to think we're all being manipulated

[newbluesofa]

I'm going to get flamed by reform voters here, and I think it'll come off as thinking I'm smarter than everyone but I genuinely don't, which is why I'm so confused by this.

To me, it is incredibly obvious that we are being completely manipulated by politicians and the media. They want us to blame immigrants and people who claim benefits for their failing to run the country properly. And it's worked.

I don't think we should have unregulated immigration, there are issues that need to be addressed. But there's a difference between sensibly discussing immigration from an economic point, and the nasty hate and vitriol that's everywhere now. It is what they WANT. As long as we're fighting amongst ourselves, no one is looking up at the people with the real power and money.

One example, newspapers describing immigrants as 'fighting age men'. 'Fighting' is not an age. Young men could also be fit, healthy, and able to work and contribute. They say 'fighting age' to scaremonger and promote anti immigrant rhetoric, and it works as people parrot the line.

It's always been the way that the ruling class look for ways to keep the masses infighting. Honestly I lose respect at anyone that falls for it. I don't get how it isn't so obvious to others, how can you not see you're being played?

YABU.

This has been building for a long time, especially since the EU expanded and there was unexpectedly high migration from Eastern European countries.

High levels of immigration do disproportionately affect people in poorer or more marginalised communities. It did depress wages for self employed tradespeople, including building site labourers and more skilled tradespeople. had a quote for painting my house. The price from the Eastern European was one third of that of the white British people who gave me a quote. That was maybe 20 years ago and prices have remained that depressed. That is a huge loss of income for those self employed traders.

At the time, my lovely middle class recent immigrant Polish neighbour went to work as a teaching assistant in a deprived area of the city. She came back and told me in shocked tones how the class was full of polish kids who could not speak English and how the teachers could not teach the class because of this.

The 'migrant hotels' has meant that large numbers of unemployed young men become concentrated in one area. It is not a surprise that large numbers of unemployed young men causes problems in an area.

When communities are experiencing difficulties, and when they try to speak about this, they are just told that they are thick and racist, then tensions will start to rise.

I see this as a class issue. Poorer communities have been disproportionately affected. But the middle classes, who only seen benefits of immigration in terms of new delis and cheaper tradespeople, have not only ignored them, but actively derided them when they spoke about what they were experiencing.

Sure the cost of living crisis and the cost of housing, and problems in the NHS will have heightened things further, these are things that disproportionately affect those who are poorer, and people with fewer resources will be feel more protective of those resources, but there have been real and disproportionate negative impacts of immigration in some already pressurised communities.

This is not a tale of the elite manipulating people but of middle classes and politicians having a class based derision for poorer people and a deep set unwillingness to listen to what poorer people said, a lack of curiousity about their experiences and views, because they had already decided that poor white people, who do not dress like them or talk like them, are thick and racist and not worth listening to.

"“Civilization’s going to pieces,’ broke out Tom violently. ‘I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard? Well, it’s a fine book and everyone ought to read it … This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are.. and we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization — oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see"
Its the same arguments repackaged. Again and again and again

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

.

I see it as an issue with people being so poorly educated that they can't differentiate between being told nonsense and sense. Everyone is supposed to have their own mind. If we don't, we're all lost. I personally see very clearly (I think!) when I'm being manipulated. I think it's happening everywhere on lots of levels, left, right, you name it. We all need to settle down, accept that views can be different to ours and be willing to debate in a civilised manner.

I re-read this over summer alongside Ds who did too and it really is stunningly well written. It has a delicacy that I don’t think I remembered or that has been successfully put into film.

We should focus on the Royals

And the billionaires

Absolutely, OP.

Right wing media and vested interests who want people to fight among themselves while the top 0.1% hoover up money while lowering the median standard of living.

''People get the government they deserve'' - even in Africa and certainly in UK.

Thank you. This is tangiable stuff that we can have honest conversations about. I can see why you would find this distressing and even why it would make you angry. As somebody who has experienced this what do you think the answer is? Tell me honestly what do you think is the solution? Do you think that Farage has the right answers? I'm not asking to agree or disagree btw I'm just wondering

This is illogical because quite obviously "culture wars" do the opposite of create a concensus.

There are two competing dialogues here and, as ever, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

We have the left who claim all immigration is good and it is the only solution to our demographic bubble and all cultures are equal and anything else is racism. And that immigration doesn’t depress wages or create inequality. They also believe that there is no value in the nation state.

And we have the right who believe that immigration is out of control, the recent immigrants are a cost and a threat to our society. They also believe that the nation state is all important.

The reality is that we need immigration and a certain amount of immigrants can be absorbed and assimilated into society each year. But that, above this number, it is creating problems and social divisions. It is also true that the democratic libertarian culture based on Judeo-Christian ideas (regardless of whether someone is religious) is what has allowed the West to do so well over centuries, and not all people share these values.

