blessedly free of race
antagonism. Race/skin colour and ethnicity appeared as a borderline irrelevance
that we seemed at least close to transcending. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that hasn’t been so for many non-white people. However
I have heard from some who have said the same. Of course, sometimes I have
witnessed or been part of incidents in which these things came to the fore –
either conventional racism or racism used as an accusation to attack someone
else. On other occasions I have smelt it in the air, palpable and unmistakable,
while remaining under the surface, just.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However in the last four days race has appeared front and
centre in my ordinary life, just being around in London, three times. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first occasion was in a bus station when a
scrawny-looking white man appeared stumbling along the payment and stuck his
face right into that of a young East Asian woman who was waiting for a bus next
to me. He then turned on me and stared. I looked back at him in the eyes. He
stuck his head towards me but, like the woman, I didn’t flinch. He cried, ‘You
English?’ in a tone that assumed I wasn’t; that no one was around here. I didn’t
say a word and eventually he went off: a pathetic, desperate man. On
reflection, my initial contempt towards him turned into a measure of sympathy
for this obvious loser.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The next evening at a pub I got talking to an oldish black
man: a patently nice, decent bloke who told me he didn’t like the way some
people questioned diversity and equality – mentioning in evidence the actor
Laurence Fox, who caused a stir with his appearance on Question Time not long
ago. <br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I asked him what he meant and he said that Fox gave the
impression that he didn’t like people like him. He said he experienced racism “every
day of the week”. I confess I got a whiff of ideology at this point and asked
him to give an example from that day. He failed to do that, or to give any
examples at all, saying that I couldn’t possibly understand it. He added that
he went to Dublin recently and felt like he was treated much better over there;
seemingly just the way he felt walking around.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The third incident was today when walking into a train station.
A mixed race man with two small children was coming the other way and was shouting,
seemingly at someone behind, “I AM A PERFECTLY GOOD, COMPETENT PARENT. YOU KNOW
IT’S 2020 NOW! THE DAYS OF COONERY ARE OVER!!!” [For those who don’t know, ‘coonery’
refers to the racist term ‘coon’]. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
He didn’t look in the best of shape and neither did the
children, with dirty clothes and faces. I had obviously come across them in the
aftermath of an incident or some words exchanged and this was his response. I
could see no sign of anyone else involved and certainly no hostility from
anyone else towards him.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My immediate personal, existential response – you might say
prejudice – was sympathy towards whoever had caused this man to react in the
way he did. Anyone who shows any public concern on occasion experiences
backlashes like this – sometimes with recourse to identity and sometimes not. But
on reflection, I realised I had a similar feeling towards him as I did towards
the racist at the bus station. They were both defensive, angry men: lashing out
at others who were either minding their own business or, I presume (perhaps
wrongly), showing a bit of concern for the world around them and for other
people. The latter man was lashing out, just as the racist was, turning his own
poor state of being on to others; making them share his poor life-situation. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However there is one difference I would like to highlight. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The conventional racist guy was plumbing the depths of
pathetic desperation: he was the ultimate loser in life’s lottery. This man was
preening and triumphant. The racist had few words; he was a mumbling wreck.
This man had language and theory at hand. His words were those of the system
and of progressive public discourse. Since it was 2020 now, so he had it, people
with non-white skin colour should not experience negativity – and anyone
inflicting negativity of any kind of them could be called a racist.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He had been paying attention and processing the messages of
public discourse, deploying them in his own life. This was the same as what the
man in the pub was doing. He was repeating the lines of race
ideologue-activists like Afua Hirsch more or less word-for-word. He was having a go at
Laurence Fox for apparently being racist, when Fox said we should oppose actual
racism whenever we find it. The race activists' narrative has become so familiar it is now embedded within people. It is second-nature.<br />
<br />
The trouble with race activism, as the Question Time discourse
involving Fox amply demonstrated, is that racism is now routinely deployed where it
isn’t present. In those circumstances it is a weapon: an example of how identity politics so easily degenerates into pure power politics.<br />
<br />
The theory that helps facilitate this is that
racism is structural rather than behavioural.
Under this framework, the whole of society is racist. White-skinned people are
racist just for being white. Non-whites can be racist without knowing it: through false-consciousness. Racism is
universal. Any negativity a non-white person experiences in life can be
confidently attributed to it.<br />
<br />
And only the ideologue knows this properly. To be right and to be seen as right, you need to adopt the ideology. It is ultimately a politics of authority, of will-to-power: authority, status and at least a measure of social power comes from adopting the race-ideologue's narrative.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some of the most popular, lauded black-skinned musicians in this country
like Stormzy and Dave –performers who our major media companies push as <i>representing</i> black people – have adopted
this narrative almost wholesale. As they put it, ‘Britain is a
racist country’: a sweeping absolutist statement straight out of the ideologue’s
mouth. They are now ideologues themselves: quasi-intellectuals telling us how things are and what we should do.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I can’t see any good in this.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It will surely push us further apart, make us less willing
to talk across racial boundaries and engage and listen to each other. <br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If we assume the Other is evil and racist or if we are
afraid they are going to accuse us of being so - and potentially put our livelihood
at risk – why engage at all? The natural, easy response is retreat into existential
and physical ghettoes: to put ourselves behind walls where They can’t get at us.
This is the existential logic of multiculturalism and indeed of diversity
ideology as well as conventional racism: all pit us against each other based on
approved, ideological prejudice about how bad the Other is.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I would like to express some hope for the future. I think
there are some grounds, but mostly in quiet corners and spaces where people are
thinking for themselves rather than preaching and issuing or taking
instructions. However, when the BBC is commissioning Hirsch to present a couple
of programmes instructing us about Whiteness, it appears to show how most
movement is in the other direction; that race ideology is established right at
the centre of our society and is pushing outwards from it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The more we all talk about race, the more we think racially,
and the more we divide each other based on race, the more the race activists
win. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And along these lines they do indeed appear to be winning.</div>
<br />Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-39541386220707559832019-10-02T07:29:00.002+01:002019-10-02T11:49:40.841+01:00On impartiality in broadcast journalism – follow-up to Spiked piece<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I had <a href="https://spiked-online.com/2019/09/26/what-has-happened-to-the-media/" target="_blank">a short piece published for Spiked</a> a few days ago about the erosion of impartiality
in broadcast journalism.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
In this piece I only had the space to relay a few
thoughts I’d been having in response to various journalists’ tweets. Quoting
them in full meant there was little space to develop thoughts and put them in
proper context. So I thought I’d write a follow-up piece here on my blog.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Clearly, the erosion of standards is a much wider phenomenon
than what broadcast journalists (who are meant to be impartial according to
OFCOM rules) say on Twitter. What they say there <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> important, for it shows us how they think, how this thinking
informs their broadcasting and other things like how they tend to act as a pack,
enthusiastically running with some stories but not others. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
However the real proof is what they do in their
broadcasting – and this leaves a lot to be desired. For my part, I have now largely
given up on mainstream news, bored by the subjects it focuses on and annoyed by
the angles it takes to address them, which are normally those of the mainstream
progressive liberal-left plus the broadly neoliberal consensus (for ‘openness’)
when it comes to economics and business. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
From my experience as a journalist I sometimes
reflect on how there are roughly three categories of reporter, whether written
or broadcast (probably worth emphasising that the reporter is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a type</i> of journalist, distinct from those
who provide comment): </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Book Antiqua"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Book Antiqua";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Those
who develop close relations with their sources and become a first port of call
for any stories those sources might want to appear in the public sphere;</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Book Antiqua"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Book Antiqua";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Those
who seek to remain neutral and report what’s going on without favour to any one
side – something never completely achieved; and </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Book Antiqua"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Book Antiqua";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Those
who are weak, lazy and not very good, for whom the obvious temptation is to
become a bastardised version of the first category, to simply repeat people
saying what everyone else is saying.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The first category has an important place in the media
firmament, but obviously they (and the third type who fall in behind them) can easily
end up being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de facto</i> mouthpieces for
their sources. Indeed that is part of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">quid
pro quo </i>of their relationships with their sources. Since most sources in
and around British politics and organised civil society are pro-Remain, that
means pretty much all of these journalists in our current media have become mouthpieces
for pro-Remain politics and campaigning – and that’s a very large chunk.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
In that sense the way so many of our broadcast
journalists appear in the same way as pro-Remain and progressive liberal-left merely
reflects the biases of most of the people they are speaking to. It would take
considerable effort for someone to stay neutral when they are continually
talking to important people who have very strong opinions, almost all in the
same direction, and attacking the other side relentlessly. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
In <a href="https://spiked-online.com/2019/09/26/what-has-happened-to-the-media/" target="_blank">the Spiked article</a> I concluded by talking about the role of progressive
identity politics in this, in how its power,</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“lies largely in how it has become established in our
major institutions, like the media. Advocates have succeeded in presenting it
as a moral necessity, as above politics, as apparently independent and beyond
contest.<br />
<o:p> </o:p>In this way, progressive identity politics has become a
main route for advocacy to enter our broadcast media. And progressive identity
politics is almost completely aligned against Brexit, waging that culture war
with Boris Johnson as its primary target.”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
By appearing to be promoting a sort of impartial justice
rather than politics, progressive identity politics provides protection and
justification for journalists introducing politics into their reporting, for
becoming advocates. In his parting shot to the BBC, the long-standing Radio 4
Today programme presenter <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7487661/Broadcaster-John-Humphrys-lifts-lid-institutional-liberal-bias-BBC.html" target="_blank">John Humphrys referred to</a> how the corporation had created,</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“the new post of
LGBT correspondent — and the man appointed said: ‘I’m looking forward to being
the mouthpiece for some marginalised groups . . .’ . . . <span style="background: white;">Obviously, the BBC must give a voice to minorities,
but it must not act as anyone’s mouthpiece. That’s what lobbyists and public
relations people do. To confuse the two is to undermine the job of a
journalist.”<o:p></o:p></span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
To me, it appears that the problems with this approach haven’t been fully thought-through by the bosses.<br />
<br />
For a start, it would appear that this introduction of identity politics advocacy into our
major media organisations is having a major effect on output – not least in seemingly
making it acceptable for journalists <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">who
are not meant to be</i> mouthpieces to show their allegiance to the same causes
and any politics which is aligned to them (notably anti-Brexit politics). </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Moreover, if your purpose becomes more to promote people who
correctly ‘represent’ certain identity groups like the BBC and other media organisations
are doing, of promoting them to appear in the right way as victims to be
favoured, other purposes must necessarily decline in importance. It is surely
inevitable that quality is going to suffer. So, by definition, is any
commitment to impartiality.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Also, what about those who don’t feel themselves correctly
or sufficiently represented, or represented at all? The commitment to representation seems
destined to promote more and more grievance lobbying, out of which the
strongest, most organised interest groups (the ‘representatives’, not those
apparently represented) will no doubt prevail, i.e. those linked into the
progressive identity politics scene. No one is ever going to be satisfied - or at least claim to be satisfied. It is a recipe for rancour and dissatisfaction.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
By taking this path, I think that the BBC in particular,
as the state national broadcaster, has set itself up for a major crisis of
legitimacy. I also think the
same crisis is going to envelop most of our major institutions, since almost
without exception they have been embracing identity group representation as a
core goal. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
So this is a much wider issue than about Twitter,
broadcast journalism and the media. It is about our organised society as a
whole. In their drive to, often unwittingly, embrace progressive identity
politics through via the rubric of diversity and inclusion, our major
institutions have committed to a certain brand of politics – a highly
ideological form which does not leave much space for doubt, thought or notions
of impartiality (except when presented as a form of partiality, something which progressive activists and journalists have cottoned on to).</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Pretty much our whole institutional life is going down
the same road - and gradually downgrading its other core purposes as a
by-product. By embracing progressive identity politics – and with it, strong
anti-Brexit sentiment – the media is a part of something much bigger going on
at the elite levels of society. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
We are seeing a version of institutional capture by a
form of politics that has succeeded in being received as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">beyond politics</i> - as morally-correct, rational, on the right side
of history, and therefore to be adopted without question even by those who present
themselves as apolitical. </div>
<br />Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-59005226521211424412019-09-08T07:43:00.000+01:002019-09-08T07:43:24.697+01:00On misunderstanding politics as philosophy<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the differences between
politics and philosophy – and how we confuse the two of them much of the time, treating
what are often basic political necessities as matters of theory. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We do that in explaining <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">our
own</i> actions, seeking justification after the fact, but also in explaining those
of others, criticising them for mistakes in their ‘thinking’ when it is not
always evident much thinking has taken place at all.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Politics is a domain of decision-making, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in the world</i>, not detached from it. It
