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

[sihhi]

re: discussion a few pages earlier about privately educated leftists who use things like flashmobs for activism - a privately educated 'anarchist' at my uni who's going to be a sabb next year is talking about how he's made a Foucault finger puppet who inspired him to write a dissertation about why "contemporary hip-hop isn't very good because neoliberalism". ffs

Big fan of Laurie Penny. Naturally.

Will he resign to make way for a female candidate?

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/salma-haidrani/sexist-world-student-elections_b_2753750.html

Despite more than half of the student population constituting of females, it is astounding that a female President has not been elected to power in 10 years. And unfortunately it appears as if the vicious cycle of female under-presentation will repeat itself for the eleventh year, with two male candidates at present vying for the role. But it isn't merely the role of President which will soon be occupied by a male student which serves to highlight the endemic gender inequality on campus, but women's under-representation in the majority of leadership positions at my Union. At present, a mere two of the six Student Officers are occupied by women, with the Women's Officer only available to the female student body to stand for.

 

[Nice one]

sihhi Palo Alto is a very wealthy enclave though (thanks to incoporation of the city) it's a private town, with less than 70,000 highly educated, extremely wealthy residents.

I doubt Palo Alto High School is a true public school at all.

bit like owen jones and his education - not private but certainly the poshest school in the poshest area

 

[J Ed]

Will he resign to make way for a female candidate?

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/salma-haidrani/sexist-world-student-elections_b_2753750.html

Probably not, the (white) women's councillor said that she had never been more angry than she was at the sabb election this year when everyone she saw that everyone who was elected was white. She didn't offer to resign her seat for someone who wasn't white, of course.

This privilege theory BS is what passes for radical politics here.

 

[sihhi]

He likes talking about porn and tumblr. Not really looking too deeply into it all but C&Ping stuff as I come across it:

Such an odd interview, Malcolm seems to think camera phones/nude pictures should be newsworthy in general

with the celebrity sex tape what we have is more celebrities behaving like normal people than normal people behaving like celebrities. As Us Weekly reminds us: They’re just like us! And people have recorded themselves having sex, no doubt, for as long as the technological capacity has existed. The celebrity sex tape doesn’t so much normalize the making of sex tapes but the discussion of them in public. Camera phones mean nude pictures, but it’s newsworthy only if the media can link it to public figures or crime.

But blackmail via nude photographs doesn't matter to Malcolm

no one like the idea of creepy exes showing nude pictures of them to their friends. But eventually no one is going to care. So our flirting and sexual practices change in relation to technology — so what? The cops and parents will get over kids sending each other “show-me-yours” pics. No one is better about getting blasé about such things than teenagers. There’s nothing wrong with it.

Helena: But what about when they grow up? Who wants pictures of themselves at 18 —

Malcolm: — or 16.

Helena: Or 16 being online forever? What about future employers?

Malcolm: When I was in college, I was an intern at a nonprofit in D.C. In a conversation it came out that almost everyone in the office had at least one tattoo. Now, even a few years ago, “serious people” said getting a tattoo would mean ruining every real job interview forever. It’s just not true anymore, if it ever was.

 

[equationgirl]

Is it me, or is Malcolm Harris unusually obsessed with porn.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Is it me, or is Malcolm Harris unusually obsessed with porn.

And also a cunt, mustn't forget that part.

 

[DotCommunist]

Is it me, or is Malcolm Harris unusually obsessed with porn.

hasn't even the decency to be ashamed of it.

 

[equationgirl]

hasn't even the decency to be ashamed of it.

Or at least shut the fuck up about it. He'll get a name for himself as a creepy sex pest if he keeps going on about it. Are there not enough anti-capitalist things he can write about?

