I don’t think they were hipsters! More cases of Bud than artisanal micro-brewery, more pick-up truck than fixie, and certainly more guns than Aeropresses…
Also sartorially distinguishable from hipsters by cheap, imitation Hawaiian shirts worn over other traditional items of American clothing…
And yet so many politicians consider the analysis of visual culture to be a ‘non-subject’…
My thoughts exactly. Stalin wasn’t exactly science driven. Would Lenin have been any different ( I think maybe worse ). Trotsky … Who knows. Bolsheviks weren’t exactly driven by pure motive were they, and as for science, Stalin exterminated much of the intelligentsia for purely personal and ideological reasons. It just goes to show that right or left, you just can’t tell until it’s too late.
Edit: Actually, with Stalin, I’m not sure if anything was ideological. It was all personal.
But you have to be clear what you’re actually talking about - and especially not get stuck in some cold-war era McCarthy vs the Commies ideological cul-de-sac.
The subject under discussion is the link between the ideas of the right-wing brexit project and anti-vaxers - it’s about what links ideas and outlooks, not about all the things in play in the shaping of the histories of different societies.
In practice, all historical societies are messy mixtures. The Bolsheviks’ ideas didn’t work out in Russia - but then capitalism has never worked either. No actual society has ever matched the theoretical description of, say Adam Smith (indeed, if you actually read The Wealth of Nations you will find that it’s full of warnings against supposedly fundamental aspects of capitalism, like ‘free markets’!).
Moreover, whenever capitalism has come closest to actually being a dominant form of social organisation it has always led to unacceptable exploitation, slavery, colonialism, depression, war (and incidentally probably more loss of life than any other social system in history). Only really in the ‘Bretton Woods’ period - approximately the 30 years 1945-75 - was capitalism made to work reasonably for some of the world - basically by constraining it within a socialist framework (the welfare state, etc), strict regulation of monopolies, currencies, etc, and very high redistributive taxation (90% marginal rates). But even then, this was only for part of the world, was dependent on exploitation of much of the rest - and moreover on the historic wealth retained in the developed world from the previous period of slavery and colonialism - and, I suspect, was only possible in the immediate shadow of the terrible shock of the second world war and holocaust, and the perceived threat of communism.
But of course neither right nor left is reducible to a blueprint that could get perfectly worked out in real history, not only because many other factors are in play there, but because they are not blueprints! The left, for example, includes a huge range of different ideas on how best to organise societies - anarchism, socialism, communitarianism, etc - it is unified only around ideas at a more fundamental level: eg. liberté, égalité, fraternité - and underlying these, rationality - the idea that humanity is in fact capable of deciding through reason and discourse how we should live.
If anybody is interested in my own personal ideas on a blueprint - god knows why you would be! - I believe in combining the energy and creativity of free enterprise with a strong socialist and environmentalist regulatory and redistributive framework - the scandinavian model, only better, if you like.
More interestingly, I’ve just re-read Simone de Beauvoir’s great novel The Mandarins. How shocked she would be, writing about how left leaders in Paris in the 1940s had already disowned the soviet model, to find that three-quarters of a century later some people still seem to be stuck in a cold war world view.
I think the great Stuart Hall - who coined the term ‘Thatcherism’ - is partly responsible: they were frightened to death by his incisive cultural analysis.
Every year I do a guest lecture in the Stuart Hall building at Goldsmith’s College, and always think about him.
And another thought, which occurred to me as I was making what will probably be the most delicious quiche in history:
“All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.” (Acts 2:44-5)
Can you find an earlier example of socialism, @Geof_Cox ?
There’s a thread running through the whole history of socialist thinking around the ‘communal’ nature of most sustainable human societies - eg…
There are also long-standing links between (mainly dissident) christian movements and socialism, so that although the most common links by far are between religion and the right, there are also minority splinters like ‘liberation theology’ in South America (an influence on the current Pope) and the quakers in the UK - very active and influential in the UK worker-co-op movement (see Scott-Bader) and politicians like Tony Benn. Because of this connection I have met and worked with and number among my friends many quakers - some of whom are atheists!
