mhoyeMay 24

A short story, and a pattern I want you to recognize:

A few years ago somebody sent a letter into a local paper asking, why do groups of Ethiopian men stand around outside every evening, I'm white and anxious and I don't think like it, what's that about then. And to their credit, the paper did the legwork and replied "In that community, people don't just rush straight home after work; they meet friends, talk about their day, share community news, talk politics, local and back home ..."

Show threadmhoyeMay 24

After elaborating that the author had the wit to say, maybe the question isn't, why do they do this. Maybe the real question we should be asking is, why aren't the rest of us doing the same.

I think about that a lot. especially when - after we've been through decades of relentless government penury and abdication of responsibility around social and societal infrastructure - politicians start talking about social isolation as a dog whistle for xenophobia.

https://theconversation.com/britain-is-already-becoming-an-island-of-strangers-but-immigration-isnt-the-driver-256724

Britain is already becoming an ‘island of strangers’ – but immigration isn’t the driver

Keir Starmer is right to highlight the decline of social cohesion, but wrong about the reasons for it.

The Conversation
Show threadmhoye

In the UK they called it "austerity", I think because of the British total cultural commitment to describing self-inflicted misery in terms of ennobling character traits and nationalist pride, but it's the same neglect all over: when was the last time anyone near you broke ground on a community center?

Not a shopping mall or coffee shop, but an actual third-space you can just go and hang out if you want for no reason, not need to pay anything, community center?

You can't remember, can you?

May 24 at 2:03pmWeb
Show threadmhoyeMay 24

And that's the pattern.

Neglect and ignore that "the public good" means public social infrastructure and public social spaces, for decades, and then point at anyone who's trying to do what they can with the approximately nothing they have to make their cities and communities more real, more connected, more beautiful - Ethiopian corner conversations, Caribbean barbecues in parks, teenagers with spraypaint turning bare concrete into art, the list is endless - and blame them for the decay.

Show threadmhoyeMay 24
We need to recognize this pattern and understand, in our bones, what it means: that when you see somebody blaming immigrants or teenagers or _literally anyone else_ for social failures in a society, when they have their hands on the levers of _the most powerful social institutions of that society_, what we should all be seeing is somebody who either absolutely sucks at their job or doesn't think solving those problems should be their job or just doesn't want to. Malice, incompetence or both.
Show threadmhoyeMay 24

Malice, incompetence, both, doesn’t matter; bigotry and incompetence go hand in hand everywhere and always have. People whose bigotries keep them from doing their jobs are just people who can’t do their jobs and people who can’t do their jobs shouldn’t get to keep them.

(Thread collected here: https://exple.tive.org/blarg/2025/05/24/faultlines/ )

Faultlines | blarg

Show threadThe Janx DevilMay 24
@mhoye What was that you were just saying about “moral cowardice and unreliability go hand in hand” a moment ago?
Show threaddirtsideMay 25
@mhoye Brilliant thread. Powerful elites have long used powerless scapegoats to keep the public divided and distracted; they give us culture war so we won't give them class war.
Show threadJPMay 24
@mhoye "there's no such thing as society, only individuals" had infinite roaches hiding under it
Show threadTane Piper ⁂May 24

@mhoye I'm watching the new series of Clarkson's Farm - and yes while he's generally an arse, I think some humanity sometimes shines through him - and in this series he's talking up about the loneliness epidemic in farming and rural areas.

Britain's social fabric has been disappearing for many years, the town I grew up in is a boarded up dead place now, so many social pubs closed, libraries, civic centres - nowhere for local society to convene.

Show threadAsad SayeedMay 24
@mhoye Britain became a nation of strangers when Margaret Thatcher said that there was no society.
Show threadsunsetkindaguyMay 24
@asayeed @mhoye Thatcher and Reagan never went away. They seem now to be one point on the white, right-wing, male billionaire game plan to impoverish the civic space and the ordinary citizen to mould society to their advantage.
Show threadPeteMay 24

@asayeed @mhoye

#MichaelFoot said about #Thatcher:

She has no imagination and that means no compassion

Michael Foot - On Margaret Thatcher, 1981

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Foot

#MargaretThatcher #Maggie #MaggieThatcher #Foot #Labour #ukpol

Michael Foot - Wikiquote

Show threadChris SiebenmannMay 24
@mhoye It occurs to me suddenly that "teenagers with spraypaint turning bare concrete into art" says something big about our desire to have nice surroundings. People will go well out of their way and take risks and etc in order to make nice things to look at. We should be encouraging this! Yet, somehow, as you know.
Show threadsabikMay 25

@mhoye
One sad thing about shopping mall vs community centre is that a mall can totally be a third space, if it's run by someone with the wit to (in business terms) take it as a loss leader

Possibly that's even the key distinction between a thriving mall and a dying one