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

[nino_savatte]

Sunny Hundal is fighting the class war

We can win the ‘class war’




Sunny Hundal is fighting the 'class war'.

That bowtie is so 70s.

 

[sihhi]

In fact...what the fuck is this thread about? You all just jealous cos LP got the gig you were after? She pisses me off cos I'm living in a modern day Dickensian East End and any chance of a political reprieve is sliding down the plug hole...mainly because the likes of her don't even know about me and would treat me like something she trod in. Why head for the North East when Athens is on the cards?..and since she's 'the left' these days, me and hundreds of thousands of others don't exist, don't count and only get a mention when a small but vocal bunch of islamophobic gobshites decide to smash up some shops. That's what I am to the liberal media...a potential EDF thug.

Could be worse, Sunny Hundal is fighting the class war from a telephone in Washington DC.

In October last year, I persuaded an anti-Mexican racist to vote for Obama, had to put the phone down on a woman who insisted on describing the process of ‘partial-birth abortion’ as “Obama is killing those babies”, and had to persuade one Catholic woman that, despite what her local church says, she wouldn’t go to hell for voting for Obama. Only the victory party makes the long, frustrating pleas worth it.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

Of course it is. Hence the personal nature of your posts.

Oh sorry pal...you should have told me you were an eminent psychologist with the ability to divine motivation from the 'personal nature' of someone's prose.
Then again, what if I just take it 'personally'?
Then again, what if you're just a total prick?

 

[SLK]

Oh sorry pal...you should have told me you were an eminent psychologist with the ability to divine motivation from the 'personal nature' of someone's prose.
Then again, what if I just take it 'personally'?
Then again, what if you're just a total prick?

Fireflies.

 

[smokedout]

It was 1989 and Peterborough wasnt exactly cosmopolitan. My mate seemed to take it as a personal affront.

It took me another five years but i escaped in the end

bradford was very divided with the punks/goths/heavy metal people and bikers (and fuck did we need the bikers) all kind of bunched up in a few pubs around the university, which wasnt very fair and meant quite a lot of students got hurt

but outside of the internal fighting, which there was quite a lot of, there was a long running feud with bradford ointment (the bradford city local firm who were very nf at the time) and a local muslim gang who ran lots of the curry houses and cab ranks in the area, due to some stabbing that might once of happened to someone at some point

it was insanely violent, and if you drank in the city centre at night then you'd be dragged into it. when i moved to london everyone went on about how 'rough' it was going to be and put me in touch with various dodgy geezers if i got in trouble - i couldnt believe when i got settled and realised southerners really are soft as shite.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

Fireflies.

Get yourself a shopping trolley and take a ride down a cobbled hill, it might just shake the chicken shit out your ears.

 

[ymu]

LP - as a woman - is not part of a minority - but part of a 'half'.

Hence the scare quotes around 'minority' to indicate that it was a useful abbreviation rather than a strictly accurate description. Having said that, simple population statistics do not indicate representation - if they did the working class would be in charge. Women are not equally represented in the media in terms of numbers, or the roles they play, or the longevity of their careers. They are not equally represented in any profession that brings money, glamour or power and women who achieve these positions are subjected to vile torrents of abuse by threatened male psyches.

In this sense, they are a minority. Not as much of a minority as the working class, but there is no need to trivialise sexism in order to make that point. It doesn't help anything to pretend that there is zero truth underlying the childish histrionics of the identity crowd. It just makes the serious left look as shit as the inane right.

This post is based solely on the response you made to my post, not other stuff you've posted on this thread. I was not aiming at anyone, just adding to what someone else said on this and now responding to responses to that post. I've observed this happening on the left far more widely than on this thread and I think it is important to address that.

 

[ymu]

I don't see it on the left on the internet to any comparable degree - either the centre left or the far left - the ideas or their implications of postings can of course sexist or racist, but I get little sense of sustained rape myths, sex or race-based put downs or jokes.

