spiked - the independent online phenomenon

vote for your favourite

anybody who's read Lee and Herring's The Ironic Review shd be familiar with this mind-blowing site btw.

I have a thing for irrationalism.

I can't remember the last time i saw a Brendan o'Neill piece that wasn't hysterical, trolling nonsense. Puts me off the whole venture.

Misanthropy vs irrationalism for me.

gotta vote for misanthropy tbh. not that i have disgust for the entire human race mind you, just for the people that write for spiked.

i'm a misanthropy fan it's true, but luddism has its attractions.

i love how "priggishness" is a transparent code-word for the so-called politically correct brigade.

am also down with illiberalism and controlled doses of prejudice.

The only good thing about the Spiked / LM / Institute of Ideas / RCP / Frank Furedi axis is their stuff about how people perceive risk. Apart from that they are all a bunch of Tory-Ayn Rand nutters using the language of the left to peddle reactionary opinions.

goddamit that's Ed Miliband's job

Misanthropy, easily. I have a soft spot for irrationalism but usually it just makes me frustrated and angry.

chose irrationalism, that'll show those damned rationalists.

Spiked… idk, I'm always surprised it's still going - still chugging along, still pretending to be quite serious, still publishing 3rd rate cultural crit + ooh-contrary LM challops by men in glasses; no-one ever notices, though, from what I can see - maybe I move in the wrong bit of the internet, but no-one seems to give 1 sol. shit about them. What an odd place.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

didn't we leave out "Corruption"? I mean, isn't there pro-smoking stuff largely related to the money they get from tobacco companies?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

http://i.imgur.com/W4eBQ.png

search for anything uk politics related and something by that bawbag appears

hat tip to the telegraph seo crew

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KgdW57GrSc

http://i.imgur.com/W4eBQ.png

The secular beatification of Rachel Corrie sums up everything that is wrong with modern solidarity with Palestine

http://i.imgur.com/W4eBQ.png

Posh-bashing has replaced prole-bashing as the nastiest strain in British politics

won't somebody think of the poshes?

hang on in british politics i missed that bit. has Osborne been happy slapping hereditary lords again?

in moments of temperate weakness i downplay the importance of machine-gunning cunts like this

his shtick of sardonic panel show contributor mixed with guardian comment thread psycho is pretty singular u gotta admit

How about a riot against class determinism?

How about leeches inserted into your urethra?

Spiked is a whole website devoted to trolling and challops, it's also a classic case of former lefties being even more swivel-eyed than dyed-in-the-wool Tories.

that's called Paul Johnson Syndrome iirc but tbh i can't describe public school kids as "former lefties" with a straight face

saw a really awesome looking Paul Johnson history book in the charity shop last week but i've got his "History of England" and one book of delightfully savage mentalism is enough tbh

Isn't Frank Furedi the guiding light for these clowns? Formerly a Marxist sociologist. But yeah, point taken in general.

The fashionable idea that an individual’s class background determines his future and his fortunes is not nearly as radical as it seems.

politics is a parlour game to see who can reconfigure the same few century-old talking points to appear most 'radical', maybe by fusing a shockingly progressive attitude towards sunday opening hours to traditional values on land ownership in order to create a new radical feudalism

in a way this shit pre-dates American neo-cons, Johnson is atavistic here and nobody cd seriously say Julie Burchill was ever a leftist but the Mail in the 80s was full of ex-Trots bringing the monetarism iirc

the idea is to carry forward the sense of being 'radical' from their distant trot youth by employing a savagely debilitated idea of challops and trolling ie just random contrarianism and 'makes u think' crap in order to radically unseat both left and right! who are both wrong!

Frank Turnerism?

oh shit hush my mouth

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Turnerism-The-Un-Official-Religion-of-Frank-Turner/256766917681567

oh god he is probably a spiked fellow traveller

no question

I suspect Mumford & Sons are onboard too

radical new idea -- why should we be forced to pay for roads we don't use? all roads to be funded by holistic, radically nonpublic synergistic co-operatives, thereby profiting from charges paid by school buses, police cars and other government vehicles who want to use them

i saw Alexei Sayle do some actual funny shit about private road-building one time

alexei sayle being funny would be quite a radical development, even if his heart's in the right place

he used to do some legit funny shit i think but preaching to the choir is some soul-knackering boredom

mark thomas reprazent

Frank Turner – Love Ire & Song Lyrics

Well a teacher of mine once told me
That life was just a list of disappoints and defeats
And you could only do your best,
And I said "That's a fucking cop-out,
you're just washed up and your tired,
and when I get to your age I won't be such a coward"

.....

