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

planetgeli said:
This. Exactly this.

I've often glanced at this thread and thought it a bit odd that people's political views were really shaped by any of the literature mentioned. Don't get me wrong, it's been good to see a lot of papers and mags I knew of and also lots I didn't, but I just started to read the whole thread and all the time I'm thinking exactly what Epona has said so I was really pleased to come across their post. My lived experience shaped my thinking, especially from childhood, and once I got out into the world on my own at 16 I was immediately pissed off by some dick selling Socialist Worker at the back of any demo or picket I was on.

"Yeah, read this piece about Trotsky"

"No thanks, I've just come from small town poverty surrounded by a few middle class people who think they've made it good because they can afford a washing machine."

I don't care if this sounds prolier than thou. It was fucking hard being brought up in constant poverty. I didn't need Tony Cliff or anyone else telling me how hard I'd had it or what should be done about it.
Click to expand...
I take your points, but it’s the mags and rags that people read that can shape ideas. If I’d never read an anarchist paper I probably wouldn’t have ended up an anarchist. I might have ended up Labour, Trot, Green, or nothing much at all. The ideas and experience together have the impact. Then if you read the right kind of history you discover that there’s others out there, in the present and the past, who think similarly. That buoys you up sometimes even when things look bleak, or when your ideas are treated as irrelevant or inconsequential.
 
Actually it wasn’t a political magazine as such that got me going as an anarchist, but two things. Firstly an article in History of the Twentieth Century about the Tragic Week in Barcelona in 1909, and then George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. Everything else just helped to reinforce the idea.
 
planetgeli said:
This. Exactly this.

I've often glanced at this thread and thought it a bit odd that people's political views were really shaped by any of the literature mentioned. Don't get me wrong, it's been good to see a lot of papers and mags I knew of and also lots I didn't, but I just started to read the whole thread and all the time I'm thinking exactly what Epona has said so I was really pleased to come across their post. My lived experience shaped my thinking, especially from childhood, and once I got out into the world on my own at 16 I was immediately pissed off by some dick selling Socialist Worker at the back of any demo or picket I was on.

"Yeah, read this piece about Trotsky"

"No thanks, I've just come from small town poverty surrounded by a few middle class people who think they've made it good because they can afford a washing machine."

I don't care if this sounds prolier than thou. It was fucking hard being brought up in constant poverty. I didn't need Tony Cliff or anyone else telling me how hard I'd had it or what should be done about it.
Click to expand...


This.
 
Praxis comrades, Praxis.

In all seriousness, of course lived experience is a more important factor, but the information about other times and places, about other practices etc etc. also feeds into the ideas we hold.
 
Fozzie Bear said:
I've collected together all the online ones I could find here now:
libcom.org

Crowbar magazine

Partial online archive of Crowbar, an anarchist squatter magazine published in Brixton, South London in the 1980s.
libcom.org libcom.org

I know you hate Libcom, Top Cat, but if you want more adding I can scan them... :beer:.

Or you can just nick those for another online archive somewhere else innit... :D
Click to expand...
Link isn't working for me.
 
planetgeli said:
This. Exactly this.

I've often glanced at this thread and thought it a bit odd that people's political views were really shaped by any of the literature mentioned. Don't get me wrong, it's been good to see a lot of papers and mags I knew of and also lots I didn't, but I just started to read the whole thread and all the time I'm thinking exactly what Epona has said so I was really pleased to come across their post. My lived experience shaped my thinking, especially from childhood, and once I got out into the world on my own at 16 I was immediately pissed off by some dick selling Socialist Worker at the back of any demo or picket I was on.

"Yeah, read this piece about Trotsky"

"No thanks, I've just come from small town poverty surrounded by a few middle class people who think they've made it good because they can afford a washing machine."

I don't care if this sounds prolier than thou. It was fucking hard being brought up in constant poverty. I didn't need Tony Cliff or anyone else telling me how hard I'd had it or what should be done about it.
Click to expand...

Totally agree, living in the environment I was born into has had far more influence in shaping my politics than any publications or books have. Though books have given me the tools and critical thinking to put my points across, on occasion to those who I assumed had deaf ears
 
planetgeli said:
This. Exactly this.

I've often glanced at this thread and thought it a bit odd that people's political views were really shaped by any of the literature mentioned. Don't get me wrong, it's been good to see a lot of papers and mags I knew of and also lots I didn't, but I just started to read the whole thread and all the time I'm thinking exactly what Epona has said so I was really pleased to come across their post. My lived experience shaped my thinking, especially from childhood, and once I got out into the world on my own at 16 I was immediately pissed off by some dick selling Socialist Worker at the back of any demo or picket I was on.

"Yeah, read this piece about Trotsky"

"No thanks, I've just come from small town poverty surrounded by a few middle class people who think they've made it good because they can afford a washing machine."

I don't care if this sounds prolier than thou. It was fucking hard being brought up in constant poverty. I didn't need Tony Cliff or anyone else telling me how hard I'd had it or what should be done about it.
Click to expand...
I disagree.

