To not find middle class ‘socialists’ laughing at the poor and uneducated very funny.

[Mightymucks]

I’m currently a mature student and am on a lot of FB pages related to my Uni. I need to be on there for news, but an awful lot of the content seems to be middle class self proclaimed socialists laughing at jokes poking fun at the thick unwashed masses who might have the temerity not to slavishly agree with them on every issue.

Take this morning. One of them posted a joke about an imaginary rabid Brexiteer called ‘Sharon from Croydon’ who voted for Brexit ‘because she thinks brown neurosurgeons are stealing jobs she would have been qualified for if she hadn’t dropped out of her hair and beauty NVQ’. Cue much hilarity from these students and lots of comments about ‘thick northerners’ whose capability of engaging with the political process doesn’t extend beyond looking at one slogan on a bus.

I called him ‘a snob’ and he responded that he was ‘calling out racism’ despite the fact that ‘Sharon’ is fictional and therefore doesn’t need calling out. It was just a series of lazy stereotypes designed to stoke predjudice and exactly the thing socialism is supposed to be explicitly against?

A symptom of this in a ward by the Uni near me Labour has actually removed a local candidate with long standing Labour links and huge respect from locals because he is
‘too working class’ for the students to vote for and replaced him with a history academic from out of town.

I should point out that in my working class northern area I don’t know a single person who isn’t aware that Marxism and socialism represents the working classes and the poor and uneducated. But apparently a University education doesn’t extend to teaching that these days.

I also know it isn’t universal in Labour because I had a fantastic female middle aged canvasser around this weekend who was totally clued up on issues of local concern like school funding and libraries and actually convinced me to vote for them.

But AIBU to hate these middle class millennial fuckwits who pretend they’re socialists but are actually massive fucking crashing snobs?

Great post DJ. I've been worrying a lot about the identity politics thing but that's clarified for me a lot of what's going on with the left. As a longstanding socialist left-wing person who wants more economic equality as a priority, I feel so last-century.

YANBU. The level of snobbery and discrimination by the middle classes against the working classes is shocking. What's even more shocking is that it comes from people who wouldn't dream for a second of saying equivalant things from a race or gender viewpoint. I was having dinner recently with some academic friends who were doing a 'field trip' to a poor norther town. They were joking about people there not knowing what a panini and coffee were. And these are people who are absolutely 'right on' in their views on other topics. I've heard other academics who specialise in social justice sneer at 'people living in Stratford'. Brexit has made the whole thing very much worse - the amount of lazy stereotyping, and the sheer lack of concern for the viewpoint of those from poor areas who have had the temerity to disagree with their 'betters' is shocking. (I say this as someone who voted Remain, but who is reluctant to associate with that camp because of the degree of snobbery in much public discourse on this topic).

And behind it is a very real problem. I worked for a while in the NHS, and it was deplorable how little those with national responsibility for a programme understood the issues of the poorest in society. Everyone in the office (bar me) was middle class by birth and education, very few had actually met anyone working class. There was no ability to understand the very people amongst whom they were supposed to be increasing uptake of health services. This blindness is contributing in a very real way to health inequality, and to inequalities of outcome that result in premature illness and deaths.

We urgently need a more representative workforce in these areas - more people who aren't white, aren't male, and who aren't middle class.

The electorate can usually sense when such political groups have contempt for them

Amen

I get told as I haven’t a degree o have no clue what I am on about
I also find the hypocrisy difficult like all these champagne 🥂 socialists who ho on about education and shove little Tristran in a grammar or private school as soon as they can

Actually I agree it is intellectual snobbery. I just think that saying all milennials or all young people at university are like this is ridiculous. There will be idiots like this everywhere and in every age bracket.

I’m not keen on groups of people sneering at other groups in general. I remember being on a training course in Milton Keynes and people sending round photos of people they thought were ugly/stupid as ‘the locals’.

I’m a remoaner but Brexit happened because of the impoverished chucking their lot on hope and change, just like trump and not much to do with people being thick, more like desperate.

So, are you only offended by who posted it, and not by what was posted?

I was offended by what was posted yes. But it’s the hypocrisy of it that offends me most.

Imagine if David Cameron had come out the morning after the referendum and said ‘Yeah, we did our best, but working classes, the poor, the thick, the uneducated: they fucked it up’, exactly the same people who were on that comment laughing and poking fun at the same people would have been frothing with outrage.

Yet the same people would also tell us we should expect that from the Tories because they hate the poor and the working classes and it just shows the contempt they have for them.

Yet when they do it, it’s apparently fine. Despite the extra layer of hypocrisy that they espouse a philosophy which is all about defending those they’re mocking.

So yes, who said it offended me. I think it’s far worse to mock someone you claim to care about than it is to mock someone who means nothing to you.

YANBU. Many people want the kudos of being seen as left wing or progressive without wanting to have to actually be left wing.

Very well put, Crow.

LucilleBluth

If we get rid of private schools we’re will the left educate their children 😬

We can’t expect shamus and shami and the rest of Corbyns mates to put their children in state schools now

"Many people want the kudos of being seen as left wing or progressive without wanting to have to actually be left wing."

So, so right. And it's not a problem that stops at the gates of Parliament, either.

I just think that saying all milennials or all young people at university are like this is ridiculous

I never actually said anywhere it was all young people, all university students or all millennials. But when it happens, overwhelmingly it’s young millennials who do it and it is frequently University students.

It seems to be the most prevalent view at many Universities too. Because another thing people with these views tend to be is incredibly intolerant of dissent, so students with opposing views or just mild criticism are incredibly reluctant to speak out.

I think an awful lot of unis must be incredibly intimidating places for young working class people when they come up against this prejudice all the time.