is relentless, continuing day upon day for as long as we interact with others in
society. In it, our primary reference point is not detached philosophical
reflection and the theories that come out of it, but the immediate world around
us, of other people and institutions and the demands they make of us. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, theory is embedded in this world. But we do not
typically relate to it in a detached, individualised manner – that of the ‘thinker’
sitting down and working through his or her thoughts. Mostly, we relate to it
with our <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">social</i> beings, in our need
to respond and show who we belong to (or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">where</i>
we belong, in existential terms); indeed if we belong at all. Any genuine attempt
to find a purely rational or philosophical standpoint can only be laid aside in
this sort of daily fray: as irrelevant, beyond control and likely
incomprehensible.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Politics generally doesn’t have time for such questionings. As
Nietzsche said, “A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and
enemies.” It is primarily a matter of ‘us’ and ‘them’, of defining who is with
us and who is against us and fighting it out. It is an activity of groups rather
than individuals. In taking sides, we give up a part of our individual selves, for
example in choosing to vote for one thing rather than something else, in joining
a party or a campaigning organisation; even in our individual lives, in who we
make friends with and pair up with. A marriage is an inherently political act;
the family an inherently political unit; a friendship too. In them, there are
bonds which are not philosophically justified, which are not the fruits of detached
thought and decision-making. They are rather justified by mutual reliance and
commitment, which bring their own benefits. The baby has no choice about who it
is born to, who it relies upon in growing up and the culture it is brought up
in. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This may seem like a pretty bleak picture if we value
thinking. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However it was thinking that painted this picture. The point of
philosophy is surely to try to understand the world, which means understanding
how political life works, indeed how life is inherently political.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In describing reality accurately, and not over-estimating or
misunderstanding its own role and influence, philosophy can have its daily
bread, even if it is a more modest meal than its advocates might like. </div>
<br />Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-73365272022130874552019-08-04T11:01:00.000+01:002019-08-05T20:42:32.408+01:00What should be done?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sometimes as a writer on social and political issues, I get
this nagging feeling that it might be a good idea to suggest what should be
done in government and wider public life rather than just moaning about it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This may seem like a somewhat obvious and absurd thing to
say. Surely it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the job</i> of someone
writing about public life to put forward ideas about how to make it better?<br />
<br />
I agree with this to an extent. However there are
real practical difficulties.<br />
<br />
Firstly, I think the primary task of a non-fiction writer is
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to describe and explain</i> what is happening
fairly and accurately. This takes a lot more time, effort – and space – than people
might give credit for. We have limited time and space to play with as writers –
and since we tend to be writing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">about </i>something,
that something necessarily takes up most of our time and attention.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Secondly, and perhaps more interesting, is the necessary
confrontation with the world of existing policy-making and law.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Policy-making in government and other major
public organisations often involves highly convoluted processes with many
layers of consultation and detailed, jargon-laden documents of hundreds of
pages that are almost designed to deter anyone who is not already involved from
getting a proper grip on what is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">actually</i>
going on, let alone interfering in it. Indeed it often seems like the purpose
of policy-making is to keep outsiders out, to keep things in the hands of those
who are paid to take an interest: in other words of established interest
groups, public sector institutions and policy wonks.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the end of <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tribe-Liberal-Left-System-Diversity-Societas/dp/1845409752/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3NYYFAOR9K1UF&keywords=the+tribe+the+liberal-left+and+the+system+of+diversity&qid=1564912485&s=gateway&sprefix=tribe+liberal+left%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1#customerReviews" target="_blank">my book, The Tribe </a>I included an obligatory chapter of
reflections about what might be done in response to ‘the system of diversity’
and the issues that arise out of it. But, as I hear is typical with such books,
it was the last chapter that I gave serious attention to, I didn’t have many
words to work with and my deadline for completion was pressing harder than it
had been with other chapters. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was also confronted with an issue of agency.<br />
<br />
Who was I
talking to? Who was going to act and how? Was I giving policy advice, in this short
final chapter, tacked on at the end of 250 pages? The problems I had identified
in the previous pages were largely about dogmas and practices of identity-based
favouritism coming to dominate the way government and other institutions relate
to the world around them. Whatever
political parties are notionally in charge, this has been becoming more pronounced – Labour and the Conservatives/Lib
Dems at the United Kingdom level or in Wales, the SNP in Scotland and all
parties including the Greens in Brighton in local government. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hence government (and governance of other major institutions)
appeared to be part of the problem rather than the solution. I could only
really see recovery and improvement coming from the outside. Solutions only appeared
likely by citizens getting organised to fight for and protect what they hold
dear – for example democratic life, free intellectual inquiry, diversity of
opinion and the right to criticise and challenge the purveyors of ideology and bigotry.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But how would an elected government pursue this sort of
agenda? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the sake of both myself and readers, I am only going to
make a few observations here. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think the most important thing would be to make a firm
statement of purpose: that we need to <i>restore trust</i> to our state institutions
like the police, social services and the education sector. They need to recover
their sense of purpose, pursuing trustworthiness based on behaviour and
performance rather than ideological conformity and the reflexive favouring of some
identity groups as victim groups, which is proving destructive of trust in so many areas. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another way to put this would be to emphasise the importance
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">work</i>, of good work: of police
catching criminals, social services protecting vulnerable people and
universities teaching the best of what mankind has to offer, rather than each
of them getting diverted into ideological straightjackets via equalities and
inclusion policies and indoctrination under the guise of training.<br />
<br />
I should
give a nod here to the likes of Maurice Glasman and Jon Cruddas and <a href="https://www.bluelabour.org/" target="_blank">the Blue Labour</a> strand of thinking, with its focus on work as something which fulfils
us, enriches the world around us and integrates us into that world. Fulfilling
bureaucratic tick-box requirements based on skin colour, gender or anything
else is not that. Indeed it undermines the very idea of good work, replacing it
with goodness as seen through the prism of identity: a dangerous thing as we surely do not need reminding of from history.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We badly need to recover a respect for quality and for
standards in public life. I wrote a piece recently for Quillette <a href="https://quillette.com/2019/07/18/is-surging-hate-crime-in-the-uk-a-progressive-hoax/" target="_blank">about hate crime</a>, a classic example of how the state has diluted standards of
truth and evidence (to an incredible degree in this case) in order to satisfy
the representatives of identity-based interest groups. This lack of rigour has provided
opportunities for grievance-mongers to press their grievances more and through
this to demand further protection and favouritism, thereby further undermining equality
and trust – and encouraging further grievances in return. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We need to recover trust – in our institutions, our public
life and through that in our democratic society as a whole. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And a lot of that is about recovering respect for standards,
for quality and for work; in other words for ourselves. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I don’t have time or
space to go into it now but a crucial part of this wider agenda would be respect for
our language, for the meaning of words. As I write in Chapter 7 <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tribe-Liberal-Left-System-Diversity-Societas/dp/1845409752/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3NYYFAOR9K1UF&keywords=the+tribe+the+liberal-left+and+the+system+of+diversity&qid=1564912485&s=gateway&sprefix=tribe+liberal+left%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1#customerReviews" target="_blank">of my book</a> (on
The Control of Language), the identity politics of the system of diversity has attained
a stranglehold on the meaning of key words in our public life like ‘equality’, ‘tolerance’,
‘discrimination’, ‘racism’ and ‘Islamophobia’ – making them work to suit its
own political agendas. A fight-back on the meaning of words is badly needed.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U1d6N4eJKj4/XUasglaWtaI/AAAAAAAAAiE/vvMPOJBFRpUe2W2PjRe6zi7UECJyl5DLgCLcBGAs/s1600/Contents%2Bpage.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U1d6N4eJKj4/XUasglaWtaI/AAAAAAAAAiE/vvMPOJBFRpUe2W2PjRe6zi7UECJyl5DLgCLcBGAs/s320/Contents%2Bpage.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Contents page for my book, </span><i>The Tribe: The Liberal-Left and the System of Diversity </i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></div>
<br />Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-26670229437062325622019-05-13T21:34:00.002+01:002019-05-13T21:48:52.485+01:00In defence of Claire Fox<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Claire Fox is one of my heroes; one of my favourite people
in public life. And she still is. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To see her name being dragged through the mud since she committed
to become a Brexit Party candidate for the forthcoming European Parliament
elections has been difficult to watch and to bear. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
David Aaronovitch started it off with a <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-shadowy-past-of-farage-s-motley-crew-5rmdzv638">vituperative
column</a> attacking the ‘shadowy past’ of Fox and her colleagues in the old
Revolutionary Communist Party who are now involved in the Academy of Ideas and
the Spiked online magazine. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nick Cohen (an old
lefty hero of mine) picked up the thread, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/11/farage-rees-mogg-claire-fox-britain-is-seduced-by-politicians-who-are-characters" target="_blank">denouncing her</a> as “one of the most immoral people in public life”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sunder Katwala of the ‘independent, non-partisan thinktank’ <a href="http://www.britishfuture.org/">British Future</a> has been running some <a href="https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1123512882183004162" target="_blank">huge Twitter threads</a> attacking her and her candidacy. Fellow tweeter Otto English has
also been <a href="https://twitter.com/Otto_English/status/1125339445861978112" target="_blank">running a relentless Twitter campaign</a> against her. Newspapers and broadcasters have picked up and reported it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The main and seemingly most substantive accusation being made against her is her support for the IRA.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U7ui5Db5q-I/XNnXtKOYnDI/AAAAAAAAAfc/D_o00ttWyPwiN4ELOThsw2Ozls_Q2hz_ACLcBGAs/s1600/Claire%2BFox.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="203" data-original-width="248" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U7ui5Db5q-I/XNnXtKOYnDI/AAAAAAAAAfc/D_o00ttWyPwiN4ELOThsw2Ozls_Q2hz_ACLcBGAs/s1600/Claire%2BFox.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
I'm not altogether clear about this, but the circumstantial evidence is strong.<br />
<br />
If it is true, I find it incomprehensible, particularly
following the Good Friday Agreement and when set against her admirable belief
in and defence of democracy following the Brexit vote. I find it dreadful,
awful.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As with Jeremy Corbyn and others in their sympathies for the
IRA, Hamas and Hezbollah, I have no sympathy with any views like that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However I would still strongly defend Claire as a person - and
as a public figure who deserves our respect.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some might call it hypocrisy given my condemnation of Islamist sympathisers for example, but I still defend Corbyn and
McDonnell’s right to stand and be judged by the electorate (millions of whom
are still happy to vote Labour). They are standing to run the country, which is
a whole different kettle of fish to these largely symbolic European elections. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
More than that, I know that Claire and her colleagues make
an important – and overwhelmingly positive – contribution to our public life.
They offer cogent, powerful critiques against prevailing orthodoxies which
continue to make them enemies, but they stick at it and keep on coming back for
more. This is rare - and valuable.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Their commitment to free speech and democracy is crucial in offering
alternative views in our dreadfully conformist public sphere, hitting back
against the authoritarianism and even totalitarianism of our times. They run
the frankly awesome <i>Battle of Ideas </i>in London every year – a huge event where all
manner of contentious issues get debated seriously between people of all sorts
of viewpoints.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is a personal angle too. I have skin in this game. It is
unlikely that my book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tribe-Liberal-Left-System-Diversity-Societas/dp/1845409752/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3T7U17DN6VM9P&keywords=the+tribe+ben+cobley&qid=1557639203&s=gateway&sprefix=the+tribe%2Caps%2C165&sr=8-1" target="_blank">The Tribe</a></i> would ever have been published without Claire taking an interest
and supporting me. I will leave readers to judge whether this was a wider
service to society, but I think I can safely say that without her my voice
would not have been heard even in the limited way it is now. The rest of the
left especially had turned a cold shoulder.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My views in the book and elsewhere – on immigration, the
environment, climate change, Progress and development – are in many ways the
polar opposite to hers. But she has still supported me, as no one else has. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know there are countless similar stories of her generosity
towards others. I have heard many, from people of all sorts of political
backgrounds. Few people are more liked and admired by people who know her than
Claire – and deservedly so in my view. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some accuse her Academy of Ideas and <a href="https://www.spiked-online.com/" target="_blank">Spiked </a>of being cultish.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Having <a href="https://afreeleftblog.blogspot.com/2018/10/questioning-diversity-speech-for.html" target="_blank">presented my book</a> at the Battle and attended other events of theirs and their
affiliates (and now being invited to address this year’s <a href="http://academyofideas.org.uk/events/the_academy_2019" target="_blank">Academy</a>), I’ve
never heard a word from anyone telling me what to say or what to think. In fact
I’ve found a broad range of views, discussed openly in a way that is
unthinkable in most political environments. I’ve never found any of the principals
less than polite, intelligent and good company.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With their many events – not just the Battle and the
Academy, but smaller debating events in schools and prisons – they do proper work and in doing so make a huge
contribution to our public life. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Claire is director of the Academy of Ideas and oversees the
lot of it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For me, when confronted by these running attacks on her, my
reaction is this: I disagree vehemently with her on some of the things accused.
But this is life. Despite their faults
and when you disagree strongly with them, you stand by those who are worth standing by, who deserve your loyalty.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Claire’s denunciators may pose as neutral arbiters
overseeing the health of our public sphere. But they have skin in the game too.
