That wasn't Hitler it was Mussolini... and he didn't actually get the trains to run on time either. Is just one of those things with no basis in historical fact which has been elevated to "truth" via the medium of being repeated often enough.
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Russell Brand: End the Drugs War, BBC 3 at 9pm
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That wasn't Hitler it was Mussolini... and he didn't actually get the trains to run on time either. Is just one of those things with no basis in historical fact which has been elevated to "truth" via the medium of being repeated often enough.
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I agree with alot of what russel brand says, I don't think he has all the answers though but at least he is generating a debate and encouraging people to think critically about politics, whereas politicians like cameron, farage etc don't want you to think atall and rely on cheap tactics like blaming immigrants and people on welfare for everything that is going wrong.
On Russel Brand's use of language, I'm rather fond of it myself but would agree it's not exactly ideal for clarity of understanding sometimes and perhaps not best suited to times when he's trying to make serious points. Then again, politicians use of language is far worse - deliberately designed to obfuscate meaning and often seems to be outright lies made to sound like anything other than what they are actually saying.
pinkpapaver
Bluelighter
for a second I thought that said Russell Grant.
BigG
Ex-Bluelighter
Haha!1...actually I knew it was Mussolini and not Hitler but didn't put that cos I thought no-one would notice...but you did Mr Shambles and kudos for it...you know your stuff.
Whether it was actually true, you have a point it probably wasn't. I think the fact that it is often quoted as a Nazi thing is that whether true or not it's kind of a metaphor for the German obsession with punctuality, following rules to the letter etc etc.. (an awful stereotype I know).
Back to the point though and just to stir up some debate. I agree with Shambles in that Brand's verbal diahorria is rather unconductive to getting a message across unless appealing to the (fairly narrow) section of population who likes that sort of thing. No I'm not saying you have to dumb down to the lowest common denominator but it just makes sense to talk in a way that the man in the street understands.
I do also agree with someone above who suggested that Brand isn't as clever as he makes out but disguises thais with hi verbosity and spouting of other people's ideas.
I still stand by my original assessment of him although as a comedian I just love watching him
Of one thin things I do like about him is his anti-racism stance and his ridicule of right-wing media such as Fax in the Us and idiots like the BNP and EDL (I hate racism and bigotry BTW as I'm sure do most normal thinking individuals).....
BigG
Ex-Bluelighter
I don't know mate. Maybe your right. I just think the basic idea of me seeing another man of a different race to me and automatically hating him or feeling I'm superior without knowing anything about him is just fundamentally wrong.
That's the part that I hope other people feel. As for more subtle incidents, yeah your right they happen more often. I wonder how much this is ingrained though because just a couple of generations ago, racism was almost the norm and even thought of as being acceptable but now we are a bit more forward thinking and realise how abhorrent this is. Hopefully by the time our grand-kids, or great-grandkids are grown up, the idea that another human is unequal because of his race will be about as widespread as the idea that the earth is flat.
At least I hope so anyway
As a kid we used to play a game at school called "Race War" which mostly involved all the white kids being on one side and all the not quite as white kids being on the other and having a big ol' scrap on the footy pitch of a lunchtime. Some of the other games were considerably less politically correct. However, approximately half of my friends were non-white (mostly Bengali at my particular school but several other nationalities were represented too) so in hindsight all we were really doing is mimicking the attitudes of people older than us (blacking up for comedy purposes on TV was still reasonably common when I was a kid - as was Jim Davidson in general) whilst none of us actually believed any of it - we just didn't understand the implications of the things we said. Given I am now quite an auld geezer one would presume this situation has continued and da yoof is less racist now then at any time in the past - I can't really see how things could go any other way cos kids just aren't racist unless seriously intensively indoctrinated and kept from mixing with other kids.
