The Marxist theory of False Class Consciousness, simply expressed, pictures the working class as falsely believing themselves to be a free and valued, but actually trapped by capitalist oppression. For the Marxist, just as much as for the Capitalist if not more, everything is about money and economic pressure, and therefore ridiculously far removed from the human experience and what it means to be human. Not that Marxism ever really got anything right.

That said, the Marxists were on to something in the broad strokes. The little I’ve read on False Class Consciousness also refers to a Marxist call to action for the working class from being an oppressed and deluded class to being a class in itself and for itself, and here the Marxists grasped a fundamental concept. The root of any mass populace problem lies in the mass mind of that populace. Where Marx’s working class was pictured as being enslaved and ground-down, where Marxists falsely see everything in terms of capital, economics and class, we see, and see truly, everything in the light of the people and civilisations concerned. More specifically, the folk and civilisations concerned.

While worker and capitalist ‘classes’ are less and less an issue, still less a fixed one, in a ‘developed world’ more switched over to the service and bureaucratic lines of work than any other, our ethnic and cultural group (the white folk indigenous to Europe and the founders of the civilised nations outside it, such as the USA, Australia, South Africa and others) is truly trapped and deluded as to its ‘freedom’. This is a direct result of a False Folk Consciousness (FFC), which simultaneously holds that the White Race does not exist, and that White Guilt is nonetheless an appropriate and moral thing for all members of the White Race to have. Logic and consistent thought have never been strengths of the Left.

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He said: “If you look at, er, folks, er-er, of color, er-e-a-e, even women, they’re more successful in the Democratic party than they are in the white, er, excuse me, in the, ha, Republican party ...”

Parapraxis, or the Freudian slip, is the escape of a repressed thought.  Given the well-known characteristics of the typical politician, it is safe to assume that a Freudian slip by a man like Dean constitutes a little moment of honesty in a lifetime of deceit and distortion.  So what truth did he let out of hiding here?

Not, I think, that the GOP is the white party.  Too boring, too obvious.

No, he is talking about the Democrats.  He is saying that the party itself, its values and its policies for America are for “people of color” and “even women”.  He is saying that if you are a white male American you are totally outside of the ministrations and ambitions of his party.  He is saying that as a party of “color and women” the Democratic Party does not like white male America, does not serve white male America, indeed exists to undermine the proverbial hegemony of white male America.  He is saying that the Democratic Party is as fixed and as singular in its antipathy to white male America as it is traditionally towards the GOP.  He is saying, frankly, the GOP can have white male America.

But, of course, it wasn’t meant to come out quite like that.

“Everything was perfectly quiet at Rorke’s Drift after the column had left, and every officer and man was going about his business as usual. Not a soul suspected that only a dozen miles away the very men that we had said ‘Goodbye’, and ‘Good luck’ to were either dead or standing back-to-back in a last fierce fight with the Zulus. Our garrison consisted of B Company of the 2/24th under Lieutenant Bromhead, and details which brought the total number of us up to 139. Besides these, we had about 300 men of the Natal Native Contingent; but they didn’t count, as they bolted in a body when the fight began. We were all knocking about, and I was making tea for the sick, as I was hospital cook at the time.”

So begins the account by Private Henry Hook VC of the Defence of Rorke’s Drift, 22-23 January, 1879.  It is the greatest single action of British arms, a not inconsiderable place in history to occupy.

This morning, forty-four years after the release of Cy Endfield’s 1964 film Zulu, the Telegraph reported:-

Battle to restore ‘Zulu‘ hero Henry Hook‘s reputation

A campaign is underway to restore the reputation of Henry Hook, the soldier portrayed as a drunken shirker in the film Zulu.

In the 1964 film, Private Hook, played by James Booth, was shown becoming a reluctant hero by saving the lives of eight patients stranded at an Army hospital during the Zulu war in 1879.

That much was true - but far from being a cowardly, drink-soaked malingerer, Private Hook’s posthumous supporters are insisting, he was a teetotal lay preacher and was given a bonus for good conduct shortly before his heroics.

Major Tim Whedon, from the Royal Regiment of Wales, which incorporated Private Hook’s old regiment, said: “Henry Hook is an example of how a character was distorted to attract the film-goers when the story was captivating enough.”

… With Private John Williams, Private Hook, then aged 28, fought off fighters to bring eight patients to safety. However he was described onscreen as “a thief, a coward, and an insubordinate barrack-room lawyer,” only in the hospital because he was shirking duty.

Despite the distortion, Zulu was an honourable enough attempt to make a film in an already cynical, post-colonial age about a brief moment of extraordinary Victorian valour.  The script accorded the 4,000 Zulu attackers sufficient respect that Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi saw fit to appear as the Zulu war-chief Cetehwayo.  The writers were comfortable with that.  But they were obviously not comfortable with the real-life soldierly virtue of all the defenders.  One wonders how they would like to be remembered themselves.  Presumeably not as traducers.

However, that said, restoration of a reputation besmirched by film people may be a hot ticket in the next few months.  Here’s the Telegraph again:-

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My Postcivil Society series on MR has focused on many threats and opportunities provided by the increasingly unbalanced nature of globalization, but none were so urgent as this:

An imminent electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the United States.

Read on for why the neocons, who are promoting fear of this threat so as to justify preemptive war against Iran, may have outfoxed themselves while being correct in predicting an EMP attack with catastrophic consequences…

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The news that white Americans will be a minority has washed up at the Telegraph:-

Higher birth rates among minority residents, especially Hispanics, is accelerating the demographic changes brought by immigration and will lead to an end of the US’ white majority around 2042.

“The white population is older and very much centered around the aging baby boomers who are well past their high fertility years,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “The future of America is epitomized by the young people today. They are basically the melting pot we are going to see in the future.”

