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

[ymu]

So unfair on the revenue, having to pay the plebs.

 

[frogwoman]

She can go fuck herself. I hate people like this.

 

[butchersapron]

I reckon we should try and get her employees into the IWW (she is constitutionally barred) and case some trouble for her. In fact, that is a good idea for exposing all the parasites in the pics above and who flutter around this social circle (it used to be called occupy NY).

 

[JimW]

She'll have mentioned that thinking it casts her in a good light if my experience of US discourse is anything to go by - i.e. "I am good boss who pays benefits" as opposed to "bad boss" who doesn't. The rebel artist indeed.

 

[ymu]

Sounds good butchersapron, but it might depend on who the employees are? I'm guessing starry-eyed 'interns' and cheap art students who are looking for a leg up from working for her?

 

[sihhi]

For fucks sake. who in their right mind would think penny was a hero?

We have evidence - her commissioning editor Helen Lewis:

"The other surprising experimental highlight was the long free verse by Laurie Penny, of this parish. Previously, I would have said that a feminist poem sounded about as appealing as a Vogon one but Penny’s scalpel-sharp observation is here complemented by some rhetorical fireworks... It could have been excruciating; instead, it’s intoxicating."

 

[frogwoman]

The publishing industry is so full of nepotism ffs.

 

[butchersapron]

Sounds good butchersapron, but it might depend on who the employees are? I'm guessing starry-eyed 'interns' and cheap art students who are looking for a leg up from working for her?

I wasn't seriously suggesting it to be fair, i'd just like to see crabapple get told she couldn't join the IWW.

 

[Firky]

She can go fuck herself. I hate people like this.

Yeh, reading that has changed my opinion somewhat.

 

[sihhi]

Yeh, reading that has changed my opinion somewhat.

I am suspicious of some of her claims - her own website bio: "Molly Crabapple is an artist living in New York. She learned to draw in a Parisian bookstore, and once sketched her way into a Turkish jail."

But an interview reveals something more normal:

I kept going back, and eventually went to France and England and Bulgaria, Morocco, Romania…all the fuck everywhere. I went a lot of places and spent quite a few months in Turkey, which led to the infamous being put in a Turkish jail quote.”
Molly pauses for a second, laughing. “I think that had more to do with the Western girl thing than the drawing thing. In Turkey they have this institution called Jandarma, the military police. There’s a mandatory draft in Turkey. These boys are into the army and put in the middle of Kurdistan, with nothing to do and a population that doesn’t really like them. There’s nothing to do, there’s no war…they just sit around all day hassling people for their papers. If there was ever an argument against having a draft, Turkey is a good example.
“One of the things Turkish boys do is watch American programs like Baywatch, which is all about how easy Western girls are. So, they see some dumb Western girl like myself mooning around, and they think ‘score!’.
“There were a lot of Amnesty International issues at the time. There had been a civil war with the Kurds there, and Turkey doesn’t get the idea of ethnic diversity, and it’s really bad. So, if there’s a Western girl who’s just drawing they go ‘What the fuck? What’s she doing?’ They detained me for a bunch of hours, and asked me if, in the U.S., girls wore miniskirts.” Molly lets out another laugh.

Jandarma take people to police station cells - they operate (mostly rural) police stations and border points. To be put in jail is pretty unlikely - would need a charge for sketching military facilities.

 

[rekil]

So, Helen Lewis subbed Jan Moir's attack on Stephen Gately in the Daily Mail. Figures.

Anyone see this?

 

[ymu]

It does figure, but ... source?

 

[J Ed]

I just want to know why she is considered a political artist, sure she makes a vague comment here or there that might be considered political, like in the above she seems sort of against conscription but she is distinctly less political than people who wouldn't ever think to refer to themselves as political.

I also like the idea that Turkish soldiers detaining a white American tourist is indicative of a lack of Turkish progress on multiculturalism.

 

[J Ed]

I wasn't seriously suggesting it to be fair, i'd just like to see crabapple get told she couldn't join the IWW.

I want Molly to get picketed while Laurie is drinking tea in Starbucks with her.

 

[rekil]

It does figure, but ... source?

@adjykritik on the twitter - ('Writer and SolFed member interested in political economy and intersectional feminism. Founder of The @OccupiedTimes') linked to a source ehich appears to be a deleted twitter account.

 

[butchersapron]

It does figure, but ... source?

Think it came from Brooke Magnanti originally but now deleted (unless some people have wrong end of the stick, as it now appears to trace back to someone in solfed - the same one in coplikers post)

 

[butchersapron]

Now, at least one person on here is an anarchist and knows Brooke Magnanti...

 

[SpineyNorman]

work as an activist by that do they mean a full-timer in a trot party or something?

Working as a full timer in a trot party requires genuine political commitment so I doubt it!

 

[SpineyNorman]

It is already happening and if it doesn’t I’ll make it happen...The point here is not how to occupy the center during the event...

Might as well just come out and say something like 'for me, activism is all about self-promotion.'

 

[frogwoman]

I fucking despair of anything changing with people like this using something that is destroying everyones lives as way to promote themselves and secure their place in the top table so they can actually carry on doing it. What a sorry state of affairs.

 

[frogwoman]

When is "ATOS - The Musical" coming out?

 

[J Ed]

I fucking despair of anything changing with people like this using something that is destroying everyones lives as way to promote themselves and secure their place in the top table so they can actually carry on doing it. What a sorry state of affairs.

Reading stuff about intelligence operations in the labour movement during the Cold War, it makes me wonder how much of this stuff happens organically and how much is directed in some way or another, think about those scholarships...

 

[sihhi]

I never worked day jobs. I always had weird gigs. So my first art thing was I convinced a coffee shop owner to let me draw his favorite jazz figures for 100 bucks. My first non-art things … I have so many of them, but I was paid by a fine artist who was doing a thing at P.S. 1. As a conceptual art piece, I was supposed to go up to people and whisper in their ears: “This is the life.” But he didn’t tell the security guards and I was almost thrown out of the place. They just thought I was a creepy stalker.

 

[J Ed]

She is just awful.

 

[butchersapron]

I wish that i always just had weird gigs. Like Petronella Wyatt just ended up a privileged sack of shit journo.

That just says it all, so dismissive, so arrogant, so unaware of the whole network of social relations that it requires to be put in place for her life to just happen.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Reading stuff about intelligence operations in the labour movement during the Cold War, it makes me wonder how much of this stuff happens organically and how much is directed in some way or another, think about those scholarships...

There's a multi-volume book still to be written on that subject. Just the interconnections between various endowments and scholarships funded (either directly or indirectly) by the Congress for Cultural Freedom would fill a book. Then you've got all the "prizes" funded by "fellow-travellers" of the US intelligence community - the at-one-remove likes of Rand, which all feeds back into the same pot of piss.

 

[butchersapron]

This sort of thing: Hey, Mister, you want dirty book? (about Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders)

edit: sorry, just noticed not full essay there, let me see what i can do

 

[killer b]

the helen lewis twitter kerfuffle is quite curious. i'd not have even noticed if all her mates hadn't suddenly started going on about it as if everyone was already aware of the details. do they assume that if you're following one of 'em, you're following them all?

 

[butchersapron]

the helen lewis twitter kerfuffle is quite curious. i'd not have even noticed if all her mates hadn't suddenly started going on about it as if everyone was already aware of the details. do they assume that if you're following one of 'em, you're following them all?

The hidden strings since they were at uni then interns now masters of the commentariat all together

 

[killer b]

i just want to stab everyone involved tbh.