Even more dysfunctionally, neotoddlers often try to disrupt attempts to meet their own demands. Many pro-Palestine activists call for peace in Gaza and yet praise Hamas, the main obstacle to peace in Gaza. And many eco-warriors oppose fossil fuels but also try to stop viable alternatives such as electric and nuclear by, for example, storming Tesla factories and atomic energy conferences. And recent Right-wing protesters in Sunderland, who claimed to represent the unheard, burned down a citizens’ advice centre, one of the few places to offer an ear to the unheard.
Unsurprisingly, nuisance-protests often end up alienating ordinary people. While the public supports climate action, it has a negative opinion of Just Stop Oil. And while the public supports a ceasefire in Gaza, it has a negative opinion of the campus protesters. The same is true of Right-wing nuisance protests: while the public generally believes immigration should be curbed, it has a negative opinion of those, like Tommy Robinson, who incited the recent riots. So, though nuisance-protests do get attention, little of that attention is converted to sympathy and a lot to spite.
But if nuisance-protests are counterproductive, why are they spreading? Because protests are usually motivated more by emotion than reason. Take the recent Southport riots. These have been driven not by any rational plan but by the frustrations of Right-wingers and ordinary working-class people about their concerns over immigration not being taken seriously by politicians. These frustrations, stoked by fake news, have led them to engage in infantile — and dangerous — actions like vandalising mosques and setting fire to police cars, which will hurt their cause more than help it. But it does make them feel good for the moment, and they live mostly for the moment.
As for Left-wing neotoddlers, their motivations tend to be more complex (but no less childish) than those of their Right-wing counterparts, because, instead of being impoverished and alienated, they tend to be privileged and popular. For instance, an analysis by the Washington Monthly revealed that the Gaza campus protests were largely confined to the most expensive and elite colleges. And Just Stop Oil members are themselves quick to admit that their movement is “privileged” and living in a white middle-class “student bubble”.
This is no accident: it’s often the affluent, not the downtrodden, who have a greater motivation to protest. As the philosopher Eric Hoffer explained in his 1951 book, The True Believer: “There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society’s ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom.” People need struggles. If their supply of problems dwindles too low, they begin to embellish the problems they already have, and invent completely new ones. As Hoffer writes: “Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance.”
Overall, Left-wing neotoddlers and Right-wing neotoddlers tend to come from different demographics — with the former being younger, richer, more educated, and more female than the latter — and this gives them different motivations, and different modus operandi. For instance, research suggests that the cluster-B trait of narcissism, which is a feeling of self-importance, takes a different form in the two groups. In Right-wingers, it mostly manifests as a sense of entitlement, while in Left-wingers it mostly manifests as a need for exhibitionism.
This is borne out in the different approaches Left-wingers and Right-wingers take towards their public tantrums. Right-wing nuisance-protests, such as those in Southport, are primarily attempts to relieve their frustration at not getting what they want. As such, they typically take the form of straightforward thuggery and hooliganism: starting fires, overturning cars and hurling bricks.
In contrast, nuisance-protests for Left-wing causes tend to be less about relieving frustration and more about getting attention. As such, they are usually more calculated and creative: throwing soup over paintings, releasing insect-swarms into hotels, or, most recently, painting the hands of a statue of Anne Frank red.
Generally, the Left-wing approach is more effective at getting attention. It took mass destruction by hundreds of Right-wingers in Southport to make news headlines, but it only took two Just Stop Oil activists with orange paint at Heathrow to achieve the same. Left-wing nuisance-protests are also treated more kindly by the mainstream. Right-wing protests tend to be roundly condemned by polite society, firstly because they tend to be more violent, and secondly because upholders of mainstream culture — such as liberal journalists, academics, and entertainers — are culturally programmed to dismiss concerns about Islam or immigration as “far-Right”, placing such concerns outside the bounds of polite discourse (and into the hands of actual extremists).
Left-wing protests, on the other hand, are generally viewed by Western cultural elites as well-meaning. The West’s mainstream knowledge-producing institutions, from academia to the liberal media, tend to be populated mostly by Left-leaning people who see Left-wing neotoddlers as a force for good because they’re broadly ideologically aligned with them and judge them by their perceived intentions rather than their results. For this reason, the mainstream treats Left-wing neotoddlers as its golden child, always seeing the best in them, while Right-wing neotoddlers are treated like the red-headed stepchild, worthy only of scorn.
This is particularly true at universities, where a decades-long encouragement of cluster-B infantilism reached a tipping point this summer with the campus protests. We saw the students put everything they’d been taught — exhibitionism, catastrophisation, hysteria — into practice. The protests quickly came to resemble a LARP. Whenever the protesters occupied a new part of the campus, they hung banners and declared it liberated. All this liberating eventually made them feel peckish. But when they demanded refreshments from university officials, and were denied, they claimed they were being deprived of “basic humanitarian aid” and might die of starvation.
This kind of grandiose fantasising is emblematic of people with narcissistic traits because it makes their struggles seem bigger than they actually are. As such, we commonly see similar kinds of catastrophisation among other flavours of neotoddler; every flood or forest fire is an omen of “climate catastrophe”, Israel is an “apartheid state”, biological facts about sex are “erasing trans people”, and immigration is “white genocide”. Such histrionics, whether propagated in error or with intention, serve to manipulate other hysterical people into becoming neotoddlers.
And the grim irony is that, by believing the world is worse than it actually is, neotoddlers make the world worse. Their disruptions and vandalism exert a huge economic and social cost on society, and they prevent ordinary people from getting to work, attending funerals of loved ones, and meeting vital medical appointments.
Unsurprisingly, the harm neotoddlers cause to liberal democracies has endeared them to foreign dictators. The Ayatollah developed a soft spot for the Ivy League campus protesters, cheerleading them on X, and even writing them a letter of support. It also recently transpired that Iran has been funding and directing activists across the US, and that they even masterminded an anti-Israel protest at McGill University in Canada. Closer to home, the misinformation that caused the Southport riots was amplified by a fake news website linked to the Russian government.
So, how can we end this age of neotoddlerism? The simplest way would be to cut off its main source of support. And that isn’t the Ayatollah or Putin, or even the universities. No, the neotoddlers’ main source of support is, in fact, you and I.
Neotoddlerism endures because it is much more effective at making news headlines and going viral than traditional forms of protest. As a case in point, on 22 June, celebrity environmentalists like Emma Thompson and Chris Packham led a huge march of over 60,0000 people through London, to raise awareness of habitat destruction and wildlife loss. It received little press coverage. Around the same time, a handful of Just Stop Oil protesters squirted orange paint on Stonehenge; it made the front page of every major UK newspaper, and coverage in the global press too.
