Why does the Left like to fight itself so much?

@JonnieMarbles discussed this point on Twitter recently, and got me thinking. I've been thinking about it because the Jubilee stewards issue and many of the recent articles about rape culture make me turn-green-and-break-expensive-equipment angry. And I had to meet up with the girlfriend's family this weekend so I was on best-behaviour notice.

[Tl;dr: The conclusion is just after the bold header lower down if you want to skip to the end]

So I've been thinking about this question mostly to stay sane, and to an extent it worked. I've just started reading Carne Ross' The Leaderless Revolution which was published late last year and is hopefully a sign that mainstream thinkers and politicians are beginning to understand the power of Occupy-style liberal socialist movements. Which is a good thing.

But part of Carne's thesis is that people need to come together en masse for change to happen, and while we're seeing convincing signs that this kind of bottom-up revolution is beginning to happen (Occupy, the Arab Spring, and UK Uncut spring to mind in an instant), the Left remains fragmented, beset by internecine bickering and infighting. Why, when the right wing seem to vote as a bloc on almost every issue in the US, does the left not unite to fight against bigotry and hate? Why, when civil liberties for all seem so obvious a cause to all of us, are there still people on the left wing arguing that fighting for rights for women, gay people and minorities isn't worth our time?

My early answer was that people dislike hypocrisy more than the things they oppose ideologically. That sentence might not sound like it makes a lot of sense on the first reading so let me try another way: I have a much bigger problem with a man who claims to fight for the people, who promises to give the downtrodden hope, and who wins a Nobel peace prize going on to send drones out to kill innocent Pakistani civilians than I would if a foreign policy hawk spent 3 years banging on about terrorism before doing the same.

In both cases, the action is identical - innocent people will die for no more reason than a far away country convinced itself it was under threat. But in the former case, you can throw in a personal betrayal as well: we believed in the first guy, however briefly.

And to an extent this is a very human thing. We have heuristics for evaluating ideas and people, and things that affect us often seem more important than things which are far away. It's why the chickenhawks can sleep at night - they don't notice the children dying on the other side of the world, but they no how terrified they feel every time they go to an airport and see somebody who might be an Arab.

So it's possible this is the reason. We are self-policing, hounding out people who betray our principles whilst attempting to win our loyalty and keeping everybody on the straight and narrow through a sort of crowdsourced 'DCI Internet'. And it sounds plausible, but here's two reasons why it probably isn't true:

1. It makes us all look good, which is a bit self-serving
2. I thought of it

The third reason is again to do with heuristics in our decision making. Kahnemann work on discovering that there are essentially two kinds of thought processes comes in to play here: Type I is quick, but relies on signals and heuristics, Type II can think more rationally but takes more time. And these two sides find communicating very difficult.

It's why test audiences don't improve bad films. Audiences use Type I thinking to decide they don't like a film, but use Type II thinking to answer the question "What was wrong with it?" The answer they give ("The story was overwrought", "It was too gory", "Clive Owen was in it") will be rational, will make sense, and will even be true but deep down won't be the real answer.

Johnnie's answer was less kind to us lefties, but strikes me harder as closer to the truth. We are tribal. We label ourselves and fight with a real sense of in-group loyalty and out-group hostility. Look at what happened in the atheist community after Sam Harris turned out to be a racist cock (google Pharyngula Sam Harris and read some comments at mild criticism of Harris if you want to get an idea of what I'm talking about).

It's easy to give our team a name, dislike any other group with a slightly differing outlook on how to fight for better rights for all and assume that they're not following the One Right Way(TM) for the movement as a whole. The Socialist Activist Manifesto is a good example of this. It's like they decided that anyone who has fun and is a socialist isn't doing it right:

We cannot realize a socialist society with moral and intellectual weakness; we must be consistent and steadfast.
We cannot realize a socialist society with time-wasting and partying; we must always be serious and dedicated.
We cannot realize a socialist society with romantic ideals and sentiments; we must be practical, pragmatic, and deliberate.

That's tribalism, pure and simple - "if you're not one of us, you're one of them" rings from every single line of their insufferably pompous manifesto. This as a reason for infighting feels like it is why, and while I'm not normally one to follow gut feelings, here it's appropriate: only my Type I thought process can really work like other people's Type I processes.

