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

[J Ed]

Take

Fairooz Aniqa ' it just reminds me of being beaten and having my whole family threatened for being white' OH POOR YOU, now translate that to literally every brown family facing the same shit, but, not on a one off basis, but EVERY FUCKING DAY, and while we're at it lets also think about alll of the brown people across parts of Africa and the Middle East who get the shit BOMBED out of their family because they're brown (bombed by the white govt of the USA/UK that is) and also every time there is a bomb going off having people calling for your head because you're brown and every brown person is at fault for one persons actions, suddenly your problem don't seem so big no more. Remember when all those horrible brown people institutionally oppressed the poor whites and took away their land, families, jobs, homes? remember when the browns had the poor whites in shackles and sold them off as slaves and beat them/whipped them til they bled? NO? that's because it never happened. So I can call you a honkey til i'm blue in the face but you will never ever, EVER face oppression or hate in the way that brown communities do. HONKEY!

This is from an elected student officer at a London Uni, I don't know but I assume it's a paid position, she genuinely seems to think that there is a race war going on and the US is waging it on non-whites. I don't even know where to begin with this.

 

[Pickman's model]

Take



This is from an elected student officer at a London Uni, I don't know but I assume it's a paid position, she genuinely seems to think that there is a race war going on and the US is waging it on non-whites. I don't even know where to begin with this.

being a student or being elected doesn't make you intelligent and well-informed: look, for example, at the membership of the us congress

 

[ViolentPanda]

I don't wholly understand what's gone in the past dozen or so pages either.

Do you remember Linda Bellos? Is what I wrote about the '3% of all Lambeth council workers to be disabled' quota wrong?

AFAICR there wasn't an actual quota, but Linda Bellos did want the number of disabled employees to more closely match the proportion of disabled people of working age in the borough's population.
Bloody hell, that was a long time ago, and things have gotten worse, not better!

 

[frogwoman]

Take



This is from an elected student officer at a London Uni, I don't know but I assume it's a paid position, she genuinely seems to think that there is a race war going on and the US is waging it on non-whites. I don't even know where to begin with this.

 

[el-ahrairah]

I really meant it asking for a summary. I have never dipped into this thread before. I can't get my head around what the fuck it's about.

my summary was both honest and accurate. basically it's about all those liberals who pretend to be lefties and pointing out the flaws, lies, and hypocrisies in their work. it's best when they show up here to call us names.

 

[sihhi]

I think there's a fair degree of deliberate manipulation by middle class uni-groupies of the alienation that many young people from non-middle class or non-white backgrounds feel on entering the university as well.

Who exactly is manipulating? It appears to come from an alliance of middle-class 2nd/3rd generation immigrant students and middle-class women/men.

White working-class backgrounds can feel alienated in an environment where every other week is the Student Union's 'right on' culture or cause week. Go Green Week, India Week, International Week, RAG Week, Diversity Week, Women Week (around international women's day).

 

[cesare]

It's not surprising that identity politics is being used to channel frustrations, I think that's being done in a similar way to the way in which fascism was/is used to explain away problems that are a result of austerity. It's far easier to understand your poor lot in life as being a result of oppression by men, Zionists, heterosexuals, whites (including the white working-class even if you're black and middle-class) and so on.

It's also easier to organise round, because it's much more obvious and personal. I don't know if I'm explaining that very well though. I think RTB etc did a lot to create an artificial hierarchy within the working class.

 

[butchersapron]

Who exactly is manipulating? It appears to come from an alliance of middle-class 2nd/3rd generation immigrant students and middle-class women/men.

White working-class backgrounds can feel alienated in an environment where every other week is the Student Union's 'right on' culture or cause week. Go Green Week, India Week, International Week, RAG Week, Diversity Week, Women Week (around international women's day).

It seems to me the latter of the two groups you mention that are most active in working at making this student-common sense (political common sense that is, there is still, i think, a huge number of students who have never heard of this stuff) through filling official positions, filling up public debate and so on. It reminds me of a modern day version of lord and lady bountiful.

Damn right, and one of the reasons i never went!

 

[ViolentPanda]

I really meant it asking for a summary. I have never dipped into this thread before. I can't get my head around what the fuck it's about.

I'll have an attempt at a short precis for you:

it started off being about Laurie Penny making a cock-up with regard to Alex Callinicos/someone she thought was AC's son.
It then morphed into being about how a particular group of media personalities (incl. Ms. Penny) had set themselves up as the voice of a generation/spokespeople for various leftish movements. These people and the milieu they operate in was termed "the bubble".
Many examples of people from "the bubble" talking shite, talking down to people not in the bubble and telling the w/c what was best for it followed.
Then Laurie Penny joined the thread, for some reason assuming we were picking on her, and were fascinated by her toilet habits.
She accused posters in general of being misogynist, and two posters in particular of being racist, due to her making assumptions about a piece of IWCA analysis. It took about 100 pages before she made a grudging extremely-qualified "apology".
Then we got onto her about how "the bubble's" fondness for identity politics and intersectionality obscure the most important divide of all: Class.
Things went downhill.

