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Beating the Fascists: The authorised history of Anti-Fascist Action

Joe Reilly said:
The hallmark of any self-righteous dyed in the wool liberal is the assumption that each and every challenge to his or her position must be coming from the right. So you can keep your hand-wringing to yourself. As it is highly unlikely we were ever actually on the same side to begin with.
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you are literally rehashing the empty accusations re:" Momentum cancelling the Brexit debate / Laura K bodyguard / " Labour celebrating victory when they've lost " etc that we've all heard a 1000 times from bitter liberals / centrists ( Brexit ffs ! ) , but somehow your version is separate, grounded in some other reality ? Wtf ?

As for your last bit - have disagreed with you over all sorts on here over the years, and agreed with ( and had my eyes opened ocassionally by) you on some important ( to me ) other stuff - genuine shame to see you turn like that.
 
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cantsin said:
you are literally rehashing the empty accusations re:" Momentum cancelling the Brexit debate / Laura K bodyguard / " Labour celebrating victory when they've lost " etc that we've all heard a 1000 times from bitter liberals / centrists ( Brexit ffs ! ) , but somehow your version is separate, grounded in some other reality ? Wtf ?

As for your last bit - have disagreed with you over all sorts on here over the years, and agreed with ( and had my eyes opened ocassionally by) you on some important ( to me ) other stuff - genuine shame to see you turn like that.
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The original larger post was on 27 September at the time of the Labour conference. During it a Labour MP said 'we didn't win the election but we didn't lose it either'. While the Unite leader said quite simply 'We won'. So mine was contemporary commentary, not a re-hashing of anything. You think Labour is the real deal. I don't. Labour is fast becoming a metropolitan liberal party. The eulogy at Glastonbury surely proved that.

Among others, a hubristic French left also thought they could 'elect a new proletariat' and the old working class could be kicked to the kerb. Well, we all know how well that worked out for them. And with or without a change in orientation, social democracy is simply being trampled near everywhere else. And although there are undoubtedly differences, Labour is on a similar trajectory. Too many false promises, too many evasions, too many contradictions, too many hypocrisies. Even poor Theresa May can manage to say 'working class' with more conviction than Corbyn, who prefers the term 'working people'.

Trust me on this, under the bright lights, this bolting together of old school stalinists and floppy liberals will not to be a good electoral look.
 
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It's a dificult one. When the Corbyn project inevitably comes unstuck, it will be widely seen as another nail in the coffin of 'socialism', which will obviously be a setback for anybody who's opposed to the still unfolding failure of the trajectory we've been on for the last 40 years or so. In the same way that the long-coming relegation of the far-left sects to the status of historical curiosity already has. Hence the enthusiastic clutching, on the part of most of the past and present adherents of those sects, at this latest straw-which is basicallly the ill-fated Socialist Alliance and even worse successors, with added widespread support from the well-intentioned but even less politically astute who just want 'something better,' and with mainstream political resources behind it.

'Project Jeremy' couldn't be more obviously 'socialism without the working class,' as the voting pattern of the last General Election results told us...

To those of us who are, in present reality or in personal background, of the 'left behinds', the refusal to engage with 'Project Jeremy' is palpable, and couldn't be more dependent on enough of the working class 'left behinds' having nowhere else to go. And the trouble is, as we are seeing-they have...
 
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Heres what the wclass think about whether the have a say or not

DLW9GhaXcAE4QYX.jpg
 
RD2003 said:
'Project Jeremy' couldn't be more obviously 'socialism without the working class,' as the voting pattern of the last General Election results told us...
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that would be the election where Labour won a majority of the votes of workers? Full-time, part-time, every working group bar retirees. Doesn't really sound like 'without the working class' to me - unless you too want to redefine the working-class into purely old fashioned sociological terms.
 
Joe Reilly said:
Among others, a hubristic French left also thought they could 'elect a new proletariat' and the old working class could be kicked to the kerb. Well, we all know how well that worked out for them. And with or without a change in orientation, social democracy is simply being trampled near everywhere else. And although there are undoubtedly differences, Labour is on a similar trajectory. Too many false promises, too many evasions, too many contradictions, too many hypocrisies. Even poor Theresa May can manage to say 'working class' with more conviction than Corbyn, who prefers the term 'working people'.

