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

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SpineyNorman said:
I can't bring myself to watch that. Seriously.
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You should. I've watched three times; so intrigued was I by her involuntary gagging reflex. Can't decide if it's induced by her lying or anything she finds 'distateful'. I'm sure I've seen and heard her refer to being 'a little bit sick in my mouth' before. I think I'm arriving at the idea that she does it when she KNOWINGLY lies eg...the bit about her doing 'lots of work with disabled groups'. I doubt this is even remotely true, although maybe she's aware that reading the odd blog and giving the odd heads up on twitter can't reasonably be described as work. Then again my theory suffers in that it accords her a degree of self-awareness never hitherto seen.
The lying hypothesis is also difficult to confirm since she has such a bloated and deformed self image that she can happily assert complete bollocks regarding her activities which, in most people's books, count as little more than plain dishonesty.

Then again, if it does only occur when she finds certain topics distasteful, then watch again...she seems to find the organised left and disabled people 'make her a bit sick in the mouth'.

Finally...could be nerves, although if a supportive panel and appreciative but tiny crowd induce a nervous reaction then any future plans involving political participation and sizeable crowds seem unlikely...she'll be reduced to spreading her gospel through twitter and cosy panel discussions.
Good news all round really.
The lark's on the wing, the snail's on the thorn, God's in his heaven and this contemptible piece of shit is doomed to a life of virtual irrelevance; especially once her rapturous adolescent followers have to get out and earn a living, watch the kids and so lack the time to idolise pseudo-radical wannabes.
 
weepiper said:
Is it just me or do Tories and 'activists' have a shared view of the working class who don't lap up their dribblings as 'bitter hate-filled lefties'?
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Prior to us being "bitter hate-filled lefties", I believe we were written off as uneducatable and antagonistic.

Yep, I'm sure that when my great-gran got the vote, she voted Communist because she hated "the man", not because the Communists were the only buggers who made sense. :facepalm:
 
ViolentPanda said:
Quite. It's as old as any member of the working class having the franchise, as well as having been an argument for denying women and the working class the franchise.
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i've just spent a joyous couple of hours reading about how the Irish can't be trusted to manage their own affairs, until they were properly educated to listen to the English rather than their own leaders. and that a system of political parties representing various interests within Ireland was beyond their intellect to cope with.

the names and the details change, the attitudes don't
 
SpineyNorman said:
I can't bring myself to watch that. Seriously.
Click to expand...
That's because you're a misogynist. China Mieville takes the piss by ending his talk with something about the need for "socialism from below" - then the next speaker is Laura.

"A lot of people are feeling really upset and traumatised and my overwhelming impression I took away from the situation with the SWP at the beginning of the year and obviously I was quite involved in that, because I erm I was one of the peop- I broke the story in the mainstream news and I was involved <clapping> oh thanks, but we wasn't uh like a just that was like just a platform..."
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"It's right to talk about emotions. It's right to talk about trauma. It's right to talk about the effect on us as activists, as people who see ourselves as members of the left because what the left is for is providing a space, providing an alternative emotional home for people. People are at the moment refugees from neoliberalism, people's lives are being destroyed and one of the functions that activism serves is to keep peoples lives from falling apart. At the moment I'm doing work with, a lot of work with disabled people against cuts and disability rights mental health rights groups across the UK..."
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Emotional home I am in you.
 
copliker said:
That's because you're a misogynist. China Mieville takes the piss by ending his talk with something about the need for "socialism from below" - then the next speaker is Laura.




Emotional home I am in you.
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She broke the SWP story in the mainstream news? First I've heard of it.
 
GoldenVision said:
You should. I've watched three times; so intrigued was I by her involuntary gagging reflex. Can't decide if it's induced by her lying or anything she finds 'distateful'. I'm sure I've seen and heard her refer to being 'a little bit sick in my mouth' before. I think I'm arriving at the idea that she does it when she KNOWINGLY lies eg...the bit about her doing 'lots of work with disabled groups'. I doubt this is even remotely true, although maybe she's aware that reading the odd blog and giving the odd heads up on twitter can't reasonably be described as work. Then again my theory suffers in that it accords her a degree of self-awareness never hitherto seen.
The lying hypothesis is also difficult to confirm since she has such a bloated and deformed self image that she can happily assert complete bollocks regarding her activities which, in most people's books, count as little more than plain dishonesty.

Then again, if it does only occur when she finds certain topics distasteful, then watch again...she seems to find the organised left and disabled people 'make her a bit sick in the mouth'.