 

[cesare]

AFAICR there wasn't an actual quota, but Linda Bellos did want the number of disabled employees to more closely match the proportion of disabled people of working age in the borough's population.
Bloody hell, that was a long time ago, and things have gotten worse, not better!

I don't know about councils, but there definitely used to be a green card holder quota in the private sector.

Ah yep, here we are http://www.stammeringlaw.org.uk/disability/green_card.htm

 

[frogwoman]

Who exactly is manipulating? It appears to come from an alliance of middle-class 2nd/3rd generation immigrant students and middle-class women/men.

White working-class backgrounds can feel alienated in an environment where every other week is the Student Union's 'right on' culture or cause week. Go Green Week, India Week, International Week, RAG Week, Diversity Week, Women Week (around international women's day).

I don't think it's just the white working class who finds them alienating tbf

 

[J Ed]

Who exactly is manipulating? It appears to come from an alliance of middle-class 2nd/3rd generation immigrant students and middle-class women/men.

White working-class backgrounds can feel alienated in an environment where every other week is the Student Union's 'right on' culture or cause week. Go Green Week, India Week, International Week, RAG Week, Diversity Week, Women Week (around international women's day).

The idea that there could be a working-class week at Sheffield Uni actually seems kind of absurd, if it was proposed it's not that I wouldn't be extremely supportive I'd just be surprised.

It's Nakba Day today, there's a die in on campus.

 

[sihhi]

I'd say it is over-analytical, but given the date it's also an attempt (at the "infancy" of the mainstreaming of identity politics in the UK) to define the scope of the issue at a time when the language around identity was a fair bit more amorphous.

Yes I can understand this sort of stuff then - when the AIDS panic was at its height etc when lesbians were accused of ruining children's lives by forcing dads to be single dads while they swanned around Greenham Common.

But some of the stuff now has even less subtlety and more arbitrary divisions. I'm sure that lot would never have accepted people using the word honkey like that S.U. officer is doing.

 

[frogwoman]

The idea that there could be a working-class week at Sheffield Uni actually seems kind of absurd, if it was proposed it's not that I wouldn't be extremely supportive I'd just be surprised.

It's Nakba Day today, there's a die in on campus.

to be fair when i was a student we just sort of ignored these stupid "weeks" most of the time

 

[J Ed]

Yes I can understand this sort of stuff then - when the AIDS panic was at its height etc when lesbians were accused of ruining children's lives by forcing dads to be single dads while they swanned around Greenham Common.

But some of the stuff now has even less subtlety and more arbitrary divisions. I'm sure that lot would never have accepted people using the word honkey like that S.U. officer is doing.

It's not so much the SU officer doing it, but the number of (mostly white, probably middle-class) people in the comments under it lining up to talk about how great it is to call white people that.

These people seriously think that Obama is more oppressed than the working-class of Minsk.

 

[chilango]

to be fair when i was a student we just sort of ignored these stupid "weeks" most of the time

I think most students in most unis do.

I'm on campus most days, and live in the heart of studentville, and there's never even a hint of this kind of thing.

 

[frogwoman]

It's Nakba Day today, there's a die in on campus.

i wonder what any palestinian students feel about that?

 

[kebabking]

...White working-class backgrounds can feel alienated in an environment where every other week is the Student Union's 'right on' culture or cause week. Go Green Week, India Week, International Week, RAG Week, Diversity Week, Women Week (around international women's day).

even simpler, at my uni - so i suppose others - was that ledership/organistional roles within the student groups take time, and by and large the kids from less privilaged backgrounds had less time to give to such roles because they spent more time working, more time travelling, and more time studying - the kids from more affluent backgrounds generally had to work less because they got more support from home, they lived closer to the uni because they more money rather than catching 3 buses to come in from miles away, and they they were more relaxed about studying because they came from families with a history of university attendance.

so the kids from more affluent backgrounds took the society posts almost by default, concentrated on the 'ishoos' you've highlighted, and the other kids got bored and joined the climbing club.

 

[J Ed]

i wonder what any palestinian students feel about that?

A few Palestinians are taking part I think, they act out check points just in front of the student union entrance every now and again. It's kind of weird, they don't really try and involve the people going back and forth beside them, although when I think about it I'm not sure how they would do that lol

 

[sihhi]

to be fair when i was a student we just sort of ignored these stupid "weeks" most of the time

Of course you do. But the feeling that your union - the student's union - is just as distant from you as the university management - is there.Working-class students stay silent and don't attend the student meetings. So the experience of working-class people going through these institutions is erased as well as the structural problems of the institutions themselves.

