Since 1979 UK governments have deliberately and systematically pursued policies which prioritised the speculative financial industries of London and damaged large scale manufacturing. The apotheosis of this policy was the massive transfer of money from everybody in the land to the bankers in 2008 by Gordon Brown.
There are two major results of this forty year policy. The first is that the deliberately engineered manufacturing decline has caused social and economic devastation in the UK outside South East England. The second has been an astonishing accumulation of wealth in a tiny number of hands as income inequality levels have risen to the highest disparity in all of human history, wealth centred in South East England.
This has naturally led to rising discontent among many people in many areas, despite the concentrated use of mass communication media under elite control to spread narratives to contain or divert discontent. But as unrest has continued to threaten control, a particular diversionary narrative has become dominant.
In truth, the cause of mass poverty amidst great wealth is the existence of state structures which direct economic activity to the exclusive benefit of a tiny elite of the ultra-rich. But rather than the ultra-rich who control the state structures, ordinary people are encouraged to blame their own lack of access to resources on immigrants. A false narrative is created whereby the cause of poverty is not the billions and billions monopolised by the ultra-rich, but rather that poor foreigner over there.
This is an argument of stunning intellectual paucity. It depends on a totally false narrative of an economy as a thing of fixed size. In fact, immigration is a massive driver of economic growth. If immigration really made countries poorer, then the United States would be the poorest country in the world and Germany the second poorest. That is plainly untrue. Immigration is not the cause of poverty, quite the reverse. It is only the benefit of millions of energetic new migrants that has prevented deflation in the UK these last few years.
Yet, despite being obvious nonsense, the argument sticks. The ultra-rich succeed in diverting the anger of society at inequality of resources, away from themselves and onto that poor foreigner over there.
And why does this obvious nonsense work? Because it appeals to a deep-rooted, basic, instinct of atavism. Because it appeals to a xenophobia that transcends logic and intelligence. Because it is a simple appeal to racism.
Concern about immigration is racism. A racism deliberately whipped up to divert people from their real enemies.
We all just want everything to be OK, my poor lad hasn’t slept for 36 hours, and he says its incredibly hot in there – and came home for 5 minuted for something to eat…
Anyhow – My Wife & I we are still going to the pub…
How long do these things take?
Notice, I didn’t do the joke…
Her Parents are Immigrants too
Tony
Tony_Opmoc
“In fact I even agree with Habb. This doesn’t happen very often.”
__________________
Tony, this is how it should be. A rational person should be able to agree with individual points I make even if more generally he/she would wish me off this blog permanently.
In fact the only person I know, who has evidence of not being an immigrant to England since around 1509 is my wife. So far as I can tell – She is a pure English Princess.
I know I’m an immigrant circa about 1570…(French)
I guess he just fell in love with the sparkle in her Irish eyes.
Tony
Deconstructing Craig’s argument a little further, we can both take as a given that globalists run our country (and most countries) with the compliance of the politicians they do their best to put in place. One of the main tenets of globalism is that labour must be as cheap as possible, to maximise the profits paid to people who already have plenty of money. And the fewer barriers to the free movement of labour – and capital – across the world, the better. In that light, wouldn’t it make more sense for the globalco to hypnotise the host population into willing acceptance of workers who undercut the locals? Wouldn’t inciting xenophobia be literally asking for trouble? Wouldn’t it be completely counter to the objectives of that businessmans’ and bureaucrat’s delight, the EU? IMO the Guardian apologists for mass immigration have it exactly back to front. They’re making the globalists’ job easier, not harder. The Telegraph apologists’ alternative line, that immigration =growth* only has weight if growth is good for you, and for the vast majority of the population facing yet another inevitable crash as an integral part of the economic cycle, it isn’t.
Xenophobia has provided an evolutionary advantage to pack-apes throughout the Holocene. It’s inherent. Insufficiently xenophobic tribes become extinct. Ultimately it will break out in any sufficiently stressed society which perceives a threat from the rival tribe. It’s a given, too. If it wasn’t you wouldn’t want to stake out your separate territory north of Berwick, and you’d find few enough people to join you if you did. When the stress cannot be relieved – Craig has no practicable ideas on how our economic system can be reformed – then at least the perceived external threat can be. It should be.
End of rant.
*Growth here is taken to mean ‘profits for bankers’
Craig
I am not favorably impressed with your attempt to dismiss EdF’s position as a “consensus of his saloon bar milieu”.
But I put your choice of language down to a wish to give EdF a rhetorical kicking rather than as an expression of what you really believe.
Your post is not one of your best efforts.
To take your central theme:
“The ultra-rich succeed in diverting the anger of society at inequality of resources, away from themselves and onto that poor foreigner over there.”
1/. I do not believe that all this is a cunning plot or conspiracy by the 1% to divert the anger of society.
2/. I am not even sure that society in general is especially angry. You should beware of ascribing your own feelings to society as a while.
3/. Even if there were a cunning plot or conspiracy I should say that it has been singularly ineffective: from what I gather, society as a whole – insofar as it is aware on a personal level of the egregious current income inequalities – is not blaming immigrants for them.
