Douglas Murray on intolerant politics

I'm late to this thread but wow @packingsoapandwater your post on 15th Dec cuts right to the heart of the matter. You are dead right

I didn't get the "North London" reference until I saw David Irving use it (when I was following his failed case against Penguin and Deborah Lipstadt about his holocaust denial), and what's more using it to a US or other overseas audience who'd need a map to find London.

Made absolutely no literal sense at all: what on earth could he be talking about?

Ohhh, then he made it perfectly clear: he meant Jewish, with trad antisemitic conspiracy bollocks just for good measure.

Up till then, I hadn't a clue.

Arnold I think a lot of the problem with political discourse generally is that everyone's talking at cross purposes, which is a shame.

ironically, this leads us into Murray's book on "The Madness of Crowds".

Looking up Murray, I can find quite a lot of alarming information about comments he has apparently regretted making.

but this article led us to this discussion, which has been genuinely helpful all round.

I still think that if we could find a way back to integration, it would be helpful - but it's too late now - I'd be decried as a coconut for suggesting it, a white person would be decried as a racist.

I'm aware of those things but I don't think it's unreasonable not to be.

I agree.

And then you decide to stand as a local councillor or MP or take a high profile job, and a spotlight is shone and people start saying you should have known.

I don't think there's an answer to this, unfortunately.

I'm aware of those things but I don't think it's unreasonable not to be. It was the North London thing that threw me.

No, I don't think it's unreasonable not to be, as I say, it isn't something that's taught. The message given via our culture on anti-Semitism is all too often no more nuanced than 'Hitler bad'. We are all ignorant of many, many things, there's no shame in that.

I think we may be talking somewhat at cross purposes as I generally see 'metropolitan elite' refered to in a wider, ore global context, and didn't really pick up on the specific reference to 'North London'. US right wingers use it a lot for example.

Was having lunch with a friend yesterday and we were discussing the outcome of the election, hes very interested in politics and told me about a tweet by the former Kosovian foreign minister under Corbyns concession twitter video where Corbyn implied history would prove him right

"If the world listened to you in 1999, my family and million other Kosovars would have been refugees scattered across refugee camps."

twitter.com/Petrit/status/1206201371713851392

Corbyn was against intervening in Kosovo, he was also against the peace process in Northern Ireland (which hasn't been perfect but has meant 20 years of relative peace) unless the starting point was a united Ireland, was against intervention in the Falklands and has supported regimes like Maduro which have decimated their country etc.

This isn't a bashing Corbyns voting record post but it just got me thinking that politicans are lambasted for action like the Iraq war but rarely for inaction just like more liberal partners in a coalition are judged by the actions of that coalition as a whole when they may have moderated the actions of the more senior coalition partner.

I thought it was an interesting perspective of "the right side of history" which everyone wants to be on, the identity of a lot of labour voters is so much tied to which side their chosen candidate was on as regards Iraq which was a failure versus the successes

Arnold "Antisemites referring to Jews as wealthy or (in modern parlance) metropolitan elites is much older than social media, as are sneering references to bankers. They go way back to the era when Christians were not permitted to be money lenders and Jews were banned from many other professions."

I'm aware of those things but I don't think it's unreasonable not to be. It was the North London thing that threw me.

thing is, again, this is partly about how you grew up. If you grew up in the days where race was just about to stop becoming an issue - seems to be my age group and possibly a London/Essex thing - you often won't know much about history of persecution because why should you?

this also goes back to my irritation re endless questions on heritage - as if people just need to fit me into a box and are very annoyed when they can't do that.

tbh I can barely remember what happened yesterday, never mind the history of anything. I had a friend round yesterday and we were talking about this - you eventually end up with a vague memory of "x happened to this group because"...and then you're middle aged and just living your life and of course you've forgotten it and that should be okay, IMHO.

I would love for my world to be smaller, really. A globalisation problem? Happy to be called parochial etc.

Eh?

I've just produced two articles (after no effort whatsoever) where the phrase is used like that.

I've also made perfectly clear that I don't think everyone (or even most people) using that phrase is intending to convey racist undertones – but that their listeners may hear these.

