Elsewhere (103)
BenSix ponders the moral compass of Russell Brand and Laurie Penny:
I do not know what Ms Penny’s memories of the riots are but mine are not of “righteous rage,” as Mr Brand phrased it. I think of Haroon Jahan, Shahzad Ali and Abdul Musavir, who were killed in a hit-and-run attack while defending their community from rioters; Richard Mannington Bowles, who was beaten to death while trying to extinguish a fire and Ashraf Rossli, who was attacked and then robbed by people who had pretended to help him. I think of the hundred private homes that were burned; the shops that were torched and the thuggishness that was so dramatically irresponsible that fire engines had their windows smashed when they arrived to fight the flames.
Penny can believe that such acts were inspired by “anger,” though the fact that so many of the participants had faced multiple prior convictions suggests that a good many of them required no such excuse to vandalise and steal. What I find disgusting, though, is the idea that they provide a model for future protests. It is evidence of a bizarre ethical and intellectual failure that one can romanticise this cause of death and destruction in a piece that is devoted to the horrors of casual sexism. It is interesting that a journal of left wing opinion is so receptive to calls for violent upheaval. One can only speculate as to their response should a Spectator columnist demand attacks on wind farms, speed cameras or publishing houses.
As regular readers will be aware, Ms Penny is inclined to hyperbolical nihilism and has some intriguing views on the subject of violence and on whom it may be inflicted. In August 2011 on the BBC’s World Tonight, Laurie offered her “intelligent analysis” of the aforementioned criminal spree. What frightens her, she said, isn’t the beating and murder of pensioners, the mugging of children or the gleeful attempts to burn people in their homes, but the use of the word “feral” to describe the people doing so. By Laurie’s lofty moral calculus, we, not the rioters, are the ignorant ones. “Violence,” she insisted, “is rarely ever mindless.” “Nicking trainers,” we were told, is “a political statement.”
Mark Steyn notes there’s nothing funny about Obama:
There’s a designation for countries where mocking the leader gets you sent to re-education camp, and it isn’t “self-governing republic of freeborn citizens.”
Chris Snowdon does some basic arithmetic:
Anyone who says that they want a tax on fizzy drinks because they are concerned about the cost to the public is either disingenuous or ignorant. It will place a further tax burden on the public that far outweighs any plausible savings. Also remember that we already have a 20 per cent tax on fizzy drinks. It’s called VAT and it isn’t levied on fruit juice, milk or water.
And Tim Worstall tries to endure an economics lecture by the Guardian’s foremost social commentator Polly Toynbee. As you can imagine, it tests his patience a little.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets below.
Update, via the comments:
Anna quotes this,
It is evidence of a bizarre ethical and intellectual failure that one can romanticise this cause of death and destruction in a piece that is devoted to the horrors of casual sexism.
And adds, “Laurie Penny in a nutshell.”
It does indeed capture something of Laurie’s… psychological peculiarities. It takes an extraordinary determination, or a practiced obliviousness, to see the riots of 2011 and somehow construe the predators as victims and therefore entitled to a spot of arson, pillage and murder. Victims, it turned out, who were mostly known thugs and career criminals – 75% having previous convictions for an average of fifteen crimes, some more than fifty. Laurie wasn’t alone of course. The Marxoid philosopher and fellow Guardian contributor Nina Power did the same, as did the post-colonial studies lecturer Priyamvada Gopal. And as did China Miéville, another titan of the left who’ll perform any contortion to excuse a fit of thuggery. Interviewed in 2011, Miéville claimed to be “horrified” by the use of the word “feral” when describing what he refers to as “troubled” teenagers. To describe as feral the kind of people who drag female fire-fighters from their vehicles and then punch them insensible – randomly, for fun – is, he says, our “moral degradation far more than [theirs].” Yes, by referring to such behaviour in unsympathetic terms, we are the degraded ones, the ones in need of fixing.
Faced with such statements, you do have to wonder about the people making them. Were their minds broken before they embraced the far left – did some pre-existing shortcoming draw them to that worldview? Or did prolonged exposure to Marxoid politics turn otherwise functional people into moral idiots?
This rickety barge is kept afloat, just barely, with the tip jar below.
It is evidence of a bizarre ethical and intellectual failure that one can romanticise this cause of death and destruction in a piece that is devoted to the horrors of casual sexism
Laurie Penny in a nutshell.
Laurie Penny in a nutshell.