So maybe Jonnie's right. In fact, he probably is right. Maybe I'm right. It's likely that both things contribute. But I have a final question:

Why does it matter if we fight?

We're not on a simple linear left-right scale. Left- and Right-wing are simple labels when mainstream politics has essentially a two party dichotomy but it in no way means that we, the people, need to separate into two diametrically opposed voting blocs like foxes and rabbits.

Why are we not asking why there is such a dearth of free thrinking on the right that we're still hearing the same refrain for lower taxes from a united voice? Why is everybody dumbly towing the line considered a strength? It may get things done, but it's a weaker movement for it, more open to extremism fostered on a majority by a vocal minority (abortion rights, anyone?).

On 'the Left' we represent a cacaphony of different voices, each pushing for their own struggle. Yes, it means some people will think that they have the Most Important Idea Ever(TM) and that there's a conspiracy to keep it down by all the people who are banging on about other stuff all the time. But it also means that the traditionally voiceless can get themselves heard. And that we raise issues long before 'the Right' ever could.

If anyone wants to disagree with that, I'm well up for hearing it. And I love irony.

Sunny on Englishness

@sunny_hundal likes Englishness. In fact, he's liked it ever since Ed Miliband decided to do a speech about it. But the important thing about this article is that his ideas are better than both the right-wing (Englishness is racist for them, boo) and the left-wing (who are just pooh-poohing anything which sounds nationalist).

I always thought patriotism was the last refuge of scoundrels.

How to Write a Jubilee Article

Warning: This post is not for people with dependency management issues. If you didn't understand the Matrix, you won't like this article. If you did understand the Matrix, it's likely that you still won't like this article.

So, the struggling journo thinks to himself, I should write an article about the Jubilee. Lots of people seemed to take it pretty seriously, and every journalist seems to have an opinion. But I also want to make sure I get a staff position somewhere - maybe the Telegraph or somewhere like that. I'd really love to write something that's both original (so I can look clever and witty to the Mail) and conformist (so I don't look like one of them crazy Queen-hatin' liberals).

If only, he thinks, I had access to this article, which completely details everything I need to write a serious piece about the Jubilee without saying anything stupid.

How to Write a Jubilee Article

The Headline: A headline is all important for an article about the Jubilee. Remember that this is a feature as it's been nearly a week since the weekend itself, so you'll need to pose your headline as a question to make it look like your analysis goes deeper than simply gushing about the benefits of long-term inbreeding. A few hints to get you started:

• Throwing in a reference to mainstream politics is always good:
• How Does the Queen's Legacy Contract with the Transience of Modern Politics?
• Are the People Ready to use the Queen as an Example of how to Live in Modern Britain?
• Remember you never need to address the question itself, this is only here suck people in to your article and make them assume you've thought very deeply about the questions of monarchy itself.
• Don't ask the question in a way that could conceivably be answered with a No:
• In Today's Society, does the Jubilee Highlight the Queen's Continuing Relevance? - this is out, as it'll let the bastard lefties in to the comment section to ruin the image of conformity and destroy a budding journalistic career. And you wouldn't want that.

To begin the article itself, remember that the Jubilee is not about you - it's about the Queen, so be sure to shoehorn in your personal feelings about the Queen into the first paragraph, so everyone knows how much this article is about her. If you have one, tell an anecdote about meeting her once when you went on a school trip or something. If you've never done so, imagine what meeting her would be like and write that down. People love to read what other people think meeting the Queen might be like. It's gold.

