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

[butchersapron]

And being a student doesn't make you an intellectual. It might make you think that you are for a few years though. Students and education as a class demand = very important. Student politics = irrelevant.

 

[butchersapron]

Actually, on re-reading, i don't know what on earth that last para is even supposed to be arguing. Have you given up on arguing it because you can't adequately explain it? Or we're too thick? Too stuck in an approach? If so, what?

 

[Brainaddict]

And being a student doesn't make you an intellectual. It might make you think that you are for a few years though. Students and education as a class demand = very important. Student politics = irrelevant.

I've just been to a Latin American country where many politicised students see it as their duty to pass on political and other forms of knowledge to people who don't have the chance to go to university. Some continue doing so after university. It is quite a significant force in organising. They see a role for themselves based on their good fortune in getting an education. i.e. based on a recognition of their position being different from that of the working masses (so to speak).
The political situation is different here and I'm not saying we can copy it. But I feel like, partly because the price of being an idiot is quite low here, many people allow theory to dominate their worldview and never even look at their own position and surrounding landscape, which would be the first step in creating a politics that would be relevant to the people around them.

 

[butchersapron]

I've just been to a Latin American country where many politicised students see it as their duty to pass on political and other forms of knowledge to people who don't have the chance to go to university. Some continue doing so after university. It is quite a significant force in organising. They see a role for themselves based on their good fortune in getting an education. i.e. based on a recognition of their position being different from that of the working masses (so to speak).
The political situation is different here and I'm not saying we can copy it. But I feel like, partly because the price of being an idiot is quite low here, many people allow theory to dominate their worldview and never even look at their own position and surrounding landscape, which would be the first step in creating a politics that would be relevant to the people around them.

Why have you just told me that? What have you just told me? What do you mean by " the price of being an idiot is quite low here"? Is this related to "passing on" of knowledge by student intellectuals to the idiots who aren't students? Can you have a go at making what you are trying to say clear here please. I genuinely do not understand what you're getting at - and i'm getting some nasty vibes off it.

 

[sihhi]

secondly they instinctively know that their interests are not aligned either with a British plasterer or a Bangladeshi textile factory worker.

In this throwaway non-analysis, students studying plastering have opposite interests to plasterers, and students are only able to see foreign workers as some kind of opposing interest group. This is instinct, apparently - does it apply to non-students as well?

Do hospital porters instinctively know their interests are not aligned with plasterers, do textile workers instinctively know their interests diverge from people doing the same job abroad etc?

 

[butchersapron]

That's the word that was itching at me sihhi - instinctively.

 

[The Pale King]

Hodges returns to sniff own vomit:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/d...mps-actually-laurie-penny-it-is-all-about-me/

Comments turned off as Telegraph readers just can't be trusted not to start up with the violent misogyny and racism. And I guess having 6 pages of rants about 'miscegenation' by posters whose avatars are knights templar isn't such a great look for attracting advertisers.

No matter how misguided Laurie is, there's something distasteful about watching the glee with which no-marks like Mensch and Hodges have alighted on this (half understood) stuff as self-evident proof of the absurdity of the left.

 

[sihhi]

It's an open goal for them mate:

Laurie’s argument is she simply changed her mind “based on new, better information”. But what? The first point the lady tweeting Laurie made was that people in black communities were under attack. Well, Laurie knows that. I’ve read several pieces by her that make precisely that point.
...

Laurie changed her mind not because her opinion got trumped by a different opinion, but because that opinion was held by someone who was black. Which is fine; that’s her choice. But it is her choice. She isn’t under any artificial obligation to change her stance because of her “privilege”.

It pains to write it, but Hodges 1 - 0 Penny

 

[butchersapron]

The reason people often bother Mensch about class and race is not because she is personally ambitious, but because she has been personally involved in the Conservative effort to destroy the British welfare state

So why do we bother you? It's because you are both nakedly ambitious and using your privilege to further that ambition. This is the hole that you dug.

