Douglas Murray on intolerant politics

[BovaryX]

There is an interesting article by Douglas Murray in the DM about the authoritarian, identity politics which have alienated Labour voters and triggered a paradigm shift in the political landscape. It covers some of the themes which Lang GC Pencils and others have been discussing in light of election result.

It is a divide between people who have real-world concerns and those focused on niche and barely significant ones...How, you might ask, have we reached such a state? There is a clue in the Labour Party’s dysfunctional reaction to its catastrophic defeat on Thursday

MoltenLasagne
But there's a social phenomenon in British Muslims whereby it is common to have a first generation in every generation, as a spouse for a UK born child is found from the home country.
So it makes it way more difficult to integrate. The £35000 thing was intended to combat this but it doesn't work; the families just pool the money temporarily to meet the Home Office requirements.
It's a very specific phenomenon that is off-limits. Consanguineous marriage is also an issue, I'm sure you've seen the study for babies with birth defects in Birmingham from Muslim consanguineous marriages.

If we cared about these people as fellow Brits we would be actively discouraging the practice, we would be explaining the dangers to babies, we would be exploring what it means to people. But instead we stick our fingers in our ears and sing "lalalalala I'm not racist".

Oh and in so doing we undermine the efforts of people (women mostly) from those demographic groups who work hard to undo these social expectations.

Antibes agree, everything is about GDP and an endlessly growing economy.

Molten that sounds awful and scary.
Sorry if it’s a stupid question but why do you now know details of the backgrounds of friends?

Xpost woth Flying what is the 35k thing please?

I hate the trend to mention colour in everything

Two threads going on at the moment referring to “white men” as a collective for no reason at all

AutumnRose1
Where a sponsoring spouse doesn't earn the minimum £18,600 they have to prove they have savings to support the foreign spouse.
www.freemovement.org.uk/appendix-fm-financial-requirements/#What_if_I_earn_less_than_18600_a_year
It has to be held in the account for six months. The link has a few case studies.

It depends on which families though Flying - many of my friends were the daughters of accountants, doctors, dentists etc so were actual 3rd generation.

And yes, my sister did her childcare placements in special needs settings and had some very upsetting stories so whilst I don't know the stats, I'm aware of the issue.

It depends on which families though Flying - many of my friends were the daughters of accountants, doctors, dentists etc so were actual 3rd generation.
Fair enough. Do you think it had anything to do with the importation of Wahhabism through mosques and imams funded by KSA? That's another possibility I suppose.

I had to google 3rd generation immigrant

I think I’m going to add “if you don’t know it, don’t bother looking it up” to the resolutions list.

It’s so sad to have hit adulthood in a world where this was irrelevant and find that now people are looking at this level of detail.

Autumn basically because it very quickly went from "you can't hang out with white girls" to "you can't hang out with Hindu girls" to "She's Bangladeshi, and we're Indian / Pakistani" to "Well what do you expect from Sunni Muslims?" Just this ever decreasing circle of who was allowed to socialise with who and a whole lot of bad feeling to go with it.

It was worst for the black kids at school because anti-black racism from asian kids went through the roof which was really horrible. My school photos show this gradual segregation but worst was this feeling of being pre judged for what you were rather than who you were.

Molten that is so sad 😞

I wonder how and why that happened.

It's like BAME. I mean, what is that? It covers bloody everyone! What does a 3rd generation Kashmiri from Keighley have in common with a newly arrived Nigerian student? Nothing but humanity, and yet they are both "BAME"

Isn’t it a sort of unionisation? It’s hard getting your voice heard as a small minority (any kind, really) so it makes sense to come together to ask for minority issues, generally, to be considered. And sort out the specifics later.

Do you think it had anything to do with the importation of Wahhabism

I honestly don't know - I was a teenager seeing the fallout rather than the cause. There was a vocal minority of Somali parents who I remember refusing to let their children wear the school jumper because there was a teeny tiny cross as part of the logo. That was the first really obvious clash I remember when I was about 12 and the first time I knew the kids by their background but I think that was just the impact of new immigrants rather than the type of Islam. At 14, one of my friends got sent to Pakistan during summer holidays because a cousin had spotted her with Hindu friends outside school and she never came back. It was after that that it got really bad, unsurprisingly. I was appalled, the other girls were terrified.