Sunder and his organisation have done a lot of admirable work, but his political
sympathies are obvious from his Twitter feed. British Future <a href="http://www.britishfuture.org/about/funders/">is funded by</a> and does
work with all sorts of groups who have political commitments, including the
European Commission.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but I’ve never
seen anything like the campaign Sunder has waged against Claire, from him or
anyone else. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is politics though. It’s a harsh and brutal world. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s also an imperfect world, of imperfect, flawed people who get things wrong. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For me, as imperfect people go, Claire Fox is one
of the best.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Certainly, if I had a fraction of her courage, commitment and
generosity, to people and to worthwhile causes, I’d be a better person than I
am. We should be grateful to have her around.</div>
<br />Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-81149263488205142962019-03-03T07:21:00.000+00:002019-12-28T19:19:19.178+00:00A Q&A on the trans-feminist war and wider identity politics for the French magazine L'Incorrect<i>Here I have pasted in a lengthy series of questions </i><i>and answers </i><i>I conducted with </i><i>the journalist Sylvie Perez for an article t</i><i>hat has appeared in <a href="https://lincorrect.org/fragments-de-france/" target="_blank">the March issue of the French magazine L'Incorrect</a>. </i><br />
<br />
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3pnZs2HM0nU/XHt5YdqUSyI/AAAAAAAAAac/1Hn6ty_rZV8ysbOuTQImoNR5gWKNQn-IwCLcBGAs/s1600/L%2527Incorrect%2BMarch%2B2018%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="212" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3pnZs2HM0nU/XHt5YdqUSyI/AAAAAAAAAac/1Hn6ty_rZV8ysbOuTQImoNR5gWKNQn-IwCLcBGAs/s320/L%2527Incorrect%2BMarch%2B2018%2Bcover.jpg" width="225" /></a><i>The article discusses the transgender-feminist war that is raging away now in Britain. My comments put this in the context of what I call 'the system of diversity' <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tribe-Liberal-Left-System-Diversity-Societas-ebook/dp/B07FCNKR59" target="_blank">in my book The Tribe</a>. Obviously, only a few of those comments can appear in the article and I thought they were worth pasting in full on here.</i><br />
<br />
<h4>
<i>Questions and Answers</i></h4>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>1/ What does the conflict opposing feminists to transgender
activists tell us about the escalation in the victimhood status and overall
about the leap forwards of identity politics ?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Victimhood is the base of knowledge
which all claims to identity group favouritism rely on. The transgender
activists seem to have realised this, learning their lessons from other
identity activists that maximising how victimised they appear will pay back if
they shout loud enough and pressure the right people.<br />
<br />
There are jobs and
funding for activists in doing this, just as there are for being a mainstream
feminist or a non-white race activist or Islamist. However the demands of
transgender activists for all the particular rights and privileges of women intrudes
on the protected authority of mainstream feminists over women and what it means
to be a woman.<br />
<br />
One of the early controversies in Britain was about self-identifying
women being cleared to be selected on the Labour Party’s All Women’s Shortlists
for Parliamentary Selections. This was previously a privilege that appeared to
be for women as women, so understandably some feminists resented giving some of
that space reserved for them to people they considered to be men. This is an
example of an area which is cordoned off for control by identity group
representatives, and transgender activists wanted a part of it for themselves.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>2/ Which side (feminists or transgender) do you predict, will
win that unprecedented war?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I tend to avoid predictions. Also I
am not a specialist in this specific area. However I think there are a few useful
things I can say.<br />
<br />
For a start, the number of actual transgender activists is very
small in relative terms, so they have a natural disadvantage when it comes to a
straight numbers game. Also, there has been some major feminist mobilisation
against them, drawing support from major media organisations like <i>The Times</i> and even the staunchly
liberal-left <i>Guardian</i>.<br />
<br />
However many
leading feminists in politics have avoided coming out against self-identification
and have sought to cool the war of words. In the ‘system of diversity’ I talk
about, this would be because transgender counts as a favoured identity: to
refuse favour creates conflict within the system and undermines the power and
credibility of everyone within it. I can see a further cooling taking place,
with the most extreme demands being quietly dropped. If the transgender
activists won, I couldn’t see their victory lasting in any case – since the backlash
would come increasingly from ordinary women and undermine the credibility of
associated institutions significantly. But the activists won’t go away. They
have established themselves on the political scene and will need to be
mollified with different favours.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>3/ The transgender group appears in your “favoured/unfavoured
identity groups” table, in The Tribe.
Do you know when this group was targeted as a “favoured group” by the Left? (You
seem to think it’s rather recently?)</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My book isn’t a history of these
forms of politics, but rather seeks to describe what is going on at the moment,
how it works. So this is something I am relatively ignorant about. However I
don’t really see the transgender group as a separate group that was <i>targeted</i> by the left for favour; rather
that the activists finally made enough noise to be appear in the right way as a
victim group in need of favour, which they now receive. In Britain, the New
Labour governments of 1997-2010 gave a push to all these forms of identity
politics favoured by the liberal-left – not least by training activists in the
mechanisms of political power – of how to influence policy-makers and raise
funds among other things. The ability of transgender activists to raise
significant amounts of money for campaigning, even from the National Lottery,
is remarkable. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>4/ Are transgender people the latest group added? Who came
first (female, non-white, muslim etc) ? Can we establish a chronology? And who
will come next? What is the next group to enter the “diversity system”?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Again, this isn’t something I have
looked at specifically. I have simply looked at this point in time and sought
to explain what on earth is going on. As for what groups might bust their way
in, I think the hall is full now, though I may be wrong. Jewish identity politics
employs the same community leader model, the same language and attempts to maximise
victimhood. However the main sources of Jewish victimhood come from <i>within</i> the system – from Islamists and
left-wing opponents of Israel. Also Jewish activism can’t point to empirical
disadvantage in society like other racial or religious groups do. They rather
appear as part of the white majority, so as natural oppressors. I can’t see
that changing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some good-natured folk also want to bring
working class people into the system, but the practicalities of doing this are
very difficult, not least since ‘working class’ is now largely just a cultural,
existential category with no distinguishing physical identifiers and virtually
no political organisation to grab hold of except that which appears to be ‘far
right’ movements. The cultural distance between progressives and working class
people is now vast and I see little reason why that should change.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>5/ The Transgender Action Plan was conceived in December 2011
and signed by Theresa May (then Home Secretary and Minister for Women and
Equalities). And the reform of the Gender Recognition Act was launched last
autumn by the conservative Theresa May PM in the midst of the Brexit turmoil!
Still would you say that the Left is responsible for giving such importance to
such a small group of people ? Aren’t we dealing with a wider progressist
ideology ?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
[NB: I would say ‘progressivist’] I
agree to a large extent that progressive ideology is now the default position for
anyone now participating in public life and administration – from all political
parties and none. However I don’t think the Conservative Party in Parliament,
and certainly not the activists in the shires, have converted to the cause of
transgender rights and activism. G. K. Chesterton had a great line that,
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and
Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The
business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”
They are naive about these forms of politics. They want to appear nice and
modern and ‘inclusive’ and win praise from someone, anyone, so those who are
paying attention are keen to please the lobbyists, just as they do with
business. Theresa May is particularly prone to this. There is an emptiness to her
and to the Conservative Party at the moment. They are called ‘conservative’,
but they like calling themselves progressive, which ties into their faith in free
markets. They tend to see the expansion of free markets into all areas of life like
the identity activists see the expansion of the diversity ideology: as absolute
progress in history and of mankind.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>6/ Can you explain how the conflict of interests between
women’s rights and transgender rights is a challenge to the integrity of the
“diversity system”?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By intruding upon the protected
rights and privileges of women, the transgender activists are making a
challenge to the authority of feminists: a demand for them to give way and to
grant these rights and privileges to biological men. Many mainstream feminists
are not too bothered by this, being accustomed to outsource authority [over] other
favoured group business to representatives of that group. But in this case that
business intrudes not just upon their authority but upon the very category of
women and the protections that follow from that category like female-only
toilets and prisons. I call it a sort of ‘breakdown’ in the system of
diversity, in which representatives of one favoured group interfere with the
business of another – moving on to their territory and threatening their
favoured status. We see this sometimes between Islamists and feminists or LGBT
activists, but remarkably rarely given how their fundamental beliefs oppose
each other. In my view this is because to do so would undermine the system of
politics which outsources authority and power to you in the first place. If you
put at risk other sources of support for the system, you risk no longer
benefitting from the favour and patronage on offer.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>7/ Is the “diversity system” getting more or less powerful?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think it’s both. It’s getting more
powerful because identity and diversity activists are continuing to expand
their reach, extending the favouring of favoured groups into all areas of
institutional and even personal lives. The more institutions implement formal
positive discrimination measures and boast about how much they believe in
diversity, the more reason there is for the rest of us to align with this way
of relating to the world: in order to win favour ourselves, including
employment. Also continuing mass immigration means that the amount of people
for whom identity group representatives can speak is increasing rapidly – and
as much as they go in to the lower levels of the employment market, they can be
employed as victims to justify increasing ‘representation’ by more positive
discrimination. I think that side of the system is only going to get stronger.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However, the rising power of these
forms of politics has now mobilised significant opposition on the fringes of
mainstream politics and outside. The identity wars appearing daily in the media
are making ordinary people sit up and take notice and look for ways to express
themselves politically which mainstream politics doesn’t currently offer. Articles
and books are appearing like my own which seek to explain what is going on and
what we might do about it. Some prominent people are expressing their
opposition in public and absorbing the personal attacks which follow. On social
media the backlash is now quite strong and well established. People are
expressing themselves openly, and have the language and arguments to hand. So
there’s a lot of activity. But it’s early days and not very organised. The
system is organised and embedded in our society and its major institutions:
that’s why I call it a system: it’s a bit like capitalism in that way.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>8/ It seems that the main fuel to identity politics is the
fantasy of equality. Which leads to a paradox: in order to maintain equality as
an incentive, one needs to emphasize and theorize diversity. Can this paradox
can hold any longer?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes, there are definite incentives
in the system to maximise inequality in order to increase the push for equality
and maximise the favour passed to group leaders who represent the victim
groups. These leaders depend on the disadvantage and victimhood of the groups
they are supposed to represent. Among non-white ethnic minority groups in
Britain, the more successful have been drawing away from this view of themselves
and of their place in society and also pulling away from the Labour Party which
promotes it. Women have never been particularly keen on it as a group.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However the forces which promote
this view of the world have got much stronger in recent years. As Britain’s
most important media organisation by a long way, the BBC now makes dedicated
effort to produce daily stories to represent the system’s favoured groups by promoting
their victimhood in the public sphere. There is an interesting backlash going
on to this way of seeing the world among some non-white, female writers and
politicians, but it is negligible compared to the system’s ability to generate
its messages in the public sphere. Politics doesn’t mind a paradox if it aligns
with political power.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>9/ Those disputes opposing different “favoured groups” are
being silenced. The feminist philosopher Kathleen Stock underlined the fact
that philosophers ignore the threat of trans ideology upon women’s condition.
They don’t dare writing about the vanishing of the concept (let alone the word)
“woman”. Equally, we don’t hear much the gay community’s opposition to islamist
disgust of homosexuality. Where does this power to silence people lie ?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The power of silencing lies in the
system itself: in the relations which need to be maintained for the different levels
of the system to benefit. As I have written it in The Tribe, there are three
levels to the system: 1) the progressive liberal-left as an overseeing class,
presiding over the system and outsourcing favour to favoured groups via group
representatives; 2) the representatives of favoured groups, who seek favour for
themselves on the basis of their groups being victims of a society dominated by
unfavoured groups; and 3) the members of the favoured groups whose role is to
appear as victims. If people fail to conform to one of these roles, they appear
outside the system and will likely not benefit from the power it generates. So
when the gay activist Peter Tatchell criticises Islamist institutions for indulging
hostile attitudes to gay people, he places into question the idea that they
should be favoured and protected within the system. Yet the overseeing
administration depends on Muslim support for its campaigns and at election time
so doesn’t want to put at risk that relation. As a result, there is a strong
incentive for such outbreaks to be minimised: to stop people from talking about
Islamist attitudes to homosexuality for example. One way of doing this is to
fail to identify them as Islamists and to highlight them as victims instead,
which aligns to the Islamist view of themselves and their place in relation to
the West.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>10/ Is diversity an extension of multiculturalist ideology,
in order to add new minority groups within the same culture and endlessly
segment the population ?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I see the system of diversity as an
extension of the system of multiculturalism, yes: bringing identity groups
including women, gay and transgender folk, and Muslims into the same system of
relations on the same basis: as favoured and due special protection and
representation. I’m thinking that the purpose is two-fold: firstly that it appears
convenient, both for the identity group activists who want to promote
themselves and their groups, and for the overseeing politicians, for whom it is
convenient to segment voters by identity group. Secondly, there is the
progressive, historical aspect, in that the defeat of discrimination and
prejudice towards these groups appears as an historical mission, demonstrating
Progress in its most tangible form. Beyond these aspects, I don’t think many of
the people promoting diversity have thought through the consequences much. Once
they are committed and integrated into this system of relations they tend to avert
their eyes from any evidence suggesting negative consequences.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>11/ It seems transgender organisations like Stonewall, Press
For Change or Gendered Intelligence are quite powerfull. Where do they get the
money and the power ?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>The Times</i> revealed
recently that Stonewall (which is a general LGBT+ advocacy group) has been
awarded £494,000 [by the National Lottery] to "empower trans leaders and organisations" to
carry out “media and influencing” – in other words to carry out political campaigning.
Previously the <i>Sunday Times</i> revealed
how the lottery had
awarded £500,000 to the trans advocacy group Mermaids, which campaigns for
children to be allowed prohibited sex-change hormones. Other than that I have
not seen anything about funding. But it’s an indication of how embedded
favouring the system’s favoured groups has become [in] our society that these
committees see these forms <i>of politics</i>
as worth large amounts of public money they have control over. Meanwhile many
of the Lottery’s causes, like grassroots sport, remain badly deprived of
funding.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>12/ Through which channels do transgender campaigners make
their way into public life and society (schools and universities, NHS, public
services in general and, last but not least, law). For example, I was amazed to
find out about the V&A LGBT working
group. What is the most striking evidence you’ve noticed of the power of
trans campaigners?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think you are more knowledgeable
on this than me. I would simply repeat what you have said so will not say any
more.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>13/</i> <a href="https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/UKCP-Memorandum-of-Understanding-on-Conversion-Therapy-in-the-UK.pdf" target="_blank">A Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy in the UK</a><i> was signed by prominent health organisations in October 2017 and tends
to condemn psychotherapists trying to dissuade their patients to transition. How
would you explain that so many organisations signed it? Just to avoid being called
transphobic? Some mention a climate of fear. Do you agree with that?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am only speculating, but it looks
like a classic example of where intensive lobbying has taken place both from
within and outside the organisations concerned and they are afraid of what
might follow if they didn’t sign. There would likely be public denunciations of
course, with the ubiquitous accusations of ‘transphobia’, but also the
representatives of these organisations might be afraid of how a failure to sign
would align with their own Equalities and Inclusion policies. To sign and find
strength in the pack is much easier than to reflect and take a stand on
principle – and therefore risk heavy opposition within your institution and
possibly losing your (very highly-paid) job and never getting another one.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>14/ Identity politics corrupt the campuses. The state of free
speech in universities seems to worsen. Would you say it’s a lost cause?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wouldn’t say it is a lost cause.
