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

[Captain Hurrah]

It's not difficult Dave. Just one word: sorry.

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

Did someone mention criminal records?

a bit like that lol

 

[sihhi]

The Kingster is our man on the inside. That reminds me, I promised him a PD mug,

I felt a bit guilty about linking to him - but the point was to show the systematic nature of Oxbridge media dominance.

However he is now being feted by the Danish embassy http://storbritannien.um.dk/en/news/newsdisplaypage/?newsid=c7a350b5-067b-4ff8-b07f-a207fc6e6f8e.

Money that should be for Danish immigrants is spent on a party function with another Guardian journo interviewing him (I wonder how hard the questions where?)

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

It's not difficult Dave. Just one word: sorry.

sorry: where's there whole "Dave Barnett" thing coming from?

 

[DotCommunist]

It's not difficult Dave. Just one word: sorry.

seems to be the hardest word

 

[ViolentPanda]

Surely there's a patron saint for racists somewhere.

St. Tommy of Robinson.

 

[rekil]

"Well, ok, to clarify, I've no idea whether [LD] is racist,

Thete's a john terryesque quality to that, an attack masked by a fake apology or denial.

Does that sound right? More like the "I've no idea whether the protocols are a forgery" school of attack maybe.

 

[ViolentPanda]

sorry: where's there whole "Dave Barnett" thing coming from?

Laurie Penny's real name is Laura Barnett, so it was decided to call her Dave.
We had a meeting and a vote. Didn't you get the memo?

 

[DotCommunist]

St. Tommy of Robinson.

I bet christmas dinner in jail must be well shit. He'd best opt for the halal choice

 

[ViolentPanda]

Vote labour with no illusions

Always makes me chuckle, that.
Like you could vote Labour unless you had illusions.

 

[ViolentPanda]

it's all for a new book apparently.

the decline of men or some shit.

So, another risible ride through Laura's ill-informed opinions, then.

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

Laurie Penny's real name is Laura Barnett, so it was decided to call her Dave.
We had a meeting and a vote. Didn't you get the memo?

lol thanks for the heads up. am in another party.

 

[sihhi]

Reading over the twitters from today, this exchange is also confusing:

LP's question is "This idea of 'the decline of the young man' and 'the end of men' causing violence, social breakdown - what do you think, Twitter?"

"LP: I have a huge essay on this I'm working on, it's for my book though so not out till next Autumn... #endofmen

Joshua Eaton: So men are told their privileged oppressors, which is true, without having an outlet for the class oppression they get, too.

LP: Yep. That's the thing. Having privilege is NOT the same thing as having power. Not all privileged people are powerful."

Joshua Eaton seems to suggest that working-class men are violent/cause social breakdown because they experience class oppression and male privilege. Laurie agrees, sort of suggesting that the working-class version of 'male privilege' is responsible for violence/social breakdown.

This as an idea totally fails to account for middle-class males' oppression over women, doesn't it? Unless I'm reading it all wrong. Privilege politics is so confusing.

Also capitalism is social breakdown.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Didn't Susan Faludi already do that? Expect great chunks cut+pasted no doubt

NO NO NO. You've entirely failed to understand the journalistic process! Laura doesn't "cut and paste", she re-imagines past writings of an author in a conversational format!

 

[The39thStep]

Always makes me chuckle, that.
Like you could vote Labour unless you had illusions.

It is rhizomatic, its tendrils spreading and retracting -
To me.
To you.

 

[frogwoman]

Reading over the twitters from today, this exchange is also confusing:

LP's question is "This idea of 'the decline of the young man' and 'the end of men' causing violence, social breakdown - what do you think, Twitter?"

"LP: I have a huge essay on this I'm working on, it's for my book though so not out till next Autumn... #endofmen

Joshua Eaton: So men are told their privileged oppressors, which is true, without having an outlet for the class oppression they get, too.

LP: Yep. That's the thing. Having privilege is NOT the same thing as having power. Not all privileged people are powerful."

