tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post4065360938963807052..comments2024-03-01T08:19:54.547+00:00Comments on BobFromBrockley: Triangulating Bobism 2: The Furedi cultbobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15439386754907203808noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-83656588083131610052011-01-08T17:26:34.646+00:002011-01-08T17:26:34.646+00:00Have people seen this resource on the RCP and its ...Have people seen this resource on the RCP and its successors? <br /><br />http://www.powerbase.info/index.php?title=Category:LM_networkAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-31196020638542547712010-11-03T11:28:43.741+00:002010-11-03T11:28:43.741+00:00Footnote: I mentioned Strange Times in the post, a...Footnote: I mentioned Strange Times in the post, and I notice today that they have just hosted a debate on climate change featuring ex-RCP Austin Williams. Small world, and indeed Strange Times.<br /><br />http://strangetimes.lastsuperpower.net/?p=763Bobhttp://brockley.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-25456845001808951742010-10-11T10:56:59.510+01:002010-10-11T10:56:59.510+01:00There is another reason why the Respect/Rise festi...There is another reason why the Respect/Rise festival came to an end, which as far as I am aware has never been publicly commentated upon. <br /><br />The last year the event was in Victoria Park, I noticed a a couple of hundred black teenagers sprinting through the park. A minute or so later I reached a group of about 20 extremely scared cops, truncheons drawn yet with no one near them. <br /><br />It seems a shot, or shots had been fired. <br /><br />I would venture a free festival, with open access to a park for all, is now very unlikely to pass any Met health and safety assessment. Even if you searched all the punters going in, a weapon could very easily be thrown over the park fence somewhere, or even hidden before hand and collected later.Paul Stotthttp://www.paulstott.typepad.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-50352245878453554682010-10-11T10:13:38.857+01:002010-10-11T10:13:38.857+01:00If I understand you right, Anon, I partially agree...If I understand you right, Anon, I partially agree with you. <br /><br />The Enlightenment and in particular the idea of "progress" has a dark side, and there is no document of (modern) civilization that is not also a document of barbarism - both for the empirical reasons BenSix rightly highlights (the limits to our planet's capacity to sustain endless "progress") and the philosophical reasons set out by Benjamin, Adorno and others. (I know less about Kurz - a summary or some pointers would be very welcome!) The radical left has been right, therefore, to be skeptical about the Enlightenment, and I don't want to suggest a re-founding of the left on the basis of reclaiming it.<br /><br />On the other hand, I still think that the core values of liberty, equality and fraternity, of reason and doubt, of egalitarian republican democracy, remain the strongest foundation for a project of emancipation which remains unfulfilled and urgent. <br /><br />On "radical Enlightenment", see, e.g. <a href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/aug2003/spin-a26.shtml" rel="nofollow">Ann Talbot</a>, <a href="http://www.gold.ac.uk/media/toscano_spinoza_teheran.pdf" rel="nofollow">Alberto Toscano</a>, <a href="http://ebrandom.blogspot.com/2010/03/left-of-enlightenment.html" rel="nofollow">Eric Brandom</a>.bobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15439386754907203808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-89788566462128230092010-10-09T22:04:02.700+01:002010-10-09T22:04:02.700+01:00"The fact that the RCP’s commitment to the va..."The fact that the RCP’s commitment to the values of the Enlightenment – social progress, freedom, and so on – have more of an appeal on the right than on the left says something terrible about the decline of the left."<br />Totally contestable. See Walter Benjamin's Thesis of History, and more recently, Robert Kurz of the German Exit journal.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-1327134666791816032010-10-08T13:16:39.591+01:002010-10-08T13:16:39.591+01:00The fact that the RCP’s commitment to the values o...<i>The fact that the RCP’s commitment to the values of the Enlightenment – social progress, freedom, and so on – have more of an appeal on the right than on the left says something terrible about the decline of the left.</i><br /><br />That depends on how one views "<i>social progress</i>". <i>Spiked!</i> - or, at least, O'Neill - uphold the values of <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/debates/copenhagen_article/9716" rel="nofollow">consumption</a> and <a href="http://bensix.