However it is true that certain forms of identity politics are now embedded
within universities and academic life. Identity politics is established and
powerful and organised. Opposing voices are mostly individuals. Many choose to
remain anonymous when expressing their opposition. Those that don’t open
themselves up to fierce attacks and attempts to get them fired if they have
said a single thing that opposes the prevailing ideology. There is an
opportunity I think for individual universities to set themselves up against
this and build their reputations anew, but do I think this will actually
happen? In America – yes. But here? No. Not for the moment anyway.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
'<i>The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity</i>' is available at a discount via <a href="http://imprint.co.uk/tribe">imprint.co.uk/tribe</a> for £12 (RRP £14.95) with free postage to UK addresses. Use coupon TRIBE. It is also available via online retailers. For Amazon reviews, see <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tribe-Liberal-Left-System-Diversity-Societas/product-reviews/1845409752/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_srvw_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews&sortBy=recent#R3Q3FSFFV3EETI">here</a>.Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-33908096767725376742019-02-15T15:17:00.000+00:002019-02-15T19:59:32.757+00:00Two articles at Unherd - on Vaughan Williams and NIMBYsIn the past month and a bit I have had two articles published by the website Unherd.<br />
<br />
The first is on the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, who I <a href="https://afreeleftblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/vaughan-williams-music-for-anyone-and.html" target="_blank">have written about here </a>before. The article is entitled '<a href="https://unherd.com/2019/01/vaughan-williams-not-simply-a-nostalgic-nationalist/" target="_blank">Vaughan Williams: not simply a nostalgic nationalist</a>' and looks at how he doesn't conform to many of the stereotypes given to him, particularly by progressives and anti-Brexit types.<br />
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The second is '<a href="https://unherd.com/2019/02/in-praise-of-nimbys/" target="_blank">In Praise of NIMBYs</a>', which was published today and seeks to redress some of the bile that these committed members of the community [Not-In-My-Back-Yard-ers] receive from our political elites.<br />
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I hope they are worth a read. Feel free to put any comments up here or to me <a href="https://twitter.com/bencobley" target="_blank">on Twitter</a> since there is no comment facility on the Unherd site.<br />
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Here's a bit more VW anyway: perhaps the greatest piece he ever wrote.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Ralph Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis</i></span></div>
Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-5910766387855724722019-01-24T19:09:00.001+00:002019-03-23T07:05:58.689+00:00The remarkable identity politics of the People's VoteIn <a href="https://afreeleftblog.blogspot.com/2018/06/my-book-whats-it-all-about.html" target="_blank">my book </a>I wrote quite a bit on how efforts to keep the United Kingdom in the European Union have mobilised what I call 'the system of diversity', by aligning to a view of the world in which certain identity groups like women, gay and non-white-skinned people appear as victims of unfavoured groups like men, white-skinned people and the ethnic English.<br />
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Seemingly every day brings more remarkable evidence of this.<br />
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Via Twitter, <a href="https://twitter.com/jmendelsohn77/status/1088347502653460544" target="_blank">James Mendelsohn</a> has kindly sent one of the best, most concise examples I have seen so far - a video by a campaign group called <a href="https://twitter.com/OFOCBrexit/status/1088082452751495168" target="_blank">Our People, Our Choice</a> which calls itself, 'A group of young people campaigning for a <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PeoplesVote?src=hash">#PeoplesVote</a> on the Brexit deal!'<br />
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We say no to Brexit<br />
And social mobility, grinding to a halt.<br />
We say no<br />
To the rich doing fine but the poor getting poorer<br />
Whilst parliament “negotiate”, dividing regions and communities.<br />
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WATCH, SHARE & RT this powerful poem by <a href="https://twitter.com/antoniacundy?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@antoniacundy</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PeoplesVote?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PeoplesVote</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WednesdayWisdom?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WednesdayWisdom</a> <a href="https://t.co/JSoxixs05y">pic.twitter.com/JSoxixs05y</a></div>
— Our Future, Our Choice (@OFOCBrexit) <a href="https://twitter.com/OFOCBrexit/status/1088082452751495168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">23 January 2019</a></blockquote>
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In its two minutes, the video evades any discussion about the EU, the Four Freedoms and the relative merits of national democracy against this legalistic rules-based pan-national regime. Instead it concentrates on how the 'we' of young people are against "this fucking mess" of Brexit because their futures are being put at risk by it, how it is apparently going to increase inequality and also reduce social mobility. Quite how this is going to happen we are not told. Rather we must trust the authority of the writer Antonia Cundy and those who dictate this 'poem' (more a series of slogans) to us.<br />
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It also associates their anti-Brexit cause explicitly with favoured identity groups, as victims of unfavoured groups. Towards the end we read and hear the lines:<br />
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“We stood outside for Grenfell, <br />
We stood outside cos Black Lives Matter,<br />
We chanted for Me Too<br />
We chanted for gay pride”<br />
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Grenfell no doubt appears because of the explicit politicisation of the Grenfell Tower disaster as one in which a predominantly poor, non-white, immigrant population died and suffered as a result of the neglect of a predominantly male, white, non-immigrant governing class. The Black Lives Matter and Me Too campaigns respectively show off black-skinned people and women as victims of white-skinned people and men (both originated in the United States, with its identity wars on a much higher pitch than over here, albeit we're clearly catching up). To round it off, we have a tick-box nod towards LGBT politics.<br />
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Quite what it all has to do with Brexit is not explained. But it all appears as a continuity - as part of the same messaging, presenting a younger generation that is apparently immersed in these forms of identity group favouritism and victimhood and associates them explicitly with Brexit.<br />
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There is an historicist, authoritarian element to it too, for the video ends with a slogan, ‘Be on the right side of history. Join the movement for a People’s Vote.'</div>
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History here appears as something that we need to be on the right side of, like a kind of entity which judges and whose judgements are unquestionable and absolute - so like a God in other words. In this way the People's Vote campaign appears as a movement that has privileged knowledge of these judgements of history, being able to see into the future and relay history's judgements back to the rest of us.<br />
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This is not entirely remarkable given that the People's Vote organisation is dominated by progressives of various stripes, and notably New Labour types, for whom this authoritarian historicism is a staple part of their politics. The video gives this sort of a messaging an assertive, radical, youth-driven edge, but it's basically the same old thing.<br />
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People's Vote has a record with this sort of thing.<br />
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Launching Women for a People's Vote <a href="https://twitter.com/theJeremyVine/status/1038482245600911361" target="_blank">in September</a>, the feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez laid down a similar authoritarian message, saying, “Women no longer want to leave the European Union. The failure to listen to their voices is a national scandal and it stops now.” The LGBT for a People's Vote group's strapline is that “Brexit is a threat to the LGBT+ community”.<br />
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Last week I spoke on this subject at a well-attended event at the Spread Eagle pub in Camden, North London. As I said then, identity politics has been a core part of Remain campaigning - and it is certainly not going away.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Thanks for James Heartfield for the photographs, taken at the Spread Eagle on 17th January 2019.</i></td></tr>
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'<i>The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity</i>' is available at a discount via <a href="http://imprint.co.uk/tribe" target="_blank">imprint.co.uk/tribe</a> for £12 (RRP £14.95) with free postage to UK addresses. Use coupon TRIBE. It is also available via online retailers. For Amazon reviews, see <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tribe-Liberal-Left-System-Diversity-Societas/product-reviews/1845409752/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_srvw_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews&sortBy=recent#R3Q3FSFFV3EETI" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-54850430024854213432018-10-30T15:41:00.002+00:002019-04-28T22:08:51.800+01:00Kenan Malik’s critique of identity politics – a critique<br />
This article follows a long <a href="https://twitter.com/sandystarr0/status/1053938522028150785" target="_blank">Twitter discussion</a> initiated by Sandy Starr, relating <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/21/white-identity-is-meaningless-dignity-is-found-in-shared-hopes" target="_blank">Kenan Malik’s review</a> of Eric Kaufmann’s fascinating new book Whiteshift to <a href="https://afreeleftblog.blogspot.com/2018/10/questioning-diversity-speech-for.html" target="_blank">the debate we had</a> on <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tribe-Liberal-Left-System-Diversity-Societas/dp/1845409752/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540914835&sr=8-1&keywords=tribe+cobley" target="_blank"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my</i> book</a> at the Battle of Ideas in London on 13<sup>th</sup> October.<br />
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'The real problem, however, is not that the notion of white identity is racist but that it is meaningless.'<a href="https://twitter.com/kenanmalik?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@kenanmalik</a> responds to <a href="https://twitter.com/epkaufm?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@epkaufm</a>'s <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Whiteshift?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Whiteshift</a> in <a href="https://twitter.com/ObserverUK?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ObserverUK</a>.<br />
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Relevant to recent <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BattleOfIdeas?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BattleOfIdeas</a> debate between <a href="https://twitter.com/bencobley?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@bencobley</a>/<a href="https://twitter.com/cricri42?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@cricri42</a>/<a href="https://twitter.com/_HelenDale?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@_HelenDale</a>.<a href="https://t.co/xs5ND6W3aF">https://t.co/xs5ND6W3aF</a></div>
— Sandy Starr (@sandystarr0) <a href="https://twitter.com/sandystarr0/status/1053938522028150785?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">21 October 2018</a></blockquote>
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In this thread, Kenan linked to another article of his, entitled <a href="https://kenanmalik.com/2017/07/23/not-all-politics-is-identity-politics/" target="_blank">‘Not all Politics is Identity Politics’</a> a beautifully-written piece in which he presents his critique of identity politics and through which I could see some avenues to explore the differences with mine. </div>
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Firstly, it’s probably worth explaining where we agree. </div>
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Kenan is a critic of identity politics, and from the left. As he says, “Most of us who criticize identity politics do so from the perspective of having challenged oppression and injustice for most of our adult lives.” He also strongly criticises the ‘community’ or ‘group’ leader model as I do:</div>
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“In practice, contemporary identity politics does little to challenge the roots of oppression. What it does do is empower certain people within those putative identities to police the borders of ‘their’ communities or peoples by establishing themselves as gatekeepers.”</blockquote>
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A lot of what he says I strongly agree with or at least sympathise with.<br />
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But there are some significant differences, so let’s get into those.<br />
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I think a good place to start would be in the title of Kenan’s article. I would certainly agree that ‘Not All Politics is Identity Politics’, but only in the sense that identity politics is normally understood nowadays, referring to certain identifiers or properties of people like their sex/gender, skin colour, religion or nationality. Obviously, there is a lot more to politics than those things.<br />
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But identity means a lot more than these things too.<br />
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Kenan himself recognises a broader meaning in saying, “Identities are, of course, of great significance. They give each of us a sense of ourselves, of our grounding in the world and of our relationships to others.”<br />
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However, he draws a distinction between identity and <i>the politics of </i>identity in saying that, <br />
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“politics is a means, or <i>should </i>be a means, of taking us beyond the narrow sense of identity . . .” </blockquote>
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I start to draw apart here, with this idea that the purpose of politics is to <i>transcend </i>identity rather than to reflect it: that identity and politics should be <i>separate </i>from one other. From this, it would be logical to say that identity <i>does not belong</i> in this higher sphere of politics: that politics that gather around identity have no authority in this higher sphere, even that they are <i>illegitimate</i>.<br />
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But, for me, this misunderstands the nature of politics – and the nature of identity.<br />
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Like Kenan says in one of the passages above, identity gives us a sense of ourselves, of our grounding in the world and of our relationships to others. However, for me, these things – most obviously our relationships – are <i>fundamentally political</i> in character. Indeed, they are <i>significant </i>precisely <i>because </i>they are political. If they were isolated in the individual they would have no significance.<br />
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I can also see some contradictions in Kenan’s argument.<br />
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For, as he quite rightly points out,<br />
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“In the 1960s, identity politics provided a means of challenging oppression, and the blindness of much of the left to such oppression, and was linked to the wider project of social transformation. But as the old social movements and radical struggles lost influence, so the recognition of identity became an end in itself.”</blockquote>
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I wholly agree with this, but I don’t see how you can recognise the necessary role of identity politics in fighting good causes like black emancipation or anti-colonialism while also maintaining that identity politics is fundamentally bad and wrong, full stop.<br />
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When a group is being oppressed, gathering together <i>as a group</i> to defend group members and their interests is often not just important, but necessary – and I don’t see any reason to believe we’ve reached an End of History at which such gathering can no longer be justified.<br />
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Clearly this is difficult terrain to navigate and make judgements on once you start admitting broader exceptions like I am prepared to though. Kenan seems to resist any more allowances, especially when it comes to the current reaction against progressive-led identity politics. He has no time for any forms of politics that seek to defend cultural forms related to what we might call ‘white’ or ethnic British, English or European interests from the pressures of globalisation, mass immigration and attacks from progressives. He dismisses seemingly anything and anyone that does so as ‘regressive’, racist, ‘anti-immigrant’ and ‘anti-Muslim’, so 1) as going against the forces of history and 2) being fundamentally aggressive in character rather than defensive, being grounded in old-style racism and negative judgements of what we might call ‘the Other’.<br />
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For me, this is much too sweeping a generalisation and fails to recognise the existential, pre-judgemental realm in which identities can be threatened and the quite natural reaction we all have when this happens to us. This comes back to the nature of identity as fundamentally relational (or social) in character. When the relations that make up our identities are replaced with other relations in the world of our concern – leaving us without possibilities that we previously had – we are necessarily unsettled in existential terms.<br />
