Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Debate directly related to English Chess Federation matters.
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Gerard Killoran
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Gerard Killoran » Sun Aug 07, 2022 1:43 am

For the record, I said nothing about the attitudes of the British political establishment in the 1930s. I referred to "British public opinion".
1. How do you know what British public opinion" was in the 1930s?

2. What is "British public opinion", and does such a thing exist?

3. Who made British foreign policy in the 1930s, "British public opinion" or "the British political establishment" - in particular, the British Conservative Party?

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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by David Sedgwick » Sun Aug 07, 2022 7:47 am

Gerard Killoran wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 1:43 am
1. How do you know what British public opinion" was in the 1930s?
Obviously that is subjective. Hence my comment was somewhat vague.

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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Gerard Killoran » Sun Aug 07, 2022 12:28 pm

David Sedgwick wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 7:47 am
Gerard Killoran wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 1:43 am
1. How do you know what British public opinion" was in the 1930s?
Obviously that is subjective. Hence my comment was somewhat vague.
A product of your imagination, in other words.

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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by David Sedgwick » Sun Aug 07, 2022 3:02 pm

Gerard Killoran wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 12:28 pm
A product of your imagination, in other words.
No. A product of my recollections of TV documentaries in the late 1960s and the 1970s.
Last edited by David Sedgwick on Sun Aug 07, 2022 4:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Chris Goodall
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Chris Goodall » Sun Aug 07, 2022 3:33 pm

Gerard Killoran wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 12:28 pm
David Sedgwick wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 7:47 am
Gerard Killoran wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 1:43 am
1. How do you know what British public opinion" was in the 1930s?
Obviously that is subjective. Hence my comment was somewhat vague.
A product of your imagination, in other words.
No, subjective. For someone who professes such bafflement at what other people actually mean, you are awfully sure that they're wrong.
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by NickFaulks » Sun Aug 07, 2022 4:10 pm

Gerard Killoran wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 1:43 am
1. How do you know what British public opinion" was in the 1930s?
In my case, from speaking to my parents. My father's family in particular believed that Hitler's Germany, for all its known faults, was a valuable bulwark against the horrors of Stalin's USSR. They only later came to realise that both were unimaginably evil.
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by JustinHorton » Sun Aug 07, 2022 5:14 pm

I think the point here (and again, I don't want to do too much thread diversion) is that opinion polling in the UK is almost entirely a postwar phenomenon and for this reason, while we can speak with confidence of the opinions of given individuals and their circles, we perhaps need to be much more cautious in declaring what the wider public view was on any given subject.

(At any rate, as I say above, "public opinion" was not what drove foreign policy and historically it is not right to suggest that the British political class didn't appreciate what fascism and militarism entailed, though they certainly didn't entirely appreciate what it would later become. They knew what Mussolini had done and they knew what the Enabling Laws had done: these things were not secret. They were not particularly bothered about it because they were not particularly bothered about the people it threatened. But they didn't realise that eventually it would threaten them.)
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Chris Goodall » Sun Aug 07, 2022 9:18 pm

JustinHorton wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 5:14 pm
historically it is not right to suggest that the British political class didn't appreciate what fascism and militarism entailed, though they certainly didn't entirely appreciate what it would later become.
"Fascism" is doing too much work there. What fascism, where?

If I told you that there is a political party whose symbol represents the idea that "the people united will never be defeated", that blames most of your country's problems on globalist capitalism, that is responsible (at the cost of permanent budget deficits) for the most redistributive welfare system in Europe with particular emphasis placed on the old, sick and disabled, that binned its original classical-liberal economics in favour of a Labour Charter that emphasises "from each according to his ability" and enshrines collective bargaining into law, whose leader was a revolutionary socialist until he was 31, pushed the hardest for an anti-Germany alliance at Stresa and, while those yahoos in Germany are smashing Jewish storefronts, has a Jewish mistress and Minister of Propaganda...

...then I would understand if you too didn't entirely appreciate what the Partito Nazionale Fascista would later become.

You damn conservatives for opposing fascism only when it eats their lunch, when what has always bothered leftists most about fascism is fascism's obvious appeal to their own supporters.
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by JustinHorton » Sun Aug 07, 2022 9:27 pm

Hi Chris. I don't usually read your posts because I have you on block, which is largely because you post to provoke (you will recall you were barred from my old blog for the same reason) and given that everybody at the time understood on which side of politics Mussolini stood, which is why he was admired by rightwingers but imprisoned leftwingers, I'll not be wasting any further time on this particularly transparent trolling attempt.
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Chris Goodall » Sun Aug 07, 2022 9:51 pm

JustinHorton wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 9:27 pm
everybody at the time understood on which side of politics Mussolini stood
JustinHorton wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 5:14 pm
we perhaps need to be much more cautious in declaring what the wider public view was on any given subject.
Okay.
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Sun Aug 07, 2022 10:35 pm

Mussolini started out on the left, yes.

But *by the time he took power* there was little if any doubt about on which wing he stood politically.

And absolutely none after a year or two of his rule.

I suppose at least we have been spared the "Hitler was a leftie because his party had SOCIALIST in their name" spiel. Small mercies eh.
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by JustinHorton » Sun Aug 07, 2022 10:40 pm

Well yes, the argument is a variation on that and serves the same water-muddying purpose.

Still, since the resolution has ultimately proven ineffective, hasn't this thread outstayed its welcome?
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Chris Goodall » Mon Aug 08, 2022 12:36 am

Granted, the one-party rule, the secret police, the nationalist mythology and the tanks were all somewhat North Korean. Then again, there are lots of people who still think North Korea is the left-wing end of the Korean peninsula... hm.

Do you never get the feeling that maybe the water-muddying is a result of trying to do something impossible, which is to require every past, present and future politician to define themselves first and foremost by whether they'd have sat with the abolitionists or the retentionists in the French Revolutionary Assembly of 1789?

That perhaps, in the context of the war in Ukraine, Putin's deliberate strategy of employing the rhetoric of both wings simultaneously would not have confused so many of us for so long, if so much of our self-worth were not tied up in being on the same "wing" as everyone we like and on the opposite "wing" to everyone we dislike?
Matt Mackenzie wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 10:35 pm
I suppose at least we have been spared the "Hitler was a leftie because his party had SOCIALIST in their name" spiel. Small mercies eh.
That spiel isn't an argument against lefties. It's an argument against evaluating a person by what wing they're on, as opposed to whether they murdered 17 million civilians.
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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by Gerard Killoran » Mon Aug 08, 2022 10:52 am

David Sedgwick wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 3:02 pm
Gerard Killoran wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 12:28 pm
A product of your imagination, in other words.
No. A product of my recollections of TV documentaries in the late 1960s and the 1970s.
Even better.

If anyone wanted proof that chess players are no more intelligent than the average person, then I'd point them to this thread.

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Re: Tim Wall's Ukraine Resolutions

Post by David Sedgwick » Mon Aug 08, 2022 1:17 pm

Gerard Killoran wrote:
Mon Aug 08, 2022 10:52 am
If anyone wanted proof that chess players are no more intelligent than the average person, then I'd point them to this thread.
If anyone wanted proof that (some) members of this Forum are more gratuitously offensive than the average person, then I'd point them to this thread.
Last edited by David Sedgwick on Tue Aug 09, 2022 9:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

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