Paxo v Brand starts in 5 minutes

[chasbo zelena]

Edit for being a gossipy little tart.

 

[billy_bob]

The lack of substance isn't a problem given the message was essentially i'm angry and want everyone else to be angry to, here's why. And the very last thing anyone on our side needs is someone like paxman helping put substance into anything. He and people like him are part of the problem.

But a part of his message was also we need a political alternative. When you hear anyone saying that, don't you want to know what, if anything, they have in mind?

I suspect Brand hasn't got that far, though at least he's not using his celebrity to just whine about the tax laws. But unless someone challenges him to flesh it out, he might be a millionaire hippy shaman self-publicising gobshite who should be ignored, or he might get more people questioning things even if he himself hasn't got much more to offer, or he might have something more substantive to say. Might turn out to be a crypto-fascist - who knows?

You're right about Paxman, but then that's who was interviewing him. If Brand had laid into him effectively for being a complacent establishment prop that might have been good too....

 

[butchersapron]

But a part of his message was also we need a political alternative. When you hear anyone saying that, don't you want to know what, if anything, they have in mind?

I suspect Brand hasn't got that far, though at least he's not using his celebrity to just whine about the tax laws. But unless someone challenges him to flesh it out, he might be a millionaire hippy shaman self-publicising gobshite who should be ignored, or he might get more people questioning things even if he himself hasn't got much more to offer, or he might have something more substantive to say. Might turn out to be a crypto-fascist - who knows?

You're right about Paxman, but then that's who was interviewing him. If Brand had laid into him effectively for being a complacent establishment prop that might have been good too....

In all honesty, no, that's probably the last thing i would want to know about. What they are going to do to help me and mine and how they think it can be done, yes please, a worked out political alternative that i had no role in forming, no thanks.

I think any role he could ever play would depend on him not having a political alternative.

 

[chasbo zelena]

He can talk about revolution, but if the last one didn't last back when people had to die for some rich cunt, there's not much chance of it having legs when they only have to be his valet.

 

[chasbo zelena]

I think he's sincere though, if half of the female population wanted to suck ME off, I'd probably have a warm and fuzzy feeling that things are going to get better.

 

[ska invita]

Anyone here see mark fisher's facebook page? i think he's got a bit excited!

It goes like this:
22 October

Absolutely exhilarating seeing Russell Brand tonight in Ipswich. Haytaz gotta hate, anarchos gotta whinge and snark, but this was exciting in the same way that seeing Owen Jones up here in Ipswich at the People's Assembly a few weeks ago was - hundreds of people in a provincial town listening to a 90-minute blast against conservatism of every kind, sharing a reality in every way opposed to the one offered by the dominant media. Pro-immigrant, pro-communist, saturated with working class intelligence and not afraid to show it, queer in the way that popular culture used to be (i.e. nothing to do with the sour-faced identitarian piety foisted upon us by moralisers holed up in the vampire's castle of the post-structuralist academic 'left').

Malcolm X, Che, politics as a pyschedelic dismantling of existing reality, communism as something cool, sexy and proletarian, instead of a finger-wagging sermon from someone who went to private school. Horizontalists can stay on the margins, talking to each other. But Brand, like Owen, shows how fame can be used to galvanise, excite and educate people. Remain in the shadows if you like, but the mainstream is there for the taking, if we want it ...

--------------

then

23 October

We're doing it again, we're running rings round these Oxbridge thickos ... Unbelievably fucking good. Unbelievable. What politician has come even close to revealing how slow-witted and smug Paxman is like Brand does here. 'What gives you the authority to speak, you working class oil?' 'There's going to be a revolution, it's GOING TO HAPPEN.'

-
Yesterday

Come on, are we really going to say that Lydon swearing at Bill Grundy is more significant than Brand skewering Paxman with super-sharp working class intelligence for ten minutes? We're in new times, thresholds being crossed ...

Yesterday

And, like clockwork, the posh holier than thou anarchos arrive on twitter to pour a dull grey haze of moralistic resentment over everything ...

-----------------

then shared:

On facebook today from one RRobin Urbanomic
3 hours ago · Edited

Re: Brand: Usually no sympathiser with "The [self-declared] Left", I'm with Mark on this one. Strange how so many post-post-structuralist queer-theory anti-identitarian collectivist performativity-conscious etc. etc. leftists are so desperate to reduce this to a matter of Brand's personal identity and history. Powerful words spoken, which actually stacked up and did something apart from endlessly feeding back into the kaleidoscope of celebrity (and celebrity-politics) hyperreality. On behalf of those without power, on behalf of the real, in a place of power. Yes, maybe, we can't be sure, with some real effects on people like us who didn't expect or dare hope for it.

At the very least, certainly conveying and encouraging a conviction (all but extinct in the media today) in language and rational thinking as a real force (instead of banners and camping and clowning in the park). And through a performative test rather than an already-defeated pleading to ‘be heard’. Most importantly, not just a first-level enumeration of complaints, but an indefatigable refusal to allow them to be deflated by time-honoured patronising psychological class-war techniques: in fact facing up to the latter with an arsenal of intelligent countertechniques. So whoever he is, whether or not (or to what degree) it was a ‘performance’, it held powerful affect for some of us. To dismiss us as nothing but the shills of false consciousness seems very much like doing power's patch-up work for it.

(i.e.: it is you who are interpreting it as a matter of hero-worship, in order to stamp on our optimism. An optimism which is founded on the full awareness that "persons" are nothing but vehicles for impersonal vectors for thought and action --- which is precisely why, in so far as it has happened, the fact that Brand did this, *after* having done or having been x, y, and z, is a cause for excitement, not deflationary suspicion).