Let's be 1905 but not 1917,
Let's be heroes, let's be martyrs, let's be radical thinkers
Who never have to test drive the least of their dreams
Let's divide up the world into the damned and safe
And then ride to the valleys like the old life brigade
And straighten our backs and we won't be afraid
And they'll celebrate our deaths with a national parade

surprised dudes at Eton were telling him that tbh

1905 was more radical than 1917, because it radically envisaged the idea of a constitutional monarchy, whereas executing the cunts and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat was a lazy milquetoast cop-out

pretty sure Joe Stalin was into the dividing up the world into the damned and the safe thing

lol we had a history teacher at school who used to call him joe in a way that probably wasn't but definitely sounded affectionate

much as i love Robert Wyatt i'm always wary of the fact that he'd probly kick the shit out of me for eating pigs and not digging on crazy Joe

i mean kick the shit out of me with his chair obv

http://i.imgur.com/17N0G.png

start "Things Brendan O'Neill Doesn't Do" poll y/n?

ehh it's 2pm on friday might as well

yeah but i think i'm finishing in the next 15 mins or so i cd go home and play Oblivion instead or something

don't feel whimsical enough right now

No results found for "furedi fandom"

http://i.imgur.com/W4eBQ.png

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mobileweb/brendan-oneill/angela-jolie-mastectomy_b_3273003.html

From Jade Goody having her cancer diagnosed on Indian TV to Kerry Katona doing interviews about her bipolar disorder to Stephen Fry writing about his depression... in both the tabloid and high-brow sections of the celebrity world, talking about being sick is not only increasingly acceptable - it's expected.

obviously been pished off his tits for the last 5 years

glad to see he's setting a personal example of how to lead a brave, rebellious life by writing contrarian bullshit on the internet

Just went on Spiked for the first time in many years. It's almost sweet the way the layout has made no concession to the last 5-10 years of progress in web design. It rigidly and steadfastly takes up the left-hand 45% of my modest monitor. Is it symbolically clinging to the left? who knows!

http://i.imgur.com/9ok7kk1.gif

why do cunts end up like this

been on the pedro ximenez and want answers

http://i.imgur.com/W4eBQ.png

hi sir

is it that they're taught conflicting disciplines of empathy to all and crude managementkult self-actualisation in their formative years and can only find resolution through picking fights with strawman nannystaters against whom they seem (to themselves) bastions of free thought and levity

because that, as they say, is having your cake and fucking it too

You have tried to insert a duplicate message.
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http://i.imgur.com/LC7eBm4.png

it's worth rehosting just for that implacable sardonic glowering into the abyss

resembles a cross between matt dc and a (very pleasant) schoolmate of mine

actually it's almost exactly how I pictured the protagonist of Remainder

this week i was mindful of reposting just that byline photo itt but then i forgot but then i saw he had been ragging on jolie the pretentious, cancerous hypocritical enemy of reason so he got his revive

christ the clamour to fill hitchens' void is nauseating

Hitchens had more principle than any of these fuckers will have in their entire lives

well obviously. they're taking the bits that suit them

That 'decriminalise rape now imo' barrister woman is on of this lot.

who is that?

http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/13604/

Not the sort of barrister you'd want defending you on anything serious huh

http://i.imgur.com/m7431MB.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/m7431MB.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/m7431MB.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/m7431MB.jpg

That guy sure is no sucka

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100240554/for-generations-radical-leftists-fought-for-press-freedom-why-have-they-abandoned-it-now/

angrier than I've ever been. fuck the press and fuck this guy

That is what modern Leftists think of the masses – that they’re cruel, dishonest, immoral, violent, and apparently these tendencies must be tamed by depriving the oiks of their daily fix of tabloid titillation. This is the true story behind the modern Left’s enthusiasm for more state interference in the world of ideas and news: the Left once believed in people; now it despises them.

http://i.imgur.com/m7431MB.jpgpinihttp://i.imgur.com/m7431MB.jpgns4u

I didn't realise he was still banging this shit out on a regular basis. His power to wind up the left must have waned significantly because I haven't seen anyone mention one of his pieces for months.

yes it's difficult to feel anything but contempt for hacks dredging up the same tiresome shit year after year, especially when they have the imprimatur of a national newspaper behind them

Nous nous moquions, il y a un an, avec une grande raison, de la prétendue liberté des Anglais, qui n’ont pas la liberté indéfinie de la presse
- Brendan O'Neill

http://i.imgur.com/W4eBQ.png

If Morrissey's autobiography is crap, how will Penguin recover from having released it as a classic? Actually, even if it's good, still some very serious questions will have to be asked about Penguin's ability to be the gatekeeper of the best of human knowledge and writing when it is willing to publish a pop star's musings alongside the greatest literature of all time. Penguin is effectively using the word classic in the same way young people now use it – not to mean a work of art of recognised and substantial value, but rather to mean "wicked, dude".

"wicked, dude"

Dude, it's meant to be funny.

Independent going in hard on this too.

. How do you wreck overnight the reputation of a global brand that, since 1946, has built up its worldwide trust on the basis of consistent excellence, expert selection and a commitment to pick and sell only the very best? Easy, really. You chuck 67 years of editorial rigour and learning out of the corporate window and kowtow to the whims of a petulant pop icon.

