I have been much criticised for referring to Unionists – and No voters are precisely Unionists – as evil or stupid. I have given this much thought, as a number of very well-intentioned people have urged me to apologise. After a great deal of angst, I have decided to offer a heartfelt apology. Not all Unionists are Evil or Stupid. Some are just Cowards. There, I think that covers it.
My analysis runs thus:
Evil
The United Kingdom has become a force for ill in the World. In invading Iraq against the express wishes of the UN Security Council, Blair and Bush did to the United Nations what Hitler and Mussolini did to the League of Nations. The UK was up to its neck in complicity with extraordinary rendition and torture. Its foreign policy is based on resource grabs for the benefit of a few wealthy corporations. Even this year it is in Court still defending the atrocious deportation of the entire population of Diego Garcia to make way for a US airbase, and still preventing their return. It is actively preparing to do the same to the Ascension Islanders. It supports the hideous dictatorship of Bahrain and was implicated in the overthrow of Egypt’s only elected government by the CIA’s General Sisi. It constantly works against the interests of the Palestinians at the UN.
This week the UK has been passing still more laws attacking fundamental liberties in the name of “counter-terrorism” and increasing surveillance. It has an economy dedicated entirely to the interests of very wealthy people in the City of London. Its wealth gap between rich and poor is massive and still growing. The UK has 100 billionaires, and malnourished children, living on a small island. It is dominated by corporations run on a low wage model and has systematically destroyed workers’ rights.
On balance, the government of the UK has become a force for evil in the world. not a force for good. To support it in full knowledge of the above is evil.
Stupid
Given the existence of the tremendous communications possibilities of the internet, and given the wide range of information available above all in Scotland where a new political consciousness has developed, there are few excuses for having been ill-informed in the referendum. The failure to inform oneself, given the resources available, was itself evidence of a lack of gumption.
Some people are Unionists not because they support the policies outlined under Evil, but because they fail to perceive them. This group overlaps heavily with those who do not believe the Labour Party is now a fully paid up neoconservative party subscribing to everything above, and with only a sham concern for social justice. Despite the Red Tories’ open pledges to be tougher on welfare reform and immigration than the Blue Tories, these stupid people believe social progress is possible within the UK under Labour. They also actually believed that The Vow on Devo-Max would be delivered. This group of Unionists are incapable of perceiving evil when they see it, even when it comes certified with membership of the Henry Jackson Society. These people are stupid.
Cowardly
I have added this last group. These are people who did perceive the evil of the UK, and thus weren’t entirely stupid, but were too scared of social change to abandon unionism. A substantial section of the cowards should in fact be grouped under evil, because the cause of their fear was entirely self-centred. They could see the evil the UK does, but cared rather more about their own pension, job, mortgage etc. than they cared about anything else in the world. This combination of selfishness and fear of social change is of course classically Tory. But not all cowards fell into the Tory category. Some were genuinely fearful that things might somehow get even worse for everybody. They would not have boarded the first trains in case their heads were blown off by the 30mph winds.
Conclusion
After four months of constant thought, I cannot think of any hypothetical unionist position which does not fall into one of those categories. I am grateful for the criticism which led me to realise that I had left out the cowards. Some of that criticism came from nationalists who do not like politics to be described in moral terms, and for whom national independence should rouse no more passion than a change in local council boundaries, being a simple question of the best technocratic management of broadly similar political systems. That is a position I wholeheartedly denounce. For me national independence for Scotland is a great ethical choice for good – and against evil.
Fortunately a great many of the stupid are realising their mistake – being slower on the uptake does not stop you getting there eventually. So now there is a definite majority, for Yes. I am pleased about this, and view Independence as absolutely inevitable in the near term. I shall certainly live to see it. I don’t see converting No voters as part of my personal mission in life. The Wizard of Oz could give the Coward a medal and the Stupid a diploma. I shall content myself with being the one who throws water over the Evil.
Finally, for those who cannot get their heads round the purpose, style and conventions of political polemic, plainly you don’t have to be a No voter to be stupid. I have No voters in my family and among very close friends, including some without whose assistance I couldn’t keep this blog going. An attempt to introduce intellectual rigour into political discussion and test positions as part of political debate in no sense equates to personal animosity. As I have repeatedly stated in the context of the hundreds of political issues this blog has debated over ten years, I do not choose my friends by their politics. Otherwise I guess I wouldn’t have any đ !
