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

[Idris2002]

There were plenty for Mussolini though. Not just Lewis, but Yeats and Pound and arguably Eliot, not to mention most of the Italian Modernists.

Eliot was more of a Franco type, with his Catholic-style rejection of modernity. And the casual anti-semitism.

It was Fascism, in short, which helped to close down the Criterion, a point overlooked by those for whom Eliot and his magazine were themselves of this persuasion. In fact, Eliot was not a Fascist but a reactionary, a distinction lost on those of his critics who, in the words of Edmund Burke, know nothing of politics but the passions they incite. Ideologically speaking, Fascism is as double-visaged as the Modernism with which it was sometimes involved, casting a backward glance to the primitive and primordial while steaming dynamically ahead into the gleaming technological future. Like Modernism, it is both archaic and avant-garde, sifting pre-modern mythologies for precious seeds of the post-modern future. Politically speaking, however, Fascism, like all nationalism, is a thoroughly modern invention. Its aim is to crush beneath its boot the traditions of high civility that Eliot revered, placing an outsized granite model of a spade and sten gun in the spaces where Virgil and Milton once stood.
Fascism is statist rather than royalist, revolutionary rather than traditionalist, petty-bourgeois rather than patrician, pagan rather than Christian (though Iberian Fascism proved an exception). In its brutal cult of power and contempt for pedigree and civility, it has little in common with Eliot’s benignly landowning, regionalist, Morris-dancing, church-centred social ideal. Even so, there are affinities as well as contrasts between Fascism and conservative reaction. If the former touts a demonic version of blood and soil, the latter promotes an angelic one. Both are elitist, authoritarian creeds that sacrifice freedom to organic order; both are hostile to liberal democracy and unbridled market-place economics; both invoke myth and symbol, elevating intuition over analytical reason. The Idea of Europe, as Eliot dubbed it, is in its own civilised way quite as exclusivist as the Nazi state which in Eliot’s eyes helped to spell its ruin. It represented, as Thomas Mann understood, a disabling sublimation of the spirit that left actual human life perilously open to the assaults of barbarism. Moreover, though racism and anti-semitism are not essential components of right-wing Tory belief, as they are of most Fascist doctrine, they flourish robustly in that soil.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n18/terry-eagleton/nudge-winking

 

[Idris2002]

i absolutely hate yeats..little fascist twat .

Good poetry, though.

 

[phildwyer]

"We will glorify war—the world's only hygiene--militarism, patriotism--destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman."
-- Marinetti, The Futurist Manifesto

 

[phildwyer]

Good poetry, though.

The best since Milton.

"Out of Ireland have we come,
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us from the start.
I carry from my mother's womb
A fanatic heart."

 

[Idris2002]

"We will glorify war—the world's only hygiene--militarism, patriotism--destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman."
-- Marinetti, The Futurist Manifesto

Wasn't there at least one futurist wanker who toddled off to the front in 1914, only to promptly die of lead poisoning?

 

[phildwyer]

Eliot was more of a Franco type, with his Catholic-style rejection of modernity. And the casual anti-semitism.

He was also involved with Charles Maurras's Action Francaise.

 

[phildwyer]

Wasn't there at least one futurist wanker who toddled off to the front in 1914, only to promptly die of lead poisoning?

I hope so.

Almost as good as Rupert Brooke being buried at sea.

 

[Idris2002]

I hope so.

Almost as good as Rupert Brooke being buried at sea.

I hope so too.

 

[Casually Red]

Good poetry, though.

i hated that too . All that 1916..terrible beauty shite . Drives me up the wall . The opportunist git waits till its safe to write it, about 5 years after the British pull out of Dublin. Proclaims it was his work that actually motivated the decision to have an uprising and hey ho writes himself into the revolutionary narrative over ten years after the fact .
When in reality a revolution kicks off virtually outside his front door, led by people he knows on first name terms , including the woman hes been stalking for years, and he goes and hides under the bed . For 11 years. And then writes himself into it .


ggaaaaarrgghh..hate him

 

[andysays]

Wasn't there at least one futurist wanker who toddled off to the front in 1914, only to promptly die of lead poisoning?

I was, presumably, what he would have wanted.

