I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

Yeah, a planet where people don’t march to keep a genocidal fascist dictator in power and then are proud of that fact.

I’m off to bed, more tomorrow. The Dude

You’re beyond parody, y’know.

Heh if you think that you should have seen that neo con tosser, he was unbelievable. The guys from another planet, truly!

You’re beyond parody, y’know. Being kicked by Heseltine is like being savaged by a dead sheep.

I think Sunny overplayed his hand a little.
Implying that the Tories had “reinstated” Mercer.

In fact it was his beloved NuLab Gordon who had taken him on!!!

What is quite interesting is that Enoch Powell seemed to think quoting rabid constituents as evidence was A-OK. And what do we get, forty years later? Another playing exactly the same game.

“T’ain’t me sir, ’tis these poor disempowered folk” Consequences? What consequences?”

Robert has a very good analysis of Hastilows game, here:

http://www.robertsharp.co.uk/2007/11/05/rivers-of-bloody-words/

I’d agree that both knew what their constituency was, if that is the point you are trying to make, and ‘dog whistle politics’ sums it up. What they were both trying to do was appeal to lowest common denominators amongst the white population. Frankly, neither gave a monkeys how it played out elsewhere. Cheap nasty little demagogues, the both of them.

It is incredibly cowardly to hide behind a constituents words, for example ‘the whip hand’ remark, and pretend that you are thus completely disassociated from it.

And you, sir, are disingenuous in the extreme. The phrase that Powell quoted was:

“the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.”

There is nothing to suggest it is anything other than an allusion to the slavedriving that Jagdeep so clearly posited. I take it that Powells’ audience were not all media studies graduates?

What is quite interesting also, is that the Powell speech is up on this site:

http://www.natfront.com/powell.html

I despair, I really do.

Yup.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2941845.ece

Interesting- but I suppose they cannot force him to stay.

Sunny and ChrisC:

From what I can tell from his website, Mercer holds no shadow cabinet brief:

http://www.patrickmercer.org.uk/type3.asp?id=96&type=3

Some time later : “… how deliberately referring to such a bigot, but being careful to not endorse him personally …”

Thank you. You can always edit the post.

And what’s the “is hardly likely to make non-whites feel any better” ? Are we all so easily wounded ? And I don’t exactly get a sense of low self-esteem coming from your writing !

Jagdeep –
a) Powell was quoting a constituent on the ‘whip hand’
b) it was a fairly common expression – I thought it came from racing, but maybe I’m wrong
c) Powell studied Greek, not cultural studies at SOAS. While I’m not a Powell scholar, and life’s too short, I’m pretty certain Powell’s speech was aimed at indigenous Brits, not chosen to frighten the maximum number of incomers. What would the point of that be ? He was trying to convince the natives.

At least people aren’t raising “piccaninnies”, a common expression for children in the West Indies – still used today as ‘pickney’.

http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/mail/news/tm_headline=enoch-powell-row-tory-nigel-hastilow-could-be-back%26method=full%26objectid=20080059%26siteid=50002-name_page.html

The local papers, both the Birmingham Mail and the Wolverhampton Suppress and Slur have been full of the sort of hideous readers letters that make dog-whistle politics so popular and full of urban myths about housing etc.

“Yet not a word from our Rumbold over Mr Haitslow, despite asking him for a reaction to his comments. Priorities.”

Er, this is what I said in #16:

“Surely the Conservatives condemned racism by (rightly) sacking him?”

It seemed a fairly open and shut case to me; Tory candidate makes racist comments, and is deselected by Tory party.

Longer, similar post: http://www.septicisle.info/2007/11/enoch-powell-was-right-and-completely.html