Humans are irrational. Rationality is a fundamentally inhuman concept. There’s never been a human who lived their life according to consistent set-theoretic axioms of choice.
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Immigration to the UK - do you have concerns?
- Thread starter mojo pixy
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SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Not even you?
Especially not me
Agree with that. Scarcity, fear of the future and poverty is what gives these ideas a sea to swim in. And as Smokeandsteam said upthread there can be some purchase in pointing out that the 'leaders' of this movement have nothing to offer the poorest working class - although once conspiratorial beliefs are added to the mix like great replacement nonsense then this gets a lot harder or even impossible. And those ideas are growing fast.
What worries me most is that I think Farage/Tice's current commitment to neoliberalism is currently likely to hamper Reform's growth. But if they can shift from that to a more left leaning economic position like some far right parties in Europe have done then I think we're in trouble. There have already been signs of that. Shortly before the 2015 election UKIP were the first party to break from the benefit scrounger consensus and scrapped their previous mass workfare policies instead calling for an end to Atos assessments amongst other things. The proposal to raise the tax threshold to £20k suggests thinking in that direction as well, as does scrapping NI for the self employed, although they can't resist even bigger tax cuts for the rich alongside this.
But I think that's where the danger is. The far right need to offer more than just racism to shift that 20% upwards. If Farage is too ideologically committed to Thatcherite ideas to do that then I suspect someone might emerge who isn't.
krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
Sorry, what does this mean?
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
Everyone lives in their own little world
mojo pixy
...שלא נמצא בשמאל
It’s what “rationality” is. Being “rational” means an adherence to axiomatic logic. People aren’t rational. Instead, people are reasonable — they have reasons for things. But reasons depend on how you make sense of your circumstances. Different sense-making produces different reasons and thus different thoughts and different behaviours. This also means that the same person will produce quite contradictory behaviours and thoughts as their reasons shift in response to their sense-making altering. As the Red Queen said, “Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
mojo pixy
...שלא נמצא בשמאל
Anyway.
There have been anti-immigration riots happening, and racist and xenophobic discourse (as well as misogynist and homophobic discourse, from largely the same sources) has become and is still becoming normalised.
I think making excuses for it all isn't going to help.
There have been anti-immigration riots happening, and racist and xenophobic discourse (as well as misogynist and homophobic discourse, from largely the same sources) has become and is still becoming normalised.
I think making excuses for it all isn't going to help.
What a bizarre thing to say. Who is making excuses for it?
BigMoaner
What A Load of Old Bollocks
The whole concept of “rationality” is flawed from the get go. It assumes that our perceptions represent “realityh” as a starting premise which is probably the greatest of all human delusions. For rationality to be, well, rational, it needs to understand what reality is in the first place so we will be waiting a long time for rationality to to be truly rational.
Anyway, as said, that’s little to do with anything, where there’s this. Top of MY (whom watches true crime and Buddhist videos) YouTube page today. 1.2 million views in two days.
krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
Feel like have just been given a lecture, rather than an answer.
So, contradictory behaviour is neither rational nor irrational. It just is. Racism is just a reasonable response to people's take on what they perceive, as opposed to being an illogical response?
mojo pixy
...שלא נמצא בשמאל
The story so far...
- Look at this rioting, what a bunch of racist cunts!
- Aww hold on, don't call them cunts, bless 'em they're probably just frightened. I mean, society is changing, and their communities have been fucked.
- By immigrants?
- No of course not, by governments! But it's still understandable that these people are attacking immigrants, because none of us really knows anything anyway and we're all pretty inconsistent in our beliefs and behaviour.
Is that it so far?
I note that when we discuss male violence against women and girls we don't end up talking about how frightened the perpetrators are or how feminism has let them down. So how are we here talking about fear and disengagement when it's racist violence under the microscope?
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
Those views really aren't uncommon. There are far more people with views like that, or versions of them, than there are outright racists. Dave's not even a Tory. he's been a Labour voter all his life and now he's eyeing-up Reform. I honestly think that many on the left don't actually get where the issue lies because they don't engage with people outside of their own political structures. That's why people on here occasionally called right-wing or Tory, for expressing views that really aren't, in the real world. It's people who occupy the grey ground that need to be stopped from becoming far-right. Not the people who are already there. Win those people and the right are fucked because there are so many of them.