Trust me on this, under the bright lights, this bolting together of old school stalinists and floppy liberals will not to be a good electoral look.
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Corbyn's base is very similar to that which propelled Hollande to victory in France. His election was greeted with hyperbole across the European left at the time with them lining up to publicly speculate about a progressive social democratic alliance forming across Europe with France, Greece and Spain at the forefront. We know what happened to Greece as the institution so beloved of the middle class left forced austerity and bankruptcy onto the people. In Spain, the impulse is no longer about a socialist society but towards (legitmate) separatist/independence movements and in France? Hollande was booted out with record low polling levels and the French election was a run off between an orthodox neo-liberal and a fascist.

What did all these movements have in common? All thought the project could be achieved without the working class - or that the working class had nowhere else to go and would be with them - and that an alliance of discredited cobweb left types, students, stalinists, opportunists and rehabilitated careerists, minority interest groups and a disaffected lower middle class could get the job done. History tells us that they were disastrously wrong.

As for Corbyn's Labour, detailed work by sociologist Paula Surridge (which I posted on the Corbyn thread where it was ignored) demonstrated that in the 2017 GE the more working class voters in a constituency there were the more it swung tory. The less working class and the higher the density of students the more it swung labour. As for the activist base fanboying Jeremy - 77% are ABC1 with high levels of social and cultural capital.

As someone once said 'those who do not learn the lessons of history......'
 
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Whilst I agree with Joe on this, Belboid's point on how we are defining the w/c is crucial.

in my constituency, Reading East, Labour swept to an unexpected victory. Even they had no idea it was happening. Who swept them to the win? White collar workers. The very section of the proletariat that have been told over and over that they are m/c and should have the aspirations to match. But, now, in the face of rents of £1200+ pcm, housing dominated by BTL landlords, jobs with no security, mounting student debts, grinding commutes, etc etc maybe, just maybe, things are fraying.

Sure, these aren't the "left behinds" that RD2003 talks about but they're every bit as proletarian and they are the breeding ground for the alt-right.
 
Smokeandsteam said:
As for Corbyn's Labour, detailed work by sociologist Paula Surridge (which I posted on the Corbyn thread where it was ignored) demonstrated that in the 2017 GE the more working class voters in a constituency there were the more it swung tory.
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where did you do this? You made two posts on the Corbyn thread after the election, neither mentioned anything to do with this.
 
Smokeandsteam said:
Corbyn's base is very similar to that which propelled Hollande to victory in France. His election was greeted with hyperbole across the European left at the time with them lining up to publicly speculate about a progressive social democratic alliance forming across Europe with France, Greece and Spain at the forefront. We know what happened to Greece as the institution so beloved of the middle class left forced austerity and bankruptcy onto the people. In Spain, the impulse is no longer about a socialist society but towards (legitmate) separatist/independence movements and in France? Hollande was booted out with record low polling levels and the French election was a run off between an orthodox neo-liberal and a fascist.

What did all these movements have in common? All thought the project could be achieved without the working class - or that the working class had nowhere else to go and would be with them - and that an alliance of discredited cobweb left types, students, stalinists, opportunists and rehabilitated careerists, minority interest groups and a disaffected lower middle class could get the job done. History tells us that they were disastrously wrong.

As for Corbyn's Labour, detailed work by sociologist Paula Surridge (which I posted on the Corbyn thread where it was ignored) demonstrated that in the 2017 GE the more working class voters in a constituency there were the more it swung tory. The less working class and the higher the density of students the more it swung labour. As for the activist base fanboying Jeremy - 77% are ABC1 with high levels of social and cultural capital.

