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

[sihhi]

Owen Jones backs conferences at the QE2 Centre in Westminster £8 minimum entry for one day.

This is Molly Crabapple at the Hyatt in Austin Texas for the SXSW festival.

As part of the festival, with probably similar ticket costs to Owen Jones ideas.

 

[butchersapron]

could well say the same thing of Owen Jones - what do his writing and calls for a movement of Labour(-led)-Trotsykists-Greens-Nats actually mean? Who is Chavs really for? It's not to popularise radical ideas, it's to use radical ideas to popularise OJ.
A movement like Owen wants will cement the position of figures like him.
OJ is doing it through the guise of journalist/rabble-rouser (and Labour Party has a union link!)... in 2013?

Don't really agree mate, OJ wants to help re-establish an outdated form of social-democracy through his words - that's his primary motivation. Any public recognition of him - rather than the ideas - is welcome but incidental for him. MC is fully about public recognition and celebrity for her not for any politics (not even sloppy and incoherent politics). That day that OJ has an event entirely dedicated to people coming in and simply looking at him is the day they are then the same - the worst you'll get with him is a puppy-dog willingness to have his pic taken with other people.

 

[butchersapron]

I've talked at events (never paying ones though) would this make me the same as crabapple and jones?

 

[butchersapron]

Came across this earlier as well and meant to post it.

 

[sihhi]

I've talked at events (never paying ones though) would this make me the same as crabapple and jones?

What kind of question is this? The point is about the type of big bang ticketed events that Owen Jones was justifying a few weeks ago.

We'll disagree it's becoming like a parlour game - OJ or MC who is worse. I still think Sunny Hundal would win.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

It is confusing because it's harder to pin down MC's ideas.

I think this is precisely because the ideas are secondary to the self-promotion.

Indeed, the vaguer the ideas, the bigger the potential audience.

Whereas with Owen Jones the self-promotion is secondary to the ideas. (Or rather the self-promotion relies on the ideas, rather than his "hotness" / status as a wild child of revolution.)

 

[Balbi]

Contrasting OJ & Crabapple is good really. Jones may be a bit wrong, but he's not trying to monetise his very existence, appearance and every scrap of work. There's a genuine, if naive, belief that his ideas (while being cashed in with the book etc) are part of an ideal he has which means he speaks for free at events, joins in and publicises the event as a journalist/activist without pushing too much of his semi-celebrity onto the issues.

Crabapple's events are about Crabapple, the ideas subsumed in the Crabapple funding. They're praising her for suckering people into donating cash to her, to continue to promote herself. It's a weird cult of the self which has nothing at the core. Even Koresh had a philosophy, Billy Graham had god.

 

[articul8]

Oh god.

sense of humour bypass much?

 

[Balbi]

 

[butchersapron]

She is very sexy, even though her politics is a turn off. It's making my head hurt

Stop rubbing it then.

That better?

 

[el-ahrairah]

I love the graphic novel, but it really did not tell me a great deal about anarchism.

yes, i was very glad that i read it years after George Woodcock introduced me to anarchism, rather than as an impressionable wanky teenager.

 

[sihhi]

Contrasting OJ & Crabapple is good really. Jones may be a bit wrong, but he's not trying to monetise his very existence, appearance and every scrap of work. There's a genuine, if naive, belief that his ideas (while being cashed in with the book etc) are part of an ideal he has which means he speaks for free at events, joins in and publicises the event as a journalist/activist without pushing too much of his semi-celebrity onto the issues.

Crabapple's events are about Crabapple, the ideas subsumed in the Crabapple funding. They're praising her for suckering people into donating cash to her, to continue to promote herself. It's a weird cult of the self which has nothing at the core. Even Koresh had a philosophy, Billy Graham had god.

I'll concede I was maybe too harsh on Owen Jones. But Crabapple's point is that to earn any kind of wage in art production, you have to be named and popularise the name. It's virtually impossible to receive a sum of money for a cogent socially engaged work without an artist name/anonymously. Hence her ideal is to take the popularisation out of the hands of the established galleries and to do it via the internet (and the earlier more unsavoury bit by part-sexualising something which for centuries has been completely non-sexual - life drawing in Dr Sketchy's Art School). It does appeal to a lot of middle-class less prestigious art school graduates.

Different terrain but not too far from how Owen Jones' approach also picks up steam amongst certain types of people - people who don't want "the British economy" to haywire itself via a series of non-union-controlled, unskilled-heavy strikes/refusals to cooperate with new government rules.

 

[articul8]

Stop rubbing it then.

That better?

Much

 

[el-ahrairah]

sense of humour bypass much?

"humourless feminazis"

 

[gosub]

social bungee jumper

 

[el-ahrairah]

Came across this earlier as well and meant to post it.

blimey.

when guy debord died i had never heard of him, but i was so impressed by the obituary in the paper that i stuck it up on the noticeboard in the sixth form common room.

 

[DaveCinzano]

blimey.

when guy debord died i had never heard of him, but i was so impressed by the obituary in the paper that i stuck it up on the noticeboard in the sixth form common room.

What he the chap from Mother Love Bone that inspired Temple Of The Dog?

 

[el-ahrairah]

What he the chap from Mother Love Bone that inspired Temple Of The Dog?

deep man.

 

[J Ed]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...-game-an-art-show-about-the-financial-meltdow

She obviously has some rich fans to get $8,000 and $5,000 donations.

Why does a millionaire need to do kickstarter projects? Stupid question I suppose since Homebase and Tesco take people forced on to workfare.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I think they're trying to create a modern day Bloomsbury Group

With or without the sexual peccadilloes, though?

E2A: Who plays the Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington roles?

 

[ViolentPanda]

sense of humour bypass much?

You keep having these delusions that you've engaged in humour.
Are you getting treatment?

 

[cesare]

With or without the sexual peccadilloes, though?

I've no idea!

 

[TruXta]

I've talked at events (never paying ones though) would this make me the same as crabapple and jones?

Are you hot? Please say yes.

 

[Badgers]

Are you hot? Please say yes.

Sexist

 

[butchersapron]

Are you hot? Please say yes.

Little monetization potential here i'm afraid.

 

[TruXta]

Little monetization potential here i'm afraid.

There's a niche for everything, mate.

 

[Balbi]

Spare some change for a poor monetisation prospect guvnor?

 

[barney_pig]

a union for pimps. Lordy.

I always thought that was the TSSA

 

[SpineyNorman]

I'm hot as fuck so you'd all best give me your money. Otherwise we won't be able to have nice things - like a revolution.

 

[rosecore]

That's pretty harsh, I think their values are similar - both OJ and MC ride above the work of others to 'popularise' (or 'make accessible') 'movements' to middle-class audiences.

It is confusing because it's harder to pin down MC's ideas. Here's the closest from 2012 introducing the Shell Game - after the wave of radicalisation visiting Britain, Spain, Greece, being arrested on the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street:

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/mar/15/comment-medici-crowd

(droput of state school means dropout from an art school/art university)

All fine OK but the conclusion explains that the only innovation is for named artists who already have a name following

Strikes me as the worst excesses of the Occupy movement, where comfortably white middle class folk could re-appropriate themselves in a social movement. The vanity of protest. There are many great people I'm sure involved in the Occupy movements who will never get anywhere near the attention she will.

By her own admission (and talent) she only got 'x' amount of donations because she happened to have friends on Twitter with a sphere of influence. There is nothing radical. She simply used an existing system of power to satisfy her artistic demands. There's nothing really to salute here. Maybe she does have some interesting ideas about Occupy and the current political climate. I haven't seen anything yet. I'm happy to be proved wrong.

The radicalisation of convenience.