Struggling with my political allegiance now and it's really bothering me

”I also found it really interesting to explore feminism from a conservative lens for a while. Like, female activists who opposed things that seemed "weird" to oppose, like female suffrage or women in the workplace or liberal divorce laws or abortion. Exploring what the female-centric arguments for those things might be. Almost like alternate history.”

Conservative feminism and non-feminist feminism are really interesting. Was Phyllis Schafly a more important figure than the libertarian feminists she opposed? Was Mary Whitehouse a prophetic figure? I listened to a fascinating discussion between Louise Perry and Kate Phelan about the way feminism has been absorbed by progressivism so that it’s become a dead letter. Fairer Disputations is a good source of articles exploring more conservative versions of feminism — particularly centring motherhood and caring for children.

@Shortshriftandlethal There is still coal beneath us. It became very difficult to extract from narrow deep seems consequently more expensive.
BTW I was in favour of the Cumbria mine for hard coking coal. DH met the company planning it.

Likewise 😁screenshot us in your book proposal as evidence of readership demand!

@SionnachRuadh write that book. I would read it 😁

They could have gone a different way to this authoritarian and lie based rhetoric.

It is pushing more people right.

😂

Seriously, you think a face being exposed in a large crowd is enough to ID someone? We don't have that technology yet. What we would need is serious public advertising like we do for killers & rapists & for someone to step forward to identify that person. An in case you haven't noticed we don't even have the funds for the most serious of criminals to be publicly outed.

Again, what you are proposing isn't practical.

I feel exactly the same - you're not alone. I was always very left wing, but it feels like the wheels have completely come off that bandwagon. I put it down to me ageing (the cliche being that people move rightward as they get older) but I'm starting to think it's something else.

I have to keep my mouth shut around most of my friends (v. left wing) as when I've expressed anything around the trans issue I've been accused of being a QAnon-er (!).

Israel / Palestine is another one - anything other than wishing for the destruction of Israel etc. etc. apparently makes me a fascist

Interesting haven’t rtft but will. Also hadn’t quite clocked the rally in September was cited as being for free speech.

How are they slipping through the cracks when they are literally marching on the streets, inciting violence against women, with their faces on show, being photographed and filmed? I can't think of many arrests that would be easier, to be honest.

How is that more difficult than trying to identify who raped and murdered a woman in a poorly lit area late at night when there was no CCTV?

Oh and by the way the violent behaviour of trans activists is absolutely the responsibility of the "trans community".

You're not alone. I am totally politically homeless. Last election I went to the hustings and looked at what all the candidates said about all the issues I care about, education, economy, democracy, freedom or speech and women's rights and I realised none of them represented me.

It wasn't a myth. It was a viable industry, in that we were still using coal, except now having to import it from abroad, and it was necessary in that whole communities were dependent upon it.

Strawman.
Logistics & commonsense dictate that a limited amount of cops v thousands of protesters means some criminals will slip thru the cracks. This is true of all protests & not 'special' for trans protests. I can't believe I need to explain this obvious logistical fact but here we are.

Your problem being further resourcing needs to be taken up with the tax payer not trans people.

Snigger

I can see why that seems like a perfectly reasonable argument in @Howseitgoin head

Green washing has had the effect of merely shifting problems to another part of the world so we can say we aren't the problem whilst still continuing to buy even more crap at even lower prices. All whilst manufacturing in this country has died this meaning there's less jobs in this area in the UK and adding to economic woes so we can't invest in better technology which actually does reduce emissions. The focus on emissions rather than consumption is the issue and is one of fiddling the numbers to make something look better than it is in reality whilst putting ourselves at greater security risk in the process.

It's a fucking farce.

We've had friends have a go at us for still having a small petrol car (which we've been getting 70mpg over the lifetime of the car) rather than replacing it with an electric. They meanwhile have bought a huge new electric car. If we were to replace our car the cost you have to factor in the cost of producing a whole new car and all the associated consumption of it which given the size of their monster probably would be more than any potential savings to the environment. We don't drive a huge amount as it is. It makes no fucking sense. But they can't compete that 'its a bit more complicated' than merely looking at the type of fuel.

Omnicause recitals are incapable of the concept of 'its a bit more complicated'. Weirdly I've had more productive conversations with people who others might term 'close minded' who have gone 'oh you know what, thanks for that I hadn't considered that point, that's really interesting and maybe I'm not as right on this as I thought I was'.

It's really fucking frustrating. It's the arrogance of righteous rather than being genuinely interested in a subject and wanting to know more about it.