Move on to describe the boat show - as the main 'attraction' of the whole thing you should spend some time doing this, with at least one paragraph on each of

• What the Queen was wearing. Her personality is less important than the talents of her wardrobe staff. Remember she's a figurehead of imperialism, not a real human being with any feelings. If there's a political twist to the exact shade of pastel she's wearing, throw that in there for good measure.
• Comment on her bravery for spending all day in the rain. Because she's in her 80's, and standing in the rain is tough at that age when all you have is millions of pounds and the best medical staff money can buy. Extra points for then explaining that the unemployed scroungers forced to sleep under London Bridge  for no money should take a lesson in fortitude from their reigning monarch.
• Describe how awesome you thought the boats were. Cold hard numbers are good - how many boats, how long did it take, if you laid them end to end how many times would they go to the moon and back. Add in numbers for crowds too - it's only a guess anyway, so add on a few zeroes if you fancy. Lying means you love the Queen the most.
• Adjectives that may assist
• Resplendent
• Moving
• Stalwart
• Beloved
• Joyous
• Regal
• Astonishing
• Erstwhile (if you fancy something a little different)

Briefly mention the concert - people usually derided as chavs in the sorts of newspaper you want to work for can suddenly become national treasures by singing out of key for Queen'n'Country. Be sure to mention their working class background, to show that even celebrities from very poor backgrounds will sing at a concert on the Mall on National Television. Leave implied that the real reason they're doing it is because everyone loves the Queen so much

The latter half of the article should be a brief story of her reign. Mention how she ascended the throne, and then run through a list of things that have happened since then, to show just how darned awesome she is. Don't compare how the 30 year reign of Mubarak was considered a disgusting exercise in despotism - people don't like to think we have double standards in the UK. A list of events that may help:

• Katrina and the Waves won EuroVision
• Rationing ended
• Thatcher systematically destroyed the labour movement in Britain
• Liberty X had four (count 'em) top 5 hits
• The sun rose and fell 22,030 times
• Tim Ballantine was born, 3rd December 1987
• Tim Ballantine had 24 birthdays

Add others as necessary.

Finally, avoid quoting your own article. It generally makes one look pretentious. And avoid the pronoun 'I'. One would not be amused to see the queen say it, and she would not want to hear it from you. And one wouldn't want that.

BBC News' Rose-Tinted Glasses

BBC News website has run a hauntingly saccharine look at what life was like in 1952, the year the Queen was crowned. It's called You in '52. It covers thing like how you may have dressed (if you were rich), the music you might listen to (were you able to afford a wireless), and the food you would eat (assuming you had the wealth or connections to avoid the still-in-place wartime rations).

Aah, you may say, a return to the life of those days would be nice. Don't you wish for the family values? The happy children playing in the street? The gay men imprisoned and chemically castrated for their "perversion"? The black people racially abused and still treated as second-class citizens? The women treated as unpaid house-staff, unable to work for themselves with any measure of economic freedom once married? Or the unmarried women, derided as unlovable spinsters? No? Okay, then.

Examiners ask Stupid Question in GCSEs

But politicians fail to understand why.

The Telegraph article Pupils asked 'why do some people hate Jews?' in GCSE exam highlights a huge mistake on the part of AQA. Asking such a politically, racially and religulously charged question of a fair few thousand 16 year olds is clearly in poor taste. It's in poor taste for many reasons, not least of which at least a few of the kids answering the question will already hate Jews themselves and might unsurprisingly give some pretty hateful answers.

An answer along the lines of "Because they run a secret cabal which rules the Earth on behalf of their shape-changing alien lizard overlords" is not especially enlightened, but is pretty damned enlightening for anyone who might read it. Additionally, there is a fair amount of scope for people who would feel pretty offended to have to explain, however briefly why some people hate one another for no good reason. For some, it's okay, and for others not so much.

So the really dumb part is not necessarily the question (which I'll get to later), but the fact that 16 year olds are being essentially forced to answer it. If you're going to require participation in an exam, probably the best thing to do is to leave questions which remain highly charged in the world of today out of it.

But, predictably, Michael Gove and I don't see eye-to-eye:

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, branded the move “insensitive”.

He told The Jewish Chronicle: “To suggest that anti-Semitism can ever be explained, rather than condemned, is insensitive and, frankly, bizarre. AQA needs to explain how and why this question was included in an exam paper.”

"Insensitive" is indeed the word that describes the actions of AQA, but our agreement stops there. In fact Michael Gove's second paragraph is kind of inexplicable. The only way I can make any sense of it is to assume that he can't tell the difference between the words "explain" and "justify". For example, the text of the exam question is:

Explain, briefly, why some people are prejudiced against Jews.