It does capture something of her… psychological peculiarities. Though I suppose it takes a kind of skill, or at least an extraordinary bloody-mindedness, to see those events and somehow, in the face of all evidence, construe the thugs and predators as victims and therefore entitled to a spot of arson, pillage and murder. She wasn’t alone of course. The Marxoid philosopher and fellow Guardian contributor Nina Power did the same, as did the leftist lecturer Priyamvada Gopal. And as did China Miéville, another titan of the left who’ll perform any contortion to excuse a fit of thuggery. Interviewed in 2011, he claimed to be “horrified” by the use of the word “feral” when describing what he refers to as “troubled” teenagers. To describe as feral the kind of people who punch female fire-fighters insensible and burn women out of their homes – randomly, for fun – is, according to Mr Miéville, our “moral degradation far more than [theirs].” Yes, by referring to such behaviour in unsympathetic terms, we are the degraded ones, the ones in need of fixing.
You have to wonder, were their minds broken before they embraced the far left, did their emotional shortcomings draw them to that worldview? Or did prolonged exposure to Marxoid politics turn otherwise functional people into moral idiots?
“were their minds broken before they embraced the far left, did their emotional shortcomings draw them to that worldview? Or did prolonged exposure to Marxoid politics turn otherwise functional people into moral idiots?”
Either, depending on the individual. Some embrace leftism as a form of therapy for their alienation. Others are corrupted by Marxoid theory and assumptions.
On a lighter note, I did enjoy the media’s “spot the white guy” competition during the London riots, as they strove to pick out melanin-deficit no-gooders in order to put a more politically correct complexion on the disturbances.
It was like “Where’s Wally”, but with arson.
Lenin asked “Who, whom?”. According to the British media, it was, errr… “youths”. And the recent convictions in Rochdale were brought against, umm… “older men”. Ahem.
Curses on autocorrect. “Deficit” should be “deficient”.
It was one of those events where you really couldn’t miss the desperate, quite ludicrous attempts to bolt on a completely bogus narrative. And the BBC, our utterly impartial state broadcaster, was still referring to habitual criminals as “protestors” days after it was clear what was happening. Unless, that is, the thugs and thieves, almost all of whom had numerous previous convictions, were politically upset by the existence of small ethnic restaurants and the evil conglomerate Mothercare.
I heard one BBC reporter asking a besieged resident, “Is this about the cuts? It’s about the cuts, isn’t it?” When the resident looked puzzled and disagreed, the disappointment was audible. Those actually doing the thieving offered more revealing explanations. As one pair of female looters put it during an interview while drinking stolen wine: “Chucking bottles, breaking into stuff, it was madness… good though. Good fun. Free alcohol.” After quite a bit of prompting, the looters finally added a political dimension, of a sort: “It’s the government’s fault. I dunno… the Conservatives… yeah, whatever, whoever it is. We’re showing the police we can do what we want.”
In a Newsnight interview Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman echoed the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee and wanted us to believe that the beatings and muggings were due to cuts in the Educational Maintenance Allowance and the underfunding of social workers. This claim became slightly funnier when two of the looters were revealed as a teacher and a youth social worker – who, like many of their fellow rioters, were in no meaningful sense “deprived” or “excluded,” just opportunist and leftwing. And with the same self-justifying sense of entitlement as the pissed-up moron looters.
[ Edited. ]
“Nicking trainers,” we were told, is “a political statement.”
It’s still funny.
It’s still funny.
Given that even the Guardian acknowledged that much of the looting had been co-ordinated using BBM, smartphones and Twitter, the idea of the perpetrators as “desperate” shoeless paupers doesn’t quite convince: “Everyone from all sides of London meet up at the heart of London (central) OXFORD CIRCUS!!, Bare SHOPS are gonna get smashed up so come get some (free stuff!!!)”
I think Mr Eugenides summed it up quite well.
“Given…the looting had been co-ordinated using BBM, smartphones and Twitter, the idea of the perpetrators as “desperate” shoeless paupers doesn’t quite convince…”
Ah! But the Joseph Rowntree Trusts would argue that anyone who cannot afford a smartphone, trainers, a couple of weeks “away” a year, a large flat screen tv and a gallery of hideous and expensive tattoos is “deprived” – relatively, of course. I mean, if only we’d had the “living wage”, the riots would never have occurred.
I knew the 2011 riots had arrived in my neighbourhood when, at midnight, a number of BMWs and SUVs parked in my street and their occupants jumped out and ran down to Currys, returning shortly with large cardboard boxes. I feel sickened and ashamed to belong to a society that drives people to such acts of desperation.
It does capture something of her… psychological peculiarities.
There’s a lot of it about…
“I can’t quite believe that I’ve just sat through ten minutes of BBC television in which British journalists Owen Jones and Zoe Williams have defended Karl Marx as the prophet of the End of Capitalism. Unbelievable because I had thought Marxism was over with the fall of the Berlin Wall – when we discovered that socialism was one part bloodshed, one part farce. But unbelievable also because you’d have to be a pretty lacking in moral sensitivity to defend a thinker whose work sent millions of people to an early grave.”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100244023/the-left-is-trying-to-rehabilitate-karl-marx-lets-remind-them-of-the-millions-who-died-in-his-name/
Laurie wasn’t alone of course. The Marxoid philosopher and fellow Guardian contributor Nina Power did the same, as did the post-colonial studies lecturer Priyamvada Gopal. And as did China Miéville,
These four idiots should publish their homes addresses so those ‘victim’ looters can come round one night and nick their stuff too. Let’s see them put their money where their mouths are.
