In-Group Preference and Jeremy Clarkson
The Daily Mirror has “outed” Jeremy Clarkson (a long-term opponent of the Mirror’s former editor, and most unpopular man on earth, Piers Morgan) as a “racist” because he might have used what is always euphemistically described as the ‘n-word’. For those who don’t know, this relates to an out-take in Top-Gear in which Clarkson, to choose between two otherwise identical cars mumbles “eenie meenie miney mo, catch a…”
There IS a culture in which people feel they cannot express how they feel. When the white, working class feel a black teenager gets better justice because he’s black, or that immigrants are getting special treatment, and they cannot express these views, these views cannot be challenged. What you’re left with is a simmering resentment of the political system which isn’t addressing genuine, if misguided concerns. If any attempt to express these concerns will end up with him being “exposed” as a racist, then he’s likely to seek out places where he CAN express himself.
When you get lots of people expressing the same resentments in the same place, that place becomes an echo-chamber where blaming ‘the other’ becomes amplified, and you end up with a UKIP meeting delivering all the juicy quotes which are catnip to the exquisitely liberal media.
When immigrants move into an area, usually the cheapest, least desirable areas, “the indiginous population” tend to move out. The richer you are, the more likely you are to live in an ethnically homogeneous area. This is true even of well-integrated and economically successful groups: North London’s Jewish community for example. There are many good reasons why people congregate in communities. Access to a synagogue or mosque for example, which isn’t a consideration an Anglican would have to make – there’s always a church nearby. But there’s also a desire shared by the vast majority of the human race to live with people like oneself.
And here’s the rub. The Working class – low waged people are competing with and living in close proximity to people who aren’t like them. Immigrants may speak a different language, and will have different cultural assumptions. Shop window signs will appear in a foreign tongue. Unfamiliar brands appear in the local off-license. It’s uncomfortable. People, usually, prefer to live among people like themselves. These working class people are inarticulate, and may express their feelings inelegantly, and they’re being excoriated for doing so most often by people who have the luxury of living in more expensive, ethnically less diverse areas.
There’s other effects: one of the benefits of education is an extension of your “in-group”. Basically, the less educated you are, the more, on average you fear those not personally known to you. More educated people are more likely to mentally include visibly different strangers in their in-group, basing their priors less on visible difference and more on subtle cues, like education and white-collar professions. Middle class people feel less stress around people generally: The wealthier you get, the greater are the returns to trust. So wealthy, educated people are more likely to trust strangers than are working class people further increasing the wealthy’s misunderstanding of the motives of the working class’s motives for saying and thinking they things which are appearing in these UKIP “exposed” stories.
So the key to defeating UKIP is keeping the debate rational. (Pot, Kettle yes, yes, I know…). They are a protest movement, not a coherent political party and the ‘tsunami of twattishness’ as I’ve been calling it, will recede as people realise UKIP have no real answers to people’s actual ‘amenable-to-politics’ problems. The problems of immigration will not be solved by simplistic proposals like strengthening border controls, but by ultimately by reforming the welfare state (and many of the coalition’s reforms seem along the right lines to me). The problem is not that the immigrants are coming here to steal our benefits, they’re not; but that the availability of benefits prevents indigenous working class from seeking the kind of low-paid jobs that the immigrants are now doing. Increase the propensity to take on low-paid jobs by the British, and at the margin, the returns to immigrants by moving here are reduced.
So by all means brand genuine racists, as some of these UKIP nutters are, as racists. But when you scrape the barrel, and suggest, using tenuous evidence that someone’s a racist, for just saying something we all feel but expressing it inelegantly, then you will drive people to UKIP and re-enforce the echo-chamber effect at party meetings and online. At least UKIP are giving previously ignored people a chance to say what they genuinely think. What mainstream politicians must do is show people what they genuinely believe is often wrong, without shouting them down. Unfortunately UKIPpers have stopped listening just as the mainstream of politics has started shouting.
As for me, While I can understand their appeal to marginalised people, I cannot stand UKIP, their views and find them a risible bunch of tosspots, who’re dishonestly fuelling an entirely unnecessary panic about immigration, the benefits of which far outweigh the costs, and proposing simplistic, unpleasant solutions to a problem which doesn’t exist, causing damaging side-effects they’d no-doubt blame on the EU. In doing so, they’re reinforcing the prejudices and biases in a vulnerable audience. I have no particular need to drive UKIPers back to the Tory fold. Every frothing, immigration-obsessed UKIPper lost to the Tories may mean one or two ex Lib-Dems who find the Tories much more appealing as a result. The decent people of UKIP will flood back to the Tories (and Labour and Lib Dems, but a plurality of Tories) when they’ve had their fun kicking “mainstream parties” at the utterly irrelevant Euro elections. This is why I don’t share the panic of UKIP winning the Euro Elections.
Elections are won in the middle ground, not shouting like a goggle-eyed brownshirt, from the right flank, blaming everything on the dirty foreigner. I accept showering UKIP with invective is possibly counterproductive, but it’s also fun, and I’m not a professional politician. I just wish I could have put my views as beautifully as the Flying Rodent has here.
When Chinese people move to Tibet that's gencoide yet when Chiese people and other groups immigrate to Europe and the likes of the US that's alright because 'it's beneficial to the ecomomy.'
How can people moving from one. Oh try to another and making permanent settlement in another country ever be about ecoomics?
