'Right-wing' feminism?

[user1498662042]

Thought this raises some interesting questions. As a liberal, Cohen ties himself in knots trying to distance himself from this woman and all that she stands for. Obviously, feminists should speak out against misogynistic elements of Islamic culture (or any religious belief system); but is there a line where the liberal crosses over into being another kind of bigot? Can you be on the right (as in be an anti-immigrant nationalist who believes that Islam is incompatible with secular liberalism) and still be a feminist?

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/29/bigot-who-would-lead-ukip-is-a-product-of-our-times

What do we believe in Lass? Collectively?

The Roman Empire collapsed due to barbarian migration. In the Dark Ages Britain was a migrant country, made up of Germans, Danes and others.

The influence of the Norman invasion was so vast that for hundreds of years half the country spoke French. To this day most of our words are etymologically French.

Western liberal capitalism has fifty years max before it reaches economic, social and ecological limits.

Who is this 'we' that you keep referring to?

In terms of your understanding of the history of the British Isles, you seem to have conflated cultural and genetic change.

I haven't mentioned genetics?

Migration implies genetic change in the population. Large cultural changes are not evidence of large scale migrations. Large scale migrations are not evidence of large scale cultural changes.

You also seem to think that large scale migration leads to some kind of cultural blending. This is not always the case. Sometimes cultures are entirely or almost entirely wiped out.

The Normans took over but they just affected the stuff at the top. Most of us remained as we were and yes I know we had all kinds of Viking and other invasions. The ordinary people, most people, were not hugely affected by the Normans or the Romans.

i can agree with you over ecological limits - growth cannot always go on forever although in the grand scheme of things humans won't be on this planet very long anyway - the blink of an eye historically. We have always been on the way out. Mind you Ireland for example is nothing like back up to the 8m people + it had before the famine. So not everywhere always keeps growing and growing in terms of population.

The Normans took over but they just affected the stuff at the top. Most of us remained as we were and yes I know we had all kinds of Viking and other invasions. The ordinary people, most people, were not hugely affected by the Normans or the Romans.

They were massively affected. Our political and legal systems were established by the Normans, and Roman influence on culture, engineering and architecture was colossal.

There is no such thing as a pure British race or culture, and nor will their ever be.

Ecological degradation is only one consequence of market capitalism. As the economy is digitalised and robotics advances, huge areas of employment will disappear. Increasing numbers of human beings will become economically unnecessary. Economic and social inequality could revert to levels last seen in the 18th century. The capacity to 'edit' genes already exists - hitting the headlines last week actually. Governments will try to regulate it, but in vain I fear. Designer babies will become available to the rich, allowing them to perpetuate a genetically 'superior' elite. Genetics will become another form of capital. Joining financial capital, social capital, cultural capital and erotic capital will be genetic capital. 'Good breeding' once meant belonging to a feudal dynasty; in the future it will be available on the market - beautiful, intelligent children free of disease. At the other end of the spectrum, a precariat of genetically 'inferior' workers will probably struggle to eke out a living service sector industries or the sex industry - though even their jobs will probably be threatened by sex robots.

The ice caps will melt and geopolitical conflict will ratchet up. India and China will be the ascendant economies, and the US and developed Europe relegated to second world status. Terrorism and cyber-terrorism will come be completely beyond the control of governments. Social problems such as crime, mental illness, suicide and homelessness will reach hitherto unknown levels.

As societies go into meltdown, extremist religious and political cults like ISIS and those of the neo-fascist far right will gain power.

This sounds like a sci-fi dystopia, but I cannot imagine any other prospect at the moment.

I agree with the Lucysky about the Romans and Normans.

There is a broad consensus among Historians that for most people in Britain, life was changed very little by the arrival of the Normans, and the impact of the Romans was temporary.

It don't think it's true to say the Roman and Norman influences were merely temporary and passing.

The Romans left Christianity when they left, which in spite of the Viking invasions, survived and implanted. You might argue that christianity would have come anyway, but it helped that the ruling class were practicing it by the time they went.

Before the Normans came, England's economy and culture was intimately bound up with Scandinavian/ Viking economy. There was a massive trade between England, Scandinavia and the Viking parts of Russia - it was huge and profitable and when the Normans came, England re-oriented towards the continent and away from Viking trade and culture. That may only have directly affected the merchants carrying out the trade, but it indirectly affected everyone because the goods they got and the cultural exchanges they had, were different.

