The Brexit Arms (temporary till the licensee get here)

[BoredofBrexit]

Noise enforcement squad!
Where's the landlady? Surfer?
We've been advised of a a lock in and it's reported that the jukebox has been stuck playing Pulp - Common People - all night.

I do not even know where to begin with that video.

He says stuff like: "There is no racism in the US"

He's like a holocaust denier. He speaks with a certain level of authority because he is intelligent and able to articulate an argument in a way which sounds like it is legitimate.

He even talks about millennials not knowing what the holocaust is and therefore it is fine to make jokes about jews, cos they are 'just trolling'.

Except if you are the victim of that.

Fuck me, is he saying its good that we've forgotten where hate got us and ended up in WWII?! Yes he damn well is.

But then, the US is full of ideas like Creationism.

Honestly. Its the legitimisation and normalisation of de-humanisation. That's being a dick to other people. Its not ok. Its bullying.

Political correctness is clunky and is flawed but if you happen to be in a minority how do you fight back against the tyranny of the majority?

Black Lives Matter comes out of a denial that there is no racism. Its like a rat in the corner, trying to defend itself. Its not some kind of 'black supremacist movement'. Its something that says that there is worth and value and pride in being black, in a culture that denies that there is inequality and discrimination whilst at the same time Trump had an active campaign policy to 'supress the black vote' by making them so disillusioned they don't vote. Obama is to blame for making their lives worse.

Fucking hell, if you really believe this, then we are in an even worth state than I thought in this country. I thought we were in a bad way but not as bad as the US. Seems I was wrong, and are EXACTLY like the US and we really are on that direct collision course for widespread violence. Like the US.

Milo Yiannopolous is not good people. He has been permanently banned from Twitter for orchestrating harassment and abuse (and its not easy to get permanently banned from Twitter).

Not so good then Mango!

'Liberal fascism' is the justification of the re-emergence of longing for 'English Imperialism' or the more obvious white supremacy of the confederate states, which dominated and exploited others, and has a total lack of awareness of this and how that actually impacted on those who were on the receiving end of it.

He says stuff like: "There is no racism in the US"

He even talks about millennials not knowing what the holocaust is and therefore it is fine to make jokes about jews, cos they are 'just trolling'.

Fuck me, is he saying its good that we've forgotten where hate got us and ended up in WWII?! Yes he damn well is.

No, he's saying that teenagers are doing what they've done forever - trying to be controversial & extract outraged reaction.

They just do it differently now, via social media.

When someone bites & tries to shut them down with outraged reams of facts and 'isms' they win - they've got a reaction.

On the other hand, if you stop just shutting down the crap & instead let it be said, whilst approaching it as 'ok. I don't agree with you, but I will challenge what you are saying, but without reacting how you want or expect me to react' you can challenge and educate much more effectively.

He's not saying 'hate is good' at all - he's saying 'hate is out there, but if we quash it and ban it then we can never truly get to the root of it and challenge it'.

By making everything an 'ism' and banning, marginalising, thought policing (what we have been doing for a while now), has that worked??
Well, no!
Because: Trump. As president.

That's the measure of 'success' for how we've been dealing with hate & prejudice so far.

So what next?
Keep ploughing on in the same vein, in the hope that it Might Just Work? Or start to look for different ways to challenge & fix?

Racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-semitism, islamaphibia, transphobia etc etc etc

It's all out there, happening & perpetuating all the time.

By banning people, speech etc - by hurling insults back at them - what changes??

Fuck all.

It hasn't worked.

People of colour are still being persecuted, women are still being suppressed, people of all religions are still being marginalised, gay people are still attacked, transgender people are still ridiculed.

Suppressing and stifling people who hold those views Has Not Worked.

So what next?

At what point do you look for a different strategy?

Milo Yiannopolous is not good people. He has been permanently banned from Twitter for orchestrating harassment and abuse (and its not easy to get permanently banned from Twitter).

How has banning him from twitter worked out then?

Has that stopped him in his tracks?

Or has it just made him even more of a poster boy for 'free speech' something we seem to increasingly just pay lip service to?

But people love Milo, he has millions of followers because he's not afraid to stick up for the boring, untrendy, white man/woman.
Black people had had enough of being overlooked, gay people, feminists. great! good luck to them, but you can't then criticise the ordinary white person for saying, 'fuck this' I've had enough.
& Red you need to look at your own people's behaviour before you lay all the blame at our door. What feminists are saying about the women who voted for DT is shocking, but it's the same old story, they only like you if you think like them.
This world is now totally fucked & we're all to blame.

Hitler had millions of followers.
Having lots of followers is not a marker of being right.

I am not saying that the way we have been going has worked. It hasn't.

I am saying that this direction is not the solution either. We should not try it, merely because its the one that has the support of a particular dominant part of society. That's flawed too.

