SNP Lies, Corruption and Hypocrisy- add them here

[Artie]

3 hours ago, orfc said:

The Jacobites were basically some chancers private army. If you go to Carlisle Castle you can see the licking stone they were alleged to have worn with their tongues to get moisture after capture, before tootling down the road to Harraby Hill

 Marvellous

Edited February 16 by Artie

[Freedom Farter]

16 hours ago, Artie said:

I've always looked at this as the last attempt by a Roman Catholic succession line for the throne after being excluded by the Bill of Rights 1689 in Parliament. It has nothing to do with whether Scotland does or doesn't need Independence in the past or in the present.

Indeed, it doesn't map onto whether contemporary Scotland needs to leave the UK or not but I'll come to that later and you'll notice I didn't argue that in my original reply.

We're encouraged in the anglosphere (Ireland excepted) to conceptualise history as constant struggles over identity rather than struggles over material conditions. We're told to view things this way because it benefits anglo interests (by that, I mean the state power of UK/Aus/NZ/Can/USA). All opposition to that state power is reduced to a mere identity movement. Take the recent referendum in Australia, where the indigenous Australian attempt to improve their material conditions was crushed. That was done by misrepresenting their concerns as a shallow identity movement which provoked a much larger identity backlash from the Euro-Australian majority. 

You see this same misrepresentation happening everywhere that anglo interests extend. We're encouraged to just view the struggles in these places as mere identity clashes between groups. Rather than as ownership power (formalised by state power) dispossessing and immiserating indigenous people. From Northern Ireland to Israel. What's frustrating is how folk still fall for the identity shite when the ownership/state class even tell us why they act: 

(Ronald Storrs was writing there as British governor of Jerusalem).

Onto the Jacobites. Their rank and file was comprised of the dispossessed and the immiserated. Regardless of what their purported higher cause was, their actions came about as a response to their material conditions. You mention 1689 there, well what followed 1689? The Seven Ill Years. Famine. A quarter of the Aberdeenshire population died from starvation. The other major population hit were the Highlanders. That's the two main regions from where Jacobite support was drawn in Scotland. 

Important to remember in this analysis, though, is that empire has layers to it. Highland gaels were the most mistreated people in Scotland, their suffering was immense. Yet they had an escape route in some cases which was provided by wider British empire. They could leave during the 1690s to escape the famine and settle in Ulster, where the indigenous people had been pushed out and were themselves subject to a far worse famine later. Then during the Highland Clearances, some Highlanders were able to escape and settle in the Americas, upon land the empire had cleared for them.

Something funny about that Evening News opinion was him raging about Mel Gibson's depictions of the Red Coats. Sometimes this misrepresentation of all history as identity struggles backfires on those who promote it. Which is what has happened there with the Americans concocting this absurd foundational myth of escaping British oppression. The American Revolution is a revolution in name only. The Haitian Revolution was an actual revolution. What happened in USA was an intra-imperial squabble. If it wasn't for the Americans in WW2, the British would be speaking German right now, they always tell us. OK, and if it wasn't for the British, the Americans would still be speaking Choctaw and Navajo right now. What's telling is that neither Gibson nor that Evening News opinion gave a moment's thought to the following; that both the settler-colonists and the Red Coats continued their unabated ethnic cleansing of indigenous Americans throughout the Revolutionary war period.

Finally, to the instrumentalisation of the Jacobite cause in service of contemporary Scottish independence arguments. As I keep trying to hammer home, identity struggles are not the same as struggles over material conditions. You'll never be able to neatly fit your preferred identity argument onto a period of real history where the people were not acting due to identity but due to their material conditions. Jacobin sympathy went from Wales up to north west England, over to Ireland, back over to north west Scotland then finally to north east Scotland. Effectively, it encompassed much of the celtic fringe to the British isles and skirted around the anglo interior.

The Scottish independence movement really needs to get to grips with this. You see folk wearing a Glengarry at their demonstrations. That hat was named after a clearer of the Highland Clearances. Its a symbol of Highland subservience to British empire. It was worn by co-opted Highlanders in the British military who fought to clear people around the world for the same British state that'd cleared their neighbours. 

 

16 hours ago, Artie said:

The whole popular idea of the Jacobites mainly portrayed in books and later in the 20th Century in films as plucky revolutionaries is entirely based on the romanticisms of the Victorians, who reinvented Scotland as their own concept, their fiction becoming reality becomes a modern fantasy adventure for the tourists.

The project wasn't just undertaken because the Victorians were a romantic bunch. It was done for two reasons. Firstly, to consolidate their cultural hold over the metropole. By awarding a new and distinct identity to a "rebellious" population, that group could be placated and enfranchised. Secondly, following on from the first goal, this would open up a new pool of peasants to be used as military fodder for empire expansion. It wasn't Jacobite sentiment that was re-imagined, it was the concept of "Scottishness" and particularly "Highlandness" as fierce, warrior-like defenders of Britain and empire. 

