Oliver Dowden MP, the chair of the Conservative Party, tweeted this yesterday:
First of all, let's note that this speech was given at the very right-wing, pro-Trump, Heritage Foundation. They are best known for their annually produced index of economic freedom. They explain their view of freedom as follows:
Economic freedom is the fundamental right of every human to control his or her own labor and property. In an economically free society, individuals are free to work, produce, consume, and invest in any way they please. In economically free societies, governments allow labor, capital, and goods to move freely, and refrain from coercion or constraint of liberty beyond the extent necessary to protect and maintain liberty itself.
It's not hard to see through this. The freedom being celebrated is that of the individual irrespective of the consequence of their behaviour for others or, come to that, the planet. This is a definition of freedom based upon the idea of the right to exploit that has implicit within it the idea that virtue is indicated by wealth.
Note that Dowden used the word nostrum in his speech, which refers to a false medicine prescribed by an unqualified person. Implicit in what he says then are two things. The first is that what he supports is the truth. The second is that he is qualified to tell this.
Taking him at face value and presuming his judgement is, at least in his opinion, sound let's remember that Dowden chose to speak at the Heritage Foundation. He did not need to do so. And as he chose to do so he must have known of its views on what freedom might be. He clearly describes them as true as a result. That is what we must conclude.
Then let's look at some reports of what he said. This version comes from the Huffington Post. I have not been able to find a transcript on line, as yet:
Dowden said it was up to conservatives to “mount a vigorous defence of the values of a free society” which he claimed were under threat from “woke ideology”.
And he took aim at left-wing activists whom he accused of being “engaged in a form of Maoism determined to expunge large parts of our past in its entirety”, citing the defacing of a statue of Winston Churchill during protests in 2020.
The Tory party chairman said the “world watches” the relationship between America and its allies as they attempt to prevent Russian president Vladimir Putin from attacking Ukraine.
But Dowden said that just as “rogue states are seeking to challenge the international order...a pernicious ideology is sweeping our societies”.
“In Britain, its adherents sometimes describe themselves as social justice warriors,” he said.
“They claim to be woke, awakened to the so-called truths of our societies.
“But wherever they are found, they pursue a common policy inimicable to freedom.
“In their analysis, free speech is not a fundamental right necessary for the discovery of truth. To them, it is a dangerous weapon.”
He went on: “For all their fury at so called imperialism, these activists have absolutely nothing to say about that Vladimir Putin's modern day empire building.
“Indeed, one of the perversities of this worldview is that the imperialist West is always at fault.”
Dowden claimed “woke” ideology is now “everywhere”.
“It's in our universities, but also in our schools. In government bodies, but also in corporations. In social science faculties, but also in the hard sciences,” Dowden said.
“But I tell you, it is a dangerous form of decadence. Just when our attention should be focused on external foes, we seem to have entered this period of extreme introspection and self-criticism.
“And it really does threaten to sap our societies of their own self-confidence.
“Just when we should be showcasing the vitality of our values and the strength of democratic societies, we seem to be willing to abandon those values, for the sake of appeasing a new groupthink.
“The US and the UK may be different societies but we are joined by the same fundamental values.
“Neither of us can afford the luxury of indulging in this painful woke psychodrama.”
Let's look at this. First, picking on a theme of the moment, Dowden seeks to claim that those who are woke support Putin. That suggestion appeared in a comment offered to this blog yesterday, which I deleted. It is, very obviously, going to be a promoted narrative now.
It also is laughable. Anyone with any awareness of freedom knows that the kleptocracy in Russia is absolutely no friend of human rights. That Dowden can claim that there might be some link between the promotion of human rights and support for a totalitarian regime in Russia is laughable, but he clearly sees it as an argument worth pursuing. In the process he does, very strongly, undermine the credibility of his own claims about the threat from Russia. You cannot lie and be credible at the same time. He should be careful.
Second, let's be clear what woke means. As far as I can tell the etymology of the word begins in the 1940s when black America awoke to the idea of racial injustice, or as was said, they woke to the reality of the situation. For all the opprobrium that Dowden and others wish to pile upon it, what woke refers to is an awareness of inequality and social injustice, particularly with regard to race but also with regard to all other forms of social and economic injustice and inequality. I think that there is nothing more to it than that.
