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

[Citizen66]

The place where monkeys fear to tread?

Nah, there's worse before you reach there.

 

[chilango]

This board has no power, chilango, only interesting/thoughtprovoking posters (bar conspiracists and right-wingers)
She's been in journalism for a fair few years, and as LLETSA correctly predicted, she will carry on.

Though having said that...

..if we were of a mind to do so, we could, collectively shred her credibility with the audiences she needs.

Our CV is impressive to the hangers on and fellow travellers that read the liberal media. More impressive than hers.

Her radical pose is all she has in a sea of posh kids desperate to play the role of journo/writer/blogger. Take that away and she has nothing to distinguish herself from a million others...

 

[sihhi]

She was never and will never answer them.

She's emailing love detective right now.

I was going to ask what she thought of Sunny Hundal earning money for tweeting after the NUJ New Statesman question. I was also going to ask her if she could post a link to the thread - warts and all - so her 60,000 followers could see what was written.

 

[bluestreak]

she won't come up against anyone with real power because no-one with real power will be threatened by her. the sort of bluster she comes out with suits entirely the existing power struggles because it is so easy to refute or laugh off. that's why she spends more time arguing with feminists and the left, her alleged comrades, than she does doing anything else. her shit is more offensive to us than to them because it misrepresents us and does us damage.

 

[chilango]

she won't come up against anyone with real power because no-one with real power will be threatened by her. the sort of bluster she comes out with suits entirely the existing power struggles because it is so easy to refute or laugh off. that's why she spends more time arguing with feminists and the left, her alleged comrades, than she does doing anything else. her shit is more offensive to us than to them because it misrepresents us and does us damage.

Oh she will.

She'll end up pissing an editor off.

 

[radgiesteve]

Contacting people individually so she gets to pick what bits get aired on her twitter feed/NS articles. Divide and conquer comrades, the proles must be subdued. The peasants are revolting etc.

 

[love detective]

will be interesting to hear his side of the exchange in that case

I didn't write that article personally (had some input to it from what i remember though). I've certainly had no communication from Laurie Penny since she called me a racist for posting a link of it to her and then blocked me

I've emailed the person who did write it though to see if her story checks out, i would be amazed if it did though

 

[framed]

Yes, but that's not her name. Do you call Michael Howard, Mikhail Hecht?

Whatchoo talkin about Willis?

Laurie Penny is not her name either...

And I don't know Michael Howard to talk to, but if I ever do meet him I shall of course refer to him as Herr Hecht, or better still... EVA.

Auf Wiedersehen.

 

[love detective]

Yep now it's not just LD and SN that are racists we all are.

Hard to keep up

So I originally was racist, then she didn't know if i was or not, then i wasn't, now i'm back to being one again? and this full circle has been accomplished without one piece of dialogue between her and I

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

More Southbank really

What sort of industry do you work in?

There's only about 3 employers in Southbank, I probably know you...

 

[framed]

@ framed

I'm not asking you to engage with her I'd just prefer it if you cut back on the abuse a bit. Or at least put some thought behind it. Repeatedly calling her a cunt is just a bit crap.

I called the cunt a cunt and you're het up about giving her 'a way out', as if she's some kind of fucking revolutionary project in the making!

Catch yerselves on, ffs.

"Look quickly Quentin, Torquil, Penelope... someone just called me a cunt on Urban 75, I won't be able to finish my sherry tonight, I'm afraid, their misogyny has made me feel quite faint!

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

A blanket dismissal of identity politics is racist?

who knew?
It's at times like this that I curse my feckless and indolent parents for not getting off their arses to earn the kinda dough that would've given me the kind of education where you learn this stuff.
Bastards turned me into a racist.

 

[Blagsta]

I didn't write that article personally (had some input to it from what i remember though). I've certainly had no communication from Laurie Penny since she called me a racist for posting a link of it to her and then blocked me

I've emailed the person who did write it though to see if her story checks out, i would be amazed if it did though

Let us know the answer!

 

[Firky]

Which part of RR's post here is slanderous lies, @lauriepenny?

It is one of the most popular posts on this thread, why do you think that is?

"then worked as a sub-editor on the Morning Star"

As a former co-worker I'd suggest not using your what, three months (if that), "working" for the Star as material for your "I didn't just walk into a national job" schtick. If the Star had operated as a normal workplace you'd have been repeatedly hauled over the coals for failing to show the slightest interest in doing anything which didn't advance the career of Laurie Penny. Did you even join the union in the end? We certainly asked you enough times and this was during a period when it actually mattered.

As for your journalism, it's just a job - one which in your case involves little to no risk unless you forget your get-out-of-kettle-free press card and find yourself swept into the actual front line. There's journalism with real risk attached but you don't do that stuff Laurie "not getting arrested just for journalism" Penny, you do talks for other liberal-left worthies and op-ed pieces with a bit of protest tourism thrown in. That's not activism.

