Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[Bakunin]

Would these be the 'so-called lefties' who:

1. Have been around and involved with various activist and protest groups for many years?

2. Have often worked in full-time jobs and then spent their free time working for one cause or another or perhaps several at the same time?

3. Who've risked (and not infrequently suffered) arrest, court cases and jail for various causes?

4. Who put their own time, effort and money into supporting those causes instead of being paid to merely write about them??

Just for clarification's sake. We'd hate to slate anyone who wasn't a pretend leftie with careerist intentions and a martyr complex, obviously.

 

[Balbi]

Unfashionable protest groups.

Un-networked jobs.

Actual risk.

 

[lauriepenny]

Balbi said: ↑

This thread is a theatre seat conversation - which includes weird hecklers. Consider your work our performance, and our criticism valid despite hecklers. Try.​

But why? Why should I?

The valid criticism is all stuff I've heard before and answered elsewhere. The essay on Warren Ellis online is just one of the places where I talk about journalism and class privilege and what it means and how we can change it. I'm actively involved in a number of campaigns that aim to change and challenge the bourgeois commentariat model.

But not only do I suspect that that doesn't matter to you, I find it hard to consider any criticism valid when it comes peppered with ugly misogyny and crass schoolboy bullying. You invalidate your own arguments by being frankly creepy and stalkery. It's boring.

I have to get back to work now.

 

[Firky]

Fearless.

 

[lauriepenny]

You've also

Would these be the 'so-called lefties' who:

1. Have been around and involved with various activist and protest groups for many years?

2. Have often worked in full-time jobs and then spent their free time working for one cause or another or perhaps several at the same time?

3. Who've risked (and not infrequently suffered) arrest, court cases and jail for various causes?

4. Who put their own time, effort and money into supporting those causes instead of being paid to merely write about them??

Just for clarification's sake. We'd hate to slate anyone who wasn't a pretend leftie with careerist intentions and a martyr complex, obviously.

Your assumption that I haven't done any or, in fact, all of these things is rather sweet.

 

[Captain Hurrah]

Hi.

 

[butchersapron]

Your assumption that I haven't done any or, in fact, all of these things is rather sweet.

Your ignoring the prior points in favour of answering this one is is sweet. Well sweet. As sweet as fucking possible. Sweet.

 

[rekil]

does anyone fancy a frappe?

Who knows, maybe the prof will turn up and the thread will get back 'on topic'.

 

[love detective]

Unfashionable protest groups.

Un-networked jobs.

Actual risk.

Laurie Penny in April 2012

“To be an honest political writer or journalist today is constantly to negotiate and re-negotiate the complicated relationship between conviction and orthodoxy, between critical reportage and activism-as-journalism. That relationship never been more fraught than it is now, because the line between activism and media production has become smudged to the point of irrelevance.But there’s a line in the sand, and you cross it when you start making most of your living writing about politics. Because once you have decided that you will always tell the truth you see in front of you, no matter what your bosses say, you have to decide what’s more important: your career or your conscience.” (Laurie Penny, essay on journalism in April 2012)

Laurie Penny in September 2012

"That's it. Sorry, guys, but I'm not going back out there today. Really don't want to be arrested and deported just for journalism"

 

[Frances Lengel]

To be fair that's just one particularly strange person - there is some serious criticism throughout the thread.

Less of the strange. Though I'll readily admit to not being very clued up about politics - Not into all that facts and figures business, me. I've got a more Croft Original kind of approach in that "One instinctively knows".

 

[butchersapron]

Great though francis and firky are the points responded to.

 

[lauriepenny]

To Balbi on his point about theatre seat hecklers/valid criticism:

The valid criticism is all stuff I've heard before and answered elsewhere. The essay on Warren Ellis online is just one of the places where I talk about journalism and class privilege and what it means and how we can change it. I'm actively involved in a number of campaigns that aim to change and challenge the bourgeois commentariat model.

But not only do I suspect that that doesn't matter to you. I suspect that this thread is just a place you lot come to blow off steam by hating on someone you find it convenient to hate, and jesus, I understand that activism is tiring and we all need to relax, but is chilling out by slagging off people who are actually trying to help really the best use of radical downtime? Quite apart from the fact that I happen to be a real person, and not your counter-revolutionary wank-fantasy. I'm a 26-year old woman with a mum and a dad and baby sisters and a job I work hard at and politics I believe in and am prepared to put everything on the line for just as much as any of you.

I find it hard to consider any criticism valid when it comes peppered with ugly misogyny and crass schoolboy bullying. You invalidate your own arguments by being frankly creepy and stalkery. It's boring.

