Ok I’ve thought about this and decided it’s a doubling down on liberalism insomuch as it’s basically saying ‘my liberal social ontology is the only one that exists and within its rubrics ‘phenomenon a’ is unexplainable.’
Then when you get critiqued en masse you can play victim.
Really curious to understand what is psychologically motivating economist academics to ask questions they should know the answer to like ‘why does everyone hate Starmer?’ and then refuse to listen to the very well articulated and multitudinous answers provided.
And yet Bridget Phillipson heads up the DfE and gets to see Taylor Swift for free, as she continues its decades long project of making life more miserable for young people…
Labour have a seat majority in magic wand territory. Yet ever single time push comes to shove Starmer defaults to 'we are conducting a review,' 'we are consulting experts,' 'we are writing to the regulator.' Don't let some PLP gobshite pretend they're victims of circumstance.
I know Marxists waving books are tedious and I’m probably being tedious writing this, but I genuinely think this is a helpful book for trying to understand the difference between what liberalism says (freedom, justice, equality) and what it does (at present, amongst other things - enables pogroms)
And as liberal institutions spiral out into fascism, our collusion with them and our call to essentially encourage ‘service users’ to tolerate them, becomes more and more part of the problem.
And to psychologists and those in the caring professions, if we really care about the psychological wellbeing of children and families, we need to spend our energies struggling to bring about the deep structural and long term societal change required to facilitate their wellbeing.
100% this.
Addressing the problem of far right pogroms would mean deep structural and long term change.
Starmer can describe the scenes in Belfast as ‘sickening’, but it is the crumbling neoliberal order he presides over that is fuelling them.
Masks off for liberals. Socialism or barbarism.