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

[Random]

I lay awake last night trying to think of a profession that'd be less missed if they disappeared tomorrow.

First the bosses, then the cops, then the journos, then the trots.

I'm currently working as a mainstream journalist myself, btw, and I'm under no illusion that a journalist's job is anyhting other than to produce material, on a regular basis, that will sell advertising, or fit a public service broadcaster's political role. In Penny's case, her employer is a paper owned by a Russian oligarch and Putin ally. Any activism that professional jounalism involves is secondary to this.

 

[emanymton]

Being a trots a profession, damn it I never got paid.

 

[Bakunin]

I lay awake last night trying to think of a profession that'd be less missed if they disappeared tomorrow.

First the bosses, then the cops, then the journos, then the trots.

I'm currently working as a mainstream journalist myself, btw, and I'm under no illusion that a journalist's job is anyhting other than to produce material, on a regular basis, that will sell advertising, or fit a public service broadcaster's political role. In Penny's case, her employer is a paper owned by a Russian oligarch and Putin ally. Any activism that professional jounalism involves is secondary to this.

I do it for money as well, although it is a job that I also enjoy a great deal. To me, a journalist's job is to be accurate with facts, honest, fair, diligent when it comes to fact-checking and to write to a reasonably decent standard. It should also be far more about the story being covered than about the person writing it. What I think it shouldn't be about is shameless self-promotion, sloppiness with facts, outright dishonesty, sweeping generalisations, refusing to even acknowledge criticism (however constructive) and the ridiculous notion that any hack is bigger and more important than whatever story they're covering. And I don't like the idea of mixing political beliefs in with journalism either, as far as I'm concerned that simply muddies the waters leaves people wide open to instant accusations of being a propagandist and not being an objective observer reporting the actual facts rather than spinning them to suit a particular pre-conceived agenda.

 

[Random]

Being a trots a profession, damn it I never got paid.

That wasn't a list of professions, it should have been in quotes. Just a list of class enemies.

 

[Random]

Ihat simply muddies the waters leaves people wide open to instant accusations of being a propagandist and not being an objective observer reporting the actual facts rather than spinning them to suit a particular pre-conceived agenda.

The journo ideal of being an objective observer is just a liberal fig leaf, though. Journalists are not objective; they are driven to produce profitable copy for their employers, who are usually capitalist businesses.

The media in general has little chance to carry out radical activism. Reporting can be of some use, or entertainment, and so journalists should try to do a good job, so that the amount of actually poisonous product is as little as possible. But doing an ok job, and doing little harm, is not the same as being a mighty warrior of social change, like certain star columnists think they are.

 

[Random]

Real social change comes through people organising around shared interests and winning battles against politicians, corporations, etc. It doesn't come through certain skilled people getting well paid for writing lefty articles. Or through NGO professionals, or through full time politicians or trade union officials, for that matter.

Journalists can sometimes help social change, through defending people taking part - like investigations of police activity during a strike. But so can lawyers help to defend people against oppression, and I'd also laugh at someone whinging about how being a barrister is bloody hard work/activism.

 

[andy2002]

Just finished reading the very good series by Warren Ellis, Planetary. Wish he'd stick to the sci fi about holographic universes, rather than trying to foster trufax outlaw journalism. Spider Jerusalem would shit his pants with rage.

Laurie Penny is the typical kind of person Ellis attaches himself to. Young, outsider(ish), seemingly cool and radical but not enough to frighten the horses. When they are eventually subsumed into the mainstream he then reminds everyone that he was a supporter/pal of theirs early on and basks in the reflected glory. Some of his comics are great (Planetary being one of them) but he's a precious, pretentious old twat really.

 

[articul8]

Being a trots a profession, damn it I never got paid.

It's funny how the careers adviser at school never mentioned "full time Trot apparatchik" as an option

 

[Random]

Laurie Penny is the typical kind of person Ellis attaches himself to. Young, outsider(ish), seemingly cool and radical but not enough to frighten the horses. When they are eventually subsumed into the mainstream he then reminds everyone that he was a supporter/pal of theirs early on and basks in the reflected glory.

Who else has he done it with?

Some of his comics are great (Planetary being one of them) but he's a precious, pretentious old twat really.

Am not really expecting much from him; sci fi writers aren't neccessarily activists either . Possibly for a separate thread, but was really shocked after reading Warren Ellis' Seven Soldiers, to realise he's just a hack for the big publishers these days, after seeming to want to use comics for something rather more ambitious and self-destructive, in Animal Man and Invisibles.

 

[andy2002]

Who else has he done it with?

Comic writers, artists and photographers mostly, don't think he's done it with a 'radical journo' before though.

Am not really expecting much from him; sci fi writers aren't neccessarily activists either . Possibly for a separate thread, but was really shocked after reading Warren Ellis' Seven Soldiers, to realise he's just a hack for the big publishers these days, after seeming to want to use comics for something rather more ambitious and self-destructive, in Animal Man and Invisibles.