 

[sihhi]

God, he really is close to being a nutter - something on the edges of an insurrectionist anarchist:

"There was an anti-IMF consulta in DC, and representatives from all over the world were discussing what actions their communities would take locally. Person by person, they detailed comprehensive plans for direct actions, balancing risks and possible rewards, the various statements they would be making, the composition of coalitions, etc. These kinds of meetings can stretch on and on, and are often filled with all sorts of bullshit posturing and rarefied code words. In short, they can be insufferable. The discussion finally gets around to a Greek anarchist group. The Greeks are internationally known for being especially militant (and awesome). Their spokesman addresses the assembly and says simply, “We will make total destroy.” Everyone looks incredulous and confused. The Greek spokesman, fearing he has miscommunicated, excuses himself to confer with his group. He speaks with them in hurried Greek, and the rest of the assembly seems relieved that there will be further explanation. After the short clarification, the spokesman turns to the room again and says, “Yes, we will make total destroy.”
That phrase, bridging the gap between strategy and tactic, has become a slogan. “Make total destroy” is a step past the ossified anti-neoliberal struggles, with their summits and counter-summits, and summits to plan the counter-summits. Eschew bureaucracy, embrace bricks."


This is from the L A Review of Books - America's second most intellectually prestigious general intellectual magazine after the NYRB - a review of James Scott's Two Cheers for Anarchism:

"Compare these examples of infrapolitics to the story of Jamal Thomas as related in the pamphlet Union of Arsonists, put out by The Phoenix Class War Council. Thomas was a Domino's Pizza employee who was unjustly fired after being mugged on the job. When he recovered from his injuries, Thomas went from one Domino's location to another in his old uniform, claiming to be an inspector, and proceeded to burn them all down. His sabotage actions don't fit into Scott's narrative, because it's hard to imagine how they'd benefit him, or lead to anything resembling progress: Domino's being much more likely to upgrade their fire insurance than reassess employee grievance procedures. Although Scott mentions episodes of structural change marked by "riots, attacks on property, unruly demonstrations, theft, arson, and open defiance," such revolutionary instances are neither theoretically or practically his concern. Like neoliberalism itself, Scott’s “infrapolitics” are anchored in an everlasting capitalist present, which can’t comprehend an attack on its very premises.

If, as the maxim goes, there are no revolutionaries before the revolution, then by the same token there are no anarchists before anarchy either. This is what happens when you try and live like an anarchist under capitalist liberal democracy: you get Scott, or you get Hedges. Either your resistance teaches new tricks and lends legitimacy to the structures you detest, or you get cut out like a cancer, regardless of your supposed rights. Netroots and Kickstarter or batons and pepper spray: if the capitalism doesn't get you, the riot police will. All too often it's both: the occupations got clubbed out of the parks into the ballot booths; Pussy Riot landed themselves in prison and Hot Topic simultaneously. Scott says nothing about how to live under such intolerable circumstances, or how to bring them to an end, though he does allude vaguely to some future time when we might need something more than infrapolitics.
...
Though it shares a family resemblance with the passive-aggressive rebellion that interests Scott, revolutionary politics requires the drawing of lines of antagonism through the here and now. Not just through the designation of illegitimate authorities, but also the identification of comrades and contestation across the divide. It's the difference between a politics and an opinion. What the sky will look like on the big day, Scott doesn't reveal. In the meantime, he's just a guy walking to work faster."

 

[sihhi]

I think

Eschew bureaucracy, embrace bricks

has better internal rhyme than

Fewer business lunches, more throwing punches

 

[Bun]

Perhaps we could raise the money to have him killed on Kickstarter. It's how he would want to go, I'm sure.

 

[DotCommunist]

we should monetize that. Kickbucketer, the crowd sourced funding for assassinations. I'll give a tenner to see the pope downed, who is with me?

 

[equationgirl]

we should monetize that. Kickbucketer, the crowd sourced funding for assassinations. I'll give a tenner to see the pope downed, who is with me?

Old pope or new pope? Both popes?

