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

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OK, so who is saying "stupid shit" (I see that in some cases, but even so) and why have one (it's actually close to one person, but might be two) or two people decided to police the thread now that Laurie Penny has arrived? Why has their "stupid shit" not been asked to stop before?

It only serves to appear that they think she matters. I think to some posters, her arriving on the thread really matters.

They shit their pants. With rage and joy. Then got drunk.

(f'ing autocorrect)
 
dave said:
Of course, the old left is not about to disappear completely. It is highly likely that even after a nuclear attack, the only remaining life-forms will be cockroaches and sour-faced vendors of the Socialist Worker.
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The ginger guy in the centre is the 22/3-year-old charging $5,000 exclusive of travel, food and expenses to give a talk about Occupy and anti-capitalism.

6166252322_d696a4ca63_b.jpg

strawberry blonde, surely?

Sorry, but who's paying him 5 grand to speak? I find that bafflingly.
 
That's the fee his 'agent' was quoting at potential clients and he said he didn't know anything about it, but his 'agent' turned out be his flatmate or something.

Damn, I live in Brooklyn . . . I have a beard . . . I wear t shirts with ironic statements . . . and I'm strawberry blonde. Why don't I know these people? :(
 
One thing that is intriguing is how leftie journalists always big up other leftie journalists as being the *best thing*. Here is Sunny Hundal pointing out America Matt Taibi in the Rolling Stone is superior to any activist or academic on the left in this country in analysis of capitalism:


Alex@Potentia_Space
@sunny_hundal I think an understanding of how capitalism works is essential for the development of a strategy to combat austerity


@Potentia_Space Matt Taibi / Rolling Stone for eg does a much better job than any radical academic or activist on left in the UK.
Hundal is the worst of them all. LibDem cuntsock
 
I'm still fucking fuming about what Laura did yesterday by the way. Partly it's because I can think of few worse things to be called than a racist and to be tarred with that brush in front of such a big audience is pretty fucking irritating. But I think it's also the hypocrisy of it all - she's always on about privilege, but then she uses her own obvious and massive privilege to slander me and LD, and by association the IWCA and I guess anyone on the left who dislikes identity politics, then remove any possible opportunity for a right of reply.

It's pretty fucking low and I think it says a huge amount about her - she doesn't have a problem with power - she just has a problem with people other than her and those who think like her exercising it. Fucking Fabian scum.

Anyway, as anyone who knows me in real life would agree, I'm usually a very laid back, mild mannered person who doesn't take life too seriously. But when I feel like it, if I'm pushed too far, I can be a right spiteful, vindictive, grudge bearing bastard when I want to be. Maybe that means I'm multi-human or whatever it was that daft pseud twatted at @lauriepenny - if so the human I am right now is of the vicious, grudge bearing wee bastard persuasion. So I would appreciate any suggestions for revenge.

Obviously they'd have to be non-misogynistic, non-violent etc - because even if I didn't adhere to those principles I'd be loath to allow her any excuse to cry foul play.

I've also got a huge capacity to hold and act on a rational justified grudge. For some reason though her racist accusations is not the main thing spurring me to do something, the main reason is just her in general,not her specific attacks on me, but who she is, what she does and how she does it, and what that means about the capacity and eagerness of the wider left in general to tolerate time and time again developments that are poisonous and corrosive to it

As someone famous once said the weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Amongst all the dross, this thread is packed full of incisive, pertinent, prescient, revealing and honest criticisms of Laurie Penny that is currently not being used in a productive way, the problem is that most of it is dwarved and hidden both by the dross but also just by the nature of how discussion threads are, which means only the small amount of people who have participated in it is aware of all the gems of solid criticism within it, there's no way in it's current state is it possible of 'gripping the masses' (lol)

So I think a useful (productive? satisfying?) response would be to put together some kind of 'dossier' that extracts and distils all the good stuff from this thread and present it in a structured logical way that can be circulated widely as an honest comprehensive and emotion free account of who she is, what she does and how she does it, leaving no room for the type of get out and avoidance tactics that she employs when asked to respond to the criticisms of this thread itself. We moaned at her for not responding to the substantive points on this thread, but i'd struggle to find the substantive points in around 8,000 posts if I was coming to it cold. More importantly, so would any bystander who holds an open mind on it.

