Heresies Ep. 2: White Privilege? The Demonisation of the White Working Class

[Music] [Music] nobody can be said to know london who does not know a true cockney so begins virginia woolf in her 1931 essay a portrait of a londoner [Music] in writing of the fate of mrs crowe she is anticipating the fate of the city breed the character was part of mrs crowe is dead and london no though london still exists london will never be the same city again previous authors predicted the tribe would biopsy within a generation outlived by healthy migrants from the countryside killed by the polluted city air yet they survived until the 21st century many migrated to the suburbs and beyond while successive generations of elders were left behind as the victorian streets were replaced by housing estates and now gentrification [Music] the tribe that wolf described were the subject of a book i wrote in the early years of this century entitled the likes of us it's a group i can identify with the wider story of a white working class that were demonized by a political left that once championed them they were caricatured as xenophobes and bigots now they're said to be beneficiaries of white privilege so this film this essay picks up the story of a tribe once described as the white working class the term white working class wasn't conjured up by the political right it was coined by the political left to fulfill a racist archetype yet years later the left claims that the white working class doesn't exist and yet they expect them to play the full guy when they dominate a demographic they're seen as a block on the landscape of multiculturalism when they leave they seem to be advancing white flight i assigned this tribe the status of an ethnic group i said they'd been demonized by the loftiest champions of the proletariat those now evangelical about their idea of diversity it's a given that the working class are now a disparate demographic where every group within it allowed its proud tribalism except one the white working class are allotted their own ethnic status only when they're being singled out as racist this demographic is a proportion of those lowercase whites that benefit from white privilege at least that's the view of black lives matter movement and those of all hues that believe systemic racism and white privilege is dominant in society [Applause] oh why were they prejudiced why would they not be if someone from the north was alien why would commonwealth immigrants descending on mass on brixton be anything less than the threat the arrival of empire windrush in 1948 has taken on a fabled status that overlooks the fact that it was not particularly welcomed by the authorities nor expected by the labour government the labour politician arthur quiche jones said at the time these people have british passports and they must be allowed to land there's nothing to worry about because they won't last one winter in england [Music] twenty years later the labour government passed legislation to restrict immigration to pacify white working-class voters and anti-discrimination laws duplicate the recent arrivals [Music] the act addressed discrimination in housing and employment by 1976 the board established to implement these laws had become a commission and its brief extended a cleft between the party and its traditional supporters emerged that would widen into the class bit that persists in the party today [Music] the white working class didn't have the luxury of using immigrants exclusively as victims of racism or symbols of exotica in the flow of newcomers we saw the good the bad and the ugly in short ourselves they were as dull as the rest of us that's how it is when you move from society's margins to the mainstream you're not knife world in drug dealing absent fathers the classical view of the far right but you're also not the carnival loving soul man in fear of the policeman's knee the current view of the left historically the working classes were limited by their economic circumstances and the need to live and work in the same vicinity the street was an extension of the home the neighborhood was an extension of the street and the country an extension of that [Music] those of us who made the voyage out and live like ex-pats with ambivalent memories of the old country seek out relics on return trips not in the name of nostalgia but history to remind ourselves that we existed on streets where we now walk as ghosts i guess it's the living past in the shadowed present people didn't travel too far did they couldn't afford to one thing so they worked near and if they live near the stalls and work near the stalls on the evenings and weekends then sort of people like that made the group a close-knit community it's just like a just a little community see where all where to come from pharmacy where'd you come from oh camp road where you come from or anything at castle it was just that round uh all the time and we had met every year see it's just broke up see all the friends we had are all moved out see they have to come out because it was all slums and they're all moved away from us and we've got nobody i'd like us all to live again as we used to i'm not going to say our old houses because the youngsters i like to see them all come back with us all of them since the way they build these flats you can't get no neighbours you don't know what i mean like you can't make friends so you're isolated but where we are we're isolated from all the other people in this block people don't realize that the the poverty abandoned that abounded if you speak to young men today and to tell them what you had to undergo or what others had to undergo they'd laugh at you they say i wouldn't do it because they can't realize how bad it was there is now pressure from elsewhere to