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/anti-environmentalism-as-a-secular-religion/" rel="nofollow">human activity</a> without concern for the environmental consequences or, indeed, its very <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/22/peak-oil-department-energy-climate-change" rel="nofollow">limits</a>. That's not "left" or "right", it's just silly.BenSixhttp://bensix.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-30532614821849491082010-10-07T23:18:12.560+01:002010-10-07T23:18:12.560+01:00Must admit that after years of getting softer, mor...Must admit that after years of getting softer, more humanist and pacifistic I am finding myself reverting to seething toff-hating with each passing day of 'stop the poor breeding' class hate from above by the vile Tory scum.Morbid Symptomsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-72857573912111535172010-10-06T14:14:26.008+01:002010-10-06T14:14:26.008+01:00My impression is that the majority of the talk of ...My impression is that the majority of the talk of the "White Working class" etc is projection.<br /><br /><br />It comes across to me as a fake concern, a method by which the middle classes can project their own neuroses.<br /><br />So once more, the working-class ends up as the ventriloquist's dummy for middle-class anxieties. <br /><br />Not like it hasn't happened before?modernityhttp://modernity.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-55150803216350767262010-10-06T10:11:52.649+01:002010-10-06T10:11:52.649+01:00Some of those Facebook pages, by the way, have mem...Some of those Facebook pages, by the way, have members in the thousands (or did when I last looked over someone's shoulder - I'm a Facebook avoider). <br /><br />If I said that chav hate is the only acceptable prejudice, I completely retract that. I agree that the other forms of prejudice you mention are also on rise. Racism against Eastern and Central European people is not acknowledged at all and in that sense has strong similarities, especially given the objects of both of these are apparently "white". <br /><br />However, most other forms of racism (e.g. against Asians or Jews) is recognised as racism, and will get you told off, and most people who use it recognise that at some level. So, someone at Harry's Place is racist about Arabs, they may not get reprimanded by the moderators, but there are lots of people who will make a big deal of it (e.g. websites like IslamophobiaWatch and AaronovitchWatch exist for that purpose), and the same with racism against Jews at, say, Socialist Unity. Anti-"chav" hate, however, will not provoke hardly any response, and if you say it amounts to racism most people look at you as if you are mad.<br /><br />--<br /><br />I agree that the prejdices of the relatively powerless can have real effects on people's lives. But the effects on the victims are cushioned in lots of ways. So, if someone snarls about David Cameron being a snob (or, say, me being effete), it might hurt David's feelings, but he has a lot of resources to protect him against its effects. He's not going to have trouble getting a job in a PR company because of his accent, or ignored and overruled by doctors, or have assumptions made about his child-rearing by social workers. <br /><br />If prejudices lead to violence, that's completely different. So, there wouldn't be any moral difference between a member of Class War actually stringing up a public school teacher by the entrails of a minor royal and a member of the Facebook hunt a chav group actually hunting down a chav. But the instances of prejudice turning into violence are a small proportion of the instances of prejudice. <br /><br />And I think that the racist black kid and the Palestinian bomber are slightly different sorts of cases. In the universe of the inner city school, it might be black boys who hold a fair amountt of physical power over the space and the middle white kids who are the persecuted minority, and this might leave physical and psychic scars on the white kids even when they leave school and enter a world where the black boys are completely powerless. I don't think this is about prejudices. <br /><br />Similarly, I would see Palestinian terrorism as part of an assymetrical war than as an expression of the prejudice of the powerless, even if prejudice agaisnt Jews plays a part.bobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15439386754907203808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-26919768116072209492010-10-05T23:58:20.097+01:002010-10-05T23:58:20.097+01:00As for class chauvinism going in the other directi...As for class chauvinism going in the other direction, there was the Class War magazine's constant exhortation of its readers to physically assault 'the rich' - loosely defined - or vandalise their homes, cars etc. There was the crowd over at the Drink Soaked Trots, particularly Will Rubbish and Hakmao, periodically expressing violent class hatred of the middle classes; e.g. Hakmao claiming that the middle classes had 'loathsome offspring'. There's HP's Graham Lloyd constantly using 'middle class' as a term of abuse for anyone who disagrees with him, and using the term 'rancid little middle class dickheads' on his Facebook profile. There's Andrew Coates using 'toff' as a term of abuse (and also boasting about how he called a woman in a pub a 'cunt'). This all seems to pass without reprimand.