frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
How is your question relevant to the topic?
Going on about ruling elites brainwashing the masses and how we need a great leader to fight the cause of the common man
How is your question relevant to the topic?
Another reason why I'm warming to Russell Brand. I'm assuming if money bags Brand showed some empathy with those struggling by wearing a poppy or Pudsey bear t-shirt he wouldn't be a hypocrite in Morgan's eyes.The TV tantrum that shows why 'revolutionary' Russell Brand is really just a revolting hypocrite
By Piers Morgan for MailOnline
My voice gets heard fine in the projects and activities I'm involved in in my local community, along with the other people who are involved.
Mailwatch is a good forum for highlighting endless tabloid cantThe tone of the Mail article and comments is appalling. Its like saying "How DARE you donate to cancer research when you haven't even got cancer!"
I might do a bit of trolling there...
I don't agree with RB all the time, but he's clearly getting up a lot of noses, which is no bad thing.
Some leftists complaint about him strike me as weird. He's managed to get a lot of folk, not normally that interested in politics, thinking about about fairly left wing stuff, far more than so many others ever managed to via festishised rhetoric, shouty slogans and dull meetings.
It's like "how dare he talk about E15 mums or Occupy on Newsnight. how dare he do a daily show ripping the piss out of reactionaries. He's not as perfect as ME It should be ME doing that. I am the MOST LEFTYIST OF THEM ALL."
And obviously, no one with any money should be left wing. Like engles, kropotkin, Benn etc. The rich are politically obliged to be right wing, and we have right wing media to back us up on that.
You know who's not a hypocrite, doesn't blur any anti establishment message or run any risk of mishandling a campaign like New Era? Katie Hopkins. Lets have more people like her. Fan fucking tastic. If we can't have impure people arguing a case like ours, lets just have the opposite case put the whole time.
It's as if some people would rather he was just a vapid celeb, giving interviews to OK about what clothes he likes or his love life,while the real political analysis is left to the grown ups who have strangely achieved next to no traction over the last couple of generations.
Yes, alot of what he says is obvious to many of us, rather empty in some ways and ego fuelled, but he's sincere enough and would admit all the above. A lot of the critique seems rather churlish.
Is he not just doing it because he loves to be seen, to be fashionable, to be feted? Why does he live in luxury when he can quite easily give all his absurd wealth to good causes?
It seems like bollocks.
The system which gives everything to the few and nothing to the majority is the enemy of equality and of what is in the interests of the majority and fairness. All Brand has shown is that he has a big mouth, he hasn't sacrificed ANYTHING AT ALL.
In fact I think he is probably crackers. And he is not exactly a good example to the young. BTW I don't mean his drug problem but the whole Sachsgate shit.
Socialism is or should be very simple. Shelter the vulnerable and those in danger. Protect those who would be exploited by the extortioner. Support a politics which establishes principles of truth, good judgement and always persistent and hasty for justice.
I don't want to go on too much but while I am here: we are run by a bunch of ridiculous inadequates in suits who LIE to us.
When I see the common man try to take down someone who speaks on behalf of the common man, all I can think is that centuries of indoctrination by the ruling elite still holds people mentally enslaved in the 21st century.
Mind boggling.
"But before we change the world, we need to change the way we think." - Russell Brand, "We No Longer Have the Luxury of Tradition," The New Statesman
Not sure if I'm this common man you speak of, I'm no celeb though, so I guess so.
I don't want or need someone to speak on behalf of me.
I never asked brand to speak on behalf of me.
Afaik brand doesn't say he speaks on my behalf but he must understand how the media works and whatever he says about not being leader/spokesperson that is how he'll be presented.
His voice - to some extent - takes away from my voice.
I want my voice to be heard, I want it to be my voice, and if practicality dictates I be represented, I want a direct part in choosing who represents me.
Does that help you understand?
Raoul Vaneigem said:"The ideological spectacle keeps up with the times by bringing out harmless plastic antagonisms; are you for or against Brigitte Bardot, the Beatles, mini-cars, hippies, nationalization, spaghetti, old people, the TUC, mini-skirts, pop art, thermonuclear war, hitch-hiking? There is no one who is not accosted at every moment of the day by posters, news flashes, stereotypes, summoned to take sides over each of the prefabricated trifles that conscientiously stop up all the sources of everyday creativity."
for me, that is the common ground we all share, being active within our local communities, and that is what russell brand is advocating. you are already in that place, doing those things with other people. many of us aren't, what little i do, i do in almost isolation. very few hear my voice or are affected by my deeds. but i am not a leader, i'm not a good spokesperson. yet they are roles i have found myself in, albeit in a small way. i'm sure in time i will find a cause where i can be of use.
wanted to write more but have stuff to do.
I think last nights exchanges demonstrate the poison that allowing or fostering celeb-culture in our organising and our networks will bring with it. A leader with infatuated followers protecting him (and it will be a him) by shutting down criticism, by hunting down dissidents, by insisting that difference of opinion is malevolent, psychopathic or who knows...put there by our opponents. And then the leader gets bored and the followers move onto the next messiah leaving a hollowed out fractured and internally destroyed organisation/campaign.
