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Anthropology TV

No, Wait, Hear Me Out

September 8, 2024 100 Comments

Lifted from the comments, an idea for late-night viewing. First, some context is in order, but do let me know what you think.

It began with some rumblings on common progressive attitudes regarding crime and recidivism. Not least a practised unrealism and the failure to acknowledge just how different the mental landscape of the criminal demographic can be:

Those mouthing progressive positions on crime and social disorder very often have limited personal exposure to the creatures they so ostentatiously excuse. They are unlikely to have grown up among them or to have had them living next door. And so, with little formative experience of the type, false assumptions accumulate.

Among which, these.

It’s worth noting that the field of academic criminology, in which unrealism and excuses are pretty much the default, is notoriously left-tilted, here and overseas, with liberals and radical leftists outnumbering conservative colleagues by a ratio of around 30:1.

And it occurs to me that people in high-status professions, including legal professions, are more likely to have internalised high-status opinions, mouthed as a kind of social jewellery. According to which, the creatures treating us as mere prey – suckers from whom things can be taken – are the ones most deserving of our sympathy and indulgence.

Pretentious sympathy, of course. But still.

And so, we have competitively activist legal professionals, such as Mr Clive Stafford Smith, a man who believes that the wellbeing of burglars is more important than the wellbeing of their numerous victims, especially if the burglar is a “young black person.” And who regards anger at being burgled and the subsequent sense of violation as plebeian and unsophisticated, while disdaining the victims’ expectations of justice as, and I quote, “idiotic attitudes.”

Such views passing entirely unchallenged in the inevitable, rather fawning Guardian profile. A profile in which Mr Stafford Smith chides and insults the victims of burglary, and the law-abiding generally, while offering excuses for those who break into strangers’ homes and steal their belongings, and who do this over and over again.

Mr Stafford Smith goes on to boast that he dislikes Conservative voters much more than criminals, and Ms Decca Aitkenhead, his Guardian interviewer, claps along approvingly. As if rhetorically minimising crime and its effects – say, on the elderly who find their homes violated and stripped of any valuables – were somehow a credential, proof of their own elevation. There’s a weirdly demented quality, one that’s not acknowledged as much as it should be.

At which point, I was reminded of the Guardian‘s own Zoe Williams, who scolds those who would rather not live next door to thieving, feral neighbours – say, the kinds of creatures who blast out loud music at 3am, and who hurl pets from upstairs windows:

According to Zoe, we should be “unstigmatising,” which is to say, non-judgmental. A result of which is that empathy, or feigned empathy, is shifted from the working-class victim of crime and antisocial behaviour to the working-class perpetrator of crime and antisocial behaviour, on grounds that the thug or criminal is in some way being oppressed and, unlike their neighbours, being made to misbehave.

Presumably Ms Williams’ own neighbours have little in common with, say, the delightful Stuart Murgatroyd, a father of twelve who has never worked and boasts an extensive criminal record, not least for robbing the elderly in graveyards, and whose attempt to challenge an Anti Social Behaviour Order was cut short at the very last minute due to him being arrested for assaulting the mother of his children, herself a convicted getaway driver, on the steps of the courthouse.

And I suspect our infinitely compassionate Ms Williams has yet to experience an all-night, full-on, eleven-hour rave being hosted next door, which would doubtless give her an opportunity to practise that non-judgmental piety.

As I can tell you’re curious, here’s Mr Murgatroyd with three of his twelve children. Everyone in the photo has been subject to Antisocial Behaviour Orders for repeatedly terrorising their neighbours.

Here’s Mr Murgatroyd exchanging views with the mother of his children:

So, with the above in mind, here’s the pitch.

Imagine, if you will, a reality TV show of perhaps a dozen episodes, in which, having been banished from their current council-house digs, the Murgatroyds move in next door to Zoe Williams, our Guardian columnist and champion of the downtrodden – albeit, until now, from a safe distance. Would we be treated to heart-warming chats across the garden fence, and exchanged cups of sugar, while the families’ respective children – Zoe’s are named Thurston and Harper – have jolly times together?

As a real-world test of Zoe’s scrupulously progressive worldview, one shared widely by her peers, it would, I think, make for instructive viewing.

And as svh suggests in the comments, “She deserves no less.”

Update, via the comments:

Picturing the scenario above – Zoe Meets The Murgatroyds – does rather reveal the absurdity of her pretence. But this pretence is far from uncommon among professed egalitarians. It’s a fantasy world, quite laughable in its dishonesty. Unless we’re to believe that Zoe, dear caring Zoe, would be thrilled to have violent morons moving in next door to her.

