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Russell Brand on Revolution

Diana9 said:
Have you yourself read this "ground breaking" book? If the review you posted is the premise of the book, i.e., "that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their liberty to enslave others'" then it is flat out wrong, as the facts I've already posted show. Can you refute those facts?

Instead you spout empty, condescending rhetoric:

To wit:

"the standard and now shop worn responders you chose to post doesn't actually deal with any of the issues raised in Horne's ground breaking book."

I've pointed out the very opposite. The shop worn American mythology is all about "The Founders," the great, important men we are taught to revere, centered mainly around two of the founders, Washington and Jefferson, both slave-owners, overlooking the majority of the other Founders who were not slave-owners (or who freed their slaves), and the vast majority of the Patriots who actually fought and died in a revolution inspired by Thomas Paine, whose vision of liberty, equality, and democracy was aborted by monarchists like Hamilton, Adams, et al, and who thus imposed a system built on the British model that still rules over the western world today.

"Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain." (Joel Barlow, American diplomat and poet).

"A free America without Thomas Paine is unthinkable." - Marquis de Lafayette

Those words still hold true today. There would not have been a revolution without Paine (it certainly wasn't to preserve slavery), and there is no free America today without the democracy Paine envisioned. There is no freedom in the British Common Wealth, nor in the U.S, nor in Hong Kong, or anywhere else in the world. We are all oppressed by the same system. If you would stop wasting your time in idle gossip about celebrity, you might begin to understand that the revolution Paine wrote about is the same as Brand talks about and perhaps then you'd be able to use this powerful technology for a greater purpose.

The revolution as Paine saw it and as Brand sees it is democracy -- government of, by, and for the people. That means people must be awakened to the possibilities for change and become radically engaged.



"We have the power to make the world over again" - Thomas Paine
Click to expand...

Brand, the modern day Paine,? now I'm as thick as mince when it comes to the modern day 'left intellectualism' but even I can see your stretching it a wee bit.
 
ViolentPanda said:
What was that you were saying about "utter bullshit revisionism"? Slaves being sold in the colonies (by Portuguese, Spanish, British, French and Italian privateers) was already happening before Elizabeth I was crowned. What Elizabeth did (in, IIRC, the 1580s) was to grant the equivalent of trade licences to British companies that became the foundation of the triangular trade.

Blame Elizabeth, by all means, but don't forget the part the other "Old World" empires played.
Click to expand...

It's not about blaming, it's about understanding a common history and the mindsets we've inherited. It might help to understand the origin of those mindsets that still influence us today.

The Queen's Slave Trader: John Hawkyns, Elizabeth I, and the Trafficking in Human Souls

Throughout history, blame for the introduction of slavery in America has been squarely placed upon the slave traders who ravaged African villages, the merchants who auctioned off human lives as if they were cattle, and the slave owners who ruthlessly beat their helpless victims. There is, however, above all these men, another person who has seemingly been able to avoid the blame due her. The origins of slavery -- often described as America's shame -- can actually be traced back to a woman, England's Queen Elizabeth I.

During the 1560s, Elizabeth was encouraging a Renaissance in her kingdom but also knew her country's economy could not finance her dreams for it. On direct orders from Her Majesty, John Hawkyns set sail from England. His destination: West Africa. His mission: to capture human lives.

After landing on the African coast, he used a series of brutal raids, violent beatings, and sheer terror to load his ships. As the first major slave trader, Hawkyns's actions and attitudes toward his cargo set the precedent for those who followed him for the next two hundred years. In The Queen's Slave Trader, historian Nick Hazlewood's haunting discoveries take you into the mind-set of the men who made their livelihoods trafficking human souls and at long last reveals the man who began it all -- and the woman behind him.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Queens-Slave-Trader-Trafficking/dp/0060935693
 
I like Russell Brand a lot purely as a bloke and I like how he thinks and I especially fucking love his spiritual stuff heh heh. Personally that's mostly all I might wish he would stick to cos all the guys on here who do stuff make some very good points tbf.
I love the way he articulates stuff and it's hard to be critical when in his own head he's actively doing stuff too and for the right reasons by turning out on demos etc etc.
But defo those who say there are huge negatives to it are right as well.
It's kind of hard tbf cos what do you say to a well intentioned guy .. you can only say stuff don't turn up .. don't get involved in individual campaigns or do but go in disguise .. just give em some money .. YOU are a bit of a liability in all honesty.
Well yeah maybe that's it .. that's life on life's terms like everything else .. how it is.

