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Showing posts with the label "Margaret Thatcher

Britain: The Meaning of Imperial Statues

"Britain isn't racist." The likes of Hancock and Johnson are unsurprisingly in denial. Johnson nuanced his opinion by saying that Britain is "much, much less racist" than the U.S, for example. Johnson and his ilk have also condemned the "thuggery" of those who pulled down Colston statue, saying that the protesters must have followed the right/legal channels, not taking direct action.   Actually, that's what the campaingers have done for years, but with no change. The campaign of Rhodes Must Fall is a case in point. -------- For the [Rhodes Must Fall] movement’s vocal critics, it has been commonplace to observe, euphemistically, that Rhodes was “a man of his time”, by way of suggesting that his time has nothing in common with our own. But if you replace the word “British” with “western” and “United Kingdom” with “the west”, you find this statement in his will encapsulates not only Rhodes’s vision but a vision of the world today, one that ha
Summary: An argument for better taxation to reduce inequality. A couple of arguments refuting myths. However, there is no word about exploitation, the real source of inequality, which is also, paradoxically, the source of human advance. The argument that huge inequality is a consequence of bad taxation is a myth that the author reiterates. Inequality already takes place and is reproduced through property ownership and during the relations of production, i.e. before taxation itself. Consent and acquiescence play a role in accepting inequality. Agreed. And that is the power of ideology to legitimate inequality and gloss over exploitation. "The idea that rising inequality is inevitable begins to look like a convenient myth, one that allows us to avoid thinking about another possibility: that through our electoral choices and decisions in daily life we have supported rising inequality, or at least acquiesced in it. Admittedly, that assumes we know about it. Surveys in the UK an
"The label 'terrorist' works to identify a little enclave of evil, a sub-population of evil-doers, from whom the rest of humanity distinct. It works to hypocritically stratify global violence, so that we know who is entitled to its use, and whose rustiest weapon is an outrage." When the ANC were "terrorists"