Urban v's the Commentariat

[ViolentPanda]

Didn't she also win the George Orwell prize for counter revolutionary literature?, she will be handing lists of intersectionalists to M15 before the decade is out.

Given the narrow limits of LP's convictions, and her proven lack of courage in pursuing those convictions (most of us remember the "I'm not leaving my room to check on the Occupy Wall Street protests, in case I get hit by a copper" tweet), I wouldn't put it past her, and sooner rather than later.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Stalin and Ralph Steadman. Hopefully in some kind of Fear & Loathing type set up about the Ukraine?

Given how much Uncle Joe hated his birthplace, more likely "Fear and Loathing in the Caucasus".

 

[ViolentPanda]

Intersectionalists saying describing antisemitism as racism is racist because it is white people trying to say that the religious discrimination they experience is the same as what people of colour experience. And white people shouldn't say they experience racism.

The person who said this is a middle class white women in her 50s

Jews in the west were mostly not really considered "white" until much the same time as the Irish were. They certainly (as with the Irish) didn't get to exercise "white privilege".
I think that your interlocutor may be either historically-ignorant or (more likely) a complete and utter fuckwit.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I've often thought an intersectional analysis of the Rwandan genocide would be err... interesting.

As well as revealing.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Anyone who genuinely thinks antisemitism isn't a form of racism is an historical illiterate and fuckwit who shouldn't be taken seriously by anyone.

Except perhaps a psychotherapist.

 

[ViolentPanda]

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.

Their lives would have to have pretty much avoided "intersecting" with anyone from a "white" minority to be this ignorant. Most of us, within living memory, can recall Irish immigrant communities being treated as poorly as BME communities, with much of that based on their Catholicism.
Perhaps these people are middle-class mono-cultural types whose "experience" of others doesn't extend very far, ignorant as the day is long?

 

[rekil]

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).

She's at least part jewish afaik. She nicked it off her rolling stone chum Matt Taibbi, a prep school, private liberal arts college (Bard College - $60k a year!) dude. On top of everything else, it's a stupid trope because vampire squids are harmless 1 foot long deep sea things that live off prawns.

 

[cesare]

Oppressed prawns

 

[ViolentPanda]

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.

In the way privilege theory is used by the majority of its' "commentariat" proponents, it addresses complex socio-cultural situations and developments with what are effectively simplistic binary oppositions - black=oppressed, white=privileged, and so forth. There's little nuance or acceptance that nothing is quite as simple as binary oppositions lead you (them) to believe.

It's really, in this incarnation, not about guarding against discrimination (many people, regardless of ethnicity, skin colour etc do that anyway, as part of how they act within society), it's more about playing categorisation games, and "allying" yourself to people you perceive to be non-privileged. If it were purely about theory, and how theory could inform a wider social understanding of the gradiated asymmetry of privilege, I'd be all for it. Unfortunately, it isn't currently, it's about "privilege theory" as a tool used by an elite to neutralise arguments that they don't interpellate/identify with, hence the virtual absence of class arguments.

 

[ViolentPanda]

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.

Possibly without the cilice, though.

 

[Idris2002]

Oppressed prawns

 

[rekil]

Oppressed prawns

I have a crap prawn based anecdote. To cut a shit story short, an Irish patrol on UN duty in the Lebanon is being intimidated by an IDF helicopter which is shooting both sides of the road, so one of the troops stands up, sticks his thumbs in his straps and goes "at the end of the day, we're all just prawns".

.

 

[Limerick Red]

I have a crap prawn based anecdote. To cut a shit story short, an Irish patrol on UN duty in the Lebanon is being intimidated by an IDF helicopter which is shooting both sides of the road, so one of the troops stands up, sticks his thumbs in his straps and goes "at the end of the day, we're all just prawns".

.

