Condemnationalism

At last the fluffy PR-friendly mask of the LibCon Alliance has slipped to reveal their true face: Condemnationalists. Cameron's confused gibberish this weekend:

"state multiculturalism ... encouraging different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream" - just like the British ex-pat communities abroad then.

"We have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong" - so the solution is yet another PR campaign then?

"We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to our values" [see point one].

"So when a white person holds objectionable views – racism, for example – we rightly condemn them. But when equally unacceptable views or practices have come from someone who isn't white, we've been too cautious, frankly even fearful, to stand up to them." - that's why the non-white prison population is so large [27% compared to only 11% of the general population] and ethnic minorities are much more likely to be subject to stop and search then?

So what's Cameron's solution to a situation where only white people are ever accused of being racist? "We need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism." So he's suggesting a little more than a PR campaign then and is aiming for a full-scale monoculturalism as the answer then [One Culture Conservatism anyone?] - if we all think and behave exactly like all true blue Brits do in his rose-tinted vision of a neo-Victorianist world and if everyone coming to this country adopted Cameron's way of speaking/dressing/thinking/voting/etc. then all would be well with the world. Utter tosh.

So we should all stop eating filthy foreign foods like curries, spag bol, chow mien...; stop drinking all those filthy foreign drinks like tea, coffee, Chateau la Fete and coca cola; stop wearing Armani suits, Chanel couture, Adidas, Nike, etc. and stop worshipping those awful foreign gods [surely everyone knows that God is an Englishman and his son was born in Blighty?] and be just like ... well, not like Cameron and his ilk at least.

So, here's the Condemnationalist view of the Good Foreigner:

They must have enough money [c.f. Tier 1 visas] of the right skill that the country can exploit [everyone else] before they are allowed into the country, only then will we behave in anything approaching a 'colour-blind' manner towards them [a hefty donation to the political party of their choice always goes down well and may even end up with the ultimate seal of approval - a knighthood]. That is, until they are no longer useful and then they better bugger off back to where they came from tout suite or we'll lock you up in an internment camp [detention centre] for as long as we see fit.

Then there is the good foreigner who is willing to still be exploited but has the good manners to stay in their own countries. You know the sort: they work for low wages in multinational companies or their subcontractors producing the sort of cheap goods that we think that it is our right to buy at low prices in high street shops and supermarkets; that produce the vital resources that end up in the latest must have consumer goods that within months end up as landfill. And all the while their environment is to be degraded and sold off to the highest bidder and their subsistence farms turned into massive pesticide and fertiliser-guzzling monocultures under World bank and IMF 'free trade' rules.

And the Bad Foreigner? Well, everyone else surely is a 'bogus' asylum seeker/religious fundamentalist/extremist/dago/wop/terrorist/coolie/etc. - legitimate targets all for Jeremy Clarkson's [the ur Brit] xenophobia.

Not that Cameron's 'Little Englander' rhetoric has been the only inane drivel sprouted by a politician this weekend. There was also Miliband's 'British promise' i.e. the expectation that children will have more opportunities than their parents, which roughly translates as: it is our god-given right to continue to expand the economy, and at the inevitable expense of the rest of the world.