She wrote 'we' in that bit above as well i bet, then bottled it.

 

[Delroy Booth]

No matter how misguided Laurie is, there's something distasteful about watching the glee with which no-marks like Mensch and Hodges have alighted on this (half understood) stuff as self-evident proof of the absurdity of the left.

I agree with you, so much what passes for the new left discourse is ripe for parody, the right will run wild with it.

 

[butchersapron]

Note this retelling of the tale:

In her piece, Mensch singled me out for criticism because this week, after getting into a short debate with several black women on Twitter over the appropriate way to respond to racism

there was no debate, you said something and caved. You don't do debate full stop.

 

[butchersapron]

I agree with you, so much what passes for the new left discourse is ripe for parody, the right will run wild with it.

No it won't, the right won't even notice. This only got noticed because of mensch and the assiduous courting of her by LP. This means nothing to them. Nothing at all.

 

[J Ed]

the United States.

that's half the appeal to Laurie and similar personages: it's got that sexy AmeriKKKan feeling.

Oh honey, you sound so smart when you talk about intersectionality with that accent!

 

[J Ed]

How many people on campus are involved in this shite? Under 1% i reckon. Even there it means nothing beyond careerist and personal individual positioning. And none of these people are pushing class as one of the rubrics under which they operate as far as i can tell.

Way less than 1%, I think 1% is the percentage of people who are aware that it is going on.

 

[J Ed]

I agree with you, so much what passes for the new left discourse is ripe for parody, the right will run wild with it.

When people (and not just right-wingers) are confronted with it they just assume that this is what all socialists and/or Marxists think.

 

[Bakunin]

Note this retelling of the tale:



there was no debate, you said something and caved. You don't do debate full stop.

Makes a change from throwing libelous comments at people and then running away at the mention of possible legal troubles, I suppose.

 

[butchersapron]

As soon as I began getting regular work, I spoke out about the over-representation of private school kids like me in media. Big mistake.

Why? Did it stop your career? Where did you speak out? Where have you tried to help re this:

“I believe it's on all of us, if we are fortunate, not just to acknowledge any privilege we have but to give a leg up to those without it. I try to do this all the time, but very occasionally the volume of nasty shit I get for being honest makes me wish I hadn't bothered.”

Do you even do your non-structural paternalism Laurie? Why would "the volume of nasty shit" you get mean that you wish you hadn't bothered tying to give non-privileged people a helping hand? Is it the non-privileged giving you the "nasty shit"? If not, why are you punishing them and removing your patronage for the actions of others?

 

[butchersapron]

When people (and not just right-wingers) are confronted with it they just assume that this is what all socialists and/or Marxists think.

And it is, because their interaction with the left is no longer at work or based on shared spaces - it is only via the media. There's no space for involved dialogue - nothing.

 

[sihhi]

Intersectionality" is another new bit of equality jargon that the stiff suits in the conservative commentariat loudly claim not to understand – despite or perhaps because of the fact that schoolchildren have been using it on the internet for years. All it means is that you cannot talk in any meaningful way about class without also talking about race, gender and sexuality, and vice versa.

Odd how disability or educational status is kept off the list but sexuality makes an appearance.

 

[Bakunin]

Odd how disability or educational status is kept off the list but sexuality makes an appearance.

Well, Penny Dreadful hasn't exactly been prolific on disability issues, welfare reform and so on. Not enough professional advantage to be gained, I suppose, although her particular brand of cack-handed, credibility-free cobblers would probably do as much to harm the cause of disabled claimants as ATOS and the DWP so we should be grateful for small mercies.

 

[The Pale King]

Odd how disability or educational status is kept off the list but sexuality makes an appearance.

Odd indeed. Seems arbitrary.

 

[sihhi]

And it is, because their interaction with the left is no longer at work or based on shared spaces - it is only via the media. There's no space for involved dialogue - nothing.