No one has accused you of being white supremacist. I don't understand why you feel defensive.

Or why you're enamoured of this particular phrase? It's only just been suggested on this thread: it has some merits, some demerits. Discussing both of those is a good thing!

This is all just a bit weird now.

Is this perhaps the worst thing social media has done to discourse - lots of hidden phrases that you don't know unless you're glued to it all day?

Antisemites referring to Jews as wealthy or (in modern parlance) metropolitan elites is much older than social media, as are sneering references to bankers. They go way back to the era when Christians were not permitted to be money lenders and Jews were banned from many other professions.

They are behaviours, dog whistles, call them what you will that have cropped up time and again across Europe. I genuinely think a lot of people are ignorant of the history of Jewish persecution and the reasons why there is a connection between Jewish people and certain professions. It isn't something that is generally taught. Anti-semites know it though and they know how to manipulate people's annoyance over economic failures, or disquiet at Israeli policies. You do see a lot of it online from left and right, but historic pogroms against Jewish people have always played on similar themes.

Perking I appreciate the info.

It does underline my feeling that I shouldn't discuss politics or anything really major with anyone other than my mum and best mate!

Also, any non-Zimbabwean Brit old enough to have repeatedly heard "kith and kin" used on the news in this context, may have this connotation, even if only subconsciously.

Using it may tap into that, and you may inadvertently issue a racist dogwhistle that you had no idea you were doing.

You'll have to make your own decisions about what language to use.

I'm just letting you know what a large number of others may hear.

I am glad that I found this out. I shall ask my brother about it too.

"North London Metropolitan Elite to me means the Granita years Islington luvvies set"

not where I live, but where I worked/the type of people I worked with, for years and years. I'm 43.

I only found out about the dog whistle thing a couple of years ago.

I’m a Londoner.

North London Metropolitan Elite to me means the Granita years Islington luvvies set but that probably ages me. I’ve used it that way myself.

I accept that it may be a dogwhistle for antisemitism but I must say that connotation had passed me by and I was quite secure in my knowledge that this was a reference to New Labour luvvies until I saw the David Baddiel comment on it.

Try googling it using "Rhodesia" instead of "Zimbabwe" – I found plenty when I checked before writing that post.

Eg
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesia
www.independent.co.uk/news/military-chiefs-reviewed-plan-to-invade-rhodesia-1321929.html

Any Zimbabwean old enough (and probably many who weren't) will recognise it.

The point isn't just whether white supremacist use it; it's that people on the receiving end of, or even just knowledgeable about, this particular manifestation of racism will recognise it, and will wonder what you're actually trying to say here. If you don't mind them suspecting you might be a white supremacist and therefore interpreting everything else you say through the prism of that suspicion, then crack on. You may find yourself being misunderstood for reasons you can't fathom...

I feel as if "ignorant" or "uneducated" is the new acceptable insult.

Arnold "There is an awful lot of ignorance around the centuries old persecution of Jewish people."

Being friends with quite a few Jewish people, I don't know I'd call it ignorance. It may be that before the hell of identity politics arrived, things were better and therefore less discussion came up.

Honestly, when I told my Jewish neighbour (who is a good mate) that the North London met elite was apparently code, she didn't know either.

Is this perhaps the worst thing social media has done to discourse - lots of hidden phrases that you don't know unless you're glued to it all day?

'Meteropolitan elite' has long been an anti-Semitic dog whistle but one people often seem oblivious too. Comments about bankers are also often dubious on that front. There is an awful lot of ignorance around the centuries old persecution of Jewish people.

I get a similar twitch at "TIM" in GC vs trans lingo because to me it says sectarianism, not genderism.

Me too. 'Tim' was one of the few words that were banned in my house when the children were growing up. See also 'hun'.

North London metropolitan elite

I confess that I did not know this either. My brother lives in North London and is a Corbynista as are most of his academic contemporaries.

It is not a phrase I ever use tbf but genuinely had no idea of the connotations. I wonder if this is far more apparent to Londoners who may know where various communities are concentrated than to people in the rest of the country?