When what I think Michael Gove read was:

Justify, briefly, why some people are prejudiced against Jews.

Now, the difference between these two is crucial. The former is asking for the real reasons why people think something which is very very bad to think. The second is asking people to support the prejudice itself. Michael Gove's statement applies well to the latter question, but not so much to the former. Both questions, as I've already said, are not really appropriate for an exam question, but his statement is not just wrong when it comes to this discussion among adults, it's blatantly counter-productive.

For example, were I a world-reknowned social and political scientist (I am not), and I wrote a paper with the following abstract (I have not), I would be perfectly justified in suggesting that anti-Semitism can be explained: 

An explanation into the motivations of anti-Semitic belief. The following paper, using interviews and polling data from the US population, investigates the fundamental vehicles for the inheritance of anti-Semitic beliefs. In modern society, open anti-Semitism justifiably has pariah status, and yet many continue to openly profess such beliefs. This paper concludes that a combinations of religious belief and political motivaton of group leaders often act as catalysts for such beliefs, and that other group members undergo conformative biases in order to fit in with their group. Once such a belief is expressed openly, the very nature of the belief encourages its holders to retreat to enclaves of anti-Semitic communities, causing groups to become even more closely knit and exacerbating the in-group/out-group hostilities which often arise.

The paper further concludes that greater integration, particularly during primary and secondary levels of schooling would act as a powerful factor in reducing the incidence of such beliefs as they cross such in-group/out-group lines and allow children the capability to see people from different backgrounds.

The point is that explaining a belief is a good thing, even if the belief itself is unjustifiable - understanding why people become anti-Semitic would help us learn how to improve things. We can hope people with stupid beliefs change, but the only thing each of us truly have the power to control is our own actions, and searching for explanations for why other people behave abominably informs us on the best steps we can personally take to reduce such behaviour.

Compare and contrast, for example, the reactions to the London riots last year. Gove, and the rest of the Tories, were quick to dismiss all who took part as part of a feral criminal underclass who can't be saved. Anyone who suggested that we investigate why they did it was met with scorn: "How dare you suggest it is our fault?" they would scoff.

Of course it's not our fault, responsibility for criminal behaviour lies with the criminal behaver. But once again: we are not trying to justify the actions of the rioters, only explain them. The riots began for a reason, and all governments have the power to do is change the way the government itself behaves. So the only questions we can ask following the riots is what the government can do differently to prevent more riots, and we can only do that by understanding why it happened in the first place.

Moron Criticises UKUncut for not being Labour Shill

In yet another example of keyboard warriors on the left criticising people who actually act, Sunny Hundal is criticising UKUncut's street party protest on Saturday. I'm aware of the irony of me, a man who doesn't go to anywhere near enough protests or actions, writing a blog post criticising a Labour activist for criticising UKUncut. I'm aware of that. But I have the good graces not to criticise the people who are actually fucking doing shit.

Sunny's taken time out of his Labour "activism" - stuff like making Cameron memes out of silly photos - to criticise a group of people who are exploring the Coalition's broad sense of agreement on the necessity of the cuts.

Liberal Conspiracy as a blog pisses me off already. It refactors left-of-centre politics as Labour politics, when in reality, left-of-centre politics almost by definition needs to be non-partisan. After all what mainstream party can legitimately claim to support the real liberal left wing? Not Labour, they spent the last 13 years finishing off what Thatcher started. Not the LibDems, they're worse than the fucking Tories right now. The Greens? Maybe, but they remain a single issue party who happen to be in the right on the majority of issues, so I guess that for now they fail to meet the "mainstream" bit of the criteria.

And Sunny epitomises this. It's important to Labour to attack the Tories, as they know the LibDem's support has evaporated, and their support will mostly switch to Labour. What they now need is to hit the Tories hard to ensure they have a shot at regaining power in 2015. So, were UKUncut a Labour Party movement, then criticism like

I think the street party was nevertheless counter-productive in its tactics.
By that I’m not referring to the claim it brought out sympathy for Nick Clegg. I just think it makes more sense to target Conservatives than Libdems on this issue.