Another name which can be added to the list of artistically progressive yet politically well dodgy is DH Lawrence.

I hope we've done enough to convince sihhi that there were plenty of "bohemian apologists for fascism"

 

[phildwyer]

i hated that too . All that 1916..terrible beauty shite . Drives me up the wall . The opportunist git waits till its safe to write it, about 5 years after the British pull out of Dublin. Proclaims it was his work that actually motivated the decision to have an uprising and hey ho writes himself into the revolutionary narrative over ten years after the fact .
When in reality a revolution kicks off virtually outside his front door, led by people he knows on first name terms , including the woman hes been stalking for years, and he goes and hides under the bed . For 11 years. And then writes himself into it .

He got it right the first time:

"What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone?
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave."

 

[Idris2002]

I was, presumably, what he would have wanted.

Another name which can be added to the list of artistically progressive yet politically well dodgy is DH Lawrence.

I hope we've done enough to convince sihhi that there were plenty of "bohemian apologists for fascism"

I tried reading Lawrence's Women in Love last summer. It's one of the most unreadable books I've ever tried to read (Kerouac's Visions of Cody is the only one I genuinely couldn't read, but WiL came a very close second).

Evelyn Waugh's another shitehawk. Apparently even well into the war (and as a serving officer in HM Forces!) his private diaries contain a reference to Hitler "fighting for European civilisation".

 

[Idris2002]

i hated that too . All that 1916..terrible beauty shite . Drives me up the wall . The opportunist git waits till its safe to write it, about 5 years after the British pull out of Dublin. Proclaims it was his work that actually motivated the decision to have an uprising and hey ho writes himself into the revolutionary narrative over ten years after the fact .
When in reality a revolution kicks off virtually outside his front door, led by people he knows on first name terms , including the woman hes been stalking for years, and he goes and hides under the bed . For 11 years. And then writes himself into it .

ggaaaaarrgghh..hate him

I think it's either Roy Foster or Ferriter who quotes Yeats' line "Did that play of mine send out certain men the English shot" and says "almost certainly not".

 

[phildwyer]

Evelyn Waugh's another shitehawk. Apparently even well into the war (and as a serving officer in HM Forces!) his private diaries contain a reference to Hitler "fighting for European civilisation".

When he was supposed to be aiding the Yugoslav patriots he accused Tito of being a lesbian.

 

[Idris2002]

When he was supposed to be aiding the Yugoslav patriots he accused Tito of being a lesbian.

That's actually my favourite conspiracy theory - that Tito was a woman (apparently this belief is widespread in the former Yugoslavia).

 

[Casually Red]

I think it's either Roy Foster or Ferriter who quotes Yeats' line "Did that play of mine send out certain men the English shot" and says "almost certainly not".

somebody else wrote

if Yeats had spared the pencil lead
would all those men have stayed in bed

 

[andysays]

I tried reading Lawrence's Women in Love last summer. It's one of the most unreadable books I've ever tried to read...

Yeah, I tried either that or Sons and Lovers once. I can't remember if it was unreadable, or just didn't strike me as very worth reading.

It's tempting to try to make an argument for the politically dodgy artist also being artistically uninspiring (Dali is another name which springs to mind from that period) but would probably be an oversimplification.

 

[phildwyer]

That's actually my favourite conspiracy theory - that Tito was a woman (apparently this belief is widespread in the former Yugoslavia).

He does have a sort of womanly figure in the photos.

Apparently he sent a note to the British High Command: "Ask Sargeant Waugh why he thinks I am a lesbian."

 

[phildwyer]

I tried reading Lawrence's Women in Love last summer. It's one of the most unreadable books I've ever tried to read

He did some good pomes though.


How Beastly the Bourgeois Is

by D. H. Lawrence

How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species--

Presentable, eminently presentable--
shall I make you a present of him?

Isn't he handsome? Isn't he healthy? Isn't he a fine specimen?
Doesn't he look the fresh clean Englishman, outside?
Isn't it God's own image? tramping his thirty miles a day
after partridges, or a little rubber ball?
wouldn't you like to be like that, well off, and quite the
thing

Oh, but wait!
Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with another
man's need,
let him come home to a bit of moral difficulty, let life
face him with a new demand on his understanding
and then watch him go soggy, like a wet meringue.
Watch him turn into a mess, either a fool or a bully.
Just watch the display of him, confronted with a new
demand on his intelligence,
a new life-demand.