Contradictory behaviour is what all humans engage in. It’s “irrational”, if that’s how you want to label it, but the label doesn’t really get you anywhere. Like all labels.
Racism is a “reasonable response” in the sense that it derives from reason that is attached to a particular perception of the world. What, you think that it just randomly hits somebody’s brain some day to hate immigrants, with no reason at all?
This is why the contemporary left ends up going in circles so often. It would rather label socially-destructive behaviour as the actions of the irrational and unreasonable other, an inhuman and illiterate lump of sub-humans, than engage with the psychological, sociological, political and economic processes that produce particular ways of seeing the world — the “reasons”, if you like. In a funny way, it really is just the mirror image of what the other side are doing — label the other and fear them.
No. It’s a moronic caricature that helps nothing and nobody.
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
I've failed those test every time I've taken one. Most of us would, but the idea of them is not really to test the knowledge of the candidates. They're given a book with all the answers in before they take it. The purpose is to test reading comprehension and that they've put bit of effort into getting citizenship, which is fair enough really.
mojo pixy
...שלא נמצא בשמאל
krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
The economic, political and sociological processes are certainly to the fore of the minds of the humans who set fire to buildings with fellow human beings in, am sure.
In fact, we shouldn't be labelling the racists as "racist".
To do so, is inhuman.
krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
Labeling people as moronic is very helpful.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
Is it? Why?
I get Jordan Peterson on my feed too and I have no idea why.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
for me a major reason to talk about it is because the beliefs manifested by many of the participants in the recent disorder have been so clearly built on sand and received through social media / the media for people spouting them for their own (the influencers / politicians') benefit. gordon brown's british jobs for british workers. miliband's immigration plan. shammer's talk about sending back bangladeshis. may's hostile environment. sunak's talk about small boats. farage's claims that the truth is being concealed. syl's hateful videos. individually each of these people doesn't add much to a framework which informs and enables pogroms. but in concert what the politicians say creates an environment in which people like syl and farage add their own little twists. and when those politicians include people like patel and braverman and badenoch the distance between the conservative party and fascists becomes really thin. when tories come out with racist guff for their own political ends, for their electoral purposes, they forget - being charitable - that comments about race and immigration take on a life of their own and don't need so much assistance to start a conflagration.
tl;dr? what politicians say matters, especially in a context in which few people bother reading the news with anything more than cursory attention.
e2a: more to come
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
Because requiring people who wish to become citizens of the country they're applying to, to have a basic grasp of English, is practically useful for them, but also removes one of the weapons that the right uses to target those "middle-grounders" we've been talking about; "they don't even speak the language".
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
there are for me many similarities and crossovers between the way in which anti-immigrant bollocks is pushed and the way in which incel / toxic masculinity nonsense is pushed. but among the difficulties we have is that 'the left' has proved poor in using the internet and social media in the way that jihadis and fascists have - this is not a call to emulate them, but to try something different. should we as people on 'the left' continue as we are, where there are few innovative ideas about pushing ideas over the internet? or perhaps try what some people have already done and speak to people face to face - some anarchists have tried speaking to people at syl rallies, and report mixed results.
i don't have a solution for this but i think new things need to be tried, not in isolation but in concert. every year you see swp posters which clearly take their inspiration from punk images of the 1970s. have there really been no new ideas in political communication since jamie reid?
mojo pixy
...שלא נמצא בשמאל
In fairness it was the caricature being labelled 'moronic' but that was just kabbes lashing out because he's very well-read and highly qualified, and doesn't like not being taken seriously.
I can be moronic though, I'm sure we all can. Hopefully not as moronic as rioters trying to burn down a hostel with people inside.
Doing that would be unhelpful. Labelling a caricature as moronic, however, is perfectly meaningful.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
I would be very interested to find out if there are exceptions to this rule, allowing for disabilities. But I don’t agree with removing that propaganda ‘weapon’ is that’s the only reason for doing it.
It’s not speech they’re testing though, but reading. Will now have a google to find out if the test can be taken in other ways.
Again, this is a bizarre and unrepresentative mash-up of the ideas presented in this thread.
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