Quiet Fascism

It shouldn’t come as a surprise in a society which has institutionalised contempt for other ‘neds’, ‘gypsies’ and ‘asylum seekers’, but the recent comments in the Sunday Herald from a doctor recommending that the police assault people is incredible. "A SENIOR accident and emergency consultant urged police to abandon “wimpish” treatment of football hooligan, draw their batons and “knock the f*** out of them”. Ian Anderson, a former president of the UK’s Faculty of Accident and Emergency Medicine who is based at Glasgow’s Victoria Infirmary, believes society has become “overly politically correct and wimpish” in the way it deals with drink-fuelled loutishness." Full story here.

Is this a comment on the superiority of the professional classes or the wider contempt of society against the poor?

Probably both.

Certainly there’s a quiet fascism in this country that can make you feel physically sick if you wake up and look at it. Take New Labour’s Anti-social Behaviour Bill, which brings in extraordinary police powers to move on groups of young people. This piece of oppressive legislation offers nothing to the young people and was actualy opposed by the Police in Scotland who said it was "uneccesary and unworkable". Can you imagine the Tories producing policies so far to the right that they were rejected by the Police?

Not sure what's scarier, the idea of doctors with this latent violence in them or the normalisation of these attitudes at a 'conference'.