Left-wingers... are they all mad?

[Arginald Valleywater]

There is no left wing anymore. We are now more like the US where one party looks after the very rich, another the slightly less rich and nobody gives a fook about the poor (New Orleans said example numero uno).
I work with 2 Labor coucillors. Nice houses, Audis, 3 holidays a year, designer clothes and only venture onto the hustings once every 4 years to con some poor old dear or workshy fop into voting for them before retiring back to their detached 4 beds for a nice glass of expensive claret...

[max_tranmere]

In my view loony-lefties are more rare now than before. I was only a little kid in the 1970's but from what I understand any flag waving then was immediately seen by some as confirming you were someone from the far-right. Patriotism was interpretted by the Left as racism. This all changed in the 1990's when Tony Blair helped reclaim the flag for the centre-ground, and the Britpop music scene played a part in that too. There are less of these loonies now, but there are still too many.

[max_tranmere]

The Socialist Workers outfit, and Trade Union militants in general, were rife years ago. Thatcher helped cull them in the 1980's, largely wiped them out in fact, but a few re-emerged under 13 years of 'new' Labour. At least since the 1970's there have not been these powerful Union barons, Red Robbo and others, who commanded as much power as they did and who had the power to bring the nation to its knees. One of the legacies of 13 years of Blair/Brown is the Unite union and how big it became. I don't like them at all.

[max_tranmere]

Lol. I can imagine her response if I was to tell her to 'get back in the kitchen' or 'women shouldn't have the same rights in the workplace or politics as men'. Of course I don't hold such views but one thing that has always amazed me about people like that is they would go potty if some sexist male said that to them, yet you never hear a peep out of them when it come to the issue of how men treat women in Islam.

[Toliverwist]

Are they mad? well there are political and medical terms that cover their condition.

Xenophile
A person infatuated with foreign people and culture.


[center]Roger Scruton on Oikophobia[/center]

Roger Scruton in an address to the now defunct Belgian political party Vlaams Belang, identified this perverse attitude of mind. He calls it Oikophobia, the medical term for an aversion to home.

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but there is an equal fault which they exhibit in abundance, which is the repudiation of, and aversion to, home
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No adequate word exists for this attitude, though its symptoms are instantly recognized: namely, the disposition, in any conflict, to side with ?them? against ?us?, and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably ?ours?.
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I call the attitude oikophobia ? the aversion to home ? by way of emphasizing its deep relation to xenophobia, of which it is the mirror image.
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Oikophobia is a stage through which the adolescent mind normally passes. But it is a stage in which intellectuals tend to become arrested.
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Roger Scruton


"Again, however, there is a double standard that affects the description. Members of our liberal ?lite may be immune to xenophobia, but there is an equal fault which they exhibit in abundance, which is the repudiation of, and aversion to, home. Each country exhibits this vice in its own domestic version. Nobody brought up in post-war England can fail to be aware of the educated derision that has been directed at our national loyalty by those whose freedom to criticize would have been extinguished years ago, had the English not been prepared to die for their country. The loyalty that people need in their daily lives, and which they affirm in their unconsidered and spontaneous social actions, is now habitually ridiculed or even demonized by the dominant media and the education system. National history is taught as a tale of shame and degradation. The art, literature and religion of our nation have been more or less excised from the curriculum, and folkways, local traditions and national ceremonies are routinely rubbished.

This repudiation of the national idea is the result of a peculiar frame of mind that has arisen throughout the Western world since the Second World War, and which is particularly prevalent among the intellectual and political elites. No adequate word exists for this attitude, though its symptoms are instantly recognized: namely, the disposition, in any conflict, to side with ?them? against ?us?, and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably ?ours?. I call the attitude oikophobia ? the aversion to home ? by way of emphasizing its deep relation to xenophobia, of which it is the mirror image. Oikophobia is a stage through which the adolescent mind normally passes. But it is a stage in which intellectuals tend to become arrested. As George Orwell pointed out, intellectuals on the Left are especially prone to it, and this has often made them willing agents of foreign powers. The Cambridge spies ? educated people who penetrated our foreign service during the war and betrayed our Eastern European allies to Stalin ? offer a telling illustration of what oikophobia has meant for my country and for the Western alliance. And it is interesting to note that a recent BBC ?docudrama? constructed around the Cambridge spies neither examined the realities of their treason nor addressed the suffering of the millions of their East European victims, but merely endorsed the oikophobia that had caused them to act as they did.

