(I did not want to attach an image displaying EDL slogans but this one is instructive.)
Un-man Robert Naysmith confronts Colonel Samsey:
"'Cram it, Samsey,' said Naysmith wearily. 'The American Guard has ranks, uniforms, weapons, and drills. Every member belongs to the Americanist Party. You're a private army, Nazi style, and you've done the murders, robberies, and beatings of the Party for the last five years. As soon as the government is able to prove that in court, you'll all go to the Antarctic mines and you know it. Your hope is that your faction can be in power before there is a case against you.'
"'Libel! We're a patriotic social group -'" (VIII, p. 78)
Poul Anderson projects into this future history the kinds of political movements that we know from past history and from current experience. We are currently familiar with street movements that aspire to become private armies: Proud Boys and a succession of similar outfits in Britain. Most murders are random street violence although there have also recently been the murders of a Labour Member of Parliament by a white supremacist and of a Conservative MP by an Islamist.
Someone whose judgement I usually respect had hoped that the EDL would turn out to be just a patriotic movement...
See also Jack Havig's Pamphlet.
24 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And many people become radical, extremist, violent, etc., when their fears and anxieties, not all of them unreasonable or unjustified, are ignored, waved away, scorned, etc., by the established parties, both left and right. Then you are going to get groups like the EDL crossing too many lines.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I only partly agree here. When people are unemployed or low paid, poorly housed etc, then, yes, they have grievances and unfortunately too many of them seek answers from the far right as an easy option - blame immigrants or a Jewish conspiracy for everything. However, if hostility to immigrants is regarded as in any way reasonable or justified, then I disagree with that. The Pope recently spoke about the obligation to welcome foreigners.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree. It is not merely economic factors which can enrage people. Massive influxes of foreigners, esp. if they are intruders illegally in the country, can outrage the natives, making them feel threatened and marginalized in their own country. That is why the ten million illegals that bungling idiot "Josip" and his "Border Czar," Kamala Harris, have stirred up such furious opposition to them and their leftist puppet masters.
All sovereign nations have the inherent right for setting the terms and conditions allowing legal immigrants into a nation. Foreigners who illegally sneak into the US or UK have no right to be there and should be expelled.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The government does not ignore, scorn or wave away hostility to immigrants but encourages it.
I think that basic freedoms include the right to seek work and a better life anywhere on Earth. Freedom includes freedom of movement. The population of Britain is descended from waves of immigrants and invaders. In Lancaster, we have Asians, Poles and Ukrainians who enrich society and the economy. Sheila and I buy bread and cakes from a bakery run by a young Polish couple. The churches are involved in welcoming and supporting newcomers. There are organizations with names like "East meets West" where women swap recipes etc. When anti-immigrant campaigners announced that they were going to gather on the Town Hall steps from 10:00 on one Sunday recently, we, culturally mixed anti-racists, gathered there in much larger numbers from 9:00. Their less than 100, many of them from outside Lancaster, arrived and stood across from our several 100s with a line of police between. We stayed in place for over seven hours, going away in small numbers to get sandwiches and coffees, until the police informed us that the last of the other side's demonstrators from out of town had got back on the train. At a recent public meeting, a Jewish man spoke of wanting unity with his Muslim brothers and sisters and a Muslim man said that Islam had been anti-racist from the time of the Prophet. We have a good thing going here and we stand up to those who would divide us.
Paul.
A nation-state belongs to its citizens; they have an absolute right, through their elected representatives, to set conditions for entry and for joining the national community. If they want nobody allowed in but left-handed Serbo-Croatian speaking hermaphroditic redheads, that's their right. Anyone who seeks to deny it to them is an enemy, and an enemy of democracy too.
I might add that the sovereign nation-state is the only possible locus of democracy, which means "rule by the people". That is, -a- people in -a- country.
Nations are historically very recent and I think that we can move on from them. Well, things will change whether or not the way I would like them to.
Kaor, Paul!
But you are not addressing the point that matters, to both Stirling and myself: do or do not nations have an absolute right to set the terms and conditions by which immigrants may legally come in?
