Blog 14 - Re-directing the poison
- A System Analyst
- Sep 19, 2025
- 3 min read
Standard Header - In these blogs, current politics is illuminated by reference to the basic relationships explained in ‘Us, Politics and The System.’ To give readers an idea when to look for a new post, the initial plan is to do a new one at least once a week, on Fridays.
Still with the anti-outsider nastiness - we need to say – ‘Yes, your expectation that ‘being British’ means ‘the country’ will see you right is correct. That’s the promise of politics. But then say ‘Surely that means tackling why it’s not happening, independently of the immigration issue, and supporting centrist or even socialist politics?’ And ‘You need to make the expectation a practical thing, not just assume it. Because some fellow-nationals and fellow-whites oppose and obstruct it. Conservatives – which includes Reform – just don’t believe in it. Their core belief and practice is that everyone’s out for themselves, it’s all about self-interest. And for them, it is. And they oppose public services because they do OK without them’.
And we need to say ‘Look past the political parties and government and look at the system below that - at the people who run most of production, work, and the generation and distribution of wealth – the business class. They and their conservative parties oppose the nationalist expectation of government looking after the people, against public services and support.’
But the actual flag-flying isn’t based on this practical view. It’s based on a simple, unthought-out identity, of ‘Britishness’ or whiteness, that takes no account of the actual behaviour of fellow-nationals towards each other. We need to question and challenge this identity and argue the practical view.
It has as a base a wider platform of less nasty national identification, where almost everybody identifies with people and things simply from them being fellow-citizens, ignoring their real actions and politics. In everyday life and debate, we need to challenge the validity of this platform and weaken the base for nationalism. Start with the business class but also ask people generally ‘What sense is there in identifying automatically with anyone or anything ‘British’ or ‘American’ or wherever, in sport, products, and a whole range of things and people? We don’t know them. They could be conservatives or otherwise nasty and opposed to your interests. If they are Ok people, fine. If not, don’t support them’.
The absolute key thing is to name the business class. Try it, in your head, then in the next conversation where it fits. Get used to using it. Because it names the people really responsible for the flag-wavers, and the rest of us, not getting what we need. Rather than just labelling them ‘the rich and powerful’ or ‘the billionaires’, it opens up the observable production, work and wage relationships that make that true.
And let’s take the flag-waving personally – it’s not only the hitting on innocent people, let’s start thinking of the people doing it as letting the rest of us down, and themselves, because we’re trying to sort out their problems and ours properly, by tackling conservatives and the business class, and they are siding with them.
For more – Nationalism and Classism, https://www.uspoliticsandthesystem.org/_files/ugd/e8d212_5af29c0781464baca2f3440ed48aa47d.pdf
And ‘The Essential Us, Politics and the System’,
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