<br /><br />I don't think this sort of thing is harmless. E.g. in Cambridge, where I spent many years, the students (wrongly identified as a privileged group, though the majority come from state schools) are frequently victims of unprovoked assaults by local thugs - simply for the crime of being students.<br /><br />'But there is an enormous difference between the prejudices of those with power about those without and the prejudices of the relatively powerless about those who rule them.'<br /><br />I agree with you only up to a point. Would you really say that because the Israelis have the upper hand vis-a-vis the Palestinians, then Palestinian anti-Semitism is less objectionable than Israeli anti-Arab racism ? Is Muslim chauvinism in Britain, as expressed in the London bombings, less objectionable than Christian chauvinism ?<br /><br />In my ethnically mixed London comprehensive, there were cases of white kids being seriously beaten up in racist assaults by black kids - no point telling those victims that their suffering wasn't real.<br /><br />At times, chauvinism directed at members of the middle or upper classes can be murderous - e.g. during the February/March revolution in Russia, 1917, when, as Orlando Figes describes, there were widespread beatings, rapes and murders of people who appeared better off - which might just have been a matter of wearing glasses. Subsequently, the Bolsheviks effectively starved 'bourgeois' people by depriving them of proper rations. Then there were the horrors of Stalin's de-kulakisation. And the mass crimes of Mao and Pol Pot.<br /><br />So I don't think class chauvinism is inherently less objectionable or potentially dangerous when it's the supposed middle or upper classes on the receiving end.Marko Attila Hoarehttp://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-49088212655088781322010-10-05T22:53:25.566+01:002010-10-05T22:53:25.566+01:00Bob, I've looked at the Facebook pages you men...Bob, I've looked at the Facebook pages you mentioned, and I totally agree - they are disgusting and frightening hate sites. Of course, there's no way of telling the class background of the members of these groups - whether they are 'middle class' or 'respectable working class' - the two groups aren't really distinct anyway - but I suspect that whoever they are, such people like to define themselves by their self-perceived superiority to 'chavs' - who can conveniently be defined as anyone they think of as socially and culturally beneath them.<br /><br />Still, those groups all thankfully seem to have small memberships, and I don't think that level of viciousness and hatred is quite representative of mainstream liberal opinion. Guardianista-type liberals are entirely capable of snobbery toward 'chavs' or 'white working class' people, and certainly more tolerant of it than they are of outright anti-black racism.<br /><br />But that hardly means that anti-working-class chauvinism is the only kind of chauvinism that is at all accepted.<br /><br />E.g. racism against Balkan peoples is widely acceptable - liberal icon Michael Moore describes the former Yugoslavia as a 'godforsaken part of the world' whose people suffer from an 'addiction to violence' and engage in 'tribal warfare' (I remember the folks at Aaronovitch Watch seemed to feel that that type of racism was acceptable). Julie Burchill wrote in her Guardian column 'Croatia's not a country; it's a bloody division of the German armed forces - scratch a Croat, find a Kraut.' She certainly wasn't reprimanded.<br /><br />Anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-Palestinian racism are widely tolerated and deemed acceptable ; e.g. at Harry's Place, where the most blood-curdling expressions of chauvinistic hatred against these groups pass without reprimand (Morgoth twice called for all Palestinians to be expelled from the West Bank without being reprimanded, let alone banned).<br /><br />Anti-Semitism is increasingly tolerated in some left-liberal circles - I'm sure I don't need to cite examples for your readers.<br /><br />Anti-gypsy chauvinism is official policy in France and Italy, and finds supporters here in the UK - e.g. The Independent's Mary Dejevsky, who said 'Sarkozy is right about the Roma'.<br /><br />Whole tabloid newspapers thrive on anti-immigrant chauvinism which even our mainstream politicians don't stand up to.<br /><br />Sorry, but I don't think the working class is particularly singled out for acceptable chauvinism.Marko Attila Hoarehttp://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-47906896231170396812010-10-05T14:24:15.070+01:002010-10-05T14:24:15.070+01:00[continuing...]
