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

[butchersapron]

"First they came for the students"?

Yep, that is a terrible and revealing of what aspect of austerity is visible to her.

Look at the bit under the headline as well, dangerous stuff to spread:

Protesters face violence, arrest and serious charges. Only the brave dare face this savage suppression

 

[tenniselbow]

Yep, no sense of history or politics here. Just the breathless excitement of brave young 'uns and truncheons and the mean old state.

 

[butchersapron]

Also, seems to endorse specialists in dissent in the guise of activists, a spectaularisation almost.

 

[frogwoman]

Also, seems to endorse specialists in dissent in the guise of activists, a spectaularisation almost.

that's what is fucking us over

also do you ever find that these people go on about benefit claimants, cuts etc in the same way people do if they are talking about saving the whale or some shit like that?

 

[butchersapron]

...and fantastically, spectacularly we find laurie recommending:

The Society of the Spectacle, by Guy Debord - The situationist bible; a book that was passed from hand to grimy activist hand in 1968, and remains of equal importance to today's young dissidence. A book about the nature of capitalist reality and the imagery of alienation.

 

[butchersapron]

that's what is fucking us over

also do you ever find that these people go on about benefit claimants, cuts etc in the same way people do if they are talking about saving the whale or some shit like that?

Classic imperial philanthropism.

 

[Bakunin]

...and fantastically, spectacularly we find laurie recommending:

 

[el-ahrairah]

where's the class analysis ffs?

oh, wait...

 

[treelover]

that's what is fucking us over

also do you ever find that these people go on about benefit claimants, cuts etc in the same way people do if they are talking about saving the whale or some shit like that?

Laura has indeed wrote quite a lot on benefits, etc her ex was disabled, afaik..

 

[butchersapron]

Laura has indeed wrote quite a lot on benefits, etc her ex was disabled, afaik..

You missed the 2nd part of the post, the key bit.

 

[Firky]

And shame on us, even in these cowardly times, if we don't support those with the courage to take a stand.

Finishes the article by congratulating herself. Fucking hell.

 

[tenniselbow]

...and fantastically, spectacularly we find laurie recommending:

The Debord reference is perfect.

One thing that's characterized Laurie's writing from her early blogging days is this paradigm of inter-generational conflict. It made a certain sense in her early blog posts about how utterly, totally unfair it was that she couldn't break through into the London media and how hard life was for young Oxbridge grads trying to make their way in the world. Now that she's writing about serious stuff like austerity and attacks on the working class, these inter-generational tantrums waft around her political analysis, such as it is, like a fuzzy hangover.

 

[frogwoman]

I've been trying for a long time to put my finger on whats wrong with a lot of quite well meaning activist types and why I find them quite annoying sometimes, now i think i have found it. It's the entire way they talk about and relate to people like they are some sort of endangered species rather than actually asking them what they want and treating them like they are people with opinions - and most of all like they are nothing to do with THEM but like something separate.

 

[rekil]

Also, seems to endorse specialists in dissent in the guise of activists, a spectaularisation almost.

Even then, her views on activists are well weird.

Laura in Jacobin

A fair few articles I’ve filed from the frontlines of the global protest movements over the past couple of years have featured young men at moments of crisis and violence lighting up cigarettes dramatically, exhaling meaningfully and saying something cheesy and rousing. This is not a coincidence. This is because, at moments of social interest and in the presence of an averagely attractive woman who seems suddenly very interested in their ideas, your garden-variety young male activist, anarchist or student troublemaker has the tendency to produce a cigarette, light it dramatically and say something they think is deep. They do this because it makes them look cool and sometimes gets them laid. I promise you, I’ve seen it happen.

 

[butchersapron]

Oh jesus she never learns - does really believe that we would believe this sean exists?

I shared a smoke with a gang of lads who weren’t more than twenty, whipping out the recorder from time to time to collect quotes for the piece I was writing. I began to ask them about their politics, their understanding of economics, when one of them, an 18-year-old high-school dropout called Sean, whipped out a dollar bill from his pocket, set light to it and used it to light his cigarette. ”That’s debt, and that’s what we do with it,” he said. He wasn’t a rich kid, not by anyone’s standards. He owned the clothes he was standing in, a rucksack full of random belongings and half a cigarette.

He needed that dollar. But he burned it anyway.

Several months after that Chicago bus trip, I saw Sean again, sleeping on the streets of New York, outside Wall Street, in the dead of winter. I remembered how I’d laughed at his trick with the dollar. I remembered how he was so pleased with himself, how he told me about the new life he was hoping to build somewhere on the West Coast where the streets were warm.

 

[tenniselbow]

I've been trying for a long time to put my finger on whats wrong with a lot of quite well meaning activist types and why I find them quite annoying sometimes, now i think i have found it. It's the entire way they talk about and relate to people like they are some sort of endangered species rather than actually asking them what they want and treating them like they are people with opinions - and most of all like they are nothing to do with THEM but like something separate.

