May I pick your brains about something that I am trying to work out? I wrote this earlier to try to vocalise what’s on my back burner. Thanks in advance. x
I have something going on in my head that could use some input, some expansion of thought.
There is something going on that I don’t think there is even a name for, but it’s huge, and maybe it not having a name is a measure of how well hidden it is, and deliberately so, because of its importance.
It is a form of racism, although that doesn’t cover it. I can see it right throughout the history of conquering the world, in which indigenous populations were held in contempt and often eradicated.
Meanwhile, all that made that world conquer and domination possible was the exploitation of the people of the ‘home’ country, the lives of ordinary people without whom no conquering was possible and yet those same people were held in just as much contempt as those they conquered for the elites.
The age of empire has dwindled, or at least it’s changed. Now we make some bogus reason for war and invasion to go and steal resources. The imperial mind-set hasn’t changed – conquer and pillage.
What has changed is that they don’t need us any more, these things can be done with minimum personnel and they have turned inwards against us. We are now subject to economic warfare and if we are unproductive, in their terms, we are not wanted and are being steadily eradicated. They have made it perfectly clear that we have no part of any share in any wealth. The conquer and pillage is being directed at us. Wealth is rewarded, poverty is punished and they now do it in plain sight. Tax breaks for the rich, austerity for the poor. And they are impervious to complaint. Cameron walked away scot-free from the harm he caused, into a bright future of reward and privilege. Nothing could have shown his contempt for us more than simply resigning on the spot with a huge golden handshake, paid for by us.
Right now racism is being rammed down our throats from the government and the media, ok, divide and rule, it works, I get that, but there is something else here. Yes, they seek to divert our attention by playing the immigrant, racism, card, but the real focus of their contempt is in the forced narrative they pound us with, against us. We are the focus of their hate, not the immigrant, the foreigner, the ‘other’. They hate us, loath us, attack us, create division amongst us, openly and I don’t know a word for that.
It can’t be called racism and classism is a too weak and ‘class’ too worn.
I was far from the first to use the expression ‘ordinary people’, though I used ‘Keith Ordinary Guy’ very deliberately, but what can I call this hatred of ordinary people regardless of race, colour, religion, creed or anything else?
Part of what Ken Loach has done is put ordinary lives front and centre in ‘I, Daniel Blake’ and the despicable way we are treated. But what on earth can I call it? If I can’t name it, it remains the elephant in the room. Without a name, how can we easily see it and embrace it as real?
‘Precariat’ doesn’t cover it because it isn’t just about those who have nothing, for whom living precariously is their daily reality, it is also about anyone who can be tossed out of a job, onto the scrap heap, because they are superfluous to requirements. It includes the middle classes, those currently living comfortably, and anyone who can just be let go without ‘them’ batting an eyelid.
Who are the masses of ordinary people and what can we call this despite and contempt for us? I know of no word in history that covers it.
Brutalisation of workers, suppressing dissent, attacking and curbing unions. Ensuring that those not working are worse off. ‘Othering’, redirecting the attention and anger of the masses. The public be damned – William Henry Vanderbilt. Loathing the lower orders. Etc.
