Urban v's the Commentariat

[SpineyNorman]

I know, they were saying that it was just white people trying to compare what religious discrimination they have experienced to the experience of people of colour and as white people they don't experience the oppression they do therefore its racist.

I didn't comment because I had work to do but they are in a pathetic pissing contest to prove who is the most intersectional and it is pathetic and actually what they were saying was very insulting.

Do these people genuinely think antisemitism is religious persecution with no racial element to it whatsoever? I can't understand how anyone who claims to take the subject seriously could possibly think that.

 

[frogwoman]

I know, they were saying that it was just white people trying to compare what religious discrimination they have experienced to the experience of people of colour and as white people they don't experience the oppression they do therefore its racist.

I didn't comment because I had work to do but they are in a pathetic pissing contest to prove who is the most intersectional and it is pathetic and actually what they were saying was very insulting.

And actually I really don't like saying that everything is racist because I don't like that way of arguing I think that if an argument is wrong you can say it is without necessarily finding any racism but in this case they don't fucking realize how privileged they are and they are using it to shut people up and rather than saying that it is 'the voice of' [insert ethnic group here] that's important the way I have seen them treat people of any ethnicity who disagree with them their voice is only important if they agree, and they think they have got over all their privilege but they are using these views to shut people up and haven't really challenged their own racism etc at all.

 

[frogwoman]

Do these people genuinely think antisemitism is religious persecution with no racial element to it whatsoever? I can't understand how anyone who claims to take the subject seriously could possibly think that.

That is what they were saying and that it was racist for a white man to say that it is because there are Jewish people of different ethnicities

 

[SpineyNorman]

That is what they were saying and that it was racist for a white man to say that it is because there are Jewish people of different ethnicities

For fuck's sake. Hitler obviously wasn't a proper antisemite then.

 

[J Ed]

My favourite is when they know that they have fucked up (whether on their own terms or in reality) and rather than actually acknowledging that they fucked up and feeling embarrassed they use it as a way to prove how moral they are through ritualistically acknowledging that their own failings. It's all a bit Opus Dei.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

The logic is as follows:

1) There is a reasonable argument that Jewish people in Britain in 2014 are not a systematically racially oppressed group.

2) Racism is not simply racial prejudice but such prejudice in a context of systemic oppression.

3) Members of groups who are not subject to racism (by that definition) who claim to suffer it are thereby diminishing the real racism etc etc.

Each of those claims is contestable, but no stage of the argument is plainly irrational in its own terms. What it does tend to reveal is that these arguments have been picked up from present day America and are being treated as geographically and temporally universal. So those who are "white" as understood in the US in 2014 cannot be racially oppressed. There is actually an interesting discussion to be had about how / when British Jews and Irish immigrants ceased to be racially oppressed in a systemic way, or about how anti-traveller or anti Eastern European prejudices operate at the moment. But not with these people.

 

[frogwoman]

Nigel Irritable I never see them mention travellers or Polish people, I think they think Polish immigrants also benefit from 'white privilege'

I think you are right about Jewish people in the UK but I would say that it doesn't happen on a wide scale (although in my own experience its a lot more common than people think, something like 4 out of 10 Jewish people have experienced some form of it the last year etc) but in terms of access to employment etc you are probably right.

I think their argument is that its not racism because you can't tell just by looking at someone?

They would probably say the same thing about Polish people, apparently EVERYONE that is white benefits from 'white privilege'

 

[DotCommunist]

My favourite is when they know that they have fucked up (whether on their own terms or in reality) and rather than actually acknowledging that they fucked up and feeling embarrassed they use it as a way to prove how moral they are through ritualistically acknowledging that their own failings. It's all a bit Opus Dei.

weather underground/cmrd bala

 

[SpineyNorman]

My favourite is when they know that they have fucked up (whether on their own terms or in reality) and rather than actually acknowledging that they fucked up and feeling embarrassed they use it as a way to prove how moral they are through ritualistically acknowledging that their own failings. It's all a bit Opus Dei.

I [insert bad thing here in 1984/show trial style confession style]. I am very sorry, that isn't OK.

(That is not/isn't OK is another of their catch phrases I've noticed - I think it's their way of saying 'I acted the cunt, sorry')

 

[frogwoman]

I [insert bad thing here in 1984/show trial style confession style]. I am very sorry, that isn't OK.

(That is not/isn't OK is another of their catch phrases I've noticed - I think it's their way of saying 'I acted the cunt, sorry')

That's not real solidarity folks

 

[tim]

I'm at Victoria now getting a burger can't see any homeless people to share it with???

You probably have an intimidating aura of privilege. Laura on the other hand indeed on both hands has the stigmata that have been brought on by the Christlike persecution she has suffered.The patronisable poor know a real saint when they see one.

 

[DotCommunist]

its either the aura of privilege, or hep C.

 

[DotCommunist]

That's not real solidarity folks

poor allyship

 

[frogwoman]

poor allyship

I hate all those cringey made up terms !!!

Speak like humans ffs!

 

[co-op]

What it does tend to reveal is that these arguments have been picked up from present day America and are being treated as geographically and temporally universal.