Third, in that case if Dowden is serious about the claims that he makes, what he is suggesting is that social and economic equality is the threat about which he is most worried. His call is for society to resist equality. In other words, he is calling for is the perpetuation of inequality and the injustices that have been associated with it.
To put it another way, he is calling for the perpetuation of the Heritage Foundation view of freedom, which can be represented as the right to exploit.
Unsurprisingly, as a consequence, he is right to note that there is a fight around the merits of Western imperialism. A quick Google search offered this definition of imperialism, with which most dictionaries appear to be in agreement:
a policy of extending a country's power and influence through colonization, use of military force, or other means.
What Dowden seems keen to promote is the right to use force to coerce others into economic and social obedience. It's not exactly attractive, is it? The Heritage view if freedom is, of course, consistent with imperialism.
And what Dowden really reveals is that that he is frightened that those who are woke realise that this imperialist power was used to oppress much of the world for an extended period of time and rightly react to that by suggesting it was inappropriate.
That's not Maoist, as Dowden suggests. That's simply about learning how to do things better in the future and to not repeat the mistakes of the past. Unsurprisingly, education wants to tell people not to make those mistakes again. What else is education about if it can't teach about doing things better?
But what really is sad about Dowden's worldview is that implicit in it is his call for Western imperialism to defeat Russian imperialism, as if nothing has ever been learned. As those who are woke know, what he is seeking to perpetuate is what Eisenhower once described as the military-industrial complex which will, in both the West and Russia, be rubbing its hands in glee at the creation of the current stresses.
Those who are woke oppose that worldview from wherever it comes, and argue it must be defeated by the promotion of freedom. That is because it is the military-industrial complex that has denied freedom for so long. In the process it has oppressed so many whilst serving the interests of the few. And it is this worldview that Dowden describes as the UK - US values he wants to perpetuate.
Thankfully, some of us are woke to that. No wonder we will oppose all that he wants. We know his freedom comes at a direct cost to the vast majority, which is precisely why we will highlight the absurd claim he makes that he and his like are the victims in all this when the exact opposite is the truth.
There is but one person peddling false medicines here. That is Oliver Dowden, who appears to be a man singularly ill-qualified to tell the truth, Boris Johnson excepted.
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Since Dowdon equates support of Putin with an attack on freedom, he has an easy way to prove that he believes what he says. He should demand that the Conservative Government use sanctions against the oligarchist presence in London and the financial sector, whether or not Putin invades the Ukraine. The Conservatives should have done a great deal more to reject the Londongrad Laundromate ever since the death of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. The Conservatives have been in power for twelve years and done precisely nothing; so who is really opposing Putin?
Not the Conservatives; they operate solely in a fake media world of ephemeral, trivial, meaningless sound-bites.
Agreed
John S Warren wrote: “The Conservatives should have done a great deal more to reject the Londongrad Laundromat ever since the death of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. The Conservatives have been in power for twelve years and done precisely nothing; so who is really opposing Putin?”
By coincidence today’s Guardian carries an article in which Tory Peer Lord Fauks reveals that his attempts at legislature to create a register of foreign-owned property in the UK were thwarted by No 10 on the grounds that they would take care of the matter, which of course they never did.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/15/no-10-pressure-money-laundering-measures-lord-faulks
Lord Fauks told the Guardian “I was obviously misled because nothing has subsequently happened. I can only think a deluded desire to protect the City of London has led to all these delays.” Whether No 10’s desire to protect the City of London was deluded or not, it was clearly condoning illegality on a significant scale. I also think Fauks was being discreet here: he must have suspected that individuals in very senior positions in UK Government were benefitting personally from that illegality and, with my old auditor’s nose twitching mightily, I suspect that is proven by their continuing failure to act. As long as there’s gravy in the trough, snouts will be kept in it. This is yet another example to add to the growing list of Tory government corruption and something urgently needs to be done: we have an antagonistic foreign power disrupting peace in Europe while exercising undue influence on our body politic through financial inducements. We’d find this hard to believe if presented as the plot for a play or movie, but it’s happening here in clear view.
Ken
You are right
May comes out of this one badly
The stench is rising
Richard
A truly free society is surely one that makes room for a difference of opinions but allows a route to debate and then some route for a truth or truths that can be agreed upon? If I remember correctly, that’s what politics was all about.
Dowden does not seem aware of this – the principle works both ways. This is just the usual divisive identity politics bullshit.
And I had to laugh at this:
‘Economic freedom is the fundamental right of every human to control his or her own labor and property.’
