I wrote another post-in-the-comments (from here and on), about the fading populist spirit from the Trump years, as shown by the greater emphasis on race and gender than class when right-wingers were reacting to the final phase of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.
Namely, freaking out that so many women on the jury meant it was over for him, without asking whether those women had college degrees or not. And being unaware that Kenosha is one of the prototypical counties that had been loyal Democrats for decades, before flipping to Trump twice, due to de-industrialization, and the lack of nationally-connected employers that would make the place a magnet for over-produced elite aspirants and parasites looking for their QE handouts.
There's also a shift back to portraying the enemy of Trump, Rittenhouse, and whoever else on that side, as blue-haired cat ladies who majored in gender studies and post on TikTok. This is a fake enemy that does not exist. The real enemy is a blonde doggy mommy who lives in the suburbs, posts on Twitter (like the right-wingers themselves), and majored in a field that Rush Limbaugh Boomers would've praised as a "real major" -- law, business, or STEM.
To counteract the drift back toward performative culture wars within the upper-middle class, of the Bush and Obama years, we need to re-ignite the left-right alliance against the bitterly despised elites that was the norm of online political types just a few years ago.
The only thing I can do right now in this brief post is point you toward another podcast to listen to, and group of people to interact with on Twitter. If you're reading this blog, you're probably already familiar with Aimee Terese and the ladies from Red Scare. But I don't think I've mentioned some of the others very often.
Red Star Radio (twitter here) is the purest example of the left side of the left-right alliance. Anti-capitalist lefties, but who are against the dehumanizing cultural project of the left. Opposed to the hysterical scientism from the media about COVID-19, the lockdowns, the vaccines, masking, government mandates, etc. Also did recent episodes defending basic civil liberties in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, and a new one about the questionable models behind the hysterical scientism related to climate change.
Co-hosts are Brit Alexander McKay -- member of Mancs for Marxist Masculinity -- and Canadian Leila Mechoui -- booster of Berber Babes for Bolshevism. (She hasn't explicitly said what her background is, but pretty sure it's Moroccan, or Maghrebi at any rate.) Good-natured, lighthearted, not irony-poisoned or emotivist, and not an audition for a "news comedy" show.
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To add some substance to this plugging post, when I get back to the series on national dialects and ethnogenesis, the case of Britain will distinguish Northern from Southern dialects. And since we rarely get to hear Brits speaking conversationally -- usually only in songs or news media presentations -- you can listen to McKay for understanding the Northern dialects and regional cohesion vs. hostility.
Southern dialects, along the meta-ethnic frontier against the French, departed from the historical norm by lowering their vowels. This happened especially during the Great English Vowel Shift, which arose as Southerners came into intense conflict with France during the Norman Invasion and the Hundred Years War, and wanted to mark themselves as the True English, fighting on the front lines against The Other -- unlike the Northerners who were farther removed from the conflict, and whose traditional pronunciation we want to distinguish ourselves from.
This change was less imitated in the North, so that up there "luck" and "look" have more or less the same vowel (a higher vowel, whatever it is by micro-region), whereas "luck" in the South has a lower "uh" vowel like we use in America and Canada. However, Americans are a mix of Northern and Southern English, so we also use the higher, unchanged vowel as Northerners when it's written with "a". E.g., Northerners pronounce "last" as Americans & Canadians do (the trad way), whereas Southerners changed it to the lower "open wide and say ah" vowel.
The podcast is also useful to appreciate another aspect of ethnogenesis, namely that there is much tighter cohesion along the meta-ethnic frontier, and more internecine hostility farther away from it. So, the Southeast and Southwest of England feel very close to each other, despite the Southwest being more rural and the Southeast being more urbanized. They're still both Southerners -- the True English who were forged in the crucible of the conflict against the French.
Whenever McKay, who's from the Northwest, has to mention someone from the Northeast (say, Paul Joseph Watson), he reflexively gets in a dig about how they're a worthless Yorkshireman. Far away from the frontier against the French, the civil wars between Lancaster and York never fully faded away. Such hostility between neighbors did not survive along the Southern border, as they were compelled into a larger collective by the conflict with France.
