[milo]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Erm..no. It's a euphemism for poor people. If I go outside my house and see a black guy with a very expensive car in a suit, playing music very very loudly then I might think he is a dickhead. Yet at no point would I think "****ing chav".

innit

If the Old Etonians Rugby Club reunion starts singing their team song very loudly in the street late at night they might also be considered dickheads. Yet no-one would think of calling them chavs.

Why not? How am i to know they're old etonians? And even if they are, yeah i still would

So chav, at the very least means a certain kind of dickhead. They are certainly not synonyms for obvious reasons. And so the question becomes what characteristics require you to be a chav?

Broadly anti-social idiocy.

Could Yahwe ever be a chav?

If he fell out of clubs drunk and started fights with random strangers, yes.

Could MrL?

Again, yes!! im curious why you think they wouldn't? Their general posting makes me think it unlikely, but if they chose to act like dickheads and we gave a random selection of people some pejoratives to call them, why do you exclude the possibility of 'chav' being mentioned?

Now, just because there is a word for a group doesn't mean we're going to automatically march to fascism obviously. But I would say that it's incredibly naive to assume that words like chav are mere synonyms for curse words.

In the absence of any other evidence, i think it ridiculous to suggest anything other than that.

How do you know this? Which mind reading powers are you using? Because reading the hundreds of posts by at least one of the people quoted I can find nothing to make me think it's safe to assume he was joking.

Not mind reading powers as such, more 'general intelligence'

Can you seriously say you know their politics well enough to say that for each of the people who posted? Or for the rest of the internet?

I can only go by what they post, and nothing in what they've posted makes me seriously consider the notion of them supporting death camps. I cannot speak for the internet, can you?

I am fully willing to admit that most people who post (or write) "sterilise all chavs" are almost certainly joking, or being ironic, or being sarcastic or whatever. But are you seriously saying that it's totally impossible for the converse to be true?

This is getting absurd, how am I meant to state something is totally impossible?!?!? Yes dante it is totally and completely impossible for them to be anything other than ironic (im being sarcastic btw).

I come to a reasonable likelyhood of them joking based on the context of their posts and the presumption im not talking to a psychopath.

As they say in the Simpsons - are we being sarcastic? I don't even know anymore. With all the sort of uber-light hearted stuff everyone does on the internet it's difficult to tell. Pretty much everyone on this forum has done some kind of anti-semetic remark and certainly among my real-life friends it's the same. And so then you meet people who wear German WW2 uniforms while out clubbing and you presume there's some sort of post-modern ironic kitsch statement being made, even if it's not immediately obvious what it is. And then there's people who have scarred a swastika into their chest and who have pictures of Hitler up on their walls. And then you visit the homes of criminals who are almost certainly psychotics and you notice they sure do a lot of fascist salutes and boy do they have a lot of confederate flags. Or the cop who is married to one of your inlaws who jokes about black people and then you hear is suspended for kicking a black suspect to death.

Yes they're being ironic/sarcastic/postmodern/kitsch/emo. Perhaps you should ask tnf whether he feels comfortable saying hes a jew in slimes, as opposed to a bnp gathering.

You visit psychotic criminals?!!

And then you realise maybe it's not a joke for some of these people.

Then don't visit them.

Now, despite my above Godwin, I am not saying that the "chav" situation is anyway similar. But I would not assume the opposite either, that every person who talks about such things does not want them to happen or is joking. Off-hand I can think of at least four members of my family who would cheerfully vote for forced sterilisation for anyone breaking an ASBO for instance.

No, they're just angry and tired.

edit : Also, I'd add that even very serious thoughts of sterilising role playing communists (I don't know any btw, but there's bound to be one!) wouldn't (or shouldn't) be considered as dangerous as other forms of "discrimination" because there's no real history of organised prejudice against such groups. Similarly, racism must be taken much more seriously than anti-underclass sentiment, but that doesn't mean anti-underclass sentiment is nothing either.

In the absence of specific reasons why 'anti-underclass'* sentiment has presented a problem in modern society id take it as being nothing. If anti-social-behaviour-orders (regardless of their debatable shitness) apply equally to all members of society i don't see why its a problem to call anyone who acts in a certain manner consistent with them a chav.

If you're suggesting that said 'anti-social behaviour' is part of the ethnicity and culture of 'poor people' id suggest a petition to make parliment give 'poor people' the right to shit in the street, that said i think its patronising and condescending to say 'poor people act like this' (granted you don't accept chav as being a synonym for working class).



*What the hell is underclass? Who defines it? anecdotal experiences from friends and my own life experiences pretty much showed rich kids get bullied more. Being seen as a member of the proletariat isn't a problem, being seen as 'middle/upper class' or a toff singles you out for ill treatment. Hand on heart i have never ever seen anyone bullied because they were poor, on the contrary those who came from wealthy families tried to hide their background.

I think yahwe and jakiri would be harassed in certain areas of the country because of the way they 'acted' (even though the way they acted didn't break the law). If anything class bigotry in britain runs in the opposite way to which you describe. If a bb house full off yahwes and jakiris bullied a deffeh** id obviously be appalled. But all the class bullying i have ever witnessed has been the other way round. To suggest the white working class are only at the recieving end of 'class bigotry' let alone that what they experience is comparable to the historic bigotry based on gender/racial/sexual lines is insane.




**deffeh im sorry, im not saying you're crap