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Also, I can see that the understandable imbalance with which Kenan addresses different forms of identity politics – admiring one for what it achieved in the past while using the harshest of language on the other – is itself a form of identity politics of the sort based around race and ethnicity etc. It makes some space for the one, quite rightly in my view, while condemning the other in absolute terms, treating it as immoral and illegitimate in all shapes and forms – and seeing it all as an outgrowth of counter-Enlightenment racism and nationalism.<br />
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In this way I see Kenan merging partly into the politics of what I call ‘the liberal-left’ or ‘progressive liberal-left’ – treating some of the same identity groups as unfavoured groups that should not be allowed to express themselves as groups in public life, while not using the same absolute language on favoured groups.<br />
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Nevertheless, I agree with Kenan that transcending the identities ascribed to us according to skin colour and gender and other things is a good thing for the most part. But I wouldn't condemn anyone for that alone. I don’t see why someone shouldn’t see their gender/sex, nationality, religion and sexuality – and even their ethnicity and skin colour – as significant to who they are and important to their politics.<br />
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In particular I think that not relating ourselves to these things is virtually impossible at this point in time, when they are being constantly politicised in public space. We may like it or not, but if people are being attacked for being white or black or English or Muslim it is understandable that they gather around those identities with a positive spin on them. I only have a real problem with it when these identities become aggressive and when they start telling untruths, which invariably puts up walls and stops others from seeing what's inside (where they might find something attractive to them).<br />
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In any case, by attempting to transcend such things, I think that we create new groups and new identities that need to be promoted and defended in their turn in order to survive. People who want to transcend identity are merely creating another identity: of people who transcend what they consider to be identity.<br />
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This is how politics changes and reproduces over time. We can never wholly get away from groups, and therefore from group identity and the politics of identity in a wider sense. As I say in Chapter 1 of my book, inspired by Chantal Mouffe and beyond that Carl Schmitt, in a sense identity <i>is </i>politics – as the formation and maintenance of groups which relate to the world in particular ways, ways that necessarily conflict with those of other groups. This is how political life is constituted.<br />
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In that passage I quoted before in which he said that identities “give each of us a sense of ourselves, of our grounding in the world and of our relationships to others,” I think Kenan is close to that point. He can see that identities are fundamentally relational but he does not make the small leap to recognise that this means they are also fundamentally political.<br />
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I think this is their very nature.<br />
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And this brings me on to a deeper philosophical disagreement I have with Kenan. He has found his political-philosophical home in the Enlightenment tradition of universal human rights. He quotes Joseph de Maistre as an ‘arch-reactionary’ railing against the Rights of Man by saying, “There is no such thing as Man ... I have seen Frenchmen, Italians and Russians… As for Man, I have never come across him anywhere.” Kenan uses this example to contrast the noble Enlightenment universal rights tradition with a counter-Enlightenment reactionary particularism: “Where reactionaries adopted a particularist outlook, radicals challenging inequality and oppression did so in the name of universal rights.”<br />
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De Maistre’s point here, in the way it appears here, is nonsense. Denying the reality of Man or humanity is absurd. But that doesn’t mean that national groupings he upholds have no interest or meaning. I see no reason why we should uphold Man as a universal authority just as I see no reason to uphold any particular national grouping as one. Man is itself a particularity, contrasted with the rest of nature and the Universe. Universalism is a form of particularism.<br />
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But this is a characteristic of Enlightenment philosophy and of progressive politics in general to this day. There is a yearning there to transcend conflict and a faith that its techniques can do that, just as long as everyone does what we say and see things the way we do.<br />
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In practice, Enlightenment techniques and philosophies have been appropriated widely by totalitarian regimes and what Kenan would call ‘reactionaries’, perhaps the most egregious example being the Nazi appropriation of biological science to justify its racism and its employment of the medical profession to administer death in order to promote apparently superior forms of life. Marxist Communism is a clear outgrowth of progressive Enlightenment philosophies which used the authority of claimed knowledge (in its case primarily of history – and of the clash of different identity groups within it) to justify totalitarian politics.<br />
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The authority of historical knowledge plays a major part in Kenan’s account too. As he puts it, “To understand the characteristics of contemporary identity politics, we need first to go back to the origins of modern politics, at the end of the eighteenth-century.” His attempt to explain identity politics by claiming to understand the origins of it in intellectual discourse/history contrasts sharply to my approach in <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tribe-Liberal-Left-System-Diversity-Societas/dp/1845409752/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540914835&sr=8-1&keywords=tribe+cobley" target="_blank">The Tribe</a></i>, where I attempt to explain identity politics now by describing <i>how it works now</i>.<br />
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For me, there is nothing wrong with Kenan’s approach, just as long as you get it right – and getting something as complex as how our politics got from the 18th Century to the present day isn’t easy. For me, identity politics (in terms of different groups competing with each other) obviously goes back way further than this and is something innate that the animal and even plant worlds share with us.<br />
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I also don’t see human rights as a solution to the problem of identity politics in the way that Kenan does. I wouldn’t say rights are inherently bad or wrong. They help us to circumscribe the rules by which any society must function. But it depends on what they are, what they circumscribe and who controls them.<br />
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After all, every right confers a corresponding obligation. What is a right for me to not be interfered with or to have something good is an obligation for you not to interfere with me or to make sure I have that good thing.<br />
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Rights are therefore not just freedoms; they are also constraints on action – even necessities. Not interfering with something or someone means not acting in the world; not being present; not participating; not exercising agency; withdrawing from involvement – which inevitably lets other powers appear in the space let open.<br />
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In the world we now inhabit, human rights are wielded as political tools conferring absolute authority on those who wield them to stop others from acting. Any attempts to assign absolute authority to certain rights are attempts to put them beyond the sphere of political contest. They are instruments of power – and inherently authoritarian.<br />
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Anyway, I think that is more than enough to be going on with. Kenan and I have different perspectives. However he clearly makes a valuable and highly articulate contribution to debates on identity politics that are raging today and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.<br />
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His core intention to transcend the narrow confines of what I call ‘fixed’ or ‘quasi-fixed’ identity is a noble one.<br />
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I just don’t see it as realistic in the short-to-medium term, especially within the context of a progressive politics that sees the past of this place and the people within it as inherently regressive. This standpoint has coalesced with progressive politics of identity (against ‘white-’ and ‘male-dominated’ history and culture) to produce a backlash that is now difficult to detach from racial and ethnic and other forms of identity. In trying to defeat the past you inevitably end up trying to defeat (and indeed eliminate, in existential terms) those who are still connected to it.<br />
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That’s a shame, but that’s where we are.<br />
<br />Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-51615145329285186302018-10-18T15:13:00.000+01:002018-10-19T00:25:05.697+01:00Questioning Diversity – speech for session on my book at The Battle of Ideas<i>This is the text of the speech I gave at the session about my book, '<a href="https://www.imprint.co.uk/product/tribe/" target="_blank">The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity</a>' at the Barbican, London on Saturday 13th October 2018. It differed a little in delivery. Further details of the session and the participants are <a href="https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/questioning-diversity-discussing-the-tribe/">here</a>.</i><br />
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Hello Everyone. Thank you all for coming.<br />
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Also a special thank you to Jon [Holbrook] and the Academy of Ideas for arranging this session.<br />
<br />
And another special thank you to Christine [Louis-Dit-Sully], James [Panton] and Helen [Dale] for agreeing to participate and for wading through this book of mine.<br />
<br />
I hope we can have an interesting and lively discussion about it and the issues it raises.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en-gb">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
“Questioning Diversity: discussing THE TRIBE” - at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BattleofIdeas?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BattleofIdeas</a> - with <a href="https://twitter.com/bencobley?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@bencobley</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/cricri42?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@cricri42</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/_HelenDale?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@_HelenDale</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/jimpanton?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@jimpanton</a> - packed out!!! <a href="https://t.co/NJTAQrEUEY">pic.twitter.com/NJTAQrEUEY</a></div>
— The Great Debate (@greatdebateuk) <a href="https://twitter.com/greatdebateuk/status/1051069235865243648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">13 October 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<br />
<br />
So, let’s get into it. What is this book all about?<br />
<br />
I’ve been reflecting on this and I think I could give a lot of answers.<br />
<br />
Of course, on the surface it’s about the politics of identity and the politics of diversity. I started off writing it in order to highlight some of the problems that are arising from them.<br />
<br />
I also started off with what I call ‘the liberal-left’ or ‘progressive liberal-left’ at the forefront of my mind. I had become increasingly interested in its role in promoting these forms of politics based around such things as gender, skin colour and sexual orientation – and came to think that this is what defines it as a sort of identity group in its own right.<br />
<div>
<br />
So there is another theme there about what has happened to liberal and left-wing politics as it has embraced these forms of identity politics while virtually abandoning that based around class.</div>
<div>
<br />
But I could also say it’s about our modern world and the technocratic forms of power that are dominant in it. By this I mean those who govern us treating government as a technical exercise: to maximise things like GDP and diversity for the greater good: stuff that can easily be measured.</div>
<div>
<br />
Another important theme is the relationship between the individual and the group – whether that’s a racial or gender group or a social/political group like the liberal-left.</div>
<div>
<br />
For me, the nature of the self is as much ‘out there’ in the group as ‘in here’ in the individual, but we do have that special little window of freedom.</div>
<div>
<br />
However, that little window is vulnerable – and so is our relationship to the truth.</div>
<div>
<br />
Sometimes it’s convenient not to tell the truth – and our group commitments play a big role in leading us away from it. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Not necessarily by lying.</div>
<div>
<br />
But by sidestepping the truth. Avoiding it. Turning to other forms of truth that are more convenient – for ourselves and our groups.</div>
<div>
<br />
To a large extent I see this as being just part of the human condition.</div>
<div>
<br />
I say right at the beginning of the book,<br />
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
‘Collective life has its own justification – to be together and through that to survive and prosper now and into the future.’ </blockquote>
<div>
<br />
We can’t do without groups. And to exist they must have some sort of definition – i.e. some form of identity.</div>
<div>
<br />
Joining a group or being part of a group is inherently political. Indeed I think it is the essence of politics. But what we normally call ‘identity politics’ is different to this.</div>
<div>
<br />
It’s simultaneously a sub-category but also much bigger.</div>
<div>
<br />
It’s a sub-category because it focuses on only certain kinds of identity relation – like skin colour, gender and religion. (By identity relation I mean something that we link to or that others do, thereby tying people to their skin colour and other such things.) </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
These forms of identity politics are integrated into a totalising view of the world, which claims that certain identity groups – notably men and white-skinned people – are dominating society and oppressing other groups. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is a form of universal knowledge, and it justifies a politics which favours those victim groups like women, non-white-skinned people and Muslims while seeking to suppress the oppressing groups.<br />
<br />
In theoretical terms, the simplicity of this account may be a weakness. But politically it’s a strength.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It’s so easy.</div>
<div>
<br />
Some groups are victims and others oppressors. The righteous way to go is therefore to favour the victims and disfavour the oppressors.</div>
<div>
<br />
That’s all you need to know. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Simple. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And so we arrive the identity politics we all know and love, in which the world appears as an antagonistic conflict between identity groups – and which we set up an antagonistic conflict between identity groups to counter.</div>
<div>
<br />
Or something like that.</div>
<div>
<br />
Thankfully, the reality isn’t quite as clear-cut. In practice, we know that a lot of the time people from these oppressor and victim categories get on pretty well.</div>
<div>
<br />
Men and women sometimes quite like each other.</div>
<div>
<br />
There are now many more than a million mixed-race Britons which shows how white-skinned and non-white skinned people sometimes get on OK too. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yet despite many of the activists’ claims falling down when scrutinised, they seem to go from strength to strength – picking up awards, receiving government grants and forcing big organisations to do what they say and give them money. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Again, we can see a political strength.</div>
<div>
<br />
And this is one reason why I talk about diversity as a ‘system’ in my book: because favouring people according to things like skin colour and gender has become a model for how our major institutions should go about their business – and this helps make it a model for the rest of us too.</div>
<div>
<br />
We favour the favoured groups and the organisations which represent them, as long as they represent themselves and their groups as victims.</div>
<div>
<br />
This model comes out of liberal and left-wing politics, especially the Labour Party in this country.</div>
<div>
<br />
Labour now has an extensive infrastructure of identity group favouritism integrated into its rulebook and structure – including All-Women’s Shortlists for MP selection and the powerful role of Keith Vaz as BME representative on the party’s governing body. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The party also, almost automatically, takes the side of favoured group representatives when they have a grievance – such as when Islamist organisations complain about the Prevent anti-terrorism strategy or feminist groups demand higher pay for top female journalists at the BBC.</div>
<div>
<br />
This is a model of outsourcing authority to people who appear as representatives of these groups as victim groups.<br />
<br />
And we can see it appearing all over our society now.</div>
<div>
<br />
We can see it in organisations paying activists to come in and instruct their employees on how to talk about their identity groups. We can see it in the police throwing resources to combat hate speech while neglecting conventional crime like theft. We can also see it in big media organisations like the BBC and Channel 4 producing more content led by people who present themselves as representatives of favoured identity groups and who are often overtly political in asserting that role. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We can now see there are possibilities available for playing these roles: for representing these favoured groups as victim groups and for outsourcing authority to them.<br />
<br />
In other words, this system of diversity is working.</div>
<div>
<br />
It’s a working system of how we can relate to each other.</div>
<div>
<br />