This is the thing that often strikes me, it's unconsciously incredibly arrogant and - ironically - ideologically imperialist. I think I have already mentioned on here something that I heard personally way back in the 90s when a man at a meeting in Brixton (but who was from a small, more-or-less all-white town up north) starting going on about "African-Americans" much to everyone's confusion, until it became clear he was trying to use the right word for black people in Britain, and was just using the most up-to-date word he'd heard.

 

[J Ed]

I hate all those cringey made up terms !!!

Speak like humans ffs!

This is just typical gaslighting of PoCs, violating the safe space of allies calling out the MRA Left through their own lived experience of intersectional minority spaces so embrace the progressive stack and step back.

 

[frogwoman]

This is just typical gaslighting of PoCs, violating the safe space of allies calling out the MRA Left through their own lived experience of intersectional minority spaces so embrace the progressive stack and step back.

I don't even understand that

 

[weepiper]

I'm on the verge of deleting the lot of them because they're just fucking me off so much with their bullshit but they're the ones organizing the demos and everything else round here.

sack em off frogs. Organise stuff yourself. You don't need these oppression-vampires.

 

[tbtommyb]

Ireland's main anarchist group, the WSM, or at least what's left of them, dive further into the new identity politics package. First it was intersectionality, now it's privilege theory. Here one of their main dudes produces a facile blogpost defending the concept. It's been doing the rounds of their members on Facebook, with only outsiders disagreeing (in so far as I've seen at least).

http://selfcertified.wordpress.com/...wledging-privilege-doesnt-make-you-the-enemy/

How is this stuff progressing inside AFED or SolFed, if at all?

So what actually do you not like about this article?

 

[DotCommunist]

This is just typical gaslighting of PoCs, violating the safe space of allies calling out the MRA Left through their own lived experience of intersectional minority spaces so embrace the progressive stack and step back.

for some reason whenever I think of the progressive stack I am siderailed by thinking about Giant Haystacks, the big wrestler from the dark pre-WWF era of british wrestling

 

[rekil]

Progressive Giant Haystacks would be an interesting wrasslin persona.

 

[DotCommunist]

His entrance music would be Braggs 'sexuality'

 

[J Ed]

He wouldn't fight anyone, he would just get all his allies on twitter to tweet the rival wrestlers' twitter accounts and guilt them out of the ring

 

[frogwoman]

sack em off frogs. Organise stuff yourself. You don't need these oppression-vampires.

A lot of them seem to think that criticism of them is the same thing as racism.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

So what actually do you not like about this article?

There is no substance to it beyond the elision of "privileged", a colloquial way of saying "better off than" and privilege theory, a set of ideas that purports to explain how multiple forms of oppression operate and reproduce themselves.

The idea that some working class people experience various forms of oppression that others do not is a statement of the bleeding obvious and not something anyone argues against. Understanding that in no way implies accepting the sometimes implied, sometimes explicit theoretical explanations for the existence and functioning of or methods of dealing with those oppressions which form privilege theory. That has to be argued out not simply stated. The article doesn't do so, whether because the distinction has been missed or as a rhetorical device.

 

[tbtommyb]

There is no substance to it beyond the elision of "privileged", a colloquial way of saying "better off than" and privilege theory, a set of ideas that purports to explain how multiple forms of oppression operate and reproduce themselves.

The idea that some working class people experience various forms of oppression that others do not is a statement of the bleeding obvious and not something anyone argues against. Understanding that in no way implies accepting the sometimes implied, sometimes explicit theoretical explanations for the existence and functioning of or methods of dealing with those oppressions which form privilege theory. That has to be argued out not simply stated. The article doesn't do so, whether because the distinction has been missed or as a rhetorical device.

So what is wrong with privilege theory?

I ask because I have read through the threads on intersectionality etc and I have seen plenty of dismissive comments but not really any good explanation of why it's problematic.

As far as I can tell all it purports to say is that if we, for example, had common ownership and no class inequality, we would still need to guard against other forms of discrimination manifesting themselves.

 

[frogwoman]

So what is wrong with privilege theory?

I ask because I have read through the threads on intersectionality etc and I have seen plenty of dismissive comments but not really any good explanation of why it's problematic.

As far as I can tell all it purports to say is that if we, for example, had common ownership and no class inequality, we would still need to guard against other forms of discrimination manifesting themselves.

That's not all it says tho is it? It explicitly relegates class, not being able to pay bills etc, to an 'identity'

 

[BigTom]

Also has the tendency to fall into a similar trap to utilitarianism of thinking you can measure oppression and weigh off one person's oppression against another, often it seems to decide who is right in an argument.
Being connected to liberalism of course all oppression/identities are equal and it's just how many you can claim.

 

[rekil]

has la crabapple displayed any of her own daubs?

How appropriate that Occupy's greatest artist does not know the difference between a squid and an octopus.

 

[andysays]

How appropriate that Occupy's greatest artist does not know the difference between a squid and an octopus.

View attachment 52294

Depections of octopuses representing bankers, financiers etc are often seen as anti-semitic.

I suspect MC drew the picture with that subconciously in mind (or maybe the image had been suggested by some of her Occupy chums...), then realised what she'd done and wrote squid instead because she couldn't be bothered to re-draw with a proper squid (and TBF, it is a jolly good pic of an octopus, especially the way it's raising its eyebrows in a threatening manner).