You can’t do this though as a worker as member of a union, or just to withdraw your labour if you are unfairly treated and you have a mortgage to pay – it only works for those with capital. Well of course it does. What a surprise!
Pathetic.
Dowden…rhymes with ‘Dumb One’.
I wondered if the speech was some kind of parody – or fake news – that a chairman of the Conservative Party would be so stupid as to identify with the Heritage Foundation. As Chris Patten said – it is no longer the Conservative Party he knew.
Warning about ‘decadence’ undermining ‘the West’ sounds very 1930’s Germany .
Despite the dire warning, about it being ‘everywhere’ it all sounded rather feeble …. ‘they claim to be woke’ , and makes him look rather stupid.
Just seems another example of desperate attention seeking by the headless chicken that is the UK on the world stage – despite being increasingly irrelevant, post Brexit.
My definition of woke is that it is a term applied to belittle or delegitimise any narrative which challenges existing power and privilege.
Wren – Lewis has an argument that the right wing can’t talk much about economic policy to the working class as there is little in it for them. Instead they appeal to the socially conservative in the USA by talking about immigration, guns, religion, nationalism and coded racism, while here they talk much the same (not guns or religion) but include the EU and class.
I don’t think the constant newspaper war on woke is just the journalists filling up space and encouraging outrage to sell newspapers.
I think it is the unspoken policy of the owners to create a sentiment that no reasonable person should pay attention to liberally minded people. They then don’t listen to what they to say on the economy or Constitution.
Although I’m proud to be ‘woke’ I don’t like the label as I find it derogatory.
I have not worked out what I would prefer to be called but I also know that I’m not a herd animal.
‘Aware’?
‘Informed’?
‘Un-ignorant’?
‘Well-read’?
‘Curious’?
‘Conscious’?
How can you live unconnected to the past and also not question it? How can you not see injustice and somehow not want to put it right?
I’m not a fan of the concept of ‘white privilege’ but that is only because I have believed for some time that wealth wants to enslave all those who are not wealthy regardless of colour. Their economic indifference to us will be a racial leveller. It does not mean that I don’t realise that these concepts are a response to a lack of racial justice. All I’m saying is that there is a bigger threat-trend on its way where we will have to stick together and support each other no matter what tribe we come from.
To be aware, well read, curious, consciousness etc., are all human traits and are apparently what separates us from other animals.
So, for good or ill, rather than woke, I’m just a human being really.
And if you are critical of my humanity, then what doe that make you Oliver?
Pilgrim
How about calling yourself progressive?
Pilgrims progress to a new place in search of a a more moral awareness.
(I have often wondered what ‘slight return’ means. I speculate you changed your mind at some point)
There’s a long story to that, many moons ago….
Sorry to be interested in what might be perceived as trivial amongst such erudite company, but I too have long wondered what the story was over your monker PSR? Perhaps one for another day.
Great stuff Richard and all, I soooo value reading here. Thank you so much.
The unexamined life &c. (and, indeed, lives …) I doubt if Dowden has any awareness of or interest in history, ethics or anything beyond greed. He read law, and appears since to have done little but act as an attack dog for “naked capitalism” © ( – well actually the eponymous website is somewhat anti-capitalist, but let’s not quibble)
What struck me was exactly the incompetent use of language and thought that the OP objects to. A particular example was the Guardian’s citation that ‘He also claimed that Labour “has got woke running through it like a stick of Brighton rock” ‘..
Expatriate, I cannot answer for Labour Party members nowadays, but I doubt that any of them are pierced by sticks of wokitude (cor, they don’t ‘alf like it up them) – what he should have said of course was that wokeness ran through them like legends through a stick of rock – but suggesting that he think again is pointless.
Mr Stevenson,
“I don’t think the constant newspaper war on woke is just the journalists filling up space and encouraging outrage to sell newspapers.”
I keep rinsing and repeating this point, only because I think it is important. In modern politics Spads, Journalists and Politicians have all become inegral parts of the same electorate-manipulating amateur-profession in a new media driven by misinformation. All you need do is look at Downing Street; the famous Number ’10’ door is no longer a door, it is a constantly revolving door; journalist becomes politician and PM (Johnson); or journalist becomes Spad (typically Head of Communications, Downing Street); and typically then becomes more senior journalist, in time to feed the next sound-bite-fest election propaganda machine for the Conservative Party; or more generally, journalist becomes politician, becomes Peer (Ruth Davidson). Nothing to see here? I really don’t think so; this is how the whole public-conning British political charade is kept on the road.