Finally...could be nerves, although if a supportive panel and appreciative but tiny crowd induce a nervous reaction then any future plans involving political participation and sizeable crowds seem unlikely...she'll be reduced to spreading her gospel through twitter and cosy panel discussions.
Good news all round really.
The lark's on the wing, the snail's on the thorn, God's in his heaven and this contemptible piece of shit is doomed to a life of virtual irrelevance; especially once her rapturous adolescent followers have to get out and earn a living, watch the kids and so lack the time to idolise pseudo-radical wannabes.
Click to expand...

Thanks - still don't think I could stomach it though :(
 
From an intersectionalista on facebook in response to this article

^ There was a lengthy Twitter discussion about this inane and slanderous article when it came out. I find it insulting that a so-called anti-racist would take the time to write something like this. Essentially, what it's doing is telling POCs off for offending their oppressors. First, it ignores the fact that people laugh at the EDL's inability to use English *because* they go around complaining about foreigners not speaking English. Second, this is typical of the left being unable to see anything except through the prism of class because, to them, the class war is the overriding issue and that's what POCs should really be talking about. If only these people would put down their copies of Das Kapital and actually speak to POCs. At one point in our discussion, the writer tweeted that accents are the only thing anti-racists "home in on". If this isn't stupid and slanderous, then I don't know what is.
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what the left is for is providing a space, providing an alternative emotional home for people.
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Very revealing. Does she, at any point, talk about the need to transform society into something better (doesn't even need to be socialism, just some politics of some kind)?

Left as trendy subculture.

Consumer wadicalism, I am in you.
 
J Ed said:
From an intersectionalista on facebook in response to this article
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I was called a racist sexist on facebook the other day just for saying I agreed with some parts of Louise Mensch's article on privilege checking. They didn't even bother to ask which parts and it later transpired that they hadn't even read Mensch's article.

Then, when I suggested it might help if they read it, and also if I told them what part I agreed with, I got into a reasonably sensible and respectful discussion with a female fan of Penny. She ended up agreeing that, while we certainly should listen to people whose life experiences offer them a unique perspective on specific forms of oppression, once we have done that we are perfectly entitled to disagree, regardless of whether we share said oppression (eg. I can disagree with black people about antiracist strategy and the causes of racism etc but it's poor form to argue that I already have the answers and don't need to listen to what black people who disagree have to say first, same with women and womens liberation and so on).

I sort of summed up what we'd agreed and she said yes, she did indeed agree. Then a white man (and it will become clear why this is relevant) again called me a racist sexist and said what I'd posted (ie. the thing me and a woman agreed on) was sexist and racist and just another way of saying feminism has gone too far. He ended it by saying, 'boo hoo, women won't do what the white man says so he gets in a strop' - or something like that.

When I pointed out that since a woman had just agreed with what I said it sort of appeared if anyone was guilty of that it was him, a 'white dude' who appeared to be telling a woman she was doing feminism wrong.

He went weird then and said, 'cool story bro' then something weird about leaving on a 'sick' (why does sick mean good now by the way, when did that happen?) motorbike leaving a cloud of dust.

It was so absurd I that I was disappointed to note that I wasn't even able to get righteously angry about it.
 
J Ed said:
From an intersectionalista on facebook in response to this article

^ There was a lengthy Twitter discussion about this inane and slanderous article when it came out. I find it insulting that a so-called anti-racist would take the time to write something like this. Essentially, what it's doing is telling POCs off for offending their oppressors. First, it ignores the fact that people laugh at the EDL's inability to use English *because* they go around complaining about foreigners not speaking English. Second, this is typical of the left being unable to see anything except through the prism of class because, to them, the class war is the overriding issue and that's what POCs should really be talking about. If only these people would put down their copies of Das Kapital and actually speak to POCs. At one point in our discussion, the writer tweeted that accents are the only thing anti-racists "home in on". If this isn't stupid and slanderous, then I don't know what is.
Click to expand...

This sort of stuff is dangerous to anti-fascism. For a start the EDL don't really "go around complaining about foreigners not speaking English" that's a really crap attempt to justify class bigotry. It's the logic that permits the most reactionary and ridiculous behaviour (hypothetical example "who are you, with your white privilege, to lecture a POC's right to fly the Al-Queada flag at an anti-EDL demo, your an ally and your job is to either unconditionally support the oppressed or STFU")
 
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