Though without the dated youth speak.

pretty sure i could v. quickly find a list of 20 or more Penguin Classics that let the side down more than this tedious Moz jape. having said that, fuck this tedious Moz jape.

iiiiiiiiiiin one

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_uE49w633SVk/TQQ-KLmILZI/AAAAAAAAADM/n0XeTcWhhv0/s1600/atlas-shrugged-penguin-modern-classics.jpeg

That is a Modern Classic, rather than a Classic.

i thought Moz is going in Modern Classics? either way, one could argue that a section of both lists is the pulp/genre fiction of its day, lent dignity with time

It's going to be a black-jacketed Classic according to Penguin's website. There's tonnes of pulp stuff on both lists but they're mostly notable / important books, even if they are't, strictly speaking, any good. It's bad brand management, i think, but it will probably boost the Classic imprint's revenues about 1000% this year.

it is bad brand management but i never have to own it, so.

it wd be less bad brand management if Morrissey was half the writer his devotees think he is.

Yes, i'm just annoyed that it puts paid to my plan to own every Penguin Classic ever printed.

Best thing about that Penguin cover is the distinct whiff of fascism that illustration gives off.

lol

Is there a site like Arts & Letters Daily except not so stupid?

still love the chronicle but christ the aldaily is um problematic

"The global economy has its ugly corners but the overall system delivers more happiness than all the failed utopias of the past. Disagreeing with this makes you a pathetic faggot, SOME AUSTRIALIAN COLUMNIST explains..."

― gff, Thursday, August 30, 2007 1:49 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"do you think Hitler was bad? Guess what, Stalin was really bad also. BOOK REVIEWER FOR SPIKED ONLINE elucidates..."

― gff, Thursday, August 30, 2007 1:55 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.spiked-online.com/images/Lawlor.jpg

o god the thought of siding with the Spiked massive might drive me to vote "Stay" after all

Golly, Spiked on the same side as the hard right, what strange bedfellows.

Have noticed a female journalist (don't know her name) from Spiked has been popping on telly lately, just saw her discussing International Women's Day on Sky News... I think you can guess what she thinks of it, in fact you could probably guess at every single word that comes out of her mouth.

She was hugely in favour of celebrating feminism and campaigning against all the very real inequalities that women throughout the world are still subject to?

Not quite.

Damn I thought I had it

tbh she was thrown when the Sky presenter pointed out that not every woman in the world lives in Zone 1 (some live in Zone 4), paraphrasing somewhat there. Not very impressive all round.

These are all people making up in later life for all the fun they missed out on by not being Young Conservatives tbf

Another day, another 12 year old from Spiked arguing the toss on Sky News, this time about the statue of Cecil Rhodes that some students want removed from some Oxford college.

o man the so-called politically correct brigade are censoring our glorious history which shd totally be celebrated

waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice, luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism

k I reckon supporting Cecil scores as misanthropy, prejudice, Luddism and illiberalism at least

Seems like programme makers have discovered Spiked, so expecting more appearances from these twats.

when oh when will old white imperialists be given the respect they deserve?

found an old Graun piece by intellectual heavyweight Will Hutton of a similar stripe to the Spikeistas equating "not having monuments celebrating dead imperialists" with "re-writing history" which seems a bit of a stretch tbh

"remember when they pulled down that statue of Lenin and then everybody forgot what happened in Russia in 1917?"

maybe there's something to be said for leaving shameful effigies in place as a reminder of the more hateful episodes of our history?

oh wait we still have david cameron so i guess that covers all those bases [/trenchant social commentary]

O'Neill. Daniels. Two men.

man this site has really gone hard on the rape denialism in the past few weeks.

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/spiked-online.com/authors/BrendanONeill/headline_new.jpg

As well as being the editor of spiked, Brendan is also a columnist for the Big Issue and Reason. He writes widely for a variety of other publications, including the Telegraph, the Spectator and the Australian. He is the author, most recently, of A Duty to Offend: Selected Essays (2015).

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/spiked-online.com/authors/BrendanONeill/headline_new.jpgI! I said https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/spiked-online.com/authors/BrendanONeill/headline_new.jpgI!

What you lhttps://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/spiked-online.com/authors/BrendanONeill/headline_new.jpghttps://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/spiked-online.com/authors/BrendanONeill/headline_new.jpgking at, you little rich bhttps://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/spiked-online.com/authors/BrendanONeill/headline_new.jpgy!

powerful

Claire Fox, talking about people on the left posts overreacting to Trump's tweets, "... and I'm from the Left". Hard to follow that one.

Seems like programme makers have discovered Spiked, so expecting more appearances from these twats.

― A Fifth Beatle Dies (Tom D.), Wednesday, 9 March 2016 10:58 (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Three in the last 24 hours: Big Bren himself, throwing his support behind the Boris/Gove/JRM coup; specky freedom of speech at all costs 12-year old; "the biggest problem women have today are these middle class feminists" middle class woman.

exterminate the brutes is probably in order at this point

Brendan O'Really? putting on a fine save-a-Trump performance right now, what with the campaign against the President by the liberal mainstream media and Hilary not exactly being squeaky clean either, dontchaknow. Time to forget Hillsborough too btw.