And nations, States, are not historically recent. The first true States arose around 4000 BC, for good practical reasons, monopolizing the means of violence in order to enable most people, most of the time, to live in peace. Also, States/nations are natural extensions of the family, clan, tribe. And no one has any right to just force their way into their territories. That will provoke resistance and wars.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I am not addressing the point that matters? Because it had not mattered to me in the same way. But I will address it now: No.
Nations are recent. States (bodies of armed men as means of coercion) are not. The purpose of states was not to enable people to live in peace but to monopolize the wealth that their labour had produced.
No one has a right to force their way anywhere. They do have a right to travel and live anywhere.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Disagree. Sovereign nations have an absolute right to decide who can enter and live in its territory. Outsiders do not have a right to live in other countries unless they meet the terms and conditions required for doing that. That so called right to travel and live anywhere can and often has meant invasions and wars by other peoples.
That "monopolizing" of wealth is a secondary effect of the existence of organized bodies like clans, tribes, nations. All of which had/have armed bodies. People have a right to defend what they have.
Wealth is produced by the demand placed on all kinds of resources, including labor. Here I mean the marginal utility theory of value. The labor theory of value has long since been exploded.
Nor are organized states "recent."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Disagree. Of course the right to travel does not mean the right to invade!
The labour theory of value has not been exploded.
Governments should serve the interests of whoever lives in or passes through their territory. This is an absolute obligation.
Paul.
Actually, no, nations are not very recent. They're simply a modern manifestation of the 'tribe'. And tribes are as ancient as behaviorally modern human beings, at the very least.
Tribes are ancient. Armed nation-states with nationalities and nationalism are more recent.
Going out to a meeting. Will have to respond further later.
Nationalism is a sub-set of tribalism.
Sean: expelled or just killed out of hand.
Sean,
Of course organized states are not recent. I made a distinction between them and nations.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: There is no absolute right to move from one country to another. All "peaceful" travelers have to obey the terms and conditions set by any nation for emigrating to it.
No, economists like Carl Menger, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, etc, have long since demolished, from both reason and the facts of real world experience, the theories of economics you favor.
The prime duty of any gov't, any State, is to defend its people and territory. And that goes straight back to clans and tribes. The distinction you made is unclear and makes no sense.
Mr. Stirling: The millions of illegals who swarmed in since "Josip" took office have no right to be in the US and should be expelled. Most of them sneaked in via Mexico, which did nothing effective to stop them. Let Mexico take care of them!
I wonder how Teddy Roosevelt would have handled this mess?
At the time of TR's presidency, European immigration was at its peak, running at numbers that were (relative to the total) higher than anything today. There were strong forces wanting restriction, but others opposing them. Asian immigration had been restricted, though.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I remember reading about that in your BLACK CHAMBER books. And of how TR disliked the prejudice against Asians. But I think TR always wanted a legal defining of immigration, in reasonable ways.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
That is what you think. Economics remains a matter of interpretation and opinion. You cannot just state as if it were a matter of fact that one theory has been demolished. Well , you can merely state it but that does not settle anything or end the controversy. Living labour transforms raw materials into usable articles, products and commodities. That at least happens.
The distinction between ancient tribes and modern nation states is unclear and makes no sense? Can't we just discuss the issue instead of dealing in absolute denials and denunciations?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I believe Adam Smith and his Austrian successors explained economics far more realistically than the theories you favor. Labor has value only according to what others have for it.
What I have been trying to say is that organized States and nations are extensions of families, clans, and tribes. The impression I get is that you don't believe that to be the case.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Of course you favour Smith but that is an entirely different matter from saying that another theory has been entirely demolished. The physical labour of slaves produced the food that priests ate.
We seem to have got all mixed up about nations and states. In fact, I notice that I got mixed up in something I said. These threads are difficult to follow. At one stage you used the terms "state" and "nation" interchangeably and I disagreed with that. The earliest states were groups of men with spears guarding granaries against the populations whose whose work had produced the food that was in the granaries.
Sometimes these exchanges become mere brief retorts to the last thing the other person said and, when that happens, I begin to question their value.
Paul.
One too many "whose."
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