I hadn’t thought of it like that, but you quite right. Our politics depend on information based on reality and respectful and honest debate.
I have seen a Reuters post on Facebook put up by an American friend describing how election officials and members of school boards are not only facing anonymous accusations but actual death threats. We know how debased the media has become in the United States.
I think woke is how Richard Murphy describes it. However, I do think there is such a culture as wokeism, which is something completely different. Wokeism is not a collective of twitter uses or is it identity politics. Identity politics has been around since the 70s, woke has been around since the 50s. These terms are not new.
Wokeism as described by Hans-Georg Moeller is not even really left wing, but some kind of civil religion that has always existed in the united states from its very founding. “That all men are created equal.”
Equally Trumpism is also a civil religion that has existed in the united states from its very founding. “We the people.”
Both claim to be the original true spirit and therefore only authentic USA.
The ‘shut up and go away’ message is running through our MSM which appears to be mainlining extremist nazi opinions right into the majority of news consumers eyeballs and ears ever more shrilly these recent days.
Regarding Ukraine two examples:
The story in the Sun last week about a ‘volunteer blonde lady sniper with her night vision goggles shooting someone and two others who came to that persons aid in full night vision silhouette video.
A little research into this freedom fighter reveals her Nazi and racist opinions. Yet we are to brightly accept the Sun pushing the snuff movie of anonymous murder.
Second The Times doubles down today with a blonde grandmother being taught to defend her self with a western rifle being trained by the Nazi Azov brigade trooper clearly showing his SS badge on his uniformed arm.
These are the people we have set up and are urged to support. I don’t.
It is not just far away Ukraine that we are being gaslighted about , yesterday Scottish Independence got several barrels as Bozo for some reason felt an urgent need to visit there again and the SNP crow about getting a couple of Freeport’s.
If the Scottish government (currently SNP, unionist, nato supporting, nuclear power) believes that Free Ports are at all good for any part of Scotland, surely that would be good for ALL of that nation?
But that would require Independence from England.
Even if it costs Scotland £10 BILLION PER YEAR FOR A LONG LONG TIME as apparently the Express reports Sturgeon was WARNED.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1565708/nicola-sturgeon-news-snp-scottish-independnce-indyref-scotland-uk-payment-debt
By whom was this major threat made?
Some paragraphs down it was an associate professor of something at De Montfort university.
Not the Crown state then?
£10 billion a year? That’s chump money.
But being the Unionist Express it doubles down with another anti independence bit of cry wolfing that Nicola will surely heed. It will be the new Greece! I don’t know if this is them looking for an upside to global warming.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1565931/scotland-news-greece-without-sun-independence-snp-nicola-sturgeon-spt
The Narratives are becoming chaotic as both local and far away stories refuse to follow the script that the History makers expect us to.
Interesting of course that there is a lot of ‘Book Banning’ going on in the USA right now
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/07/banned-book-club-pennsylvania-animal-farm
Again of course the definition of ‘Freedom’ is it seems far from straightforward
It was interesting to read the report of Dowden’s speech and then your blog about it, having watched the first episode of Louis Theroux’s new series which dealt with right wing extremism in the US the previous evening.
As a regular watcher of various MSNBC current affairs shows (e.g. Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Joyce Reid, etc) I can’t say anything about the right in the US, or the post Trump anti-democracy Republican Party, surprises me. Their approach includes their ability and willingness to lie about, or (at best) distort almost anything just as long as it supports their increasingly extreme, openly racist and thus deliberately devisive narrative.
Attacking so called ‘wokeness’ is now one of the central tropes of the right’s approach to politics globally. It’s a politics aimed at stirring up and maintaining hate, leading, ultimately, to confrontation and violence – as we saw with the incident with the so-called ‘anti-vaxers’ and Starmer recently, with the riots/insurrection in the US capital last January (recently excused away by the RNC as legitimate ‘political discourse’), and the various mass shootings that occur on a regular basis in the US, but have also happened elsewhere on occasion (New Zealand, Norway, etc).
Dowden’s speech, as with pretty much any speech Trump gave – and still gives – is a dog whistle to the extreme right – pure and simple, and he and the people involved in writing it know that only too well.