And that is a very compressed version of what The Tribe is all about. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It’s about how a certain way of relating to the world, favouring people based on their identities, has become integrated into our society. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Anyway, now it’s time for me to shut up, so we can hear what Christine and Helen thought about it, then we can open out to you lot [the audience].<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Jon Holbrook and Helen Dale have both reviewed The Tribe - for <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/diversity-the-new-favouritism/21612" target="_blank">Spiked</a> and <a href="https://quillette.com/2018/09/06/the-system-of-diversity/" target="_blank">Quillette </a>respectively. Also at the time of writing there are 14 reviews up on the <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tribe-Liberal-Left-System-Diversity-Societas/dp/1845409752" target="_blank">Amazon UK website</a> with an average rating of 4.5 stars out of 5.</i></div>
</div>
Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-60985233358265073432018-10-04T11:43:00.000+01:002018-10-04T17:06:37.564+01:00Postmodernism isn't to blame for our identity wars <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have been seeing a lot of people lately blaming postmodernism and ‘post-modernists’ for our current malaise with identity politics. But I think this neglects the knowledge base of identity-based ideologies, without which they would fall apart.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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These ideas and claims seem to have reached a crescendo with the '<a href="https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/" target="_blank">Grievance Studies’ hoax</a> exposing how some identity-focused academic journals are happy to publish weapon-grade nonsense if it aligns to their own political, ideological objectives. (Anyone who is familiar with these ‘disciplines’ and not indoctrinated into them knew that anyway, but big credit to James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian for demonstrating it for the rest of the world in such an entertaining manner)</div>
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en-gb">
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"Postmodernists pretend to be experts in what they call “theory.” Lindsay, Boghossian, and Pluckrose expose this for the lie that it is. “Theory” is not real. Postmodernists have no expertise and no profound understanding."<a href="https://t.co/ntapmAipwn">https://t.co/ntapmAipwn</a></div>
— Quillette (@QuilletteM) <a href="https://twitter.com/QuilletteM/status/1047479633120251905?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">3 October 2018</a></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
In <a href="https://quillette.com/2018/10/01/the-grievance-studies-scandal-five-academics-respond/" target="_blank">this Quillette article</a>, five academics respond to the hoax. One of them, Nathan Cofnas says, “Today, postmodernism isn’t a fashion—it’s our culture. . . It has taken over most of the humanities and some of the social sciences, and is even making inroads in STEM fields. It threatens to melt all of our intellectual traditions into the same oozing mush of political slogans and empty verbiage.”<br />
<br />
Neema Parvini adds, “It has been the explicit goal of post-modernity to reject reason and evidence: they want a “new paradigm” of knowledge.”</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
Quillette has quickly become an invaluable source of alternative, intelligent opinion in the Anglosphere – and has been leading the charge against postmodernism in defence of the Enlightenment, science and objectivity. Following the hoax, its founder Claire Lehmann neatly <a href="https://twitter.com/clairlemon/status/1047744182641602560" target="_blank">called in evidence</a> the Dutch professor – and incidentally specialist in ‘extremism and populism’ – Cas Mudde defending the disciplines targeted by hoaxers <a href="https://twitter.com/CasMudde/status/1047560215187656704" target="_blank">while also saying</a>, “I deny “objectivity” and argue that the whole idea that science should be “neutral” and “objective” is in itself an ideological position.”<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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This is a nice dig and demonstrates how postmodernist and similar ideas
are certainly <i>used</i> by academics who
engage in current leftist identity politics. But this is my point, that <i>they are used</i>. It doesn’t mean they are
the source or root cause of identity-based ideologies – which have probably
been around in one form or another since man started using words; certainly
well before anyone had heard of postmodernism. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Marxism for example has a large
identity-based element about the proletariat and bourgeoisie, but Marx and his
historicist theory were both very much in the modernist tradition.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Post-modernist denials of objectivity and knowledge
serve as a <i>tool</i>, just like other
forms of argument serve as tools: to defend ourselves against opponents by undermining
their authority, thereby helping to defend our own authority and power. The
purpose is primarily political rather than philosophical. Just because someone
uses a theoretical argument in a certain political context, it doesn’t mean
their whole political standpoint is consistent with that standpoint nor aligns
with the whole standpoint of those who came up with it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
For, far from discarding ideas of objectivity and universal knowledge, the left's current politics of identity are grounded in a specific, universalistic account of knowledge: that its favoured groups are victims of a society dominated by unfavoured groups. This is a simple view of the world that is easy to ‘roll out’ in different circumstances (which is a crucial part of its appeal and power).<br />
<br />
As I see it, techniques like deconstruction can be used just as effectively <i>against </i>these ideas and the authority of those who propagate them as by them. Indeed, though I'm not familiar with Derrida's specific version of it, sometimes I think of <a href="http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.com/2018/06/my-book-whats-it-all-about.html" target="_blank">my own book</a> on identity politics (<a href="https://quillette.com/2018/09/06/the-system-of-diversity/" target="_blank">here reviewed on Quillette</a>) as an exercise in deconstruction, in the sense that I was deconstructing or taking apart an edifice in order to analyse it and hopefully show it for what it is.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are certainly plenty of problems with postmodernist
theory, not least the way it has encouraged people to write incomprehensible nonsense
rather than seek to understand and explain what’s going on (which is a
pretty big objection to be fair). Also we can see clear evidence of identity
activists and ideologues using postmodernist arguments to attack opponents and
protect themselves from criticism. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But that doesn’t mean that postmodernism or deconstruction
or post-structuralism or whatever is ‘the root cause’ for all our troubles in
this area. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rather, these techniques seem to serve as
just more tools in the toolbox: as something available to take out when the need arises; as ways to project power into the world.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you are looking to attack the theories of identity-based
ideologues, I think you are better off starting with their claims to universal knowledge,
not their denial of it.</div>
<i></i><br />
<div>
<i><i><br /></i></i></div>
<i>
My book 'The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity' is available at a discount via </i><i><a href="http://imprint.co.uk/tribe" target="_blank">imprint.co.uk/tribe</a></i><i> for £12 (RRP £14.95) with free postage to UK addresses. Use coupon TRIBE. It is also available via online retailers. For Amazon reviews, see <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tribe-Liberal-Left-System-Diversity-Societas/product-reviews/1845409752/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_srvw_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews&sortBy=recent#R3Q3FSFFV3EETI" target="_blank">here</a>.</i><br />
<div>
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-84946335958348984982018-09-26T17:56:00.001+01:002018-09-26T17:56:40.807+01:00Unherd article on economic rationalism, diversity and immigrationI have written a piece for the website <a href="https://unherd.com/2018/09/economic-rationalists-dont-get-immigration-debate/" target="_blank">Unherd </a>about the way the alliance between technocratic, free market liberalism and the politics of diversity over mass immigration - is a theme that crops up a few times in my book.<br />
<br />
You can read the article <a href="https://unherd.com/2018/09/economic-rationalists-dont-get-immigration-debate/" target="_blank">here</a>.Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-50437682376633753982018-09-01T12:18:00.000+01:002018-09-07T09:08:22.580+01:00Jonathan Haidt, Jordan Peterson and the 'social justice' institutionI just wanted to flag up this fascinating conversation between the public psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Jordan Peterson on 'the perilous state of the university' and draw out some parallels with my work on diversity and institutions in <i><a href="http://www.imprint.co.uk/product/tribe/" target="_blank">The Tribe</a></i>.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4IBegL_V6AA/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4IBegL_V6AA?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Jordan Peterson interviewing Jonathan Haidt on 'the perilous state of the university'</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The video, which I was drawn to by <a href="https://twitter.com/David_Goodhart/status/1034939311450415104" target="_blank">an effusive tweet</a> from David Goodhart, is more than an hour and a half long. However, unusually for such a thing, I found it didn't drag at all. In fact at the end of it I was left wanting more. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
Goodhart picked up on the point the two discussed about how "any good society must be open AND closed", but there is a lot more to chew over. I was perhaps most interested in Haidt's idea of the 'social justice' university that is dedicated to the promotion of social justice and opposing the Right above other considerations - notably the pursuit of truth.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This has a lot in common with the notion of 'the institution of diversity' which I expound in <i><a href="http://www.imprint.co.uk/product/tribe/" target="_blank">The Tribe</a></i>. As I have written it in the book, institutions of diversity have adopted norms and increasingly rules and laws (in the case of government) that favour some identity groups over others and outsource authority to representatives of those groups as victimised groups. Among others, I talk about Channel 4 and the BBC as institutions of diversity which do this to a greater or lesser degree, and whose purposes have therefore shifted from what they used to be. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
They have become more explicitly <i>political</i> institutions, dedicated in their being - in the way that they are organised - to <i>political </i>objectives: to the promotion of some people and the suppression of others. This expresses itself in all sorts of ways. Channel 4 has gone especially far in this direction, an example being its regular podcast <i><a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/topic/ways-to-change-the-world" target="_blank">Ways to Change the World</a>,</i> promoting and showcasting explicitly political viewpoints, the overwhelming majority of which gather around the social justice and diversity narratives and promoting people who expound them. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=BXzO0z6fmhI" target="_blank">The latest of these </a>features the Channel 4 presenter and model Jameela Jamil talking about the Kardashian family as "agents for the patriarchy", how "people have made me look white" in modelling assignments and blaming society for eating disorders she had when younger - despite by any standards being a beneficiary of society's rules and norms. There are clearly some elements of truth to what Jamil says, but it's notable the way she frames them in the characteristic language of progressive liberal-left politics: of universal victimhood for certain favoured identity groups at the hands of society.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As I have written it in <i>The Tribe</i>, the 'system of diversity' that is spreading around our society offers possibilities to favoured group members who promote these narratives of victimhood for themselves, even if, or perhaps especially if, they are privileged with privileged access to channels for promotion like through Channel 4.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Channel 4 and other institutions that are embracing these norms and messages are therefore appearing as what Haidt might refer to as 'social justice' institutions, just like the universities that they talk about appear as 'social justice universities'. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
They are are dedicated to the same objectives, which are political objectives. The politics comes first, above such things as pursuit of the truth.<br />
<br />
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<i><br /></i>
<i>My book 'The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity' is available for £12 (RRP £14.95) with free postage to UK addresses. Use coupon TRIBE at <a href="http://imprint.co.uk/tribe" target="_blank">imprint.co.uk/tribe</a>. It is also available via online retailers.</i></div>
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<i><u>Comments so far include the following</u>: </i></div>
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<i>“a wonderfully lucid and convincing book”</i></div>
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<i> ~ Professor Robert Tombs, author of The English and Their History</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i> ‘searing’, ‘daring’ and ‘pioneering’ ~ Spiked</i></div>
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<i>“a must read for anyone who is trying to make sense of the issues and fault lines in UK politics today.” ~ All in Britain</i></div>
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<i>“superb, timely, well-written and excellently researched” ~ Amazon reviewer</i></div>
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<i>“<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R1TI0XG37XL77/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1845409752" target="_blank">one of the most important books of our time</a>” ~ another Amazon reviewer</i><br />
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<i><br /></i></div>
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Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-10776732214247228652018-08-12T12:01:00.001+01:002018-09-01T19:18:30.560+01:00On Boris, burkas and the quest for unity<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of my favourite lines is from the Russian writer Mikhail
Bakhtin:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“My voice gives the illusion of unity to what I say.”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I reckon you could write a book on that sentence alone.
There is so much in it and so much it can be applied to.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It immediately makes me think of someone talking
confidently, perhaps on TV, maybe with a presenter deferring to them as an
expert. They feel comfortable, at ease, and this is reflected in their voice,
which is clear, calm and authoritative. In order to get on to the sofa in the
first place, their voice probably had to sound this way. In order to enter into
the situation of being deferred to, to be treated as an authority in front of
millions of people, they had to look and sound the part of someone
who knows what’s going on. They had to fit in with this sort of
situation of people who go on TV and talk confidently about things.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is a sort of unity in this situation: of the
authoritative voice matching up with the deference of the presenter on a
platform where they can speak freely, without contest, to more people than they
could ever hope to meet in a lifetime.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the line that I like so much, Bakhtin refers to an
‘illusion’ of unity, but of ‘what I say’. In this situation, the person
speaking confidently and being treated as an expert appears authoritative
pretty much whatever they say. As long as they appear confident and don’t mix
up their words and at least attempt to refer to the subject matter, it all
hangs together somehow.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In a sense this is an ‘illusion’. But in another there is a
real form of unity here – an existential unity. There is an alignment between
the person speaking and the environment around him or her. There may also be a
unity between what they are saying and what they are talking about, i.e. a
truthful relation, but this isn’t necessary to the existential sort of unity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How does this relate to Boris Johnson and <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/05/denmark-has-got-wrong-yes-burka-oppressive-ridiculous-still/" target="_blank">his comments</a> about the burka, on how “Muslim head-gear that obscures
the female face… looking like letterboxes… like a bank robber…is absolutely
ridiculous”, you might ask?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My interest is more in the reaction to Boris’
comments. I substantially agree with <a href="https://quillette.com/2018/08/11/do-britains-muslims-have-a-right-not-to-be-offended/" target="_blank">Claire Fox</a>, who calls his comments “crass” and says “I am no fan of BoJo-style
private school wit”, but laments the hysterical reaction as highly damaging for
the cause of free speech, not least in how it stops us from speaking about important
things that concern us if that might involve criticising Muslims. As an example
of that reaction, you only need to read the words of Rebecca Hilsenrath,
chief executive of the government quango the <a href="https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en" target="_blank">Equality and Human Rights Commission</a> (EHRC), who said, “Boris Johnson’s use of language in this
instance, which risks dehumanising and vilifying Muslim women, is inflammatory
and divisive.” (Notice the strong words there: ‘dehumanising’, ‘vilifying’,
‘inflammatory’, ‘divisive’, words that we might justifiably apply to the burka
itself in the way it serves in public space.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Much of the political liberal-left, representatives of
Muslims and anti-Brexit Tories jumped in with similarly strong language.