*How can people moving from one country to another and making permanent settlement to another country ever be about ecoomics?
PS: I know that not all immigrants do make permanent settlement but I bet most do
PPS: With regards to that ice age point the whole worldly has experence migration since the ice age, does tha therefore mean that the New Zealand Maori aren't indigenous to New Zealand? (The Maoris actually migrated to NZ from New Guinea 10000 years ago yet nobody ever mentions that)
why do the political elite support open door immigration ?
1 ] they are clever – its great news for the economy
2 ] they have contempt for the stupid . they believe democracy can be carefully managed to exclude the stupid .
how might the elite run into a problem ?
what if the clever elite is in charge of an economy that runs full steam ahead into an iceberg .
many are cast into some very cold water .
are the elite clever now ?
of course much of this elite lives in the leafy suburbs ,
and probably has a diverse property portfolio anyway .
they are in no sense tied to anyone area .
they may own companies , that are more profitable if there is cheap labour .
their party membership might believe immigration control is " racist " , thus alienating existing immigrants with a vote and a political voice .
the media would love to see immigration control debates at party conferences .
the elite does not need internal disunity .
the status quo is fine .
except of course there is a problem .
something has changed .
before crisis . intelligent mr blair in govt + nasty , unelectable tories in opposition .
after crisis . nasty unpopular tories in govt + socialists in opposition .
yes the socialists are " intelligent " enough to be anti racist , but socialism ?
it always fails .
the problem for the tories was the libertarian classless society .
it broke down existing common values , and then forced the elite to collectively accept political correctness as a control mechanism .
this worked , for the elite , until the economic collapse .
now the control mechanism is being challenged by ukip .
as for the economic arguments , they are of course bollocks .
the elites in trouble .
" there is little credible evidence that immigration drives down wages "
there will clearly be an arbitrage issue .
why sell labour in one market ,
when the price is higher in another .
if there is free movement between markets , the supply line of labour for the richer market will shift outwards .
ie , at every price , more labour will be supplied .
if demand doesn't change , and assuming no existence of perfect elasticity or inelasticity ,
every a level student in the u k
will tell you what happens to price .
this of course is only a prediction , derived from the theory taught by leftie , Keynesian college teachers .
working class people may not have seen the evidence on the bbc or in the daily mirror , but as you say ,
" people will feel something is up "
this something , of course , as you argue , has nothing to do with the elite .
immigration has occurred since the ice age . there has been no change of policy , therefore no policy change to review .
?????????
bollocks .
immigration used to be controlled .
however , this ended when the john major govt introduced a political culture , where those outside the tory party were continuously informed , in no uncertain terms , that their feelings were irrelevant .
the end of decades [ perhaps even centuries ? ] of government by consent , obviously generated immense hostility .
in this hostile political environment , it suddenly became clear , via media reports , that abuse of the asylum system was taking place .
without a swift response , ie deportation of those abusing the system , a clear " its o k " message was going to be sent out .
but deportation of asylum seekers is controversial .
the john major govt dodged the issue , and nothing has been done since .
in simple terms , you either deport illegal immigrants , refuse bogus asylum seekers + then deport ,
or you don't .
the media has made it clear what the sentiments of the political elite are on this issue .
since the john major govt , the usual statistic is
90 % success rate for an asylum seeker .
in your preferred terminology ,
that provides a significant incentive for those in low wage countries to " try their luck " .
often you don't need economics qualifications to understand markets .
that's why they are so pervasive .
pragmatic capitalists , in richer countries , have a vested interest in moving towards an equalization of global wage rates .
dogmatic socialists have often preferred the broader idea of global equality to the more narrow pursuit of making the domestic poor better off .
some of the working class may not be as well educated as you .
but their not stupid .
they do get this .
Paul Weston was just arrested for quoting Winston Churchill and you don't think you have a problem?
Nothing could be more emblematic of Britain’s imminent demise than the arrest of one of its contemporary politicians for quoting words spoken by its foremost defender against tyranny. You had better wake up
The piece that you like so well by the Flying Rodent strikes me as
nothing more than an all too typical collection of pompous insults and supercilious
comments designed to belittle and destroy particular persons rather than engage in any kind of intelligent or meaningful debate about serious issues.
I'd be more careful about who you emulate.
The bar for being considered an"idiot" or a racist or a bunch of "angry yokels, spite-crazed nutters, glowering cretins or out-and-out fruitcakes," seems to have been lowered to loving your country, your culture and your people and wanting them to survive.
matthewmtt
It's saying "your country, your culture and your people" are under threat (they're not) and wanting them to survive (they will) is a unique emotion to UKIP, which marks you as google-eyed fuckwits.
What markets your think that a group of people will survive on it's own Jackart? Or are you just saying they will be she you know it's what the Anon wanted to hear?
saying "your country, your culture and your people" are under threat (they're not) and wanting them to survive (they will) is a unique emotion to UKIP, which marks you as Google-eyed fuckwits'
Two points: Firstly awhile British people are expected to be a minority within two generations, so yes we are under threat.
Secondly, love of one's ethnic group is a universal value which is found in every society worldwide expect for the west. It is not the nationalists who are the global minority but in fact western liberals who are on the wrong side of history. Some places in the Far East such as China and Korea are fiercely nationalist who won't risk becoming minorities sin their own country for the sake of an increased GDP.