I'd love to see Brendan getting beaten to death by a gang of Scouse football hooligans! But let's not forget he is friendly with some 90's ILM indie counterculture heroes, who are apparently beyond criticism.

Oh who?

The Stereolab connexion.

Need a bit more than that? Brendan's buddies w/ Laetitia?

I doubt it. But they all drink from the same cup. The Furedi Cup.

lol! here we go again!

band with lifelong association with right-wing posh arseholes are completely blameless... again!

if you like their music it doesn't really matter, but apparently taking the piss out of them on message boards is out of control wokeness!

you're not really responding to anyone itt rn

well I am and cross referencing another thread, tbf.

james

no one posting on this thread since the revive said anything in defense of sadier on that other thread

I was responding to LBI's post.

I might have misinterpreted it, but that was what I was responding to.

Lol @ 'Furedi cup'

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-49435041

fuck the bbc and their need for "balance" which means we have to read the opinion of a spiked online/policy exchange moron in this piece

Surprised to see she isn’t one of the many pricks from there appearing on a select committee this year.

Dark laugh at her byline on this piece of shit paired with the box that covers the top half of the page.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/decolonise-curriculum-movement-re-racialises-knowledge/

[to the tune of Transformers]

Nazis in disguise

These popped up again on the main thread but I'll ask here instead of derailing.

I still don't really understand where these are coming from. I could understand if they were Strasserite/Nationalist but they just seem to occupy the same space as the Spectator. I guess they're sort of a UK equivalent of Rave Dubin / Pim Tool but they aren't organic in any way, and Spiked seems like it kind of is and has a real audience? Identity politics for people who hate identity politics? (but thats kind of centrists, though I guess thats for people who are blind to the fact they have an identity)

Is Nagle one of them yet?

some good background on the Right Wing Pundits thread.

better link.

It makes sense to think of them primarily as an astroturfing exercise / extension of a libertarian think tank, rather than a media outlet with a significant popular following.

I had thoughts last night that I'm too tired to go deep into right now but in brief:

I wonder if the best way to look at them is thru the insane fissiparity of left politics throughout its UK history, where being correct and maintaining the true faith is infinitely more important than building an actual collective force capable of political action. And where that purity seems to mean attacking any thought that deviates from your own.

Plus obviously they're financially supported by libertarian capital and they're all really cosplaying middle class tools, which shouldn't be overlooked.

It makes sense to think of them primarily as an astroturfing exercise / extension of a libertarian think tank, rather than a media outlet with a significant popular following.

Plus obviously they're financially supported by libertarian capital and they're all really cosplaying middle class tools, which shouldn't be overlooked.

which makes them Rave Dubin and Pim Tool but for a UK audience....but they were 'real' at some point, and have something of a 'real' audience, but maybe just a small percentage

I guess actually this makes them sort of a RB Leipzig or Salford City?

some good background on the Right Wing Pundits thread.

― Fizzles,

Oh yeah, I thought I had seen a better link than this one. Its strange that this sphere has such a long history in the UK - which is what makes me think its "real" or at least partially real, and not just think thank funded stuff.

as i say, that's where the micro-factions of UK communism come in

There is a huge question mark over whether they were always like this. From a Guardian article about Living Marxism 19 years ago:

It is a meeting of strange minds. Until its closure, LM more or less aped the conservative rightwing political, economic and cultural libertarian arguments being pushed heavily in the US by free market organisations a like the Reason Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute and the Cato Institute. These are all funded by industry but are just the tip of a vast network of “freedom” groups all linked intellectually and semi-formally by the loose coalition known as the Freedom Network.

The meeting of minds in the libertarian zone in Britain allowed Forest, the pro-smoking group funded by the tobacco in dustry, to organise a debate (Blair’s Britain - The Tyranny of Political Correctness) in the Groucho club last month under the institute’s umbrella with Dr Masden Pirie of the free market Adam Smith Institute in the chair.”We get on very well with these people,” said Dr Pirie.

Another rightwing think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs, helped organise speakers for a debate last week on war crimes at University College London.

The source of the LM-institute’s funding has always been a source of wonderment. Living Marxism had 3,000 subscribers and LM rose to 10,000 but the sums never seemed to add up. Fox says everyone worked for free and it was always difficult to balance the books.

Furedi has been at this grift for decades.

Spiked seems like it kind of is and has a real audience

If by a real audience you mean BBC and Sky commissioning editors, that is. The Taxpayers Alliance must hate them because they've been pushed way down the Right Wing Rentamouth Arseholes list and even Kate Andrews is having to fight for airtime. Troubing times.

By real audience I meant pre-recent(ish) media boosting (or possibly pre-branding). I don't mean the BBC etc, that most assuredly, is not real

But ShariVari has just debunked that idea anyway!

time for the periodic re-up for this Pandora’s Docs piece on the links between Adam Curtis and Frank Furedi. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to Curtis balanced but does contain some analysis of Furedi, How He Came to Be and What He Is.

balanced

I can’t say I know all that much about Curtis to comment on that part (although his thing about people with ocd got my back up), but fuck me, that’s a really bracing and thorough piece. Thanks for sharing.