When me missus was been laid off on a community project in Limerick herself and the other women were meeting the management over their redundancies and one of the infuriated women shouted at the management , " your offering us mittens , how are we supposed to get by on that, it's just bloody mittens"
Me missus although equally angry, had to cover her mouth and try not to burst her hole laughin

 

[captainmission]

I think i've found a new favourite intersectionalist

DarkMatter ‏@DarkMatterRage Apr 13
also we can't forget as @queerthunder reminds us that the 'closet' metaphor is about anti-blackness and the colonial anxiety of the unknown

Malcolm Shanks ‏@queerthunder Apr 14
It's able-ist because supposedly sight=citizenship. It's anti-black bc black=unknown and both are bad. @Traveller_23 @DarkMatterRage

e2a Malcolm Shanks graduate of woodberry forest boarding school (a steal at $48,500 a year) and brown university.

 

[chilango]

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.

I wouldn't go on demos organised by people like this.

 

[frogwoman]

I wouldn't go on demos organised by people like this.

I know, I haven't been, not in ages.

 

[frogwoman]

I wouldn't go on demos organised by people like this.

Dunno what the alternative is, sit around ranting on here though. which is what I usually do.

I want to get back into political stuff I really do but I don't feel able to.

 

[butchersapron]

Anything - demos or otherwise - those people organised would simply be demonstrations (in both senses) of affective self-valorisation. The wankers.

They'd get eaten alive in the real world.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Dunno what the alternative is, sit around ranting on here though. which is what I usually do.

I want to get back into political stuff I really do but I don't feel able to.

Didn't you used to be in an SP branch? There must be some non-fruitloops doing something locally?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I have no words
http://seymourvscyrus.tumblr.com

 

[frogwoman]

Didn't you used to be in an SP branch? There must be some non-fruitloops doing something locally?

There are, the SP is pretty much non existent where I am (branch meetings are an hour from here by bus)

There must be other people though.

 

[rekil]

e2a Malcolm Shanks graduate of woodberry forest boarding school (a steal at $48,500 a year) and brown university.

I fucking love looking up these places. Have a look at their promo vid. See how they make sure the only 2 or 3 black lads in the school are in every shot.

 

[J Ed]

I wonder if they teach ethical personal brand building at Woodberry Forest Boarding School like they do at Laurie Penny's private school.

 

[Delroy Booth]

I wonder if they teach ethical personal brand building at Woodberry Forest Boarding School like they do at Laurie Penny's private school.

Those private American boarding schools are modelled on the UK system except are probably better equipped.

My school didn't look like that. My university didn't either....

 

[butchersapron]

Holy frig - look at the notable alumni of that school - apart from the Porky's bloke, fucking hell. That's some serious firepower.

 

[frogwoman]

Coming out of the closet is anti black wtf?

 

[Delroy Booth]

Holy frig - look at the notable alumni of that school - apart from the Porky's bloke, fucking hell. That's some serious firepower.

Y'see is it any wonder people end forming complicated conspiracy-theories about skull and bones or bilderberg when they're confronted by a ruling class as rigid and clear as that list there! How exclusive it is, how such a small number of people can exert such a wide influence, how few people fill so many top jobs, the brazenness of it too. I've always tried to be skeptical of things like C Wright Mills power elite (with all it's hints of "400 families running everything") because it's a bit conspiracist but when you see a list like that it's tempting.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I woder what his parents think about him wasting that expensive education on being a twitter pinko and activist type? Like Lorelai Gilmore with confused politics instead of pregnancy.

 

[Dillinger4]

I woder what his parents think about him wasting that expensive education on being a twitter pinko and activist type? Like Lorelai Gilmore with confused politics instead of pregnancy.

the ruling class needs to have some of its own infiltrated within the working class, to provide guidance and leadership. It is what they were trained for.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

[side issue: the class politics of Gilmore Girls are interesting and unusually well developed, but they centrally deal with the interaction between the petit bourgeoisie and the haute bourgeoisie. The working class is not central at all]