Accusations of ‘racism’ and ‘fascism’ were thrown around with abandon, and
senior people including Theresa May have demanded he apologise for the offence
caused.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All of this noise achieved a sort of unity which transcended
the meaning of the words of the accusations themselves. The classic accusation
that Boris was being ‘racist’ for example is absurd. Boris was talking about a
specific garment worn under a particular – and particularly strict – strain of
a religion. However his accusers said this didn’t matter and there was a
higher truth, that he was blowing a ‘dog-whistle’ for racists and fascists,
that he was a racist beforehand so that must mean his comments here were racist
too.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And here we start that familiar and depressing descent from
the actual truth to an ideological truth – a higher truth that may not match
the actual truth but which gives a much more unified view of the world.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It all felt right: the politicians, the EHRC chief and
<a href="http://www.mcb.org.uk/mcb-response-to-boris-johnsons-comments-on-the-niqab/" target="_blank">Muslim ‘community leaders’</a> made their assertions and others took on their
messages, passed them on to others as truthful, and so the whole thing built up
into a crescendo of crashing rhetoric with virtually no interest in or relation
to Boris’ own words.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is a classic example of what I have called in my book,
‘the system of diversity’ in action. It aligns with a progressive story of
history, of things improving over time as people who say things that do not fit
into the system are removed from public life. Everything that gets in the way
must be removed one way or another: by stopping people from speaking, by
denying them employment and potentially in other ways too.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is the path we are on. Hopefully my book The Tribe
helps to explain it in more detail.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity is
available for £12 (RRP £14.95) with free postage to UK addresses. Use coupon
TRIBE at <a href="http://imprint.co.uk/tribe" target="_blank">imprint.co.uk/tribe</a>. It
is also available via online retailers.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><u>Comments so far include the following</u>: </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“a wonderfully lucid and convincing book”</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>
~ Professor Robert Tombs, author
of The English and Their History</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i> ‘searing’, ‘daring’ and ‘pioneering’ ~ Spiked</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“a must read for anyone who is trying to make sense of the
issues and fault lines in UK politics today.” ~ All in Britain</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“superb, timely, well-written and excellently researched” ~
Amazon reviewer</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R1TI0XG37XL77/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1845409752" target="_blank">one of the most important books of our time</a>” ~ another Amazon reviewer</i></div>
<br />Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-13544194413634787832018-07-22T16:10:00.000+01:002018-07-24T15:49:23.060+01:00The role of identity politics in the Remainer RevoltThere is a new piece of mine up on the Briefings for Brexit website: 'The role of identity politics in the Remainer Revolt'.<br />
<br />
Click <a href="https://briefingsforbrexit.com/the-role-of-identity-politics-in-the-remainer-revolt-by-ben-cobley/" target="_blank">here</a> to read.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>UPDATE, 24th July 2018: The same article, edited slightly and with a different title, is also up on the Brexit Central website. See <a href="https://brexitcentral.com/remainers-using-identity-politics-demonise-brexiteers/" target="_blank">here</a>.</i><br />
<br />
<br />Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-2623326915529114032018-07-19T08:50:00.000+01:002018-07-20T02:23:34.126+01:00On mass immigration as a phenomenonWhile writing <a href="http://imprint.co.uk/tribe" target="_blank">The Tribe</a>
I found two of my main interests, in the existential background to life and in
mass immigration as a phenomenon, fusing and coming together in ways that I am
still exploring and finding interesting.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think this coming-together has helped me to address one of
the fundamental questions of our time in the book, namely,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 1.0cm; margin-right: 1.0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
Why is mass immigration such a troubling phenomenon for ‘host’
communities or people? </blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even using this word ‘phenomenon’, which I know annoys some
people in its vagueness, helps to guide us towards the sort of answers I have
been coming up with. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It helps because it does not limit how we address what is
going on in the act of describing it. For one thing, it helps us to avoid
locating the source of trouble in immigrants themselves, as if there is
something wrong with them. But it also avoids locating the troubles in what I
am calling here, for want of a better word, ‘host’ communities or people – as if
there is something wrong with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">them</i>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Treating mass immigration as a phenomenon allows us to avoid
committing ourselves to the fray on one side or another simply in the act of
describing it. It may appear <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">too</i> broad
and wide-ranging. But in being so, it allows us to include the full range of
aspects which others do not consider; indeed how <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">they</i> seek to describe it can feature <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as part</i> of what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">we</i> are
looking to describe.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This points towards one of the underlying themes of my book:
that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the way</i> we interpret the world
is part of the world we are looking to interpret – and must be taken into
account if we are to see things accurately. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The</i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">phenomenon</i> of mass immigration includes
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how we interpret</i> mass immigration and
different aspects of it. It allows us to consider immigrants themselves as a
block but also as individual people who have decided to move countries. It allows us to consider those who feel
uncomfortable about immigration, but who do not convert that discomfort into
hostility towards immigrants – and also those who do. It allows us to consider
the role of pro-immigration activists and politicians. It allows us to consider
how tabloids treat immigration in an often crude way, at least in their
front pages – and how other news media have made it an issue in different ways,
indeed sometimes primarily as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">reaction</i>
to the tabloid treatment.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To allow all these considerations to exist is what
addressing mass immigration as a phenomenon means in practice. It means seeing
the world not as an object to be described in the same way we would describe
objects, with fixed properties and easily-reached conclusions, but as a dynamic
whole in which we are all participants and our participation is crucial to what
is going on. It brings us towards the nature of social and political power, in
which some participants are more important than others, and in which we can grab a piece
of that power by aligning to it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In <a href="http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.com/2018/06/my-book-whats-it-all-about.html" target="_blank">The Tribe</a>, I have
written extensively about mass immigration in this way, as a phenomenon which
is much wider and more interesting than our judgemental, rationalistic political
discourse allows. Of course I’ve written about it principally in relation to liberal-left
politics, because that’s what the book is all about. In doing so I’ve drawn out
how these politics are often dubious and even dishonest, but also how they have been successful and looking at some of the consequences of
this success – not least on working class people in the Unfavoured Groups
chapter.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sometimes looking over the book I’ve thought that maybe I’ve
talked about immigration too much – at the expense of other issues. On the other
hand though, I think it deserves this level of treatment. As one of the
defining issues of our times, immigration remains little understood in public life.
Hopefully, my book will help to change that a little bit.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Tribe</b>
is now available for £12 (RRP £14.95) with free postage to UK addresses. Use
coupon <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">TRIBE</span></b>
<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">at <a href="http://imprint.co.uk/tribe">imprint.co.uk/tribe</a>.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">For more about the book, see my previous blogpost <a href="http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.com/2018/06/my-book-whats-it-all-about.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></div>
<br />Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-65035808758020016052018-06-15T06:46:00.002+01:002018-06-15T06:46:07.295+01:00My book: what's it all about?My book, <i><a href="http://books.imprint.co.uk/book/?gcoi=71157100124090" target="_blank">The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity</a></i>, is being published on 1st of July, so not long to go now.<br />
<br />
Last week a courier dropped off my copies - showing this <i>thing</i> that has been dominating my life for the past few years in physical form for the first time.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RUt53X_p8v8/Wx6LHEUc_bI/AAAAAAAAAWk/nWWhqw2ltU8Wu7cE4iYEhc_tmoH1YIGpQCLcBGAs/s1600/067.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RUt53X_p8v8/Wx6LHEUc_bI/AAAAAAAAAWk/nWWhqw2ltU8Wu7cE4iYEhc_tmoH1YIGpQCLcBGAs/s200/067.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>THE BOOK: it exists</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I have already posted the <a href="http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-tribe-some-more-details-including.html" target="_blank">backcover blurb</a> and some of the <a href="http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.com/2017/11/a-book-is-on-way.html" target="_blank">theoretical background</a>.<br />
<br />
But what is it about, really? How would I sum it up?<br />
<br />
At the most basic level, <i>The Tribe </i>is an attempt to explain <i>what on earth is going on</i> with the politics of identity and diversity. How has it come to dominate our public sphere? And what is the role of the progressive liberal-left in this? It obviously has a major role, but how does this work? Why is this combination so powerful? And what are the consequences of it, not least on our public life?<br />
<br />
It is not a history book. It does not attempt to find 'root causes' for what it going on or to track back in time to find a few individuals and say, 'These guys are to blame', 'They started all this'. Such a project would be very interesting no doubt, but I think would detract from what is going on in the here and now, which is what I wanted to address.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-e5vK8f-aGJs/WyNOUzbRagI/AAAAAAAAAW4/H4_tIjsCXp0DHtaaFkDaAftp67oEIB-lQCLcBGAs/s1600/Contents%2Bpage%2B002.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-e5vK8f-aGJs/WyNOUzbRagI/AAAAAAAAAW4/H4_tIjsCXp0DHtaaFkDaAftp67oEIB-lQCLcBGAs/s200/Contents%2Bpage%2B002.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Tribe: Contents page</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Instead, <i>The Tribe </i>seeks to describe and explain how the politics of diversity and identity <i>works</i>: how it <i>fits in</i> with our lives and especially our public life; how it pulls us into adopting its ways, or at least not resisting them. The book also seeks to explore the limits to that success. This has a lot to do with the problems that follow from it, in the taboos that arise from identity group favouritism and the institutionalisation of these taboos - and their sometimes disastrous effects, as found in some cases of mass child sexual exploitation.<br />
<br />
Nowadays, there seem to be several media storms bubbling away every day with these forms of identity politics at their heart - from attempts to stop Brexit to the politicisation of the Grenfell Tower disaster as a racist act and the attempts of the trans lobby to control how people speak about them.<br />
<br />
The sheer political power on display is remarkable. If anything I think I have <i>under</i>played this power in the <i>The Tribe. </i>However, hopefully it will help readers to understand what is going on: how this politics works - and especially <i>how and why</i> it has become so powerful in our world.<br />
<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>The Tribe is available now for pre-order via the publisher Imprint Academic's website <a href="http://books.imprint.co.uk/book/?gcoi=71157100124090" target="_blank">here</a>. Enter 'TRIBE' to get a nice discount on the RRP. It is also available via Amazon <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tribe-Liberal-Left-System-Diversity-Societas/dp/1845409752" target="_blank">here</a>.</i>Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-26351630805271882212018-05-26T07:48:00.000+01:002018-06-08T23:16:27.304+01:00The power of identity politics<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
“The strong cannot help confronting; the less strong cannot
help evading.”<br />
Julian Barnes, <i>The Noise of Time</i></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the core themes of my forthcoming book <a href="http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-tribe-some-more-details-including.html" target="_blank">The Tribe</a> is the remarkable power that certain kinds of identity politics have attained
in our public life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The knowledge base of this politics is the universal
victimhood of its favoured identity groups. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the United Nations’ ‘<a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Racism/SRRacism/Pages/IndexSRRacism.aspx" target="_blank">Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance</a>’ Tendayi Achiume put it <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-austerity-and-immigration-policies-have-made-uk-more-racist-11368184?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter" target="_blank">in her report</a> on how awful and racist Britain is, “The harsh reality is that
race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability status and related categories all
continue to determine the life chances and well-being of people in Britain in
ways that are unacceptable and in many cases unlawful.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For this interpretation, which is appearing in our public
life daily and prominently, the life chances and well-being of non-white-skinned
people, women, the ethnically non-British, Muslims and disabled people are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">determined</i> by those identity markers, so
that they appear as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">universal</i> victims
of society and of the identity groups which dominate it. This is direct causation
she is talking about – that identity leads to either success or failure. She
makes no qualification on it and makes an unequivocal judgement on the
situation as unacceptable and also sometimes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">unlawful</i> – so assuming a kind of absolute authority over it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Achiume, who <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/brexit-austerity-and-hostile-environment-have-made-britain-racist-says-un-expert-9krdml8r7" target="_blank">The Times described </a>as a ‘Zambian-born, US-based academic’ and ‘a UN expert’ on its front
page, added, “Austerity measures have been disproportionately detrimental to
racial and ethnic minority communities. Unsurprisingly, austerity has had
especially pronounced intersectional consequences, making women of colour the
worst affected.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here we see the logic of this form of knowledge, attributing
victimhood along the lines of identity categories – so, combining women and people
‘of colour’ as victims, we arrive at a maximum victimhood of ‘women of colour’.
This type of knowledge, of ‘intersectionality’, will be familiar to anyone accustomed
to the theories coming out of the social sciences (and wider humanities) departments
of Western universities.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However the ability to make assertion in the public sphere –
and to have it leading the news with the one
making the assertion described as a ‘UN expert’ as in this case – is an
indication of political <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">power</i>. The
domination of academic discourse by this sort of universalising theory is a
sign of political <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">power</i>. That someone
propounding this theory gets appointed by the body that brings the world
together to go and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inspect</i> countries
and tell them what to do is a sign of political <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">power</i>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-tribe-some-more-details-including.html" target="_blank">My book</a> explores how this power works through relationships which have built
up between what I am calling ‘the liberal-left’ (the ‘tribe’ of the title) and
these favoured groups via those who appear as their representatives – so
feminists, Islamists and ethnic group activists for example. These
relationships make up what I am calling ‘the system of diversity’ – a form of society
grounded in these relationships of favouring and representing, linked to assumptions
of identity group victimhood.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I am seeing it, many of our major institutions, including
major media organisations like the BBC, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sky
News</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Times</i> and especially <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Guardian</i> and Channel 4 are
constantly being drawn towards the system of diversity and its ways of relating
to the world – seeing fixed and ‘quasi-fixed’ identity as primary to what is
going on in the world and primary to how they should address it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Achiume’s statements drew fierce criticism as soon as they
appeared. However, the way similar statements and reports keep on appearing –
for example just recently with accusations that <a href="https://twitter.com/Peston/status/999191819622723584" target="_blank">Oxbridge admissions are biased</a> against black people (<a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-oxford-is-actually-more-likely-to-offer-a-place-to-the-best-black-candidates" target="_blank">when they are not</a>) and <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/05/jordan-peterson-and-rise-cargo-cult-intellectual" target="_blank">attacks on the Canadian psychiatrist and identity politics critic Jordan Peterson</a>,
tells us something significant about where power lies in our society. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The critics are constantly mobilising just to respond to the
tide of assertion and accusation and demands for favourable treatment for the favoured groups. They are
not setting the agenda. They are barely holding back the tide. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the rest of us, this agenda is increasingly working its
way into our daily lives as rules and orders and social norms – to implement
positive discrimination in the workplace, to attend training to correct our ‘unconscious
bias’ and to report assertions that are not favourable to favoured group members to the police as ‘hate crime’.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The natural response in this situation is to give way, which
is after all, fundamentally, a giving-way <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to
power</i>. We evade, we protect ourselves, while the winners go on producing
their reports and setting the agenda and setting the rules that govern our
lives.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tribe: the
liberal-left and the system of diversity, will be published on 1<sup>st</sup>
July by <a href="http://www.imprint.co.uk/product/tribe/" target="_blank">Imprint Academic</a> (for order details, click <a href="http://www.imprint.co.uk/product/tribe/" target="_blank">here</a>).