The victim culture thing is quite otm except it seems as though these days they’ve switched from merely scorning anyone who is structurally or personally oppressed to actively advocating in favour of the oppressor. Which ofc is fascist as fuck.

I'm going to have to spend some time going through that piece as there is a lot to get through, but I disagree with some of the analysis of how he talks about Eduard Limonov for example, he is not painted as a heroic figure but as one with dangerous ideas, especially dangerous for how attractive they are. On the whole it seems like a post-AWOBMOLG rebuke (the series was a mess, probably his weakest work) but feel like Hypernormalisation cleared up a lot of these questions.

wait, the source of at least some of their money in the 90s was known: they ran cyberia, the first (or one of the first) internet cafes in London, and made a mint from it?

they were in early and in smart on the technical side of converting print media to digital, i worked with a couple of their drones on this in the late 90s in the sight and sound production office and they were very good on tech stuff -- they went on to do the same for the guardian

even in the early 90s they were busily organising public debates, i was on the panel for one of them (and there were a couple of wire reviewers who were RCP spods lol)

(i feel i've told this story before)

right-wing trash in a left-wing guise is his contention, via associating Curtis with post-Marxist libertarianism of Frank Furedi ... His question about who you are co-opting when you say 'we', and then looking at Curtis's fellow travellers, is fairly persuasive. Though sometimes I think the piece sometimes confuses Curtis's fascination for approval.

was my original assessment. no desire to drag Curtis into this but the brief summary of Furedi’s noxious progress is useful, especially why his targets were his targets (competition for radical campus attention, basically)

xp to camaraderie.

i feel you’ve told this many times before mark!

Interesting piece on Curtis - fair bit to absorb! I'm not super familiar with Curtis as I've found his stuff irritating, and difficult to watch. I feel like Curtis was one of the first to make Putin into this all-powerful figure? that now seems default for mainstream media, particularly since 2016)

Going back to the spiked people, I'm getting a sense of Trotskyist/Communist left in the 60s/70s the viewed itself like those Soviet posters, as strong men that were going to do great things, storm factories and other fantasies. And that by the late 1980s that was losing the battle with reality. And that the feminists and the environmentalists were a sign of weakness and how are we going to storm the factories with these losers in our midst, wanting to make sure we don't stand on a daffodil on the way to the factory?

And the wish their ranks were made up of miners and not souped up horticulturalists. And somewhere along the line a fetishising of the miners and growing intolerance and hatred for those perceived as weak, and who hadn't performed or been up to scratch?

Which then ties in with the Great Man stuff. A fetish for strength and power that needed a new vehicle once the illusion the old vehicle was going to work finally died

All grift aside, this feels a pretty organic process

Sorry on incoherence, kind of thinking aloud

Does Furedi's 'career' essentially foreshadow Jordan Peterson's or is that too facile (and pointless) a comparison?

feel religion plays a significant part in peterson’s schtick? not really applicable here.

the RCP calling their magazine "living marxism" precisely bcz they had declared that exactly what avil describes, that kind of marxism-as-factory-centred-workerism, was DEAD marxism (bcz the working class was now passive and co-opted and so the proletariat were no longer available as a vanguard: the future would be about intellectuals! and technology!

(this general worry abt the co-opted passivity of the WC was widespread in the 4th international in the 70s: the SWP made a big deal of the "great downturn" and very much turned to recruiting among students and teachers, with much less union activism -- which became a self-fulfilling prophecy)

xp I guess I was more thinking about how the academy becomes like a benign shelter and a legitimising force for all the truth claims these schmucks are wont to make.

here are the times i've talked abt cyberia on other threads lol:

they're a mid-70s offshoot of IS (which underwent many splits at that time: what was left evolved into the swp): the revolutionary communist party then split from the revolutionary communist group* over tactics relating to anti-apartheid (ribald voice from the back: "yes, furedi was pro! etc etc haw haw") -- its organ "living marxism" (so-called bcz everyone else's was declared dead) was active until the mid-90s, when a journalist they libelled during the yugoslav civil war sued it to extinction. they were rebooting at this time as radical libtertarian cyberlefties anyway -- they ran and made a lot of cash from the early internet cafe cyberia -- and (presumably cynically) adapted to harmonise with the tech flavour of libertarianism instead. even in the early 90s the other trot orgs mocked them as a yuppie party

*according to wikipedia, the RCG's paper fight racism! fight imperialism! is still running for nearly 40 years, tho it's a LOOOOONG time since i've seen a copy on sale. rumours that Spiked! is abt to be renamed don't fight racism! don't fight imperialism! are too funny to ignore

