6 ms·

The wilful cognitive dissonance on the part of the British establishment, and "sunlit uplands" types is remarkable. Demanding statues remain up so "history is

by grlass 5y ago

The wilful cognitive dissonance on the part of the British establishment, and "sunlit uplands" types is remarkable. Demanding statues remain up so "history is not forgotten", then making moves to ban the discussion of unfavourable history, such as the legacy of empire and such, Churchill's policies during the Bengal famine being the classic example.

dpwm 5y ago
The entire ideology is so inconsistent that it can only seem like it might work if you wilfully ignore vast swathes of evidence. Britain’s imperial past and present provide a perfectly adequate explanation for the UK’s relative prosperity. It seems entirely understandable that proponents of the ideology only want some of the history to be remembered. Otherwise, too many voters might get the idea that the UK is some kind of dishonest, nasty little island nation built on, and still benefiting from, slavery and imperialism. It’s probably a bit harder to remain in power with a program of advancing domestic inequality to the descendants of the beneficiaries of that imperialism. I don’t think that this is a problem that just the UK has – many industrial imperial powers have the problem of how to contextualise their relative wealth. Once you start asking if it is right for the beneficiaries of those policies to have kept their wealth, solutions like serious wealth redistribution start to get proposed. It’s just that in the UK, there is a tendency for reactionaries to look almost comical to even their deepest opponents.
- jl6 5y ago
  Race is a relatively new dimension in this conversation, largely imported from the USA. Conventionally, English society is divided by class, not race. The roots of class are in land ownership. And how far back must we unwind that to achieve equity?
  - dpwm 5y ago
    > Race is a relatively new dimension in this conversation, largely imported from the USA. Conventionally, English society is divided by class, not race. Absolutely, and the class structure in the UK is very still prevalent and cohesive. I also add that the beneficiaries of the slave trade and imperialism were predominantly one class, with a few crumbs dropped. In the context of the comment and this article, imperialism and slavery are central. I think you understand why there is a backlash against any kind of redress for slavery, you only have to consider what is at stake: it’s not such a great leap from tackling race inequities to tackling class inequities – and didn’t those ideas get buried already? I also believe this is true in the US, and why there is similar reaction to race inequities being raised: it’s no coincidence civil the rights movement and socialist movements were interlinked. In the US, the lives of poor white people don’t matter so much, either; that is not to deny that there is not and has not been a substantial race element too. There is this idea that the US is a classless society, but it still has a class of wage labourers and a class of bourgeois – along with the inevitable class that mediate between the two but are actually the former. It looks remarkably like the UK class system today, with the key difference being the aristocratic remnants in the UK. > The roots of class are in land ownership. And how far back must we unwind that to achieve equity? Land ownership, inheritance and distribution are fascinating topics, especially when considering equity on a global scale and how the utility of natural resources has changed. Land reform in the UK was itself a substantial political theme throughout the 20th century, and we still see elements of it resurface in debates on housing policy and environment, even if the blatant inequities are conveniently ignored.
    - jl6 5y ago
      I think the practicalities of the unwinding are actually central to the key point of all this: what do we do about it? Litigating history to try to work out who is benefiting from a historical injustice is almost infinitely complex. Race and class and other identity categories have extremely fuzzy edges. Everyone will have a bad actor somewhere in their group. Nobody is pure victim or pure oppressor.
      - dpwm 5y ago
        > I think the practicalities of the unwinding are actually central to the key point of all this: what do we do about it? I don’t think you can unwind – you can create a more unfair or less unfair society, but even how you measure fair is to be debated in a context where money buys both influence and reach. It’s not just the class- or race-inequities – it’s the whole ideology: the alternative explanations, the justifications and what look like churches surrounding it. > Litigating history to try to work out who is benefiting from a historical injustice is almost infinitely complex. It’s also very backward-focused, and very subject to interpretation. Not to mention it is taking place in a world where the publishers tend to be owned by members of the class that stands to lose the most. It’s also not just a historical injustice: it is perpetuated and maintained to this day. Some would argue that