My Favourite Rightwingers: The British Chav

OH YEAH, LOOK AT HIS MAJESTY!
You can see that shit on the beck of a coin, can't you? Fabulous. Yes, it's the wonderful phenomenon of the "chav" under discussion here - sort of. And thing one about them - back in the day, there were plenty of names for the sportswear-clad, alcopop supping youths that fill shopping districts after dark up and down the country. Down 'ere in Devon, they were kevs. Glasgow had neds, Belfast spides, and so on. But then! Something horrible happened. Yes, it's the liberal middle-class Londonistas again. (Yep, that's what this is really about.)

Looking up from her bowl of Country Crisp one morning, Jenny Guardianista noticed that young Toby had come home from school with a bloody nose - probably as a result of being a smug twit called Toby - and, upon asking the neighbours who these strange creatures who worshipped Fred Perry actually were, discovered in horror that they were people who paid for ringtones, smoked and ate food that probably wasn't organic. The local term happened to be chav (a sort of portmanteau of "cheltenham 'ave-not", or perhaps "Council-Housed And Violent", which should clue you in to the real content of the mass-hatred they receive). And because she's godawful yuppie scum, it became everyone's local term.

The chav is the generic signifier for absolutely everything that is a square peg for contemporary ideology. They are not interested in living healthier lives, reducing their carbon footprint or "ethical consumerism" - which is to say, in the self-aggrandising asceticism which has temporarily displaced political discourse in the West. (Slavoj Zizek notes that what really bothers us about smoking is not any genuine concern for our own health - sitting in a smoky cafe for an hour is no more toxic than walking down a busy road - but that the Other has the temerity to place a cigarette to her lips, inhale deeply and enjoy it.)

There is, of course, a dark side to this - the average chav is racist, although it is not the systematic racism of the fascist so much as the insecure lashing out of the playground bully. They are pulled, as the disavowed excess on the social body, in extreme political directions - and this means fascism as much as anything else. But again, it must be acknowledged that this is our fault too - the Left has become dominated by this suffocating Liberal smugness, a middle class ideology intent on keeping those below down there. These lost, benighted souls are precluded from the club ultimately because they fail to show sufficient enthusiasm for hybrid cars.

They tell the elitist not so much things about herself as her inadequacy confronted with the realities of life - total impotence in the face of capital. When we hear the old line about more votes being cast for Big Brother than in the general election, it underscores the unmentionable - that they're right not to vote in (these) general elections, that the choice between Gordon Blair and David "look at my shiny bike" Cameron is so utterly insignificant that the outcome of X Factor really will make a bigger difference to their lives, and ours.

Leaving these millions of people to the BNP might be the last mistake we ever make.