I think you're mixing Ellis up with Grant Morrison (writer of Seven Soldiers, Animal Man and The Invisibles), although he too has become a bit of a big publisher man. Ellis has virtually left comics these days to concentrate on writing novels.

 

[Random]

Yes, was a complete brainfart to keep writing WE, when I knew I mean Morrisson

 

[Random]

For me, Morrisson's worse hackery lies in the way he self-consciously with 7 soliders seems to have the aim of putting new life into bad old genre hulks owned by his publisher masters, and with a view to making them into a viable franchise (his words). Whereas Ellis, in Planetary, puts together fairly original skilled sci fi with a decent modern view of his women characters, as opposed to the unreconstructured fish net tights heroine fanboy-pleasing females in 7 soldiers.

Derail!

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Hasn't Morrison gone utterly anti Islam bonkers in recent years?

 

[killer b]

That's frank miller I think. Maybe both of them.

 

[DotCommunist]

Miller has always been suss.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

That's frank miller I think. Maybe both of them.

Oh balls sorry yep you're right!

 

[Random]

Hasn't Morrison gone utterly anti Islam bonkers in recent years?

A quick google shows that a recent Morisson X Men character is a muslim Afghan woman. Frank Miller's gone really nasty, and Alan Moore turned and bit a chunk out of him recently when Miller slagged off Occupy. IIrc Moore said that 300 was a-historical garbage, and Sin City was pure misogyny.

Back to Morisson - it depresses me that someone who can clearly go beyond the hackneyed genre stereotypes is now one of those centrally involved in reproducing them. Superheroes are one of the worst things in comics, and they're holding back the whole genre. Seems to me, though, that someone like Morisson has recently become supremely bankable for Marvel, since a sucessfully comicbook character can now mean a big budget film.

 

[Delroy Booth]

That wasn't a list of professions, it should have been in quotes. Just a list of class enemies.

lol so "trots" are class enemies now then yeah?

Is the definition of "trot" anyone who's not in your particular sub-category of anarchist by any chance?

 

[Random]

lol so "trots" are class enemies now then yeah?

Yes, of course they are. Anyone who wants to create a capitalist society is, by definition, a class enemy.

 

[Delroy Booth]

Whoa hold your horses there a moment, trots are in favour of a capitalist society? Really? Are they? Coz I've been rubbing shoulders with trots of various types for years now and that's not something i've ever encoutered before.

As a class enemy, how do you propose to counter these evil right-wing trots? Perhaps by teaming up with the Daily Mail in a trot-bashing PR campaign perhaps?

Any other class enemies? What about democratic socialists? Is there any kind of left winger that isn't a class enemy whilst were here?

 

[butchersapron]

lol so "trots" are class enemies now then yeah?

Is the definition of "trot" anyone who's not in your particular sub-category of anarchist by any chance?

Are you a trot delroy?

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Morrison knows exactly what he is doing and the so-called hackwork has been part of his plan from the begining, it in no way a deviation or a "selling out" or surrendering of his former work.

All his work forms part of a rich tapestrey of 'things Grant Morrison is interested in'. You just don't like some of it.

 

[Delroy Booth]

^ This is Anarchism in practice

 

[butchersapron]

Whoa hold your horses there a moment, trots are in favour of a capitalist society? Really? Are they? Coz I've been rubbing shoulders with trots of various types for years now and that's not something i've ever encoutered before.

As a class enemy, how do you propose to counter these evil right-wing trots? Perhaps by teaming up with the Daily Mail in a trot-bashing PR campaign perhaps?

Any other class enemies? What about democratic socialists? Is there any kind of left winger that isn't a class enemy whilst were here?

What's a democratic socialist?

 

[butchersapron]

^ This is Anarchism in practice

delroy on THE RAMPAGE. Making anarchists very angrrRRy.

 

[Delroy Booth]

Are you a trot delroy?

No I wouldn't say so, I don't like defining myself by the outdated standards of the early 20th century.

 

[butchersapron]

No I wouldn't say so, I don't like defining myself by the outdated standards of the early 20th century.

Ah, a liberal scared trot.

 

[Delroy Booth]

What's a democratic socialist?

A pretty vague catch-all term origninally used to describe the politics of the Labour Party and fellow travellers, although it's worth pointing out that Labour ceased to be a democratic socialist party in any meaningful sense a long time ago.

 

[butchersapron]

So who are you on about in your witch hunt?

 

[Delroy Booth]

Ah, a liberal scared trot.

LOL no I just don't see the point in having to constantly refer back to the events of the early 20th century to define myself ideologically, and I think that constantly invoking Lenin and/or Trotsky all the time is fucking stupid in the year 2012. I'm just a socialist.