the maintenance of such statues is offensive. To me, statues have always marked people who were important to the state – and slave traders and colonisers were. A friend once remarked that there was seldom a statue that didn’t deserve all the abuse it got from birds. > Race and class and other identity categories have extremely fuzzy edges. Everyone will have a bad actor somewhere in their group. Nobody is pure victim or pure oppressor. Absolutely – in fact they’re largely abstract when you factor in phenomena like albinism and environmental changes for race alone, without even getting into "scientific" racism. Defining class results in substantial reports that have a few interesting observations, but don’t really provide a definite result. I have almost certainly directly benefited from the imperialism. I don’t think it agrees with my values, but I don’t really see an alternative beyond a sort of tolerated hypocrisy.
- dash2 5y ago
  > Britain’s imperial past and present provide a perfectly adequate explanation for the UK’s relative prosperity. Citation needed. Slavery does not explain the industrial revolution. In fact, expensive labour, plus cheap coal, does a better job. My citation: Robert Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective.
- Tycho 5y ago
  As if having an “imperial past” is merely the result of some unenlightened policy decisions, rather then the product of endeavour, resilience, ingenuity and cultural brilliance.
  - dpwm 5y ago
    I actually consider this the most honest critical reply, even if it runs counter to my values – so I upvoted it. I don’t believe that the policies were unenlightened, or accidental, or coincidental. I think they were the result of immense effort and cunning, driven by a different set of values that are intrinsic to and still maintained by a certain class today. I believe they originated in the class system as a way to justify the privilege, and I don’t think they ever went away. The level of ingenuity to pull off what was done, and then to create an ideology and a set of scriptures to justify and entrench it for centuries is absolutely fascinating at both a historical and anthropological level. It’s also a in a context of immense human suffering and loss of life that it cannot be separated from. I find the woke culture an almost comical clash between the overt and implicit values of globalism and neoliberalism. I view it with a fascination, and it’s not from some position of superiority. I’d like to believe in the ideology, because I think I’d be so much happier, but I’ve always asked too many questions. Again, I consider the possibility I’m intellectually incapable of understanding some fundamental truth. The supremacist angle – not meant as a pejorative – seems the closest I can get to it, but I find that nearly all paths rely on post hoc ergo propter hoc, and it again puts me in a position of being better than others. And yet, fundamentally, do we all not have a sense of superiority: does our own individual survival not come ahead of another’s – outside of kin? I don’t believe we are qualified to know the impact of imperialism without knowing what the world would have looked like without. From a cybernetic point of view, imperialism appears as though it can only have reduced the variety of the planet, and seems to me a negative – but this is assuming that industrialisation would have happened by another means. Imperialism also arose in multiple forms, leading me to believe it was inevitable, and I suspect other imperialist powers may have seized the opportunities left behind – but this seems a weak justification for what I consider amoral behaviour. I wonder, however: if the asymmetry were reversed would maintain your position? Were you on the receiving end of might-is-right imperialism, would it still be a position you would hold? Kudos if so, but it’s not for me. I realise that I was fortunate to be born into an imperialist country, and to be able to be an immigrant in another imperialist country. I drive a car. I can live with that and not agree with the things that ostensibly led to what I benefit from, and put me in the position of privilege to be able to even think about these things.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- krona 5y ago
  > Britain’s imperial past and present provide a perfectly adequate explanation for the UK’s relative prosperity. And the relative prosperity of countries that were colonised? Is this an argument in favour of colonisation?
  - dpwm 5y ago
    How do you define prosperity? GDP seems a flawed metric when discussing plunder: of course country A forcing country B to mine or farm will increase the GDP of country B. I believe it requires either supremacism, inconsistency or hypocrisy to argue that land ownership at home should be sacrosanct whilst the rest of the world is fair game. I’m actually not arguing for one thing or another, but I do have a side. I’m fine with overt supremacism or racism, though both run counter to my values.
thu2111 5y ago
making moves to ban the discussion of unfavourable history, such as the legacy of empire and such Where is this British establishment trying to ban discussion of the British Empire?