BecomingJulie
Bluelight Crew
I think what it comes down to is that while co-operation is definitely and demonstrably the preferred strategy in times of plenty, there's an old saying about one fat caveman having a slightly better chance of survival than two thin cavemen, and much better than three thin cavemen. We only survived until today because our ancestors knew exactly when they had to give their temporary travelling companions the heave-ho, and had all of later to make up some story about their brave friends' noble sacrifices. And although we had the Agricultural Revolution and then the Industrial and Information Revolutions and basically humanity nowadays is in the position that nobody ever has to suffer anything like that again, ever when compared to what prehistoric life must have been like, that capacity for brutality has had to endure. So people are more likely to behave obnoxiously in times of scarcity. It's just Nature. Not even Human nature, just the nature of gregarious predators in general.
And if you can keep people in a state of fear for long enough, some of them will naturally tend to think in terms of "Sod the rest, it's everyone for themself now". And the person with whom they might once have shared a sandwich, when they had three slices of bread, is now a potential threat when they have only two slices -- and almost a legitimate target when they have only one slice.
We're working harder than ever and getting less return for it (people will be sleeping in offices soon, to save the expense of travelling home every night and back to work the next day), and it is making people dangerous. The rich and powerful are cynically manipulating the poor and disenfranchised into betraying their own kind. Couple this with a tendency of some people to hurt the ones closest to them in preference to strangers, and it should be obvious that this is not going to turn out well.
BigG
Ex-Bluelighter
Exactly Shambles. Kids today know better and we can only hope that with future generations they continue to do so.
I'm not sure exactly how old you are again but I think you are around my age (just turned 40) and I remember those things as well, The Black and White Minstrels, Love thy Neighbour, Til' Death Do Us Part, Jim (unfunny-cunt) Davison, huge racism at football (which unfortunately seems to be virulent still in some places). Nowadays (thank god) things have improved.
Where I live (North-East) the population is very mixed as South Shields was a major immigration centre for Asian (Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis) and also Arabs (Yemeni mainly but Iraq and Iran as well). For reasons that escape me despite the mass immigration there were very few West Indian and African people (although my longest ever girlfriend was from West Africa). Anyway my point being that when these people first settled in the 1950s things were very different from today. Today they are part of the community and as much locals as anyone else....and I'm glad for it
BecomingJulie
Bluelight Crew
Oh, Shambles
How I have missed you! Let's hope I'm never again too ill to log onto Bluelight for so long.
BigG
Ex-Bluelighter
Even back into Victorian times which is not that long ago, it was thought of as being fine to do whatever you liked to any "natives" (look what was done to the Zulus) and in a way, it was just the attitude of the time from less-informed people who were the product of a different time in history where priorities were very different from today.
The only reason that we were successful in these colonial endeavors is that the industrial revolution happened in a "white" country and thus we developed better weapons which made exerting our will that much easier.
Does make you wonder what would have happened if the industrial revolution had happened in say Africa or the Middle East first, what would history of turned out like and would maybe the racism we know from history be turned the other way round?
Impossible to say but probably. I guess we were just not as nice back then
The only reason that we were successful in these colonial endeavors is that the industrial revolution happened in a "white" country and thus we developed better weapons which made exerting our will that much easier.
Does make you wonder what would have happened if the industrial revolution had happened in say Africa or the Middle East first, what would history of turned out like and would maybe the racism we know from history be turned the other way round?
Impossible to say but probably. I guess we were just not as nice back then
BecomingJulie
Bluelight Crew
I think it's pretty much the same in any urban area where there is a mixing of populations. Coming back to my "one fat caveman" schtick, the kids (who are still running on instinct at that age) are generally being deliberately kept in more or less of a state of contentment by their parents and carers, so they tend to be accepting of one another's differences. Someone else may have a different colour skin than you; but they still enjoy most of the same things as you do and they probably will show you something you may never have seen before but like as much as they do. They are obviously not that different from you, and -- precisely because it's kids we're talking about, [ii]they pose you no threat[/i]. So what you end up with eventually, is a whole generation of adults who simply never learned to be racist.
Oh, I do not doubt that for a moment!
People are all pretty much the same, whatever colour their skin. Without wanting to sound racist, black people can do things just as terrible to other black people as white people do to black people -- or white people, even. I'm certain that it was nothing but sheer, blind luck that put the coal, limestone and iron ore under a populated part of Britain and not Africa. Anyone would have had a decisive advantage, once they had got some serious-scale steelworks together.