Duncan MacFarlane @11.49 & 11.53- you’ve dealt comprehensively with Giyane’s ‘ridiculous accusations’; I hope he throws the toys out of his pram and desists from extruding any more anti semitic bilge on this thread.
Duncan McFarlane
“David Icke, whose political analysis is right on the money right up to the point that he starts talking about…..alien space lizard people”.
I’d say he’s a nutter well before that point, back to birth perhaps.
“Can you think of any instance where anyone just throwing insults at you ever persuaded you that they were right and you were wrong?”
Can you think of any politics that actually works that way? ie to nicely persuade the other side?
Like the social mobility fantasy. Yes it does happen, but it’s largely a myth.
Fuck off and die retard.
Two to me. But after you.
Iain Orr, please draw your friend’s attention to the final sentence nestling in Craig’s penultimate paragraph:
The trouble with this is that it’s right at the end of Craig’s post, and those who weren’t already in agreement were probably too incensed to maintain attention that far.
Craig! You need begin such posts with these sorts of explanations of your personal motivations; they’ll never be read properly at the end.
The name ‘Border Reivers’ is already used for an annual festival of re-enactments and such (no doubt entertaining) tomfoolery.
Besides which, they were cut-throat cattle-thieves and marauderers on either side of an uncertain border, the border itself an irrelevance, besides whom the wildest of Highlanders’ cultured civility would contrast exceedingly. Think ISIS, you’d not be far off.
The no campaign was far more insulting to Scottish people than Craig ever is, or could be.
A reminder.
Ep. 12 UK Press and the Scottish Referendum | Media Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPaWSqlTZxQ
Has anyone ever persuaded you to change your mind by starting off by saying “And if you don’t already agree with me on this you’re an idiot, evil or a fucking coward”? I doubt it.
Can you name me a Prime Minister who ever got elected by saying “and anyone who has ever voted for one of the parties i’m not, or agreed with them, is a fucking idiot, or evil, or else a coward”. Hint – there are none.
There isn’t any party that has even so much as got a councillor elected who got elected by telling voters that anyone who disagreed with him on anything was an idiot or evil. Not an independent. No one. It does not work. Insulting voters for not having voted the way you think they should have may make you feel good.
It doesn’t persuade people of anything because it doesn’t present them with any facts or arguments that could persuade them, and because it goes out of its way to get them to stop listening from the point they’re dismissed as stupid, evil, cowardly whatever.
So don’t pretend its gritty reality. It’s just stupidity i’m afraid.
“Maybe exercise would help Fred.”
I don’t need any help, I’m just doing fine.
Now stick to the issues or fuck off and die. You make it personal, I make it personal.
Got that cunt?
All politics and all persuasion starts by treating the people you’re trying to persuade with a bit of respect, and presenting them with some facts and arguments, not by telling them they’re fucking C***s if they don’t already agree.
“All politics and all persuasion starts by treating the people youâre trying to persuade with a bit of respect.”
Bollox.
Sneaky lying populist manipulation. Deception subterfuge and out right criminality. Subverting democracy and true representation.
Fred, I’m trying to engage with the argument you presented, but you’re choosing to respond to insults instead.
Manure price falling due to supply exceeding demand.
Craig.
I was just thinking about freedom of speech after reading Fred’s comments.
Maybe at PMQs if someone was to tell Cameron to “fuck off and die retard” as Fred says quite often we would soon find out how much freedom of speech there really is.
Homeneara wrote “Sneaky lying populist manipulation. Deception subterfuge and out right criminality. Subverting democracy and true representation.”
True that a massive amount of that goes on – all three main party leaders in the UK and many previous ones being good examples.
But the fact remains that if you want to persuade people, you present them with facts and arguments. If you just insult them, they’ll likely stop listening to anything else you say after that and you’ll never get the chance to tell any of them the real facts or persuade them with any arguments.
“fucking C***s if they donât already agree”
I’d say it was not that extreme actually, your wording I take it?
I don’t recall Craig looking for any form of agreement. Or being upset and abusive if he did not get it ?
Your making it up as you go along parhaps?