by grlass 5y ago

dpwm 5y ago

The entire ideology is so inconsistent that it can only seem like it might work if you wilfully ignore vast swathes of evidence. Britain’s imperial past and present provide a perfectly adequate explanation for the UK’s relative prosperity. It seems entirely understandable that proponents of the ideology only want some of the history to be remembered. Otherwise, too many voters might get the idea that the UK is some kind of dishonest, nasty little island nation built on, and still benefiting from, slavery and imperialism. It’s probably a bit harder to remain in power with a program of advancing domestic inequality to the descendants of the beneficiaries of that imperialism. I don’t think that this is a problem that just the UK has – many industrial imperial powers have the problem of how to contextualise their relative wealth. Once you start asking if it is right for the beneficiaries of those policies to have kept their wealth, solutions like serious wealth redistribution start to get proposed. It’s just that in the UK, there is a tendency for reactionaries to look almost comical to even their deepest opponents.

jl6 5y ago
Race is a relatively new dimension in this conversation, largely imported from the USA. Conventionally, English society is divided by class, not race. The roots of class are in land ownership. And how far back must we unwind that to achieve equity?
- dpwm 5y ago
  > Race is a relatively new dimension in this conversation, largely imported from the USA. Conventionally, English society is divided by class, not race. Absolutely, and the class structure in the UK is very still prevalent and cohesive. I also add that the beneficiaries of the slave trade and imperialism were predominantly one class, with a few crumbs dropped. In the context of the comment and this article, imperialism and slavery are central. I think you understand why there is a backlash against any kind of redress for slavery, you only have to consider what is at stake: it’s not such a great leap from tackling race inequities to tackling class inequities – and didn’t those ideas get buried already? I also believe this is true in the US, and why there is similar reaction to race inequities being raised: it’s no coincidence civil the rights movement and socialist movements were interlinked. In the US, the lives of poor white people don’t matter so much, either; that is not to deny that there is not and has not been a substantial race element too. There is this idea that the US is a classless society, but it still has a class of wage labourers and a class of bourgeois – along with the inevitable class that mediate between the two but are actually the former. It looks remarkably like the UK class system today, with the key difference being the aristocratic remnants in the UK. > The roots of class are in land ownership. And how far back must we unwind that to achieve equity? Land ownership, inheritance and distribution are fascinating topics, especially when considering equity on a global scale and how the utility of natural resources has changed. Land reform in the UK was itself a substantial political theme throughout the 20th century, and we still see elements of it resurface in debates on housing policy and environment, even if the blatant inequities are conveniently ignored.
  - jl6 5y ago
    I think the practicalities of the unwinding are actually central to the key point of all this: what do we do about it? Litigating history to try to work out who is benefiting from a historical injustice is almost infinitely complex. Race and class and other identity categories have extremely fuzzy edges. Everyone will have a bad actor somewhere in their group. Nobody is pure victim or pure oppressor.
    - dpwm 5y ago
      > I think the practicalities of the unwinding are actually central to the key point of all this: what do we do about it? I don’t think you can unwind – you can create a more unfair or less unfair society, but even how you measure fair is to be debated in a context where money buys both influence and reach. It’s not just the class- or race-inequities – it’s the whole ideology: the alternative explanations, the justifications and what look like churches surrounding it. > Litigating history to try to work out who is benefiting from a historical injustice is almost infinitely complex. It’s also very backward-focused, and very subject to interpretation. Not to mention it is taking place in a world where the publishers tend to be owned by members of the class that stands to lose the most. It’s also not just a historical injustice: it is perpetuated and maintained to this day. Some would argue that the maintenance of such statues is offensive. To me, statues have always marked people who were important to the state – and slave traders and colonisers were. A friend once remarked that there was seldom a statue that didn’t deserve all the abuse it got from birds. > Race and class and other identity categories have extremely fuzzy edges. Everyone will have a bad actor somewhere in their group. Nobody is pure victim or pure oppressor. Absolutely – in fact they’re largely abstract when you factor in phenomena like albinism and environmental changes for race alone, without even getting into "scientific" racism. Defining class results in substantial reports that have a few interesting observations, but don’t really provide a definite result. I have almost certainly directly benefited from the imperialism. I don’t think it agrees with my values, but I don’t really see an alternative beyond a sort of tolerated hypocrisy.
