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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jan 22, 2019 10:58:58 GMT
The thing about people like Fintan O'Toole is that they will acknowledge the reality of social alienation, the need for identity and community, even spiritual needs-- but their answer is always socialism. Everything would be OK if only we had socialism. Now, I'm not particularly right-wing economically, but I don't buy this idea that everybody would become socially and culturally progressive if only they had no economic frustrations. This seems to be the theory of Fintan O'Toole and Owen Jones and the like. And the economic transformation they are always holding out as the promised land, and the answer to all social problems and tensions, is completely illusory anyway. Fintan O'Toole and the Irish Times have been the vanguard killing off any meaningful institutions in Ireland. They see the Nation state as suspect, Christianity as no longer relevant, and don't mind killing a new generation of Irish children. There's really little else of significance for him to hang his ideas off. He's slowing sawing away at the branch he is sitting on. Personally, he has still a good job, will bring out a book every couple of years, is lauded by the liberal elite, but essentially is a destroyer rather than a builder. One might almost think he was reading this thread, since his article in today's Irish Times addresses this very issue. www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-it-is-not-just-the-economy-stupid-brexit-is-about-belonging-1.3765447So he seems to accept the need for collective identity and belonging, but his only examples are trade unions and working class communities. Left-wing writers always have this idyll of working-class communities which are based on nothing more than bonds of proximity. The truth is that cultural bonds go much deeper. I'm not denying that people can feel a sense of identity and belonging based on a trade union, but I'd say it's rather rare and evanescent in the grand scheme of things. |
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Post by assisi on Jan 22, 2019 14:03:49 GMT
Fintan O'Toole and the Irish Times have been the vanguard killing off any meaningful institutions in Ireland. They see the Nation state as suspect, Christianity as no longer relevant, and don't mind killing a new generation of Irish children. There's really little else of significance for him to hang his ideas off. He's slowing sawing away at the branch he is sitting on. Personally, he has still a good job, will bring out a book every couple of years, is lauded by the liberal elite, but essentially is a destroyer rather than a builder. One might almost think he was reading this thread, since his article in today's Irish Times addresses this very issue. www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-it-is-not-just-the-economy-stupid-brexit-is-about-belonging-1.3765447So he seems to accept the need for collective identity and belonging, but his only examples are trade unions and working class communities. Left-wing writers always have this idyll of working-class communities which are based on nothing more than bonds of proximity. The truth is that cultural bonds go much deeper. I'm not denying that people can feel a sense of identity and belonging based on a trade union, but I'd say it's rather rare and evanescent in the grand scheme of things. He talks about 'belonging' and the working class and yet his only example of an item of lost identity is that of 'being in a union'. I don't think this man understands the working class, or what it used to be. I would bet that the working man felt more affinity with a working man's club where he could go and have a drink and a game of darts, rather than the machinations of the unions. Marches in the North during the height of the troubles could summon thousands on the street to demonstrate for their political or national identity (that's not to say that sometimes the demonstrations were misplaced). Union marches, on the other hand, would rarely attract a fraction of that, just Eamon McCann and cronies. It's as if O'Toole cannot bear to admit that people might prefer things like Church, nation, tradition, heritage to his colder and more impersonal entities like unions and fragmenting identity politics groups and internationalist mindset of belonging to anywhere rather than somewhere. He also says: The hard Brexiteers, under the cover of nationalism, want to unleash an even more virulent form of globalisation that will destroy what is left of working-class communities. What does he mean by this? What form of globalisation? And hasn't the left done a pretty good job of destroying the working class 'deplorables', with their mantras of white privilege, toxic masculinity and patriarchy, many of whom are mired in addiction and hopelessness? Also how come he refers to Hard Brexiteers (whatever that is) as 'And yet these liars and fantasists....'. Strong and seemingly contradictory words from someone who in the rest of the piece appears to set himself up as a conciliatory man trying to understand the mindset of Brexiteers who want to 'belong'. A poor piece from O'Toole. |
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jan 22, 2019 14:14:56 GMT
He also says: The hard Brexiteers, under the cover of nationalism, want to unleash an even more virulent form of globalisation that will destroy what is left of working-class communities. What does he mean by this? What form of globalisation? And hasn't the left done a pretty good job of destroying the working class 'deplorables', with their mantras of white privilege, toxic masculinity and patriarchy, many of whom are mired in addiction and hopelessness? It's a bizarre claim, but O'Toole is always trying to be clever and turn his opponents' arguments on their head. Some Brexiteers, like Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees Mogg, do tend to say that Britain can be a more global economy outside the E.U. And they both have Thatcherite leanings, so I suppose that's what it means. But surely the point is that the British are FREE to take whatever economic policy they choose, and to change it if they want to, and to tweak it however they want to, outside the E.U. They're not locked into anything, like they are in the E.U. |
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