Has to be admitted - we (people) did have an interaction with left spokesperson on this very thread.

 

[butchersapron]

Has to be admitted - we (people) did have an interaction with left spokesperson on this very thread.

And we got proper told where we are going wrong

Imagine that happening millions of times over and over and over.

 

[Bakunin]

Has to be admitted - we (people) did have an interaction with left spokesperson on this very thread.

 

[sihhi]

“I believe it's on all of us, if we are fortunate, not just to acknowledge any privilege we have but to give a leg up to those without it. I try to do this all the time, but very occasionally the volume of nasty shit I get for being honest makes me wish I hadn't bothered.”

Again, I hate to sound like an arse, but where is this honesty?

"Laurie Penny, 23, never imagined she would find herself enmeshed in a world of poverty and the grip of the benefit system"

 

[butchersapron]

the stiff suits

Wow, she might as well have wrote the businessman in his suit and tie/squares.

To be writing this stuff after 19. Embarrassing.

 

[Firky]

Odd how disability or educational status is kept off the list but sexuality makes an appearance.

Yes, I noticed that too but I thought I was being picky.

 

[sihhi]

Wow, she might as well have wrote the businessman in his suit and tie/squares.

To be writing this stuff after 19. Embarrassing.

Stiff suits is better than identical suits from the Morning Star in 2010:

"200 well-dressed members of the British literary and political class gathered in the Thomson Reuters building in Canary Wharf to watch three nice white chaps in identical suits jostle for the most recalcitrant position on immigration.
The great and good had assembled for the announcement of the Orwell Prize shortlist. And, after the winners had been applauded, the leaders' debate was screened over drinks and nibbles. Television history was made over the clink of champagne flutes in a dazzling, painful dramatisation of the alienation of mainstream politics from the reality of ordinary people's lives.
I had spent the early part of that morning bidding farewell to my housemates, who had finally been forced out of their Tottenham bedsit after years of frantic joblessness and graduate debt in which all of us were repeatedly denied welfare benefits and adequate health care because we had the temerity to be young, poor and disenfranchised. It took two years for us to lose hope."

 

[Brainaddict]

Why have you just told me that? What have you just told me? What do you mean by " the price of being an idiot is quite low here"? Is this related to "passing on" of knowledge by student intellectuals to the idiots who aren't students? Can you have a go at making what you are trying to say clear here please. I genuinely do not understand what you're getting at - and i'm getting some nasty vibes off it.

I think you're searching hard for something nasty is all
I mean the price of holding facile, ill-thought-out political views that will never be able to have an impact is quite low for students in that (a) many of them are relatively comfortable, particularly globally speaking, and they won't lose much of that by holding crap political views (b) We're not in a time of large-scale leftist movements here and so in their heart of hearts they probably know that their 'radical' views will never be held by anyone except them and their friends, and they'll probably never have to defend it on national tv and so on.

 

[butchersapron]

Stiff suits is better than identical suits from the Morning Star in 2010:

"200 well-dressed members of the British literary and political class gathered in the Thomson Reuters building in Canary Wharf to watch three nice white chaps in identical suits jostle for the most recalcitrant position on immigration.
The great and good had assembled for the announcement of the Orwell Prize shortlist. And, after the winners had been applauded, the leaders' debate was screened over drinks and nibbles. Television history was made over the clink of champagne flutes in a dazzling, painful dramatisation of the alienation of mainstream politics from the reality of ordinary people's lives.
I had spent the early part of that morning bidding farewell to my housemates, who had finally been forced out of their Tottenham bedsit after years of frantic joblessness and graduate debt in which all of us were repeatedly denied welfare benefits and adequate health care because we had the temerity to be young, poor and disenfranchised. It took two years for us to lose hope."

Astonishing. So many claims, so many lies, so much hyperbole, so much self-love and self-mythology in so many words. Who is hiring the peoples press?