“But the fact remains that if you want to persuade people, you present them with facts and arguments. If you just insult them”
I’d rather be insulted openly.
I was replying to your post there above where you asked if any politics actually works by persuasion. It does. If the voters weren’t conned by the big parties into voting for them and voted in large enough numbers for e.g the Greens instead it would change.
The Greens don’t try to get them to vote for them by saying “and anyone who’s ever voted Labour or Tory or Lib Dem is evil, stupid or cowardly” do they? Because it wouldn’t work in a million years.
And ditto for telling No voters they’re all cowardly , stupid or evil, won’t persuade any of them to vote Yes next tme because it doesn’t give them any reason why they should.
So all Craig’s explanations of why he says they’re cowardly, why he says they’re stupid, or why he says they’re evil are a total waste of time after he’s just called them all three – every time he insults people just for having disagreed with his views, more of them stop reading his blog, and he has less influence – as Iain pointed out with the two of his friends who have now stopped reading the blog.
If he’d made some arguments for independence instead, he might have persuaded some of them.
Why is there an ‘urge’ to be supercilious on here – we are all colleagues not classmates.
Fred, you had some hours to present your argument, but now I have some visitors. Best wishes to you as ever.
(It makes little odds. Fred’s argument falls into the “evil” category.)
“Fred, Iâm trying to engage with the argument you presented, but youâre choosing to respond to insults instead.”
The motivation for voting yes was obviously based on irrational things like tribalist instinct and emotion while people’s decision to vote no was based on rational assessment of the pros and cons of both eventualities.
There was no logical reason for an independent Scotland the yes campaign was purely ideological. The refusal of the Nationalists to accept the majority decision is evidence of that in itself.
There are lots of ways political change happens. Right now we need an opposite pole. People power. Structures that maintain an antithetical stance to concentrated power. If they can’t do that from within then without is fine.
Not saying this can’t effect current structures in good way. But it’s never come from them.
And I don’t get all this focus on Craig tbh. With all the real scum about it seems somehow VERY unbalanced.
âThe Greens donât try to get them to vote for them by saying âand anyone whoâs ever voted Labour or Tory or Lib Dem is evil, stupid or cowardlyâ do they? Because it wouldnât work in a million years.â
Mmmm. I really don’t know about that. Maybe it’s because they don’t, yet people just take for granted all the disguised abuse of those who pull the levers. And not just words but deeds. Killing people, starving them. Putting them in more poverty. It’s like a mass abuse of society.
Maybe not really fighting it is one of those things for a lot of us.
“Why is there an âurgeâ to be supercilious on here â we are all colleagues not classmates.”
All colleagues?
Duncan,
I am very confident we are going to achieve Independence within a few years. No voters did a very terrible thing in September. Many are realising it. They tend to be appropriately apologetic. I accept those apologies, and I forgive. To forgive a terrible act does not detract from the wrongness of the act. To point out to them the profound error of their ways, is a good thing.
I do not view National independence as a question like the powers of local government, on which there may be legitimate opposing views. National independence is a question of a different entirely order. Plus, like Podemos and Syriza, Scotland had a chance to upset the repressive neo-con world order. It was wrong on so many levels not to take that chance. It was not an abstract wrong occurring ethereally. It was a real wrong, done by No voters.
Duncan
I should have said really good to hear from you, as always.
Fred wrote “The motivation for voting yes was obviously based on irrational things like tribalist instinct and emotion while peopleâs decision to vote no was based on rational assessment of the pros and cons of both eventualities.
There was no logical reason for an independent Scotland the yes campaign was purely ideological. The refusal of the Nationalists to accept the majority decision is evidence of that in itself.”
Not sure if you’re just doing an anti-independence version of Craig’s post to try to show how much it’ll get peoples’ backs up, or if you’re serious there.
If you’re serious then i can’t agree. There were some people who voted on tribalist instinct and emotion on both sides – hardline Scottish nationalists and hardline British nationalists/ unionists (including the significant minority of Orange voters in the No vote – like the “Loyalist” thugs who attacked independence supporters in George Square , the Orange Lodge and the Orange walk brigade.
