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RCP/Spiked/IoI

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Ridiculous of course. There are so many real, non-made-up reasons to cancel an event involving Kate Fox...
 
flypanam said:
I guess I’m judging him by the company he keeps he does that pod with Philip Cunliffe who still is at the Uni of Kent. Seems he was at the Ioi in 2016. Basically it smells a bit spiked.
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just revisiting this ... what do people make of the bunga bunga cast?
 
...something else on my mind, perhaps covered before, but I don't really understand what causes this drift rightwards, brownwards....is it psychological, is there some kind of corrosive political contrarian instinct that takes time to rot? I'm still shocked by the relatively quick 180 about turn of Nina Power for example. Maybe its different for different people but there must be some common reasons.
??
 
People resisting change as they get older? Culture wars are about not having to make uncomfortable changes to outdated opinions. And more settled in comfortable conditions, more to lose as you get older. Surprises me tbh - how my generation has benefited from the PWSC and they're just pulling up the drawbridge.
 
Wannabe media pundits sniffing the wind in many cases. The reaction against social liberalism is broad enough (at least where the actual money is) that anyone wanting ongoing work with the big boys will tee themselves up by pushing lite versions of those politics in lesser/easier entry rags. The "left" press as much as the right.

In other cases it'll be people who got ticked off by social media headbangers/their mates for some reason and responded by turncoating, either via "scratch a liberal" or because their rep was fucked in their original circles so now they're finding new ones who welcome the Damascene conversions of useful idiots.
 
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ska invita said:
...something else on my mind, perhaps covered before, but I don't really understand what causes this drift rightwards, brownwards....is it psychological, is there some kind of corrosive political contrarian instinct that takes time to rot? I'm still shocked by the relatively quick 180 about turn of Nina Power for example. Maybe its different for different people but there must be some common reasons.
??
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I think it's a really good question, and the answers share some similarities with why people drift towards conspiracy stuff as well. Individualism of political views, historical political weaknesses and flaws that have never been addressed in some scenes, monetisation of certain views, encouragement and given a platform from some parts of society ('culture war' stokers), the psychological boost people get from being 'iconoclasts', etc. and then it's also a hard path to row back from once on.
 
Dom Traynor said:
Yeah as a regular reader of Jacobin and Spiked (not because I agree with either particularly) I couldn't make head nor tail of the thread to be honest.
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I don’t read Spiked, unless I really want to be annoyed, but I look at Jacobin now and again. I couldn’t follow the LibCom points myself, but I’m not firing on all cylinders particularly so maybe it’s me.
 
ska invita said:
...something else on my mind, perhaps covered before, but I don't really understand what causes this drift rightwards, brownwards....is it psychological, is there some kind of corrosive political contrarian instinct that takes time to rot? I'm still shocked by the relatively quick 180 about turn of Nina Power for example. Maybe its different for different people but there must be some common reasons.
??
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I think Power was not a typical case though, having followed it a bit. For many people it is the gradual creep of conservatism. Whereas she had a moment of shock when 'the left' rejected her for some terf-y 'concerns' on the trans issue. I actually think poor mental health was a factor as well and some people she thought of as friends turning against her. It all broke her a bit and then there was a new right wing influence in her life who hated 'cancel culture'. Though I'm not one to moan about 'cancel culture' myself, in this case I do still wonder if there was a moment she could have been pulled back from the brink, and whether the harshness (the speed and publicness) of her denunciation prevented her being able to re-assess what she'd said. With some people the rightward drift afterwards looks a bit inevitable, in her case I'm not sure it was. A sad tale all round.
 
I find this territory so hard to navigate.
I know there are people on urban who are really good at mapping the different subpositions and they probably have a much clearer view of it all, but for me there is so much potential grey area... a fact the committed red-brown types know and use, hence The Grayzone!
I find it hard to tell where it's genuine intellectual curiosity/free thinking/slip ups, and where there's a deliberate crypto agenda.

Like here's a little example today

Toby Green and Thomas Fazi published in Unherd....i read that the bungacast gave a sympathetic platform to them too on this topic...
There's probably a few suspect articles in Jacobin if we really went through them all
Identifying all the subcurrents and submeanings takes a huge amount of concentration, awareness, time and digging.
I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I also hate murk, and worse hate being duped.
 
Brainaddict said:
I think Power was not a typical case though, having followed it a bit. For many people it is the gradual creep of conservatism. Whereas she had a moment of shock when 'the left' rejected her for some terf-y 'concerns' on the trans issue. I actually think poor mental health was a factor as well and some people she thought of as friends turning against her. It all broke her a bit and then there was a new right wing influence in her life who hated 'cancel culture'. Though I'm not one to moan about 'cancel culture' myself, in this case I do still wonder if there was a moment she could have been pulled back from the brink, and whether the harshness (the speed and publicness) of her denunciation prevented her being able to re-assess what she'd said. With some people the rightward drift afterwards looks a bit inevitable, in her case I'm not sure it was. A sad tale all round.
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This is the one kernel of truth in the whole "cancel culture" shite talking. There are people out there who derive a whinnying pleasure in the denunciation of others, and the destruction of others through denunciation. These people might say they're on our side, but they're working for the other team.
 
ska invita said:
...something else on my mind, perhaps covered before, but I don't really understand what causes this drift rightwards, brownwards....is it psychological, is there some kind of corrosive political contrarian instinct that takes time to rot? I'm still shocked by the relatively quick 180 about turn of Nina Power for example. Maybe its different for different people but there must be some common reasons.
??
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I think this paragraph from the Jacobin article is revealing: "A recurrent pattern for the RCP throughout the 1980s was that it would establish front groups around certain issues with appeals to unity, while steadfastly refusing to cooperate with other organizations that were working on similar issues." - I think this exclusionary, domineering attitude morphed gradually into a simple need to disrupt, regardless of where that disruption ends up positioning the disruptor themselves.

