The party will follow the usual template: tea, cupcakes, flags upon flags upon flags, wartime slogans and songs, and the performance of a very specific type of Englishness – the Englishness of Fry and Laurie rather than This Is England. One harks back to the empire while the other attempts social realism.
This kind of middle-class nationalism, rooted in a confected history of postwar austerity, has been resurgent in the years since the last royal wedding. The ubiquity of the Keep Calm and Carry On poster is the most obvious symbol. As the writer Owen Hatherley puts it, the cultish signifier points to the “enduring pretension of an extremely rich (if shoddy and dilapidated) country, the sadomasochistic Toryism imposed by the coalition government of 2010–15, and its presentation of austerity in a manner so brutal and moralistic that it almost seemed to luxuriate in its own parsimony”.
Sigh.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a demonstration of shared community is just a demonstration of shared community. We Brits might do this with a street party for some royal occasion or other occasionally. In other parts of the world it’s done a little differently. Perhaps in a Catholic country it’s the fiesta for the local saint’s day. The Czechs celebrate something very close to Beltane (pre-slavic Celt from what I garnered from the translation).
Shrug.
Look, they just hate us. They can wrap it up and disguise it in as much verbiage as they can, but in the end it is just simple hate. They look at ordinary people, families, and just despise them. They always have and they always will.
From Wiki:
Hatherley has described himself as a communist “at least in the sense in which the word was used in The Communist Manifesto”. He wrote that “revolution might be a rather exciting thing, one that would transform the world, and transform space, for the better. Worth doing. Why not try it.”[8]
Sigh.
He’d be liquidated within six months. He says it because he knows that it would never happen, so he can continue to wallow in adolescent fantasies (while earning moolah for doing so).
It’s the sort of funhouse mirror version of reality, where relative prosperity is “sadomasochistic Toryism” but criticism of the Eastern bloc is overplayed.
In other news, Labour scratches head because it cannot connect with Labour voters. It’s a mystery.
Not the “middle-class” reference. In fact most such street parties tend to be in working class areas, but the Guardian cannot reveal its hatred of the English working class so instead disguises it.
Beltane ? Are you sure about that Tim ? My Czech pal was a bit confused . They celebrate May Day and the End of the War. I’m not sure that they even celebrate Corpus Christi, unlike the Germans and Austrians ( they call it Fronleichnam, which sort of translates as Happy Corpse – Luther described the holiday as a “disgrace”).
Anyway the Celts were pretty big in these parts, there are lots of barrows and circles in Lower Austria near wher I used to live up by the border. They first arrived around 1800 BC and joined the great migrations when the Romans went home and it became a bit unsafe.
Akin to, not quite Beltane. Having a fire and throwing the ashes into the river??. Sure, there are various spring rites (the commies pushed May Day for example) but we had this conversation a few weeks back when it was all going on in the pub. Definitely linked to those Celtic festivals.
“The Queen’s birthday has unleashed a pernicious new patriotism”
How dare you like your own country! Obviously it leads to all sorts of horrors like not wanting to import millions of third-world peasants.
This particular type of grey misery was first identified by Chesterton in “The Secret People”:
“They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.”
In 2011 a friend and I smartly fled to the phone-reception-bereft Scottish Highlands to avoid the royal wedding
Meanwhile, the better sort of Briton was using the wedding as an excuse to have some fun.
“How dare you like your own country! Obviously it leads to all sorts of horrors like not wanting to import millions of third-world peasants.”
Thee elites have decided that nationalism and only nationalism causes wars – hence the nation state must be abolished, along with ethnic homogeneity and identity.
They really do fucking hate us…
What Flubber said to which I would add but unfortunately they don’t fear us amd that is the fundamental thing we need to change.
With out wishing to advovate violent revolution, it behoves all to arm ourselves to the (meagre) limit allowed by the law and possibly more (not that difficult by all accounts) and to be as generally stroppy as possible.
We’ve seen that the ira and isis get whatever they want paid for by us. So fuck them all let’s fight for whatvteh fuck WE want.
“Thee elites have decided that nationalism and only nationalism causes wars – hence the nation state must be abolished, along with ethnic homogeneity and identity.”
Yes, but only in Europe and North America. Strange that.
The Queen’s 90th Birthday was April 21st 2016. Simple historical fact. But since when did the Grauniad journalists think facts/truth were important?
Lies follow lies – street party organisers are not “perennially furious residents” – in my town a group of, mostly young, volunteers from the local churches organise fun days (equivalent to street parties but in parks) for the local kids on each summer bank holiday weekend.
BiI: Gun legislation in UK apart from Northern Ireland was tightened up considerably after the Dunblane massacre in 1996 and handguns are essentially illegal here. Further, possession of one is a ‘strict liability’ offence – the mere fact of holding one, even if you just found it & picked it up could get you 5 years in prison.
Apparently there are moves in Europe to tighten up firearms legislation along similar lines. Lubos Motl (The Reference Frame blog) had an item on it recently.
As opposed to middle-class international socialism, rooted in the nineteenth century?
I’m not sure what the problem is. At least they now put pesto on their “cheese” and pineapple on toothpicks.
Tim W
Beltane is very popular in Edinburgh
https://beltane.org/
🙂
@Jonathan
“How dare you like your own country! Obviously it leads to all sorts of horrors like not wanting to import millions of third-world peasants.”
What I don’t get is that to the left, immigration is good (lots of people coming here to be run by our government), but colonialism is bad (lots of people stay where they are, and get run by our government).
From a strictly utilitarian point of view, colonialism must be better, as it saves the peasants the bother of the trip.
@John square:
“What I don’t get is that to the left, immigration is good (lots of people coming here to be run by our government), but colonialism is bad (lots of people stay where they are, and get run by our government).”
I think many on the left just hate Britain and they see mass immigration as a punishment for our sins, i.e like Labour ” rubbing the Rights noses in multiculturalism.”
This ‘brutal austerity’ that continues to see government spending going up?
The Queen’s 90th Birthday was April 21st 2016. Simple historical fact. But since when did the Grauniad journalists think facts/truth were important?
I don’t think the Guardian is responsible for the Queen’s official birthday being on the second Saturday in June.
Ugly bird is embittered at life.
@ SJW
The Grauniad is not responsible for there being an “official birthday” (which, if memoery serves, was a convention created because Edward VII was born in November, not a good time for outdoor parties).
That does not excuse their cavalier mis-statement.