Likewise, last week in London, there was a generally peaceful march against mass immigration, involving tens of thousands of people of all ethnicities, and led by figures like Tommy Robinson and Laurence Fox. It was ignored by most of the press. One week later, when Robinson embraced his inner-toddler and stoked violent riots, they made global headlines.
At a time when competition for attention is fierce, it makes business sense for the press and social media platforms to boost stories that outrage people into clicking and sharing. Such platforms naturally form a symbiosis with people who seek to outrage their way to fame: demagogues like Robinson; vandals like Just Stop Oil “poster girl” Phoebe Plummer; and more bizarre figures still, like the “performance artist turned political activist” Crackhead Barney, who wears little but a diaper and seeks to save Gaza by being as obscene as possible.
By giving these figures platforms, we’ve not only allowed them to proselytise to huge audiences, but we’ve also turned them into idols — living testaments that you can get what you want by acting like a baby. And we can’t blame the media for this; they’re just showing us what we prefer to see. It is ordinary people who have made being a public nuisance pay. Neotoddlerism needs nothing more than attention to thrive — it is physical clickbait — and we just keep clicking.
“By giving these figures platforms, we’ve not only allowed them to proselytise to huge audiences, but we’ve also turned them into idols.”
But there is a way out. The solution to neotoddlers is the same as the one to regular spoiled brats: to ignore their outbursts and deny them attention. If someone sets fire to a car or makes a mess with orange paint, it shouldn’t make global or even national news. The media will stop reporting on these stories when we stop engaging with them. They’ll stop amplifying — and thereby incentivising — the neotoddlers when we do. So we should learn to react more slowly to news, to pay attention to what we pay attention to, and to give more of our attention to behaviours we wish to encourage rather than those we disapprove of. It’s not just the neotoddlers who need to be less impulsive, we do too.
And there are many people in this world who deserve our attention. The Dutch inventor Boyan Slat, for instance, has for the past 10 years been quietly removing plastic from the oceans through his startup, The Ocean Cleanup. His project recently hit a milestone of 15,000,000kg of trash removed from oceans and rivers worldwide, but it’s hardly been reported by the press. Meanwhile, Greta Thunberg became world famous by yelling and blocking entrances to public buildings.
We don’t yet have any start-ups to clear the oceans of rubber dinghies, but such a thing is possible, if addressing illegal immigration can be made more palatable to polite society. And that will only happen when the people who wish to “stop the boats” refrain from acting like the violent thugs they’re often stereotyped as, and start supporting practical, adult solutions.
Every child begins life throwing tantrums. And every good parent learns to ignore them, because they know that acknowledging attention-seeking behaviours validates them, and prevents their kids from outgrowing them. If we wish to stop seeing good causes ruined by bad actors, we must stop rewarding immaturity. If we wish to usher in an age of post-toddlerism, we must stop making neotoddlers famous.
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SubscribeRelevant commentary. Unfortunately the media default is the old saying, if it bleeds it leads. Balanced media is as far away as ever. Making a noise out rates making a difference.
I get the point, and it’s cute and of its time, but it’s wrong.
The analogy is wrong-headed. Toddlers have good reasons for tantrums. Parents are generally not listening, or have not explained. The toddlers may be tired, hungry or wishing to gain some control in an imbalanced situation.
Current democratic Govts change only when they’re forced to, and not a moment before. Here in NZ, the Govt relaxed draconian covid policies shortly after a multi-week occupation of Parliament that ended in a riot. It was preceded by months of organised calm protests that were ignored by govt. The protestors were not wrong in their assessment about the world. They were without jobs, partners, old friends, families…
My pick is that the UK Labour Government will, unless it has a death wish, now take some sort of action on immigration. It will never admit that the riots prompted it. After years of being able to get away with not listening to the public, the Government was forced to listen by the violence. If it doesn’t change, the violence will return.
The assumption is that Governments behave rationally. The last decade or so suggests they do not, otherwise we would not be dealing with the problems we now have. It’s very possible that this is the future, the norm, and we will all adjust and find a way to cope with it. Better for some, worse for others.
I think government actions are probably rational in the interests of the market and the economy as they see it. The problem is more that rationalism is not enough when you are governing a country, people are human beings with emotions and imaginations, not Spocks (Star Trek). Churchill understood this very well, unfortunately so did Adolf Hitler.
Keir Starmer has shown very poor leadership imo, he could have condemned the violence without using insulting labels – “thugs”, “far right”, which could well lead to more resentment and anger not less.
Starmer et al having a bit of a tantrum of their own.
It’s a valid point that governments across the world don’t listen, either to what people vote for or to peaceful protests, but Bhogal suggests the answer is private or individually-led action rather than government “listening”.
Given that it would be impossible for any government to act in a way that satisfies both the left-wing vandals and right-wing rioters, private/individual schemes (like Ocean Cleanup) may actually be by far the best way for each group to see progress towards what they want.
The toddler analogy is useful for them as (mostly) young people making demands on a Nanny State to fix things for them, but also to us as adult observers. Forget “forcing the government to listen” – the more you depend on government, the more power you give it. When people act independently of government – and in a way that doesn’t rile your fellow citizens – the less power government has to ruin lives.
Agreed.
Let’s be honest, our governments aren’t really capable of much of anything. They’re clumsy, flat-footed, tin-eared; I’m not sure they can tie their own shoelaces. And they throw money around like idiots.
Certain private organizations seem to be capable of actually moving forward, The Ocean Cleanup for instance. And I’ve seen videos from Mossy Earth, an organization doing rewilding projects, mostly in Central Europe, that seem to be more imaginative, more effective and less controversial than anything I’ve seen any government do. Others are building beaver dams, out of sticks and logs, to mimic the helpful effects on riverine ecosystems and send more water back into the aquifers. Sometimes real beavers show up and take over!
I suppose we could all get a start by finding their vids on YouTube or InstaGram or…And getting involved.
You make a point about the error in pleading to government that I very much agree with. As you say, it gives Govt authority over you, and expects more than they can do. I try to live my life without asking anything of it.
BUT, it was govt that locked down, it govts that allow immigrants. If you tried individual or collective actions that circumvented these things, the Govt comes after you.
Again, the article makes a bad analogy. Individual action is what a toddler takes in a tantrums; it is – usually – trying to gain or express autonomy, not demand things of parents.
BTW, I disagree that govt cannot find a way through. Its job is to find a middle ground for its society.
Or it might actually prove the author’s point. A toddler might have good reasons for tantrums but the government (and institutions) are not your daddy. They should be you in a liberal democracy. And if it has come to the point where one does feel they have a child/parent relationship with them where they need to throw tantrums – and I think quite some Western citizens do – something went wrong along the way. And that’s not necessarily the fault of the protesters either. The social contract should be an agreement between adults but Western populations have been infantilized.