reclassify the working class as terms like traditional and heartlands have racist connotations while shifting focus to the white working class means neglecting the needs of the ethnic minorities that will one day outnumber them these are findings from reports compiled by quangos and academics those proposing that the white working class were a construct a political fiction their interpretation is much a cliche as the cartoon cockney or the cloth cap northerner the left once championed the insularity and the folksy localism was suddenly deemed objectionable even though it was applauded when practiced in other communities in the name of multiculturalism the industry that houses the profiteering race-baiters and grifters that control the narrative on race has grown into a billion pound industry paradoxically just as racism in society started to diminish it makes many an academic believe they have a book in them and bestows on those whites defined by status and class who minorities are a relatively recent find an objective to educate the rest of us but we covered this decades ago because of where we lived because of who we lived among because we had to attitudes to race changed the familiarity surfaced as the consumerism of the past four decades opened up the experience and aspirations of a younger generation along with the potential of the black pound a sense of belonging was central to the view of young people born into a country in which they remained the alien immigrant as things improved the race industry moved the goal post shifting the arena and flagging up multiculturalism the emphasis was no longer on the assimilation of immigrants but on the natives accommodating the cultures of the new settlers even if these were odds with the values that defined them we were told that all cultures were equal but the one that most of us identified with was the one that was subjected to scrutiny and ridicule [Music] the white working class is now a disparate group class is not where you end up it's where you start out this is always been a problem for the left while pushing for the working class to move themselves out of poverty there's always been an implication that the working class need to stay poor in order to remain moral there's always been a problem as to how to define the working class when they move up and move out especially if they remain affiliated with the culture of the places where they were born in the aftermath of the referendum of so many opting for leaving the eu they were finally given a name ill-educated the absence of qualifications made them unworthy of a vote or an opinion these attitudes were expressed by those lofty left-wing champions of the proletariat despite this trend the white working class were a lot more informed than their detractors would have you believe so what do they know they know that racism will forever widen its remain in order to prop up the lucrative industry that it needs to survive they know that hate crime legislation silence his opinions and eventually censor them completely they know that black lives matter when those that extinguish them are white they know that rapists in grooming gangs are de-racialized when the victims are white they know that an equality of opportunity that would benefit them has been supplanted by an equality of outcome that won't we lived on these streets we went to those schools some of us married out some of us took black boyfriends home when we were barely out of our teens these were those we liked or loved laughed cried and climaxed with and those with whom we share a similar outlook on evidential prejudice in whatever race faith or shapes [Music] clearly the problem is no longer mere racism but whiteness white privilege and white supremacy are as innate as our bigotry so it's whiteness that's being eradicated here not white people white lives matter after all they are needed to be the patsy the useful idiots on black lives matter protests rumors that the white working class are in crisis in the face of change and diversity are premature on the contrary they're pulling up a chair and watching as the competitive victimhood of the intersectional olympics causes the left to implode if there was a positive to take from the pandemic quarantine it was a possibility that the identitarianism the anti-white tropes that dominate social media would dissipate the shared values that define us would bring us together instead in the wake of riots twitter's king mob created further division and will deepen the anger of the silent majority not everyone is prepared to take the knee and if they recoil from charges of racism it's from boredom rather than fear will the majority continue to keep its council if the acolytes of black lives matter along with their apologies continue to promote lies falsehoods and double standards while edging society towards greater chaos they might be met by their equivalent which is doubtless what they're pushing for what if the opposition responded in kind and attracted those willing to comply it would be great copy for the media and it'd be a godsend for the left for he would be a riotous mob they could gleefully demonize without censorship or cowardice ill-educated lower-case working-class and white this is also how they see the tribe once synonymous with the capital that virginia woolf and other writers predicted would one day disappear and one day they did and london know though london still exists london will never be the same city again [Music] everyone [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The New Culture Forum

Views: 152,680

Keywords: New Culture Forum, Peter Whittle, So What You're Saying Is..., Culture Wars

Id: EBq7jZIGEFo

Length: 18min 44sec (1124 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021