Social dissent

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Polly Toynbee has written in the Guardian that:

Rightwingers have long used class against any middle-class leftist, a bullying that sidesteps the real political argument. It implies anyone middle class is a traitor to their own by supporting fairer shares. The abuser never explains what's hypocritical about those born privileged arguing on the side of those who are not.

Many commentators here seem to use this ploy. Many more would if I did not block their comments.

It's fascinating that they use the language of the "politics of envy". And yet as far as I can see Polly Toynbee isn't envious at all. Nor am I. We just have concern for social justice.

But that's enough to incite the hatred of the Right. But as Polly Toynbee says, that's all part of their deliberate manipulation in pursuit of their own self interest:

The right spits venom at talk of class, except to sneer at middle-class leftists, but avoids hard facts: a working-class child is 15 times less likely to move upwards than a middle-class child is to stay put. This is no classless society, but a society whose politics conspire to deny it.

Some of us don't deny it. And as Jon Henley noted in his interview with Hanna Segal in the Guardian this week:

speaking our minds takes courage, because groups do not like outspoken dissenters

That's really why the Right don't like those from the middle class who speak out for social justice. We're the enemy within. Long may it continue!


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