The Census Bureau released projections through 2050, based on rates for births, deaths and immigration.

The US’ 305 million population is expected to grow to 400 million in 2039 and 439 million in 2050.

White non-Hispanics make up about two-thirds of the population, but only 55 percent of those younger than 5.

By 2050, whites will make up 46 percent of the population and blacks will make up 15 percent, a relatively small increase from today. Hispanic will account for 30 percent in 2050, double their current share.

Asians, which make up about 5 percent of the population, are projected to increase to 9 percent by 2050.

The population 85 and older is projected to more than triple by 2050, to 19 million.

The companion piece to this was last November’s “come-clean” by the UK Official of National Statistics, which forecast that population would rise to hitherto unmentioned levels.  The Daily Mail, ever anxious to stoke the fires of righteous indignation, majored on the upper level of the forecast thus:-

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Geopolitics trumps everything, they say.  That’s a pretty good rule, and pretty apposite in the case of the Russian invasion of Georgia now.  The South Ossetians and Abkhazians are getting what they want, which is freedom from ethnic Georgia.  They will doubtless feel that the military aggression they have wilfully exhibited towards the Georgians has paid off in the most handsome manner imaginable.  But they are only foils for the real objectives of the Russian campaign.  The problem is that no one knows exactly what those objectives are, and how far Russia must go to meet them.  And they ain’t saying.

The possible objectives are:-

1. To prevent Georgia from joining NATO, thereby furthering the latter’s ambition to encircle the bear.

2. To make a gesture in the direction of empire unmistakable to other Western-oriented neighbours, and also to the world community (not coincidental, it seems to me, at the moment when China is announcing to a watching world its own arrival as a major international power).

3. Possibly, if Russia seeks to install a puppet government in a defeated Georgia, to exercise control over the movement of oil and gas supplies across Georgian territory.

Meanwhile, the Western press has moved swiftly to engineer public sympathy for poor little Georgia, notwithstanding the fact that Georgia was an inexplicable aggressor (or almost inexplicable).  Judging from that Telegraph thread not many thinking folk are content to be engineered.

Here’s Stratfor’s somewhat kosher but still worthwhile, current take - not illuminating enough, but as good as I can find at present:-

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Paul Kingsnorth is an unusual journalist by Guardian standards.  He claims to be a nationalist.  Well, obviously, he’s not a BNP candidate for the parliamentary seat of I’m-Mad-As-Hell south.  But he has written critically about Gordon Brown and Britishness and British “identity”, and even what it means to be English.

He has a blog called ... wait for it ... Real England.  He has published a book titled, erm, Real England.  And, for all these reasons no doubt, he has been interviewed by something called Albion Magazine.

So you might be forgiven for thinking that Paul Kingsnorth is someone who loves and believes in this little country and the people who made it.

You would be half right.

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Today the Telegraph and the Daily Mail both carried a turning-worm story about a government study into attitudes by ethnicity towards the country generally and public services in particular.  The interesting finding is that the attitudes of “whites” - a group which may or may not be synonimous to the English - and of all non-whites are growing divergent.

This is good.  This is the beginning of a zeitgeist of rejection.  No doubt it is influenced by the current poor economic outlook. But minds are made-up and attitudes will only harden.  Labour and the Conservatives issue their regulation calls for unity, but it is a total waste of breath.

From the Mail:-

One third of whites claim they are victims of racism A growing number of white people believe they are the victims of racial prejudice in Britain, official research has found.

Almost one in three - 29 per cent - said they now expected to be treated worse than other races by key public services.

And the number of whites claiming to have been refused a job or discriminated against at work for reasons of race has doubled in the last five years, according to the Government study.

Seven per cent believed they had failed to win a promotion because of their race, up from three per cent in 2003.

Three per cent alleged they had been turned down for a job for the same reason, up from one per cent.

In addition, the study reveals that most ethnic minorities living in Britain feel stronger ties to the nation than whites.

One in six white Britons feel only a slight sense of belonging to the nation.

Whites also now feel less able than other ethnic groups to influence decisions affecting their local area and the country as a whole.

For example, 41 per cent of black African, 36 per cent of Bangladeshi and 35 per cent of Indian people feel they have a say in decisions affecting Britain, compared to 19 per cent of white people.

The survey of 15,000 people - ordered by Communities Secretary Hazel Blears - is likely to prompt a fierce debate about the disillusionment of the white majority.

The Tories blame Labour’s race relations strategy.

Tory communities spokesman Baroness Warsi said: ‘It’s no wonder more people feel there is an increase in racism when Labour’s multicultural industry is forever talking up what divides us rather than concentrating on what unites us.’

The research found that overall, whites are more likely than those from ethnic minorities to believe that racial prejudice and discrimination is getting worse.

Fifty-eight per cent said they believe there was more racial prejudice now than five years ago, compared to 44 per cent who were interviewed in 2001.

The figure for ethnic minority communities has hardly changed, at 32 per cent.

The survey found that 29 per cent of white people expect to be treated worse than other groups by at least one of eight public services, including the police, prisons, courts, Crown Prosecution service, probation service, local housing organisations, schools or GPs.

Whites identified council housing departments or housing associations as the most likely to discriminate against them.

The proportion of members of ethnic minority groups who expected to face discrimination from one of the eight bodies fell from 38 per cent in 2001 to 34 per cent.

But it remains higher than for white people in many categories, particularly the police.

Tory MP Greg Hands, a member of the Commons communities and local government select committee, said: ‘It’s a dangerous phenomenon if any part of the population feels they are being systematically discriminated against.’

Overall, 84 per cent of people felt they belonged strongly to the country, including 45 per cent who said they belonged very strongly.

However, nine out of ten Pakistani and Indian people said they felt a strong sense of belonging, compared to 84 per cent of whites.