It's also not true that the common people didn't notice. William the Conqueror carried out a genocide so bad that the pope threatened to excommunicate him unless he stopped (which English historians understated as "the harrying of the North") and the way their lands were used (not being allowed to hunt on lands that had previously been common, not being allowed to hunt certain prey e.g. deer) did affect normal life. It wasn't an instant thing and it's true to say that life went on as normal for most of the people in the short term, but long term, the impact on the way life was organised and the cultural assumptions people developed, must have been quite significant.

But yeah, right wing feminism is nearly always dodgy IMO.

From what I've seen of it, it seems to nearly always rest on the assumption that men are really, really terrible people and therefore women need to find a "realistic" survival strategy in order to be able to live with them. And that given that they are bound to enslave us anyway (what with them being bigger and stronger and generally dreadful people), it's better to be the property of one of them, than of many of them, which is the socialist alternative.

It has a point. But it's a bleak view of men. And of our ability to be able to build a world where there isn't an automatic assumption of women being there for men's use.

Good point Basil, though there are different kinds of right-wing. There is libertarian, anti-statist right; authoritarian right; traditional conservative right. Sometimes extreme liberal left and right meet - as do authoritarian left and right. Le Pen, for instance, is quite left wing in terms of economics. Then extreme libertarians and the anarchist left can sound quite similar, both being anti-government.

It's got very complicated.

I disagree that Christianity survived the end of the Roman Empire in Britain. It was almost entirely replaced and was reintroduced in later periods.

There are a great deal of straw man arguments all over this thread. Nobody has argued that there was ever such a thing as a 'pure' British culture, that the influence of the Normans was temporary or passing (not sure why the Normans are being seen as a very different group from the Vikings anyway! Norman means Norsemen).

This thread has got some really wild speculation about what is going to happen in the future, based on a large number of generalisations about the consequences of migration, based on very incomplete and cherry picked account of migration in the past.

I disagree that Christianity survived the end of the Roman Empire in Britain. It was almost entirely replaced and was reintroduced in later periods.

Reintroduced by who?

The Anglo Saxons in the 7th century.

The Angles mostly weren't Christian.

I never suggested they were.

You've lost me.

I thought we had dark ages (and anyway the Roman had all their specific Gods - I've seen the stuff they left up at Hadrian's Wall and it's not Christian) and then Christianity came in again in another wave.

There is no "purity" of our race we are lots of different mixtures but that does not mean that the UK will benefit from taking in more immigrants than it has space or money for. I've had my DNA tracked back 25,000 years and that ancestor to the Caucasus mountains and we all came out of Africa originally. I have been tracking back more recently in the hope of not finding someone from the UK but so far no such luck on any side of the family but I am only back to about 1785 (earliest) - 1820 so far. Even the Irish one moved here when the UK and Ireland were one nation so technically they weren't immigrants which is a pity as it means no records of the sea crossing which those going to the US are able to find to help find ancestors.

I fear nothing for the future. All will be well Eventualyl there will be no humans on the planet but that's not a problem. Who says the planet is better off with humans on it anyway? There have been few periods in UK recent history as peaceful as now. When you think of all those ancestors of our killed in world war I. Then my great granny was only just over that (widowed twice) and then we had world war 2 (she died in the middle of that), my parents with bombs fall.ing over them in the 1940s, then the fear of nuclear war.... and then we have this wonderful period of huge peace across most of England other than occasional IRA or ISIS issues. We have never had a little violence on the planet as now. Things will get better and better. We are lucky to live in these times.

Why are you lost? Some of the people in the 7th century (part of the Anglo Saxon period) believed in Christianity and attempted to get other people in the British Isles to also believe in it. Some of the people in the 7th century did not believe in Christianity and did not attempt to spread it.

Different people within cultural groups believe different things.

Reintroduced by St Augustine in the 590s.

What is Islamic feminism please?

Lucysky Roman artisans and traders came to Britain with news of Christianity in the first century. By the left the Roman Empire had become semi-Christianized.

I'm not saying that immigration should be controlled and managed as efficiently as possible; only that over the coming centuries the Muslim diaspora will mix with western cultures. This is inevitable. There is going to be a lot of moving around. In only a few decades for example, the Maldives will be underwater. Their inhabitants are already are looking for somewhere else to live. In 500 years we will probably all be brown and there will be so such thing as British life as we know it now. We Europeans could even be semi-nomadic, driven from place to place by environmental conditions. This is starting now. We are seeing the collapse of the old world of nation states.

People move around; cultures come and go; things get better and then get worse and then get better again, and so on. Stability and progress are both myths.

I agree that things were not better in the past, which is why we should not entertain these absurd fantasies of the left and right that we can't fo back to the 'good ole days'. We can't.

www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332715585855781.html

Different people within cultural groups believe different things.

Of course. I never suggested otherwise. But beliefs and cultures do not arise in a global vacuum.