“Middle Class Britain is bulking with aging radicals who are desperate to relive the heady days of their youths protesting the Vietnam War or patriarchy or capitalism. They possess an abundance of the resources necessary for the life of demonstrating — spare time, spare cash and, having left the job market, a willingness to acquire a criminal record.”
There’s the point made a few years ago by P J O’Rourke that there is a reason why centre-right folk tend to avoid demonstrations – they’ve got jobs to do and they are intelligent enough to be able to sign a petition, write to their MP, and considerate enough – mostly – to avoid irritating ordinary folk going about their business. There are a few exceptions if the cause is seen as big enough. In my lifetime, I recall that exception to the rule: the Countryside Alliance one in the Blair years, where the ostensible cause was to protect the hunting of foxes with hounds (you can still shoot them with a rifle, by the way). And the rural angle returned when farmers recently drove their tractors into Whitehall to protest against inheritance tax on their businesses. But the vast majority of demos are for banning things like fossil fuels, and supporting enemies of Israel. (I haven’t come across many demos about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine lately.)
Perhaps Aging Radicals are more concerned about local or national matters rather than distant matters (in countries or decades in the future)? Perhaps Aging Radicals have realised that protesting about distant matters achieves nothing?
If your view is correct, why are there all these middle class white grannies getting oxidised about Israel? It’s quite a long way away. It’s not like asylum hotels in Norwich.
A little bit of Norwich is a dangerous thing.
Makes a lot of sense really. The elderly don’t need to fear cancellation and job losses like younger people would. They most likely don’t have mortgages to worry about, kids if they have them long grown up. The press can’t accuse them of being spoiled and brainwashed zoomers.
It’s much harder for the press to make elderly protesters look threatening compared to large groups of young people, and the police trying to arrest the elderly is going to look bad from a PR POV. If Palestine Action is made to look more like a Saga cruise, then it makes it harder for the government to claim they are a dangerous group.
I don’t think this is necessarily a left wing tactic only. Mobilising women and children protesters to protest against the hotels being used to house refugees is genius tactically. It makes it much harder for the left, press and police to dismiss the protesters as drunken football hooligans.
Where did trans-rights come from?
I mean why? as much as where? here.
The entire LGB thing was done with equal marriage and adoption rights. So that’s it?
Not if you are an Activist. I you are an Activist then that is what you do, that is in a very real sense what you define yourself as being. Hence the whole trans war on TERFs, Gaza, Green…
Another example is “colonialism”. Am I the only one who finds it grimly amusing that there are people actively “de-colonising” curricula, tearing down the statues of the long dead and indeed protesting about the fact Britain once had an Empire. We de-colonized before I was born. We were deeply pro-active from the early C19th against slavery. We expended much blood and treasure to end the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Yet we must feel a collective, genetic guilt. Forever.
These are tragic Wolfie Smiths stuck on their eternal 8 tracks of protest songs. For them there must always be another summit to climb because it isn’t so much what they do as what they are. It is their essence. They have to always open a new front – however ludicrous it might be – because without banners to wave and slogans to chant they are nothing.
I have a lot more to say on this but I also have to clean the microwave.
Martin, women and children protesting outside migrant hotels isn’t a tactic, it’s desperation and their last line of defence aimed at convincing TPTB to curtail, and if possible eliminate, the potential danger those migrants represent for those women and children.
I think this is interesting…
Yeah, I broadly agree with Bono. I think the last time I said that was in the early ’90s*. I also think his critics here have a perverse point when they suggest billionaires can say what they want. Yes. That is true for JK Rowling as well. I say “perverse” because when you’re at the top of the greasy pole you can truly speak your mind. It is those climbing it who must CONFORM. Conforming being the new radicalism.
*That was about the U2 Album “Achtung Baby” which was a much-needed radical departure for them and got them out of a rut. It has lasted rather well.
As I said on another thread they’ve got their guy on the throne.
But the vast majority of demos are for banning things like fossil fuels, and supporting enemies of Israel. (I haven’t come across many demos about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine lately.)
Just reflect on the subjects where King Tampon has made his views crystal clear and the ones where he remains tight-lipped with zero regard for the laws and customs of the nation he only recently swore to uphold. That venn diagram has a damned strong overlap.
Whatever it is, it’s more effective
, at least partly because mothers and children are harder to demonise compared to young men. It’s much harder to get sympathetic media coverage of cops beating and arresting mothers and small kids.
In other news:-
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/labour-councillor-cleared-throat-slitting-gesture-southport-5Hjd9J4_2/
I knew a woman – she died quite young from cancer, I am sad to say – who was a Corbynite, and went on demos all the time. It was a hobby. I said as much to her, and she sort of gave me a shit-eating grin to suggest I had got to the core of it. She was particularly into all the Stop the War stuff, although as is clear, such folk aren’t so much anti-war as for a particular side.
Some of these oldies seem to be attracted by the whiff of cordite, as it were. Corbyn, who has been a protester all his life, seems to get an almost sexual rush from hanging out with the likes of Sinn Fein-IRA, Hamas, appearing (for money) on Iranian TV, and so on.
The Wooldridge article notes that yes, there is no uniform ideological thing with all these older protesters. Funnily enough, he does not mention the Poll Tax riots of the early 1990s.
Another 2 minute hate against old people. Next up, white liberal women are the cause of our misfortune. And those fat black women buying soda with their food stamps! Ultimately, this is identifying with the oppressor. Because it deflects from who’s doing the really bad things.
Kill the four pests. Don’t trust anyone over 30. The Jews are our misfortune.