For more on the theoretical background to the book, click <a href="http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/a-book-is-on-way.html" target="_blank">here</a>.
<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<br />Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-31480498402313774082018-05-03T15:48:00.000+01:002019-03-14T06:25:50.152+00:00The end of Britain/the end of democracy?<div class="MsoNormal">
In 1999, the conservative commentator Peter Hitchens
published a book called '<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abolition_of_Britain" target="_blank">The Abolition of Britain</a>' that described the constitutional changes taking
place under Tony Blair's first government as a 'slow motion coup d'état'. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
I haven't read the book myself, but the theme and title come to mind now that
it seems clear that Brexit will only happen in name only, if at all. The
Establishment forces have been organising for two years now, and they have just
about made it. When the Irish government and the EU in concert work to exercise
a veto over British constitutional arrangements and the British Establishment
shrugs its shoulders or eggs them on as they have been, the game would seem to be up. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
The idea that a 'hard border' on the island of Ireland as a result of Brexit
will somehow 'cause' violence to break out is a political device invented by politicians and spin doctors. It is an assertion which serves a
crucial political purpose (as well as stamping all over any serious notions of causality and agency). </div>
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<br />
Sinn Fein is certainly using the issue to stir up trouble, with Leo Varadkar's
government a happy accomplice, but from what I have seen and heard there is no desire
from the ex-IRA to go back to shooting and bombing people. Rather, the EU
together with the Irish government and anti-Brexit campaigners have been using the IRA
as a silent threat to influence public - and political - opinion in Britain. You might
say they have been employing the IRA as their armed wing - in the name
of peace.<br />
<br />
(We could even call this the first instance of an EU Army being used,
even if it is an old terrorist army that doesn't officially exist anymore.)</div>
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I don't see much point in getting too angry about this. This
is political power in operation. Everything about the anti-Brexit movement,
from their concerted and successful efforts to dominate the airwaves to their
work in Parliament and Whitehall - has screamed political power. The winners
get to describe what is happening and what happened and what will happen, and that is the case now. It only goes to show how much they want to keep Britain in the EU and
unable to control its own destiny as a sovereign democracy.</div>
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The question is: what next? Things will never be the same
again, that is for sure. I certainly have no crystal ball, but a few thoughts
have been leaping to mind (with the emphasis on 'leaping'), including the following:</div>
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<br /></div>
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</div>
<ol>
<li>This is the end of British democracy; </li>
<li>This is the end of the United Kingdom as a notionally
independent state; and</li>
<li>This will give a big push to renewed independence efforts,
c.f. what has happened with the SNP in Scotland.</li>
</ol>
<br />
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I wouldn't say any of those things with any certainty,
but I think they are worth reflecting on.</div>
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On the first question, there is no such thing as a perfect
democracy, and the United Kingdom has never been that. What the anti-Brexit
efforts have shown is that our elites are alive and well and aren't willing to
let democracy prevail if it doesn't match their own wishes and interests. On
one level you could say, 'fair enough' to them - though it'd be nice if they
didn't disguise their own will and preference behind ideas of <a href="http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/why-accusation-irrational-is-generally.html" target="_blank">absolute, rational good</a> for everyone. </div>
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<br /></div>
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When I was
thinking about this the other day, it brought to mind <a href="https://journalofdemocracy.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/krastev-25-4.pdf" target="_blank">an essay</a> by a Bulgarian political scientist
called Ivan Krastev. In <a href="https://journalofdemocracy.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/krastev-25-4.pdf" target="_blank">this essay</a>, written well before Brexit, Krastev
wrote "Elites approach elections as opportunities for manipulating
the people rather than listening to them (Big Data makes voting marginal as a
source of feedback)."</div>
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<br />
But with the EU referendum vote, they struggled to do that. The question asked,
Leave or Remain, went beyond our normal 'managed democracy' into the realm of
existentials, asking us a fundamental question about who we are and where we
see our destiny. The likes of David Cameron, George Osborne, Tony Blair and
Nick Clegg did their best to manage us, but we got away from them, just.</div>
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<br />
Not for long though. It looks as though will have to get back in our box again.
But how long until we pop out again? What organisations will appear looking to
renew this democratic revolution of sorts?</div>
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We will have to wait and see (and get busy).</div>
<br />Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-68459673665785622672018-03-30T08:38:00.001+01:002018-03-30T09:18:42.497+01:00A few thoughts on human 'rights'When we hear activists talk about how we or they or some particular people have 'a right' to something, it can sound a little perplexing.<br />
<br />
On one hand, it sounds nice that people have a right to the good things of life, like security, freedom, material reward and the rest. But on the other the word, 'right', serves rather like a hammer, nailing down something, making it secure, which means taking away elements of doubt, of contest - of politics in other words.<br />
<br />
After all, a right is <i>an entitlement</i>. It moves the situation from one where the good things of life are up for grabs based on such things as hard work, ethical behaviour, greed, ambition and political power - and secures those goods from such contingencies. Political power is <i>entrenched </i>in a right. Any hard work can be considered done, ethical behaviour is put to one side and the human, all too human qualities of greed and ambition no longer need to be considered.<br />
<br />
In other words a human right accords a <i>legal </i>basis to the allocation of rewards. A right might be encoded in statute law, but it remains a form of legality even without that. Failure to accord someone their right means breaking a law. The idea serves in a similar way to that of 'social justice', in bringing an account of justice to cover <i>political </i>life. Failure to do what social justice activists demand means breaking a law, which is to say committing a crime, a political crime - and this deserves punishment in the court of political life.<br />
<br />
One of the most interesting aspects to this - and something that I have seen David Goodhart refer to a few times in talking about 'judicial activism' - is the relationship of rights to democracy. A right secures the allocation of resources (including existential resources like protection from criticism), and puts it beyond contest, which means putting it beyond democratic contest.<br />
<br />
With a right, the matter has already been decided and no amount of democratic decision-making can change the decision.<br />
<br />
If you start to look carefully, you might see that this way of approaching politics is all around us. It is a powerful way of removing political opposition. It is therefore a clear and present danger to democratic political life.<br />
<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>This is not to say that the things that come to us through our 'rights' are bad things. On the contrary. such things as 'rights at work' and 'the right to vote' are obviously good things. Our problem is how the language of rights is reaching out and extending its dominion, so closing off more and more political space.</i><br />
<br />Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-16243919426311986402018-03-27T10:40:00.000+01:002018-03-27T10:40:34.896+01:00Corbyn and anti-Semitism: the whole of Labour is to blame, including 'moderates'I must say I have found it a little strange seeing so many 'moderate' Labour MPs and activists <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/enough-is-enough-protest-labour-mps-join-hundreds-of-activists-outside-parliament-in-campaign-to-a3799546.html" target="_blank">getting angry</a> about anti-Semitism in the party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.<br /><br />
Where was this anger and upset during two leadership elections which re-elected Corbyn in 2015 and 2016?<br />
<br />
This sort of stuff is not new. It was well known and covered widely on blogs such as <a href="http://hurryupharry.org/2012/06/14/labour-and-extremism-jeremy-corbyn-and-abdur-raheem-green/" target="_blank">Harry's Place</a> and Rob Marchant's <a href="http://thecentreleft.blogspot.com/2015/08/this-is-not-engagement-it-is-apologism.html" target="_blank">Centre-Left blog</a> in 2015. I also wrote about it <a href="http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/corbyns-links-to-anti-semites-and.html" target="_blank">on this blog</a>. The right-wing press covered it extensively. Even the Guardian published a piece by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/13/jeremy-corbyn-labour-leadership-foreign-policy-antisemitism?utm_content=bufferdcb65&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer" target="_blank">James Bloodworth</a> setting out the charge sheet against Corbyn and his many known associations with anti-Semites.<br />
<br />
But in both elections, as I recall, none of the leadership candidates dared to raise it as a reason not to elect Corbyn as leader. Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall and Andy Burnham in 2015 and Owen Smith in 2016 instead fought dull, dry campaigns trying to tell the membership what they wanted to hear while talking intermittently about their high principles and 'values', of which anti-racism is always right up there.<br />
<br />
When it came down to it, none of them had the spine to make a stand when it really mattered. And the rest of the Labour Party, except for a few honourable exceptions, just let it pass, allowing Corbyn supporters to dismiss it all as a right-wing conspiracy and letting him get elected, twice, without serious contest.<br />
<br />
They are all to blame for this. Virtually the whole party is to blame. I see Liz Kendall was at <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/enough-is-enough-protest-labour-mps-join-hundreds-of-activists-outside-parliament-in-campaign-to-a3799546.html" target="_blank">the protest yesterday</a>, as was Chuka Umunna, another leadership candidate in 2015, for a brief time before he bowed out. Stella Creasy was also there. She was a candidate for deputy leader in 2015. Did she speak up then? I certainly don't remember it.<br /><br /><i><br /></i><br />
<i>Part of the problem for the liberal-left on anti-Semitism is that its favoured identity groups in what I am calling 'the system of diversity' do not include Jews. Favoured groups include women, gay people, non-white people and, associated with the latter group, Muslims. Jews do not qualify. </i><i>Claims of structural disadvantage do not stick so easily to them (</i><i>though some Jewish groups have been making strenuous efforts for Jews to be accepted on the same basis as a favoured group).<br /><br />Instead, Jews generally appear in the white-skinned group, so as part of an unfavoured identity group. Partly as a result, anti-Semitism doesn't fit comfortably into the forms of discrimination and prejudice that the left fights against on a daily basis. This has opened up a space for anti-Semitism to gain a foothold among some groups, notably on the farther reaches of the left that have affiliated most readily with anti-Israeli and Islamist movements. This is something I look at in my upcoming book, '<a href="http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-tribe-some-more-details-including.html" target="_blank">The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity</a>' - now <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tribe-Liberal-Left-System-Diversity-Societas/dp/1845409752/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521735060&sr=1-1&keywords=the+tribe+cobley" target="_blank">available for pre-order via Amazon</a> (sorry, no alternative retailers).</i><br />
<br />
<br />Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5133176631661920943.post-66012091021131649112018-03-22T07:10:00.001+00:002018-04-23T23:04:35.263+01:00The Tribe: some more details, including blurb and cover designImprint Academic has made available some details of my book, <i>The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity</i>, on its website <a href="http://books.imprint.co.uk/book/?gcoi=71157100124090" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
[<i>Update: it is now available for pre-order via Amazon </i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tribe-Liberal-Left-System-Diversity-Societas/dp/1845409752/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521735060&sr=1-1&keywords=the+tribe+cobley" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">here</a> and on the Imprint website <a href="http://www.imprint.co.uk/product/tribe/" target="_blank">here</a>]<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-z9sRZ1TE_nw/WrNVFNsqZhI/AAAAAAAAAVs/HQkb8qcZuAUNSPiuim1eNGPP9uFneJ5xwCLcBGAs/s1600/Tribe%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="386" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-z9sRZ1TE_nw/WrNVFNsqZhI/AAAAAAAAAVs/HQkb8qcZuAUNSPiuim1eNGPP9uFneJ5xwCLcBGAs/s320/Tribe%2Bcover.jpg" width="205" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The Tribe</i>: book cover</div>
<br />
The blurb reads:<br />
<br />
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
From Islamist terror to feminist equal pay campaigns and the
apparent Brexit hate crime epidemic, identity politics seems to be everywhere
nowadays. This is not entirely an accident. The progressive liberal-left, which
dominates our public life, has taken on the politics of race, gender, religion
and sexuality as a key part of its own group identity – and has used its
dominance to embed them into our state and society.</blockquote>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
In<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <em><span style="line-height: 115%;">The Tribe</span></em>,</span> Ben Cobley guides us around the 'system
of diversity' which has resulted, exploring the consequences of offering favour
and protection to some people but not others based on things like skin colour
and gender. He looks at how this system has almost totally captured the Labour
Party and continues to capture other major institutions. He also looks at how
it is capturing our language, appropriating key terms like ‘equality’,
‘tolerance’ and ‘inclusion’, while denying a voice to its outsiders.</blockquote>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
The system of diversity makes
a challenge to us all: submit, or risk exclusion from society itself.</blockquote>
<br />
The website page states that publication date will be 1st July this year, but my understanding has been that it will not be available until later than that. I will update will any further details.<br />
<br />
<i>Update: the publication date should be 1st July as listed. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I wrote a few more words about the argument <a href="http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/a-book-is-on-way.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<br />Ben Cobleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12663573050880771244noreply@blogger.com2