In my opinion it is not about the protests themselves or the legitimacy of their cause, it is about the underlying psychology of the protesters.
That’s a very good comment. Thank you!
I agree with you about the terrible state of affairs where govts have become parents. But that’s not really the author’s point – they’re blaming the people and not the state.
BTW; I’m not clear on where the author thinks the dividing line is between a neotoddler and revolutionary. I think they make the mistake of believing the western world is benign, so any physical protest is unjustified.
Let’s talk about the psychology of these protestors. In a society so wrapped around you that it *seems* impossible to carve your own path, live your own way, control your destiny – what do you propose people do when bad stuff happens within that environment; things that make that environment even less bearable, and had happened less in the past.
I have UK friends who say they’re just hunkering down, trying to avoid the worst of what they see happening in their country. They, like me (in NZ), I have the wit and wherewithal, (and here in NZ, the space and freedom) to find and create a niche. To create the world we want. Those are luxuries and advantages many many people don’t have.
Neotodlerism sums it up very well. If parents stop giving in to toddlerism maybe children will learn to think for themselves and not grow up relying on neotodlerism to get what they want.
We could remove some of the ‘spells’ that are accepted without question:
You will be looked after, from the cradle to the grave (no matter how you treat your body)
A pill for every ill (ditto), no matter the consequences.
A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work (even if no-one wants to buy the produce).
Get a degree, any degree, and be given a graduate job, with a graduate salary.
Follow the Science, and do what the Establishment tells you to do, and think, without question.
There’s a Climate Crisis that needs to be immediately neutralised, without any investigation, thought, prototyping, analysis, or informed discussion.
There’s a TV channel, that currently puts out drivel, that could be used to air the informed discussions: it’s called the BBC.
The problem with many “current democratic governments” is that they are so blinded by the mix of short-term electoral issues, post-modernism, identity twaddle and the advice they receive from the equally blinded civil-service and academic blob that they seem to harbour the “death wish” to which you refer; not a death wish for themselves, but for the West and its remarkable achievements in improvng the lives of billions.
Of course, I am writing from the perspective of a white, privileged, middle-class, cis male from the boomer generation — so what do I know?
There are no “cis” people white or otherwise.
As for the short termism, not a recent phenomenon.
My prediction is that, on the contrary, the UK Labour Government will ignore what’s going on now and do precisely nothing about mass immigration as to do something would be to admit that there was a problem.
Pace Aris Roussinos elsewhere in Unherd, the UK elites have an agreement to remain silent on issues related to ethnic conflict in order to pretend that no issues exist.
In which case, the disorder will worsen and gradually turn into a fullscale civil war.
Not sure what to make of this essay. It was thoughtful in many respects and offered a fresh perspective on contemporary issues. It was dead wrong in other respects and creates more questions than answers. IMO the author is struggling to make sense of something that is largely senseless.
The climate and Palestinian protestors are toddlers IMO, in the sense there is literally nothing Britain can do to address their concerns. Britain can produce zero emissions and it won’t solve climate change. And Britain literally has no leverage in the Gaza conflict. Their protests are nothing more than theatre IMO.
But Britain can certainly stop immigration. In fact, you can argue border security is the essence of a sovereign nation. Yet, I too am horrified by the seemingly senseless violence and vandalism. I think this makes the protestors toddlers in some respects, even if I share their grievances.
Again, I return to the truckers strike in Ottawa. They showed the world that you can launch a peaceful protest and get results. It also revealed the dystopian tactics the state will use to discredit protestors. In the end though, every province in Canada rolled back punitive covid policies within weeks – and the feckless leader of the Conservative Party was ousted and replaced by a real conservative politician.
The world is a mess right now – all self inflicted by an incompetent and disconnected ruling class – and many of us are struggling to make sense of things that are seemingly senseless.
Their protests are nothing more than theatre IMO.
Expensive theatre.
“Britain can produce zero emissions and it won’t solve climate change.”
Are protestors demanding that Britain solve climate change? My understanding is that they want Britain to do its part in solving it. (And its part is significant.)
“And Britain literally has no leverage in the Gaza conflict.”
That’s another absolute. Is it true? A one-minute search uncovers this, from The New York TImes, July 25th:
“By the end of this week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to drop the previous government’s objections to the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s pursuit of an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu…
“Last week, Britain said it would restart funding for the main United Nations’ agency that aids Palestinians, UNRWA, having concluded that the agency had taken steps to ensure that it meets ‘the highest standards of neutrality’…
“Taken together, these steps show a government that is willing to pile more pressure on Mr. Netanyahu for Israel’s harsh military response in Gaza. It also shows that Mr. Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, is paying more heed to international legal institutions than the United States.”
There are likely more examples, since after all those were the result of only a one-minute search. It doesn’t mean those examples will have enormous effect on what happens in Gaza. The point is that they are indeed forms of leverage that would likely exert some small but meaningful effect.
Who knows what the contribution of even small effect can have on the whole? — especially over time, since we are not supposing they would cause an immediate resolution to these problems.
A thought pattern of absolutes shuts off the imagination, denies other possibilities, in this case ways of influence that might improve conditions on this Earth. Why would we want to do that?
I would add that with respect to the Cdn truckers it wasn’t “peaceful” to block off main city streets, blasting horns, for days. Whether or not one agrees with the protester’s views, the form of protest was the definition of “disturbing the peace” — as it was obviously intended to be.
Imagine fossil fuel protesters doing the same. Would you still describe it as “peaceful protest?”
I suppose you’re right in a superficial way. Yet Britain is not stopping climate change and it is not stopping Israel.
Come on, Jim, it’s hard to have a discussion if we just label someone’s response “superficial” and repeat the same points their response addressed. It has the same effect as a thought pattern of absolutes: closing off. We can’t understand each other if we do that. We’ll just be hearing echoes of ourselves inside our separate bubbles.
Are protesters demanding that Britain solve climate change? Or are they demanding that it do its part in solving it? If the latter, that seems a reasonable thing to demand.
As for leverage to help the Gaza situation, it seems to me that some positive effect would be better than none, given the stakes. We can’t know the result of actions like the examples given, but we can imagine their potential to improve conditions — as long as we don’t deny our capacity to do so.
Not sure why you are being downvoted. I guess it’s because your comment isn’t denigrating the left, or young folks, or whining about how screwed we are and how the world is falling apart.
Of course Britain, or any country doing a small part in any of these issues will have some positive impact, and potentially a big one. Not an immediate impact (remember, us adults don’t subscribe to the “instant gratification” that all these young morons do *that’s a joke, by the way*). but leading by example can certainly make an impact. Coming up with a successful framework that other countries can mimic can also end up making a big impact.
