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

[The39thStep]

Laurie Penny ‏@PennyRed
In a cafe off Tahrir talking post left/right politics with some friends who believe in a new kind of #classwar. Posters of martyrs on wall.

 

[Balbi]

A new kind of classwar. Verily doth Karl and Fred tremble in their tombs.

 

[weepiper]

REAL left. Not that fake left that just goes round boring old housing estates and workplaces addressing ordinary people's concerns.

 

[Balbi]

For too long the class war has raged from the bottom up and top down! Comrades, we are oppressed both by those above and below. NOW IS THE TIME FOR ACTION, NOW IS THE TIME FOR THE TWO FRONT WAR. As was Napoleon, Hirohito and Hitler's glory, so shall be ours. THE TIME IS NOW. NO WAR BUT THE MIDDLE CLASS WAR (on everyone else, once my Ocado delivery's arrived).

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Perhaps it's a class war for all those who did really well at school against the mediocraties and worse who are holding them back; top of the class war.

One thing is for certain, it won't be a community based pro-working class war, waged by and for the working class; that's the road to sexism and racism that is.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[Belushi]

post left/right politics

A third way?

 

[Balbi]

A third way?

The right to be stinking rich and lecture the poor on what they're doing wrong while quoting Goldman, Friedman and Marx.

 

[butchersapron]

Anderson style Openly Classist?

Laufenberg style National Bolshevism beyond left and right but class war by the proletarian nations on the bourgeois nations?

Evolian 3rd poistionism?

Or a dilettante war against those who think in terms of class and class analysis - i.e what she already doing.

 

[Balbi]

The war on filing deadlines.

 

[Random]

It's probably Egyptians who see the Arab nationalists as the left, and the Islamists as the right, and reject both

 

[butchersapron]

It's probably Egyptians who see the Arab nationalists as the left, and the Islamists as the right, and reject both

You think she's ran into some left-communists? Very unlikely - what's more likely is that she is very confused.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

You think she's ran into some left-communists? Very unlikely - what's more likely is that she is very confused.

Or trying to find/create a position where she can dissociate herself with past left failures, while still claiming to be part of the same emancipatory tradition...she wouldn't be the first person looking for this easy way out of some difficult questions.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[butchersapron]

True...or she may mean the lib-dems again.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

what's more likely is that she is very confused.

Confused, and also perhaps hyping up something that for the rest of us would simply be "talking a load of bollocks with some mates about politics in a caff".

 

[fractionMan]

top of the class war.

 

[butchersapron]

Confused, and also perhaps hyping up something that for the rest of us would simply be "talking a load of bollocks with some mates about politics in a caff".

Funny she should do that in tahir: Twitter Devolutions: How social media is hurting the Arab Spring.

First, there's the general tendency toward exaggeration and hyperbole, which has arguably cost Egyptian activists (in particular) a certain amount of credibility. There's a reason why the catchphrases "it's never as bad as it seems on Twitter" and "the Tahrir bubble" caught on. I still remember the first time I was driving around a perfectly calm, absolutely normal Cairo while reading a Twitter feed describing apocalyptic clashes and mayhem. So do a lot of others. Social media loves a crisis, and it loves morality tales with a clear good guy and bad guy -- preferably identifiable in 140 characters.

(Not a general recommend on the text mind)

 

[butchersapron]

Reminds me, has anyone heard or seen her voice opposition to private schools? Don;t think i have, and her mentions of her marvelous school and teachers have got me wondering. People who consider themselves of the liberal-left but owe a lot to their private schooling are often pretty odd on this.

 

[frogwoman]

Can't see the article m8 says youve got to sign up

 

[frogwoman]

Reminds me, has anyone heard or seen her voice opposition to private schools? Don;t think i have, and her mentions of her marvelous school and teachers have got me wondering. People who consider themselves of the liberal-left but owe a lot to their private schooling are often pretty odd on this.

I thought she did in one article, though I might be thinking of somebody else!

 

[butchersapron]

Can't see the article m8 says youve got to sign up

One i linked to? Seems to work for me - anyone else?

 

[weepiper]

One i linked to? Seems to work for me - anyone else?

wants me to sign in too.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

I thought she did in one article, though I might be thinking of somebody else!

rigour

 

[Idris2002]

rigour

of the mortis variety

 

[butchersapron]

Ah, i think it only allows a certain number of free reads from any one link, Tbh i quoted the mist apt bit anyway, the rest is really about building national democratic consensus blah blah

 

[phildwyer]

Reminds me, has anyone heard or seen her voice opposition to private schools? Don;t think i have, and her mentions of her marvelous school and teachers have got me wondering. People who consider themselves of the liberal-left but owe a lot to their private schooling are often pretty odd on this.

Yes, and they almost ınvarıably send theır own chıldren to prıvate schools.

I do remember LP referrıng to herself as havıng been 'lucky' to attend a 'nıce' school (I'm 99% certaın those were her very words). Thıs does rather suggest that she's mıssed the poınt.

I'm thınkıng of bannıng her from thıs thread anyway. I don't thınk eponymous people should be able to contrıbute to theır own threads, ıt smells of corruptıon. Anyone object before the hammer falls?

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Lots of hyperbole during the 2011 London riots too. Including my local cornershop being turned over by a gang of hoodies, which was certainly news to the people working there.

Obviously the twitterati thrive on exagerration, hype, up to the minute exclusives, being in the thick of the action etc.

ETA: Someone was saying the other night that taxi drivers were just as important as the internetz for spreading info during the arab spring.

 

[rekil]

Reminds me, has anyone heard or seen her voice opposition to private schools? Don;t think i have, and her mentions of her marvelous school and teachers have got me wondering. People who consider themselves of the liberal-left but owe a lot to their private schooling are often pretty odd on this.

Just the once I think, not very convincing either.

Any Education Minister who was remotely serious about tackling educational inequality in this country would start by removing the tax-exempt status of British private schools, with a view to dismantling them altogether – but Gove has no interest in doing that. He was simply reminding the pupils of Brighton College of what they learn, in my experience, every day. He was reminding them what team they're on.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...on-but-im-still-not-on-your-team-7737823.html

 

[Random]

You think she's ran into some left-communists? Very unlikely - what's more likely is that she is very confused.

Or newly politicised people who're not at home with either political bloc

 

[butchersapron]

Or newly politicised people who're not at home with either political bloc

But there simply is not these two blocs anyway.

 

[butchersapron]

Lots of hyperbole during the 2011 London riots too. Including my local cornershop being turned over by a gang of hoodies, which was certainly news to the people working there.

Obviously the twitterati thrive on exagerration, hype, up to the minute exclusives, being in the thick of the action etc.

ETA: Someone was saying the other night that taxi drivers were just as important as the internetz for spreading info during the arab spring.

My mates just finished his phd on the 80s riots, he reckons bus drivers and taxi drivers figured prominently in the circulation of info there - as did pirate radio in some places.