I never joined a grouplet (being a walking middle class cliche, I came to left politics via single issue stuff). But my partner did. He'd sit in a meeting where it was all pro-feminist sensitivity and let's set up a woman's caucus (heaven forbid they be allowed to feel equally heard in plenary). As soon as they were down the pub, it was get yer tits out for the lads. That and being made to speak at every meeting (see, we have a black member!) but never actually consulted about anything apart from how to get drugs or some dodgy gear for a gig was why he left in disgust.

The right is all about abusing power relations. It is not surprising there. On the left it is fucking inexcusable. And the extreme reaction against identity politics does lead some lefties to some seriously fucked up attitudes with respect to identity-related issues. IME, obv.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

Erm...I'm a bit aware I've got a bit personal tonight and I apologise for that. Think it might be for the best if I fucked off for a while. However, I'm a bit pissed, as I often am...and it's a problem I'm well aware of...but I absolutely stand by the description of my locale. It certainly isn't some kinda inverted snobbery or wall pissing thing. It's desperate and genuinely dangerous and I'm frankly amazed that people doubt that there aren't many such parts of this country...I lived in London for 10 years and never, in all that time, felt as liable to recieve a good kicking as every time I leave my house now...if I were old or young or female or infirm I'm sure those feelings would be amplified 10 fold...and, if that isn't real and relevant and brutally honest privilege checking, I'm fucked if I know what is. And I may be flippant in saying this but if I could shift with the family to somewhere normal and get all my threats online I'd be happy as a pig as shit.

 

[Belushi]

Think it might be for the best if I fucked off for a while.

I hope you mean just for tonight mate.

We get way more personal round here than you've been tonight

 

[ymu]

There's nothing wrong with your posting Ronnie. You have a particular style, which is very funny and good to read. It pushes the OTT buttons cos that's your style, but I don't think you have anything to apologise for or feel embarrassed about. No more than (prolly less than) the average poster on a heated thread anyways.

 

[Random]

There's nothing wrong with your posting Ronnie. You have a particular style, which is very funny and good to read. It pushes the OTT buttons cos that's your style, but I don't think you have anything to apologise for or feel embarrassed about. No more than (prolly less than) the average poster on a heated thread anyways.

Yes! Would very much enjoy reading Ronnie's take on other topics on U75 as well. He's so funny that at first I thought he must be a professional author.

 

[barney_pig]

That description of the show looks pretty grim, I don't know who she is really, but she's not a voice for the left on Newsnight, Women's hour, Sky News, major published media etc. Perhaps her work be discussed in the TV forum?

Laurie Penny, prominent voice of modern socialism:

feminists [inspired by Pussy Riot] are "amplifying the rebellion in their own hearts, and we're talking about our countries and our lives wherever women and young I first came to anti-capitalism thourgh feminism and I first came to it as a child too young to understand what either of those things meant. But it always seemed logical to me that the root of women's oppression was economic, and the root of economic oppression was capitalist. Sorry I'm going back through my notes because I've changed it around a little bit. Um but right now it's really we're told aren't we that women have come far enough and it's important to have this kind of perspective so at my age fifty years ago at my age um 26 my grandmother was a recent immigrant with five kids and another one on the way and she was shackled by a religion to a violent alcoholic husband who she'd married in wartime to escape the Ireland where she lived and she wouldn't have called herself a feminist but feminism was what began has begun to win for me and my sisters - I mean my actual sisters not my theoretical sisters - the birthright of all women in the 21st century which is the one the birthright that women and sorry the birthright that conservatives across the world are actively trying to confiscate right now, which is the right to freedom from domestic drudgery and sexual violence the right not to have to rely on a man to keep you, the right to live your life without worrying whether or not you are pretty enough or well behaved enough to stop your boss or your husband getting sick of you, the right to be socially, sexually, financially independent. And I wonder if the yearning I get when, is anybody else here a sci-fi nerd [audience response] yeah yeah I watch a lot of Battlestar Galactica and um I find myself, oh I love Starbuck I love me some Starbuck, but um, sorry, but when, does anybody get that feeling when you watch battles in space or those films of space battles when you think oh I'm not quite sure what it is I'm wanting and that impossible yearning is what I imagine that my grandmother and women her age felt watch people like me going to university and having boyfriends before marriage, travelling to other countries and dancing all night and wearing your short skirts and for her and for women like her my life and our lives are science fiction, it's weird and it's frightening and it's enabled by technology and I see women of my generation handling it as casually as an extra on Star Trek might handle one of those palm computers on Star Trek that looked exciting in the 1970s and now they look like Nokia Smartphones from 1999."