Some of the vandalism in protesting is opportunism from bored white kids, sure. But I don’t think we should just call them all toddlers and sweep it away. These are issues that people care about. And this is nothing new.
Yeh, destroying the lives of countless people to do your bit must make you very proud
LOL, I thought my points were reasonable. There’s no way to know what the downvoters don’t like. Maybe they’ll specify later.
I agree it’s unhelpful to make blanket pronouncements — well, smears — about protesters. I’ve encountered lots of dumb protests in my time, and lots of smart ones, each concerning the same issue. Sometimes I feel angry at the dumb protests because they make it easy to dismiss a cause. They can set it back, doing the opposite of what was intended. We’re human, our motivations are complex, and the most influential of them can be unconscious, unacknowledged.
Why were the truckers disrupting people and damaging the economy ‘a wholesome and ethical protest’ but just stop oil doing the same type of protest ‘outrageously unjustified and unethical’?
Aren’t you just saying ‘my cause is more just than yours therefore these tactics are justified for me but not you’?
Surely the point is, in a democracy, protest should always be peaceful and not cause mass disruption to the lives of normal people?
Good question, but no. The Canadian truckers were protesting a government policy. Just Stop Oil are protesting “the way things are”. That’s why disruption in the first case is legitimate, because you want action (stop the policy) whereas in the second case you are just creating anarchy. Normal people are the target of Just Stop Oil.
I would make the point more succinctly that there is no equivalency between Left and Right protests. This is a canard of journalists who don’t want to be canceled by their 95% Progressive peers. The Left has complete control of Establishment Media, and so of course they blame violence on the far-right along with slavery, climate change, vaccine hesitancy, and Islamophobia. That’s the narrative. The Left, in control of Establishment Media, have created a fearful web of lies to destabilize the West, leading among these are that Climate Change is the fault of Evil Big Oil and that if you are not a multiculturalist then you are a racist. These are politically convenient lies to justify completely demolishing the West in its current form via anarchy, and build the new Utopia which they will administer. Gullible young people have bought this hook, line and sinker and are busy saving the planet from conservatives who just want to raise a family in a stable economy.
The Stockport protests include some hot-heads, but are facilitated by crossover agents who want to enflame aggravation since all rioting is anarchic.
“we’ve not only allowed them to proselytise to huge audiences, but we’ve also turned them into idols — living testaments that you can get what you want by acting like a baby. And we can’t blame the media for this”
An interesting piece. But the reference to “we” is a bit of a stretch. Apparently we’re responsible because we watch what the media feed us. Something, I would guess, you can only prove through ratings, which in itself is a dodgy business to drive more advertising.
The problem is the media. Just look at some of the headlines in Unherd. So, yes, we can blame the media, just stop with the horror and sensationalism,
Yes, the problem in the UK is that the media now speaks exclusively in the behalf of a metropolitan class grown fat on the unearned property wealth that arises as a consequence of open borders policies and financialisation.
The rent payers and wage earners pauperised in the process are hardly going to get a fair hearing from them.
All I ever hear on the MSM is: ‘housing crisis’, the ‘cost of living crisis’, ‘tax evading non-doms’, ‘food poverty’ and how the ‘Tories are incompetent / evil’
You must be watching / listening a different MSM to me
Trivialising the causes of unrest doesn’t help. I’ve read somewhere that peace is the existence of justice, not just the absence of war. Justice as a clear representation of consistently accepted right & wrong across society has been absent in many Western countries for decades. Peace crumbling is a symptom, not the illness.
Two-tier (multi-tier?) policing exists in Australia too.
Opportunity makes thieves.
Being able to commit crimes without any punishment brings out the worst in human beings. When victims have nothing left to lose, they start fighting back. None of what is happening in the UK now should be a surprise to anyone.
Is two-tier policing where the police do not arrest shoplifters?
Two-tier policing happens when Two-Tier Keir, as Director Of Public Prosecutions, failed utterly to address the iniquity of grooming gangs in the very towns where rioting is now taking place.
Karma, eh? Hopefully he’ll also eventually pay a price for letting Savile off the hook.
Also worth remembering when 2-TK starts talking about illegal immigration after these events, that as plain Keir Starmer QC he took the (then Labour) government to court and won the right for failed asylum seekers to indefinitely receive benefits from the public purse. Talk about a “pull factor”- even if your case for asylum is rejected you don’t get deported and the government pays you money every week for the rest of your life.
Be interesting to se the DPP files from the time if someone would care to leak them
If they haven’t conveniently destroyed them like Starmer’s Assange files.
Why the down votes you heroes
But didn’t that police man stamping on the head of a brown Muslim while he lay paralysed on the floor at least partly redeem the accusation of two tier policing?
How many more brown / Muslim people need to be attacked by the police before they are not considered two tier?
It seems the police cant win
You mean the man who attacked a policewoman and broke her nose before repeatedly punching a policeman who was trying to restrain another savage in the back of the head? Oh him. Yes, he should definitely have got the velvet-glove treatment off the copper he committed GBH against. Lucky they didn’t shoot him.
Lucky or unfortunately
I am not in the least surprised, if I had been, it would only have been because unrest has taken so long to breakout. Then again according to our Prime Ministers account my beliefs make me a member of the far right. For the record that is an armchair member not an activist.
People like you seem to be quite cheered up by the recent violence. I guess from your ‘arm chair’ its quite a fun spectator support?
I suspect once it comes your door step you will find it all a bit less amusing though
The anger and frustration simmering under the surface in all off us who endured lockdowns is making itself known. Many woke up then…as Joe Rogan says, ‘We lost a lot of people during that time, and most of them are still alive’. Latching on to a cause and allowing it to be amplified against common sense could be a way of payback: ‘I know it’s not logical what I’m doing ‘(applies to either Right or Left ) ‘but what you did to me for three years wasn’t logical either. The powers that be taught us rules don’t have to make sense, so why should forms of rebellion make sense?’ We are divided and fragmented and this was manipulated to be so; as we stumble forward searching for solutions my hope is that those who we didn’t lose will work together, combine their knowledge and find an answer acceptable to if not all then the majority.
Humans are always ‘simmering just under the surface’. To be alive is to feel injustice, pain and suffering. Blaming lockdown, climate change, immigration etc is just an excuse that allows us to vent our inherent anger with life.
Once we realise this we shall all calm down. Its called growing up
Right. It’s the tiny psychopathic minority of megalomaniacs versus the people, as it always has been and as it always will be. There will always be a significant proportion of the people who will see through the lies; there’ll always be some who won’t; and there will always be the tiny monitory of born liar-psychopaths who cloak themselves in power, status, and worldly goods that hide their insecurities and fears, from themselves as much as from others.
