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Struck by this from @debmattinson's 'Beyond the Red Wall': "The nod to Trump led to a spontaneous chant of ‘Let’s build a wall'....‘We’ll build a wall around London!’ shouted one and everyone cheered...keeping Londoners in their place would be a very desirable outcome indeed."
(This from a citizen's jury with with people from a 'Red Wall' constituency)
I'm struck by the depth of feeling against 'London', the intensity of the visceral feeling it reportedly provoked. This intensifying of cultural-right hatred of London seems like a distinctive feature of recent years, becoming ever more rhetorically prominent.
Conservative phobia of the cosmopolitan metropolis is neither new nor unique to the UK. But the anti-London version feels more intense and absolute than it used to be, tellingly occluding any conservative appreciation of London as seat of the institutions that embody nationhood.
As someone invested in literary and cultural representations of London, I find this turn fascinating. As a citizen, I find it concerning: The excessive, obsessive rhetorical hatred (let's call it hate, because that's what it is) of a particular place-identity never ends well.