Given that the US are also a country of still large-scale immigration (whether legal or illegal),I should be happy to hear something from our Transatlantic Friend Lysias on what he thinks of Craig’s ideas here and in particular whether he thinks that immigration into the US is being demonized in order to divert attention from gross income inequalities.
(If he should feel unable to share his personal thoughts I suppose we could settle for mention of a book he has just read on the subject.)
Ba’al,
It’s The Labour we are all worrying about. Before she met my son, she was only a little girl.
Tony
(at school)
I note that my definition – on the previous thread and repeated on this one – of racism has not been contested by anyone except, possibly, by Mr Scorgie, who has come up with the following considered comment/
“What about “God’s chosen Habbabkuk? Are they racist?”
(I’ll be happy to reply once he has confirmed that he is talking about the Jews).
“The ultra-rich succeed in diverting the anger of society at inequality of resources, away from themselves and onto that poor foreigner over there.”
“1/. I do not believe that all this is a cunning plot or conspiracy by the 1% to divert the anger of society.”
Such as these “little Scotlanders” currently trying to drive a wedge between the peoples of the British Isles, you mean?
“2/. I am not even sure that society in general is especially angry. You should beware of ascribing your own feelings to society as a while.”
How come you aren’t angry? Haven’t you been paying attention?
“3/. Even if there were a cunning plot or conspiracy I should say that it has been singularly ineffective: from what I gather, society as a whole – insofar as it is aware on a personal level of the egregious current income inequalities – is not blaming immigrants for them.”
That’s because we have been paying attention. I’m angry because we have an incompetent baboon pretending to be PM, but then again, what’s new about that to us who have been paying attention?
Your first three and a half paragraphs make sense. Then the bollocks:
A false narrative is created whereby the cause of poverty is … that poor foreigner over there.
Of course mass immigration lowers wages and increases corporate profits. If you don’t understand that you must be an economic ignoramus with no business commenting on the subject.
It was George H. W. Bush, who made perhaps the earliest public proclamation of the New World Order, who said (in the 90’s) of illegal Mexican immigration to the US: “It solves the servant problem,” i.e., it satisfies the demand for cheap labor. And the drive for the unrestricted movement of labor from the Third World to the West has gone on from there.
There is hardly a job in Europe (pop. 500 million) that a resident of the Third World (pop. 5 billion) is not only ready to take but is better qualified to take than the European incumbent.
Remove all restrictions on global labor movement and capital flow, as is the intention of the globalist elite, for whom you are a mouthpiece, and wages in Britain and the rest of the West will equalize with those in the Third World.
In time it will be seen that your brand of anti-racism is simply elite propaganda for the genocide of the European nations in the interests of profit maximization.
But you will presumably delete this statement of the obvious as you have recently deleted most if not all of my previous comments here.
You are conflating racism and xenophobia.
It doesn’t work.
There will be many people who distrust white Poles but have no problem with their British-born black neighbours.
Alan (19h28)
I have no idea what you’re going on about, but I’ll assume you don’t agree with me.
And that’s all the attention I’ll pay you until you come up with an argument. 🙂
BTW, re the Archbishop of Canterbury:
why is the fact that he was an oil company executive in a previous life held against Justin Welby?
Does anyone remember what Paul was before his conversion on the road to Damascus?
My Respect for the NHS has just gone up…
They told her to go in yesterday…cos she is a bit overdue…and they gave her a few hours to get used to being hospital…they tried to induce it a bit at 1:00am …so knowing what I read in The Daily Mail…
Well Friday Afternoon – we all finish shift soon and we’ve got the weekend off including the guy who can do Ceasur
but no…they didn’t do anything except monitor her and her baby…and said it while yet…let him go home and charge up his mobile phone and get something to eat and get some sleep…
I said..drive back and get her now..
I am doing my best to keep the house warm…and I have seen it twice before..
It really didn’t seem that difficult – but I am not a little girl a week overdue.
Is that better???
Tony
…the cause of mass poverty amidst great wealth …
Er, umm, this has already been well covered by Henry George in “Progress And Poverty”.
It’s a good read and a guaranteed catch-up for anyone seeking answers.
P.S. Craig, your request for data on remote-powered listening devices elicited lots of pointers. Hope that was real help.
P.P.S. Your viewson this forum and the many comments are helpful and I’m pleased to be a frequent reader. Just began reading Cath Orangemen of Togo…and already thank you for writing it.
That’s a far too simplistic and absolutist position for me to agree with.
You deploy only the economic arguments that suit your cause (‘immigration is a driver of economic growth) whilst ignoring those that do not – it does nothing for economic redistribution.
Big capital has been making use of mass immigration since forever as a means to reduce the pricing power of labour. It is not racist to be concerned about that.
Big capital also is quite happy to allow the blame to fall at the immigrants door, rather than of those who lobbied for and drove the immigration policy to fatten the profits of the owners of capital.
As I never tire of saying: if you are the kind of guy that hangs out at Davos and currently are wringing your hands about ‘inequality’ (which is code for “I’m so obscenely rich I’m worried I might get guillotined”), which would Davos man prefer to see, a class war or a race war?
