I think it’s time we’re all encouraged (forced) to explain what we mean when we accuse people of belonging to specific ‘wings’. For instance what does “Momentum” actually mean when it says it regards Tom Watson as rather right wing?
One used to think of your archetypal right wing person as heard-hearted, disciplinarian, pious, moustachioed, buttoned-up and bristling with repressed sexuality and overt racism. Not very nice, in fact.
Your left-winger was more attractive. Cool; relaxed, tolerant, devoutly sympathetic to the lame and disadvantaged and open to new ideas. Progressive. In summary, a good egg, and champion of the unconventional and the avant-garde to boot. These ideas are old-hat, though.
Now I’m right wing! Me, the free-spirited child of unconventional parents. Me, an art-school graduate, even though, at the time, I didn’t take any much notice of the tuition on offer, for what it was worth, (which, one could argue, was a sign of an independent spirit.)
Really, I assume I’m labelled right-wing because I haven’t joined the left-wing alliance with Islam and I don’t subscribe to the deceitful concept that Muslims are the new Jews.
Of course the Conservative party itself has been confused for some time. Both the government and the opposition have been sidling to the left, inch by inch.
The Telegraph boasts of its conscious editorial decision to move to the left, and there’s many a lefty piece in the Times. When left-wing Jewish writers contribute to the Guardian some people call them “house Jews’, which is not at all nice; but the fact is that when their actual Jewishness is exploited to shield the newspaper from charges of antisemitism, they literally become useful idiots.
No. I’m right-wing purely because I defend Israel against the media’s outrageous bias against it.
Well, not purely because. I have other right-wing attitudes too, so I’m led to believe, but I prefer to think of them as belated signs of maturity. For example mothers being encouraged to dump put their offspring in low-cost daycare so they can pursue their real careers. I didn’t think much of that as an aspiration and I still don’t.
While we’re at it, let’s say something about the Labour manifesto too. As Matthew Parris says in The Times, (from which Laura Perrins quotes at length) what we are lacking is any credible opposition from the Conservatives to the incredible opposition provided by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.
We need Theresa May to articulate loudly and clearly why some of the utopian-sounding ideas and attractive-sounding handouts in Labour’s manifesto aren’t the answer, and warning of the unintended consequences that would ensue should they be implemented, sure as night follows day. And if Theresa may is too aloof to ‘debate’ with Corbyn, the BBC should step up to the plate and give the voting public something nice and gristly to chew on.
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Jeremy’s journey
How can people be allowed to get away with saying that Jeremy Corbyn is an honest man and a man of integrity. It’s upsetting to hear people heaping him with undeserved praise for the very qualities he lacks, especially when they do so in front of people who obviously know no better. It needs to be challenged by people who do know better.
There must be someone in the BBC who’s aware of Corbyn’s murky past, and if so they should inform the audience even if it’s only as a preamble to one of their fanciful tales about his ‘journey’
There's always a lot of upset on this blog about the "nasty" image the right supposedly has, and the undeserved "nice" image the left has. There's a lot to dispel the latter whilst the right generally are left untouched. If there are faults with the Conservative Party or other traditional bastions of the right, well blow me down, it's because they've veered to "the left". In other words, this blog perpetuates the notion that right=right, and left (or left-liberal, that handy concatenation of all things not on the right) = all that's wrong with the World, and that somehow the latter has subjugated the former...this must be put right!
ReplyDeleteWell, even though it's a considerable achievement to make-believe that "the right" would never stoop so low as to mock, belittle and demonise "the left", perhaps the biggest problem is aligning oneself to tribes in the first place. See, my big problem with the forthcoming election is the abysmal choice we're facing. The incumbent Government have performed abysmally. They've overseen, if not outright managed, an accelerated decline in provision and quality of health services, social care services, emergency services, armed forces and education. Homelessness has increased. I don't even need to mention the deficit do I? Their "performance" has been so bad that even Jeremy Corbyn looks a better bet. Yes, even Jeremy Corbyn.
I’m not sure that this blog does perpetuate “the notion that right=right, and left (or left-liberal, that handy concatenation of all things not on the right) = all that's wrong with the World, and that somehow the latter has subjugated the former...this must be put right! “ However, I’ll put it to Craig. He’s the rightie round here.
DeletePersonally, I thought I had explained that I wasn’t aligning myself with a tribe.
If you’re attractive, cool, relaxed, tolerant, devoutly sympathetic to the lame and disadvantaged, you must be open to new ideas too
Thanks for introducing me to the word “concatenation” (a series of interconnected things) which I’d never come across before. I’m going to apply it to our cat straight away.
There was a time when right and left had some meaning - right wing parties generally being attached to property and the status quo while left wing parties were generally seeking to better the lot of the have-nots and challenge the satus quo.
DeleteThanks to technological changes (jet flight, computers, containerisation) power, plus associated changes in the way business and finance operate, power and privilege is no longer primarily filtered through the nation state. Globalisation is the key feature of our age and power is globalised.
