Seizing back control: The ILX lol brexit is how we're all gonna die thread.

@Archimbaldo
The other part of Bad Milkshake Discourse: let's not be inconsistent about direct action.

Yes, you can consistently say that milkshaking Farage is good but egging Corbyn is bad. You can't say that one is harmless fun, exercising free speech, but the other is violent intimidation

@Archimbaldo
Left direct action (or certain forms of it) is a demonstration of power. Often it is intimidation. Sometimes obviously it's literal violence. Fine, but let's be honest about it. Being opportunistically mealy-mouthed, selectively outraged makes us look like hypocrites and liars

@Archimbaldo
Fascist violence is bad because it's fascist, not because it's violent. Anti-fascist violence is justified because it's antifascist, not because it isn't violent.

@Archimbaldo
If you think Brexit is a fight against fascism, don't call the police when protesters in yellow vests intimidate Owen Jones - form a militia and smash them.

I think I agree with this, that the distinction between violent and non-violent that a lot of ppl are making is fairly indistinct

Corbyn wasn’t egged, he was punched in the head. Anyone making the comparison is a fucking idiot.

Start freezing your milkshakes first, then we'll talk

Not that i disagree with the thrust of Mr Mboldo's argument, but as far as i'm aware nothing about the shakings so far really constitutes "violence" in intent or execution

the definition of 'violence' seems to be fairly malleable at this moment in time, on every side of the political spectrum. maybe it always is.

https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3577/3480840777_42d3450f8e.jpg

I'm ready..

I feel like a lot of ppl's assessment of whether this kind of stuff is 'violence' depends on who the target is.
I mean, this was literally the exact same thing that happened to Corbyn for example, and a lot of ppl who approved of one disapproved of the other

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTtOuP1-rJQ

I think it's legit to say that this was ok b/c this guy's a far-right creep and Corbyn isn't, but why not be open about that being the distinction rather than the act itself?

I guess you could say that the identities of the participants matter in a deeper way, e.g. if a white man throws something at a black female pol like Diane Abbott I think a lot of pro-milkshaking ppl would see that as an act of violence, but might say that the identities of the ppl involved changes the nature of the act, that making a distinction between the act and identities of the ppl involved is artificial?

I think you can draw a distinction between specific acts that appear to involve an intent to hurt or intimidate and those that appear to be about ridicule, but that specificity would vary case on case and might only really matter in a legal context. I broadly agree that trying to distinguish between "their" violence and "our" violence as qualitatively different is rhetorically futile.

Punching somebody with an egg in your hand is qualitatively different to throwing harmless liquid at them imo.

a lot of people would class words or insults or gestures as 'violence', or maybe political views. that seems a fairly growing definition in academia, though it does pose problems.

From what I can see the main effect of the last few weeks of elections, particularly the Euro elections, has allowed people on both sides of the argument to inhabit a lovely fantasy world where Parliamentary arithmetic doesn't exist.

Well i guess i think there are kinds of language use that are contextually designed to intimidate or instil fear and that could be construed as a form of violence. The problem or mistake is trying to reduce specifics to hard general rules.

Disturbing to see people laugh at Nigel Farage getting a milkshake thrown at him. What if it had been a sundae? What if he had rainbow sprinkles in his hair and butterscotch pooling in one of his ears? What if there was a maraschino cherry atop his head? Not so funny now, is it?

— David Roth (@david_j_roth) May 20, 2019

xxp was thinking that this morning Matt, even if these elections have a huge turnout what odds does it make to anything happening in Parliament?

Could you elucidate, Matt? Do you just mean parliament is likely to be hung?

Well i guess i think there are kinds of language use that are contextually designed to intimidate or instil fear and that could be construed as a form of violence. The problem or mistake is trying to reduce specifics to hard general rules.

like the law, lol.

(saying that in agreement with you)

The context of Corbyn was a violent right-winger went into a mosque on interfaith day intending to assault him, in direct view of a congregation that had been traumatised by another right-wing thug mowing down one of their congregants because it proved impossible to run over Corbyn or Sadiq Khan.

The first milkshaker was a guy who reacted in the moment to being surrounded by haranguing fascists who tried to beat him up after that. Subsequent milkshakers have no intention that couldn’t be sorted by a trip to the dry cleaners or a change of clothes. Women and minorities are frightened of injury or being killed, while right-wing bigots are frightened of mockery.

What I mean is, that when the dust has settled and everyone is claiming victory, we'll be in exactly the same place we were when May last tried to get the WA through Parliament, or at the indicative votes stage.

There's still no outcome that commands a majority of votes in Parliament. The main difference will be that an election is even less likely, because the Tories fear being obliterated and the CHUKers won't vote against the government in a no-confidence vote.

Yeah I'm not looking at these elections as meaning anything for brexit or UK politics in general, really - orienting principle should be who do you trust to make the right decisions in the EU parliament, for however long they still get to sit there.

Fuck sake, poor old Ted Heath was forever getting stuff thrown at him and no-one saw it as an assault on democracy. Stupid world we live in.

No doubt these elections would be deemed more meaningful if Labour were poised to win.

parliamentary sitch is basically labour holding their nerve until an election. how much pressure the PLP can pile on corbyn during this time will be largely dictated by what happens outside of westminster

It would point at something different regarding a general election maybe pom, but it still wouldn't affect this parliament, so not really

When you have elections where the leading party subsequently fails to win a single seat in the following General Election, then it's kind of hard to take them seriously.

parliamentary sitch is basically labour holding their nerve until an election.