I think the Sharon joke is funny. I'm wc and know a few Sharons - it's not a lazy stereotype. These people exist.

YANBU. Many people want the kudos of being seen as left wing or progressive without wanting to have to actually be left wing.

Someone a while back posted about being shocked her neighbor made a racist joke because you know he had been to university
And that my friends sums it all up

Are they very young? The young are horrifically arrogant

I didn't think ageism was allowed on MN

I agree to an extent. The irritating thing about the middle classes getting het up about the working classes' annoyance with immigration levels is precisely that so poorly satirised by their joke. The middle classes aren't the ones competing for minimum wage jobs with a mass influx of eastern European workers, for example. It is the working classes most effected by an open immigration policy.

But the bleeding heart liberal left (in which I would include myself) don't seem to recognise this and just yell bigot/racist

And that as a black person shocked me more that people actually think in 2018 the only racists are people who couldn’t get beyond a NVQ

Behead the Queen, Lucille?
Wow.
Are you generally in favour of the death penalty for anyone you disagree with or dislike?

I say this as someone who voted Remain, but who is reluctant to associate with that camp because of the degree of snobbery in much public discourse on this topic

This! The amount of vitriol directed at the working class AND the elderly after Brexit was breathtaking. Someone on this thread had already trotted out "did you vote Brexit? shame on you!" - the left nowadays are completely closed to open discourse on political matters, and have disassociated dramatically with the working class. The only method of debate they have now is to try to shame, ridicule or belittle someone who does not agree with them, and that is not conducive to a healthy society. The fact is that their key demographic has shifted to fairweather lefties/champagne socialists, which has left the working classes and elderly completed demoralised and feeling alone = hence the voting for other parties/Brexit/Trump in the US.

Unfortunately in the UK at the moment all we have to work with are Jeremy "I'll lie to students about uni fees to get votes" Corbyn and Theresa "Fields of fucking wheat" May. I despair.

Babyplaymat

Thank you for that post
And this is why as a black working class person I could. Never vote for labour currently because the levels of immigration he would welcome don’t effect people like him

Often living in the whitest parts of London on homes that are worth millions when immigrants come they get housed here in my road it’s my children’s schools And those middle classes can opt out when doctors are full and go private but

My concerns are just bigoted

There is a big divide between working class and middle class students at uni. (I graduated two years ago) I went out for lunch with someone I'd met during the first couple of weeks and we started talking about places we've been and she couldn't believe I'd "only" been abroad three times - I considered myself very lucky because I know people who've never been abroad.

My flatmates came to me for budgeting advice halfway through the first term because they couldn't understand how I still had money to go out drinking; they were genuinely shocked when they found out that by shopping at ALDI rather than Waitrose/Sainsburys where they've always shopped with their parents, they could make their student finance and the money their parents were sending them last longer.

It isn't a young students vs mature students thing, I went to uni at 18. It's a class thing. I'm working class, left-wing and a socialist. The thing is, there are people like "Sharon from Croydon" - I've encountered plenty; I have some in my own extended family - so I can't get too worked up about laughing at it because that is the absurdity of their logic. The "thick northerners" one is though and I'd have called them out on that without a doubt.

totally agree willy, social media has made the sneering so much easier and quicker to do. The understanding of why people feel the way they do, so much bloody harder.

Yes, JC's 'free' tuition fee crap, a huge subsidy to the middle classes. Outrageous. Let's have a 'very left' labour party make the middle classes better off. Yeah. Er not...spend the money on improving secondary outcomes...

I actually think Corbyn's stance on Brexit has really tried to show respect to the popular vote. He's pissed off so many Remainers as a result of trying to do it, and the frustration is often voiced in terms of a total frustration that he isn't just toeing the middle class political line of thinking that those with degrees know best. I think the reason so many people hate him is actually that he shows up the very faultline in the left that is the subject of this thread - the difference between genuine socialists (who want significant redistribution and transformative social change) and those who want only an empty badge of leftism without any meaningful content whatsoever (Blairite/Brownite/blue Labour).

My FIL is one of those people who goes on and on and on and on and on and on about being a Labour voter with great pride, yet who doesn't really believe in redistribution. In the wake of Brexit he actually said - loudly and in public - that he didn't think some Leavers should have the vote. And he was being quite serious. He hates Corbyn because Corbyn holds up a mirror to his own hypocrisy.

And behind it is a very real problem. I worked for a while in the NHS, and it was deplorable how little those with national responsibility for a programme understood the issues of the poorest in society.

Funny you should mention that. I wonder if we used to work in the same place?

I remember sitting in on a high level NHS meeting about the problem of tackling excess alcohol consumption amongst people on lower incomes and the suggestion that they just needed to be told that there were alternatives like the cinema, bowling, the gym or theme parks to visit in their leisure time instead of getting pissed.

I had to very gently explain it might have something to do with the fact cinema tickets cost £14 but 3 litres of strong cider costs £2 and lasts longer than a film. It really was a revelation to some of the senior managers that alcohol might genuinely be one of the few luxuries some people could afford. Ditto deep fried food and chocolate.

FYI Millennialls are people aged 22-37. Were they all mature students?

I think the reason so many people hate him is actually that he shows up the very faultline in the left that is the subject of this thread - the difference between genuine socialists (who want significant redistribution and transformative social change) and those who want only an empty badge of leftism without any meaningful content whatsoever (Blairite/Brownite/blue Labour)

I hate him for other reasons, although this is a good one too.

In the wake of Brexit he actually said - loudly and in public - that he didn't think some Leavers should have the vote.

This is something else I have heard a lot from middle class socialists. Or people without qualifications above a certain level being excluded.

But if you believe that, no matter how many times you claim you are a socialist, you’re not. By very definition you are not.