I actually dunno tbh
 
Last edited:
Diana9 said:
Have you yourself read this "ground breaking" book? If the review you posted is the premise of the book, i.e., "that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their liberty to enslave others'" then it is flat out wrong, as the facts I've already posted show. Can you refute those facts?

Instead you spout empty, condescending rhetoric:

To wit:

"the standard and now shop worn responders you chose to post doesn't actually deal with any of the issues raised in Horne's ground breaking book."

I've pointed out the very opposite. The shop worn American mythology is all about "The Founders," the great, important men we are taught to revere, centered mainly around two of the founders, Washington and Jefferson, both slave-owners, overlooking the majority of the other Founders who were not slave-owners (or who freed their slaves), and the vast majority of the Patriots who actually fought and died in a revolution inspired by Thomas Paine, whose vision of liberty, equality, and democracy was aborted by monarchists like Hamilton, Adams, et al, and who thus imposed a system built on the British model that still rules over the western world today.

"Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain." (Joel Barlow, American diplomat and poet).

"A free America without Thomas Paine is unthinkable." - Marquis de Lafayette

Those words still hold true today. There would not have been a revolution without Paine (it certainly wasn't to preserve slavery), and there is no free America today without the democracy Paine envisioned. There is no freedom in the British Common Wealth, nor in the U.S, nor in Hong Kong, or anywhere else in the world. We are all oppressed by the same system. If you would stop wasting your time in idle gossip about celebrity, you might begin to understand that the revolution Paine wrote about is the same as Brand talks about and perhaps then you'd be able to use this powerful technology for a greater purpose.

The revolution as Paine saw it and as Brand sees it is democracy -- government of, by, and for the people. That means people must be awakened to the possibilities for change and become radically engaged.



"We have the power to make the world over again" - Thomas Paine
Click to expand...

Lol
 
Diana9 said:

It's not about blaming, it's about understanding a common history and the mindsets we've inherited. It might help to understand the origin of those mindsets that still influence us today.

The Queen's Slave Trader: John Hawkyns, Elizabeth I, and the Trafficking in Human Souls

Throughout history, blame for the introduction of slavery in America has been squarely placed upon the slave traders who ravaged African villages, the merchants who auctioned off human lives as if they were cattle, and the slave owners who ruthlessly beat their helpless victims. There is, however, above all these men, another person who has seemingly been able to avoid the blame due her. The origins of slavery -- often described as America's shame -- can actually be traced back to a woman, England's Queen Elizabeth I.

During the 1560s, Elizabeth was encouraging a Renaissance in her kingdom but also knew her country's economy could not finance her dreams for it. On direct orders from Her Majesty, John Hawkyns set sail from England. His destination: West Africa. His mission: to capture human lives.

After landing on the African coast, he used a series of brutal raids, violent beatings, and sheer terror to load his ships. As the first major slave trader, Hawkyns's actions and attitudes toward his cargo set the precedent for those who followed him for the next two hundred years. In The Queen's Slave Trader, historian Nick Hazlewood's haunting discoveries take you into the mind-set of the men who made their livelihoods trafficking human souls and at long last reveals the man who began it all -- and the woman behind him.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Queens-Slave-Trader-Trafficking/dp/0060935693
Click to expand...