To put it in American terms, the British South is like the American "West" (from the Midwest out to the Pacific coast), and their North is like our East. The standard national dialect in America is Western, whereas the least nationally normative are those along the East Coast, whether Northeastern or Southeastern. And the entire West coast is well unified, from SoCal up to Seattle, whereas the Civil War never fully faded away between the Northeast and Southeast. Even within the Northeast, Boston and New York are bitter enemies, in a way that is impossible between Seattle and San Francisco on the West coast.
That's because the meta-ethnic frontier in America has been out West, against the Indians (and later on and more briefly, the Japanese Empire).
Secession has already taken place among Northern Brits, when Ireland split off 100 years ago. (They can deny they're any sort of British, but everyone knows they're from the same family of islands and peoples.) And Scotland recently got as far as putting independence up to a popular vote. That will never happen anywhere in the South, and Celtic revival (i.e., de-Britishization of their ethnicity) has been weakest in Cornwall, as it's part of the South, compared to Ireland, Scotland, and Wales in the North.
The American version of this is that secession will never take place out West, whereas the East is most vulnerable to fragmentation. It reveals the cluelessness of various separatist "movements" (whites only, right-libertarians, anarcho-libs, whoever else), that they chose places in the Northwest as their spot to breakaway from the national government. In reality, it will be Florida (back East) that breaks away de jure, and recently has already begun to de facto.
As a Brit from the South of England i think it will be relevant to add my view on this issue: The South of England while having conflict with France since the Norman invasion is also somewhere where a lot of the elites live, i think your comment about the South being like the west of America is correct but also one could say there are similarities with the NE of America especially which is not surprising as a lot of people there originated from SE England, especially the puritans, i remember you wrote a post about Connecticut and the lack of social cohesion there compared to other parts of the States, this made me think about just how similar that state is to typical southern English counties where people are more withdrawn from strangers and less outgoing in public. I am not sure as to why the southern English accent does not have the continental pronunciation but your theory is quite convincing, it makes me think of how the Spanish pronounce some English words in quite a Northern way as well. I think one of the reasons why there is less SE and SW conflict in Britain is because of the low population density of the SW along with the fact that a lot of the population is older and not from there but emigrants from SE England, the North especially with it's Leeds-Liverpool conurbation numbering over 5 million really does see itself as a rival to the South and has never gotten over(and quite rightly too) it's post industrial decline, the region has not thrived like London has in the past 40 years.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm talking just about the cultural elites / innovators / vanguard, not for the political or mercantile domains necessarily.
ReplyDeleteIn some countries, like Britain, all three are in the same place (Southeast England).
But in America the cultural elite, who have driven American ethnogenesis, are out West, while the political and mercantile elites are back East.
In Pakistan, the cultural and political elites are in the same place (Lahore and Islamabad, in the north), and the mercantile center is somewhere else (Karachi, in the south). Northern Pakistanis have driven their ethnogenesis, lying on the fierce frontier between the various NW Indian empires to their east (most recently the Mughals), and the Iranian and Afghani empires to their west. Not much invader action in the Sindh or Balochistan, in the south.
Pop density is fairly light in the East Midlands and Northeast as well, whereas most of the population of the North is either NW or right in the center of the North. And yet they're bitter rivals with each other, unlike the same rural vs. urban divide in the South.
ReplyDeleteDitto for Scotland, even further away from the French frontier. The urbanized South looks down on the rural North / Highlands, to a greater degree than the London area does to Cornwall.
And there are also intense rivalries between neighbor cities, like Glasgow and Edinburgh, both of which lie in the urbanized South, but one is western and the other eastern. Similar to Boston vs. New York in America, or Lancashire vs. Yorkshire in England.
That's not even mentioning Ireland vs. Northern Ireland!
It's understandable why the Leeds-Liverpool region is hostile to the South of England -- but they are also so hostile toward one another up there. That's the strange thing.
Actually, it's the cohesion of the South that is unusual and needs explanation. Most places around the world view their close neighbors with suspicion and hostility. Only when they find themselves up against an advancing meta-ethnic frontier do they start putting those minor differences aside and forming super-regional identities.