So we have a much more complex picture: the globalist power network is support by figures on both right and left (Osborne and Blair for instance). Some of the most extreme globalist policies e.g. no borders free migration is actually supported strongly by people otherwise described as "moderates". I am thinking of people like Yvette Cooper and Stella Creasy.
We now have a rather complicated political mosaic in which how people relate to global power is as important as where they stand on wealth distribution or free market operation within their notional national boundaries.
There is BTW very little evidence from Western Europe that social welfare provision is worse under right wing governments as opposed to left wing ones. Syriza in Greece has cut back on welfare and social provision.
"Right wing" is being used by the pro-globalist elite as a method of social control. The media, led by the BBC, New York Times, the Guardian, Sky and CNN deliberately elide the terms fascist, far right, extreme right, right wing, and conservative. They even apply the word "conservative" to radical Islamic regimes, like the dictatorship in Iran or communist dictatorships like China.
If the right really had any traction in the media then in history documentaries would always refer to Hitler's political movement as National Socialist and bring into sharp relief the anti-semitism prevalent in Bolshevism.
One of the reasons for the difficulty in positioning the Conservative party today, and perhaps why strict right/left divisions are no longer relevant, is because it morphed into a modern-day version of nineteenth century liberalism in the eighties. No doubt there are still old style Tories (somewhere), but this is the new middle ground that that was embraced by both the Conservatives and Blair’s New Labour.
ReplyDeleteYou could also argue, and I need to give this more thought, that the middle ground tends to be reactive to events and the left tends to be proscriptive. In a messy complicated world the latter almost always ends badly. Only in a parallel world do I see the philosophy of Corbyn as a good bet. The nasty right barb is a good hook for left wing comedians, but it doesn’t really mean anything. Is the left really so caring, or is it just about class-war and control?
I've thought about this a lot and I'm not sure anymore, right and left seems to have been superseded by Remain and Leave voters in my experience.
ReplyDeleteI know that the BBC likes to connect your political views to your level of education, however they seem to ignore that this is skewed by the fact that most people get more "right" as they age and the current "older" generation had less opportunities to become educated.
I do find it strange that once you know someone's views on one subject, you can normally guess quite accurately their views on something else which seem contradictory. For example Corbyn seems to be for the nationalist cause at any cost in Ireland but doesn't seem to think the Israelis have the same right to a country.
We know how the BBC play it. They wait outside the betting shop in some miserable post-industrial landscape and wait till someone comes out on a mobility scooter with a fag in their mouth...then they ask them if they voted Leave.
DeleteThe BBC seem determined to take us back and redraw the now outdated traditional battle lines between Labour and Conservative. Last night on the ten o'clock news, Laura K reporting on the Conservatives' manifesto launch managed to interrupt herself by bringing in protesters from outside the venue in order to reinforce the Old Labour message. The protester was there ready and rehearsed with his carefully engineered sound-bite delivered with red-faced passion bordering on anger. 'The Tories are taking us back to the 1870s' he said, evoking the familiar message of evil capitalism. This was so obviously a staged interruption by Corbyn supporting friends of Laura K and the BBC. What a disgrace.
DeleteI have noticed that Laura stays out of camera shot much more than she used to, relying on voice-over to present her biased message. That's probably so that we can't see the smirking expression on her face.
Yes, what a difference between this and her interview with Jeremy Corbyn at the time of the Labour manifesto launch. Laura Kuenssberg never asked any searching questions to Corbyn on the spot.
DeleteWhen I was younger I would probably have described myself as a socialist, but as I grew older and I hope wiser, I gradually began to understand the sheer destructiveness of the left. This might be the general pattern.
ReplyDeleteI think the institutional bias at the BBC actually starts much earlier and is rooted in the educational establishment. I am trying to avoid the simplistic notion of academics divorced from reality and perhaps never really growing up. But there, I have alluded to it. The inescapable fact is that civilisation is based on the world as a marketplace - making things and selling them to people. Titian, Mozart, Hokusai, some of the greatest minds the world has ever seen understood that, not just grey suited businessmen. At some point most of us come to terms with it. If the left wing bias at the BBC reveals anything, it is the preponderance of middle-aged adolescents walking the corridors of Broadcasting House.
The other day I heard President Rohani described on BBC Radio news as a "moderate cleric" which rather summons up the image of a middle-of-the-road Anglican vicar passing round the cucumber sandwiches and declaring the weather to be very warm for the time of year...not the nominal head of a state which organises weekly "Death to America and Israel" protests.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC really do go out of their way to whitewash the walls of Islam.
They are still at it!
Deletehttp://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/04/03/soros-tied-networks-foundations-joined-forces-to-create-trump-resistance-fund.html
ReplyDeleteWhy do we have to go to Fox News to find out about Soros's war on the democratically elected President of the USA?