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

[chilango]

He doesn't understand climbing that's for certain.

 

[agricola]

"My housemate, Razors"

 

[rekil]

Laurie Penny is trying to make 'beauty privilege' a thing.
As you were.

Saucy communist golems ftw. Not what she meant though.

What if one is really really good looking but has a somewhat cavalier attitude to personal hygiene? Step up or step back?

 

[Tom A]

Reminds me of the "rabid dog" hand puppet from this 80s public information film about rabies...

 

[SpineyNorman]

Laurie Penny is trying to make 'beauty privilege' a thing.
As you were.

SHe's plagiarising my idea from this thread

 

[Delroy Booth]

SHe's plagiarising my idea from this thread

Credit where it's due if she's done that deliberately to wind you up that's excellent trolling, fair play

 

[Tom A]

So I'd characterise Occupy Birmingham as having broadly four groups:

1) Right wing, ron paul fan, anons (we don't have capitalism, we have corporatism)
2) conspiraloons (fair amount of crossover with 1, especially the rothschild banker shit)
3) anarchists plus the odd trot
4) a smaller set of people who weren't (particularly) politically active prior to occupy

Not to dissimilar to how Occupy Manchester ended up (I know friends who were parts of groups 3 and 4), and it was soon left mostly to 1 and 2 - people I dub Zeitgeististas and the David Icke fan club, with a smattering of "freemen" thrown in for good measure, with a continually diminishing number of hangers on in group 3 desperately trying to reclaim Occupy before realising it was an exercise in futility.

Still linking through that is the idea that we are not free, that we are under the yoke of the 1% and need emancipation.

The "the 99% vs the 1%" dichotomy bugged me from day one, it seemed extremely simplistic and ignorant of the way capitalism and the class system domineers over our lives.

 

[Delroy Booth]

That's sad reflection on how David fucking Icke and Alex Jones have done a better job at undermining the bourgeois media and changing the narrative than even the Owen Jones and Laurie Penny's of this world amongst a sub-section of disillusioned young people.

 

[Casually Red]

"My housemate, Razors"

 

[butchersapron]

That's sad reflection on how David fucking Icke and Alex Jones have done a better job at undermining the bourgeois media and changing the narrative than even the Owen Jones and Laurie Penny's of this world amongst a sub-section of disillusioned young people.

Or how off-putting the latter are to that group.

 

[Delroy Booth]

Or how off-putting the latter are to that group.

Not entirely without justification y'know, for instance the dancing anti-semitic priest and Old Holborn and the Assangeista's put me off too. Let the libertarians have 'em, they can draw some of the worst cranks away from the left, it's the bulk of people who are otherwise decent who end up getting drawn to it that's concerning me.

I gave up on that 99/1% stuff when I started hearing things like "The Jew 1%" get bandied around online. Still see it in the Socialist Party's literature from time to time. Well on top of the zeitgeist as always.

 

[Tom A]

Yeah it sounds awful.

If I'm honest I've suffered quite badly with mental health issues and feeling guilty on the basis of my upbringing (or whatever) and other things that I had no control over and to be honest if i'd got involved with shit like this it would have sent me into a really really dark place.

I have Asperger's Syndrome. I can often say things in a manner that's misinterpreted and unwittingly causes offence - and then subsequently feel terrible guilt for when offence gets taken. I have to resist the tendency to tiptoe on eggshells as a result. So you can imagine how it might feel to find yourself on the receiving end of an accusation of (insert oppression here) even though you do your damnedest to oppose said oppression and avoid doing things that facilitate that oppression. Usually in time I will shrug it off and go "feck those wankers", but it still stings at the time, nonetheless.

 

[Idris2002]

 

[butchersapron]

Not entirely without justification y'know, for instance the dancing anti-semitic priest and Old Holborn and the Assangeista's put me off too. Let the libertarians have 'em, they can draw some of the worst cranks away from the left, it's the bulk of people who are otherwise decent who end up getting drawn to it that's concerning me.

I gave up on that 99/1% stuff when I started hearing things like "The Jew 1%" get bandied around online. Still see it in the Socialist Party's literature from time to time. Well on top of the zeitgeist as always.

Nah, i said that penny etc put them off so they look at these others.

 

[frogwoman]

the jew 1%.

i'm glad that i'm a bit older now so i can deal with this stuff rationally - when i first started to come into political activity and already had nationalist zionist and anti-muslim views this could have been a fucking disaster. i'm glad i was born when i was and not a few years later and have had time to "develop my consciousness" (sorry)

so fucking dangerous this stuff.

 

[phildwyer]

I gave up on that 99/1% stuff when I started hearing things like "The Jew 1%" get bandied around online. Still see it in the Socialist Party's literature from time to time.

Evidence?

 

[leyton96]

Evidence?

