Mad Paul Mason

[SpackleFrog]

As far as punching up goes, I thought the whole point of Urban was to rip the piss out of the soft left commentariat? Which he definitely definitely is.

My money is on a coke problem for the record. But whatever the reason, he comes out with increasingly batshit stuff, the media give him a platform which makes it Important Batshit Stuff, and we may as well have a laugh about it.

 

[chilango]

Yeah. I get all that. I'm not bothered about defending Mason and the like.

But.

...but, I dunno, I feel a bit uncomfortable with it right here, right now. I don't wanna go all "...but, but Jo Cox!". I really don't. I'm just not sure that it's a good time for this kinda thing.

 

[chilango]

And I know I'm rambling a bit but I just think we need a little bit more kindness in our movements.

Not for the sake of our enemies but for our own sake.

Look at the anarchists, the stuff on Twitter it's f****** horrible. If you like elsewhere on the left at the trots and their sex pests, some of the nasty bullying demeanor that's some of the men on the left exhibit....

.... It's not exactly the new world that we carry in our hearts is it?

 

[8ball]

And I know I'm rambling a bit but I just think we need a little bit more kindness in our movements.

Not for the sake of our enemies but for our own sake.

Look at the anarchists, the stuff on Twitter it's f****** horrible. If you like elsewhere on the left at the trots and their sex pests, some of the nasty bullying demeanor that's some of the men on the left exhibit....

.... It's not exactly the new world that we carry in our hearts is it?

Needs saying more often.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Everyone should be kinder as much as is possible

Just realised Proper Tidy your new pic is Mason innit. Was thinking it was Shankly or something.

 

[Fedayn]

I agree with you about the book. I absolutely loved it. The way working class history was presented, the way it attempts to demonstrate continuing structures of feeling and collective memory and the way it provides examples of resistance to dispersal in post industrial places is brilliant.

However, let’s be clear Mason has been on a journey since. From the moment he proclaimed himself to be ‘a public intellectual’. The journey is towards popular frontism, towards a construction of a ‘new working class’ that ditches entire sections of the existing working class for good and towards a strategy that has seen the left obliterated and the far right in ascension where it’s been applied.

This work as LynnDoyleCooper reminds us has been performed within a self satisfied London bubble of affluent people who can afford to ‘do’ politics as a hobby and have incredible self regard for themselves and the bubble and a barely repressed disdain for the rest of us.

Unless narcissism is a mental health issue I can’t agree with the rest of your post

Aye, his membership of Workers Power not withstanding I really like his previous work on Channel 4 News and Newsnight. He also did a cracking programme on Northern Soul which was really enjoyable. Since then however he seems less and less the articulator of radical ideas and more and more the shouter of increasingly desperate near conspiratorial measures. Sad...

 

[Treacle Toes]

As far as punching up goes, I thought the whole point of Urban was to rip the piss out of the soft left commentariat? Which he definitely definitely is.

.

This is interesting. Perhaps there is too much focus on this... perhaps there needs to be less 'calling out' and more 'calling in'. Perhaps it's all got a bit too macho and top bantz.

I am not saying that criticism is off the table, I just think that if we're doing it just for the sake of doing it it's time/energy wasted.

 

[chilango]

This is interesting. Perhaps there is too much focus on this... perhaps there needs to be less 'calling out' and more 'calling in'. Perhaps it's all got a bit too macho and top bantz.

What's "calling in"?

 

[SpackleFrog]

This is interesting. Perhaps there is too much focus on this... perhaps there needs to be less 'calling out' and more 'calling in'. Perhaps it's all got a bit too macho and top bantz.

I am not saying that criticism is off the table, I just think that if we're doing it just for the sake of doing it it's time/energy wasted.

You think we need to go #TopTopBantz?

 

[Treacle Toes]

What's "calling in"?

Good question. I picked it up as an expression from another thread recently.

It stayed with me and I understood it to mean identifying the issues & bringing people closer/working at unity not just sending them away with no more than a flea in their ear.

It was jimmer who used it here.

 

[JimW]

Aye, his membership of Workers Power not withstanding I really like his previous work on Channel 4 News and Newsnight. He also did a cracking programme on Northern Soul which was really enjoyable. Since then however he seems less and less the articulator of radical ideas and more and more the shouter of increasingly desperate near conspiratorial measures. Sad...

Yeah, recall his reports from China for Newsnight were much better than the usual, just for the framing and who he talked to - working class people for instance.
Also thought his California Carafes were the height of sophistication back in the day.

 

[SpackleFrog]

Good question. I picked it up as an expression from another thread recently.

It stayed with me and I understood it to mean bringing people closer/working at unity not just sending them away with no more than a flea in their ear.

Thing about the commentariat is you can't really bring them closer. Or get them to listen to you. They comment and we comment on what they comment.

In general though I do like the 'calling in' thing and think it was a good way to respond to the call out fad a while back.

 

[JimW]

Though calling in makes me think of a pedalo on a boating lake. "Come in, Jeremy Corbyn, your time is up."

 

[tommers]

As far as punching up goes, I thought the whole point of Urban was to rip the piss out of the soft left commentariat?

 

[tommers]

Parliament has been suspended (possibly illegally), the Prime Minister has been found guilty of lying to the Queen in a fucking court, the government hasn't complied with an order from Parliament, we've read 6 pages detailing how food and medicine shortages might cause actual deaths, the country is split down the middle about a trade deal, an MP was shot and killed but the important thing is that somebody said something in the Guardian that I find a bit objectionable.