The Levellers and Diggers in the English evolution were also partly religiously inspired…
When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Gentleman?
I agree you haven’t thought it through completely. In my opinion a ridiculous comparison to make
Welcome, Phil!
Could you expand on why you think it’s a ridiculous comparison?
2 days ago — Across the four UK countries, 88.0% to 91.8% had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 68.5% to 76.9% were fully vaccinated.
I hope the above figures help…
If my memory serves me right it was around a 50/50 split on Brexit.
By trying to use the vote split for brexit I think you have misunderstood the original implication. No one is saying that all brexit voters are anti-vax, but the there is/maybe a correlation between those who choose to ignore the science & the well being of others & those of a brexity persuasion.
@Phil1953, as Badger says I wasn’t thinking that the percentages were at all relevant - I agree, it would be a ridiculous idea - but wondering if there was a link between people who voted for Brexit and people who were vehemently anti-vaccine.
Anecdotally, among the people I know, there is a link; is it (as Badger, James O’Brien and I suspect) one which can be traced back to a set of beliefs and principles?
The latest discussion on the ‘Damned COVID Statistics’ thread is very relevant here: in terms of areas of France, there seems to be a correlation between more right-wing people (eg. areas with high Rassemblement National votes) and low vaccine take-up - it’s the same correlation we see clearly in America between right-wing Republican areas and higher numbers of anti-mask, anti-vax people.
I’d be very surprised if there isn’t some relationship in the UK between brexiters - at least those that voted that way for xenophobic or nationalist or other right-wing reasons - and anti-vaxers. It’s both logical (for the reasons already outlined) and evidenced, at least in other countries.
Maybe the discrepancy between the UK and France/US attitudes is in some part due to differing national attitudes to vaccination.
Vaccine scepticism in the UK is much lower and also the issue has largely avoided being heavily politicised. France’s vaccine scepticism was quite high at first, but gradually decreased, as people started complaining that they couldn’t get it quickly enough and then complaing that they couldn’t pick and choose their vaccine! I suspect that remaining French anti vaxers are a mixture of left and right, united by a mixture of misinformation and being innately anti-authority. By contrast the US anti-vaxers are almost entirely Republican or right wing libertarians.
In addition, I imagine the Brexit voters would be proud of the NHS rather than anti, whereas those most critical of its shortcomings (particularly in comparison to many other European countries) would probably have voted to remain the EU
But that doesn’t quite fit the facts (as discussed in the other thread)…
38 % des électeurs de Marine Le Pen déclaraient n’avoir reçu aucune injection du vaccin, contre 26 % seulement dans l’ensemble de la population.
The link between the right and antivax is indeed much clearer in America, but as far as I know every aspect of right-wing-Republican ideology is also present to some extent in the European right - including France and the UK - Republicans were much more likely to support brexit than Democrats - so it would be surprising indeed if there was no connection at all between right-wing brexiters and antivax.
We all have crosses to bear!
Not sure about that with regard to Brexiter’s (‘presumed’) pride in the NHS and contrasting RW US attitudes to ‘socialist medicine’.
I would have thought that Christ was an example of the ultimate socialist.
But I don’t think that’s true Mark. We have to bear in mind we’re not talking about the vast majority of brexit voters (who I’m sure are indeed proud of the NHS) - but on the extreme right many (Nigel Farage among them) have proposed replacing the NHS with an American-style insurance system.
There is indeed a lot of evidence that the Tories generally would like to privatise the NHS - and to some extent are doing so by stealth - though it is of course the policy that daren’t speak its name!
Npihytyeqr
The enigmatic message above appears to have been written by my cell phone and posted from my shirt pocket whilst I was walking the dog.
I’ve no idea what it means, but it seems a shame to delete it.