Edited February 17 by Freedom Farter

[Freedom Farter]

13 hours ago, orfc said:

The Jacobites were basically some chancers private army. If you go to Carlisle Castle you can see the licking stone they were alleged to have worn with their tongues to get moisture after capture, before tootling down the road to Harraby Hill

Are you not a military guy from Cumberland? Due to its strong jacobite sympathies, your home region was subjected to intensive enfranchisement efforts not dissimilar to other Jacobite areas like the Scottish Highlands. That's the origins of your region's strong love affair with the UK military. Maybe your ancestors had a point, though. The rewards for loyalty haven't been that great. Most recently, getting sent to kill and be killed in Iraq for anglo oil companies.

[strichener]

On 16/02/2024 at 23:51, Freedom Farter said:

Indeed, it doesn't map onto whether contemporary Scotland needs to leave the UK or not but I'll come to that later and you'll notice I didn't argue that in my original reply.

We're encouraged in the anglosphere (Ireland excepted) to conceptualise history as constant struggles over identity rather than struggles over material conditions. We're told to view things this way because it benefits anglo interests (by that, I mean the state power of UK/Aus/NZ/Can/USA). All opposition to that state power is reduced to a mere identity movement. Take the recent referendum in Australia, where the indigenous Australian attempt to improve their material conditions was crushed. That was done by misrepresenting their concerns as a shallow identity movement which provoked a much larger identity backlash from the Euro-Australian majority. 

You see this same misrepresentation happening everywhere that anglo interests extend. We're encouraged to just view the struggles in these places as mere identity clashes between groups. Rather than as ownership power (formalised by state power) dispossessing and immiserating indigenous people. From Northern Ireland to Israel. What's frustrating is how folk still fall for the identity shite when the ownership/state class even tell us why they act: 

(Ronald Storrs was writing there as British governor of Jerusalem).

Onto the Jacobites. Their rank and file was comprised of the dispossessed and the immiserated. Regardless of what their purported higher cause was, their actions came about as a response to their material conditions. You mention 1689 there, well what followed 1689? The Seven Ill Years. Famine. A quarter of the Aberdeenshire population died from starvation. The other major population hit were the Highlanders. That's the two main regions from where Jacobite support was drawn in Scotland. 

Important to remember in this analysis, though, is that empire has layers to it. Highland gaels were the most mistreated people in Scotland, their suffering was immense. Yet they had an escape route in some cases which was provided by wider British empire. They could leave during the 1690s to escape the famine and settle in Ulster, where the indigenous people had been pushed out and were themselves subject to a far worse famine later. Then during the Highland Clearances, some Highlanders were able to escape and settle in the Americas, upon land the empire had cleared for them.

Something funny about that Evening News opinion was him raging about Mel Gibson's depictions of the Red Coats. Sometimes this misrepresentation of all history as identity struggles backfires on those who promote it. Which is what has happened there with the Americans concocting this absurd foundational myth of escaping British oppression. The American Revolution is a revolution in name only. The Haitian Revolution was an actual revolution. What happened in USA was an intra-imperial squabble. If it wasn't for the Americans in WW2, the British would be speaking German right now, they always tell us. OK, and if it wasn't for the British, the Americans would still be speaking Choctaw and Navajo right now. What's telling is that neither Gibson nor that Evening News opinion gave a moment's thought to the following; that both the settler-colonists and the Red Coats continued their unabated ethnic cleansing of indigenous Americans throughout the Revolutionary war period.

Finally, to the instrumentalisation of the Jacobite cause in service of contemporary Scottish independence arguments. As I keep trying to hammer home, identity struggles are not the same as struggles over material conditions. You'll never be able to neatly fit your preferred identity argument onto a period of real history where the people were not acting due to identity but due to their material conditions. Jacobin sympathy went from Wales up to north west England, over to Ireland, back over to north west Scotland then finally to north east Scotland. Effectively, it encompassed much of the celtic fringe to the British isles and skirted around the anglo interior.

The Scottish independence movement really needs to get to grips with this. You see folk wearing a Glengarry at their demonstrations. That hat was named after a clearer of the Highland Clearances. Its a symbol of Highland subservience to British empire. It was worn by co-opted Highlanders in the British military who fought to clear people around the world for the same British state that'd cleared their neighbours. 

 

The project wasn't just undertaken because the Victorians were a romantic bunch. It was done for two reasons. Firstly, to consolidate their cultural hold over the metropole. By awarding a new and distinct identity to a "rebellious" population, that group could be placated and enfranchised. Secondly, following on from the first goal, this would open up a new pool of peasants to be used as military fodder for empire expansion. It wasn't Jacobite sentiment that was re-imagined, it was the concept of "Scottishness" and particularly "Highlandness" as fierce, warrior-like defenders of Britain and empire. 

Tldr;

[Freedom Farter]

20 minutes ago, strichener said:

Tldr;

You can say that again! I typed it out on desktop where it doesn't look so bad but then I saw it later on my phone and realised what I'd done. Almost deleted out of shame!

[CarrbridgeSaintee]

11 hours ago, Freedom Farter said:

You can say that again! I typed it out on desktop where it doesn't look so bad but then I saw it later on my phone and realised what I'd done. Almost deleted out of shame!

I’ve made that mistake in the past too

I respect a long, well thought out post though, so will try and battle through it later on.