And there were also many Yes and many No voters who were weighing up the risks and benefits of each option. There are plenty of risks to remaining in the UK. The banking crisis and recession were due to deregulation by the British government. All three main UK parties have been in government at some point since it and none of them have brought in any serious regulation of the banks and hedge funds since. And since they’re competing for donations to party funds from them, they’re not likely to. So we could have another banking crisis any time.
There were Greens and Lib Dems and Labour for independence people and people from no party all campaigning for independence. There were plenty of English people who’ve moved to Scotland campaigning for it. The Yes campaign and the Yes voters were not all Scottish nationalists any more than the No voters were all strident unionists.
I’ve even met some of the new SNP members in my area since the referendum at a Yes meeting. And many of them aren’t nationalists either – just sick of getting tory governments they didn’t vote for, or else New Labour ones with tory policies like PFIs and privatisation bleeding the NHS.
UK governments are also so much based on parties whose leaderships have adopted Thatcherite ideology and who will all do favours for big donations to party funds that they won’t even enforce competition and anti-monopoly laws on big banks and firms let alone regulate them. So benefits for people who actually need them are refused, cut or capped, but the energy companies are allowed to charge consumers whatever they like, even when their own costs are falling. Privatised train companies get 4 times the taxpayer subsidy British Rail got in real terms, and to keep all the profits from train fares that they increase above the rate of inflation.
And what influence do MPs in Scotland have? Not much. Only 4 elections since 1945 in which they’ve made any difference to the overall result of a UK General election, and every time a minor difference. House of Commons Library research analysed how often Scottish MPs votes made a difference to the outcome of votes in the UK parliament and found it happened in only 0.6% of votes in the last 13 years.
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/briefing-papers/SN07048/england-scotland-wales-mps-voting-in-the-house-of-commons
Add in the Scottish parliament voting system being much fairer and more representative of how people voted than the UK General election voting system, and the lack of any chance of the big UK parties conceding electoral reform (Blair dropped it in 97 the moment he was elected, AV referendum wasnt even close) and there are plenty of rational reasons why many people voted Yes.
Israeli propaganda attack dogs at work contd. This time it’s Mr Taub.
Israel protests to Nick Clegg over MPâs Netanyahu tweet
Ambassador writes to Lib Dem leader to complain about David Wardâs âoffensive and shockingâ comment about Israeli PM
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/14/israel-protests-nick-clegg-netanyahu-tweet-david-ward
Craig – Thanks and hope you’re doing well. I agree with you that an independent Scotland along with Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain could have a big impact through example. I only disagree on telling No voters they’re bad people or stupid or cowards, both because i know many Yes and No voters and some of each voted for good reasons , and some of each for bad (e.g i know some Yes voters who are just blind Scottish nationalists the same way some of UKIP are blind English or British nationalists).
And i don’t think going for another referendum or UDI election too soon is the only or even wisest strategy. If we lost again within a couple of years of the last referendum there might really not be another for a generation.If we can extract the maximum devolved powers from the UK government that protects people suffering from welfare reforms and service cuts, and could get other parts of the UK to demand the same.
If the UK government refuses to deliver the additional powers that the polls show most people want within a few years, then more of them will back independence. Either would be an improvement.
As I forecast in this comment the fascist Kiev army was preparing to attack Ukraine (unreported in UK MSM).
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/01/unionists-an-apology/comment-page-2/#comment-503046
It’s already started again. Graham Philips, a graduade of Craig’s university, who reports on atrocities in the Donbass region, is sending pictures from Donetsk today. This is a disatrous fascist government supported by the west. So many over here keep quiet about this on ideological grounds. It is worse than Palestine.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1538072513110451
Fred You may think it a cheap response, but as I remember, Hitler was elected. There are many reasons one can remain “logically” opposed to parties, people or policies which have secured a democratic mandate; just as it is open to people (including prisoners) to campaign against what they see as unjust court verdicts, whether by judges alone or by juries. When it comes to the UK, being unhappy with results/decisions despite their being underpinned by some form of legitimate authority is just as normal as it is to hate what someone says but accept their freedom to say it. There is no need to be able to cite evidence of dodgy dossiers, dodgy postal balloting, a dodgy electoral system (FPTP with an unelected House of Lords) and dodgy constitutional practices such as the exercise by ministers of the Royal Prerogative, without the need for an affirmative parliamentary vote on a proposal made by the government of the day.