And some of those protesters are wearing inferior outerwear.

 

[chilango]

And some of those protesters are wearing inferior outerwear.

You've got to draw a line somewhere.

 

[HoratioCuthbert]

Parliament has been suspended (possibly illegally), the Prime Minister has been found guilty of lying to the Queen in a fucking court, the government hasn't complied with an order from Parliament, we've read 6 pages detailing how food and medicine shortages might cause actual deaths, the country is split down the middle about a trade deal, an MP was shot and killed but the important thing is that somebody said something in the Guardian that I find a bit objectionable.

And some of those protesters are wearing inferior outerwear.

Don’t worry, it doesn’t take a huge amount of energy to slag off someone’s choice of waterproofs.

 

[DaveCinzano]

"And there I was, knelt in Syntagma Square with the tear gas in my eyes, and Varoufakis on my right had just shot his copious load over the arm of my tight leather jacket, and I looked left and pleaded for the youthful masked anarchist to concentrate on finishing the job in (my) hand rather than his Twitter and hurry up before the euro collapsed and I missed my deadline for Channel 4."


View attachment 183961

Stewart Home just faxed from 1996 asking for a credit

 

[chilango]

Don’t worry, it doesn’t take a huge amount of energy to slag off someone’s choice of waterproofs.

I mean, on a serious note, imagine standing on a picket line when the comrade stood besides you has to go home because they're soaked through after their Trespass waterproof jacket starts to leak through its untaped seams?

Or, you're running from the cops during a demo when a member of your affinity group stops because they're getting too sweaty in their "breathable" Trespass waterproof after making the assumption that TresTex must be more or less the same as GoreTex, right?

Or, you're hunkered down observing a target when the cell member on your right's teeth start chattering because the cheap synthetic insulation in his Trespass "puffer" just isn't keeping him warm. The cell member to your left moves to warm him but the rustle of the stiff face fabric on his Trespass jacket, unlike the softer Pertex Stretch on your Rab, gives away your location to security. That's 15 years in Belmarsh right there.

Am I right?

 

[Magnus McGinty]

Now hold on a minute. We best not be too harsh on the bourgeois left.
Fuck ‘em.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

Jones and Sarkar no platformed Eddie Dempsey and labelled him a ‘borderline racist’ (whatever that means?) because some comments he made swam against the liberal tide. Is Mason in that camp of cunts?

 

[belboid]

Jones and Sarkar no platformed Eddie Dempsey and labelled him a ‘borderline racist’ (whatever that means?) because some comments he made swam against the liberal tide. Is Mason in that camp of cunts?

They didn't 'no platform' him, they chose not to speak on a platform with him on it. He (self-described as 'Blue Labour,' the tosser) has had to apologise at least twice for comments he belatedly realised had racist undertones and repeats racists attacks on asylum seekers ('I dont mind proper asylum seekers, but...). He's a right-wing shit. But he gives it the 'I'm proper working-class me' so he takes a few buffoons in.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

They didn't 'no platform' him, they chose not to speak on a platform with him on it. He (self-described as 'Blue Labour,' the tosser) has had to apologise at least twice for comments he belatedly realised had racist undertones and repeats racists attacks on asylum seekers ('I dont mind proper asylum seekers, but...). He's a right-wing shit. But he gives it the 'I'm proper working-class me' so he takes a few buffoons in.

Not sure how he’s ‘blue labour’ given he’s a communist. Perhaps you mean he’s socially conservative whilst economically hard left?
I’m not saying I agree with his politics, I probably don’t. But I’m tired of middle class twats being the spokespeople of ‘the left’ and then attacking voices from trades unionism. A genuine working class bloke.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

One of their gripes was that he supported leave. Is that a right wing position then?

 

[belboid]

Not sure how he’s ‘blue labour’ given he’s a communist. Perhaps you mean he’s socially conservative whilst economically hard left?

It was on his twitter. Gone now, maybe it was a joke. But he's a tosser either way. Who repeats (and has to apologise for) racist shite.

One of their gripes was that he supported leave. Is that a right wing position then?

No, it was that he spoke on a far-right (Leave Means Leave) platform.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

I’ve read plenty of what he has to say given I’m in the same union as him and I think you’re talking shite. Unsurprising that you’d be up the arse of Sarkar and Jones though.

 

[belboid]

I’ve read plenty of what he has to say given I’m in the same union as him and I think you’re talking shite. Unsurprising that you’d be up the arse of Sarkar and Jones though.

I'd trust Matt Wracks opinion over yours any day, and he expelled the fucker.

 

[HoratioCuthbert]

I think the offending comment was:

“too many in the Labour Party have made a calculation that there’s a certain section at the top end of the working class, in alliance with people, they calculate, from ethnic minorities and liberals, that’s enough to get them into power.”

An alliance of the comfortably-off, liberals and ethnic minorities, to deliver power to those “calculating” people who wish to betray the honest working class.”


Ah, well now we have a phrase for working class people that don’t need coaxing away from Yaxley- Lennon - it’s “the top end”.
Last thing we need is more divisive crap from yet another angle. Backing politicians that are vocal about racism isn’t something that only happens if you have more money. And are ethnic minorities off the “honest working class” list? Explain yersel buey.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

I'd trust Matt Wracks opinion over yours any day, and he expelled the fucker.

Expelled who from where?

 

[belboid]

Expelled who from where?

Okay, I'm confusing the fucker with Paul Emberry on that one

Two shades of shite, mind