As someone once said 'those who do not learn the lessons of history......'
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Surridge mentioned by you on the political polling thread but not this bit about w/c tories
 
that's quite interesting. is that genuine and wtf is bear spray? is it for attracting large, hairy, gay gentlemen?
 
krink said:
that's quite interesting. is that genuine and wtf is bear spray? is it for attracting large, hairy, gay gentlemen?
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its supposed to be more effective than small arms fire against an angry bear because they have huge sensitive sinuses etc. Wherea a little slug would just thump ito a dense muscle mass

like mace but for bears. Not safe for humans
 
In the 1980's Linda Bellos was a high profile black, Jewish, lesbian radical feminist. She once berated an AFA security steward for 'dressing like a fascist' because he was wearing a flight jacket. She choose to overlook the fact that he was black.

In any event the same Linda Bellos has this week been 'no-platformed' by Cambridge University. She has been deemed to be transphobic apparently.

So, what does this tell us?

Well, when it comes to identity politics no matter far out you are politically you will eventually be out-flanked. For example, some trans activists argue that people like Bellos (for the crime of being an actual woman) ought to be treated exactly like fascists - no-platformed, punched, kicked, killed.

Which ironically, is the same playbook actual fascists would have been flipping through in the 80's when it came to the likes of LB.

Further evidence of the the liberal Left being entirely un-moored.
 
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Joe Reilly said:
In the 1980's Linda Bellos was a high profile black, Jewish, lesbian radical feminist. She once berated an AFA security steward for 'dressing like a fascist' because he was wearing a flight jacket. She choose to overlook the fact that he was black.

In any event the same Linda Bellos has this week been 'no-platformed' by Cambridge University. She has been deemed to be transphobic apparently.

So, what does this tell us?

Well, when it comes to identity politics no matter far out you are politically you will eventually be out-flanked. For example, some trans activists argue that people like Bellos (for the crime of being an actual woman) ought to be treated exactly like fascists - no-platformed, punched, kicked, killed.

Which ironically, is the same playbook actual fascists would have been flipping through in the 80's when it came to the likes of LB.

Further evidence of the the liberal Left being entirely un-moored.
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I remember her well , she must have been in every section of the Labour Party that they set up. In fact they couldn't set them up fast enough. Wasn't she leader of a council at some point?
 
Joe Reilly said:
In the 1980's Linda Bellos was a high profile black, Jewish, lesbian radical feminist. She once berated an AFA security steward for 'dressing like a fascist' because he was wearing a flight jacket. She choose to overlook the fact that he was black.

In any event the same Linda Bellos has this week been 'no-platformed' by Cambridge University. She has been deemed to be transphobic apparently.

So, what does this tell us?

Well, when it comes to identity politics no matter far out you are politically you will eventually be out-flanked. For example, some trans activists argue that people like Bellos (for the crime of being an actual woman) ought to be treated exactly like fascists - no-platformed, punched, kicked, killed.

Which ironically, is the same playbook actual fascists would have been flipping through in the 80's when it came to the likes of LB.

Further evidence of the the liberal Left being entirely un-moored.
Click to expand...

Evidence of a handful of campus activists being utterly fucking deranged perhaps.
 
Red Sky said:
Evidence of a handful of campus activists being utterly fucking deranged perhaps.
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Well, for a just a handful of campus activists they certainly seem to punch above their weight. The latest wheeze is to remove gender from the government's census on the grounds that its "invasive." Liberal left indulgence is clearly critical in this 'campus derangement' migrating.
 
Can you link us up to that 'wheeze' Joe?

All I can find is a story whipped up by the scab press out of a report the ONS had done to investigate how they might include information about transgender etc people into census statistics. Seems a reasonable enough thing to have someone look into to me.
 
FTR I agree with your post about Linda Bellos - but following that up by uncritically repeating tiresome anti-PC fabrications from The Times doesn't really help your argument.
 
I think it's this: as far as I can tell, a technical document about the difficulties of collecting accurate data about the gender identity of respondents to a census. I don't think it's anything to worry about.
 
killer b said:
FTR I agree with your post about Linda Bellos - but following that up by uncritically repeating tiresome anti-PC fabrications from The Times doesn't really help your argument.
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That remains to be seen. But a rebuttal denouncing 'tiresome anti-PC fabrications by the scab press', exhibits the type of hyper sensitivity that hardly does it any harm either.
 
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