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

[Belushi]

Oh FFS

 

[killer b]

That's not fair. It's a joke that goes back some years, between love detective, revol, madusa, a few others and myself. It's so old that I can't even remember how it started, I think it originated on another forum. I missed it on this occasion and did take it the wrong way but I don't think any offence was really taken and LD has apologised.

nor is 17 a child ffs.

 

[love detective]

The evidence is in your attempt to undermine Firky by insinuating that he was a paedo and, deliberately or carelessly, demean a 17 year old woman by implying that her primary purpose, now that it is known that she is a young woman, is to receive unwanted sexual attention from men.

Thanks for that. And all the other ways you have made it clear over the last few pages that your gloriously righteous theory is precisely skin deep. You don't give a shit and you don't even see why you should.

Like I said, you're part of the problem. You've actually managed to pick and then repeatedly defend the wrong line the week fucking Laurie Penny gets it near spot on and whilst the SWP is still imploding due to its own lack of sincerity on the 'women are part of the class too' line.

Fucking disgraceful.

you're all over the place - you don't have a clue what's going on in the majority of the threads you so deeply, pompously and dogmatically involve yourself in

if you'd been following the thread with even a minimal level of attention there's no way you would have posted what you just did there

as you did post what you did though you've just proved what i've said about you all along from the start of this little exchange, you are either unable or unwilling to read or comprehend what's been said before you wade in like a silly pompous shit. The only posts you are interested in reading are your own.

you need to sort yourself out

 

[DotCommunist]

my days, I believe we all had a good time ribbing revol in the same vein- a Skins thing

'low this

 

[Firky]

If you want a punch bag here's one:

 

[ymu]

ymu this is why I'm reluctant to criticise Greenwald too much for his previous ambivalence re: the Iraq War, especially since he's a very important voice speaking against Obama's wars and assault on civil liberties. I quite like his writing too, although the constant sarcasm isn't for everyone...

I absolutely take the point on his approach to Assange, though some good might have come out of both of that and the SWP scandal in that it exposed a lot of latent misogyny and misplaced solidarity that people were in denial about. Hopefully that will lead to better behaviour in the future.

I dunno about the good guys vs bad guys narrative being unhelpful, as human beings it's very difficult to escape that sort of dichotomy. It's built in as a defence mechanism, and I'm not entirely sure we should resist that when it comes to a lot of Anglo-American foreign policy, especially when I think about recent episodes like the coup in Honduras and the current US attempts to delegitimise the Venezuelan government. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong about making a moral case for certain issues.

But this thread is not about individual items of writing (unless it is ) it is about the people who allegedly represent the left in the mainstream.

Winchester & Magdalene, IIRC. Or Magdalen, the Oxford one.

Prime imposter material, surely. Or are we back to judging content and not the personal again. I can never quite tell.

 

[ymu]

That's not fair. It's a joke that goes back some years, between love detective, revol, madusa, a few others and myself. It's so old that I can't even remember how it started, I think it originated on another forum. I missed it on this occasion and did take it the wrong way but I don't think any offence was really taken and LD has apologised.

I know the joke. It was the context and, more importantly, the non-apologetic nature of the stream of overly defensive apology posts. You are free to judge him sincere. I am calling bullshit.

 

[BigTom]

I'm sorry, I thought we were critiquing her output. On this occasion I think she got it right.

The role of journalist, and what it requires to exist, the role of specialists and what social-relations they demand (bit of immanent critique there), how recuperation works, how social-movements talk to themselves - not whether something is a good bit of writing that you (not you personally) agree with or not.

Personally, I thought we were doing both, as well as looking at the role of class/private schools/oxbridge in the media and how that relates to social movements.

 

[butchersapron]

Personally, I thought we were doing both, as well as looking at the role of class/private schools/oxbridge in the media and how that relates to social movements.

Saying how shit she is is fine though, that's not necessarily related to the role.

Thought i'd covered my back - in this now pointless thread.

 

[BigTom]

Thought i'd covered my back - in this now pointless thread.