The key thing is for those who can see the liars for what they are is not to bicker over details (eg virus / no virus) and to be unrelenting in calling out the bigger lies. And, even more importantly than that, not to allow themselves to get duped into one or other psycho-drama. The psychopaths want you to be angry, because when you’re angry you can be manipulated a lot more easily. It doesn’t matter if you’re angry about climate change, angry about net zero, angry about Palestine, angry about Israel, angry about “far right” violence, or “woke left” politics (and, of course, the concomitant violence that goes with such ideology), as long as you are angry or resentful about something you are right where those emotionless maniacs want you to be. Calm, determined, stoic, sober people have the power to organise themselves effectively. Angry people do not.
They are always more afraid of us than we are of them. Jack is as good as his master and his master blinking well knows it.
So the spoilt brats ofJust stop oil are basically the same as the anti-i migration protesters in Liverpool and Middlesbrough.
They’re both Neo toddlers.
I don’t think so.
Nice Lego structure you built.
Very pleasing.
But I don’t think so.
It’s interesting how the media categorises. The form of protest by those regarded as right-wing is considered moronic and violent, something to be condemned and crushed because of its “ignorance”. But it’s not a lot different from black riots in America, whose public display of anger, justified by the left as their only outlet or way of being heard, is a result of their circumstances. It’s obviously a problem for some people to see young white men disenfranchised as much as young black men.
Whereas protests by the left are considered more thoughtful and meaningful because of their performative nature, which may be why they are so often supported by actors and artists.
Worth pointing out that both sets of protests are largely by young men on warm summer evenings as with so many riots across the world throughout history.
The grievances are real but so is opportunism and the fact that violence is fun for a higher proportion of young males than older men and women even if the latter groups experience worse conditions.
We know the left are hypocrites.
They know they are hypocrites.
They couldn’t care less.
The other Claire D again. I am finding this rather disturbing. Surely allowing another subscriber to use the same name opens the way to abuse.
Is it possible to change your own?
I don’t know. You and I have been commenting on here for quite a few years, would you feel like changing your name if another subscriber suddenly appeared using it ? I associate your name very much with your distinctive point of view.
As far as I know most forums do not allow names to be duplicated because of the risks involved.
Hey, I can change mine (If I can work out how)
That’s very generous of you, thank you very much.
I’m Spartacus
Why the down votes?
I would suggest you write to UnHerd Support about this. There are definitely serious problems with their system of managing the comments section and your situation is a case in point.
The system shouldn’t allow anyone to register under the already-taken name. Indeed, I remember that you’ve been under this name for years here and it’s very confusing for me (and other readers, am sure) that, all of a sudden, I am reading “your” comments, very untypical of you.
Thanks,
I did write and apparently, now, if you just use a capital letter for your surname as I do then a duplicated name is allowed.
I agree with you, the comments system does seem much more awkward than it used to be.
Not sure why the article contains so much implicit support for the Israeli state. As vile as Hamas is, and not get me wrong, they are truly vile, they aren’t the ones who keep sabotaging ceasefire negotiations and bombing neighbouring countries.
That’s funny. By bombing “neighbouring countries” do you mean those that attacked and continue to attack Israel? You make it sound like Israel sometimes gets a bit irritable and takes it out on the innocent neighbours.
Hamas have repeatedly refused ceasefire suggestions, including the most recent one approved by Israel. Hamas sabotaged what was a ceasefire by making war – by an invasion and massacre of civilians, and hostage-taking, and indicated that they intended to do it again and again…As for “bombing neighbouring countries”, do you mean Lebanon? They are merely returning fire directed at Israel by Hezbollah, which is defying a UN resolution. Do you know the ironic saying, ‘L’animal est mechant, quand on l’attaque il se defend.”?
I don’t know who you read on this subject but Israel is very much the party that is frustrating the hope of a ceasefire. They literally just assassinated the Hamas negotiator.
From Seymour Hersh’s recent Substack:
If that is true you might want to make clear why he’s resisting a ceasefire.
It is true. A month or two ago, Biden was saying that the Israelis had agreed to a ceasefire and everyone was just waiting for Hamas, whilst Netanyahu was making public statements that they rejected the ceasefire.
Hamas offered the return of all the hostages months ago. The Isrealis didn’t take them up on it and most of them are probably now dead.
As to suggesting why he’s doing it. No thanks. There are plenty of people here willing to argue the toss about observable facts. My speculation about Netanyahu’s motivations or those of any of the rest of the ghouls in his cabinet are no better informed than anyone else’s – I have no insight into the minds of psychopaths. But facts you can check.
Yes, Netanyahu refused their conditions, among which were the withdrawal of Gaza in exchange for hostages. So Hamas win with those conditions, They murder something like 1100 people, take hostages then barter with the hostages to return everything back to how it was in the beginning, It’s quite clear why he did it. Why are they ghouls or psychopaths? Yes, facts I can check and you cherry picked them to support your position. Which is what by the way?
This exchange is about who is refusing to agree to a ceasefire. The answer to that question is the Israelis. Hamas has offered terms, the Israelis have refused them. The US has tried to impose terms, Israel has refused them.
Remind me, has Israel offered terms and what are those terms? Is there a pathway to a lasting peace from their side.
This isn’t cherry picking.
My position is that there should be a lasting peace in the region. Two states, one state, some sort of hybrid, I don’t much care.
To your question of why they are called ghouls and psychopaths. You mention 1100 killed by Hamas. Strikingly, you don’t mention the number of Palestinians killed by Israel. That omission is a fact, and it reveals a bias. One which, understandably, would make it hard to appreciate why people call those responsible for that number of killings, which is increasing, ghouls and psychopaths. If their victims literally don’t count, how could their killers be called such things?
In other words, these people are suffering from arrested development. They lack self-control.
What is the quality of the education they receive? Are they deprived of a rigorous one in favour of one that emphasises feelings?
Deprivation causes crime. These protesters – like the rioters in the UK at present – are its victims.
In the UK, those people who are concerned about immigration, the climate or pollution but who are not deprived in any sense do not riot.
Yes, ignore them. And ignore, too, the silly sloganeering and manipulative, infantilising stunts put on by governments, “hands, face, space” … “see it, say it, sorted”. Ignore the left, ignore the right, ignore the centre, ignore the crisis actors, ignore the people goaded by the crisis actors, ignore the people triggered by the people who are goaded by the crisis actors, ignore the bullies behind podiums, ignore the bullies’ minions and their masters, ignore the press, ignore the TV, ignore films, definitely ignore the Olympics, ignore social media, ignore everything and anyone who you do not personally know, trust and love who is trying to compete for your attention. Pay attention only to those in your family, and in your community – that is, people with whom one communes, in real life, on a regular basis. And don’t forget to look up.