And yet she and her colleagues tell us that any effort to remove such ‘problem families’ or to inhibit their malevolence – so that their neighbours might have some semblance of a normal life – is “dehumanising,” a “demonization of the poor,” and is merely “trying to shunt people out of society for not being rich enough.” As if the victims of the Murgatroyd family, and any number of others just like them, weren’t people whose resources were also modest. As if the law-abiding targets of their sociopathy weren’t almost always working class.

Again,

A result of which is that empathy, or feigned empathy, is shifted from the working-class victim of crime and antisocial behaviour to the working-class perpetrator of crime and antisocial behaviour, on grounds that the thug or criminal is in some way being oppressed and, unlike their neighbours, being made to misbehave.

But such is Zoe’s concern for the common man.

And do note the conspicuous flattening of values, the equalising of victims and victimiser, the quite literal demoralisation.

Apparently, we shouldn’t register any meaningful difference between that nice Mrs Wilson, who doesn’t have much but is always friendly and obliging, and the laughing ferals who trashed her tiny flat, nicked her pension, and pissed all over her carpets and furniture.

And they call this being progressive.

Guardian columnists, and progressives in general, don’t seem particularly interested in the functional working class. Their greatest enthusiasm, and their most ambitious contrivance, seems reserved for the feckless and dysfunctional, the pathologically selfish, the incorrigibly criminal. That’s when we get displays of what amounts to a perverse art form.

Part of the reason, I suspect, is that there’s little in-group status to be had in pretending to care about functional people of modest means. Instead, they pretend to care about more exotic demographics. And so, among progressives, we get pretentious compassion for unrepentant and habitual thieves, habitual burglars, habitually criminal drivers. Because needlessly endangering the lives of others is now a basis for excuses, sympathy, and applause.

Oh, and dog thieves and armed muggers. Obviously.

And once you register this pattern, this weird convolution, it does seem to crop up quite a lot.

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Reading time: 6 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All Policing

What You Wish For

August 29, 2024 52 Comments

Via pst314 in the comments, some intersectional complication:

After employees had gone unpaid, they were left with a dilemma: notify law enforcement about the founder of their company – which has a goal of abolishing the police – or handle it internally.

The company’s founder, Brandon Anderson, is alleged to have embezzled a quarter of a million dollars to fund a “lavish” lifestyle, including an extensive designer wardrobe, international travel and glamorous holidays, and the renting of several mansions. Evidence of which was proudly uploaded to Facebook.

Bling, as I believe they say.

Anderson committed “the perfect crime,” claimed Nancy Mariano, a former software engineer at the nonprofit, who explained that she was sceptical about the company notifying police because Anderson “is a black person” and “the way that police treat masculine-presenting black people is terrible.”

Masculine-presenting black people. Which perhaps tells us something about the company’s employees and the mental landscape they inhabit.

“Even if Brandon committed a crime, I don’t want Brandon to die, so I don’t want to put Brandon in that position,” said Mariano.

No laughing at the back.

However, not all employees felt the same.

The company in question, Raheem AI, is a chatbot app launched in 2017 with a stated mission to abolish the police and to replace them with “community-based crisis teams” and “liberated dispatchers” – namely, anti-police activists and likeminded social workers – who would respond to emergencies armed with bottles of water and lots of “social justice.”

I know. You’re tempted to invest.

And should this particular cake require icing, Mr Anderson was named “one of 100 Black LGBTQ Leaders to Watch” by the National Black Justice Coalition.

Leaders to watch, indeed.

If the trajectory above sounds a little familiar, readers may be thinking of this saga here, in which Ms Xahra Saleem, co-founder of the activist group All Black Lives Bristol, and an applauded statue-toppler, decolonised a charity’s bank account to the tune of £30,000. A sum subsequently put to use enabling Ms Saleem’s appetite for cosmetics, hairstyling, and takeaways.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Politics

Your Affirmation Is Mandatory

August 21, 2024 121 Comments

And he will “take note” of who does not obey:

I expect Liberal MPs to march in the pride parade in Ottawa, even if they do it without party approval. I will take note of who does not. https://t.co/IPxXmgGH9b

— Jake Landau (He/Him) 🇵🇸🇺🇦 (@JakeLandauTO) August 19, 2024

Mr Landau, since you ask, is a “left wing, progressive Liberal organiser” – pronouns “he/him” – who spends a lot of his time being “exhausted and sad.” Oh, and he doesn’t like people who “suppress… dissenting voices.”