In an individualist, morally-relativist society some may argue that what you stand for is less important than what you stand against. I think this is the trap Spiked has fallen into; left wing politics is broadly about cooperation and consensus, so if that's considered boring or ineffective then the only way to progress from that position is towards the right. I think that's part of the answer, like it is for many conspiracists - a need above all to be against people you mostly agree with, to feel important or original.
 
mojo pixy said:
I think this paragraph from the Jacobin article is revealing: "A recurrent pattern for the RCP throughout the 1980s was that it would establish front groups around certain issues with appeals to unity, while steadfastly refusing to cooperate with other organizations that were working on similar issues." - I think this exclusionary, domineering attitude morphed gradually into a simple need to disrupt, regardless of where that disruption ends up positioning the disruptor themselves.
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I don't think that's the case. The two issues, idenfiied in the article, where the 80's/90's RCP diverged from most (but not all) left groups was around anti-racism and Ireland. In both cases there were legitimate and signficant differences between the RCP and other left groups. While I was never a fan of the Lloyd Cole hair, roll neck sweater RCP types in Birmingham (who were mainly students) at the time, on both issues they had a much better set of politics than the left groups and co-operation was never on the cards due to political differences rather than sectarian ones. That said,, the RCP - even then - was quite odd and seemed cult like.
 
Fozzie Bear said:
This is a good summary of the early years I think:

jacobin.com

The Strange Odyssey of Britain’s Revolutionary Communist Party

The contrarian website Spiked is now at the heart of an influential right-wing network in British politics and media. But the group behind Spiked started off as an avowedly Marxist organization before turning its back on left-wing politics in the 1990s.
jacobin.com jacobin.com
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Evan's work on the RCP and also No Platform in Universities is really well researched . He also has a book out on the Far Right and Australia
 
Smokeandsteam said:
I don't think that's the case. The two issues, idenfiied in the article, where the 80's/90's RCP diverged from most (but not all) left groups was around anti-racism and Ireland. In both cases there were legitimate and signficant differences between the RCP and other left groups. While I was never a fan of the Lloyd Cole hair, roll neck sweater RCP types in Birmingham (who were mainly students) at the time, on both issues they had a much better set of politics than the left groups and co-operation was never on the cards due to political differences rather than sectarian ones. That said,, the RCP - even then - was quite odd and seemed cult like.
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It wasn't just those things though, was it. There were several other key self-imposed distinctions between RCG/RCP and 'the left'. Even that article mentions (as well as Ireland and Racism)
  • attitudes to unions ("The RCG now criticized the IS for its “economism” and “localised trade union militancy,” accusing it of divorcing defensive trade union politics from a Marxist program of revolution. The RCG sought instead to build a cadre group to draw workers to a revolutionary vanguard party that challenged the chauvinism and nationalism of the British working class.")
  • the Falklands ("There were significant disagreements with several groups over the Falklands War, for example: the RCP argued that the islands belonged to Argentina and supported the actions of the Argentinian government."),
  • the miners' strike ("...the RCP called for a national ballot regarding strike action when other left groups and the leadership of the miners’ union insisted that this was unnecessary.")
  • the 'working class struggle' in general ("...in contrast with others on the Trotskyist left, Richards claimed that there was no political vehicle left for the working class as an alternative to these forces. This implied that the idea of a revolutionary communist vanguard, which the RCP had promoted itself as during the 1980s, was no longer viable.")

I'm not sure what the practical distinction is between 'sectarian' and 'political' differences, but I'm sure that's related to my not being a member of anything any more.
 
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I think in very general terms, if your main raison d'etre is telling allies how and why they're wrong and constantly organizing against them instead of alongside them, you're not really an ally. Anyone on 'the left' who does this is almost bound to end up floating rightwards sooner or later, all the while denying furiously they are on the right, even while attracting right-wing allies.
 
  • the Falklands ("There were significant disagreements with several groups over the Falklands War, for example: the RCP argued that the islands belonged to Argentina and supported the actions of the Argentinian government."),
  • the miners' strike ("...the RCP called for a national ballot regarding strike action when other left groups and the leadership of the miners’ union insisted that this was unnecessary.")
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Things that make you go 'hmmm'.

No?

Furedi spent his whole time from about age 22 devoted to splitting the Left. Often employing or closely working with previously non-political people who underwent miracle transformations into left-wing activists towards the ends of their own academic career (Fox, Munira Mirza).

If it walks like a duck there's probably something in the pond.
 
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