Instead we have it that universities are about:

People who are ambitious. People who expect to be in the top 10 to 1% of global society either now or in a few years. People who are members of the Oxford Union or are invited to speak at the Oxford Union lucky enough to be invited to speak at the Oxford Union and what does it mean for us to say that we are feminists. Well, one of the reasons I wanted to speak against the motion was I agree with the speaker who actually stole my point and can see me afterwards about it... for any reason he likes really.

 

[frogwoman]

A few Palestinians are taking part I think, they act out check points just in front of the student union entrance every now and again. It's kind of weird, they don't really try and involve the people going back and forth beside them, although when I think about it I'm not sure how they would do that lol

fair nuff, good way of raising awareness i suppose.

 

[sihhi]

Damn right, and one of the reasons i never went!

Had you been around the time LP was around, you might have reconsidered:

To hell with the Gradgrinds – go to university. It matters that we live in a country that no longer believes in training minds from all backgrounds

The Gradgrinds may have won the battle, but they don't have to win the war. Some years ago, I worked as a teacher and mentor for Aimhigher, a programme designed to encourage gifted and talented youngsters from deprived backgrounds to apply to top universities. It was my job to fire up those kids to pursue their dreams of learning. It was my job to listen to them when they talked about the books and ideas they loved, to pay attention to their problems and passions, to reassure them that university wouldn't mean being burdened with lifelong debt, that they would find meaningful, fulfilling work.
That programme has now itself been cut as part of the Government's austerity package, but if I had the chance to talk to those kids again, here's what I'd say.
I'd say, go to university, but go for the right reasons. Education isn't a gun held to your head: it's a weapon in your hands. Go not because you're afraid of not getting a job – that's not something you can count on anyway – but go because you love to learn, because you're excited by ideas, because you believe that education is important for its own sake, and when you get there, pay attention, read everything you can get your hands on, cram yourself with words and figures and ideas, because that's the one thing they can never take away from you. The Gradgrinds will only truly win if you start believing that time and opportunity to read books is a luxury to be purchased, a product to be consumed, rather than a fundamental human right. Enjoy your studies, and whatever you do, don't let them win.

The idea that you can let them not win personally.

 

[treelover]

It's not so much the SU officer doing it, but the number of (mostly white, probably middle-class) people in the comments under it lining up to talk about how great it is to call white people that.

These people seriously think that Obama is more oppressed than the working-class of Minsk.

not sure if I should be discussing what 19 year old students think, but it just reeks of middle class guilt and self-flagellation, I had to deal with some of it when I was a NUS officer. It was bad then, couldn't imagine having to deal with it, identity politics, at the level it has now reached.

 

[chilango]

Had you been around the time LP was around, you might have reconsidered:

To hell with the Gradgrinds – go to university. It matters that we live in a country that no longer believes in training minds from all backgrounds




The idea that you can let them not win personally.

But she IS their victory.

 

[rekil]

Stoke Newington Literary Festival - 3rd - 8th June, I am in you.

Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere.

£5. Time – 15.00, Saturday. Venue – Abney Public Hall

BBC Newsnight’s Economics Editor Paul Mason talks to Penny Red blogger & New Statesman writer Laurie Penny, on an issue that’s been debated in Stoke Newington since the 17th Century: dissent. Mason’s updated best-seller Why It’s (Still) Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions looks at the wave of revolt and revolution sweeping the planet, from Athens and the Arab Spring to Quebec and the UK. He and Penny discuss how social networking, economic crisis and a new political consciousness have come together to ignite a new generation of radicals and provide some insight and anecdotes into the future of global revolt.

 

[fractionMan]

radicals LOL

 

[weepiper]

Urgh. Middle class privately educated appropriation of working class terminology.

 

[J Ed]

In Greece it's proper brap brap get me?

 

[Tom A]

Saturday nights in London sound ace, how is that these people haven't seized control of the state yet?

we asked if they could play some hip hop and some honkey feminists said "no, hip hop is misogynistic" to which i responded "whoa, dats kinda racist"

I wouldn't say that the statement "hip hop is misogynistic" is racist - but it's definitely ignorant to tar an entire genre with the same brush with those that sadly are indeed misogynistic. I say this as someone who isn't particularly keen on hip hop (although I do like Sage Francis).

 

[sihhi]

In Greece it's proper brap brap get me?

Please stop appropriating mostly immigrant street English for your own white ends. This is a dangerous form of cultural appropriation that is resisted by all real progressive immigrants in defence of their cultural heritage. You can't understand what this is like, since a white Sheffield male there is no culture which anyone else would want to appropriate from you. All of us none of us. Stop being a shitty human being. Make the student left less shit. The left is a bit shit now. Make it better. Use your own goddamned white slang.