Mr Landau has not yet specified what he will do to those reluctant to march on demand. Something progressive, no doubt. Sadly, Mr Landau, our champion of radical dissent, is not permitting questions or replies from those insufficiently like-minded.

Via Mia Hughes.

Update, via the comments:

Rafi adds,

Compelled speech isn’t enough. Now it’s compelled marching.

Ah, but, you see, they’re “dissenting,” albeit in a very conformist way. And any failure to “dissent” – on demand, as instructed – will be punished. Compliance under duress being the way of the dissenter.

The rhetorical inversions may, I grant you, take some getting used to. But you will start celebrating now, comrade, spontaneously, and with great joy.

Lest your hesitation be noted.

Update 2:

Oh, and speaking of affirmation being demanded:

BREAKING: DNC Protesters BLOCK CARS demanding they say “Free Palestine”, angry driver drives through, gets out of the car to CONFRONT protesters when his window was dented pic.twitter.com/HuSWTyJ43Q

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) August 23, 2024

Behold our betters and their recreational malice.

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Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Politics

Reality Is An Inherent Problem

August 19, 2024 130 Comments

I paraphrase, but not by much:

It started, since you ask, with chappie being annoyed by the existence of a cruise ship. Says he,

The amount of money and resources wasted on this abomination could have changed uncountable lives across the globe for the better. 

Readers will note that the word wasted is doing some heavy lifting there. That the building of said cruise ship paid the wages of thousands of people, in several cities, for years, and that the crewing and maintenance of said ship pays the wages of thousands more, and that the thousands of passengers aboard it at any given time will be spending large sums of money in any number of tourist destinations, making lives better across the globe, seems to have escaped our indignant chappie’s attention.

But still, he has “he/they” pronouns in his bio. So some markers of status are totally okay, apparently. Chappie tells us that he’s a “Black communicator,” whose podcast “paints a multi-faceted picture of the Black, brown, and Native American experience through story-telling.”

Relevant footnote.

Relevant meme.

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading, of course.

Update:

In the comments, EmC quotes this,

The fact that people have to work to eat is an inherent problem.

And adds,

So the socialist wants to be an aristocrat?

Or an owner of slaves, perhaps. Some arrangement in which he, Our Obvious Better, doesn’t have to do things that others find of value. Something non-reciprocal.

From the thread above:

It’s certainly a mindset that’s quite telling. For instance, this came to mind:

So, for some, the very idea that a grown-up person should pay their debts – or keep their word, or honour their promises – is something to be “defeated.”

Or, adulthood is such a drag.

Update 2:

It’s curious how often such complaints boil down to, “Other people, less fabulous people, should labour for free, for my benefit, until I say otherwise.” Which, it has to be said, is an odd construal of righteousness.

We’ve been here before, of course. As when an unhappy young madam realised, belatedly and with some annoyance, that bills have to be paid, and livings have to be earned. A seemingly overlooked detail that prompted much umbrage and baffled indignation, on grounds that cars and food and houses are things “which we should just be able to have.”

As I said in reply,

The emotional assumption that Things Should Just Be There For Me, Forever, In Unlimited Quantities is, I think, something best addressed before one’s children venture out into the world.

Children who, as adults, may then make TikTok videos of themselves bemoaning the fact that they aren’t simply being given a free house, and free food, and a free car, and free petrol for the free car. Children who, as adults, may then seem genuinely bewildered by the prospect of being responsible for the feeding and clothing of any children that they, in turn, might have.

Another thing occurs to me. If pretty much everything you need, or want, should just somehow be there anyway, on an indefinite basis, via some oddly unarticulated rearrangement of the universe, then it’s not obvious how gratitude might fit into such a mindset.

Answers on a postcard, please.

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Reading time: 2 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Politics Pronouns Or Else

It’s Super Important

August 15, 2024 69 Comments

Further to The Blurting, a footnote of sorts:

“My Fox News dad makes everything political” https://t.co/JxaZvPwrSg

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) August 15, 2024

Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.

Update, via the comments:

The above, it seems to me, is not so much a declaration of values as a psychological profile.

As Rafi says in reply,

I’d buy my own laser cutter.

Not having to deal with such people does have a cash value. If in order to use a communal laser cutter, you first have to “strive to uphold” the notion that sex differences are unrelated to biology, that “meritocracy is a joke,” and that, despite all available evidence, “nonbinary people” somehow aren’t aggravating poseurs… Then, well, buying your own laser cutter seems a much better option.

After all, this life is finite and best not wasted on proximity to wankers.

Oh, and some of that super important intersectionality.

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Written by: David
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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.