As I said we have created a tribalism within politics which prevents us from looking at the under lying issues - such as inequality. This exists at a local level, it exists at a national level, and yes it does exist in at an international level. I think this is down in part, to how taxation has been managed, and how a particular type of education has attained a certain status.

I have said all this and more.

I very much do think there is blame all around. I have said things are flawed.

As for 'my people'. That says it all doesn't it. Its us versus them, rather than looking at it together. It absolves you from any responsibility or critical assessment of the 'solution' that is presenting itself. You are defending it blindly, just because its not the status quo.

That's not right either.

I am trying to bridge the gap, in part by just being here and just talking about issues and trying to avoid falling into that trap of challenging people rather than ideas. Do not make it into a them and us thing, by saying 'your people' as you are actually creating more problems rather than dealing with the ones we've got in an appropriate fashion which is going to address things - without creating a situation which is going to rain shit on those who need those changes most.

Its the old 'We must do something' trap, where something is terrible, therefore we must 'do something' to improve it as doing nothing makes you feel bad.

So you rush in with this 'do something' without considering that the 'do nothing' approach might actually be less worse.

The reality is that in most cases the 'lets think about this first and have a little patience and come up with a better alternative plan' solution.

But it's too late.

You didn't want to listen last year, 5 years ago, 10 years ago.
We were told to shut up & crawl back under our uneducated racist stone, so much so that 100's of young white girls were raped & sexually abused by Asian men in Oldham because people turned a blind eye, scared of being called 'racist' - & that's the world you want?
The left created Farage, Trump, & the Milo's of this world, & now we've just got to deal with it.

Not just Hitler of course - I really don't know why he is always cited, when we have Stalin, Lenin, Mao etc all had millions of followers.

Red, from the little I have read people in the states have been waiting a hell of a time for change.

And actually, if we're going to bring Hitler into it - then let's look at why he was successful.

Is it because the German people were a simmering hotbed of racist, stupid, easily led, privileged xenophobes?

Or was it because the German people felt marginalised, picked on, disaffected, disenfranchised etc?

If Germany had been a country of happy, harmonious folk seeing a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, which was enough to get by and look after their families - then Hitler would have had slim pickings of folk ripe for the picking.

Red - I do think you need to re-read your 3 threads to see that a 'them and us' has been created. Posters on your thread continually shut down anything that doesn't fit their viewpoint even to the point of harassment and very very few venture from the safety of your threads to even see what the other side are about. It's an interesting snapshot of the country as a whole really. Yes, this should have been addressed many years ago but it wasn't. This has caused a radical wake up call to all politicians (amongst others, big business etc) here in the U.K., within the EU and in the States and that it what is needed. Anything less than something of this size would have not had the impact needed. Whilst I admire your sentiment it will remain an ideology because it's now too late and the gap is too large. Who would have thought 12 months ago we would have Brexit & Trump, speaks volumes.

You didn't want to listen last year, 5 years ago, 10 years ago.

Who is this 'you' directed at me. I'm sorry, but how do you know what I said 5 years ago. Or 10 years ago?

I'm sorry are you saying that I am responsible for Oldham by somehow being liberal?

Last time I checked, the options open to me in terms of voicing those concerns where not a lot better than the 'disaffected' out there. yes, I'm educated. Yes I'm better off. But I'm still just some sad keyboard warrior from up north who no one really gives a shit about. My voting opinions were a rock and a hard place, and weren't really what I believed in.

I have long said that there is an inability to look at things properly and critically. I've said it on a number of issues on MN. An inability to tackle the very heart of issues has been a problem for years and years because of this.

Its a systematic lack of ability and understanding of how to identify the problem and how to provide a solution in management that's the issue here. That's an institutional thing that isn't about liberalism. Management, not liberalism as such.

To say you can not challenge established thinking is wrong. You can. Its not easy but then people are not taught the methods and skills to do it either.

Its not helped that there is an institutionalised discouraging in this country to stick your head over the parapet, that has led to things like the Stafford Hospital scandal. That's not liberalism. That's management.

This country is corrupt on a huge scale as a result. And yes we are largely blind to it.

But don't you say that I'm not trying to fight that, and I am not aware of so many of these problems. I do, and I have.

I fail to see how bowing to this popularism is going to help solve those problems though, when this popularism is proving to have a lack of depth of understand of what is needed to Brexit and how difficult it is and its solution is a simplistic 'invoke a50 NOW' response. If it doesn't understand or want to even acknowledge possible pitfalls, its going to get on no better with other issues.

I don't know, how you expected me, personally, to be any more powerful than you at getting things listened to.

I think you'll find that there is a huge number of people out there who don't fit in with the consensus thinking of the main parties as they are not in large numbers or large concentrations. They don't feel listened to.