It's really not pointless, unless everything that is to be said about the role of the journalist / class etc. has been said. I read the Owen Jones thread too and I like the critiques of the journalism, but it hasn't (and doesn't) interest me anywhere near as much as the critiques of the role.

If it's fine to say how shit she is, why isn't it fine to say when she's good? (genuine question btw, why would her being good be neccesarily related to the role, when her being shit may or may not be?)

 

[DotCommunist]

I'd recon cos how good she can or can't be is totally divorced from the mechanisms of privilege by which she got the platform to be occasionally good but mostly facepalm. The way the media bubble itself is a platform for the fail or not fail articles, paid and how these people are come to such platform.

 

[butchersapron]

It's really not pointless, unless everything that is to be said about the role of the journalist / class etc. has been said. I read the Owen Jones thread too and I like the critiques of the journalism, but it hasn't (and doesn't) interest me anywhere near as much as the critiques of the role.

If it's fine to say how shit she is, why isn't it fine to say when she's good? (genuine question btw, why would her being good be neccesarily related to the role, when her being shit may or may not be?)

Because the shitness is just her, to attack on that ground of shit journalism can only lead to defences of good journalism rather than attacks on the role of journalist full stop.

 

[BigTom]

Because the shitness is just her, to attack on that ground of shit journalism can only lead to defences of good journalism rather than attacks on the role of journalist full stop.

cheers, makes perfect sense

 

[ymu]

No interest in shitting all over Milne from the great height that appears to be well deserved given this new clarity?

The younger son of the former BBC Director General Alasdair Milne, Milne attended Winchester College and read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford and Economics at Birkbeck College, London University. His sister, Kirsty, was a visiting scholar at Harvard University and as a journalist has worked on The Scotsman, the New Statesman, New Society and the BBC.[1][6][7]

Seriously:

Seumas Milne (born 1958) is a British journalist and writer known for his left-wing views.[1][2][3] A columnist and associate editor at The Guardian newspaper, he is author of a best-selling book[4] about the 1984-5 British miners' strike, The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners,[5] which focuses on the role of MI5 and Special Branch in the dispute.

He is known for his left-wing views.

Die motherfucker, die.

 

[muscovyduck]

muscovyduck I hope this does not sound patronising but you are way more clever than me when I was 17, at least you have the right idea, when i was your age i was a zionist

i would honestly never ever have guessed you were that age, i might have seemed clever on here but i was an absolute moron

I'm sure you weren't a moron. You don't seem like a moron

 

[butchersapron]

She was, total moron

 

[killer b]

'was'?

 

[rekil]

Musical interlude time? Babes In Toyland's Fontanelle album is 21 years old. They'd give Laura and the intersectionality crew a bit of a headache I imagine, eg, "you fuckin bitch, I hope your insides rot" sounds a bit misogyny, 'but they're women', yeah but they're "old" etc.

 

[muscovyduck]

She was, total moron

Say it isn't so frogwoman

 

[butchersapron]

Musical interlude time? Babes In Toyland's Fontanelle album is 21 years old. They'd give Laura and the intersectionality crew a bit of a headache I imagine, eg, "you fuckin bitch, I hope your insides rot" sounds a bit misogyny, 'but they're women', yeah but they're "old" etc.

Fucking brilliant band. Almost got to put them on in Bristol.

 

[muscovyduck]

Lets relive this moment to get us back on track:

Good grief, I've just discovered this. I'm not sure whether to be flattered or weirded out that you've all spent 208 pages on it. I've no idea why you care so much about my appearance and toilet habits.

 

[Firky]

My favourite post on the whole thread is the one from the Morning Star journalist. Let me go get it

 

[Firky]

You could hear her jaw drop from here.

Laurie Penny wrote: "then worked as a sub-editor on the Morning Star"

As a former co-worker I'd suggest not using your what, three months (if that), "working" for the Star as material for your "I didn't just walk into a national job" schtick. If the Star had operated as a normal workplace you'd have been repeatedly hauled over the coals for failing to show the slightest interest in doing anything which didn't advance the career of Laurie Penny. Did you even join the union in the end? We certainly asked you enough times and this was during a period when it actually mattered.

