No, I'm not going to say much about Dieselbloke's new motto "Lazy Southern Bastards Spend All Their Money on Wine and Women! Didn't Even Save Some For Song!"
Look, cut him some slack. His party, PvdA, no doubt filled with people of the same remarkable political and intelectual level of Dieselbloke, just performed an amazing feat in last week's elections, going from 38 Parliament seats to 9. There's much I could say about Dieselbloke and his pals, but the Dutch already said all there was to say. Another Labour bites the dust. But, hey, Third Way ftw, wouldn't you agree?
Still, I'm sure Schauble will find some way to reward his most faithful attack hound.
Today, let's look at 2 recent Guardian articles:
These articles are from March 21 and 22. It's almost as if there was some sort of agenda behind this. Yes, I know, it's probably the Russians.
Anyway, I'm sure quotes like these are positive, right?
"(...) identity politics (...) are barriers to development"
"(...) has not only exposed deep socioeconomic fractures in British society – it has also invented new ones. Identity politics has taken hold as never before."
OK, not really. You can tell by the amount of "(...)" thingies that this is going to be another ultra-biased non-fake-news take on "identity".
Let's go, then.
"Nationalism and identity politics – of which Brexit is one of the latest examples – are barriers to development among the most marginalised groups in society, according to a UN report"
"The Brexit vote has not only exposed deep socioeconomic fractures in British society – it has also invented new ones. Identity politics has taken hold as never before"
See? That's the way identity politics should go - Brexit - Bad! OscarsSoWhite - Gooood! Identity politics was damn good fine, until them pesky white folks realized they could play that game, too, dang it!
These quotes sum up the gist of each article:
"Overall, the report said, millions of women, indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities continue to be excluded from a quarter-century of impressive global progress on human development"
"After all, it is the white middle class that is in control of the public spending cuts that are disproportionately hitting minority ethnic women, and discriminating against people with African or Muslim names in the job market. Racists and racism exists across society"
Apparently, inequality seems to "disproportionately hit" minorities and women. And while "racism exists across society", don't forget, boys and girls, that only white people can be racist.
There are some... how shall I put it... inconsistencies on each article.
On the first, we learn that "(..) 15 million girls under 18 get married (...) There are 32 countries where women follow different procedures than men to get passports, 18 countries where they have to have their husband’s approval before they get a job". And that "In Bangladesh, maternity leave is six months, whereas there is no maternity leave in the US. And Rwanda, for instance … has the highest number of women parliamentarians, at 65%".
Yes, boys and girls, some things happen in "some countries" and others happen in Bangladesh and Rwanda (for instance).
Oh, and for a few bonus laughs, you get a link to an article that celebrates "ending extreme poverty for a billion people". I'll quote the relevant part: "the world has reduced the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015". I always say, nothing like earning $1.26 a day to feel the burden of poverty extreme poverty lifting off your shoulders, hey?
And that's pretty much the whole article, just a yuuuuuge dividing line between white men and everyone else. Well, there's obviously some nuance to it all, because "some countries" where women have little or no rights are not ruled by white men, but you get the picture, right?
And that brings us neatly to article #2.
Apparently my ethnicity and London upbringing make me the enemy of the population that matters most right now: the white working class. This accusation was a reminder of how false and divisive these new labels are
Divisive, yes! Absolutely! We don't want divisive... divisive - Bad! Non-divisive... er... Goooood... I guess...
This week saw the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. We’d do well to remember how important language is in sowing seeds of distrust and hate. The "white working class" narrative is leading us down a road of nostalgia for a white Britain. We need to stop it in its tracks
How cute. The "white working class narrative" creates discrimination and division. What we don't get to learn in this insightful article is what does the avalanche of white-male-bashing articles on the Guardian create. Articles with titles such as "Austerity is a feminist issue"; or articles about fad diets that, somehow, manage to mention "white privilege". When I read stuff like that, lemme tell ya, I sure feel the inclusiveness.
When Hillary Clinton was running for president, I saw an infinity of articles peddling the theme "Women Must Vote For HER". Now, with Marine Le Pen, the song has changed, she's a "fake feminist". Ladies, vote for the white male candidate, please.
Violence/harassment against progressive "protected species" is denounced (as it should be). Violence/harassment against Trump supporters is "resistance".
Trump being compared to Hitler, and invoking 1930s Germany to contextualize his policies is fine. Tim Allen saying Hollywood looks like 1930s Germany to a conservative is disgraceful, and even sends the Anne Frank Center into a condemnatory tweet-fest, demanding apologies.
How's that for divisive?
The thing is, I happen to completely agree with the following quote, and I've been repeating over and over and over, until people tell me to shut up:
It’s not hard, then, to see whose agenda dividing the working class is serving – that of unscrupulous bosses, CEOs now earning 386 times the national living wage and the policy-makers who are creating the conditions that allow this to happen.
However, those Guardian articles (and Vox, and NYT, and WaPo, and HuffPo, and etc) are not written by bosses, or CEOs, or policy-makers. Those articles are written by (so-called) progressives, and are right up there at the top of the Breitbart scale, as far as Identity Politics are concerned. In fact, until the recent Far Right surge, no one had been playing the Identity Card as strongly as progressives for the past couple of decades. And when your only argument is Identity, you will always create division.
An additional problem is that, somewhere along the way, progressives have adopted and fully embraced the conservative double-standard playbook, and now use it shamelessly. There's no difference between the double-speak we find on these articles and the conservative BS about ending "taxpayer abuse" by the "welfare Queens", all the while promoting the most baseless corporate welfare. There's no difference between Republicans shutting down Elizabeth Warren and California Democrats shutting down Janet Nguyen; but, you wouldn't know that by reading the progressive media - because they didn't report the latter.
Progressives. Conservatives. Pot. Kettle.
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