"So here we go... Yeah, slutwalks! Who was on the slutwalk? Oh come on [audience response] Yeah, yeah, great, great, slutwalks were brilliant, and um again it's I was lucky enough to, I was lucky enough to speak at the slutwalks last year and the slutwalks for me were for me they seemed like the beginning of an enhanced consciousness about sexual freedom and social freedom for women because suddenly you had young women and old women women all across the world reacting suddenly to this idea that we should not wear short skirts if we don't want to be raped that a police officer in Toronto [said] suddenly it seemed like saying enough that's it that's just the last little thing and there was this massive upsurge of women and men all over the world and it was like nothing else but a pride march, a pride march is what it was about the acceptance of fighting for women's right to be sexual, to live freely like men do, to not live in fear of rape and sexual violence, and the newspapers didn't report this enough but it was massively keyed into anti-austerity to anti-capitalism as the feminist movement originally always was there we go it was joyful and it was brilliant, and it's absolutely an indictment on how inadequate bourgeois middle-class feminism has become that there were columnists and organisers across the UK and the US saying we're not sluts we don't want to be sluts what are they saying and this is disgraceful we're nice women oooh nno no slut is a really important word I'm so glad people are taking it back, in the way we took queer back because the original meaning of the word slut was a domestic drudge, a servant the idea that women who are underpaid and lowpaid and working as servants. The idea of slut pride is also about working-class pride. It's about taking something that is tossed to us and made to make us feel small and ashamed and taking that back and saying no this is how we want to live our lives we need to be able to do it freely without punishment and yeeaah. Anybody who that is? Anybody recognise her? That's Selma James who is the leader of the, who originated the wages for housework campaign back in 1972 um and has been active in the anti-racist and women's movements for over fifty years I was actually lucky enough to interview her last week and I've got that in the New Statesman this week if you wanna read it or just read it online, no I didn't say that but that's what I do So she Selma James is one of these people whose ideas are coming back into fashion because what she's always said is that money and economics and power are what the women's movement are really about that's what sexual freedom is about that's what gender revolution is about"

Certainly has expanded my knowledge of the Paris commune

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

There's nothing wrong with your posting Ronnie. You have a particular style, which is very funny and good to read. It pushes the OTT buttons cos that's your style, but I don't think you have anything to apologise for or feel embarrassed about. No more than (prolly less than) the average poster on a heated thread anyways.

Well, thanks for saying that but looking at it, I was sitting here getting myself really wound up...and I pride myself on not doing that. The one thing that'll always push the button though is being told I'm lying, especially about something as real and personal as that and it's all too real but...whatever.

Yes! Would very much enjoy reading Ronnie's take on other topics on U75 as well. He's so funny that at first I thought he must be a professional author.

Again, thanks for the compliment but therein lies the problem. I've been told similar things before and people can't seem to accept that my location, financial situation and 'career' marry up to my prose style. There's a simple reason for this and I know three or four people in the same boat. When I was younger a benevolent state afforded me the opportunity for several years uninterrupted reading and study, with my own room, meals and utilities thrown in. All I had to do was to help move some stuff from A to B...and get caught.