As for your journalism, it's just a job - one which in your case involves little to no risk unless you forget your get-out-of-kettle-free press card and find yourself swept into the actual front line. There's journalism with real risk attached but you don't do that stuff Laurie "not getting arrested just for journalism" Penny, you do talks for other liberal-left worthies and op-ed pieces with a bit of protest tourism thrown in. That's not activism.

Activism is doing the hard graft, for nothing (in fact usually paying out of your own pocket), for years on end in the hope of building something halfway sustainable. No glamour, no money, lots of sacrifice. It's blind alleys and wasted time and unemployability and sometimes, rarely, criminal records. How many weekends this year have you set aside to help deal with people in trouble and walk them through their options? How many dull-as-fuck meetings have you been at in 2012, volunteering as point person or offering your time to sub and print a leaflet for a campaign, then standing in the street hawking it?

The reason most people are griping on this thread is a quite palpably sensible one - you've used your expensive education and the many, many other class privileges which you are born to as a method of bypassing the drudgery of actual grassroots organising to get into the media set. Having done so, you've repeatedly exploited actual activists so you can pose as "the voice of the left" as part of a well-known career path of parasitism off the back of those who do the actual work. And then, when they call you on such behaviour, you denounce all of them en masse as sexist trolls and demand to know by what right they judge you.

That should not be the question. The question should be by what right do you speak for them?

In fact thinking about it you part-specialise in radical feminist writing right? How about you do something for the Feminist Library down in Lambeth. I don't mean write another piece in the Staggers, I mean volunteer for a couple years as a fundraiser and promoter. You're well networked with wealthy people, and they need £8k a year to meet rent. Do some proper work, get them new digs and don't use it as another line on your wadical Twitter Bio. It won't give you the right to speak for the left, but it'd be a start.

 

[DrRingDing]

i felt sorry for ariel sharon when he had his coma and thought people didn't like him because they wanted to slag off israel

Sweet Jesus froggy. That brings me hope.

 

[frogwoman]

Sweet Jesus froggy. That brings me hope.

Yeah dude, seriously you don't want to know. If you knew how much of a massive zionist I was you'd view me in a completely different light, I knew people here (on urban75) would react badly so I hid most of it from people on here.

I remember telling people that what went on in Israel wasn't as bad as scandals in the NHS being covered up and people in the UK dying in police custody

these days of course, I've read a lot about the conflict from all sides, I am not sympathetic to zionism at all but I understand why disaffected young people might turn to far-right politics because it gives them a sort of pseudo answers to the problems of the world, and problems that they themselves have experienced, and a community.

And for that reason I don't think that the approach along the lines of Laurie Penny's approach is particularly valid, especially when the person saying it frequently has little idea what's going on in your life or the sort of pressures you face every day. If anything lecturing people is just going to make the problem worse especially because the people doing the finger wagging usually have little idea what else is going on in your life to make you think that zionism (or whatever) is an attractive option, and little idea of why their own politics appear so unattractive.

i know i didn't when i had a massive reaction against all that shit

 

[ymu]

I'm sure you weren't a moron. You don't seem like a moron

Moron is a temporary state of affairs. My abiding memory-image of frogster is sound as a pound and really well read. I admit I missed the Zionist interlude but I have been reading her from before that. She's always been the aces and a breath of fucking fresh air in the mustiest corners of P&P.

People don't change. Their ideas and ability to act on them does. Frog hasn't changed a bit, beyond gaining confidence and joy.

 

[frogwoman]

I hid it from people on here because I knew how people would react

 

[DotCommunist]

I hid it from people on here because I knew how people would react

but the question remains- TWWO STATES OR ONE!!11ELEVEN

 

[frogwoman]

but the question remains- TWWO STATES OR ONE!!11ELEVEN

THERE CAN BE NO SOLUTION UNDER THE CURRENT BOURGEOIS SYSTEM

 

[frogwoman]

under decadent capitalism all states are oppressors etc