Nor is oikophobia a specifically English, still less specifically British tendency. When Sartre and Foucault draw their picture of the ?bourgeois? mentality, the mentality of the Other in his Otherness, they are describing the ordinary decent Frenchman, and expressing their contempt for his national culture. A chronic form of oikophobia has spread through the American universities, in the guise of political correctness, and loudly surfaced in the aftermath of September 11th, to pour scorn on the culture that allegedly provoked the attacks, and to side by implication with the terrorists. And oikophobia can be everywhere read in the attacks levelled against the Vlaams Belang.

The domination of our national Parliaments and the EU machinery by oikophobes is partly responsible for the acceptance of subsidised immigration, and for the attacks on customs and institutions associated with traditional and native forms of life. The oikophobe repudiates national loyalties and defines his goals and ideals against the nation, promoting transnational institutions over national governments, accepting and endorsing laws that are imposed from on high by the EU or the UN, and defining his political vision in terms of cosmopolitan values that have been purified of all reference to the particular attachments of a real historical community. The oikophobe is, in his own eyes, a defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism. And it is the rise of oikophobia that has led to the growing crisis of legitimacy in the nation states of Europe. For we are seeing a massive expansion of the legislative burden on the people of Europe, and a relentless assault on the only loyalties that would enable them voluntarily to bear it. The explosive effect of this has already been felt in Holland and France, and of course it is now being felt in Belgium too."

[max_tranmere]

St George's Day was never a big thing, it is slightly bigger now but I would like it to be even bigger than it presently is. When Livingstone was Mayor of London he ensured St Patricks Day would be a bigger thing in London than St George's Day, so would Eid and Diwali. I think that is wrong, but you expect it from the Left. Ken Livingstone also wanted to commission the building of Europe's biggest mosque in east London. Luckily he never got it through, the thing was going to be the size of a football stadium. Could you imagine what would happen to you if you proposed building a cathedral as tall as the Empire State Building in Saudi Arabia? You would be run out of town on a rail!

Someone I know who is Irish and much older than me said that when he was a kid St Patricks Day was a very small event in Ireland. It is much bigger now. Regarding St Patrick, as far as I recall he was Welsh and the myth goes that he drove all the snakes out of Ireland. I understand St George was Turkish and Richard The Lionheart had a vision of him when going into battle about 800 years ago and since then he has always been England's patron saint (I've not researched any of this, I am typing it all from memory).

I agree in part with your final point about how there is now no real left-wing movement. It all really ended in 1979 with the Winter of Discontent and numerous Labour people of that time, from David Owen to Shirley Williams have claimed to be the one who was the architect of what later became 'new Labour'. But it was never as 'new' as Blair said it would be, I mentioned earlier that the rise and later prolific-ness of the Unite union is something I don't like, and there was an explosion of Political Correctness during the 13 years they were recently in power.

So there is no large movement, but there are quite a few people who have the bonkers views that this women I know does. You find them in places like Hackney, they are usually quite middle class and have University degrees (a generation ago few people in areas like that did) sitting there surrounded by potted plants, talking about politics. They are the new wave of the nouveau riche left.

[max_tranmere]

"I think 'loony' is a strong term and one any right-winger should be wary of when using it as a pejorative for left-wing views."

I think it is deserved if the views are clearly 'out there'. Things like how patriotism is bad, one must like the fact their way of life is disappearing or else they are a racist, criminals should have more rights than their victims and so on. If if is traditional Socialist views of how there should be a safety-net for all, equality, equal opportunities, no one held back because of their background, and so on, then that is reasonable and I would never class anyone pushing those views as 'loony'.

I would class myself as someone on the centre-right.

[max_tranmere]

I remember how the Tories bonked for England. This was especially the case in the 1990's. Many polticians have affairs, usually with their secretaries and it's said that happens because they see their wives about 4 hours a week and see their secretary every day. So it is kind of inevitable I guess.

[max_tranmere]

I agree there is no significant left-wing movement any more. I have always been amazed how people on the Left always loved, and still love, the fruits of the unequal society and live very differntly to those at the bottom. I believe the first Labour PM was Ramsey McDonald. He lived in a mansion in Hampstead, north London, one of Britain's wealthiest areas. He tried to justify it by saying he had an enourmous library so he needed a big house to house all his books. Michael Foot lived in the same neighbourhood years later. The communists in Russia had big mansions and even had Rolls Royce's. The leaders of the Unite trade union are all on about ?150,000 a year with a massive pension to follow. It is incredible really.

[max_tranmere]

I've always interpreted xenophobia as someone feeling their race or culture is superior to others. If someone opposes the fact another culture, language, etc, is expanding within a country or a geographical region within that country - and this is to the detriment of their own - then I've always felt it is reasonable to oppose that happening because to allow it will have some negative effect on your thing, what you do, and what you are used to. There is a difference between diversity and domination. I welcome the former, not the latter.