I have to get back to work now.

 

[frogwoman]

things just got weirder

/dot

 

[Lo Siento.]

You've also


Your assumption that I haven't done any or, in fact, all of these things is rather sweet.

Is it? You were advocating a vote for the Lib Dems in 2010, by which time you were already a journo. Pretty safe to assume that you weren't exactly on the political margins prior to beating out a career as a professional leftie.

 

[Firky]

You've also


Your assumption that I haven't done any or, in fact, all of these things is rather sweet.

Number 3 on that list:

https://twitter.com/PennyRed/status/247797663284740096

Laurie Penny
‏@PennyRed
That's it. Sorry, guys, but I'm not going back out there today. Really don't want to be arrested and deported just for journalism

 

[free spirit]

From one lib-dem to another.Ah.

It's more down to me thinking it's generally a good thing to have someone in the mainstreamish press prepared to actually get into the thick of it a bit when it's kicking off and report from that perspective, instead of only ever reporting the police version of events from behind police lines.

That's all really.

 

[Balbi]

To Balbi on his point about theatre seat hecklers/valid criticism:

The valid criticism is all stuff I've heard before and answered elsewhere. The essay on Warren Ellis online is just one of the places where I talk about journalism and class privilege and what it means and how we can change it. I'm actively involved in a number of campaigns that aim to change and challenge the bourgeois commentariat model.

But not only do I suspect that that doesn't matter to you. I suspect that this thread is just a place you lot come to blow off steam by hating on someone you find it convenient to hate, and jesus, I understand that activism is tiring and we all need to relax, but is chilling out by slagging off people who are actually trying to help really the best use of radical downtime? Quite apart from the fact that I happen to be a real person, and not your counter-revolutionary wank-fantasy. I'm a 26-year old woman with a mum and a dad and baby sisters and a job I work hard at and politics I believe in and am prepared to put everything on the line for just as much as any of you.

I find it hard to consider any criticism valid when it comes peppered with ugly misogyny and crass schoolboy bullying. You invalidate your own arguments by being frankly creepy and stalkery. It's boring.

I have to get back to work now.

That started as an answer to me and turned into a whole thread thing right?

I'll read the Ellis essay, although I can't say i'm his biggest fan anyway

 

[SpineyNorman]

To Balbi on his point about theatre seat hecklers/valid criticism:

The valid criticism is all stuff I've heard before and answered elsewhere. The essay on Warren Ellis online is just one of the places where I talk about journalism and class privilege and what it means and how we can change it. I'm actively involved in a number of campaigns that aim to change and challenge the bourgeois commentariat model.

But not only do I suspect that that doesn't matter to you. I suspect that this thread is just a place you lot come to blow off steam by hating on someone you find it convenient to hate, and jesus, I understand that activism is tiring and we all need to relax, but is chilling out by slagging off people who are actually trying to help really the best use of radical downtime? Quite apart from the fact that I happen to be a real person, and not your counter-revolutionary wank-fantasy. I'm a 26-year old woman with a mum and a dad and baby sisters and a job I work hard at and politics I believe in and am prepared to put everything on the line for just as much as any of you.

I find it hard to consider any criticism valid when it comes peppered with ugly misogyny and crass schoolboy bullying. You invalidate your own arguments by being frankly creepy and stalkery. It's boring.

I have to get back to work now.

Radical downtime lol like a marketing exec yoghurt weaver hybrid

 

[Lo Siento.]

To Balbi on his point about theatre seat hecklers/valid criticism:

The valid criticism is all stuff I've heard before and answered elsewhere. The essay on Warren Ellis online is just one of the places where I talk about journalism and class privilege and what it means and how we can change it. I'm actively involved in a number of campaigns that aim to change and challenge the bourgeois commentariat model.

But not only do I suspect that that doesn't matter to you. I suspect that this thread is just a place you lot come to blow off steam by hating on someone you find it convenient to hate, and jesus, I understand that activism is tiring and we all need to relax, but is chilling out by slagging off people who are actually trying to help really the best use of radical downtime? Quite apart from the fact that I happen to be a real person, and not your counter-revolutionary wank-fantasy. I'm a 26-year old woman with a mum and a dad and baby sisters and a job I work hard at and politics I believe in and am prepared to put everything on the line for just as much as any of you.

I find it hard to consider any criticism valid when it comes peppered with ugly misogyny and crass schoolboy bullying. You invalidate your own arguments by being frankly creepy and stalkery. It's boring.