― mark s, Friday, December 7, 2018 4:34 PM (ten months ago) bookmarkflaglink

living m's USP in the 80s -- hence the name -- was that all the other available micro- and macro-flavours of marxism were getting everything wrong (hence were "dead m") and important updates were needed in light the shape of the modern world and where science was taking us

i: they made a good gamble on technology -- cyberia was them, and i ran into several lower echelon minions in media tech positions in the 90s, where they were often p good at what they did
ii: they made a good gamble on contrarian columnism in reactionary papers (m!ck hume at the times was the brendon o'n of the 90s)
iii: they seriously fucked up during the yugoslav civil war and LM was sued out of existence by journalists they told lies about
iv: they are well organised and long-game enough to have done well in the (declining, decadent) space of legacy media, by its deeply fuck awful (bcz so easily gameable) standards, but have not yet found a good face for the TV screen and they're so-so at best on social media, quite easily dunkable etc
v: i don't know if he always was but i think their chief guru is now literally just a fascist (he's another orban-fancier)…
vi: … and the many younger minions more or less a cloud of biddable idiots working out his plan, wittingly or unwittingly

― mark s, Wednesday, November 7, 2018 12:38 PM (eleven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

doublechecked wikipedia to see if the RCP actually ever identified as trots -- often an issue in flyspeck sectarian uk groupuscules -- and the answer is apparently YES tho i think they were nonetheless not echt fourth-internationalists despite a thread of connection (unexplored in WP) to the IS: their argt was that the living line of revolutionary marxism had broken and would need to be re-established

anyway what actually caught my eye was that they drew up a document in 1983 called PREPARING FOR POWER so you can't say they weren't optimistic

(their chief source of presence is probably that they were REALLY early in on the internet, running a v successful internet cafe called CYBERIA and putting themsevves around as advisors on e.g. magazine wanting to turn digital -- i worked with a little clutch of them in the mid-late 90s and tbh, terrible politics aside, learnt quite a lot abt computer publishing from them)

― mark s, Monday, August 6, 2018 6:24 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

the journalist who "sued living marxism to extinction" was ed vulliamy, recently spotted commenting sourly on the handke nobel

I wonder if the likes of Fred look at BernieBros in this way

I don't get the comparison.

My RW cousin has said he basically agrees with Spiked on every issue, and "it is good that there are reasonable people on the left". So thats one part of their audience

It did make me think about the role of Conspiracies. My cousin will usually caveat most things with saying "I dont think theres a conspiracy", and it struck me that the Spiked world is generally pretty anti-Conspiracy Theory? Except presumably for something like "Greta Thunberg is being manipulated by people who want working class people to have their cars confiscated"). Its quite a prosaic view of the world, and cospiracies are sort of mystical and probably bourgeois, like yoga, hippies, and Marks and Spencers - and therefore to be treated with caution and disdain

their pov is so cynical and inconsistent that they have no need for a conspiracy

Lol I mean the Koch brothers astro turf empire is a major and well known "conspiracy" that they are small but active players in. Also they all seem really unchill and annoying to spend any time with.

Seems as much to do with a lack of imagination, a dislike of anything thats complex. A variant on the "get it done, how hard can it be?" school. Proper tunes

Claire Fox having all sorts of problems with the Weinstein verdict. Why are these vile people given any platform at all?

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n13/jenny-turner/who-are-they

https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-antifada/ep-93-how-trotsky-got-spked-JUqkKSPrzMe/#episode

Couple of bits on all this here

meanwhile on the front page of spiked:

‘There’s no direct evidence that the lockdowns are working’
Dr John A Lee on why we need to keep questioning the response to Covid-19.

how helpful !

Very interesting article, good to see it slightly more from the inside than usual, but think she could have done a bit more to mention the other tendrils the LM network has wrapped around the media in the UK. Particularly liked the ending, it's true that they are not an independent cancer in society, but tie into the immensely-arrogant, over-reliant-on-rationality thread which runs through most of the media in the UK, the "let's talk like grown-ups" thing is a good tell, and it is indeed the mark of intellectual growth which has been stunted by lack of empathy (and, again, arrogance.)

If possible they're on TV even more than usual at the moment, Claire Fox certainly is.

jenny turner piece nearly a decade old now!!

sorry that's just a content-free "time flies when everything is fucked" type post

I haven't read the article yet, the podcast came up semi-randomly and ended up listening to it on my run this morning. I then noticed the article linked from the podcast, will most likely read next week

xp oh wow didn't even notice it was a piece from 10 years ago!

Free speech for some, massive pasty foreheads for others, culture war for everyone!

Seems like the epidemic is spreading! pic.twitter.com/DsJfjiBAgW

— Huw Lemmey (@huwlemmey) June 3, 2020

I think it is terrible that poor Brenda is getting shamed for his hilariously massive forehead!

Lol autocorrect brenda

sorry for self-posting but it really is too easy

Hi @spikedonline Brendan O'Neill has a grotesquely distended forehead and also has bad opinions, do not block me as this is a free speech issue

— Neil Stewart (@neilstewart) June 3, 2020

A sad day for free speech on the web pic.twitter.com/qZBLrKRn2h

— Neil Stewart (@neilstewart) June 3, 2020

lol

silenced4truth

I specifically told them NOT to block me, because free speech, and now look what has happened

Now you could say there are quite a lot of people living in his grotesquely distended forehead, rent free.

