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

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Out of interest, what anti-fascist or anti-racist activity has the Red Penace actually undertaken?

Aside, of course, from giving a platform to the sweatyheads?

And which activities have not been paid writing?
 
That's not an apology. It's a way of saying 'you're a racist but I can't prove it so I'll just blacken your name a bit.'
 
I'm speaking to my sister this afternoon to find out if there's anything I can do legally about it - reckons she might be able to sort a solicitors letter for me for free. I didn't think it was possible to get this pissed off about something on the internet but I guess you learn something new every day.
 
I'm speaking to my sister this afternoon to find out if there's anything I can do legally about it - reckons she might be able to sort a solicitors letter for me for free. I didn't think it was possible to get this pissed off about something on the internet but I guess you learn something new every day.

I take it the plea to Owen Jones fell on deaf ears?
 
I'm speaking to my sister this afternoon to find out if there's anything I can do legally about it - reckons she might be able to sort a solicitors letter for me for free. I didn't think it was possible to get this pissed off about something on the internet but I guess you learn something new every day.

Spiney - it's up to you what you do and you're absolutely right to be livid, but maybe try sending LP an email directly before going down the legal route?

I'm not an expert, but doing people for libel sounds lengthy, stressful and expensive.
 
I'm speaking to my sister this afternoon to find out if there's anything I can do legally about it - reckons she might be able to sort a solicitors letter for me for free. I didn't think it was possible to get this pissed off about something on the internet but I guess you learn something new every day.

She'll be fucking quaking in her boots at the prospect of a free solicitor's letter.
 
She's more worried that brian whelan got annoyed with her. She doesn't give a fuck about this thread. Bit weird considering.
That's not weird; that's sensible. She's only going to be bothered by potentially adverse "left" publicity.
 
Need a similar summary on the Spineynorman situation, could also do with some fridge magnet type illustrations

ok so from memory this is what happened:

LP: something about identity politics

Spiney: something in reply

LP: All politics is identity politics

Love Detective: link to IWCA artice

[For those who don't use twitter, LDs link will have appeared in Penny's "mentions" and not in her timeline, assuming she doesn't follow LD. There will have been no way that she could reasonably have been mistaken that it was LD sending the link, unless she is using a weird twitter client.]

Spiney retweets the link

[For those not on twitter, the only way she will have been able to see that Spiney RTd the link is if she (a) followed spiney but not LD or (b) follows both but was logged out when LD tweeted it originally but logged in when Spiney RTd it. In that particular circumstance she could have seen the RT in her timeline, and may have been able to reply to that. A bit of forensics shows me that LD tweeted the link at 11:13am and Spiney RTd it between 11:39am and 11:46am whilst Laurie replied at 12:51pm which doesn't rule out the possibility that she saw spiney RT the link in her timeline, though it seems unlikely and she'd have to have been following Spiney.

Some client(s) when you reply to a something someone has rt'd includes both the original tweeter and the person who retweeted in the reply. I have no idea if she uses that client, but aside from looking at the tweet to see who has rt'd it, I also think it would be impossible to have seen Spiney's RT unless she followed him (which I imagine Spiney can confirm/deny)

There's fuckloads of clients for twitter out there and I've no idea how they all work - there may well be a genuine reason going on here that she's talking about but I don't know what it is and whatever it can only mean that she was definitely 100% calling Spiney racist, if it wasn't directed at LD]

Laurie then calls LD and Spiney racist ("Oh I see, you're racist, block")

Others chip in saying wtf? you think the IWCA are racist? LD = ex afa etc

Laurie complains to her timeline about the nasty bullies, a few ppl like Owen Jones sympathise then back out as they read the back story

People continue to ask LP why she hasn't apologised, until the point where she almost does it.. almost. But not to Spiney, and in a way that seems to confirm she was calling Spiney racist.
She said "you're right, the RT-reply system does make it unclear who that was directed at. My mistake, I apologise."

[this is the bit I've talked through above that I don't understand what she means. Whatever, if it wasn't directed at LD that means it was directed at Spiney]


Somewhere in this bit someone mentioned to her that IWCA have used Carter Ruck to sue before, and I think she maybe got a bit nervous, hence the attempt to apologise to LD whilst still finding a way to not admit she made a mistake even though that means calling Spiney racist.

It's a proper clusterfuck. everyone makes mistakes, everyone gets things wrong, everyone jumps to incorrect conclusions. That's fine, it happens. Admit the mistake, apologise, move on. It's not unforgivable to be wrong.
 
The Guardian (amongst others) mines this site for journo-fodder though. I know it pisses us off when we don't get credit for it, but sometimes it's helpful. I can imagine some journo having a field day with this if there isn't the usual natural catastrophe over the festive season.
 
It's been a decade since we hit the headlines. Time for a comeback tour.

Someone spring Diesel and pbman, i'll round up Ern and Dubversion. We ride for Fleet Street!
Nah, Badger Kitten did that BBC thing after the London Bombings.
 
Fuck, I missed a golden opportunity on that post.

"We're getting the banned back together!"

SNL4.jpg
 
It's been a decade since we hit the headlines. Time for a comeback tour.
Skynews two years ago, the student kerfuffles. Much amusement as they showed a screenie from a thread here and blurred an important bit of a post to make it look like this was riot hq.
 
She said "you're right, the RT-reply system does make it unclear who that was directed at. My mistake, I apologise."

[this is the bit I've talked through above that I don't understand what she means. Whatever, if it wasn't directed at LD that means it was directed at Spiney]
The bit you don't get is basically her it was the subs-fault not mine reflex kicking in in a different environment. It does also leave it clear as day that there was not only no apology to norm, but that she was continuing to maintain that he is a racist. And it also leaves, in the most unambiguous terms, the claims that the IWCA article is racist and the implication therefore that the IWCA are racist and the suggestion that attempting to offer serious substantive contributions to ongoing political debates about top-down multi-culturalism mean you can justifiably sideline the participants for racism by the judicious use of your media-power and simple smearing.

Effectively this means people with access to that power get to decide on both the terms of debate and who they will allow to participate. That this is the case can be shown by the obsequious manner in which she had previously asked Kenan Malik to educate her about this persepective. It's ok for him as he's on radio 4 in the papers and is a pretty well known public intellectual. Lines drawn and participants decided.

Now, replay this exercise in exclusion out on the national political stage and what do we get - we get privilege and power excising large swathes of the population from public political debate as their face doesn't fit, and it doesn't fit on the basis of the social prejudices of the privileged and the powerful (and this happens in left groups as well) and then a consequent alienation of that excluded part of the population and class polarisation, with the really really powerful to jump into these gaps with things like top-down multi-culturalism and work on those polarisations even further. This is why such a dismissal as Laura gave whilst seemingly inconsequential has damaging political effects - again, she is a perfect mirror of the social relations and processes that most of us are looking to expose and challenge.
 
The idea that people who post about politics on the internet must not be active beyond that is a curious one. What does he think penny is doing?


she's posting on a different internet to us though. her internet is young, intellectual, committed, vibrant, out there doing things with camera and notebook in hand.

ours is old, dogmatic, tired, dull, sitting at home whinging with cock in hand.

you can tell ours is the old one because we aren't her friends.
 
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