The Palestine and JSO protests are about minority issues that the vast majority of the public don’t care about. Those that do care about global warming or the interminable conflict the Holy Land are from minority groups – Muslims, Hoorah Henrys, etc.
The anti-immigration protests are about the number one issue for the man-on-the-street. Almost everyone in Britain agrees that immigration should be dramatically reduced, the boats should be stopped and the illegals deported.
They are not really the same thing at all.
The research does not agree with your assumptions. The public show more concern about the cost living, NHS, Crime, the economy, housing and climate change than immigration. They do consider immigration more a concern than ‘international conflict’ thought
Incidentally, only 52% consider immigration a concern. I am not saying I agree, I think its a huge issue. But we need to stop deluding ourselves that our views are ‘the peoples views’. That is a another attribute of recent protest movements, they all assume ‘they speak for the mass of the people’. It gives people an artificial confidence in their arguments and beliefs. We would perhaps stop to think a bit more if we realised most people do not agree with us.
“The research” doesn’t actually show that. Almost all polling puts immigration the third most important behind the economy and the NHS. Far ahead of “climate change”.
I would say all those issues you list: the cost of living, NHS, Crime, the economy, housing – are all symptoms of the massive population increase caused by uncontrolled immigration over the last couple of decades.
Not even.
In fact, 70% of the public want a ceasefire in Gaza with only 13% opposed. And the proportion of people who care about climate change (even if they don’t quite know what to do about it) is similarly overwhelming.
The truth is that both left and right protests are growing out of issues that the UK political class thought it could get away with ignoring for decades. Deindustrialisation, financialisation, the undermining of working conditions and labour power. Immigration is a sticking plaster for a problem the politicos decline to fix.
Almost all of these protests are inchoate expressions of majority concerns.
But if you only want to recognise the ones on your side as such, then itl’ll be all the easier for the establishment to ignore you.
There is a vast difference between answering an opinion survey and caring about an issue. No one in Britain – except for Muslims and Jews – gives a second thought to the Middle East. When pushed by a pollster, of course many want a ceasefire – people generally want peace – but no one is lying in bed at night worrying about it. Likewise global warming – in Britain we are lucky to get a couple of warm weeks a year. Other than that it rains. Except for BBC-types, does anyone really give a fig about it?
On the other hand, start a conversation about immigration with practically anyone in Britain and you get the same response – we want much less of it.
I’d like to see the questions asked that got the result that 70% of the public want to see a ceasefire in Gaza. Of course people want the war to end, but they also support Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself, and are no fans of Hamas (who would benefit from an immediate ceasefire).
And here is the link to yougov. so you can see the data for yourself. You could also have found this, although I wasn’t immediately able to find the underlying report
You are welcome to your opinions. If you’re in the 13% fine. But you just aren’t right about what other people think and the reason you aren’t right is, apparently because you aren’t terribly curious. The information above would have taken you seconds to find.
Very few of the people in my immediate circle lose much sleep about immigration but I know that it’s a huge issue for a lot of people because I’m curious about it and I talk civilly to people with whom I disagree.
The Suffragettes used shock activism.
These women were usually middle class. Emily Davison attended Kensington High School. Academically bright as well as winning a gold medal for swimming, she was awarded a bursary to study at the Royal Holloway College. After her education she became a teacher and governess.
Millicent Fawcett recorded in her memoir, What I Remember, that before the Suffragettes shock activism her organisation as well as the Pankhursts’ could stage huge peaceful marches with banners, bunting and brass bands but the press would cover them with a tiny column buried in the centre of newspapers. Obviously an attempt to bamboozle the public into thinking that this was a minor issue of no concern to most.
After the riots in 1911, unconnected with womens’ suffrage, where windows were smashed and fires were started, the Liberal government, (which had won a landslide victory in 1906 against the Conservatives, and at a time when Britain faced a possible war with Imperial Germany), decided that sharp sentences would deter anyone who might consider taking to the streets to cause violence.
Almost all of those arrested in Liverpool were given custodial sentences. The vans taking these convicted men to jail were escorted by cavalry troopers. Crowds sympathetic to the convicted men confronted the police and Hussars, throwing missiles at them. The troops opened fire, killing two of the protesters. Yet disorders continued in the provincial towns.
Today, the government has indicated that it intends to follow the same strategy of severe punishments for the rioters. History does not make this approach look promising as it is also to be attended by the same use of ‘a standing army’. Furthermore, if this ‘army’ is composed of police, it indicates the militarisation of what is a civilian organisation.
Is it likely that today a Lord Protector deploying his starmtroopers against the disadvantaged will achieve a different result than that achieved by Asquith?
Remember also: Peterloo.
There are already indications that the judiciary can’t and won’t be able to deal with this scale of prosecutions quickly, and we already knew before all this started that UK prisons were stuffed to bursting.
The suffragettes signally failed to achieve anything except notoriety. They were unpopular with the general public for their bombs, broken windows, arson and acid attacks on businesses, politicians and postboxes. Their violence delayed all women getting the vote until 1928. The wealthy women who were given the vote in 1918 were being rewarded for their contribution to the war effort.
Emily Davison was an extremist willing to commit suicide and in the process possibly kill a jockey and a horse, for her ’cause’. That was criminal behaviour and achieved nothing. That she is held up as a heroine is a sign of decades of successful brainwashing, it is deranged.
The ability to put down violent protest is essential for any government, what is so disturbing presently is that they appear to pick and choose which protests to put down, and, it seems to depend on the colour of your skin.
Spot on. Simon Webb’s book “The Suffragette Bombers” is recommended
I’m intrigued, but what is your point? That women would have got the vote earlier without the protests? With 20-20 hindsight, what would have been a more effective political action?
My point is that “shock activism” is ineffective in bringing about change.
“That women would have got the vote earlier without the protests ?”
Yes, that is indeed possible if not highly likely; several European countries gave all women the vote in 1918 including Germany and Poland. Finland women got the vote in 1906, Denmark in 1915. All Netherlands women got the vote in 1919.
“With 20-20 hindsight, what would have been a more effective political action ?”
The more moderate suffragist movement, supported by Conservative MPs like Arthur Balfour and Liberal MPs like David Lloyd George, was probably sufficient, ie the more effective political action to my mind would have been patient argument and pressure.
The franchise was inevitably being extended anyway as liberal democracy spread, but no government in it’s right mind rewards terrorist behaviour like that of the suffragettes, hence the wait until 1928 (there was no suffragette activity from 1914 onwards).
On the contrary, I think serious politics are at play here. Young British Muslims want separation from white Christian Britain as they once got from Hindu India.
How do they intend to achieve that though? Separate part of Britain off for themselves or make their belief system preeminent?
Please research the 1400 years of Muslim expansion … thankfully, their modus operandi is crystal clear, no secrets.