But one of the interesting ironies of his reference to Russia and Putin is that it’s exactly the form of managed democracy/autocracy that Putin and his cronies have spent twenty years and more developing in Russia that many right wing parties, politicians and their supporters in the west now wish to impose on their own countries. And nowhere is that more evident than in the US.
So, while Putin may be a convenient bogeyman at the moment, due to events in Ukraine, rest assured that plenty of right wing politicians and parties are secret admirers of Putin’s playbook on autocracy – as Trump was – and will be happy to plagiarize it when the time’s right.
Thanks
@Ivan Horrocks
Spot on. Something the same approach to “nanaging democracy” is true in France and maybe Spain
Should anyone take Dowden’s splenetic puffing seriously? Well, common sense, not to say intellignet discrimination, would surely suggest not. However, a sortie into Conservative Home reveals that ‘they’ almost certainly do – if only in a tactical sense in the attempts to generate political noise hepful to the ‘pseudo-Tories’ of Brexitania.
”Dowden… displayed an early flair for understanding how a story would play out in the press. He could see the weaknesses in both the Labour and the Conservative position, so could operate in an attacking role … and also defensively, briefing ministers on the line to take when they went on programmes such as Any Questions and Question Time.” Indeed, it proudly reveals that, ”He is an enormously experienced insider, who has helped prepare four successive leaders – Michael Howard, David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson – for Prime Minister’s Questions.”
On this occasion the resulting stew of faux-righteousness is so full of inverted real meanings as to be beyond parody – but it does rather remind me of the established pieties of the old Eastern Europe – most phrases meaning the exact opposite of their apparent sense. So, what should we make of his latest outburst? Either having to deliver it to the Heritage Foundation indicates that even Johnson’s rickety government couldn’t bear to listen – or maybe it is the more disturbing possibility that he is ushering Johnson’s Brexitania into the American Far Right’s deranged embrace.
With speeches this silly it is difficult to tell.
Why on earth deliver such a speech in Washington for goodness sake
Its pretty close to a hostile act against the US Government
Going entirely against my principles and instincts, I bought the current issue of the Economist just to frame the contribution by Bagehot.
He tells of how Tory MPs are now invoking that old canard of populism, the much-vaunted
“will of the people to pursue policies that are, in fact, unpopular. MPs slate footballers, fight culture wars and attempt to thwart green policies in the name of voters who prefer the opposite. Call it unpopulism.”
Oliver Dowden is playing to a fairly thinly populated gallery, because later in the piece Bagehot informs us that a YouGov poll found that “59% have no idea what “woke” means.
It’s a mess……
And it will get worse before it gets better.
Progressive?
I suppose Ian I was trying to humanise rather than politicise the idea of being aware (or woke).
Do any of us get older without any regrets – where we might have behaved better or we made mistakes? Do societies get older without regrets? Do nations? Should we/they?
If it is human to have regrets, then really there is then room for contrition and putting things right. I find Dour-dumb’s stance supremely arrogant and anti-social.
He is denying memory; he is denying the existence of others who were there. His is the logic of negation.
But it is also unnatural to me – this ‘no regrets’ stance. It spits in the face of human development. We reflect; we learn; we tell ourselves we could have done better when we are calm. We do this because we are an innately social being. Once again the Nazi proclivity to portray man as an unthinking machine comes to the fore with Dour-dumb.
‘PSR’ – well it’s not that important – I think I have departed here a number of times to try to walk around and spread the word, buy people books (the pilgrim bit) just out of the frustration to make me feel that i’m adding to progress. The ‘slight return’ bit comes from my love of Jimi Hendrix and my sheepishness at coming back with a view to not overstay my welcome (I used to come here under my real name but realised that you could not criticise the Government and work for them at the same time, so I contrived my departure). I’m prodigal as much as a pilgrim really. But you have to be a follower in order to learn to lead. This blog is like intellectual fibre to me – fibre is good for you yeah! It’s the only place I come to really contribute but I read widely elsewhere.
Richard recently gave out some stats and I think I figured largely but its a mistake OK – I don’t come here to be first at anything and I’m sorry. Before coming here I was just wanting to find out what the hell had been happening for us to get to where we’d got to as a society. It’s just that Richard’s blog was asking all the right questions and I just clicked with it. Still do. Sorry folks.
