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

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...and one other quick point, this thread kicked off with Laurie pennie attacking the left for not recognising that technology and new forms of communication have effectively flattened out any form of hierarchy or centralisation of power and influence amongst those groups who claim to be challenging power, that networks make that impossible. I think she's just demonstrated how networks are susceptible to hierarchy centralisation and manipulation - how the network itself becomes a functioning part of maintaining that hierarchy and relations of privilege.

Callincicos wins. Victory to the prof.
 
butchersapron said:
...and one other quick point, this thread kicked off with Laurie pennie attacking the left for not recognising that technology and new forms of communication have effectively flattened out any form of hierarchy or centralisation of power and influence amongst those groups who claim to be challenging power, that networks make that impossible. I think she's just demonstrated how networks are susceptible to hierarchy centralisation and manipulation - how the network itself becomes a functioning part of maintaining that hierarchy and relations of privilege.

Callincicos wins. Victory to the prof.
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i didn't read this post because i have blocked you as i don't like what you are saying.
 
butchersapron said:
I think she's just demonstrated how networks are susceptible to hierarchy centralisation and manipulation - how the network itself becomes a functioning part of maintaining that hierarchy and relations of privilege.

Callincicos wins. Victory to the prof.
Click to expand...
Any network, whether formal, informal, technological or or not can become part of hierarchy and privilege. In fact, its almost bound to happen, and all Twitter etc does is speed up the process.
 
copliker said:
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.
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There was also Fridgemagnet's Cameron app thing on newsnight or somesuch.
 
cesare said:
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.
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This thread is open to unregistered users and search engines for anyone with access to the internet to see.

This has similiarties to Spiney and Love Detective's experience:

http://thethirdestate.net/2011/01/on-being-called-a-cunt-by-laurie-penny/


On being called a cunt by Laurie Penny

Last night I attended a debate between AWL organizer Ed Maltby and journalist-cum-activist Laurie Penny. I won’t pretend it was the most interesting debate in the whole world, but nonetheless it was one of a number of fora in which activists are coming together to discuss theoretical issues in the emerging anti-cuts movement. The event culminated, though, with Laurie Penny saying, “we all have to work with people we don’t agree with” and then gesturing at me, “for example, I think Jacob is a cunt.” When it was suggested, after the meeting, by another activist that she offer some kind of apology, her response was, “no, he is a cunt.”

I’m not going to claim I’ve never called anyone a cunt, but I certainly haven’t in a public meeting, and wouldn’t. There were about 100 people at the event, of whom I knew perhaps a quarter. Laurie Penny seemed to know even fewer. Now the issue comes that I, as an activist, have to work with these other people. If I had a cushy job at the New Statesman, if I could do all the activism I wanted without working with other people, whilst promoting my own personal (or personality) brand as “the voice of a generation”, then maybe I wouldn’t be so concerned about being so rudely denounced at a public meeting. But the fact is that these fora of debate are the places where we make links crucial to effective activist work. They are not places for mud-slinging or attempts to viciously sideline people from what has so far been a wonderfully inclusive movement. For Laurie Penny it seems that “solidarity” is just a throw-away piece of rhetoric used to make her voice “authentic”; it certainly doesn’t influence how she behaves.

.....

For the moment I can only wonder how long she will get away with abusing her new-found power and popularity.
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She does but it is still another example of her singling shit at people from atop her own soap box.

Did you read all the comments btw? It's all very familiar, LP must be thinking, "Oh not this shit again!" but she doesn't learn.
 
Mr.Bishie said:
Is that before or after the accusations of ugly misogyny & sexism?
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After.
firky said:
She does but it is still another example of her singling people out from her own soap box.

Did you read all the comments btw? It's all very familiar, LP must be thinking, "Oh not this shit again!" but she doesn't learn.
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Most of them, and yes, it's all very familiar. Familiarly depressin that is.
 
the political and media class, for want of a better word, have a real problem with twitter.

They really hate the fact they have to share this social space with people who don't exist in their little bubble. The whinges about trolling, to my ears, are whinges that there is no longer this distance between them and the great unwashed which has always been in the case previously. It's too popular for them to ignore, but too full of people they have contempt for to enjoy.

Look at Menshn, a twitter for "them" where there would be the appropriate degree of un-approachable-ness between those who matter and the swinish multitude.
 
Delroy Booth said:
the political and media class, for want of a better word, have a real problem with twitter.

They really hate the fact they have to share this social space with people who don't exist in their little bubble. The whinges about trolling, to my ears, are whinges that there is no longer this distance between them and the great unwashed which has always been in the case previously. It's too popular for them to ignore, but too full of people they have contempt for to enjoy.

Look at Menshn, a twitter for "them" where there would be the appropriate degree of un-approachable-ness between those who matter and the swinish multitude.
Click to expand...


its amusing to see them make cunts out of themselves. See: Huhne and Diane Abbot. amongst many
 
Delroy Booth said:
They really hate the fact they have to share this social space with people who don't exist in their little bubble. The whinges about trolling, to my ears, are whinges that there is no longer this distance between them and the great unwashed which has always been in the case previously. It's too popular for them to ignore, but too full of people they have contempt for to enjoy.
Click to expand...

Acceptable ways for the great unwashed to behave on twitter:

a) Sychophancy /follower fodder
b) Promoting you through retweeting
c) Answering queries like "can anyone hook me up with teenage disability rights activists in Panama?"
 
Fozzie Bear said:
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.
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I've got no idea how to contact her by email - if anyone knows her email address I will do but I'm seeking legal advice anyway.
 
BigTom said:
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.
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The something in reply was:

@PennyRed Err... no they're not #politicalnaif

that's a little bit racism apparently.
 
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