Do you understand history and historiography at all?
So an author writes a book that posits a viewpoint. That doesn't mean that what they've written is an accurate reflection - not because they're dishonest, but because history is broad - it means that it's a perspective. A perspective to be measured against other authors with other perspectives. Only by not "picking and choosing" perspectives that favour our own viewpoints are we likely to reach a synthesis of knowledge that might broadly reflect what actually happened.
The origins of the taking of slaves (for later sale) from the continent of Africa pre-date Elizabeth I, and the taking of slaves (by agents of European powers) from the West African coast pre-date her father. As I mentioned before, Britain, Spain, Portugal etc were all at it. When Hawkyns raided what's now coastal Ghana, Nigeria etc, there were already Portuguese forts in some places, used for massing slaves for export.
 
rorymac said:
I like Russell Brand a lot purely as a bloke and I like how he thinks and I especially fucking love his spiritual stuff heh heh. Personally that's mostly all I might wish he would stick to cos all the guys on here who do stuff make some very good points tbf.
I love the way he articulates stuff and it's hard to be critical when in his own head he's actively doing stuff too and for the right reasons by turning out on demos etc etc.
But defo those who say there are huge negatives to it are right as well.
It's kind of hard tbf cos what do you say to a well intentioned guy .. you can only say stuff don't turn up .. don't get involved in individual campaigns or do but go in disguise .. just give em some money .. YOU are a bit of a liability in all honesty.
Well yeah maybe that's it .. that's life on life's terms like everything else .. how it is.

I actually dunno tbh
Click to expand...

Thing is if Brand goes beyond "caring" and starts thinking "strategically" about how he can best support stuff it'd help.

But, no different from many non-celebrity activists it's too focused "oh my god I have to do something" rather than a more distanced look at forces involved and how to actually change stuff.

We see it on here regularly enough. Activism as hobby/ego/conscience salve. Sometimes doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff is counter-productive. Sometimes your battle lies away from the obvious one.
 
CNT36 said:
That'd be the triangle then.
Click to expand...

That was what initiated the triangular trade, yes. It didn't build into an established and licenced trade until the 1580s (at least from the perspective of it being more than an occasional money-maker), as I mentioned in my previous post to diana9. What Hawkyns did, with his letters patent from Liz One, was to engage in sanctioned privateering, something that had been going on since at least her dad's time.
 
Lo Siento. said:
Fuck sake, not sure which is more annoying, Brand or his centrist "voting's really important, yeah!" opponents.
Click to expand...

Brand is somewhat more coherent and less dishonest than the "voting is really important" mob. I mean, have they looked at what they're preaching? What benefit beyond exercising our franchise does voting actually bestow on us - I'd contend that it bestows nothing, and that the right to choose every few years which child of privilege will purport to represent us, but will actually follow a neoliberal line regardless, is no benefit at all. So those nice centrist types and their friends in the "vote Labour with no illusions" camp are, to me anyway, part of the problem, not part of any solution.
 
Yeah I'd take brand over Jones, penny, O'Hagan and the rest any day of the week. And isay that as someone who's never liked brand, even before he became an Icke loving darling of the trendy left, in fact ever since he began in his wreckless, dangerous abstinence is the only way drugs treatment crusade.

Definitely more genuine and, surprisingly given that he could probably buy and sell the other three, more in touch with normal people and our lives.
 
Yeah, I'd go along with pretty much every critical point on him that's been written here (I've written a few of them). The key thing is that it's liberalism dressed as (some kind of) revolution and that it's not all that good having a sleb at the heart of your politics (+ his Ickeistry). Same time I do agree with a few of the points on this page - certainly that he's better than Laurie Penny et al, that he's genuine and that there's nothing inherently wrong with 'generally' good ideas being broadcast on the tellybox. Suspect he will have brought a few people to radical politics, though whether he does that in a way that keeps them there is a bit less likely. But yeah, like rorymac says, it's complicated.
 