*muffled screams* pic.twitter.com/6gzVvc3t2F

— Guybrush Tweetgood (@Gordopolitz) June 3, 2020

now that's just taking things too far

*eyes bleeding*

Kenneth Cranham in Hellraiser 2 dot gif (was gonna post it, thought better of it)

https://t.co/AFYhEoLkI4 pic.twitter.com/1Ff1WAmbIA

— John Duncan (@Johntheduncan) June 7, 2020

brendan o’neill but with each post his forehead gets bigger: a thread pic.twitter.com/09wGN47N0U

— jonathan nunn (@demarionunn) June 9, 2020

LOLz even though I kind of hate that this arse is famous enough to have the pish ripped out of him online.

I want to see him getting shamed about his appearance so hard that he is reduced to wearing a ridiculous bowler hat or a mark knopfler head band on the BBC or sky news!

Head band? He'd need a cummerbund.

hated and derided likeness of one of history's greatest monsters being dredged up from the bottom of Bristol harbour

off to museum with you pic.twitter.com/nUev2dt9ND

— Guybrush Tweetgood (@Gordopolitz) June 11, 2020

if i write a thinkpiece demanding people stop forehead-shaming Brendan are Spiked gonna have to run a bit about why forehead-shaming is good?

By Trying to Ban the Forehead-Shaming of Brendan O'Neill, the "Tolerant" Left are Showing their True Colours

- by Brendan O'Neill

subs, please check

pic.twitter.com/GNju7K8C3C

— Nooruddean (@BeardedGenius) June 15, 2020

thought you would be posting this, which is less funny

Boris Johnson has asked Munira Mirza to set up his commission on racial inequality. Here's some of her former work. pic.twitter.com/yOY40Cntjb

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) June 15, 2020

How about setting up Gary Glitter to head a commission on child abuse next!

Look. Criticise Furedi, Revolutionary Communist Party/Living Marxism, Institute of Ideas, Spiked Online, Academics For Academic Freedom, Academy of Ideas, Ad-Hoc Hands Off the Middle East Committee, Africa Direct, Audacity, Battle of Ideas, Belfast Salon, Big Potatoes, BioNews >

— Andy Fleming (@slackbastard) June 16, 2020

Extraordinary thread on how many cut-outs they have.

Spiked… idk, I'm always surprised it's still going - still chugging along, still pretending to be quite serious, still publishing 3rd rate cultural crit + ooh-contrary LM challops by men in glasses; no-one ever notices, though, from what I can see - maybe I move in the wrong bit of the internet, but no-one seems to give 1 sol. shit about them. What an odd place.

― you don't exist in the database (woof), Friday, 27 January 2012 13:43 (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink

flashback to a more innocent age

Suggest calz gets himself down to the Huddersfield Salon and reports back.

"Families for Freedom, Families Need Freedom"

when PIE amalgamated with some anti-vax organisations!

brendan o'neill on his love of dogfighting pic.twitter.com/Hdy7dDqQcF

— gart/barfield (@wurrance) June 17, 2020

Is that actually real though or some fake Twitter shite?

Since when has Brendan O'Neill ever criticized Communists? That doesn't fit the Furedi narrative.

yeah probably fake, but he will write a dog-fighting piece at some point.

am all for Brendan getting naked in a barn and going toe to paw with a couple of half-starved Rotties

lmao he's wearing a fucking hat again pic.twitter.com/mvtftjKeJm

— P.G. Chodehouse (@mynnoj) June 17, 2020

well done to people for giving this snowflake a huuuge slaphead complex through their persistent meme-posting!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EavBSjaXkAEsfEs?format=jpg&name=large

well done to people for giving this snowflake a huuuge slaphead complex through their persistent meme-posting!

Yes, a beautiful thing has happened.

Sorry, but it blatantly did NOT completely cross the line. pic.twitter.com/t6SUcFUZNY

— That Ed boy below has just repeated my joke (@TreborRhurbarb) June 17, 2020

Mild starvation is good for children says the hate filled far right loser Brendan O’Neill pic.twitter.com/IhLsvbcKVQ

— Simon Gosden. Esq. #fbpe 🕷🇪🇺🇬🇧🏴‍☠️🦠🦠 (@g_gosden) June 17, 2020

Brendan O'Neill is ridiculous enough as it is, so why so these unfunny Twitter cunts feel the need to make up stuff he didn't say?

Oh shit is that a fake?

Second one today.

apologies for sharing it.

I blame Twitter.

well the childish appearance shaming seems to be more effective than the attempts at satire atm! I'm not judging either though, but it's no doubt great that he has been pressured into wearing a hat at zoom chats.

If it is getting under the skin of his freakishly distended dome then it is good satire, who cares if it is childish?