Did it? The LibDems are just as culpable as the Tories. Again, Labour have been trying to act like the Tories are the Agents of Evil Incarnate (imagine that in the voice of the Mysterons), while the LibDems are the unwitting dupes pootling along without realising what the Evil Tories are doing. But it just isn't true - while the LibDems are socially liberal, they remain fiscally conservative, and the Coalition agreement was built on the common ground the two parties shared over the needs for a smaller government.

Does that mean we shouldn't attack the LibDems? An argument could plausibly be made that since the LibDem voter base already support the cuts, we should instead be going after the big kahunas. In fact, Sunny attempts to do so:

But the main problem is that the Libdems are fairly supportive of the welfare cuts. Broadly their constituency doesn’t rate welfare as a key priority and there are other issues Libdem voters find more pressing. Nick Clegg will focus on social issues such as gay marriage, financial benefits such as raising the tax threshold, civil liberties and the environment to rally his base.
Welfare cuts won’t come into the Libdem equation, mostly because a majority of voters believe that some benefits cuts are needed. The leadership is too cowardly to pick a fight there and saving its political capital for other fights.

But what are the UKUncut protests trying to achieve? Is it to convince people who want cuts that they are wrong? Well, partly. But mostly it's to do what all protests attempt to do: to show that there are a large group of people in opposition to the policy. It's meant to showcase how many people are being harmed by these swingeing cuts which hurt the voiceless the most. It's meant to demonstrate to the political class the mass public support that already exists for a change in Coalition welfare policy.

Does Sunny criticise the Syrian protestors because Assad's base won't change their minds and it's not in Assad's interest to do so? I have no idea, but I'm sure most people certainly wouldn't. Instead, we see it as indicative of how the Syrian people feel about their leader: fucking angry and expecting change.

And, quite frankly, the LibDems are more likely to realize that message than the Tories. The LibDems are okay with the cuts. The Tories are positively salivating over the idea of the poor starving to death.

The Conservative Party's Double Standards

So, JH is in trouble. First off, no one's quite sure whether JH stands for Jeremy Hunt or Adam Smith. But second, and more importantly, he's had a bit of a problem keeping his thoughts to himself rather than, say, putting them into a text-based and easily recordable format, and then sending them to the Prime Minister. In case you live on the plant Zarg (read: outside of the UK) and haven't seen the text, it reads as follows:

He doesn't think he will get a fair hearing from Ofcom. I am privately concerned about this because News Corp are very litigious and we could end up in the wrong place in terms of media policy. Essentially what James Murdoch wants to do is to repeat what his father did with the move to Wapping and create the world's first multiplatform media operator available from paper to web to TV to iPhone to iPad.
Isn't this what all media companies have to do ultimately? And if so we must be very careful that any attempt to block it is done on genuine plurality grounds and not as a result of lobbying by competitors.
The UK has the chance to lead the way... but if we block it our media sector will suffer for years. In the end I am sure sensible controls can be put into any merger to ensure there is plurality but I think it would be totally wrong to cave into the Mark Thompson/Channel 4/Guardian line that this represents a substantial change of control given that we all know Sky is controlled by News Corp now anyway.

So, very pro-Murdoch. The problem is that ol' JH is supposed to be an impartial arbiter on the issue of Murdoch's takeover of BSkyB. Which, clearly, he isn't.

To be honest, I don't really care that he made up his mind about Murdoch before the takeover process began. I urge you to name one person who DOESN'T have a strong opinion on the liver-spotted media mogul who looks about 10 minutes away from having the skin on his face fall off and reveal the alien bone structure underneath.

But where I have a problem is in the Tories' reaction to the whole shebang. In particular, when I compare and contrast with the reaction to Vince Cable's "war with Murdoch" statement:

1. Man reveals he is anti-Murdoch. "How dare such a biased person be in charge of a massive takeover aimed at wiping out media diversity in this nation!" Etc, etc.
2. Man reveal he is pro-Murdoch. "Jeremy has followed all processes to the letter and listened fully to independent advice as per the process he has beeen told to follow."

Did VC follow all process? I don't know, the Tories certainly didn't give a damn whether he did or didn't. The real reason they were up in arms was that a business man with lots of money might not get what he wants. And the real reason they're more pragmatic about bias this time is that they now know he will.