None of this is to say that there...[continuing...] <br />None of this is to say that there is no working class prejudice against middle class people, that there is no inverse snobbery, or that the left does not indulge in it or in affected approximations of it (indeed, I am probably guilty myself of bashing the posh). But there is an enormous difference between the prejudices of those with power about those without and the prejudices of the relatively powerless about those who rule them. Asian people, for example, might have prejudices against white people, but these prejudices are relatively trivial given the balance of power in our society. <br /><br />This is a time when our traditional ruling class is consolidating its social power, and the kind of class contempt represented by the chav hate sites is one mechanism for that. This stuff has real, powerful, material effects on people’s lives, in generating crippling feelings of shame and also in locking people out of the good life. Friends of mine on an estate near where I live claim that some home delivery services refuse to take things there; several people i know on another estate have told me that they find ways of avoiding employers knowing where they live when they are looking for jobs. This sort of thing does not compare to whatever injury it might do to middle class people when working class people think they are effete. <br /><br />--<br /><br />I agree, by the way, that these culturally or socially defined class terms are vague and nebulous, with blurry borders. Many people who are culturally middle class would be proletarian in Marxist terms, and many people who are petit bourgeois in Marxist terms (e.g. someone who runs a small construction business) are working class culturally. <br /><br />I also agree that the term “white working class” is abused most times it is used, often as an alibi for right-wing politics, sometimes as an essentialised “ethnicity”, and that brown and black working class people suffer by virtue of class in much the same way as white working class people do.BobFromBrockleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02214715191658397060noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-84035459634381115482010-10-05T14:22:38.181+01:002010-10-05T14:22:38.181+01:00Chav rcp
OK. Here are some examples. Go to Faceboo...Chav rcp<br />OK. Here are some examples. Go to Facebook and see how many thousands of members there are of groups like ‘Petition for the legalization of Chav Hunting!’, ‘Whack-a-chav-a-day!’, ‘SPIT ON A CHAV’, ‘Kill the annoying chav playin loud music from his phone on public transport’, ‘Save the UK... Kill a Chav’, ‘I really dislike pikeys’, ‘I fuckin' hate pikeys’, and ‘Clean our Streets! Kill a Chav!!!’ These are hate sites, by any definition, inciting people, under the mask of humour (they’re mostly in the “Just for fun” category), to attack and even kill people for their class background. Thankfully, the “chavscum” website is defunct, but its sibling “chav towns” still thrives, with its huge quantities of vicious contempt for working class towns and working class people. Of course, “respectable” working class people indulge in this sport too, but it looks like most of the Facebook groups are populated mainly by university students.<br /><br />When Jonathan Ross used the word “pikey” in a derogatory way on Radio 4, he was reprimanded, but not in any serious way – compare that to his later sexual gaffes. Or Formula 1’s Martin Brundle, whose use of the term in June 2008 led to a week apology from ITV. While the Daily Mail was at the forefront of the campaign to censure the BBC over the Ross/Brand use of sexual language on Radio 2, it defended Brundle, describing his mild ticking off as a totalitarian form of humourless political correctness. One Mail columnist, Jasper Gerard, wrote: ‘As any rustic knows, "pikey" is rural-speak for "chav"… Alas "pikey" is sometimes linked to "gypsy", and gypsies are classed as a race; hence accusations of racism. But "pikey" describes folk who knock on doors offering "spare" Tarmac. It's a comment on the thin blue line, not blood lines. Oh, and it was, dare one say, a joke’ (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/columnists/jaspergerard/2303018/Formula-One's-Martin-Brundle-and-ITV-in-trouble,-but-what's-the-problem-with-'pikey'.html) Another Mail writer, Des Kelly, wrote: ‘To consider pikey a racial slur is as stupid as