These four idiots should publish their home addresses so those ‘victim’ looters can come round one night and nick their stuff too.
Ah, but Laurie, like many of her peers, has those convenient non-reciprocal principles. Which is why, for instance, she champions window-smashing and says, “I have no problem with principled, thought-through political violence,” then squeals with indignation when the police resist such violence, say, by arresting the people doing it. And presumably Laurie would have no objection to strangers slapping her about and destroying her belongings, provided their predation was sufficiently rationalised and enthusiastic.
@sk60
The comments over at the Telegraph are pretty scary. It seems plenty of leftists are willing to excuse any number of deaths by shooting, beating, torture and starvation in the name of Marxism/ Communism/ Socialism, they even try to pin the blame for Pol Pots murderous regime on the hated ‘Maggie Thatcher’.
These four idiots should publish their home addresses so those ‘victim’ looters can come round one night and nick their stuff too.
In my experience, people on the left tend to be quite naïve about crime, its causes and how to deal with it. And the further left you go, the more foolish and unhinged those attitudes are. It doesn’t seem to occur to such people that their assumptions and rationalisations are often mimicked by habitual criminals and then used as excuses. If you keep telling people that their robbing, resentment and vandalism are a result of deprivation and social inequity, and therefore to be expected, this sends a message – one that will either be internalised or exploited cynically. It’s a phenomenon that Theodore Dalrymple has illustrated many times in his books and articles. And as Dalrymple said regarding China Miéville:
But that’s what he does. It’s what Laurie does all the time. It’s all about display and self-admiration. Their counterfactual blatherings weren’t motivated by a concern for the poor, and certainly not for the victims of the violence they so eagerly excused. When push came to shove, these elevated leftists took the side of the thugs and predators. The ones who burned down small businesses, punched fire-fighters and left thousands of people cowering in their homes.
How’s that for moral high ground?
“Laurie Penny in a nutshell.”
With the emphasis on ‘nut’?
Or on ‘shell’, which echoes the superficiality of her ‘thought’?
I cannot decide…
I knew the 2011 riots had arrived in my neighbourhood when, at midnight, a number of BMWs and SUVs parked in my street and their occupants jumped out and ran down to Currys, returning shortly with large cardboard boxes. I feel sickened and ashamed to belong to a society that drives people to such acts of desperation.
And Google “pauline pearce england riots” for a much more direct . . . assessment . . . of the occurrences.
. . . come to think of it, having la Penny attempt to debate Pierce would be rather droll . . . presumably once Penny were so cornered.
These four idiots should publish their home addresses so those ‘victim’ looters can come round one night and nick their stuff too.
Ah, but Laurie, like many of her peers, has those convenient non-reciprocal principles.
Hmmm. Y’mean you’re finding the following?
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/militaryhumor/a/britoer.htm
I’d pay good money to see ‘lil Miss Penny show up here at David’s place to defend her beliefs. Not that she would learn anything, mind. Perhaps offer a guest post, David, with the stipulation she has to stick round for comments.
‘Hmmm. Y’mean you’re finding the following?’
My personal favourite (not here) concerns an RN padre. ‘This man uses my ship to carry him from port to port, and my officers to carry him from bar to brothel’.
Talking of assorted fuckwittery, I just had to share this one with you all:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/letters/letters-look-again-at-nationalised-energy-8921361.html?origin=internalSearch
‘Poppy spooks
Just like Dr Buckingham (letter, 1 November), who wrote about his experience after ordering white poppies from the Stop the War Coalition, I too sensed a presence breathing down my neck. I didn’t actually complete the purchase (of one poppy) before the phone rang from Lloyds fraud investigations wanting me to confirm recent transactions. At the time I thought this must be a coincidence, because I have had fraudulent charges on a debit card. But now? Very creepy and infuriating.
Dianne Frank, Oxford’
Yes, Dianne. Because, you see, there is something inherently sinister about Lloyds phoning you after a case of ID theft just to check that your most recent purchases were legit, and were not due to someone stealing your cash. And of course Lloyds, along with GCHQ and MI5, are rigorously monitoring the entire web to spot anyone who might be buying a white poppy, and sticking it to the man.
You see, Dianne. Remembrance Day is not about commemorating the war dead, or raising funds for the Royal British Legion to help veterans and bereaved relatives of dead service personnel. It really is all about you.