I heartily approve of the giant forehead stuff, the other stuff is pointless and unfunny and it's perpetrators should be shot.

brendan o'neill pretending not to be on twitter - and not personally, obsessively trawling through each and every meme depicting his grotesquely oblong forehead himself - is very funny pic.twitter.com/BUVGuaubX8

— Stan The Golden Boy (@tristandross) June 18, 2020

"big Irish head"

might be better pretending he's from from Easter Island!

It's anti-Irish racism, you see, that's his only possible line of defence here - except that, through his slavish devotion to the teachings of Chairman Furedi, he's painted himself in a corner and there's really no way out for him. Sweet.

As soon as he, lol, pulls too hard on that thread marked identity politics, as a repressed North London posh 2nd gen Irish white man - big heads matter! Then as well as looking even more ridiculous, his whole world unravels and now it is he who has become the snowflake!

I mean yeah, very enjoyable fun and games, but I'm a little concerned this is coming across as bullying. Shouldn't we be fighting Brendan with facts? ie calling him a cunt?

The fact is he has a grotesquely distorted head.

facts don't care about Brendan's feelings

i have a beautifully shaped head btw

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Sch%C3%A4del_der_Chongos.jpg

thought the one on the right said "Fenian Chungus" for a minute

LOL Brendan's new nickname.

it's Gaelic for mini-Brendan!

"you know waht they call Brendan O'Neill in Paris?" "Le Massive Main"

📢📢 WORLD CUP OF BRENDANS, ROUND TWO 📢📢 pic.twitter.com/h5Lq1xrGAC

— 🎶 you would cry too if it happened to you 🎶 (@RavenholmCLP) June 19, 2020

You know, I have to say I think it* has really gone too far now.


*the featureless fleshy gap between his hairline and his eyebrows

clearing out ancient document boxes of misc tat i unearthed a promotional card for EASYNET, which was the service provider associated with CYBERIA, which was the pioneering internet cafe associated with LIVING MARXISM and the RCP in the mid-90s lol

i never entered cyberia, nor did i sign up for easynet, but i did know a few members of the RCP in those years -- digital capability and the freedom to offend were their open sesames, as i think i've mentioned elsewhere. they weren't the worst ppl i worked with -- they were often actually p good at IT stuff -- but even then they were kind of exhausting. i may even have a copy of the issue of LM they got sued for, which shd have bankrupted them and stopped them but somehow didn't. there was a LOT of vc capital washing around them at that time (tho not for their "provocative" opinions on the war in yugoslavia)

You knew it was coming, but nevertheless here it is. pic.twitter.com/XES0buaywe

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) December 6, 2020

Of course, the anti-working-class left and the NuFootball commentariat (who love the beautiful game but loathe its ugly fans) instantly found the Millwall fans guilty of racism.

Schrödinger's culturally working-class football fans that are middle class enough to be able to afford the season tickets and still working class enough to be legit nazis for the sake of Brendan's arguments.

just shooting bald fish with horribly distended bald heads in a barrel here

Brendan not able to get it into his grotesquely distended head that it's only Millwall fans who have booed taking the knee - though I supposer Brendan might argue they're the only working class football fans left in the UK, if not in the world.

Oops two distendeds there.

booing at West Ham and Colchester as well apparently, although not on the same scale

West Ham. Well there you go.

anyway always fun when bastions of liberality side with an act of political symbolism that's unmistakably far-right

the scare quotes around liberality should be implicit obv

Enjoying the idea that Joe Biden, who is a 100 year old liberal, is "obsessed with genderfluidity" pic.twitter.com/D9rG2OsdY8

— Rob Palk (@robpalkwriter) January 21, 2021

listen here, jack. we're gonna abolish gender. you're a gender critical feminist? come on, man!

Brendan's Irish peasant sensibilities have been shaken by the auld yin.

heaven forbid that there should be divisiveness in US politics

Amusing(?) myself at lunchtime by leafing through today's Daily Mail, thinking, "Jesus Christ, can you believe there are cunts who get handsomely paid for writing this shite?" when I come across a full page opinion piece by former editor of the Revolutionary Communist Party's official newspaper, Mick Hume. The bold Mick, who is holding forth on Partygate, starts his piece by saying, "I'm not concerned with defending Mr. Johnson" and, I think you can guess what's coming, proceeds to spend the entire article defending Mr. Johnson. Not quite the entire article because a lot of it is spent lambasting the BBC for criticizing Mr. Johnson as part of their policy of promoting the "woke agenda of Left-liberal urban elites". The main target of his ire being, wait for it, well known Left-liberal wokester, Nick Robinson. As I said, this cunt is getting paid for this shite.

This is really the best version of the mohicaned cunt who shouted at you about SWSS at uni turning up as your bank manager 20 years later

absolutely, though I struggle to see how these kinds of shenanigans are helping to advance the Leninist vanguard

he's advancing the class struggle, but doing it t'other way round against the proletariat. sort of like the Kriss Kross of the revolutionary vanguard. You aren't understanding this correctly from a Living Marxism viewpoint!

that's the worry that keeps me up at night: am I correctly grasping Frank Furedi and friends' Hegelian dialiectics?