An election is three years away.

I think I would question anyone who’s saying that stuff like this

Diane Abbott receives so many racist messages that her office does not have time to take them to the police every day, so an assistant bundles them up and sends them once a week.

A recent survey found that a third of all abuse sent to politicians goes to the shadow home secretary, one of Jeremy Corbyn’s closest allies, who 30 years ago became Britain’s first black female MP.

And we have the fun of the wa being rejected, may going and a headbanger successor appointed before then xp

Related:

http://gal-dem.com/why-are-some-people-more-outraged-by-milkshakes-than-racism/?utm_campaign=TwitterAutoPost&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitter

FTPA + a Tory party in meltdown should put it off for as long as possible, the lamer a duck is the longer it hangs on for.

Probably the stupidest of the many stupid things that the Independents did was say they wouldn't vote against the govt in a VONC, or do anything to precipitate a GE. An anti-Brexit party who have vowed not to do the one thing that might prevent Brexit - removing the Tories from power.

A gen election three years away is too much certainty when there is usually some calamity most weeks.

brexit will be an issue for the next two or three general elections at least. the sense of false urgency around brexit waxes and wanes, it might force the tories to do something wacky but I don't see the benefit of labour buying into it.

The first milkshake thrown was indeed the day before the kid who went viral - in Bury.

In theory the knowledge that the country fucking hates them might change Conservative behaviour - but in practice it'll probably be split between "the clear lesson is we should definitely pass the WA", "the clear lesson is that we should definitely not pass the WA", and "lol EU elections, Farage always does well at those"

More milkshakes thrown at right-wingers please. It's the perfect vehicle for deflating their pretensions to grandiosity.

New Brexit deal to be announced at 4pm. Quite something we are having vote at all.

Did anyone run this by the EU or is it more fantasy.

we discussed it elsewhere, and it's gone around on twitter, but my only concern with the milkshaking is how much mileage farage/yax gets out of it. the whole viral lol at farage thing doesn't seem to hurt him much, as far as i can see. more like a path to success. as long as they're being talked about they're winning imo.

if we're talking lived experiences i guess it's p interesting that brendan cox came out and condemned the milkshake throwing, while prefacing it by saying he condemns farage.

but i think the effect of sharing the videos or not is a more important thing to question than the act of throwing the milkshake, seems a legit protest to me and i agree with the idea that it's all too easy to say otherwise if you're not part of a group being targeted by far right.

personally i'm not convinced sharing the vids is a good thing - it just makes farage trend in the media. i don't think farage's route to success is about grandiosity. it's 'they hate me'

but it's impossible to prove either way i suppose.

Coverage of the Westboro Baptist Church in the US likely contributed to a decrease in homophobia. But as you say, these things are hard to prove.

ersonally i'm not convinced sharing the vids is a good thing - it just makes farage trend in the media. i don't think farage's route to success is about grandiosity. it's 'they hate me'

if farage is gonna be in the media, i'd much rather it be because he got drenched in sweet delicious milkshake and everyone laughed at him than because he was invited onto question time to bloviate for the 50th time

Is there a reason to think that about Westboro? Always assumed they were very much in the no such thing as bad publicity camp?

Yeah that viewpoint is predicated on an unmilkshaked farage getting no coverage this week, which is not reality xp

is that really the two options we have, either have him on question time or allow him to trend on twitter as we lol at him?

maybe you're right and it's already too late for such an approach, i dunno, i just tend to think we drag fringe things into the centre by expressing our hatred for them or ridiculing them on social media. it's a bit chicken egg but presumably question time are using some bullshit 'he gets people talking' logic too.

not on this exact topic but this article was p interesting i thought: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/the-alarming-return-of-nigel-farage

A candidate named Andrew Kerr, whose middle name is England, promised, “We are going to fight corruption.”

presumably question time are using some bullshit 'he gets people talking' logic too

i'd be more inclined to give question time the benefit of the doubt were it not for their audience producer being unmasked as a far-right wingnut a while back

Is there a reason to think that about Westboro? Always assumed they were very much in the no such thing as bad publicity camp?

Indeed, but their strategy backfired for the most part. To such an extent that Fox News briefly tried to rebrand them as a secret liberal plot aimed at discrediting the right.

xpost i dunno if it even matters - my experience of bbc newsrooms was an obsession with that kind of metric when deciding what to cover, coupled with a sort of (self?) hatred of stereotypical centre-left views and a fascination with 'real people' where a real person is someone with right wing views.

Anita Bryant and the pie is the ultimate example of a bit of comestible chucking turning out beautifully
https://pictorial.jezebel.com/lets-remember-the-time-anita-bryant-got-a-pie-to-the-fa-1829785694

someone should do a party by party analysis of what the effect of a pie to the leader's face would be

[insert ill-advised pie chart pun]

The first milkshake thrown was indeed the day before the kid who went viral - in Bury.

Knew it.

there is something really shady and "of the night about" Brendan Cox. Not just just that he was a confirmed serial sex pest and quite a dangerous one at times apparently. But I can't listen to anything he's got to say .. he's a nauseating slimeball lib type character as well off course.. but also wouldn't be surprised if he's got human remains under the patio.