Well there is that chap trying to buy an island off Scotland to run as a Muslim homeland in Europe. It makes me scream with laughter when they criticise the Jewish state.
This article is classic elite deflection. People in Southport are rioting because the people rioting in airports have used mass immigration as a means of pauperising them. The people with orange hair are rioting because, having stolen all the wealth of the people in Southport, they don’t need to do anything productive and have become utterly self indulgent as a result.
It’s always about class.
And class is essentially about economics. It serves the right to make it all about culture, because they can appear to be aligned with the working class while preserving the economic status quo and deflecting the underlying causes of discontent. See Reform UK – property developer and city financier bluster about culture while following Liz Truss on economics. Same with Brexit- “elite deflection” as you aptly put it. Nice phrase, do you mind if I nick it?
Simply labeling every argument you disagree with as ‘Elite deflection’ is utterly meaningless. It makes debate impossible.
It’s the kind of defunct tactic that is used by the Marxists. ‘Well you would say that wouldn’t you, as you are a capitalist’
Although given your obsession with class, I suspect you may be utilizing Marxist theory anyway (even if unwittingly). Moreover many Just Stop Oil protestors are working class and many anti-immigration protestors are middle class. So even your clumsy attempt at class based politics is untrue.
There’s an irony here … UK governments have made promises to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands p.a.
We believed them and elected them accordingly but they haven’t reduced immigration they have massively increased it.
Along comes another election and more promises to reduce immigration, we vote accordingly and immigration continues to increase.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that that people resort to toddler tactics when they cannot be heard .. the lies are manifest.
No political parties have committed to reducing immigration other than the Tories. Most of the population do not vote for the Tories and have not for about 50 years
“…promises to reduce” Do we really believe? I reckon voters take such statements with a large pinch of salt knowing from long experience how politicians are incapable of distinguishing a pledge from a vague aspiration. Giveaways are when measures to fulfil the pledge are absent and when an issue’s separate elements are jumbled up and unprioritised.
In this case, the two migrant sources we hear most about – small boats and asylum seekers – are numerically speaking small-fry compared with other categories of overstayers. Policies that deter inward migration, or return those here illegally, even if workable, would differ greatly between these and from other much larger cohorts such as overstaying students and their nominal dependents.
Thank you for this psychobabble essay on ‘how to deal with bullies’. Children used to be left alone to handle this: by the time I was 12 (’50’s) there were no bullies left in my class. The school playground hosted regular ‘ritual’ fights, usually challenges on budding bullies, with cowboy style fisticuffs and an audience declared winner. Lessons were learned: the bully you fought had become your friend.
Now that female “adults” control the primary school playground …. well, here we are.
Females, of both sexes, obviously.
Interesting analysis. I would suggest that populations of the developed world have been infantilized, the way some people are protesting is just one manifestation of this. It’s also noteworthy that some of the famous activists being placed on a pedestal recently, were literally children.
It might be attractive to claim that this is all decadence and/or narcissism. Those elements seem to be there. However, the legitimacy of the protests might still be real. Importantly, I’d propose that contemporary society really forces people into this infantile state because of how it functions. Deleuze and Guattari wrote that late capitalist consumerism pushes people to be impulsive, anxious, constantly desiring and maintaining an unstable sens of self. In other words, a good consumer is someone who never quite becomes a stable adult and keeps consuming to constantly reinvent themselves. This condition permeates all of society including politics, the media and indeed protests.
The status quo does not seem to mind all of this too much. Children are much easier to manage than serious radicals who question the social contract and know precisely why. Contrary, with the toddler protesters it is much easier to pretend that you heard them and then ignore them and hope they will forget. Or use ‘There Is No Alternative’ arguments to end the discussion. Even though, very often that is simply not true if the protesters really study the problem.
Too many ‘serious radicals’ refrain from informed discussion, so end up demanding the impossible.
For example, simple A level Physics, studied at school, BEFORE university, shows that windmills cannot provide the Energy requirements needed by a Western nation without very disruptive changes. So why demand their use? To cause immense damage, on a national scale? The lies by omission, are obvious to those with basic Scientific knowledge, but it’s seemingly beyond all TV presenters or, at least, their controllers.
The same with Solar: yes, they can, sometimes, help with power demands in the middle of the day, like when the air conditioning is needed, which is when the Sun is shining! But for industrial processes, which need a reliable supply to avoid multi-million pound losses, both energy sources (wind and solar) are a ridiculous choice as a straight substitute for Hydrocarbon/Nuclear fuels. And domestic consumers expect power to be always available yet, on this aspect, silence has reigned. Without any sane proposals, and informed discussion about them, we are stuck with what we have.
While everyone may have a valid opinion, not all opinions are valid enough to be propagated, without informed discussion, continually, without any competition, especially when it comes to the Legacy Media. Yes, I’m talking about the BBC, and others.
Well, they are not really the serious radicals I had in mind.
Alone, no. But hardly anyone is advocating for their use as a single solution. If an opinion is based on the assumption that people want one silver bullet from windmills… well, it’s tilting at the very same.
Overwhelmingly, what’s being advocated is an ecosystem of solutions — often including nuclear. Although we’re concentrating on energy, many solutions in this ecosystem focus on other arenas that need to change, so that our use of energy is wiser.
But the challenge today isn’t so much generation as storage. We don’t need to rely on every day being sunny! Again, same issue as above, a fundamental assumption leading to a misinformed opinion. And with regard to storage, there has been remarkable progress, with a lot of new innovation. To take one of many examples:
https://rondo.com/
As for the term “radicals”: we are in radical trouble, and therefore thinking in terms of radical change is appropriate. It won’t come from incremental tinkering with the status quo. In that regard, a radical POV (“from the roots”) seems to me reasonable and rational. I think the stakes are far too high to think otherwise.
Can you point to a relatively easy read on this? I notice it everywhere, even to a lesser degree in myself, this feeling that just one more expensive handbag or watch and I will be somehow complete. A completeness that never actually comes.
Yes. First of all, I find Deleuze and Guattari very hard to read and understand myself. Like a lot of work in the postmodern realm it sometimes borders the nonsensical for the sake of it, at least for me. Nevertheless, their work on “Capitalism and Schizophrenia” and control societies are quite relevant, in my opinion.
Mark Fisher in his book Capitalist Realism is a good easy read about this, he refers to them quite a bit. I also generally like the Adam Curtis documentaries, he has a lot of material about consumerism and what it does to our psyche. What I find fascinating is that consumerism seems to permeate everything. Big capital co-opting activism and politics using advertisement tactics to manufacture consent. That’s why I thought it might be relevant to this essay.
Thank you very much for taking the time.