I have to get back to work now.

And what does "put everything on the line" mean for a journalist, Laurie? Stop with martyrdom and "just one of the people" schtick, ffs.
You get arrested it probably boosts your book sales. I get arrested, I get the sack.

 

[lauriepenny]

I've risked arrest by doing my job many times. Every time, it's a calculated risk about how important the story you're doing today is compared to all the stories you might not be able to do in the future if you're arrested or get on a blacklist. I have been assaulted by police officers, grabbed and thrown away from the 'wrong' side of official reporting lines and watched my friends beaten bloody, and then I come home to people like you telling me my work is invalid, and I continue to do what I do despite being attacked by so-called comrades because I think those stories need to be told.

 

[frogwoman]

can we have a quote for the Girder be for your off laurrie?

/dot

 

[Bakunin]

You've also


Your assumption that I haven't done any or, in fact, all of these things is rather sweet.

It would be, if that's what I was actually assuming. Which I wasn't.

Your assumption, on the other hand, that we're all a bunch of 'so-called lefties' isn't sweet. It's also dishonest and sneering as many here have spent much of their lives doing all those things without using them as a self-promotional career move.

 

[Balbi]

The majority of us have experienced the same, but haven't had a powerful platform to discuss it from. We have to clock in on Monday. No international jet setting Bugger.

(That's depressed sarcasm btw - and a teeny tiny dig at the occasional plaintive moans about your financial woes - you live in a world that'd be a dream for most )

 

[inva]

I've risked arrest by doing my job many times. Every time, it's a calculated risk about how important the story you're doing today is compared to all the stories you might not be able to do in the future if you're arrested or get on a blacklist. I have been assaulted by police officers, grabbed and thrown away from the 'wrong' side of official reporting lines and watched my friends beaten bloody, and then I come home to people like you telling me my work is invalid, and I continue to do what I do despite being attacked by so-called comrades because I think those stories need to be told.

and you were forced to sing the internationale

 

[SpineyNorman]

I've risked arrest by doing my job many times. Every time, it's a calculated risk about how important the story you're doing today is compared to all the stories you might not be able to do in the future if you're arrested or get on a blacklist. I have been assaulted by police officers, grabbed and thrown away from the 'wrong' side of official reporting lines and watched my friends beaten bloody, and then I come home to people like you telling me my work is invalid, and I continue to do what I do despite being attacked by so-called comrades because I think those stories need to be told.

It's more that your concern for people like you getting battered seems to far outweigh your concern when it happens to normals - there's plenty of hard evidence to this effect if you care to read the thread rather than looking for the posts by daft twats that allow you to dismiss it all as the rantings of 'so called lefties'

 

[butchersapron]

To Balbi on his point about theatre seat hecklers/valid criticism:

The valid criticism is all stuff I've heard before and answered elsewhere. The essay on Warren Ellis online is just one of the places where I talk about journalism and class privilege and what it means and how we can change it. I'm actively involved in a number of campaigns that aim to change and challenge the bourgeois commentariat model.

But not only do I suspect that that doesn't matter to you. I suspect that this thread is just a place you lot come to blow off steam by hating on someone you find it convenient to hate, and jesus, I understand that activism is tiring and we all need to relax, but is chilling out by slagging off people who are actually trying to help really the best use of radical downtime? Quite apart from the fact that I happen to be a real person, and not your counter-revolutionary wank-fantasy. I'm a 26-year old woman with a mum and a dad and baby sisters and a job I work hard at and politics I believe in and am prepared to put everything on the line for just as much as any of you.

I find it hard to consider any criticism valid when it comes peppered with ugly misogyny and crass schoolboy bullying. You invalidate your own arguments by being frankly creepy and stalkery. It's boring.

I have to get back to work now.

Just as i said.Watch twitter get it shortly.

 

[lauriepenny]

You know, don't you, that this is why we can't have nice things. Like a revolution.

I'm sure your hearts are in the right place, but collectively you come across like a bunch of creepy bedroom bullies.

 

[frogwoman]

there are plenty of people being arrested for stuff they believe in who don't go on about it or use it as a career boosting opportunity

 

[SpineyNorman]

You know, don't you, that this is why we can't have nice things. Like a revolution.

I'm sure your hearts are in the right place, but collectively you come across like a bunch of creepy bedroom bullies.

Yes. That's the reason. Definitely.

For fuck's sake

 

[lauriepenny]

and you were forced to sing the internationale

The internationale is a good fucking tune and I won't hear anything against it.