Ideas from outside our lived experience are important*. Many of us from our class have experienced "small town [and big city] poverty" etc, but of those of us who do experience it, it's only a tiny minority that become socialists, communists, hold revolutionary views, and all that. In fact many of our class hold reactionary and sometimes far right views on a range of things. Lived experience doesn't make socialists (though it can sometimes help), what counts most is coming into contact with ideas that go beyond the daily grind.

* Though fair enough, I'll give you Trotskyites like Cliiff, Grant, Healy and their ilk.
 
I agree my childhood and working environments had a major effect on the way I perceived the world and it is probably that which led me to read certain publications. It was my family, neighbours and later work colleagues that taught me far more than The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist.
But that community is gone, the children of those I grew up with voted a conservative MP into our constituency for the first time ever.
 
I’ve been putting together a gallery of Class War cover art on Libcom that may bring a nostalgic tear to the wizened eyes of some:

Class War covers gallery

An online archive of covers (and some posters) of the British Anarchist newspaper Class War from the 1983-2017. Taken from various online sources, including Anarcho covers on Facebook, a collection of Class War covers and posters on archive.org and the Sparrows Nest Archive. Assistance with...
libcom.org libcom.org
 
Fozzie Bear said:
Black Flag has been relaunched as an online journal.

Black Flag Anarchist Review

A UK based anarchist journal which has been published since 1970
www.blackflag.org.uk www.blackflag.org.uk

Mainly historical stuff and obituaries - and the design isn’t great. But worthwhile nonetheless and be interesting to keep an eye on.
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Cheers for the heads up. I see this contains a lot of historical texts, a short obituary of Stuart Christie, a longer obituary of David Graeber together with an article by him and a reprint of the obituary of Ken Weller from the ACG site and an interview with him. Some of this I don't recall seeing before and I look forward to reading it.

I am baffled as to what relation this is supposed to have to previous incarnations of Black Flag, or to the politics of Black Flag when it was founded. The introduction refers to it "following in the footsteps Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review published in the 1970s. It will be a collection of new translations, rare articles and reprints of the best libertarian articles and reviews, whether modern or old. We will continue its tradition of advocating class struggle anarchism (whether syndicalist or not) and we are open to articles from that tradition or those close to it."

It doesn't resemble the Cienfeugos review in the slightest. That gave me the sense of anarchists having a point of view that looked outwards, and that dealt with a broader range of matters than anarchist history and libertarian socialist politics. (The same breadth that could still be seen in the range of things that Christie Books published). And which actually had something to say about things, and a distinct tone and attitude in which to say it.

Not only does this publication seemingly have nothing of it's own to say about the things it publishes, politically it also seems a world away from Black Flag. It's difficult to judge but if I had to guess I'd say it comes from a post-graduate perspective in which anarchism is some kind of tributary of 'libertarian socialism'. If I'm right about that I can't think of anything less like the politics of Black Flag.

As I said there is some interesting looking stuff in this magazine. I guess I'm being a little grumpy because of the choice to associate itself with a 'brand' with which, as far as I can see, it has little or nothing in common.
 
I was trying to be kind but Lurdan and Dom Traynor have made good points. I think there is some overlap between the new and the latter issues of the old.

It may develop into something else of course but the Kate Sharpley Library bulletin seems to do this sort of thing better. And the ACG’s mag seems like a better version of what Black Flag was than this. But we shall see.
 
Fozzie Bear said:
I’ve been putting together a gallery of Class War cover art on Libcom that may bring a nostalgic tear to the wizened eyes of some:

Class War covers gallery

An online archive of covers (and some posters) of the British Anarchist newspaper Class War from the 1983-2017. Taken from various online sources, including Anarcho covers on Facebook, a collection of Class War covers and posters on archive.org and the Sparrows Nest Archive. Assistance with...
libcom.org libcom.org
Click to expand...
I think this was the last one I posted up at school :cool:

cw67.png
 
Lurdan said:
Cheers for the heads up. I see this contains a lot of historical texts, a short obituary of Stuart Christie, a longer obituary of David Graeber together with an article by him and a reprint of the obituary of Ken Weller from the ACG site and an interview with him. Some of this I don't recall seeing before and I look forward to reading it.

I am baffled as to what relation this is supposed to have to previous incarnations of Black Flag, or to the politics of Black Flag when it was founded...

Not only does this publication seemingly have nothing of it's own to say about the things it publishes, politically it also seems a world away from Black Flag. It's difficult to judge but if I had to guess I'd say it comes from a post-graduate perspective in which anarchism is some kind of tributary of 'libertarian socialism'. If I'm right about that I can't think of anything less like the politics of Black Flag.

As I said there is some interesting looking stuff in this magazine. I guess I'm being a little grumpy because of the choice to associate itself with a 'brand' with which, as far as I can see, it has little or nothing in common.
Click to expand...
How would you say the 2000s/2010s incarnation of Black Flag compares to the original? Not trying to do a gotcha fwiw, just wondering.
 
Lurdan said:
Not only does this publication seemingly have nothing of it's own to say about the things it publishes, politically it also seems a world away from Black Flag. It's difficult to judge but if I had to guess I'd say it comes from a post-graduate perspective in which anarchism is some kind of tributary of 'libertarian socialism'.
Click to expand...
I think the common thread between the last incarnation of Black Flag and this one is Iain McKay ?? Thats an educated guess
 
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