Mine did for a bit but I think I managed to stuff them back in - hopefully ;)

I agree though, I think my worldview is stronger and more predictive of events than my old one, and I really enjoy the new company and conversations.

It is hard to maintain a "foot in both camps" for an extended period I think though, because of the destabilisation. I think this is why many of the "heterodox" communities that spring up end up at least partially converging on a common worldview (which might bring in strands from various sides) rather than remaining a free for all for years at a time.

I think there are some complex long term issues about the decay of the left, and I could write a book about them ... (don't encourage me)

At random, a couple of things I come back to.

(One)
It used to be in Labour that you couldn't be an AEU sponsored MP unless you were a time served engineer. Other unions had similar arrangements. That doesn't jibe well with the current centre left, because it meant the PLP was much more male and white than it should have been, but it kept the party in touch with its working class roots.

Where are the working class MPs now? Is it just Lee Anderson? Are there one or two others?

Labour today is still doing class politics, but it's a vehicle for the interests of the PMC class. You can see a similar thing with the US Democrats, Australian Labor, the SPD in Germany and analogous formations across the west.

This matters because PMC causes and working class interests are not the same. Open borders are not in the interest of the working class man or woman competing for a minimum wage job. But they work pretty well if you're an MP or BBC journalist or left wing celebrity, and thanks to immigration from Albania, cocaine is much cheaper in London these days.

(Two)
The left being absolutely terrible on VAWG, despite seeing it as an issue they own. I often return to the SWP rape scandal, because I know a bunch of the people involved. But I don't believe the problem is unique to one small Trotskyite sect. During the scandal I was talking with a woman who is extremely well connected in Labour politics, and asked her if she could imagine something similar happening in Labour. Slightly to my surprise, she said she absolutely could.

Now for me, one of the key things is not simply that a lot of socialists who had imbibed all the correct theory on women's liberation decided that covering up the rape of young female members by party leaders was no big deal. That was depressing but predictable.

What I didn't predict is that the people who broke away because they couldn't tolerate the coverups, they themselves quickly decided that the really oppressed group were the women with beards and cocks. If you press them they might concede with considerable ill grace that rape survivors might be entitled to single sex peer counselling, but they're absolutely committed to the idea that gender identity trumps biological sex (which doesn't really exist) and single sex spaces should not exist.

These people, who found the SWP's coverup in 2013 intolerable, have also defended some of the SWP's overseas franchises which are also rapey as fuck; and some of them at least have described grooming gangs as a "moral panic", nothing to see here.

I know this is one smallish group, but these are people who have had an opportunity to reflect on male supremacism on the left and they have learned fuck all. I put a lot of that down to a large proportion of them having advanced degrees from elite universities. They're both extremely arrogant and wilfully stupid. This is your brain on Queer Theory.

(This criticism extends to the women who sign open letters from the SWP front "Stand Up To Racism". Some of the dim celebrities might think they're just generically opposing racism, but I refuse to believe that Diane Abbott or Leanne Wood or Zarah Sultana don't know who these people are.)

So the police shouldn't deal with men threatening violence against women because it's...difficult?

I think that reporting some tweets from April just a few days before Graham Linehan's appearance in court was probably done to try and discredit him and make him seem dangerous by the usual loony TRAs.

They live in a bubble and echo chamber. They never seem to realise that 98% of the population think they're absolute bellends. If anything the massive outpouring of sympathy for Linehan should wake them up pretty fast. But, like the Labour lot, they never fucking learn.

Well why do you think it's 'much harder'?

Pressed send too soon - I think the fact that this thread is about Tommy Robinson is illustrative of this. My circles are fairly wide and include people who would happily say they are "far right" and support policies even I find a bit extreme (and those who know my username will know I'm often all over immigration threads etc so I'm hardly a soft-hearted liberal on that point!)

95% of them think Tommy Robinson is a knob - to a PP's question, yes because of the criminal element specifically and thinking he's a grifter.

If you think of "right-wing influencers" you should think of Burke, Chesterton, Hayek, Scruton, Oakeshott... heck Matthew, Mark, Luke & John... any number of people before Tommy Robinson and the Lotus Eaters come to mind :)

I also found it really interesting to explore feminism from a conservative lens for a while. Like, female activists who opposed things that seemed "weird" to oppose, like female suffrage or women in the workplace or liberal divorce laws or abortion. Exploring what the female-centric arguments for those things might be. Almost like alternate history.

Okaaaay…🤪

I'd say it's much easier. Just turn up and apprehend.

Strawman.

It's more difficult to apprehend criminals in a large crowd. This isn't rocket science.