It's also entirely possible that on any Earth-like planet where human-like beings can exist, it is for scientific reasons inevitable that the correct combinations of resources for progress to be made will occur in temperate latitudes where light-coloured skin will prove advantageous for survival. Racism is then just an emergent property of race, but something that we can still get past by understanding it.
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BigG
Ex-Bluelighter
Exactly Julie. Even if these kids hear their parents using racist words of deriding people of other races hopefully their own experiences will teach them differently. The black or Asian kid that little Johnny sits next to in class and plays with will eventually teach him that he is just the same as him and as he grows up he hopefully will reject his parent's prejudices and his kids and then grand-kids will hopefully be free of such things. Maybe the world will be a better place too.
Vurtual
Bluelighter
I tend to think there's two types or aspects of racism - there's the ignorance-based xenophobia which us tribal humans will always apply to some 'other' group - this is part of human nature and crops up wherever there's scarcity, but is 'fixable' with knowledge and social fairness (socialism if you like). Casual ignorance-based racists tend to not be able to apply the racism directly to the friends of colour they always claim to have - they have to 'other' them first (eg "it's those other muslims/jews/blacks/etc who i haven't come to regard as human that are the problem"). This type of unthinking xenophobia doesn't stop at race though, and is commonly applied today to benefit scroungers, 'chavs', jocks, immigrants or people with certain religions.
The other type of racism is the intellectual ideological version which we (largely) invented, and which the nazis ran with - the sort of racism that claims to speak from some body of knowledge that conveniently tells them the people they wanted to oppress anyway are deserving of that oppression, cos of science (or religion). Sort of like the difference between an average sun reader and rupert murdoch. This is still based on the underlying xenophobia, but it's knowingly evoked and utilised by people who 'should' know better, often for reasons other than those stated (eg imperialism, power, class allegiance etc). Many of these 'well-brought-up' intellectual racists probably don't even actually believe in it like the brownshirts they manage to convince to follow them (like politics in general).
That 'scientific' racism was actual science back then (a reminder that we shouldn't necessarily go to science for the answers to moral/ethical questions), but these days it's pretty much accepted that there's no way to easily define race using biology or genetics (even 'species' is getting slippery).
(to speak up for 'human nature' (whatever that is) - while i think a tendency to be xenophobic is part of our nature, i'm also convinced that cooperation, kindness, compassion and love are also part of that nature, and actually make up the larger part of it, and are probably the reason we're still on the planet (see Kropotkin) - even the racists will be lovely to the people of the wrong race they've found some reason not to 'other' (sorry for the american-style verb-isation (ya racist)). You can't really blame people for ignorance, only try and educate/love/patronise them into submission
[edit: IMO (i always forget that bit and probably sound like i think i know what i'm talking about)]
The other type of racism is the intellectual ideological version which we (largely) invented, and which the nazis ran with - the sort of racism that claims to speak from some body of knowledge that conveniently tells them the people they wanted to oppress anyway are deserving of that oppression, cos of science (or religion). Sort of like the difference between an average sun reader and rupert murdoch. This is still based on the underlying xenophobia, but it's knowingly evoked and utilised by people who 'should' know better, often for reasons other than those stated (eg imperialism, power, class allegiance etc). Many of these 'well-brought-up' intellectual racists probably don't even actually believe in it like the brownshirts they manage to convince to follow them (like politics in general).
That 'scientific' racism was actual science back then (a reminder that we shouldn't necessarily go to science for the answers to moral/ethical questions), but these days it's pretty much accepted that there's no way to easily define race using biology or genetics (even 'species' is getting slippery).
(to speak up for 'human nature' (whatever that is) - while i think a tendency to be xenophobic is part of our nature, i'm also convinced that cooperation, kindness, compassion and love are also part of that nature, and actually make up the larger part of it, and are probably the reason we're still on the planet (see Kropotkin) - even the racists will be lovely to the people of the wrong race they've found some reason not to 'other' (sorry for the american-style verb-isation (ya racist)). You can't really blame people for ignorance, only try and educate/love/patronise them into submission
[edit: IMO (i always forget that bit and probably sound like i think i know what i'm talking about
)]
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