Activism is doing the hard graft, for nothing (in fact usually paying out of your own pocket), for years on end in the hope of building something halfway sustainable. No glamour, no money, lots of sacrifice. It's blind alleys and wasted time and unemployability and sometimes, rarely, criminal records. How many weekends this year have you set aside to help deal with people in trouble and walk them through their options? How many dull-as-fuck meetings have you been at in 2012, volunteering as point person or offering your time to sub and print a leaflet for a campaign, then standing in the street hawking it?

The reason most people are griping on this thread is a quite palpably sensible one - you've used your expensive education and the many, many other class privileges which you are born to as a method of bypassing the drudgery of actual grassroots organising to get into the media set. Having done so, you've repeatedly exploited actual activists so you can pose as "the voice of the left" as part of a well-known career path of parasitism off the back of those who do the actual work. And then, when they call you on such behaviour, you denounce all of them en masse as sexist trolls and demand to know by what right they judge you.

That should not be the question. The question should be by what right do you speak for them?

In fact thinking about it you part-specialise in radical feminist writing right? How about you do something for the Feminist Library down in Lambeth. I don't mean write another piece in the Staggers, I mean volunteer for a couple years as a fundraiser and promoter. You're well networked with wealthy people, and they need £8k a year to meet rent. Do some proper work, get them new digs and don't use it as another line on your wadical Twitter Bio. It won't give you the right to speak for the left, but it'd be a start.

 

[redsquirrel]

A blanket dismissal of identity politics is racist?

Which AFAIK no one has done anyway.

There has been plenty of criticism of identity politics and multi-culturalism but, from my perspective anyway, no blanket dismissal.

Personally I don't think writing off identity politics completely is helpful, there have been important criticisms of "the left" that have come from a feminist, BME, gay etc perspective.

It's not identity politics that I have a problem with but the fact that they have been used to remove class from the discussion.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

What sort of industry do you work in?

There's only about 3 employers in Southbank, I probably know you...

Fuck me...is this thread like a Teesside based operation? I'm ashamed to say I'm in ..erm...education.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I didn't write that article personally (had some input to it from what i remember though). I've certainly had no communication from Laurie Penny since she called me a racist for posting a link of it to her and then blocked me

I've emailed the person who did write it though to see if her story checks out, i would be amazed if it did though

So who is she now in email contact with and swapping analysis/apologies?

There is only 1 article in question, the IWCA one.

 

[Firky]

Fuck me...is this thread like a Teesside based operation? I'm ashamed to say I'm in ..erm...education.

Do you ever go to Stockton just to get a feel of what living in a dystopian hell will be like?

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Fuck me...is this thread like a Teesside based operation? I'm ashamed to say I'm in ..erm...education.

Ok probably don't know you then, I used work in the area though, not there now mind

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Do you ever go to Stockton just to get a feel of what living in a dystopian hell will be like?

What compared to Eston or Southbank lol?

 

[framed]

After what she's written of the interchanges on Urban and in her private correspondence with members here, why politically engage with her at all now, either privately or publicly?

There is no desired political 'outcome' to this, as far as I can see. Unless some of you still have that barmy but endearing lefty quality of wanting to 'save' her?

Better to let her write her shite and pull her writing apart imho than to indulge her ego by direct engagement. It attaches undue importance to her journalism imho.

She is not just of another class, she is from another fcuking planet.

 

[Firky]

What compared to Eston or Southbank lol?

There's some scenic views around Eston.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

Do you ever go to Stockton just to get a feel of what living in a dystopian hell will be like?

Nah...get all the dystopia I like in Grangetown.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

There's some scenic views around Eston.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

you know Ridley Scott based the version of LA in the film on Teesside right?

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

you know Ridley Scott based the version of LA in the film on Teesside right?

That was kinda the thrust of the post. But to be fair, if I had to choose between Southbank or the version of LA in Bladerunner...

 

[Firky]

you know Ridley Scott based the version of LA in the film on Teesside right?

I think Seaham was used for one of the Alien films too.

 

[framed]

There's some scenic views around Eston.

I love industrial sites lit up at night, that's a work of art that is! I served my engineering apprenticeship not far from the oil refinery in Grangemouth and it was a bit like this at night. There was also a constant low level buzzing sound everywhere you went in the town. I stayed at a mate's house in Grangemouth after a bevvy session one night and in the morning I was asking his family how the feck they slept at night with that constant buzzing noise. Their collective reply was, "What buzzing noise?"

 

[DotCommunist]

kill me....kill me...

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Their collective reply was, "What buzzing noise?"

You know what it still buzzes?