 

[Geri]

Who is Mark Fisher?

 

[chasbo zelena]

And the very last thing anyone on our side needs is someone like paxman helping put substance into anything. He and people like him are part of the problem.

I don't see how Brand is any less of a beneficiary of a corrupt system than Paxo.
They're both on TV showing off and slagging off politicians.

 

[cesare]

Who is Mark Fisher?

I was just wondering that too.

 

[Steel Icarus]

He had to go to Kenya to get his head out of his arse enough to realise Poverty Is Terrible. Bet he doesn't see much of it when he goes to the fucking shops though. He might well have good intentions but having just last week paid 2 million dollars for a US home it can only really remain an abstract for him, can't it? Oooh, poverty's a bit shit...so I hear.

 

[DotCommunist]

He had to go to Kenya to get his head out of his arse enough to realise Poverty Is Terrible. Bet he doesn't see much of it when he goes to the fucking shops though. He might well have good intentions but having just last week paid 2 million dollars for a US home it can only really remain an abstract for him, can't it? Oooh, poverty's a bit shit...so I hear.

in fairness he's been a regular at protests and sincere enough since before he went to kenya. Before he was famous even. By all means have him over for his bad points but thats not one of them

 

[butchersapron]

I was just wondering that too.

He wrote the book capitalist realism which was mildly popular among the non-trot left a few years back. At that time he was defending this quote from Jameson:

It's now easier to imagine the catastrophic end of human life on earth than it is to imagine a different order of social relations

This sort of ridiculous pessimism then flipped into this:

Never in my lifetime has capitalist ideology been weaker; neo-liberalism is now played out as a force which has forward momentum (though that isn’t to say that it can’t continue in perpetuity as a zombie). Now isn’t the time to further withdraw from institutions but to reoccupy them. In fact, part of the reason that neo-liberalism became so dominant is that we did withdraw, persuaded that mainstream media was dead and that parliamentary politics was a waste of time. But the very success of neo-liberalism indicates that these things are far from dead. Of course, both parliament and the mainstream media are deeply decadent in the UK, Italy and many other countries, and it will take some time – perhaps a decade at least – before we could make a difference. But it seems to me that, if we want to recover the future, now is the time to re-engage with such institutions.

and now into uncritical and unfettered optimism of the above. Whilst believing:

that "persons" are nothing but vehicles for impersonal vectors for thought and action

Which is nice of 'him' isn't it?

 

[Steel Icarus]

in fairness he's been a regular at protests and sincere enough since before he went to kenya. Before he was famous even. By all means have him over for his bad points but thats not one of them

Seems it was more for the buzz than much else.

 

[xes]

​

fwiw i quite like brand & his nonsense, and think on the balance it's probably better to have him talking about this shit than not. but that doesn't mean we have to just accept it uncritically, and not point out the problematic parts - the conspiralunacy, the wooly thinking & lack of actual politics. it isn't a zero sum equation, all or nothing.

even in conspiraloonery world, he's being met with much sceptisism. Everyone thinks he's a plant, or a shill of some kind. (Icke and Jones are pretty widely hated in conspiraland, they have their followers, but mostly they are ignored)

 

[killer b]

​

even in conspiraloonery world, he's being met with much sceptisism. Everyone thinks he's a plant, or a shill of some kind. (Icke and Jones are pretty widely hated in conspiraland, they have their followers, but mostly they are ignored)

you lot are fucking mental.

 

[xes]

you have no idea how true that is

(I like the doomderpers the best, and it's doom derp season, this month, we've all died like, at least 5 times, and we've just had an x class flare (think it's earth facng too) so that's going to bring 3 more days of doom derpery)

 

[cesare]

Thanks butchers.

 

[tendril]

that's the baby

 

[DotCommunist]

that's the baby

its wrong, the lion should lie down with the lamb not the wolf wit the ram. Fucking JW's

 

[weepiper]

its wrong, the lion should lie down with the lamb not the wolf wit the ram. Fucking JW's

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

 

[DotCommunist]

I stand corrected. JW's are still weird tho

 

[chasbo zelena]

What politician has come even close to revealing how slow-witted and smug Paxman is like Brand does here. 'What gives you the authority to speak, you working class oil?' .

Paxman was being utterly indulgent to a favoured son.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Working class oil. That's a good idea. Drill for victory!

 

[killer b]

Paxman was being utterly indulgent to a favoured son.

yeah, he was. there's previous interviews on youtube that are less antagonistic, they're clearly pals.

 

[butchersapron]

The BBC made them both millionaires after all.

 

[billy_bob]

In all honesty, no, that's probably the last thing i would want to know about. What they are going to do to help me and mine and how they think it can be done, yes please, a worked out political alternative that i had no role in forming, no thanks.

I think any role he could ever play would depend on him not having a political alternative.

Fair enough. I wasn't suggesting I was interested in being provided with an alternative by Brand or anyone else, just that I'd want to know what they thought the alternative might involve.

 

[tendril]

I stand corrected. JW's are still weird tho

though tbf, they're not the weirdest of the xtian based religions

 

[tendril]

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

you went to sunday school?

 

[D'wards]

its wrong, the lion should lie down with the lamb not the wolf wit the ram. Fucking JW's

“The lion will lay down with the lamb, but the lamb won't get much sleep.” Woody Allen

 

[weepiper]

you went to sunday school?

Pfft no, just gathered enough Bible knowledge from having a Catholic Nan and a non-denom school upbringing to recognise the quote