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Anti Woke movement grows

Trick is to keep that section from growing, and even try to prune it a bit. Won't happen unless Labour try to change the conversation. I realise this is largely out of their hands but still, common sense is actually quite popular. Burnham's actually not a bad communicator and even has something of the man-of-the-people about him: if he can't find a way to say, "Look, this has been blown out of proportion: students are going to student, let's look at the things that actually matter, like the problems faced by people working in health and social care, identified in yesterday's select committee", then what hope is there. The kind of people for whom bashing students is the number one priority, and who can’t even accept that Labour has other priorities, are not going to be won over, IMO.

Of course Labour have good reasons for not wanting to change the conversation, so this isn’t really a slight on their strategy. It’s just that it means you won’t get mainstream political opposition to what is basically the whole of the government’s program.
I have to disagree.

What’s going wrong for people who work in health care is only part of a wider problem.*

On the one hand we have a right wing narrative that is based on tying up a broad set of exclusions to notions of our national identity. It is a narrative that does not include the fact that slavery is an important foundation of what we are. It is a narrative that cannot withstand anything but applause for ideas of a national identity based on a salute to ‘greatness’.

On the other hand we have a left wing that’s been stuck dumb by self inflicted wounds

(*That is not to diminish the plight of care works, I get brief but regular updates on what it’s like in Care** from someone with a day job in Care and on the occasions that she has a moment

**Didn’t St Boris say he had a Care policy ready to go some years back? Guess it went the way of other oven ready deals he had cooking. Still Frozen.
 
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She is targetted as an employee of the NT and in the capacity of working on the repositioning and the modification of information to more accurately reflect the truth. Because of the way this is being reported - 'history is being cancelled', 'the wokes want to change the past' - many employees are being targeted in telephone complaints and emails. These are not personal but are directed at the NT, generally, by people who say things like, 'I will not allow my grandchildren to be made to feel guilty about slavery.' Now, I have worked in education for several years and none, and I mean none, of the children I taught would feel guilty about someone else building a house with ill-gotten gains. They would question, they would express revulsion that it went on, and they would ask if it was still happening, and that is education, not holding on to a myopic truth that serves nobody!

What’s happening to your friend is utterly despicable. Hope she has support, if not from NT, then through a Union or somesuch. It would be of interest to know if there are others being pressurised also.
 
The use of the word “cancel” in the Express headline is significant. Cancel is becoming part of the right wing lexicon along side “snowflake” and “woke”. It is being used to cancel any discussion of an objective view of history and replace it with myths and lies about our greatness.

Same thing is happening in the US. Students are amazed when they learn that the US was built, in part at least, on a system of slavery. And that that partly explains why part of the US is, on average, less educated and more racist than other parts.

I'd suggest that a nation that can recognize and own the awful things it has done (and every country has them) has a much better chance of moving past them. The attempts to move backwards in several southern US states relative to teaching accurate history shows that many people don't want to move forward.
 
Quoting the Daily Mail is akin to using Mein Kampf as a social reference book.
The point of the woke argument is to change the subject, we talk about mouthy students rather than cuts to foreign aid, Churchill statues rather than the housing crisis.
The print media is representative of the owners not the great unwashed
 
The right use woke, the left use 'isms'.

As for woke, it performs a number of essential tasks if you’re a right-wing politician: it debases society, it dumbs down debate, it fuels tribalism, it encourages in-out thinking and taps into our evolutionary need to belong. It also acts as a sort of short-hand for 'fear change', and it’s a snappy pejorative that anyone can learn and use (e.g. the media and football fans).

Maybe related…"every year since the 1960s, in Western democracies the 10% of voters with the most years of schooling have gravitated towards left-wing parties, while the remaining 90% slid the other way."
 
The right use woke, the left use 'isms'.

As for woke, it performs a number of essential tasks if you’re a right-wing politician: it debases society, it dumbs down debate, it fuels tribalism, it encourages in-out thinking and taps into our evolutionary need to belong. It also acts as a sort of short-hand for 'fear change', and it’s a snappy pejorative that anyone can learn and use (e.g. the media and football fans).

Maybe related…"every year since the 1960s, in Western democracies the 10% of voters with the most years of schooling have gravitated towards left-wing parties, while the remaining 90% slid the other way."
…and an ever widening gap between rich and poor
 
I have to disagree.

What’s going wrong for people who work in health care is only part of a wider problem.*

On the one hand we have a right wing narrative that is based on tying up a broad set of exclusions to notions of our national identity. It is a narrative that does not include the fact that slavery is an important foundation of what we are. It is a narrative that cannot withstand anything but applause for ideas of a national identity based on a salute to ‘greatness’.