How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species--

Nicely groomed, like a mushroom
standing there so sleek and erect and eyeable--
and like a fungus, living on the remains of a bygone life
sucking his life out of the dead leaves of greater life
than his own.

And even so, he's stale, he's been there too long.
Touch him, and you'll find he's all gone inside
just like an old mushroom, all wormy inside, and hollow
under a smooth skin and an upright appearance.

Full of seething, wormy, hollow feelings
rather nasty--
How beastly the bourgeois is!

Standing in their thousands, these appearances, in damp
England
what a pity they can't all be kicked over
like sickening toadstools, and left to melt back, swiftly
into the soil of England.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15345#sthash.tpZbz1Qn.dpuf

 

[Idris2002]

Worthy of the great E.J. Thribb himself.

 

[Casually Red]

The best since Milton.

"Out of Ireland have we come,
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us from the start.
I carry from my mother's womb
A fanatic heart."

yeah but come easter sunday morning, and the week that followed...and the 5 years that followed that it turns out his heart wasnt remotely fanatic at all , it was decidely faint. Too faint to even write something until it was well and truly in the past . It was all literally just outside his front door . And led by fellow poets too , by people from his own social circles. No excuse .

he was full of it i reckon

 

[phildwyer]

yeah but come easter sunday morning, and the week that followed...and the 5 years that followed that it turns out his heart wasnt remotely fanatic at all , it was decidely faint. Too faint to even write something until it was well and truly in the past . It was all literally just outside his front door . And led by fellow poets too .

he was full of it i reckon

I can't blame him for being anti-violence.

Must have taken guts to be a Protestant republican too.

 

[Idris2002]

Must have taken guts to be a Protestant republican too.

Not really. It would have been quite a common thing among his section of the intelligentsia. And later on, in the late 20s, the rump of the old Unionist party that was left behind in the south after partition had no problems merging with Cumman-na-Gael, the ruling party at the time.

 

[Idris2002]

On her next flying visit, the bould Laurie is going to look at the last few pages and think "what the suffering fuck?"

 

[Casually Red]

I can't blame him for being anti-violence.

Must have taken guts to be a Protestant republican too.

he was anti violence only when it was close and he might be on the receiving end , not when mussolini was dishing it out .
And as regards his protestant background that would have been a zero handicap . The protestant , and even english, leaders of republicanism at that time are well documented . Theres no evidence to suggest yeats even was a republican . Particularly given his contempt for the ordinary people .

 

[phildwyer]

Theres no evidence to suggest yeats even was a republican .

Wot? I'd not heard any doubt cast on that.

 

[frogwoman]

Link?

i should have put it on twitter

 

[Idris2002]

he was anti violence only when it was close and he might be on the receiving end , not when mussolini was dishing it out .
And as regards his protestant background that would have been a zero handicap . The protestant , and even english, leaders of republicanism at that time are well documented . Theres no evidence to suggest yeats even was a republican . Particularly given his contempt for the ordinary people .

Wot? I'd not heard any doubt cast on that.

Yeats was definitely a cultural nationalist, and a vital figure in the Gaelic revival in the 1890s - but remember that revival comes at a time when official nationalism is on the back foot after the fall of Parnell, and revolutionary republican nationalism is still a matter of small circles of conspirators. Yeats does make a contribution to the wave of advanced nationalism that bursts into revolution in 1916 and afterwards, but I've never heard of him being a conscious republican, no.

 

[phildwyer]

Yeats was definitely a cultural nationalist, and a vital figure in the Gaelic revival in the 1890s - but remember that revival comes at a time when official nationalism is on the back foot after the fall of Parnell, and revolutionary republican nationalism is still a matter of small circles of conspirators. Yeats does make a contribution to the wave of advanced nationalism that bursts into revolution in 1916 and afterwards, but I've never heard of him being a conscious republican, no.

Then what did he think he was doing when he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood?

 

[Idris2002]

Then what did he think he was doing when he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood?

Trying to get a shag off Maud Gonne.

But I admit that's a bit of the story I was not previously aware of. . .