 

[SpineyNorman]

Sam Rae - he's gonna be education officer

Didn't recognise the name so I did a google image search. I have somehow managed to avoid him but I can now confirm that he looks like a cunt. If we subject this information along with with the information on the post-modernist glove puppet to a ruthless materialist analysis I think we can safely conclude that he in fact is a cunt. And a massive on at that.

 

[sihhi]

LP recommended Debord's The Society of The Spectacle, Malcolm Harris uses it to analyse more gangster rap music, but fails:

Gucci’s delusion is that he can bridge the traumatic rift between exchange and use values by returning to the point of separation — purchase. But this is a repetition of disappointment, as Guy Debord reminds in The Society of The Spectacle: “The object that is glamorous in the spectacle becomes vulgar the moment it enters the consumer’s home.” Shiny new buys fade quickly into a consumer’s total collected “stuff,” “crap,” or “shit.” Vulgar indeed. Consumers must be self-sacrificing lovers; in order for Homo Economicus to function properly, s/he must desire money not for what it can bring, but truly for itself, and then let it go circulate. The impossible urge to reconcile the two drives brings on a spiral of disgust and renunciation, leaving nothing but the temporary relief of trips to the store, to be repeated unto death. As Gucci puts it tragically:

I need another hoe/my old hoe was the truth
I had to let her go/she kept naggin’ bout my goons
I been saggin’ to the floor/told her pack her shit and move
Now I’m single once again/looking for me something new

Since when does homo economicus - bedrock of neoliberal economic assumptions - require anybody at all to "desire money not for what it can bring, but truly for itself"?

 

[Favelado]

Perhaps we could raise the money to have him killed on Kickstarter. It's how he would want to go, I'm sure.

He'd probably consider his death to be so post-modern that he'd think himself to be the one laughing at us. A delicious grin of irony spreading across his smug face as he's thrown atop the bonfire.

Only briefly though, as the screaming for mummy would commence soon after.

 

[sihhi]

we should monetize that. Kickbucketer, the crowd sourced funding for assassinations. I'll give a tenner to see the pope downed, who is with me?

Monbiot has already done that for arrests - monetise your protest!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/25/bounty-blair-war-criminal-chilcot

 

[J Ed]

LP recommended Debord's The Society of The Spectacle, Malcolm Harris uses it to analyse more gangster rap music, but fails:




Since when does homo economicus - bedrock of neoliberal economic assumptions - require anybody at all to "desire money not for what it can bring, but truly for itself"?

What a twat, that's just what the world needs - an upper-middle-class parasite applying a pseudo-Marxist analysis of pop music for the amusement of other upper-middle-class fellow travellers.

 

[nino_savatte]

LP recommended Debord's The Society of The Spectacle, Malcolm Harris uses it to analyse more gangster rap music, but fails:




Since when does homo economicus - bedrock of neoliberal economic assumptions - require anybody at all to "desire money not for what it can bring, but truly for itself"?

Debord must be spinning in his grave.

The situationist bible; a book that was passed from hand to grimy activist hand in 1968,

 

[sihhi]

What a twat, that's just what the world needs - an upper-middle-class parasite applying a pseudo-Marxist analysis of pop music for the amusement of other upper-middle-class fellow travellers.

He's an anarchist insurrectionist/Debordist so his conclusions are more off-beat.

Hence he's happy with rapper who use the word f--got 231 times in one short album and bigs up Gucci Mane over other "conscious" rap musicians:

This total absence of loyalty is the problem with Gucci’s “girl,” but it’s also what makes her so fantastic. As the universal vehicle of exchange she “ain’t got no limitations,” including him. The key line, as quoted in the title, “She’ll go to war with anybody/She don’t give a fuck” brings out both sides of this dilemma. He raps it with admiration, but “anybody” is fully inclusive. “Makin’ Love to The Money” has a tragic structure: Gucci has a girl he loves, but she’s always looking to leave and he knows he won’t be able to hang on. It’s in a long musical tradition, less “Make It Rain,” more “Mustang Sally.” But mixed with the money obsession that can’t help but displace any other object of erotic drive, the two forms produce a strangely beautiful mutant hybrid child. While some “conscious” rappers rail against the profit motive, it’s Gucci Mane who expresses the loneliness, fear, and cruelty that come with avarice.