believing the word “hippy” has racist connotations, or that “hoodie” is offensive. Ban pikey, and then you might as well outlaw chav, townie, trailer trash, Hooray Henry, goth, Sloane, tinker and many more fairly innocuous labels’. <br /><br />And this is a key point. “Pikey” and to a lesser extent “chav” have ethnic connotations, and the association of the working class with the Irish, Irish Travellers, and Gypsies is one source of the power of middle class contempt for them. It is true that anti-Traveller/anti-Gypsy/anti-Roma racism are endemic and completely politically acceptable in polite British discourse, but this is not a totally different thing from what amounts to racism against the disrespectable classes. <br /><br />Left-wing people, liberal Guardian readers who would never be heard dead making an off-colour joke about people of colour, use words like “chav” with no reflection. As Kalwant Bhopal and Martin Mayers wrote in a recent book, “the use of “paki” and “coon” is hugely restricted within British culture, but the use of “chav” as a near-equivalent post-millennium British marker for “white trash” has become quite commonplace… Similarly, the use of the word “pikey”, with just a hint of irony, is considered acceptable despite the obviously derogatory nature of this term… It is not that they will not cause offence, but they will not offend in a way that would bring down any opprobrium upon [those who use them]”. [continues...]BobFromBrockleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02214715191658397060noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-58531363367388003742010-10-04T20:24:14.112+01:002010-10-04T20:24:14.112+01:00The Flying Rodent has an enjoyable take on the Fur...The Flying Rodent has an enjoyable take on the Furedification Machine:-<br /><br />http://flyingrodent.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html<br /><br />(August 22 - for some reason can’t do a proper link to it.)<br /><br />1) Open a newspaper; grab the dumbest media spaz-out in it as your subject material, then put pen to paper.<br /><br />2) Lay out the entire, sorry episode, making it entirely clear that it's an electorally-driven spankathon confected out of bugger all by insane right wing bigots for political purposes, with the support of dupes and cranks.<br /><br />3) Concede that liberal criticisms of said spankathon are essentially correct in every major aspect.<br /><br />4) Suddenly announce that the real issue is not the confected right wing spankathon, but is instead the fact that condescending Yankee liberals think they're so bloody clever.<br /><br />5) Waffle at length about how out of touch with, like, working class concerns and shit the libs are by pretending that belligerent stupidity is a class issue.<br /><br />6) Round it all off with a spurious declaration about how, if only those godawful libs weren't so obsessed with political correctness, they would somehow magically squash the controversy by focusing instead on some unrelated horseshit.KB Playerhttp://www.rosiebell.co.uknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-76050794026576937162010-10-04T19:15:13.800+01:002010-10-04T19:15:13.800+01:00PS I should add that the categories 'working c...PS I should add that the categories 'working class' and 'middle class' are themselves not nearly as rigid or separate as the terms imply; the stereotypes serve to perpetuate an impression of two distinct classes that are not nearly so distinct in reality.Marko Attila Hoarehttp://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-73382304389300407792010-10-04T18:58:49.863+01:002010-10-04T18:58:49.863+01:00'Am happy to provide examples if you don't...'Am happy to provide examples if you don't believe me.'<br /><br />I'd be interested to see your examples to see what you have in mind, Bob.<br /><br />There is undoubtedly snobbery or class hatred directed by members of the upper or middle classes toward the working class.<br /><br />There is equally an inverse snobbery or class hatred directed by members of the working class or prolier-than-thou lefty types (some of whom themselves are middle class) toward the middle or upper classes.<br /><br />You have both 'chav' and 'toff' used as terms of abuse; you have stereotypes of thick, vulgar working-class brutes and spoilt, effeminate middle-class cissies. The class prejudice cuts both ways; it's an unfortunate trait of British society that this prejudice is considered somehow acceptable.<br /><br />I reject the idea, however, that it's specifically the 'white working class' that is hard-done by today - as if the 'black working-class' or the 'brown working-class' or the 'yellow working-class' gets a better deal.