Isn’t it a sort of unionisation? It’s hard getting your voice heard as a small minority (any kind, really) so it makes sense to come together to ask for minority issues, generally, to be considered. And sort out the specifics later.
I guess so. And dont get me wrong, a lot of things have been shit for a lot of immigrants to this country, so efforts to recognise different perspectives are coming from a good place, but the slavish adherence to separating people out leads to just..a lot of separate groups eying each other with suspicion. We have to find the things that unite us as humans rather than endlessly focus on the things that make us "other" surely?

hipster your unionisation comment really baffles me in this context. Firstly, the “3rd generation” immigrant is a British person. Secondly, what are the rights you think they would seek together? What rights are either of them missing to start with?

Molten I’ve never been to Birmingham but that’s an interesting experience in relation to stuff I’ve heard from one friend working there. She travels in from a suburban area though, she doesn’t live there.

IfNot “ We have to find the things that unite us as humans rather than endlessly focus on the things that make us "other" surely?”

And it’s not even a task, when integrating was a norm, this was just good common sense.

Maybe next time I get “where are you from” I’ll just say “I don’t do identity politics”.

AutumnRose, if people feel that, say, the government/large, important organisations don’t reflect the ethnic mix of the country as a whole, and better representation is needed, surely its easier to argue for that as a larger notional BAME grouping. It’s a very broad grouping so might not be useful beyond a point, but in the short term it serves a purpose.

(I didn’t bring up 3rd gen - like you, I’d not heard of it until I read it here - I was quoting someone else. But BAME isn’t to do with nationality anyway, but ethnicity.)

We have to find the things that unite us as humans rather than endlessly focus on the things that make us "other" surely?

Bit of both?

I think some of the above is the overlap between nationality and ethnicity and how racism often doesnt distinguish between the two.

The racism that's targeted at new arrivals exacerbates racism for people who ethnically look the same though, even if they've been here a long time. You could say that about Indians in Australia. Many new arrivals are unemployed and form a majority of job applicants where they are ignored en masse.

Hipster “ if people feel that, say, the government/large, important organisations don’t reflect the ethnic mix of the country as a whole, and better representation is needed“

I always thought that kind of thing was a mistake anyway. I think it’s ridiculous to try to staff any organisation according to the optics.

I’m aware people are pushing for it and have been for ages. But I’m not in favour of it and I see it as the starting point of a lot of the problems we have now.

I’m trying to listen to that BBC Sounds thing but the presenter has an awful voice.

MoltenLasagne that sounds awful. Personally I'm appalled too. The fact we as a country largely take that kind of coercion of girls for granted, and excuse it as cultural differences etc is just wrong. It's the perfect example of those girls (I'm guessing most were born here) just not being afforded any kind of the same level of protection as other British girls.
Not that many girls have freedom from coercion sadly.
We pass a few laws but don't really enforce them, so they aren't really worth having.

Interesting discussion which I'm afraid I don't feel I can contribute to significantly theoretically, but anecdotally, reading this has made me remember the ethic mix of my friendship group as a child, which I'd never really thought about. In primary school, in the early 80s, my best friend was Chinese, I also had a Jamaican, German, half-Pakistani and a Nepalese friend (all 2nd generation). Working class background, majority white area, parents the opposite of woke. My sister's best friend was Indian. I believe identity politics is pushed by those who don't have this experience and have discomfort/guilt dealing with people from different ethnicities. They make it an issue, because for them an ethnically diverse society is theoretical rather than first hand experience.

Nothing to add personally but I love this thread. I'm agreeing with so much.

I’m trying to listen to that BBC Sounds thing but the presenter has an awful voice

Oh I know, @AutumnRose1hes a bit painful to listen to, but the discussion is interesting.

But it does strike me that no woman with such a difficult voice would get such BBC prime airtime ...