London Anarchist Bookfair 2023/24

[Serge Forward]

I always thought gen X was because we all necked pills. Was there another reason?

Luxury! When I were a lad we had to make do with just speed, an eighth of leb and some glue.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

Luxury! When I were a lad we had to make do with just speed, an eighth of leb and some glue.

Definitely would make your mind go boomer.

 

[Serge Forward]

Definitely would make your mind go boomer.

No, that was the Watneys Party Seven.

 

[Rob Ray]

One thing I will say about Gen X, your first three PMs have been doozies: Cameron, Johnson and Truss.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

One thing I will say about Gen X, your first three PMs have been doozies: Cameron, Johnson and Truss.

This doesn’t make sense. I’m Gen X and my first prime minister was Heath!

 

[Rob Ray]

As in PMs born of your generation

 

[Lurdan]

Generation X?

Following a merger with some Pistols they became Generation Sex

 

[danny la rouge]

One thing I will say about Gen X, your first three PMs have been doozies: Cameron, Johnson and Truss.

And this is where it all breaks down. I don’t think I’ve got anything at all in common with any of those people except we were born within made up boundaries.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

As in PMs born of your generation

Ah! Gen X prime ministers! Ruling class consistency.

 

[Wilf]

here is the thread on the hell site

Thanks, but I'm not on twitter and my (boomer ) IT skills can't find a way to get to the comments. Probably best.

 

[danny la rouge]

Thanks, but I'm not on twitter and my (boomer ) IT skills can't find a way to get to the comments. Probably best.

It’s no longer possible for non subscribers to see threads on TwiX. It’s one of Space Karen’s killer ideas.

 

[Serge Forward]

Aye, same here.

 

[Yossarian]

One thing I will say about Gen X, your first three PMs have been doozies: Cameron, Johnson and Truss.

Sunak (born 1980) narrowly qualifies as well, not that it does anything to raise the quality level of Gen X PMs

 

[Rob Ray]

You don't even get a Labour PM with Starkers - he's a Boomer.

 

[hitmouse]

Thanks, but I'm not on twitter and my (boomer ) IT skills can't find a way to get to the comments. Probably best.

You can get around it by using nitter, like so. But then you can read the comments, so double-edged sword at best.

 

[Serge Forward]

Jesus. What a fucking world.

 

[danny la rouge]

You can get around it by using nitter, like so. But then you can read the comments, so double-edged sword at best.

Yup, ignorance is bliss.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Statement on a recent attack by so called anarchists spreading malicious gossip about the AnarCom Network

It has come to our attention that some so-called anarchists have accused the ACN of Transphobia and have said that members where kicked out of the ACG for being transphobic. This is untrue and ill …

anarcomuk.uk

 

[Wilf]

You can get around it by using nitter, like so. But then you can read the comments, so double-edged sword at best.

Thanks.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

You can hear the frustration in the last line of that. I think that’s quite good.

 

[Wilf]

Realise I'm falling into the trap of responding to some random on twitter, but the idea that rejecting id pols is inherently transphobic is quite something. Quite a few things that should exist independently of each other have been glued together if you can end up thinking that.

 

[danny la rouge]

Realise I'm falling into the trap of responding to some random on twitter, but the idea that rejecting id pols is inherently transphobic is quite something. Quite a few things that should exist independently of each other have been glued together if you can end up thinking that.

We-e-ll <takes deep breath>, I’ll no doubt regret this, but I suspect what has happened is that short hands have emerged, partly encouraged by character-count-limits, and assumptions are made as a result. But the short hands mean different things to different people, and wires get crossed.

Possibly listening to other people and expressing ourselves in more than 280 characters would help.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Fwiw, as the person who originally posted the relevant Musksite screenshots, I wasn't particularly trying to drop Bristol in it, just to illustrate the weirdness of the original accuser making the claim in extremely vague terms and then immediately switching to "well, I can't remember but I think someone said that anyway" as soon as there was an attempt to clarify.