beautiful mutant hybrid child:

She bought me AKs call it Desert Eagles
Cocaine hammer pills meth its stupid regal
I took her from her ex yea he kinda cheap
The very day she left we started beefin'
And she don't ever lie to me she keep it real
Your bitch keep comin' short
My bitch keep wearin' heels

Makin' love to the money
I swear the sex great
I kicked them hoes out
but let the money stay

 

[SpineyNorman]

Does he really have to ask?

Ha!

 

[J Ed]

He's an anarchist insurrectionist/Debordist so his conclusions are more off-beat.

Hence he's happy with rapper who use the word f--got 231 times in one short album and bigs up Gucci Mane over other "conscious" rap musicians:



beautiful mutant hybrid child:

He's one of those privilege theory types that think that homophobia isn't a big deal when it's coming from people who aren't white, isn't he?

 

[sihhi]

He's one of those privilege theory types that think that homophobia isn't a big deal when it's coming from people who aren't white, isn't he?

Is he? Goodness knows.

Does an analysis of white millionare pop star Ke$ha here

Ke$ha goes through a comparatively lengthy examination of her preparation (pedicures on her toes, trying on her clothes, boys on phones, etc.) for the party that she predicts will not end. The first phrase of the chorus (“Don’t stop”) is then a surprise non-sensical injunction. How can we stop that which has yet to start? The titular refrain “tik tok” is an unceasing reminder of finitude even though “the party don’t stop,” the second time the command not to stop appears in a 29-word chorus.
The most revealing lyrical juxtaposition may be the song’s most famous: “The party don’t start ’til I walk in/Don’t stop…” Upon entering a party for which she has been preparing until this point, a party that does not exist as such until her appearance, Ke$ha’s first command is not to stop what has only begun through this order which is her commencing entrance. The performative utterance that brings the Party Unto Death into being also announces its end. So although she insists on the party’s infinite duration – or commands it – Ke$ha does so through constant reference to its finitude (e.g. “Now, now, we go until they kick us out, out/Or the police shut us down, down.”) Her “looking away from” is really a look “toward the end.” The clock’s ”tik tok” is the sound of a slow inevitable dying that constitutes the Party Unto Death since its beginning.

Ke$ha's favourite item is glitter:

To mark the anniversary of the war in Iraq, for instance, Washington area SDS members held a “Funk the War” dance party at the offices of companies the organization sees as profiting from combat. “We dance, we throw glitter. It’s a really good time,” said Bob Hayes, a mechanical engineering student at Maryland, who along with Harris helped found the chapter there.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Guilt well and truly established. I think the only question that remains is whether a united front with fascists could be justified if it offered us the chance to rid the world of such people.

 

[emanymton]

He's one of those privilege theory types that think that homophobia isn't a big deal when it's coming from people who aren't white, isn't he?

I think he just likes porn and shit music and knows people who like porn and shit music and had figured it he can make money by spewing a radical and intellectual sounding rationalization for it.

 

[emanymton]

Guilt well and truly established. I think the only question that remains is whether a united front with fascists could be justified if it offered us the chance to rid the world of such people.

The true way is to pitch them in a Battle Royale against each other while we sit back with popcorn, and then mop up any left over.

 

[DotCommunist]

Guilt well and truly established. I think the only question that remains is whether a united front with fascists could be justified if it offered us the chance to rid the world of such people.

never!

 

[where to]

He's just a wanker. Who cares.

 

[SpineyNorman]

never!

Fucking liberal!

 

[SpineyNorman]

He's just a wanker. Who cares.

Don't you dare try and blame this on wanking