This has left me one of the best read people I know (not an idle boast, just a factual statement, 4 years, 10 or so hours a day, 365...do the Maths) but, ironically, fuck all chance of actually applying my knowledge to any useful end other than spraffing away on the Internet...so that's what I do from time to time. Until last night I'd never actually got so wound up by it. I really think I'm gonna give it a miss for a while. Several people tell me I should lay off threads like this and start a blog and I may give that a go, but tbh I think I come on places like this because at least they have a readership and there's nothing more frustrating than working away when your output just becomes another needle in the haystack...I might even go back to watching the telly and shouting at Newsnight.

 

[Balbi]

Hang on...so out the blue, she happens to recall an article from 2010? Why exactly...unless it's to counter accusations on here about her association of 'slut' and 'working class; and I quote..LP:" The idea of slut pride is also about working-class pride."

To which..the reponse was:

So why does she suddenly tweet what she did? Together with the thing from 'Don't get me started' to prove she's a victim who needs to reclaim the net?

Don't get me wrong, I fuckin love coincidences with probabilities of astronomical proportions, and I'm off my fuckin head, but if that's 'navel gazey', I'm a fuckin cheese sandwich. Why else does she tweet that from nowhere? She must lurk here.

You want some pickle on that sandwich?

 

[goldenecitrone]

That's what I am to the liberal media...a potential EDF thug.

I had you down as npower.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Most energy comapnies could be left or right wing organisations...

 

[DotCommunist]

Most energy comapnies could be left or right wing organisations...

British Gas political dissidents, jews and trade unionists?

 

[Frances Lengel]

Erm...I'm a bit aware I've got a bit personal tonight and I apologise for that. Think it might be for the best if I fucked off for a while. However, I'm a bit pissed, as I often am...and it's a problem I'm well aware of...but I absolutely stand by the description of my locale. It certainly isn't some kinda inverted snobbery or wall pissing thing. It's desperate and genuinely dangerous and I'm frankly amazed that people doubt that there aren't many such parts of this country...I lived in London for 10 years and never, in all that time, felt as liable to recieve a good kicking as every time I leave my house now...if I were old or young or female or infirm I'm sure those feelings would be amplified 10 fold...and, if that isn't real and relevant and brutally honest privilege checking, I'm fucked if I know what is. And I may be flippant in saying this but if I could shift with the family to somewhere normal and get all my threats online I'd be happy as a pig as shit.

Only one person made a dick of themselves by accusing you of lying. And then going on about Hackney (wherever the fuck that's supposed to be).

If you feel like the best thing you can do is have a bit of a rest then that's what you must do, but you are one of the funniest and most clued up posters on here and you will be missed.

 

[goldenecitrone]

Only one person made a dick of themselves by accusing you of lying. And then going on about Hackney (wherever the fuck that's supposed to be).

If you feel like the best thing you can do is have a bit of a rest then that's what you must do, but you are one of the funniest and most clued up posters on here and you will be missed.

Hackney's in London. I'm sitting in it. Anyway, I agree with Frances.

 

[DotCommunist]

theres bit of hackney that are a bit roughouse but not Beirut and other bits which are 'respectable' and you see jewish folk with those furry hats wandering about.

 

[sihhi]

I never joined a grouplet (being a walking middle class cliche, I came to left politics via single issue stuff). But my partner did. He'd sit in a meeting where it was all pro-feminist sensitivity and let's set up a woman's caucus (heaven forbid they be allowed to feel equally heard in plenary). As soon as they were down the pub, it was get yer tits out for the lads. That and being made to speak at every meeting (see, we have a black member!) but never actually consulted about anything apart from how to get drugs or some dodgy gear for a gig was why he left in disgust.

The right is all about abusing power relations. It is not surprising there. On the left it is fucking inexcusable. And the extreme reaction against identity politics does lead some lefties to some seriously fucked up attitudes with respect to identity-related issues. IME, obv.

Have to respond quickly on this.

I was posting about the campaign LP wanted 'take back the net' targetting online misogyny. I think it's an basically empty campaign - to be supported yes, but basically empty because the sites where online misogyny (or racism) is prevalent is not where 'online organisation' happens (not that online organisation actually matters to working-class participants).