In this spirit of healing, I feel I should also point out that the characters, organisations and events portrayed in the short story Bookfair! are for entertainment purposes only. They should not be confused with any actually existing bookfairs or revolutionary groupuscules.

I unable to confirm or deny that negotiations have opened with a number of tech and entertainment platforms about Bookfair! being optioned for a multi-series TV spectacular.

 

[LDC]

Those ACN twitter threads are fucking such bollocks, people clearly don't have a fucking clue what they're talking about.

And I look at their Twitter feeds and profiles and they look at best completely erratic and confused.

 

[LDC]

...the idea that rejecting id pols is inherently transphobic is quite something. Quite a few things that should exist independently of each other have been glued together if you can end up thinking that.

That's something I've come across a fair bit tbh, as well as people saying it's racist.... Some of all this is obviously people using the same terms and not agreeing on them, and some of it is this ongoing common confusion around class and capitalism.

Very weird seeing this mash-up of trans and Ukraine stuff.

 

[Serge Forward]

Those ACN twitter threads are fucking such bollocks, people clearly don't have a fucking clue what they're talking about.

And I look at their Twitter feeds and profiles and they look at best completely erratic and confused.

Very generous of you. I thought they just came across as wrecking cunts.

 

[LDC]

I edited my post from what I said first go.

 

[hitmouse]

That's something I've come across a fair bit tbh, as well as people saying it's racist.... Some of all this is obviously people using the same terms and not agreeing on them, and some of it is this ongoing common confusion around class and capitalism.

Very weird seeing this mash-up of trans and Ukraine stuff.

Yeah, in so far as anyone's coming close to engaging with the actual ACG/N are actually saying I think you had a point here:

With the Ukraine support stuff I do think there's something going on with the emphasis that identity politics has on 'oppression' rather than 'exploitation' as a political cornerstone, and the same goes for some bits of the anarchist movement as well. The politics around 'exploitation' tends to lead one into a more class based perspective, the focus on 'oppression' a much more individualist position on people being 'bad' to one another which in turn leads to things like support for people suffering these 'bad' things, more uncritical support for national liberation struggles for example.

I think there is an extent to which, as far as people can be said to have an understandable critique, it seems to be people convinced that the class-based perspective focusing on exploitation is inherently, what's the word, dismissive of oppression and people being bad to each other. But then you do get people just being utterly bonkers as well, like the person who seems convinced that the Manchester bookfair organisers are now essentially indistinguishable from the tories and so on.

 

[hitmouse]

Also found myself thinking of this passage a fair bit this week:

For many of us, it’s the return to normality, the prospect of another year of the grinding everyday, that makes the end of a political sequence unbearable. Through the experience of defeat we realize that the quotidian is constituted by defeat; the normal functioning of capitalism is continuous counter-revolution. Depression and anxiety are forms through which this victory is secured, through which people are rendered compliant, isolated, but only when these moods are modulated by brief moments of hopefulness, relief, imagination, ambition. What capitalism wants is a continuous, low-level unhappiness. They want people engaged in a continuous process of emotional management – with images, with work, with sex, with commodities. Anything more extreme makes people unpredictable, and it’s no surprise that communities that define themselves in opposition to the status quo are filled with the most wounded and miserable types. Once such feelings get politicized, once their political origins are disclosed, all sorts of problems result. Because these affects are the one thing that people in such communities are guaranteed to share, they tend to be valorized as a mark of authenticity; they become markers of an identity, something to hold onto, burnish, aestheticize, worship. Our feelings become not the motivation for our politics, not their energy source, but their object. The result is miserabilism, a community formed by a shared unhappiness, whose reproduction secretly depends upon the continuous provision of more sources of unhappiness.

 

[Dystopiary]

I think there's a serious misinterpretation there of what identity politics means. Some people seem to be seeing its rejection as a lack of solidarity with minorities.

eta I was talking about the responses to ACN (and the recent Anarchist twitter stuff more generally) to be clear.