<br /><br />Prejudice against immigrants or gypsies/travellers is much more socially acceptable in the UK than prejudice against the native white working-class.Marko Attila Hoarehttp://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-52605837474203525742010-10-04T17:46:59.463+01:002010-10-04T17:46:59.463+01:00Of course anti-social behaviour is not a working c...Of course anti-social behaviour is not a working class thing; it is a cross-class thing, and where it is unpleasant it should be condemned. <br /><br />But there is also an enormous amount of snobbery and hatred directed towards so-called "chavs" and "pikeys" that, if it were targeted at non-white people, would be considered completely unacceptable racism, and yet is universally acceptable amongst the respectable classes and yet, as far as I know, not challenged by any left group apart from the RCP.<br /><br />Am happy to provide examples if you don't believe me.bobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15439386754907203808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-82998013355791080942010-10-04T14:03:50.680+01:002010-10-04T14:03:50.680+01:00Good heavens, I find myself in agreement with Mark...Good heavens, I find myself in agreement with Marko Attila Hoare!<br /><br />The RCP view of working class culture is just one example among many of its political fetishism and intellectual shallowness. In any case, British working class culture does not need defending by middle class, London-centric chatterati. People will do what they will as long as they want to do it, and can get away with it. If that makes life difficult for social engineers (the RCP included), then so much the better for it.Francis Sedgemorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12310279298255158895noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-55380868034741557882010-10-04T13:20:14.208+01:002010-10-04T13:20:14.208+01:00'the RCP, having turned away from class politi...'the RCP, having turned away from class politics so completely is still the only one that defends many of the facets of working class life so vilified by nearly everyone else, namely pubbing, clubbing, smoking, swearing, McDonalds-eating, budget airline-flying, Tesco shopping, unofficial-striking etc etc.'<br /><br />There's nothing specifically 'working class' about any of those activities; most British people, irrespective of social class, probably engage, or have engaged, in most or all of them (appropriate to their age-group) at least sometimes.<br /><br />You can be in favour or against any of those things, but to treat attacks on them as being 'anti-working-class' just doesn't make sense. If they're objectionable, then they're objectionable irrespective of whether they're 'working class' or not.<br /><br />Defending smoking on the grounds that it's 'working class' is like defending genital mutilation on the grounds that it's 'Islamic' - it's sheer moral relativism.Marko Attila Hoarehttp://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-42158902311187549722010-10-04T11:29:23.953+01:002010-10-04T11:29:23.953+01:00Just noticed the Harry's Place article about t...Just noticed the <a href="http://hurryupharry.org/2010/10/03/the-return-of-the-rcp-to-london-city-hall/" rel="nofollow">Harry's Place article about the RCP from yesterday</a>. This adds a little fuel, though not a lot, to the RCP/Tory nexus theory.<br /><i><br />"Most recently she has been spotted <a href="http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/09/munira-mirza-multiculturalism-racism/" rel="nofollow">in the pages of Prospect magazine</a>, again disparaging the apparently living, breathing straw man of ‘multiculturalism’ with as much singular aplomb as got her noticed by the mayor and his minions back when she was churning out op-ed features and appearing on obscure panel discussions on behalf of her RCP/Spiked-Online paymasters. The local government editor of ConservativeHome <a href="http://conservativehome.blogs.com/localgovernment/2010/09/boris-arts-adviser-denounces-multiculturalism.html" rel="nofollow">was delighted</a>, naturally. <br /><br />But, what’s this? Tucked away in the line up programme for the mayor’s annual ‘Story of London’ festival (a Mirza brainchild) alongside a fairly impressive stellar array of celebrities (Billy Bragg), commentators (Peter York) and practitioner experts (Sir Terry Farrell), in its <a href="http://www.london.gov.uk/priorities/art-culture/storyoflondon/future-city" rel="nofollow">‘Future of Cities’ debates</a> are not one but three familiar RCP alumni looking somewhat out of place: Austin Williams of obscure online think tank the Future Cities Project, recent PhD candidate James Heartfield and Professor James Woudhuysen of Leicester De Montford University. You would have thought she’d have been a little less obvious about it.