I think I know what you're getting at, frogwoman. Can you give some more specific examples to explain a little more? From my perspective this has always seemed like an issue of social class and life experience of activists, and undoubtedly the kind of (non)dialogue you describe is related to this.

 

[tenniselbow]

"frontlines of the global protest movements"

Kapuściński can sleep easy.

 

[tufty79]

I've been trying for a long time to put my finger on whats wrong with a lot of quite well meaning activist types and why I find them quite annoying sometimes, now i think i have found it. It's the entire way they talk about and relate to people like they are some sort of endangered species rather than actually asking them what they want and treating them like they are people with opinions - and most of all like they are nothing to do with THEM but like something separate.

well fucking said.

 

[frogwoman]

its hard to provide specific examples but its just a general attitude from a lot of people (not all!!) especially the likes of laurie penny etc, like a lot of the time its like they're talking about animals in a rainforest or something if you know what i mean and they're talking about it from the perspective of not really knowing what they're on about. Like about how terrible it is that "nobody cares" and like not bothering to ask or know anything about the people they're speakin for or even talking to them.

 

[J Ed]

Yep, that is a terrible and revealing of what aspect of austerity is visible to her.

Loo at the bit under the headline as well, dangerous stuff to spread:

If I was the state, that's exactly the sort of stuff I'd want the likes of Laurie to be putting out.

 

[J Ed]

Oh jesus she never learns - does really believe that we would believe this sean exists?

Do you reckon he hangs out with the homeless libertarian man she gives fags to?

 

[ymu]

its hard to provide specific examples but its just a general attitude from a lot of people (not all!!) especially the likes of laurie penny etc, like a lot of the time its like they're talking about animals in a rainforest or something if you know what i mean and they're talking about it from the perspective of not really knowing what they're on about. Like about how terrible it is that "nobody cares" and like not bothering to ask or know anything about the people they're speakin for or even talking to them.

I remember one at university, upon finding out that my boyfriend was black: Oh, that's really good.

 

[tenniselbow]

its hard to provide specific examples but its just a general attitude from a lot of people (not all!!) especially the likes of laurie penny etc, like a lot of the time its like they're talking about animals in a rainforest or something if you know what i mean and they're talking about it from the perspective of not really knowing what they're on about. Like about how terrible it is that "nobody cares" and like not bothering to ask or know anything about the people they're speakin for or even talking to them.

Yeah I largely agree. Certainly true of a lot of the activists I've known.

The endangered species analogy is actually not a bad one for a certain strain of left-liberal (I'm thinking of a Toynbee archetype here): there's definite sympathy there but on the other hand they can't exactly speak for themselves, can they? Plus it's really a matter of our own virtue; how we treat them, how good we are.

For the average middle class "radical" activist, it might be more fairly seen as just a massive cultural gulf that they're unwilling or unable to bridge?

 

[DaveCinzano]

Do you reckon he hangs out with the homeless libertarian man she gives fags to?

Laura met them both when she was round at Johann's crib taking tea with Lord Lucan one hot summer afternoon in back in December '68 whilst Nye was teaching Owen the chords to the dubstep version of The Internationale.

 

[tufty79]

a massive cultural gulf that they're unwilling or unable to bridge?

six of one, half a dozen of the other.

 

[frogwoman]

yeah, and to be fair i probably started off a bit like that, i've had several years of shitty jobs etc to get it out of me tho, so i can really appreciate how different a "middle class" job is to many other ones a lot of the time

i'd imagine a lot of these people would probably get a bit of a rude shock when they get into an actual job!

 

[tufty79]

yeah, and to be fair i probably started off a bit like that, i've had several years of really shitty jobs to get it out of me tho, so i can really appreciate how different a "middle class" job is to many other ones a lot of the time

i'd imagine a lot of these people would probably get a bit of a rude shock when they get into an actual job!

ime they end up working for ngo's, community organisations and workers co-ops. so it never happens (at least with the ones i was living/friends with). the shock they expressed at my experience of 'normal' interview questions, employment/recruitment procedures, and what work entailed was just gobsmacking.

 

[J Ed]

Yeah I largely agree. Certainly true of a lot of the activists I've known.

The endangered species analogy is actually not a bad one for a certain strain of left-liberal (I'm thinking of a Toynbee archetype here): there's definite sympathy there but on the other hand they can't exactly speak for themselves, can they? Plus it's really a matter of our own virtue; how we treat them, how good we are.

For the average middle class "radical" activist, it might be more fairly seen as just a massive cultural gulf that they're unwilling or unable to bridge?

Not really anything new though, is it? Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier is full of the same, and worse, attitudes.

 

[tenniselbow]

Not really anything new though, is it? Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier is full of the same, and worse, attitudes.

Yep.

 

[Idris2002]

Not really anything new though, is it? Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier is full of the same, and worse, attitudes.

Didn't Orwell edit out the working class activists whom he decided didn't fit the profile he was trying to put forward?