Joshua Eaton seems to suggest that working-class men are violent/cause social breakdown because they experience class oppression and male privilege. Laurie agrees, sort of suggesting that the working-class version of 'male privilege' is responsible for violence/social breakdown.

This as an idea totally fails to account for middle-class males' oppression over women, doesn't it? Unless I'm reading it all wrong. Privilege politics is so confusing.

Also capitalism is social breakdown.

we must have really got to her.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Reading over the twitters from today, this exchange is also confusing:

LP's question is "This idea of 'the decline of the young man' and 'the end of men' causing violence, social breakdown - what do you think, Twitter?"

"LP: I have a huge essay on this I'm working on, it's for my book though so not out till next Autumn... #endofmen

Joshua Eaton: So men are told their privileged oppressors, which is true, without having an outlet for the class oppression they get, too.

LP: Yep. That's the thing. Having privilege is NOT the same thing as having power. Not all privileged people are powerful."

That's fucking demented! Privilege is inherently always about power over someone. If it weren't, it wouldn't be privilege!

 

[The39thStep]

Reading over the twitters from today, this exchange is also confusing:

LP's question is "This idea of 'the decline of the young man' and 'the end of men' causing violence, social breakdown - what do you think, Twitter?"

"LP: I have a huge essay on this I'm working on, it's for my book though so not out till next Autumn... #endofmen

Joshua Eaton: So men are told their privileged oppressors, which is true, without having an outlet for the class oppression they get, too.

LP: Yep. That's the thing. Having privilege is NOT the same thing as having power. Not all privileged people are powerful."

Joshua Eaton seems to suggest that working-class men are violent/cause social breakdown because they experience class oppression and male privilege. Laurie agrees, sort of suggesting that the working-class version of 'male privilege' is responsible for violence/social breakdown.

This as an idea totally fails to account for middle-class males' oppression over women, doesn't it? Unless I'm reading it all wrong. Privilege politics is so confusing.

Also capitalism is social breakdown.

Reminds me of that disgusting attack on the miners by Bea Campbell who seemed to think that picketing was the height of patriarchy

 

[ViolentPanda]

It is rhizomatic, its tendrils spreading and retracting -
To me.
To you.

You need some root-killer, mate. Sodium chlorate do you?

 

[DaveCinzano]

Did someone mention criminal records?

They of Gang Bang fame

 

[ViolentPanda]

Trying to catch up here. So we're not racist apart from spineynorman whose racism is growing exponentially but we're all still solidly misogynist. ?

That's about right, you woman-hating bastard!

 

[frogwoman]

I'm actually disgusted. In what world are we privileged over laurie penny? LD and spiney are not famous, they are not guardian commentators and dont get to be on newsnight all of the time, so how are they privileged?

bullshit like this just makes a mockery of the idea of racism and sexism tbh.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Do I get to be a misogynist too though? I'll feel left out otherwise

I have a theory about how I am racist - it involves colonial consciousness and everything. My realtionships with black people haven't been anything to do with friendship or love - instead it's all down to me wanting to civilize them in a kind of culturally imperialist white man's burden kind of way.

I wanted to say something, mate, but it never seemed to be the right time, and you always looked so pleased with yourself.

 

[Balbi]

Platform, we are undermining you.

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

Reading over the twitters from today, this exchange is also confusing:

LP's question is "This idea of 'the decline of the young man' and 'the end of men' causing violence, social breakdown - what do you think, Twitter?"

"LP: I have a huge essay on this I'm working on, it's for my book though so not out till next Autumn... #endofmen

Joshua Eaton: So men are told their privileged oppressors, which is true, without having an outlet for the class oppression they get, too.

LP: Yep. That's the thing. Having privilege is NOT the same thing as having power. Not all privileged people are powerful."

Joshua Eaton seems to suggest that working-class men are violent/cause social breakdown because they experience class oppression and male privilege. Laurie agrees, sort of suggesting that the working-class version of 'male privilege' is responsible for violence/social breakdown.

