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British Covid Response: View From Across the Pond

Joe Hutch said:
Apols if this is 'whataboutism', but if a French person said to me 'You will never understand French values', would that be racist?
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I think “values” in a nationalistic context is always going to make it so, it’s also an unprovable assertion. It’s a bit shit to say it either way.

Low key thought: nations don’t really have “values”
 
Yes, as Claire says. Turning a discussion about ideas into one about national values, in order to explicitly exclude two non-nationals from the discussion and from those values...Well, even on an abstract, logical level it’s exclusionary and nationalistic, isn’t it, by definition? Add in context - a racialised minority - and there’s your racism. Intentionality doesn’t really come into it, strictly speaking: on one level i was just calling Tim a name, in response to a string of odious and personalised posts. Had it been someone else I might have ignored it or just pointed out what I thought was happening.

I know people think I’m overdoing the Irish thing but trust me, the scum is rising: the Bloody Sunday tribunal, Corbyn and the IRA, intransigent Dublin, DUP primitives - every opportunity is being taken to give the old flames a thorough and deliberate stoking. It’s not physically dangerous or structurally damaging, as anti-black racism is - except to Irish Travellers - it’s just another aspect of the general gammonisation of the UK.
 
Slight tangent, but racism related, I saw the documentary on Australian AFL player Adam Goodes. I wasn't exactly masquerading under the illusion Australia was a racism free society but that was a real eye opener.
 
claire.foxx said:
I think “values” in a nationalistic context is always going to make it so, it’s also an unprovable assertion. It’s a bit shit to say it either way.

Low key thought: nations don’t really have “values”
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Especially not conglomerate nations such as Britain. And even within the composite nations, are there (outside of jokes) such things as 'Scottish' or 'Welsh' values? Do North Walians have the same values as South Walians? Do Highland Scots have the same values as Lowland Scots?
 
Seanm said:
Yes, as Claire says. Turning a discussion about ideas into one about national values, in order to explicitly exclude two non-nationals from the discussion and from those values...Well, even on an abstract, logical level it’s exclusionary and nationalistic, isn’t it, by definition? Add in context - a racialised minority - and there’s your racism. Intentionality doesn’t really come into it, strictly speaking: on one level i was just calling Tim a name, in response to a string of odious and personalised posts. Had it been someone else I might have ignored it or just pointed out what I thought was happening.

I know people think I’m overdoing the Irish thing but trust me, the scum is rising: the Bloody Sunday tribunal, Corbyn and the IRA, intransigent Dublin, DUP primitives - every opportunity is being taken to give the old flames a thorough and deliberate stoking. It’s not physically dangerous or structurally damaging, as anti-black racism is - except to Irish Travellers - it’s just another aspect of the general gammonisation of the UK.
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All of which, ironically enough, illustrates to me that you do in fact have a pretty good grasp of ‘British values’.
 
Kirk said:
What are 'British values' in 2020?
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On a par with Euros, ironically enough (and soon with the Dollar).

But, seriously, there really are no such thing as 'British values'. We're a mishmash of different cultures, religions, and ethnic groups. What are sometimes characterised as 'British values' are basically either just common decency, which exists independently of nations, or an air of self-deprecation, usually masking an underlying belief in innate superiority (more of an English than a British trait). As Flanders & Swann put it:

'The English are moral, the English are good
And clever and modest and misunderstood!'

Though Donald Swann was hardly a stereotypical Englishman:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Swann

'Donald Swann was born in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, Wales. His father, Herbert Alfredovich Swann, was a Russian doctor of English descent, from the expatriate community that started out as the Muscovy Company. His mother, Naguimé Sultán Swann (born Piszóva), was a Turkmen-Russian nurse from Ashgabat, now part of Turkmenistan. They were refugees from the Russian Revolution.'
 
Joe Hutch said:
On a par with Euros, ironically enough (and soon with the Dollar).

But, seriously, there really are no such thing as 'British values'. We're a mishmash of different cultures, religions, and ethnic groups. What are sometimes characterised as 'British values' are basically either just common decency, which exists independently of nations, or an air of self-deprecation, usually masking an underlying belief in innate superiority (more of an English than a British trait). As Flanders & Swann put it:

'The English are moral, the English are good
And clever and modest and misunderstood!'

Though Donald Swann was hardly a stereotypical Englishman:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Swann

'Donald Swann was born in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, Wales. His father, Herbert Alfredovich Swann, was a Russian doctor of English descent, from the expatriate community that started out as the Muscovy Company. His mother, Naguimé Sultán Swann (born Piszóva), was a Turkmen-Russian nurse from Ashgabat, now part of Turkmenistan. They were refugees from the Russian Revolution.'
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Grateful for the response - and not just the 'wit.'
 
I was just thinking, whilst doing some gardening, about national identity and national values. I'm more Scottish than English, but I feel no affinity towards Scotland, and don't think of myself as Scottish. Although I was born and raised in England, I don't think of myself as English either, and find many specifically English things (and the 'Little England' mindset in particular) faintly ridiculous. Charles Lamb wrote an essay entitled 'Imperfect Sympathies', which opens with a quote from Sir Thomas Browne (Lamb distances himself from Browne's view):

"I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathiseth with all things; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in anything. Those national repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch."

That's more or less how I feel. My daughters seem free from any sort of Anglo-centric prejudice, but Mrs H has what seems to me to be an irrational dislike of the French. Whether this stems from ancestral, subconscious fear of 'Old Boney', or some other reason, is unclear to me (both her parents, and all of her grandparents and great-grandparents, were born in the South of England).
 
Seanm said:
There's no non-racist way of saying to non-British people that they'll never understand British values, just as there's no non-racist way of telling people to leave the country if they hold some opinion or other. Sorry! As with the others, if you're sensitive to the label, don't use the language.
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This is an increasingly common and particularly vicious rhetorical device - to accuse someone of something terrible and then leave them either to try to defend themselves against it, or to do nothing.

I have no idea what your nationality, ethnic background or ethnicity is Sean. Clearly bile and idiocy are no respecters of such boundaries. Despite that, I have never told you or anyone else to "leave", nor would I.

Inference, and yours is wildly off here, is not the same as implication.
 
Tim Jones said:
This is an increasingly common and particularly vicious rhetorical device - to accuse someone of something terrible and then leave them either to try to defend themselves against it, or to do nothing.
.
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It’s hardly new, it’s called a “straw man” but even though Seanm has his faults, which are too numerous to list here, he doesn’t seem to use a straw man defence of his positions.


https://effectiviology.com/straw-man-arguments-recognize-counter-use/
 
kensalriser said:
Slight tangent, but racism related, I saw the documentary on Australian AFL player Adam Goodes. I wasn't exactly masquerading under the illusion Australia was a racism free society but that was a real eye opener.
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A Kevin Bloody Wilson show in TW a few years ago died on its feet when he started making jokes about Aboriginal People. Some people actually walked out... Thankfully, i didn't actually pay for my ticket...
 
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