Inequality causes stabbings. Really?!
Friday, August 03, 2012
Chinese teenager stabs 8 people to death - Telegraph.
Almost everything good, encouraging and promising about modern China can be traced to Deng Xiaoping's unleashing of market forces. Almost everything bad, distressing and depressing about it can be traced to the totalitarian rule of the Communist Party.
Yet the Daily Telegraph glosses its report of the stabbing by a teenager of eight people with an implied leftist narrative that inequality is one (if not the only) cause of crime.
Violent crime has been on the rise in China in recent decades as the nation's economy has boomed and the gap between rich and poor has expanded.
In what sense, precisely, is this now a "Conservative" newspaper? What kind of "Conservative" journalist makes such egregious use of the post hoc fallacy in his writing to serve such a clearly leftist analysis? Does Mr Philips perhaps imagine that China in the days of the Cultural Revolution knew no violence? Or is he at least intellectually consistent enough to suggest that enormous inequality between the political elite of those days and the oppressed masses "caused" the airplanings and other atrocities?
Oh but wait. To a former Guardian correspondent, those acts of violence were probably not crimes but the righteous dictatorship of the proletariat. Which just leaves the question, why is a "Conservative" newspaper recruiting from the ranks of the Guardianisti?
"Why Does Winona Ryder shoplift?
Why didn't my Grandmother?"
Nicely put.
You're behind the times, Tom (or maybe behind The Times har har) if you think the Telegraph is a conservative paper now.
It is only necessary to check its environmental reporting (Louise Gray, Geoffrey Dear) or read the columns by Mary Riddell, to see which way it's going.
Note also the huge amount of celeb-infested trivia.
Sad, sad.
I do miss the old "Feudal Times and Reactionary Herald"... or at least, I miss he who used to comment on it!
Posted by: Andrew Duffin | Tuesday, August 14, 2012 at 03:28 PM
What Tom said!
Posted by: Moggsy | Wednesday, August 08, 2012 at 09:20 AM
No David, I was agreeing with you and the insulting stuff I was fulminating against was that from the "causes of crime" brigade. My bad. Sorry to have given you a moment's unease.
Posted by: Tom | Sunday, August 05, 2012 at 06:44 AM
I hope you didn't think I meant that the crimes I was talking about were some characteristic of the "working classes" - indeed, the people I refer to above as the predators are, to a "man", non-working.
Posted by: David Davis | Saturday, August 04, 2012 at 11:24 PM
You will not hear this insulting stuff from people with honest working class relatives. My Nana was a knicker presser in a clothing factory and my grandad an unskilled worker at Bentley in Crewe. They were as honest, decent and honourable as the day is long and I regard any lord of the manor snooty condescension from the know-nothing middle-class Left on the subject of poverty and crime as an insult to their treasured memories. I know public school educated criminals from privileged backgrounds. Those backgrounds are not causative nor an excuse neither. Crime is a *choice* that must never be excused in a civilised society. To do so is to be an accessory before and after the fact. If I had not so recently advocated civility in political discourse I would fill the virtual air with richly textured Anglo-Saxon in protest.
Posted by: Tom | Saturday, August 04, 2012 at 03:00 PM
The strongest motivational force driving any crime is the decision to commit it. I can't speak for China, knowing sod-all about the place except that it's an actaul capitalist society still officially wearing Nazi clothes. (I disagree in detail with Tom's analysis of the differences between "national" and "international" socialism, but that's for another time.)
In my experience of watching crime in Britain, it tends to be visited upon those least able or least likely to get retribution in any form. So for example, single mothers in "estates" (basically rows of State-kennels for feckless babyfathers [..state aided and educated to be what they have become..] to visit routinely) suffer disproportionately: these poor women also may attract predatory attention as they _can_ get the 50-inch plasma-TVs, Xboxes and iPhones from Curry's on the basis of their accredited state-handouts....and the babyfathers, being of no fixed employment or address, similarly can't. So they decide to break in and robberate...as well as rogerate I guess.
The Guardianista-rot has however set in a long time ago. In most of 1987 and early 1988, I worked as "research director" of a thing called a "business-to-business-media-relations-consultancy" run by the eponymous Reginald Watts. It was in fact called "Reginald Watts Associates". These things were then always "associates" of somebody. It was a poor career move on my part. But by-the-bye, I often found myself in philosohpical conflict with (all the rest of) the 12 or 13 staff, most of whom had MBAs, whatever those are. (I just had a couple of science degrees, me...) We often argues, as soon as they found I was a libertarian. To all of them, to a man, except for the financial accountant Ian, who was a chav and who did the pay each month and who paid the firm's bills, crime was existentially a result of poverty: it was the fault of rich people who had gear, that poor people wanted to take it off them. There seemed to be nothng I could do to get through to these people, all fully-paid-up-Yuppies and in all other respects very self-satisfied individuals, that they were taling rot.
Posted by: David Davis | Saturday, August 04, 2012 at 02:05 PM
Hear hear.
Posted by: Tom | Saturday, August 04, 2012 at 06:34 AM
Harbinger, Why are they poor? Why do they hang round and mug people for their phone, or shoplift?
Why Does Winona Ryder shoplift?
Why didn't my Grandmother?
Inequality is a poor and patronising "enabling" explanation. One given by patronising masters to and about client classes, pavlovian dogs. One that keeps people in their places.
It is one of those so-called "wisdoms" never questioned by lots of middle class people middle right or left.
Posted by: Moggsy | Saturday, August 04, 2012 at 05:51 AM
Thus adding a geographical to an economic gap. It's a practical solution (most criminals are too lazy to travel far and mainly prey on their neighbours) but it won't stop leftists using crime to call for more equality by state theft.
Posted by: Tom | Friday, August 03, 2012 at 08:26 PM
It is so insulting to the poor to use their poverty (and still more their relative poverty) as an excuse for criminality. Most poor people choose not to commit crime. Criminals cause crime, not poverty.
In this case anyway, there was no economic motivation for the crime. What possible correlation could there be between economic inequality and this guy attacking his girlfriend and her family? Was he doing it in protest or something? I am sorry, but it's just lazy formulaic thinking.
Posted by: Tom | Friday, August 03, 2012 at 08:24 PM
I agree with Sackerson and the article. Are you saying common sense conclusion on a topic thus defines one as a 'lefty'? I think not.
If we take a UK city, let's say London. Is there more likelihood of trouble in Hampstead or Bethnal Green? The many black gangs in London, who promote American gangsta mentality, beat people up to take their I-phones & I-pads knowing they won't be able to afford them. This modern, inner city culture is driven by escalating poverty and watching MSM promote materialism.
There is more outside interference in China and the slaves are fighting back. There is also horrific conditions there in the workplace, pushing people to breaking point. The only reason China hasn't exploded in violence is because of complete communist control within, not forgetting the massive indoctrination there. I'm amazed there aren't more stories like this quite frankly. Life is cheap in China and the gap between rich and poor in China is huge.
Posted by: Harbinger | Friday, August 03, 2012 at 03:31 PM
Isn't it true that if you live in a wealthy - or less deprived - area, you are less likely to be stabbed, shot etc? Isn't this why the American approach to social problems - and one which I intend to follow - is to move away from where the problems are?
Posted by: Sackerson | Friday, August 03, 2012 at 10:49 AM