dash2 5y ago
> Britain’s imperial past and present provide a perfectly adequate explanation for the UK’s relative prosperity. Citation needed. Slavery does not explain the industrial revolution. In fact, expensive labour, plus cheap coal, does a better job. My citation: Robert Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective.
Tycho 5y ago
As if having an “imperial past” is merely the result of some unenlightened policy decisions, rather then the product of endeavour, resilience, ingenuity and cultural brilliance.
- dpwm 5y ago
  I actually consider this the most honest critical reply, even if it runs counter to my values – so I upvoted it. I don’t believe that the policies were unenlightened, or accidental, or coincidental. I think they were the result of immense effort and cunning, driven by a different set of values that are intrinsic to and still maintained by a certain class today. I believe they originated in the class system as a way to justify the privilege, and I don’t think they ever went away. The level of ingenuity to pull off what was done, and then to create an ideology and a set of scriptures to justify and entrench it for centuries is absolutely fascinating at both a historical and anthropological level. It’s also a in a context of immense human suffering and loss of life that it cannot be separated from. I find the woke culture an almost comical clash between the overt and implicit values of globalism and neoliberalism. I view it with a fascination, and it’s not from some position of superiority. I’d like to believe in the ideology, because I think I’d be so much happier, but I’ve always asked too many questions. Again, I consider the possibility I’m intellectually incapable of understanding some fundamental truth. The supremacist angle – not meant as a pejorative – seems the closest I can get to it, but I find that nearly all paths rely on post hoc ergo propter hoc, and it again puts me in a position of being better than others. And yet, fundamentally, do we all not have a sense of superiority: does our own individual survival not come ahead of another’s – outside of kin? I don’t believe we are qualified to know the impact of imperialism without knowing what the world would have looked like without. From a cybernetic point of view, imperialism appears as though it can only have reduced the variety of the planet, and seems to me a negative – but this is assuming that industrialisation would have happened by another means. Imperialism also arose in multiple forms, leading me to believe it was inevitable, and I suspect other imperialist powers may have seized the opportunities left behind – but this seems a weak justification for what I consider amoral behaviour. I wonder, however: if the asymmetry were reversed would maintain your position? Were you on the receiving end of might-is-right imperialism, would it still be a position you would hold? Kudos if so, but it’s not for me. I realise that I was fortunate to be born into an imperialist country, and to be able to be an immigrant in another imperialist country. I drive a car. I can live with that and not agree with the things that ostensibly led to what I benefit from, and put me in the position of privilege to be able to even think about these things.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
krona 5y ago
> Britain’s imperial past and present provide a perfectly adequate explanation for the UK’s relative prosperity. And the relative prosperity of countries that were colonised? Is this an argument in favour of colonisation?
- dpwm 5y ago
  How do you define prosperity? GDP seems a flawed metric when discussing plunder: of course country A forcing country B to mine or farm will increase the GDP of country B. I believe it requires either supremacism, inconsistency or hypocrisy to argue that land ownership at home should be sacrosanct whilst the rest of the world is fair game. I’m actually not arguing for one thing or another, but I do have a side. I’m fine with overt supremacism or racism, though both run counter to my values.

thu2111 5y ago

making moves to ban the discussion of unfavourable history, such as the legacy of empire and such Where is this British establishment trying to ban discussion of the British Empire?