He's right (about using 99 vs 1% stuff, not the Jew 1% stuff just to be clear). It's used occasionally in leaflets and the paper. I think it's always used in the context of a broader explanation of class politics though, to be fair.

 

[Delroy Booth]

He's right (about using 99 vs 1% stuff, not the Jew 1% stuff just to be clear).

Yeah I can't stress that bit enough. Apologies if I didn't make it clear

 

[muscovyduck]

On the subject of literature (also because I can't find the art & design thread)
http://cosmarxpolitan.tumblr.com/ look what I found!

 

[Casually Red]

On the subject of literature (also because I can't find the art & design thread)
http://cosmarxpolitan.tumblr.com/ look what I found!

My boyfriend was a counter revolutionary- COULD IT HAPPEN TO YOU

 

[DotCommunist]

the asiatic mode of production and your butt

 

[equationgirl]

Who was that Daily Mail journalist who reckoned she had all sorts of problems because she was so beautiful?

Samantha Brick.

 

[BigTom]

Not to dissimilar to how Occupy Manchester ended up (I know friends who were parts of groups 3 and 4), and it was soon left mostly to 1 and 2 - people I dub Zeitgeististas and the David Icke fan club, with a smattering of "freemen" thrown in for good measure, with a continually diminishing number of hangers on in group 3 desperately trying to reclaim Occupy before realising it was an exercise in futility.



The "the 99% vs the 1%" dichotomy bugged me from day one, it seemed extremely simplistic and ignorant of the way capitalism and the class system domineers over our lives.

Yep. Birmingham was overflowing with freemen. I asked them why they hadn't got their nobles together to go and petition the king yet, as the Magna Carta clause they like to think still exists allows them to do. They said they had their nobles but couldn't tell me why nothing had happened and why we were still not free

I think there's a fundamental difference between the zeitgeist/project venus lot and some of the other conspiraloons though, in that the zeitgeist/project venus lot were genuinely looking for an alternative to capitalism - a "resource based economy" built around an open source software computer system that you inputed all the resources of the world into and it decided how to allocate them, coupled with complete automation of things so no-one has to work... a technocracy and a utopia. They thought it would mean freedom but couldn't get to grips with questions of what happens when you can't automate a process and how are decisions made about the software programming. Really poor but very different to the ron paul type conspiraloons who wanted more capitalism.

 

[frogwoman]

He's right (about using 99 vs 1% stuff, not the Jew 1% stuff just to be clear). It's used occasionally in leaflets and the paper. I think it's always used in the context of a broader explanation of class politics though, to be fair.

yes and i'm sure i've seen taaffe etc say that the idea is problematic and needs to be explained in a broader context of class etc.

I've got other issues but the party were pretty good on occupy i thought.

 

[butchersapron]

And what taafe says, goes.

 

[frogwoman]

And what taafe says, goes.

lol, nah it doesn't. to be honest i've not been to any SP stuff in ages. i've got quite a few issues with it to be honest. I still think it's probably the best group out there and there's a lot of stuff they get right but I'm not convinced any more that their way of doing things is "the way forward for the class" if you get what I mean

 

[frogwoman]

I've still got loads of respect for lots of people in the party though, and there is loads of stuff that the SP has got right, they're way ahead of most trot groups in terms of grassroots campaigning and getting stuff done. It has been quite a big decision for me and I still feel quite conflicted over it but there were a few decisions over the last year or so that I really didn't agree with, got serious reservations about a lot of the PCS/RMT stuff for example.

 

[Blagsta]

Yep. Birmingham was overflowing with freemen. I asked them why they hadn't got their nobles together to go and petition the king yet, as the Magna Carta clause they like to think still exists allows them to do. They said they had their nobles but couldn't tell me why nothing had happened and why we were still not free

I think there's a fundamental difference between the zeitgeist/project venus lot and some of the other conspiraloons though, in that the zeitgeist/project venus lot were genuinely looking for an alternative to capitalism - a "resource based economy" built around an open source software computer system that you inputed all the resources of the world into and it decided how to allocate them, coupled with complete automation of things so no-one has to work... a technocracy and a utopia. They thought it would mean freedom but couldn't get to grips with questions of what happens when you can't automate a process and how are decisions made about the software programming. Really poor but very different to the ron paul type conspiraloons who wanted more capitalism.

The "resource based economy" lot (wtf does that mean anyhow? No one could ever explain it to me) reminds me of 19th Century utopian socialism.

 

[butchersapron]

It is deliberately chosen not to explain anything but just to be counterposed to a money/profit based economy. It's PR. The utopian socialists were far far in advance of these money raking futurologists. They recognised production and use-value, made it the centre of their approach.

 

[treelover]

maybe we can go back to the time of beards and fine moustaches...