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What magazine/paper/periodical most shaped your political thinking?

chilango

chilango

Hypothetical Wanker
Like the book thread, but after butchersapron mentioned Class War and LynnDoyleCooper nentioned Aufheben and given how so many groups used a paper or whatever as their “outreach” tool, be interesting to see which ones hit home...

For me (roughly chronologically):

Class War
Maximumrocknroll
Red Action
Do or Die
Earth First! Journal
Aufheben
Subversion
Echanges et Mouvement
Processed World
 
Yeah, I think Green Anarchist had a middle few years of having some OK stuff in, and they stood out to me in a sea of hippie nonsense in the eco-activist scene. But yes, retrospectively they're pretty dire, but they were still influential to me at a certain point. Green Anarchy (US and I think there was a UK one for a bit too?) was after my time in that sphere I guess.
 
LynnDoyleCooper said:
Yeah, I think Green Anarchist had a middle few years of having some OK stuff in, and they stood out to me in a sea of hippie nonsense in the eco-activist scene. But yes, retrospectively they're pretty dire, but they were still influential to me at a certain point. Green Anarchy (US and I think there was a UK one for a bit too?) was after my time in that sphere I guess.
Click to expand...

Yeah, briefly Green Anarchist appealed for its “spikey” alignment when The fluffies threatened to swamp the movement (geddit?). We had a bit of a falling out with GA though (can’t remember what over) that pretty swiftly ended that appeal.

Did you ever see Terra-ist? That came out the GA stable championing the ELF etc. :D Nanechecked in the early eco-terror scares.

Anarchy A Journal of Desire Armed was properly shit though. Really dodgy with the worst of the US scene (Bey, Bob Black and all the that NAMBLA shit getting championed iirc). But you could buy it in Borders and Barnes & Noble so it was easy to get hold of... a bit like Living Marxism here.

A couple of other well iffy mags I liked were Arm The Spirit, a Canadian cheerleader for armed struggle and The Clash a pro-Raf thing coming out the German squatting scene. Rotten politics but exciting to me at the time. :facepalm:
 
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Trade magazines of care professions (Pulse, Conmunity Care etc).

Instructive for mental health politics as:

A) useful for learning about nhs, social care, relevant legal/policy frameworks etc. As such useful for advocating from a more informed position

B) revealing as to how much our ‘betters’ hate us.
 
For me the process of gathering new info of real world stuff going on and being introduced to contemporary thinking saw me calling people and getting called horrible things on the internet, in between books. Much more so for the kids of today.
 
I'll bite...
  • Beano - general anti-authoritarian themes, especially from Leo Baxendale's characters, though often Davey Law's Dennis was cooler
  • Crisis - ‘3WW’ and its chronologies pointed me in the direction of all sorts of groups, books, ideas and people
  • Warrior - I came to it in the late 1980s, but both ‘Marvel Man’ and ‘V For Vendetta’ leaped out and made challenging the status quo seem not just possible but essential
  • Breaking Free - okay, so not a periodical, but fun stuff, and in the back there were addresses for a bunch of anarcho/lefty groups, which is how I got into...
  • Class War - I may have come to it after its 80s heyday, but even in the early 90s it was still exciting and provocative and funny and I ended up doing bulk orders and selling it round school
  • Green Anarchist - non-whiney environmentalism (more the diaries of than the interminably long articles)
  • Arnie - I must admit the big draw was Arnie's mum
  • Living Marxism - I was influenced not so much by the politics of the actual magazine or the RCP, but by interacting with the group's members up close; it taught me a lot about arseholes (and the power of the relentless argument)
  • Eat Shit - made Bristol sound awesome and politically interesting
  • Weekly Worker - the Heat of lefty gossip
  • Do Or Die - enjoyed the intersection of anti-capitalism and green stuff; less tedious than the ACF, less fruitcake than GA.
  • Culture Vulture - I was lucky enough to be picking Marc's brains at just the time he was first brewing up his idea of CV and its melding together of sometimes complex anti-capitalist critiques with often very simple visuals, and was hooked once the zine and its off-shoot ‘little books’ came out
  • Squall - conscious raver-traveller mash-up of SchNEWSy titbits and in-depth long-form investigations which mostly (MOSTLY!) stayed the sane side of conspiracy
  • Lobster - did somebody mention ‘conspiracy’? I meant parapolitics! I first heard about Lobster in Crisis, but only started reading it regularly in the solo Ramsay years, though in more recent times I've dug out plenty of the ones co-edited by Dorril.
  • Year Zero - Adam Porter's valiant attempt at a tabloid newspaper (think Class War for the RTS generation) which reflected a serious but not po-faced or sectarian interest in the politics of resistance to globalised capital and pervasive liberal democracy; in the end it was filled a little too much with Pilger and Chomsky and Klein, and began to be undercut by the opportunities the web provided to journalists and activists working at the margins, but still some had some great reportage
  • Covert Action Quarterly - along with lots from South End Press a preferred rabbit hole full of spooks and School of the Americas and Operation Condor and Plan Colombia and COINTELPRO and the rest
  • CounterPunch - Cockburn and St Clair's The Week-inspired muckraker was a welcome regular treat through the letter box
  • The Bristolian - proudly pro-working class and cheerfully lumpen, a great local scandal sheet that shits on municipal politicos of all hues, and despite the angry denials of those targeted (mainly for incompetence, crookedness or being venal, snatching, greedy bastards) has essentially never published a story it couldn't stand up, thanks to a solid network of sources throughout the city; dozens of its investigations and stories have been stolen wholesale (and without attribution) by the ‘proper’ media, too
 
Early years was the Beano and 2000AD and then:

mucilage #2_0001c.jpg

This was the big one for me. I found it in a local independent bookshop. It was produced by a bunch of punks who lived in my town who had got their own printing press.

The layout was mad. It had lots of swearing in it. There were cartoons about casuals throwing up as well as a report from the Class War Bash The Rich march. There was a thoughtful Crass interview and stuff on local bands. Might be the best 30p I ever spent.

I bought things like Spectacular Times and Albert Meltzer's Anarchism: Arguments For And Against from the local punks when they did street stalls or gigs. And that Attack! newspaper (by the same people who did the Tin Tin "Breaking Free" book).

In parallel to that I was reading stuff like Vague, then Stewart Home's SMILE and other weirdness. Regular visits to Housamans, Compendium and Rough Trade in London got me copies of Class War, Anti-Clockwise, Here and Now, Searchlight, Red Action and Fighting Talk. Plus lots of more fanziney music things.

Then a slew of mid 90s newsletters and zines: Fatuous Times, Autotoxicity, London Psychogeographical Association, Decadent Action, Alien Underground / Datacide.

At the same time maybe a harder political side with Subversion, Communist Headache and other things.
 
Over the years...

Socialist Organiser
Militant (buyer and seller)
Crisis
Searchlight
Fighting Talk
Red Action
An Phoblacht
Scottish Socialist Voice (buyer and seller)
 
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