I don’t believe concern is necessarily racist. It CAN be, but not necessarily.
I don’t think Economics plays that large a part in the far-right’s reasoning. Go on any alt-right or far-right blog/forum/webpage and you’ll find demographics, incompatible cultures and crime are the main topics being discussed. The derka derbs side to things is a sidenote to them.
Presumably, Craig’s post is recognising the deep rooted tribal instincts in us which it can be difficult to rise above and is then lambasting those who Craig may perceive as playing with or manipulating such instincts.
A better post header might have been “playing with concerns is racist” or “playing with concerns stokes racism”.
Unfortunately, people have cause to be concerned. If I blow up your home and you say you are coming to live in mine then I would be concerned.
Paying attention also makes you laugh Alan; the human emotions of anger and shame are always usurped by humiliation.
My point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ux3oiWELIQ
I would be in court pleading
Your Honour firstly I didn’t blow up my neighbour’s home. Yes it blew up but it was whilst I was carrying out some emergency works for him and he was responsible for the pre-existing gas leak; secondly if I did blow it up then it will have benefitted him because he can now rebuild a far better home without incurring demolition costs; thirdly if you are not with me even on point two he has a closer neighbour who is better placed to assist; and finally if you are against me on every point let me pay compensation for him to rebuild his house for I fear things may not go well if he be permitted to move into my home. Especially in these circumstances.
What’s that you say your honour you find that I was right to blow up his house, that it was for his ling term benefit so he could be more like me and to help him be more like me you say he should stay in my home now. I may have a concern…..
There is some truth in this but you can’t ignore the fact that the super-rich encourage poor immigrants for their own ends – to divide the population but also to undercut the rights and worth of the indigenous population.
The immigrants themselves may be victims but they are still being used as a weapon against the British population, just as cannon fodder were in conventional wars.
When I saw the headline to this article I thought it was a joke or satire. Please someone say this is a joke and I’ve fallen for it? If not, for an intelligent man such as Mr Murray to state that immigration concern is racist is dumbfounding – like something out of from a bad immitation of 1984/Brave New World etc. This kind of well intentioned (I’m guessing) political correctness is very dangerous and is in fact paradoxiocally reverse racism and xenophobia against countries and the fundamental rights of their citizens to have a say on immigration. It will obviously take Mr Murray a long time to break all his conditioning, liberal bigotry and naivety before he realises what is going on and recognises that every single country and every race on earth are perfectly within their rights, moral and otherwise, to be concerened with immigration into their country.
It is also well known that countless countries around the world, including the UK state under Blair, have used enforced and intentional immigration to destabilise countries and dilute patriotism/sovereignity as these things are what the corporate elite want to destroy in order to be able to control homogeneous blobs of people who dont believe in the notion of countries or states, or indeed anything else much. ‘Immigration control is racist’, if a serious statement, must be one of the most idiotic things Mr Murray has said thus far and means that it is hard to take future artciles as seriously as I’d like – a shame as I admire Mr Murray’s moral principles in many other areas. But this is truly dangerous extremism and thought policing
@JSD
“You seem to be arguing that racism is instinctive and inherent, something which I would vigorously dispute – I think it is learned, not inherent.”
There is something instinctive and inherent within people that leads them to fear those who are different, as anyone with small children will be aware – but I suspect it is how that instinct is handled and explained by parents and others or not as may be the case, that really determines whether that fear develops into what is normally accepted as being racism.
I would agree with Craig on the whole – but even if you believe in the benefits of migration and the benefits arising from cultures mixing, you can still be concerned that the migrants have proper housing and schools etc. and that their joining the local population does not give rise to unnecessary friction with the existing population.
@Canspeccy
“Of course mass immigration lowers wages and increases corporate profits. If you don’t understand that you must be an economic ignoramus with no business commenting on the subject.”
No you dolt – it is restrictions on movement of labour but not capital that give multinationals the power to charge lower wages to those working in the third world – if more freedom was given to labour to move where it wants then labour would be rewarded more and capital less. This analysis will stand good whether you believe in Marxist, Neo-classical or Keynesian (e.g. Sraffa) economics.
The fact that you are concerned only about the impact on those in the West and not worried about the majority in the Third World just provides further evidence of your fundamental racism.
Resident Dissident, at 11:17pm today. Brilliant post, thanks.
I totally agree with Craig’s post. What’s being done is appalling.
At Res Diss. “No you dolt –”
Listen fucker (I call you that since you call me dolt), if you think importing labor does not reduce the price of labor, then you know nothing of supply and demand which is the basic principle of economics.
And, if you don’t realize that immigrants have an advantage over the indigenous in many labor markets for the simple reason that they’re often better, then you haven’t given the subject any serious thought, though you presume to pontificate about it and insult those who do know something about it.
And if you don’t understand why it is that smart immigrants result in many indigenous workers being consigned to the labor market scrapheap, you should read Ha-Joon Chang, Cambridge University Professor and a Korean immigrant who has excluded one English scholar from a cushy academic post. Chong is a good man, incidentally, as an economist, anyhow.
Suhayl, you’re such a pathetic arse licker.