Re your partner's experience. No left group needs to be using drugs at all - it's in invitation for police repression - I think that member was wise to leave ASAP. Being made to speak at every meeting as an esteemed immigrant/woman/homosexual etc is identity politics. They wouldn't call it identity politics but that's what it is - requiring contributions on the say of others - on the basis of surface identity.

It's not too dissimilar from having a "progressive stack" by "consensus decision making" (as LP promotes in the New Statesman analysis of student movement) - immigrants and women speak first/for longer at a meeting seems a dangerous idea - with all kinds of backlash opportunities for the right.

Chairing should be rotated to give equal access to all, in general all roles as far as possible should be rotated. An issue in 'activist politics' that shouldn't be forgotten is middle-class monopolisation of soft roles (media and press work, publicity and propaganda formation, strategy meetings) while working-class participants are relegated to only 'donkey' or dangerous work (door-knocking, delivery, picket standing, creche provision), even where the aims are properly anti-sexist and pro-working-class.

I could cite examples but that would be dangerous on a public board, it happens - and women and immigrants (for capitalist society reasons are more likely to be 'working-class' or 'unskilled') are sidelined.
In real life it's a massive problem - online it's not so much... that's the point I was making, don't want to see it twisted.

 

[Belushi]

theres bit of hackney that are a bit roughouse but not Beirut and other bits which are 'respectable' and you see jewish folk with those furry hats wandering about.

When it rains some of them wear these giant shower cap things over the furry hats

 

[Greebo]

Well, thanks for saying that but looking at it, I was sitting here getting myself really wound up...and I pride myself on not doing that. The one thing that'll always push the button though is being told I'm lying, especially about something as real and personal as that and it's all too real but...whatever.
<snip>
Until last night I'd never actually got so wound up by it. I really think I'm gonna give it a miss for a while. Several people tell me I should lay off threads like this and start a blog and I may give that a go, but tbh I think I come on places like this because at least they have a readership and there's nothing more frustrating than working away when your output just becomes another needle in the haystack...I might even go back to watching the telly and shouting at Newsnight.

Take a break from here if you must, or just from this section of urban. But don't kid yourself that your posts won't be missed. It's the mix of different people with differing experiences and opinions which makes this place what it is, instead of akin to playing chess against yourself.

 

[weepiper]

This sort of belongs here as much as anywhere else I think, because it's the headmaster of Wellington moaning about how hard kids from his school have it when they try to get into Oxbridge

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/educatio...s-is-hatred-that-dare-not-speak-its-name.html

He said: "From our perspective it looks as if some public school students are being discriminated against at the final hurdle. It's painful because we are seeing some excellent candidates who would go on to get firsts who are not getting offers, about 10 this year.
"Was that different to when I was at Oxford 35 years ago? Yes. I don't think anyone gave a toss back then where you came from, only that you were good enough to go."

By the by, my dad, son of a joiner and grew up in a council house, applied for Oxford, having passed his 11-plus aged 9 and being a straight A student ever since. His entrance exam was the only test he's ever failed in his life.

 

[butchersapron]

The author used to be the 'master tutor' (i.e posh headmaster) of Penny's old school.

 

[weepiper]

That's why I said it belongs here...

 

[cesare]

Apparently if you pass the entrance exam you don't need to go through the interviewing process - which is where (I imagine) the subjective "like us" measures start creeping in.

 

[weepiper]

Apparently if you pass the entrance exam you don't need to go through the interviewing process - which is where (I imagine) the subjective "like us" measures start creeping in.

well, yeah... the reason my dad thought he failed was that he'd been involved in a serious car crash two weeks beforehand (in which he lost all 8 front teeth). You can bet if he'd been a private schoolboy strings would have been pulled to allow him to resit.

 

[cesare]

well, yeah... the reason my dad thought he failed was that he'd been involved in a serious car crash two weeks beforehand (in which he lost all 8 front teeth). You can bet if he'd been a private schoolboy strings would have been pulled to allow him to resit.

Yep