On the other hand we have a left wing that’s been stuck dumb by self inflicted wounds

(*That is not to diminish the plight of care works, I get brief but regular updates on what it’s like in Care** from someone close to me on the occasions that she has a moment

**Didn’t St Boris say he had a Care policy ready to go some years back? Guess it went the way of other oven ready deals he had cooking. Still Frozen.
The point though is there’s nothing to engage with here. I mean, as you say, there's the right wing narrative, sure, but it's confected from a thousand made-up talking points with no referents in reality and if Labour accepts that is has to take a position on all of them then they've lost: the Tories will have succeeded in their aim of "flooding the zone with sh__", to use Steve Bannon's formulation.

No doubt there are certain fronts in the culture war where the left should take a stand but they need to be a bit discerning. 99% of the time the only sensible thing to do is refuse the terms of the question that's being put to them and just point out the mostly fictional nature of it all.
 
Maybe related…"every year since the 1960s, in Western democracies the 10% of voters with the most years of schooling have gravitated towards left-wing parties, while the remaining 90% slid the other way."
Having worked on a few building sites when young there are a lot of working class right wing sun readers; I’ve had my sister quote the Sun at me (ten things you didn’t know about the loony left) granted she’s a thick selfish cow but the proven effects of education on political views are sketchy.
I think it’s the environment of the school more than the education, ie if you are right Eton should therefore be a hotbed of leftist insurgents.
 
Appears said student who complained about HM Queen, is an American! So what the hell is it to do with him! Imagine the uproar if a UK student in an US college/university complained about a portrait of George Washington. Whole world has gone mad, student does not like a portrait then best they leave and go elsewhere.

It has struck me as strangely unremarked how incredibly international is the MCR of a college like Magdalen. I'd be surprised if UK postgrads even constitute a majority.

I'm an old member and we got a good email from the President, saying it was a cheap photo which the MCR had only put up in 2013 (college founded 1458) and which members of the MCR decided to take down (for clearly woke reasons), which it's their absolute right to do. Apparently it has been put away safely in a cupboard in case they should in future decide to put it back.

I mean, the one group in society which has always done this kind of thing is students.
 
The point though is there’s nothing to engage with here. I mean, as you say, there's the right wing narrative, sure, but it's confected from a thousand made-up talking points with no referents in reality and if Labour accepts that is has to take a position on all of them then they've lost: the Tories will have succeeded in their aim of "flooding the zone with sh__", to use Steve Bannon's formulation.

No doubt there are certain fronts in the culture war where the left should take a stand but they need to be a bit discerning. 99% of the time the only sensible thing to do is refuse the terms of the question that's being put to them and just point out the mostly fictional nature of it all.
I believe there is something to engage with. The right wing narrative might be confected, and based on myth, but myth or not, a lot of people are chomping on that toffee apple. And that very much is the problem. It is not about a thousand made up talking points, but the fact that taken together, and by not being looked at critically, they find a ready target.

Labour don’t need to take a a position on all of them, they need to take a position on right and wrong. If they can’t do that…….?
 
I believe there is something to engage with. The right wing narrative might be confected, and based on myth, but myth or not, a lot of people are chomping on that toffee apple. And that very much is the problem. It is not about a thousand made up talking points, but the fact that taken together, and by not being looked at critically, they find a ready target.

Labour don’t need to take a a position on all of them, they need to take a position on right and wrong. If they can’t do that…….?
They really can’t do that :). Partly because they think they have to listen to legitimate concerns etc but mostly because the alternative - change the conversation - is something they really don’t want to do: what on earth would they talk about?

So it’s all a bit academic as regards Labour. The rest of us have to decide what we want to do in the face of this storm of made up outrage and I’ve decided to just ignore most of it: I’ll take a stand when these things hit the institutions I’m involved with but I’m not going to waste time trying to talk angry right wingers out of their coronaries. I admire your patience but we’ve got years of this to come: you’ll wear yourself out before they do, this is all they have!
 
They had a vote about whether she should stay. The irony is that the very people kicking up an absolute stink are also the ones who hold the noose of democracy over anyone's head who suggests that the referendum result should not be followed by Brexit.

This sums it up:
Snowflakes furious over removal of portrait they didn’t know existed from room they don’t have access to
https://newsthump.com/2021/06/09/sn...w-existed-from-room-they-dont-have-access-to/
 


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