Interesting what you say, i never understood the rivalry between Yorkshire and Lancashire, it could be something that goes back to the times of the Saxons and Celts with Lancashire being more Celtic, less Blonde, more Brunet and in very much so a Northern continuation of Wales. Anyway when up in the North most of the hatred seems to be directed at the Southern elites rather than at Yorkshire or Newcastle etc but there is a very real dislike of Liverpool who they all rightly view as being less British. The Glasgow-Edinburgh rivalry is very much class based with Glasgow being an extremely working class city and Edinburgh being even more middle class than London or most English cities, again it could also be a Celtic vs Germanic thing too, Edinburgh people are very much more Germanic and in a sense British than Glaswegians. I think a lot of the South feels united by it's proximity to London, the large part of southern England is in the London commuter belt and a person from Southampton will not even be aware of the existence of other southern cities like say Norwich or Exeter, i think it is the general ruralness or small townness of the South that makes people from there think more about London than other southern cities that are generally small and dormitories for London.
DeleteCan't forget Canadian ethnogenesis, after mentioning Leila. They never faced a fierce meta-ethnic frontier, so they famously do not have an intense national identity like we Americans do.
ReplyDeleteBut to the extent that they do have a mellowed-out identity, it's mainly driven by the West as well, from the Prairie out to Vancouver on the Pacific coast. Similar to the Midwest-to-Pacific basis of American cultural identity.
The main rivalry is between Tumblr: The City (Toronto) and Montreal, both back East. That is also where separatism has been greatest, namely in Quebec. Even now, Quebec has halfway seceded from federal politics by only voting for the Bloc Quebecois, which is not a major national party outside of the province, and just represents the province in the post-election negotiations about forming a coalition.
Language plays a large role in that rivalry, since Quebec speaks an entirely different language, French, not just a different dialect.
My sense is that, like America, the local Ontario dialects back East are less prestigious and normative -- the ones everyone makes fun of. Even more so for the Maritime dialects along the Atlantic coast, similar to East coast American dialects. The desirable, normative ones are out West, in Vancouver, which sound highly similar to Pacific-coast American dialects.
However, since ethnogenesis is not very strong in Canada, they do have rivalries out West as well, just not as intense. Namely Edmonton vs. Calgary in the province of Alberta. But Alberta does not have its own provincial party for federal elections, and outright separatism is non-existent out there.
North vs. South comparisons, within an interval of the East-West dimension, are not possible in Canada because everyone lives in a one-dimensional line along the American border.
Of course, most hatred from Northerners is directed at Southerners, and vice versa, within Britain. It's easier to hate people who are farther away than one's neighbors.
ReplyDeleteBut what's happening at the next level down in the nested hierarchy of identities? Northerners will absolutely hate on each other, whereas Southerners generally will not.
The origins of the Lancashire vs. Yorkshire rivalry are not what's important, but the fact that they continue to be bitter rivals, whereas regions in the South who may have had similar causes for rivalry have suppressed them and remained unified.
Glasgow vs. Edinburgh may be class-based, but why is this rivalry allowed to fester out in the open? In Southern England there are some places that are lower-status than London -- pretty much anywhere is lower than London, a global city. And yet no bitter status-based hatred like you'd find up north.
Also, Glaswegians not only hate and look down on posh Edinburgh, they make fun of people from nearby Stirling as well, and there's nothing posh about that city or its accent.
There is simply a higher degree of hostility between neighboring places in Scotland, whether there is a class divide between them or not.
Correct, i think it could be that people in the South feel less rooted to their town perhaps? though that can't be the whole story, perhaps Saxon descended people are naturally less volatile than northern and western Celts? You do raise some good points and all i can say is that i think it is down to the general mentality, Scots and Northerners are generally more emotional, Southerners are not and so the former will be more riled up over things than Southerners.
DeleteRed Scare x Alex Jones convo drops right on synchronicity schedule. Anti-establishment nature is healing. :)
ReplyDeleteAlso, I searched the twitter of that horrendous DuPage County Democrat social media manager (Mary Lemanski), who was gloating about the terrorist attack on the Christmas parade in Waukesha, WI, as revenge for the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict.
Surprise, surprise -- she's a doggy mommy! No weird hair, on Twitter rather than Tumblr or TikTok, basic-bitch striver, from an affluent suburb of Chicago, etc., just like I said. Caricatures from Rush Limbaugh are not coming for your kids -- it's the AWFLs.
I don't mean that in the sense that the AWFLs are hiring and directing a lower army of freakazoids. Even those low-ranking jannies, like the county-level Democrats' social media manager, are mainly AWFLs.
BTW, her bitch-ass got FIRED and tossed to the curb. Remember to follow up with news of victory in such cases, social mediaites!