Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

You UKers are lucky, at least you don't have Brigid Delaney in your edition. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/series/brigid-delaneys-diary

since clicking on that link, every time i open the app it takes me to that page. so yes my guardian app is definitely worse than it used to be.

sorry!

So I guess we're just uncritically reporting nazi propaganda now https://t.co/OgCdmVaYWz

— Crowsa Luxemburg (@quendergeer) April 26, 2018

just when their Windrush coverage was getting them deserved applause, they go do a much worse than they used to be thing like this.

"Wave of Immigration" is a not bad Pixies song iirc

Pixies outed as MAGA hat wearers shockah!

come on if there's anybody you wouldn't be surprised to see Trumping it up

the graun piece is just parroting some racist Trump supporting former Republican senator's ignorant claptrap, not good.

we have to secure a future for white Christendom tho

While you're here, we have a favour to ask...

I know it's hardly the worst of the Graun's crimes, but this guy should probably try reading Watchmen
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/apr/27/what-if-superheroes-arent-really-the-good-guys

El guardián de toledo, 1650:

Are popular romances of chivalry actually a bit silly and preposterous?

tbf the article does mention watchmen (once!) but yeah it's an insight-free rehash of every 'wot if the good guys... are actually bad' article written since 1987

zoe williams has a piece in today's grauniad on 'bad nationalism' which begins

i was on a panel last week, talking about good nationalism and bad nationalism. The difference, to me, is pretty plain, though not without controversy. Good nationalism is a certain specific solidarity based on the things you have created together, as a nation, and the things you aspire to create: you could call it, for short, Danny Boyle nationalism, and it takes in the NHS, the industrial revolution, the internet, as well as other less cinematic things, such as the sewage system.

i mean you could call it 'danny boyle nationalism' for short but you know what's shorter? 'socialism'

NHS: created together as a nation as thousands of doctors flocked to give up their lucrative private practices and demanded it
the industrial revolution: FUCK OFF ZOE YOU HIGH

i certainly feel a swell of pride when i think of enclosures and child labour and the brutal exploitation of our foreign empire

the internet is cinematic now?

just off to the local picturehouse to read insta brb

nationalism is one of these things that are a certain kind of liberal is desperate to reclaim because so many good honest people feel it, but the same liberals seem less bothered about reclaiming racism, homophobia and the lust to execute wrong'uns

It's a bit like masculinity discussions where every time ppl try to come up with a "good" version it turns out to be stuff so generic that there's really no point in attributing it to a specific group at all.

both things suffer from essentialist, exclusive definitions. despite the badness of this sort of collective pride, unilaterally dispensing with widely-used parts of ppls identity doesn't seem like a winner in the medium term

i don't think there's anything you could or should do to interfere with people's enjoyment of these feelings, just don't cheerlead for them in the press

I am not aggressively against ppl wanting to claim them in harmless contexts but I don't think I can take that very seriously w/o feeling like I am fundamentally trying to fool myself.

xpost

Good Nationalism: taking pride in things you were in no way responsible for, which often were very bad things, because your ancestors were either too badly fucked over by said things to be able to escape them or too comfortable and complicit in them to have the imagination to move somewhere else.

she addressed that when she said "a few dead children are a price well worth paying for a stirring Danny Boyle tribute to James Bond at the Olympics"

"also remember when we gathered together as a nation to make Cambridge Metallica the number name in whatever it is they actually do"

All these 'we need a progressive patriotism' pieces, when they don't just descend quickly into obnoxious Strasserism, are always just pure waffle. I'm prepared to believe Zoe Williams' piece is more the harmless second type than the former type (I'm not gonna read it, lol)

the one hand sieg heils the other tbf

there's a gap left between the desirability & probable long term benefits of individuals being able to at least nominally disengage from these collective definitions, and collectively being able to deal with them as real extant forces in the world as it is

From the article

I have no problem with a bordered civic identity: our borders describe the limits of our democratic agency. Patriotism is democracy, distilled: satisfaction and solidarity rooted in having created the conditions in which generosity and innovation could thrive. I could admire another country – it’s most likely Denmark, let’s face it – but I wouldn’t take pride in it, except at the generic level of the species.

Scottish Nationalists love to tell you their brand of nationalism is different because it's about escaping from Tory rule and into the arms of the SNP's socialist-leaning policies. And in a way, they're right, but at it's core, it's still about creating a divide between People Like Us and People Like Them. I hate nationalism because so many times in my life I've been a Them and not an Us and it's the worst. I hate that people think closing the border and protecting our own is a morally better position than having our 55 MPs in Parliament making it difficult for the Tory Government to easily enact all the cuts and policies they would like to.

^wtf, jeezo.