And they certainly are not going to get any more listened to in a popularist society either. Millennials for example. Who aren't bothering to vote, because they are out numbered by baby boomers and don't have their voices representatives in politics. And when they do they get an appalling reaction like Mhairi Black (who I confess I am not the biggest fan of, but I do have sympathy for).

But yes. I didn't listen.

Yes, lets get into that blame culture, of blaming groups and individuals rather than look firmly at the top who have pandered to popularism and served wealthy middle class voters of a particular age group. (Of which I am not) A group of voters that overwhelming due to their size have much more influence on the future than those who will have to deal with the actual consequences of it in 5 or 10 years down the line.

Popularism is fab isn't it.

When you start talking about 'national interest' at the moment, its drowned out in this noise about 'the will of the people' which is a shed load of nonsense and just produces more of the same.

Stopping to reflect and try and assess the national interest is being called an attempt to 'thwart the will of the people'.

Its a crock of shit.

When I said 'you' I didn't mean you personally, generic 'you'.

Posters on your thread continually shut down anything that doesn't fit their viewpoint even to the point of harassment

1. I am not responsible for other posters.
2. I don't disagree with the harassment at times.
3. I also think that posters on the other side have a certain style which creates a clash and makes it worse.
4. I have thought about stepping in, but I think both carry a degree of blame.
5. I'd sound like even more of an sanctimonious prick than I already do.
6. I'd don't think it would resolve the issue.
7. I am trying to personally engage and listen, and then try and use point I hear in what I say. Maybe I don't get it right and maybe I don't do it enough, but I am trying.
8. Blaming me, isn't going to help that.
9. I probably agree with some of what you feel more than you realise.
10. The way forward for Brexit is the way forward for us all. Being a remain in itself does not make you a hostile nor an enemy.
11. We all can agree I'm sure that we need to do more to find some common ground.
12. Identifying the problem comes before taking about the solution and in essence that's what the referendum result is at this moment in time. We still have not got to grips with the fundamentals and the underlying causes.
13. Marching on the Supreme court is not constructive and won't help apart from to create a difficult situation become even more inflammatory when we need to start doing exactly the opposite.

Anyway, I need to go out. (Yep I'm having a doorbell moment).

Catch you later.

Catch you later

So racism, homophobia, misogyny, islamophobia, antisemitism... are all minor concerns of the "elite" and "political correctness gone mad", as the "average white man" is overlooked and has a right to be angry, right? This is getting seriously frightening. This is Nazism. Are you aware of history surfer and mango? How is it possible that you even begin to appease that video?

Red, one of the good things about the threads you host is that you don't come down on either side - you are as close to an impartial thread host as there is on mn.

That's why I carry on reading your threads (even though I don't post on them).

About to play doorbell tag by posting and running Red but I just wanted you to explain your issue with Mhairi Black. I was very sad to see her unseat Douglas Alexander because he was a local constituency MP also doing his best to mediate the Scottish Left and run the UK Labour campaign. I do often wonder if the PLP would be quite the same shambles if it still had 50 Scottish MPs to knock some sense into it. OTOH many in Scotland took the view that change from within was no longer possible.

So far Mhairi is very popular even with Scots who would never vote for her. She is respected for anchoring her wider criticisms of welfare policy in the problems within her constituency. She is reaching out across the generation divide to raise the issue of pension inequality for middle aged women. She also does not suffer from Angus Robertson's persistent compulsion to reduce everything to Scottish Independence

jaws5, your précis of my posts does not even come close to what I was saying.

Please try and take your blinkers off and use a small leap of imagination to try and step into the shoes of the people who voted for Trump, and their reasons why - as I have tried to do.

Of course I'm aware of history
I'm also aware of the sociological context of history.
The same sociological context that can be transposed to what is happening across the world today.

You can call me a nazi if you please, that is your right to free speech, which I respect - but it doesn't mean that you are right.

Read, listen and learn from a wide variety of sources - even if their message is abhorrent to you.
Only by doing that can you begin to understand the 'why' and therefore try to negotiate the way forward.

If you (and others) continue to ignore, shut down, and shout down, then you will continue to achieve the square root of fuck all.
You will continue to be complicit in a series of events in which Trump has already happened.

Mhairi Black is someone who has amazed & turned the opinions of many people who thought her a joke when she won her seat.

I know many anti-SNP people in Scotland who are actually supportive of her & are pissed off that she is SNP and not Labour.

It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so infuriating to see how elsewhere on Mumsnet people like on Paris Lees for alleged misogyny and to see here the nasty misogynist PUA wanker Milo celebrated for standing up for people's rights. Are you all on glue?

Jaws5, maybe ease yourself in gently by starting with this:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/11/why-hillary-clinton-couldnt-rally-the-black-vote-commentary.html

It's an article by a black American, explaining why he voted for Trump.