I shouldn't even be thinking about doing anything like this, but it does feel at the moment that it would be a worthwhile thing to do, you up for it?
 
So I think a useful (productive? satisfying?) response would be to put together some kind of 'dossier' that extracts and distils all the good stuff from this thread and present it in a structured logical way that can be circulated widely as an honest comprehensive and emotion free account of who she is, what she does and how she does it, leaving no room for the type of get out and avoidance tactics that she employs when asked to respond to the criticisms of this thread itself. We moaned at her for not responding to the substantive points on this thread, but i'd struggle to find the substantive points in around 8,000 posts if I was coming to it cold. More importantly, so would any bystander who holds an open mind on it.

I shouldn't even be thinking about doing anything like this, but it does feel at the moment that it would be a worthwhile thing to do, you up for it?
A good idea. Trouble is, the next time la penny and her cohorts clap eyes on this thread, the word 'dossier' will be seized upon as further evidence of urbanz' 'patriarchal bully-boy tactics and all-round creepyness' ((C)Laurie Penny 2012) and thus a twitter storm of epic proportion will kick off based on how (once again) we are all a bunch of misogynist arseholes down here in P&P (including all the feminists on this thread). =/

Fuck it. Do it.
 
Agree totally Love Detective.

It's not about a personal grudge thing either, I think it'd be an absolutely essential guide to how class power and privilige functions in the media circles of this country.

And excuse me for bringing up age in this, but I have this nightmare that the older I get, the more the kind of shite she comes out with will end up utterly dominating what passes for "left" discourse in this country. For younger people, we've got a real task on our hands to stop this rot before it destroys all that remains of the left. It's utterly pernicious. This stuff alienates pretty much everyone outside an incredibly small group of posh university graduates, and if it becomes synonymous with "anarchism" or "the radical left" it'll lead directly to it's total and utter defeat in the battle of ideas. We can't let that happen, the times we're living in are too critical for that to be allowed to happen. In other words "and deliver us from evil" as someone else famous said :D

Besides there's another point here, and even though it's a bit right-on I think it's true, that as awful and obnoxious as she is, it's still not right that people make crude sexist remarks against her. Not only does it undermine those who would wish to make thoughtful critcism of her work, and acts a tool to deflect such criticism, but I don't think any woman should be made to endure witless abuse of that kind, even if that woman is as obnoxious as Laurie Penny. That's a matter of principle to me. So something that would exclusively focus on the politics of it, with no sexist bullshit to detract from it, would be very useful.
 
Needs to be clear thAat it's not about an attack on one individual, but that her case is illustrative of a social type/trend.

Agreed. She's an archetype of something systematic that is very wrong and must be challenged.

in any democracy worthy of the name the people have the right to hold establishment journalists to account. And just because you claim to be of the radical left, that does not change.
 
OK, so who is saying "stupid shit" (I see that in some cases, but even so) and why have one (it's actually close to one person, but might be two) or two people decided to police the thread now that Laurie Penny has arrived? Why has their "stupid shit" not been asked to stop before?

It only serves to appear that they think she matters. I think to some posters, her arriving on the thread really matters.

This isn't true, I'm afraid. People earlier have been told to shut the fuck up when they've been stupid/out of order/derailed the thread.

And of course it matters that she arrived. One of the main criticisms of Penny et al is the disconnect between them and the people they make good capital - in more than one sense of the word - out of writing FOR and ABOUT. For her to bother to turn up at all was something. It wasn't going to work very well, obviously, as there were some really hard questions.
 
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So I think a useful (productive? satisfying?) response would be to put together some kind of 'dossier' that extracts and distils all the good stuff from this thread and present it in a structured logical way that can be circulated widely as an honest comprehensive and emotion free account of who she is, what she does and how she does it, leaving no room for the type of get out and avoidance tactics that she employs when asked to respond to the criticisms of this thread itself. We moaned at her for not responding to the substantive points on this thread, but i'd struggle to find the substantive points in around 8,000 posts if I was coming to it cold. More importantly, so would any bystander who holds an open mind on it.


Why though? While I can understand you being pissed off about being called a racist, is it worth all the effort when the only people who will ever hear of Laura and her ilk, let alone take them seriously, are surely those who would have no interest in your kind of politics anyway?
 
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