Celeb-COINTELPRO.
When any strong personality leaves a group, it leaves a void, whether they are a sleb or not. I guess the important difference though is those with an invested interest, those would will be directly affected by being made homeless, or further impoverished can't retreat when they don't want to do it anymore.I think last nights exchanges demonstrate the poison that allowing or fostering celeb-culture in our organising and our networks will bring with it. A leader with infatuated followers protecting him (and it will be a him) by shutting down criticism, by hunting down dissidents, by insisting that difference of opinion is malevolent, psychopathic or who knows...put there by our opponents. And then the leader gets bored and the followers move onto the next messiah leaving a hollowed out fractured and internally destroyed organisation/campaign.
Celeb-COINTELPRO.
So you want your voice to be heard. How do you propose going about it? I hate to shatter your illusions, but the common man doesn't have a voice, unless he can organize people en mass, and even then, millions of people marched to protest the Iraq war, nobody listened.
The reality is, the Sun speaks for you, the Daily Mail speaks for you. They do the bidding of the power elite to distract people with nonsense, like how much Russell Brand pays to rent his apartment. They're just trying to stir up envy, and some people unfortunately fall for it because they don't even know themselves enough to know they are envious of celebrities and wealth. "Yeah, who does Russell Brand think he is to speak for me! I can bloody well speak for myself!" And bam, they've got you just where they want you: effectively silenced. Basically it comes down to a hatchet job against anyone who deigns to speak for the public good and people need to learn to see through that and not be duped into working against each other.
If you don't need Russell Brand to speak for you, fine, but why begrudge him for lending his celebrity to the people of East London who need his voice to amplify their own? Would anyone hear their plight if it wasn't for him? Hardly.
Let's not be naive and face reality. Having a celebrity who does have a voice as an ally can help give the concerns of common people a larger hearing in the world. Unless you just don't care about their concerns. In that case, you really don't have anything to say, do you.
Shush prole. Go back to your whispering room.
The 'common people,' lol.
Does anyone really think he is "the messiah"?
I can't say I've read anything he's written but is he really that important? So much so that he should remain quiet at the request of `activists`?
He was into all the protest whatsit back in the day.
I think maybe we should email Chomsky so he can decide for us
When any strong personality leaves a group, it leaves a void, whether they are a sleb or not. I guess the important difference though is those with an invested interest, those would will be directly affected by being made homeless, or further impoverished can't retreat when they don't want to do it anymore.
We're backing this up with a sensational double page spread on this.MeMeMeMe
We've already got an EXCLUSIVE report on Laurie's hailing of siegheiling Weev's release from chokey.
I can see how if you are isolated/feel isolated, seeing brand talking this stuff up is great because you feel less isolated, but the problem I see with him talking about community based bottom up organising, is that it is in the nature of being a media-driven celeb to create something that is top-down great individual organising, you'd need someone with almost no ego to not have them/their image taken up as the image/person of the campaign, detracting from bottom up organising, and that's definitely not brand - or any other celeb really, you must need a proper ego to get yourself into that kind of place.
Is he not just doing it because he loves to be seen, to be fashionable, to be feted? Why does he live in luxury when he can quite easily give all his absurd wealth to good causes?
It seems like bollocks.
The system which gives everything to the few and nothing to the majority is the enemy of equality and of what is in the interests of the majority and fairness. All Brand has shown is that he has a big mouth, he hasn't sacrificed ANYTHING AT ALL.
In fact I think he is probably crackers. And he is not exactly a good example to the young. BTW I don't mean his drug problem but the whole Sachsgate shit.
Socialism is or should be very simple. Shelter the vulnerable and those in danger. Protect those who would be exploited by the extortioner. Support a politics which establishes principles of truth, good judgement and always persistent and hasty for justice.
I don't want to go on too much but while I am here: we are run by a bunch of ridiculous inadequates in suits who LIE to us.
It's always interesting to see how widely you miss the mark. Amusing, too.
That's pretty much the crux of it. Greebo and I do various local stuff because if we don't, we have no-one to blame but ourselves, and helping our community (either local or on-line) achieves something solid. We don't have the "luxury" of being able to retreat from activism, because everyone is important in a community, and everything we do for each other is important. Having celebrity support would bring transient attention to local causes, but then surely the drop-off of attention post-celebrity is all the steeper? I'm not saying celebs shouldn't become involved, I'm saying they should subordinate their status to the community, not act to speak FOR that community. Butchers made a very good point yesterday when he mentioned that (probably unintentionally) Brand had partially disempowered the women from E15.
When I see the common man try to take down someone who speaks on behalf of the common man, all I can think is that centuries of indoctrination by the ruling elite still holds people mentally enslaved in the 21st century.
Mind boggling.
"But before we change the world, we need to change the way we think." - Russell Brand, "We No Longer Have the Luxury of Tradition," The New Statesman
Why is this a bad thing?