<br /><br />In the past it was the Socialist Workers’ Party who you’d associate with self-declared Marxist ex-poly lecturers, obscure journal editors and PhD candidates on platforms at major conferences, but these days it appears that even Conservative run global cities have a place for them. Perhaps this is the ‘progress’ we hear so much about from David Cameron, though he’ll have to cut down on the risk aversion before Furedi and friends fully take him to their hearts. I’ve not checked yet but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see other familiar names on the Conservative Party conference fringe this week. I seem to recall the RCP had some interesting ideas about cutting NHS spending in the 1980s."</i><br /><br /><a href="http://rosiebell.typepad.com/" rel="nofollow">Rosie </a>(who kindly links to this post) responds to the "pay-masters" claim nicely:<br /><br /><i>"Do RCP and Spiked actually pay their contributors? I thought it was some kind of internship. How do they get the money?<br /><br />If they do pay and if after going through the churning of Op Eds you end up with a good gig at GLA or in the media generally, the RCP looks much more attractive than the SWP, which only offers a lifetime of selling newspapers and yelling at demos."</i><br /><br />I also couldn't help but click on a link about "Tory gangbangs" to discover that Mirza "is linked to" (may be <a href="http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2009/01/tory-swinger-found-again.html" rel="nofollow">married to</a>?) Dougie Smith, Cameron's speech writer who once organised sex parties. Is that relevant?bobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15439386754907203808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-60770244578070120732010-10-04T11:00:22.005+01:002010-10-04T11:00:22.005+01:00Socialist Appeal is Alan Woods' outfit who hav...<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Appeal" rel="nofollow">Socialist Appeal</a> is Alan Woods' outfit who have been alleged to have had some influence over Hugo Chavez, but have really been no more than his ideological hired help. (Their background is in Militant and Ted Grant's turgid ortho-Trotskyism.) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Action_%28UK%29" rel="nofollow">Socialist Action</a> is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ross_%28socialist%29" rel="nofollow">John Ross</a>'s shadowy groupuscule, who were Ken Livingstone's hired help. (Their background is the IMG. I wrote a little about them <a href="http://brockley.blogspot.com/2010/08/triangulating-bobism-1-harryism-and.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>.) I'll think about the phrasing of the post to make sure this is clear.<br /><br />Re Pinkie - My claim is of course an exaggeration; they didn't give us the Cameron government. But I think it is pretty obvious that the general point is right. <br /><br />You can argue that the RCP are no longer of the far left, and that's probably true. Perhaps more accurate to say that no other group from the British far left has had <br />such influence in the last decade. <br /><br />Who else could possibly be a candidate? Socialist Action? They of course had a lot of power in Ken Livingstone's administration but not much real influence. They continue to have a lot of clout in the race relations industry, and have some role in other campign groups. According to Wikipedia: "It was heavily involved in the publication and editorial control of Socialist Campaign Group News. Its members have maintained leading positions in many campaigns - the National Abortion Campaign, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, National Assembly Against Racism and various coalitions against the wars against Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, for example. As a result, Socialist Action exert an influence beyond that which might be expected from so small a grouping... Some of its activists played leading roles in organising the 2004 European Social Forum." <br /><br />The other SA, Socialist Appeal, may have some marginal influence on Hugo Chavez, but zero influence in Britain. <br /><br />The SWP have been a stronger contender, mainly through their front organisations Unite Against Fascism, Stop the War and Respect (although since the break with Galloway and then the Rees/German split, a lot of that legacy is in the balance). The SWP in the noughties did help get George Galloway get elected as an MP, and helped mobilise millions in February 2003 against the Iraq war, but I don't think their actual positions have really influenced that many people's ways of thinking. <br /><br />The RCP, in contrast, have a very heavy presence in the mainstream media, through the likes of Frank Furedi and Claire Fox. I think through this they have managed to actually influence the way a large number of people think. How often do you turn on the radio