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

Nigel said:
Regarding Nicky Crane is this him. Sort of remember seeing him in Transmissions video: Psychic TV many moons ago.
I'm pretty sure there is one where he walks around central london covers himself in a white sheet and sets light to himself with a petrol.
http://www.uncarved.org/blog/2004/12/the-strange-case-of-nicola-vincenzio-crane/
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"Terminus" is the video with the guy setting himself on fire, but it's not Crane as far as I can remember.

But yeah, it is generally accepted that's him in the video for "Unclean" which you posted, which was also on the "8 Transmissions 8" VHS compilation...

I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that his involvement in Psychic TV extended beyond a bit part in one video, which presumably he was paid for.

Have we mentioned the Nicky Crane novel "Children of the Sun" by Max Schaefer? It's pretty good: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Children-Sun-Max-Schaefer/dp/1847081150
 
Also apologies, but I've had to take the uncarved.org/blog bit of my site down after it got hacked. If you want to see the Nicky Crane piece then you should be able to get via archive.org or the google cache.

Hopefully it will be back up tonight.

EDIT: working again now
 
I have a copy of the Villa anti fascist fanzine that I could post for inclusion on the website. Give me a postal address and I'll send it off.
 
Inigo Montoya said:
Any fellow anoraks have this book to hand: 'Everyone wants to be fuehrer:
national socialism in Australia and New Zealand' (1972) by David Harcourt.
Looking for someone to scan up the brief Irish entry on pages 132 - 133.

Much appreciated.
Click to expand...
We have it in the library I work in but it's a reference only copy and there's no scanner there. I can sort a photcopy out if you want and post it to you.
 
butchersapron said:
Why no left wing reviews? They've read it.
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There was a review in the Stickies magazine over here in Ireland. Then again, it has almost no local relevance over here, as, at least in the South we haven't had any fascists worth mentioning for decades.

I'm not particularly surprised that there haven't been many or any left wing reviews in Britain. The book takes so many sneering pot shots at everyone else on the left that any organisation which reviewed it would feel the need to respond in a polemical style to those attacks rather than deal primarily with the overall arguments made. It's an inevitable consequence of the vitriol thrown about in the book. And if a present day organisation is going to get involved in publishing lengthy polemical articles, they are going to do it against people who are still around and who still in some way effect their own work, not against what they would see as a bunch of retired minor leaguers.
 
articul8 said:
Like Taaffe's extended polemical response to Rob Sewell?
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Yes. Sewell's mob are still around. In some countries (obviously not Britain) they are reasonably major players by the small standards of the socialist left. And they lay claim to (and contest) much the same history as the Socialist Party. Therefore, from an SP point of view they might occasionally be worth responding to.

But if Socialist Appeal (and the IMT) disappear and then ten years later Sewell emerges from the vasty deep and publishes a book which, amongst other things, has a few pops at the Socialist Party, he probably wouldn't get a response. As really, why would they bother?
 
Third rule of left wing book reviewing: You don't review anything which has a pop at your organisation unless you are going to spend most of the review responding to those attacks in a polemical style.

Fourth rule of left wing book reviewing: You don't bother writing polemics against other groups, and in particular against smaller groups or dead groups or worse still groups that are both dead and smaller, unless there's some obvious advantage to doing so.

(Rule One is that the point of a review of a book published by your own outfit is to sell the book, not evaluate it. Rule Two is that reviews of any artistic work should always be primarily about the soundness of its politics, with its artistic merits very much a secondary issue).
 
Nigel Irritable said:
Third rule of left wing book reviewing: You don't review anything which has a pop at your organisation unless you are going to spend most of the review responding to those attacks in a polemical style.

Fourth rule of left wing book reviewing: You don't bother writing polemics against other groups, and in particular against smaller groups or dead groups or worse still groups that are both dead and smaller, unless there's some obvious advantage to doing so.

(Rule One is that the point of a review of a book published by your own outfit is to sell the book, not evaluate it. Rule Two is that reviews of any artistic work should always be primarily about the soundness of its politics, with its artistic merits very much a secondary issue).
Click to expand...

lulz
 
Nigel Irritable said:
There was a review in the Stickies magazine over here in Ireland. Then again, it has almost no local relevance over here, as, at least in the South we haven't had any fascists worth mentioning for decades.

I'm not particularly surprised that there haven't been many or any left wing reviews in Britain. The book takes so many sneering pot shots at everyone else on the left that any organisation which reviewed it would feel the need to respond in a polemical style to those attacks rather than deal primarily with the overall arguments made. It's an inevitable consequence of the vitriol thrown about in the book. And if a present day organisation is going to get involved in publishing lengthy polemical articles, they are going to do it against people who are still around and who still in some way effect their own work, not against what they would see as a bunch of retired minor leaguers.
Click to expand...


I knew it wouldn't be any fault of the Socialist Party
 
Red Storm said:
I've never really seen much sectarianism from an SP member.

And why has he got the hump so much about book when most of the criticism is levelled at the SWP.
Click to expand...

They're not the worst this is true. But they have their fyed in the wool hacks as every similar group has.
 
The39thStep said:
I knew it wouldn't be any fault of the Socialist Party
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how you read my either of my posts on this bit of the thread and got the idea that I think that the main left organisations are justified in not reviewing the book. The stuff about the rules of left wing book reviews should have been a bit of a giveaway that I don't think much of the review policy of any left publications.

In the post you were quoting, I was explaining why left groups wouldn't bother reviewing it, not saying that they shouldn't. Personally, I think that a good, critical, review would be worth publishing. But I understand why one probably won't be, and why a review would probably be dominated by what are in the greater scheme of the books argument side issues if one was. And it's the book sneering tone about pretty much every left group which made sure of that.

Not of course that you're at all likely to accept that any fault at all rests with the Red Action old boys society.
 
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