However, it is also true that due to free movement of labour has vastly increased inequality and made the rich super rich whilst depressed the pay of the poor. And it has been awfully hard to redistribute this wealth.

I don’t think that either side has the answers and merely thinking the other side is thick, bigoted or fallen for a lie is self serving and not constructive.

You end by saying that we need to be able to debate civilly with one another but start by saying that people (presumably those with different views from yours) are poorly educated.

If you want to debate civilly you have to start from the premise that the person you are talking to knows something that you do not and is worth listening to. You have to start by being willing to have your views changed or moderated. You can't do that if you have already decided they are 'poorly educated.'

I love it! It's a good book to read as a teenager and then again as an adult. Different parts stand out and you notice more. I agree about the delicacy. I think maybe because he wrote so many short stories he became incredibly skilled at sketching detailed characters in a few lines. It reminds me of Iris Murdoch even though her style/themes are completely different. Tender is the night and Save me the Waltz (his wife's novel about the same subject as tender) are both really good as well but best read together IMO.

I don't and I am definitely NOT unusual. It's likely that despite the recent migration waves there are probably more ethnically British people alive than at any point in history. Our population was after all a lot smaller at the height of empire.
I do wonder why so many today try to deconstruct the British, and also British culture generally?

Maybe my point wasn’t quite clear - I do think the number of people coming in is a problem and needs to be stopped but it’s for the politicians to sort and stop incentivising the people traffickers.

😂

I couldn't agree with you more OP, and yet so many fall for it. They want the division, they want us fighting each other, divided and distracted, in survival mode and not looking at what they are actually doing at the top of the system.

I hope this era is the start of people waking up to these tactics and we see big changes in the distribution of power in the decades to come.

Mail has been owned by the Rothmere family for nearly 100 years. In 1934 the owner Lord Rothmere ran the headline 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts'.
That tells you what you need to know about the Mail. no surprise they are in favour of Right wing politics

You are absolutely correct that at this point the answer is for the wealth to be shared.
I also think it would be far preferable to not end up in this state as a society- and that would mean people being less ignorant to current affairs, the legal system and using their vote to avoid such equality.
I feel the deep inequality we have today is partly the fault of ‘normal’ people who have voted very stupidly in the past; having being manipulated by the media and not knowing enough about anything to make a good choice for themselves at the ballot box. Brexit voters, reform voters, people who have voted Tory yet who earn under 60k a year for example. Very stupid. I don’t know what they expected! It seems obvious to me that if you are in the little fish pond (as almost all of us are) but you vote with the big fish, you aren’t voting for your own interests at all. It’s pure manipulation!

Agree with your OP. But once upon a time I didn’t know either so I try to keep the frustration down.

Yes, this is part of the issue. Many people in one side of the debate are labouring under the illusion that only they are well informed and educated and have intelligence when in reality they are woefully ill informed and don’t have the level of intelligence to understand another point of view.

It's not poor education. Education IS a problem more generally. But this is more a loss of imaginative space. The Humanities/nonstem side of education is constantly downgraded/seen as less important by politicians and people spend more time watching podcasts or on social media than they do listening to music, watching films, reading stories. Reading especially. I don't think it's a class thing either. Sometimes the internet feels like the "Nothing" from Neverending story (showing my age there).I know I sound like a grumpy old person. I'm not that old. And I'm posting on social media now. I just think without fiction or imaginative spaces it becomes harder to distinguish reality from lies.

Thus ends my rant.

I'm generally pretty clueless, but do any of these papers actually have much reach/influence anymore? I mean twenty plus years ago absolutely, but don't most people get news these days from a variety of sources including social media?

I'm not the op but I'll answer. Spread out the asylum seekers geographically across the UK. Why does Scotland for example, take in such disproportionately low numbers? Why should poorer communities in England have to bear the brunt of excessive numbers taking up local resources? Open migrant hotels in wealthier areas, ditto hmos. In essence, let the middle classes start carrying some of the load; only THEN may the problem become truly apparent and we can drop the xenophobia label and start looking at the issue through a different lens.

The Mail online rather than in it's paper form has a big online presence and operates by producing very large volumes of clickbait style content so yes.
But also I think it and other papers form part of the same ecosystem as social media sites like Twitter. The Mail runs a story and its quotes on Twitter and cycles through that space even after the Mail has moved on. Even if the Mail issues a retraction. And papers report on social media storms
Sometimes you get journalists fishing for articles by starting discussions on social media they can then report on "Lots of people are saying..."

We aren't living in post-war level poverty though, are we?
We are being told things are worse than they are for a reason, division and distraction.

If you go outside and talk to people, working people who see the real world and how it actually works rather than someone sitting at home watching Farage bleating on all day, you see most people are good and want similar things. Your corner shop will be full of people who have busy days then go home and choose what to put on the TV or let in. We need to be more aware of how that choice of media makes us feel and whether that is a true reflection of the reality we see when we are in the real world.