And once again, we’ve been told, it’s been explained, and now we know: the demonstrators are just toddlers throwing tantrums. That simplifies things considerably. “We are mature. They are infants.” “The males of the Right are insecure in their manhood.” Ignore them and they will go away.
Enjoyed the piece, but out of control toddlers are dangerous and unpredictable in a way that mature adults are not – so politicians and the media are forced to listen to them.
If rational adults want to achieve something politically (even something that makes perfect sense) a good strategy might be to stir up the toddlers – or indeed to act like toddlers themselves.
Aren’t politicians a bit like toddlers too: “if you keep doing that you’re going to get hurt; if you keep doing that you’re going to get hurt; if you keep doing that you’re going to get hurt.
There, I told you you were going to get hurt!
Neo-toddlerism is the perfect description of American progressives $ Democrats.
Hmm. Clever extremely little idea however when governments develop a tin ear for years or indeed many decades on end refusing to listen to the majority beyond their coccoon – as if they were a Bourbon eleite – then the so called “toddlers” (so patronising don’t you think?) tend to erupt. Remember the French revolution?
The right is nothing like the left. The few genuine ‘far right’ head bangers have nothing to do with the right. The tens of thousands of violent ANTIFA and BLM protestors are locked into the highest echelons of the Labour and Democrat parties….The ARE the left.
The violent BLM riots were encouraged and praised. The campus takeovers by pro-terrorist occupiers were tolerated and joined by professors. The Covid lies created Us vs Them divisions and kept people locked away from each other. Antifa, Occupy Wall Street, ACAB, JSO – all destructive and acting with near impunity.
But praying in front of an abortion abattoir or making a documentary about grooming gangs gets one tossed in jail. Is it any wonder that the ignored and abused have had enough?
Please give this a listen. This guy is a historian on YouTube from Southport. So he had an inkling what went on…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvA9odna5dw
That was a whole lot of words to say something every human being has known for generations: you get more of what you allow. When people can act like toddlers without repercussions, they will continue doing so and the bad behavior will escalate. The BLM and antifa mobs were allowed to run wild in the summer of 2020, the pro-Hamas protesters are given deference over law-abiding people going about their business, and the criminal justice system (certainly in the US) is purposely failing.
Don’t whine now because people whose complaints about unchecked immigration were ignored and dismissed found themselves with no good recourse. And for god’s sake, stop with the infernal “both sides” nonsense. It’s not both sides. It’s one side that was allowed to run rampant for years, making it clear to the other side that this was how to get attention. When well-behaving kids see brats get their way by acting out, what do you think will happen?
Right wing protesters are treated more harshly than Left wing protesters!
If 5 years is considered appropriate for the annoying and disruptive but (acknowledged by the judge) Non violent, just stop oil protesters, what can those arrested for firebombing hotels and hospitalising members of the police force expect?
What a magnificent knob this guy is. His Twitter bio proclaims him a “saboteur of narratives”. Ha, neotoddler indeed.
Generally speaking, people protest when there is no more legitimate outlet for their grievances (reasonable or unreasonable).
For decades, parties of ostensible left and ostensible right have been told that there is no alternative to either financialised capitalism or unlimited migration (to pick just one example from the “left” and one from the “right”).
If that political striaghtjacket is producing a stable society in which, by and large, most people are getting better off (see, e.g. Singapore) then you will get relatively little protest. However, if that society is increasingly failing at basic civilisational functions and there is no political safety valve then you will get dissent, protest and “street politics” (see, e.g. the fall of the soviet union and its satellites, the arab spring, etc).
To complain that any given rioter/protestor/malcontent lacks a fully fleshed out political programme is moronic. Especially in view of the fact that the major political parties in most western countries – whose actual job it is to articulate such a programme – are manifestly failing to do so. Remind me how the UK is responding to the rise of China or fixing the housing market – oh, right, thought not.
This douchenozzle isn’t even a corporatist shill – he’d be horrified by the suggestion that he’s mindlessly parroting the status quo. He thinks that he’s a free thinker and above all that stuff. In reality, he’s simply a contrarian wind-up merchant.
What an excellent article – the best I have read on Unherd for some time. It explains a lot – including the responses from politicians on all sides to current “rioting catastrophe”
Thank you
Interesting perspective, but not all protesters fit into this catagory, some people have genuine grievances. Usually the nes who are least valued or protected.
It appears the author is engaging in his own neotoddlerism too, by unfairly slagging off Tommy Robinson as inciting the riots. Clearly, he needs to do more research before jumping on the MSM bandwagon.
The trouble is that it’s the government which is behaving like a nursery full of toddlers at the moment. The woke chickens have finally come home to roost, and Starmer, Cooper, Phillips et al simply can’t cope with their own cognitive dissonance.
Agree a lot with this, though think the author misses the strong sense of entitlement in middle-class protestors.
None of this is new though. In the 1970s there were significant bombing camapigns in the US “In a single eighteen-month period during 1971 and 1972 the FBI counted an amazing 2,500 bombings on American soil, almost five a day.” and ‘armed struggle’ across Europe.
In the 1980s riots were common in the UK, not just in cities but in the so-called “rural riots”.
https://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-burrough/
All planned and all happening so they can bring in global governance. Next digital IDs, biometric data for your safety, digital currencys trackable, then your freedoms eradicated. Stop being so weak and over intellectualising everything, use some critical thinking, its so easy to see. No difference between labour and conservatives, all puppets!
Terrific post and you’re right, the common thread running through both activist lefties and knuckle-dragging rightists is the ease and speed by which they revert to tantrums.
The only bit I sort of disagreed with was the bit about parents ignoring toddlers’ tantrums. If I ever dared have a tantrum when I was a child, my mother would take me to one side and read me the riot act. Alternatively, simply ignoring your child’s tantrums when out in public rather inflicts those tantrums on others. But yes, as far as adults acting out goes, the best way is probably to ignore them.
In the United States, the May, 2020 riots–purportedly all prompted by the death of George Floyd–included arson, mayhem, and the violent deaths of dozens of people in over 140 cities. Damages totaled over $2 Billion.
This was hardly a progressive non-violent temper tantrum. It was a destructive, deadly catastrophe for millions of people.
I would suggest the author’s premise applies to some people in some situations, but it’s hardly that useful in dealing with the reality of civil unrest and government indifference to its own citizens.
In every one of the instances he offers as examples the old verity cui bono (or in modern day parlance “Show me the money!”) should guide everyone’s search for causes.
Very satisfying read on many levels… It really is about childish histrionics. Idiots!
I like the term “Neotoddlers”, what you expect as they were all raised either by boomers or liberal gen-xers.
As more I see how others are around I start to respect my parents more for giving me a foundation to handle stuff without too much drama
The protestors are of course enabled by an infantile media who like the pictures.