This as an idea totally fails to account for middle-class males' oppression over women, doesn't it? Unless I'm reading it all wrong. Privilege politics is so confusing.

Also capitalism is social breakdown.

One would be interested to see if there is original material. And seemingly uncritical of the notion of 'social breakdown' (and 'male crisis') etc.. LP isn't an 'academic' as someone called her.

 

[ViolentPanda]

'Knocking' is the action of a wasteful dilettante.

They knock if they believe you have access to a Peoples' hunting rifle, comrade Dubonnet.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

Just looked at the New Enquiry piece...she gets worse..

"The markers of psychological health among young women at that time were long hair, pretty dresses, shopping, and makeup. The middle-aged, ponderously paunched male psychiatrists who ran the ward were absolutely in agreement on this point."

"At that time"?...this would be about 2001/ 2002? Presumably somewhere near Brighton? And fat middle aged sadistic authority figures were forcing her to wear pretty dresses and makeup?
To understand this, I think it's safest to assume she'd possibly just watched "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest", had a few glasses of wine and was so 'empathised' with Jack Nicholson's anarchic rebel and so determined to stress her perpetual victim hood, that when she addressed the keyboard, it just kinda came out that way. Either that or we are forced to believe hat a secret cabal of phallocentric psychiatrists was operating on the South coast in the recent past. Why was it left to Laurie to bring this scandal to light? Was Jimmy Saville involved?

"I needed to get out of that place, and if you wanted to go out the front door and not in a box, you had to play by their rules. You had to smile and eat your meals. You had to be a good girl."

Now she's channelling...erm...Jeanette Winterton? Maya Angelou?

"Look at me...I'm a victim too."
Who actually buys this shite? Do her admirers actually believe her...or do they accept that she's just telling 'mythological' truths'?...sorta feminist parables with herself as plucky hero and survivor which have no use for debased traditional (aka fat white guy) "modes of reality"?

Maybe that's why I don't get her...I always thought bullshit was bullshit...but maybe I just lack nuance and the intellectual contortionism necessary for membership of laurie's new rainbow alliance. Maybe I should just sit down and retell my life as perpetual hero/villain. Like the time I got arrested for striking a blow against Safeway's degenerate capitalist perversions by doing a runner with all that vodka. And when I took a stand against patriarchy inspired orthodox models of sexual fidelity by getting off with the wife's best mate. Fuck me...I'm a total revolutionary.

 

[sihhi]

I'm actually disgusted. In what world are we privileged over laurie penny? LD and spiney are not famous, they are not guardian commentators and dont get to be on newsnight all of the time, so how are they privileged?

bullshit like this just makes a mockery of the idea of racism and sexism tbh.

It's male privilege that she's talking about, I assume according to the chart, Laurie Penny is equal in the privilege/oppression scales with you because you are both women:

 

[stethoscope]

Joshua Eaton seems to suggest that working-class men are violent/cause social breakdown because they experience class oppression and male privilege. Laurie agrees, sort of suggesting that the working-class version of 'male privilege' is responsible for violence/social breakdown.

This as an idea totally fails to account for middle-class males' oppression over women, doesn't it? Unless I'm reading it all wrong. Privilege politics is so confusing.

Well, that's kinda the way it reads to me as well sihhi. But, given Penny's seeming inability to even properly understand Love Detective's and SpineyNorman's exchanges with her, it's hard to know!

If that's what she's saying/agreeing, then:

Firstly it fails to account for middle class male oppression over women;
Secondly, its sexist and classist bollocks towards working class men;
Thirdly, surely social breakdown and violence is caused by the effects of capitalism and those that exercise capital/class power, so that's not working class men;
Finally, privilege is all about one group of people's exercise of power over another.

 

[ViolentPanda]

193,000 page views so far for this thread. I wonder how that compares with the New Statesman's circulation.

Would you believe it's about seven and a half times greater than the circ of the Staggers?