Being part of the United Kingdom is already establishing a People Like Us vs People Like Them though, no? It's how nation states work at this juncture, and I'm not convinced being in a larger piece of land automatically makes that less pronounced (China and the US are two obvious counter-examples).

i think the European-style 19th century Romantic nation-states probably do breed a different style of nationalism but it's obviously not their exclusive domain

i don't think there's much of a "what is to be done?" here as long as nation-states/representative democracies/evil empires exist in their current forms - nationalism is woven deep into the fabric of what made these things what they are

and obviously it's easy and natural for every human being to care about the human beings close to them and treat the ones that are as lesser, weird and disposable. so all is for the best.

"the ones that aren't" i mean

Scottish Nationalists love to tell you their brand of nationalism is different because it's about escaping from Tory rule and into the arms of the SNP's socialist-leaning policies. And in a way, they're right, but at it's core, it's still about creating a divide between People Like Us and People Like Them. I hate nationalism because so many times in my life I've been a Them and not an Us and it's the worst. I hate that people think closing the border and protecting our own is a morally better position than having our 55 MPs in Parliament making it difficult for the Tory Government to easily enact all the cuts and policies they would like to.

i don't even know where to start with this but it saddens me and baffles me in equal measure. the only border that's being put up is as a result of england and wales voting scotland and northern ireland out of the european union. 55 westminster mps don't make anything hard for a tory government. they can't and they especially can't if the opposition party decides to e.g. abstain on a welfare bill that will plunge tens of thousands of people further into abject poverty. the united kingdom is utterly f'king toxic.

On the other hand, Saturday's march features a giant banner from Siol Nan Gaidheal front and centre. An organisation started by one of the Settler Watch guys and formally expelled from the SNP umbrella by Gordon Wilson as "proto-fascists" but now seemingly on the good guys list because 'my enemy's enemy' and all that.

Today in the Guardian, a very friendly and flattering piece ahead of UK tour dates by this guy

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/may/08/jeff-dunham-offensive-puppets-voice-trumps-america-achmed-dead-terrorist-jose-mexican-immigrant

Presume all anyone needs to know is contained in url there

I don't think the url quite captures the awestruck sycophancy, but aside from that yes, it does.

Scottish Nationalists love to tell you their brand of nationalism is different because it's about escaping from Tory rule and into the arms of the SNP's socialist-leaning policies. And in a way, they're right, but at it's core, it's still about creating a divide between People Like Us and People Like Them. I hate nationalism because so many times in my life I've been a Them and not an Us and it's the worst. I hate that people think closing the border and protecting our own is a morally better position than having our 55 MPs in Parliament making it difficult for the Tory Government to easily enact all the cuts and policies they would like to.

assuming you know fine well that Scottish nationalist political groupings are less xenophobic and more open to immigration than the unionist parties in Scotland. And that the unionist parties, especially the tories, but also labour, are also nationalist parties in their own way. Tories being hugely jingoistic british nationalists, xenophobic, anti-irish and anti-refugee, and labour being in favour of leaving the single market and fucking over EU citizens in the UK.

On the other hand, Saturday's march features a giant banner from Siol Nan Gaidheal front and centre. An organisation started by one of the Settler Watch guys and formally expelled from the SNP umbrella by Gordon Wilson as "proto-fascists" but now seemingly on the good guys list because 'my enemy's enemy' and all that.

― Bimlo Horsewagon became Wheelbarrow Horseflesh (aldo), Tuesday, May 8, 2018 9:56 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there might be merit in having physically assaulted the SNG activists and huckled them from the rally which would have been the alternative to them marching, but I'm sure you can see why that might have been a difficult option.

there were islamists marching in the anti-iraq war march in glasgow in 2003, i suppose anyone who was part of that should be tarred by that brush as well?

Saturday wasn't the first example of them still being part of 'team indy', they posed for photos with Salmond in 2014 for example and Sturgeon gave a thumbs up on Twitter to a photo of their banner this weekend. Phillipa Whiteford and Joanna Cherry both photographed with them in Glasgow Green after the march. They've been actively courted. Or there's Sonja Cameron, vetted in as a councillor in Stirling last year despite having been an active member of the SNLA and Settler Watch.

The party and their supporters aren't any different to any other party and supporters, and indulging in thoughts that they're any kind of special chosen people is just another shade of bigotry (as is 'we are all like this, you are all like that').

im not an SNP supporter, but "there are fringey loons among affiliated with this party" is something that can be said about all the major political parties in the uk. forgive me for the whatabouttery

also forgive the awful failure of english language that has just occurred with that last post

That's my point.

i say this as a non-Scot so if it's nonsense excuse me but it's struck me since before the referendum that there's a sizeable chunk of the Scottish electorate for who the "nationalist" bit of the SNP is the least important/attractive thing about them?

Then what is?

If it's EU membership, for example, the official position is to be part of the single market but not join without total reform of the CFP.

even before Brexit became a thing i'd've thought part of the USP was an escape from the endless cycle of Tory and Tory Labour governments that the UK looked locked into

i’ve voted snp in the past despite being at best agnostic about independence purely because they were the most leftwing party on the ballot at those points in time