and hear a representative of any other far left group? <br /><br />I genuinely believe, although there is no way to evidence this, that this influence played a part in the cultural mood which helped designate the Blair/Brown period in terms of the "nanny state": they fed David Cameron's Tories a number of its lines, and I think helped create the mood for the re-invention of the Conservative Party under Cameron. The connection with Policy Exchange is telling in this regard, because Policy Exchange is often seen as the intellectual hothouse of Cameroonian Conservatisim. And the Boris moment was significant too, as his 2008 election was in some ways a dry run for the 2010 election. <br /><br />Finally, re John Whitley: I 100% agree with you on this.bobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15439386754907203808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-25758235224797566202010-10-04T10:32:31.822+01:002010-10-04T10:32:31.822+01:00Re Sarah - Sorry I was being facetious! I am all i...Re Sarah - Sorry I was being facetious! I am all in favour of Latin in schools, and otherwise generally agree with you.<br /><br />Re Morbid Symptoms - very good points. I think I did over-exaggerate the Tory connection. There probably hasn't been a serious infiltration strategy, but rather a broader strategy of cultural influence, where some groups (Policy Exchange) are an obvious outlet. <br /><br />Also, since Mirza's appointment, of course, was the financial crisis and the Con-Dem coalition. The RCP seem to be more explicitly referencing Marxism. The first I noticed was James Heartfield bigging up Rick Kuhn's book on Henryk Grossman - extremely timely but very unfashionable. Since then, for example, the critique of pessimistic anti-capitalism, which is spot on, including the response to the ridiculous Vince Cable is Marxist suggestion. On the other hand, I think Jenny Turner over-emphasises this esoteric Marxist dimension, and the idea that their time has perhaps come in the Con-Dem momemnt. In some ways, it should be obvious under Cameron how they've been backing the wrong horse: I stand by my claim that they helped give us this mess. (See below, re Pinkie.)<br /><br />Re Marko - also excellent points. On the multiculturalism thing, I hadn't noticed that contradiction: the extreme cultural relativism when in comes to bashing liberal humanitarianism, then the extreme universalism when it comes to multiculturalism here in Britain. <br /><br />On anti-imperialism, most "anti-imperialist" politics is of course not genuinely anti-imperialist, but more properly Second Campit - supporting the rival imperialism. The RCP have failed, as far as I know, to come up with any thorough assessment of the state of "imperialism" in an age of Big Oil, Gulf power, rising China, the resurgance of brutal infra-nationalisms like that of the Republika Srpska, etc etc.bobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15439386754907203808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-43673128942228225712010-10-04T00:23:51.101+01:002010-10-04T00:23:51.101+01:00One thing that seems to have been missed out is RC...One thing that seems to have been missed out is RCP/Spiked's approach to the currently fashionable and utterly poisonous demonisation of working class youths, oft derided as 'chavs'. There is not a single other left journal that has denounced this attitude for what it is: class prejudice. Pure and simple.<br /><br />It's also rather ironic that an organisation such as the RCP, having turned away from class politics so completely is still the only one that defends many of the facets of working class life so vilified by nearly everyone else, namely pubbing, clubbing, smoking, swearing, McDonalds-eating, budget airline-flying, Tesco shopping, unofficial-striking etc etc.<br /><br />And before you say that's just a stereotype I'll say most of that list actually applies to your's truly (apart from the smoking/drinking).<br /><br />So, on balance, I'd say let the RCP/Spiked carry on. Of course in the greater scheme of things they're just pissing in the wind but then aren't we all?John Whitleynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-23208044711480119962010-10-03T20:21:18.623+01:002010-10-03T20:21:18.623+01:00"I recently wrote something like this: Frank ..."I recently wrote something like this: Frank Furedi and his cult have probably been more influential than any other bit of the British far left in the last decade. "<br /><br />Doesn't make it true, though, does it Bob? Perhaps you would like to justify that assertion.Pinkienoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10131050.post-40064110448639381622010-10-03T13:29:38.573+01:002010-10-03T13:29:38.573+01:00really excellent post bobreally excellent post bobrusty fruit juicenoreply@blogger.com