Democracy Now have just published a transcript of the interview Amy Goodman did with him:

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/2/russell_brand_on_revolution_fighting_inequality

Apart from his usual clowning about, he says a number of things which should find an echo in some people here:
AMY GOODMAN: Might you run for mayor of London?
RUSSELL BRAND: I don’t think I would really want to be part of that political system. What I’m interested in is ordinary people being engaged, whether it’s for union activity in their workplaces, new coalitions or people that are taking control of the places that they live, Amy.
Click to expand...
AMY GOODMAN: Would you consider running as a member of Parliament? Would you consider running?
RUSSELL BRAND: No, I want to help the ordinary people of America and Britain dismantle their corrupt political structures and replace them with directly responsible, directly democratic organizations. I don’t want to help them lot continue to tyrannize people.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think you could ever do that within the system, or do you think it’s much more effective to be outside?
RUSSELL BRAND: Well, I would take the advice of people that know a lot more than me—Lawrence Lessig and Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky. Most of those people say that change within the system is prevented, impossible, futile, that we need significant systemic change.
Click to expand...
A more balanced attitude to him seems to be emerging, with the main objections now being his celebrity status and his New Age spirituality.
 
Maitlis bottled it and failed to tell him to his face what Brand called him...



e2a: just noticed this has already been 'done' over in Labour/Scum thread.
 
Diana9 said:

It's not about blaming, it's about understanding a common history and the mindsets we've inherited. It might help to understand the origin of those mindsets that still influence us today.

The Queen's Slave Trader: John Hawkyns, Elizabeth I, and the Trafficking in Human Souls

Throughout history, blame for the introduction of slavery in America has been squarely placed upon the slave traders who ravaged African villages, the merchants who auctioned off human lives as if they were cattle, and the slave owners who ruthlessly beat their helpless victims. There is, however, above all these men, another person who has seemingly been able to avoid the blame due her. The origins of slavery -- often described as America's shame -- can actually be traced back to a woman, England's Queen Elizabeth I.

During the 1560s, Elizabeth was encouraging a Renaissance in her kingdom but also knew her country's economy could not finance her dreams for it. On direct orders from Her Majesty, John Hawkyns set sail from England. His destination: West Africa. His mission: to capture human lives.

After landing on the African coast, he used a series of brutal raids, violent beatings, and sheer terror to load his ships. As the first major slave trader, Hawkyns's actions and attitudes toward his cargo set the precedent for those who followed him for the next two hundred years. In The Queen's Slave Trader, historian Nick Hazlewood's haunting discoveries take you into the mind-set of the men who made their livelihoods trafficking human souls and at long last reveals the man who began it all -- and the woman behind him.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Queens-Slave-Trader-Trafficking/dp/0060935693
Click to expand...
you're not fussed, then, about slavery being e.g. brazil's shame. or saudi arabia's shame. incidentally, i don't think i'd describe as a historian someone who describes himself as a writer and journalist.
 
DotCommunist said:
indicator of how out of date the cultural references are in those circles really. Elton drank the blairite koool aid long time ago
Click to expand...

When Elton started working with Lloyd Webber I started to have the very slightest suspicion that he may not be very left wing after all.
 
Pickman's model said:
and his fascist mates.
Click to expand...
This is typical of the unreasoning and prejudiced criticism that I thought was dying out here. Presumably this is a reference to Laurence Easeman who managed to hoodwick the politically naive Brand for a short while. His views are open to criticism but not for being a fascist or a fascist sympathiser. This is such an outlandish allegation as to be self-defeating. Anyway, what about his anarchist. Green and direct actionist mates?
 
Jean-Luc said:
This is typical of the unreasoning and prejudiced criticism that I thought was dying out here. Presumably this is a reference to Laurence Easeman who managed to hoodwick the politically naive Brand for a short while. His views are open to criticism but not for being a fascist or a fascist sympathiser. This is such an outlandish allegation as to be self-defeating. Anyway, what about his anarchist. Green and direct actionist mates?
Click to expand...
for a moment i thought your post satire in the tradition of Spanky Longhorn. then i realised you hate brand more than anyone else here.
 
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