No need to be sorry
You have always been welcome
And thank you
Dowden, in my opinion, is a fascist and belongs to a fascist government. His comments make perfect sense when read in that context. He is an authoritarian who disposes of arguments with unshakeable self-belief. His world is neatly divided into two gangs: the righteous and the good – his gang; and the “woke”. Make no mistake, this was a call to arms. It amounted to declaring war on an enemy. Notice how the “woke” threat is expressed in existential terms. The historical parallels should be obvious. No middle ground can be countenanced. You are either on his side or you are against him. Those who oppose are to be resisted with absolute prejudice. Those who are on his side are the upholders of a glorious freedom. This is how fascism works. Think what is being normalised. Attacks on those who might seek a more equitable society are fair game. Think about the Savile slur and its obvious intention. Think about teachers being told to not involve their students in criticism of our untouchable leader. This is a fascist government.
It feels like it
The full transcript is now up
https://www.conservatives.com/news/2022/standing-up-for-our-values
Rather strange message, lamenting that we are “obsessed by what divides us rather than what unites us” in a speech that aims to create a massive divide in society between those who stand up for the West, believe the West is a force for good in the world and feel pride in the West, are committed to free speech, are on the side of the working people, support freedom, and are in favour of property and the rule of law; and then on the other side of this big divide is the woke bogeyman who is against freedom, against free speech, wants to censor anything unwoke, blames the West for everything, is against pride in our country and in the West, wants to erase from history anything good that the West has done, focuses excessively on Western societies’ oppression, wants to decolonise mathematics, and is in favour of left-wing excesses, with this bogeyman found across cultural and educational elites in education, the sciences, government institutions, and corporations.
It’s strange how he is sorry that we are “obsessed by what divides us rather than what unites us” when the entire basis of his party’s approach to winning is based on creating outgroups so that people will be so angry at the outgroups that they will vote against their self interest.
Spot on
That link to the full ‘speech’ is truly revealing. Not so much because of the tortured gobbledegook of its ‘content’ but more because of its ‘bite-size’, fractured sentence layout. If this is what “an enormously experienced insider, who has helped prepare four successive leaders … for Prime Minister’s Questions” (Conservative Home) is reduced to in order to attempt to communicate – “Wae’s me for the zeitgeist” as Hugh Macdiarmid said.
This is truly logical dross, leaking contradictions as each knuckle-dragging assertion trails on to collide with its next fellow traveller. The man who starts by celebrating being ‘made’ by the good fortune of his publically funded education at school and Cambridge – yet now emerges as the desperate defender of civilisation against the “cultural and educational elites” serving “their own interests rather than … the public at large” so that “this ideology is now everywhere. It’s in our universities but also, in our schools.”
However, the messianic tone is disturbing. Presumably his audience lapped this tosh up and the Conservative web-site seems in rapture. We should, perhaps, calmly recall the levels of non-sense that other/earlier, officially respected, political ideologues have foisted on media manipulated audiences – and how they have all crumbled away in the face of time and actual reality. Where is National Socialist physics now? Or Bolshevik Lysenkoism? The seeds of Dowden’s downfall are all there bubbling away in his incoherent “psychodrama”. Its logic doesn’t exist; its “woke” enemies are as real as the Albanian warriors of “Wag The Dog”; and its ‘history’ is rather less coherent than the bore at the golf club bar. The clear evidence that it is intended to stir up trouble, division and even worse, should not lead us to stop laughing at it. As was memorably said to describe a past crypto-fascist, we should mock dear ‘Olive’ as “the hero in the empty room”.
It really was drivel, wasn’t it
And I have never seen a speech written like that before
I presume he couldn’t manage the breathlessness without that help
@ Nigel Mace
Yup. I think it is particularly the illiteracy that I find hard to deal with: tho’ of course one should be more concerned about the distorted values and the hateful vision of humankind, to some extent one – alas – gets inured to that kind of drivel. They order hese matters even more disreputably in France. However there may be some balm to be found in Marine Hyde:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/18/erase-history-prince-andrew-oliver-dowden-war-on-woke
As anyone who has read Nancy McLean “Democracy in Chains” knows there is a lot of money backing these ideas.
Dowden like Truss is fishing in these pools in order to fund their personal ambitions.
But fundamentalist market libertarianism is fascism by another name.
It is intolerant, divisive, corporatist, racist and imperialist (and thus liable to generate blowback).
Its appeal to its hangers on is that there may be a job for them in going along with it.
Quisling is the term.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quisling