love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

xp the Streetings of the party have no ideas and even less sense, they’ll be bad winners under Starmer when he doesn’t do whatever contradictory shit they say. He should be thankful a load of the old wreckers are gone tbh.

Attributing calculation to these guys is over-generous for the most part, which i think ogmor hinted at. A lot of it is simple reflexive tribal hate/fear. I'm increasingly convinced that Starmer's "slipperiness" is a product of him being without qualities or principles, except maybe in a narrow legalistic sense. The brighter end of the Right should realise they don't need to do very much at the moment. A Starmer win and the reappearance of reactionary scum like Reeves in the shadow cabinet will probably drive off enough off the activist left in despair that the middle-managers *will* de facto control the party for the foreseeable. I don't know what the best response to that situation ought to be, 2020 is giving a pretty thorough kicking to whatever fight people had left in them after the election.

Actually scratch that last bit, the response will be formed by better people than tired old dropouts like me. But it seems to me that the response may be peripheral to the Labour party, we may see/need a new Green/Occupy grassroots movement that does its groundwork away from our useless Parliamentary system.

I can tell you now for free I want nothing to do with the Green Party after their disgraceful 2019 election.

there might only be a few labour members who you cld kick out for antisemitism but there's a much larger number of members who will view all such purges as illegitimate and will fight them all the way. it's not even a q of will, the procedure will be a nightmare for any vast democratic organisation and everyone's already got furious and fallen out over it many times so it wld be v hard for anyone to broach this #sensibly even if they were in the position to do so. been so poor during the current crisis and v disappointed with labour just directing members to existing non-party groups all organised on facebook, lends a lot of weight to the idea that the labour party is not a suitable vehicle for any sort of grassroots organising, doubly so when no election is involved. this whole fantasy of the party being more than an electoral machine - turns out if you want to do those things you're better off using orgs & networks other than existing parties

xp

i mean Green in terms of the importance of an ecological emphasis - the party belongs with everything else in the useless Parliamentary system, really it died the day they got hung up on having a Leader

IDS Tories/Starmer Labour. yep I can see Starmer being just as an unpalatable and irrelevant (wish he was a "quiet man" - that fucking voice!) to a broad cross section of the electorate. I don't think he'll make any gains in the brexity Midlands/Northern constituencies and that will be a failed gambit and he'll just inspire apathy and despair (see his pathetic attempts at being *opposition* thus far) in more metropolitan lefty constituencies, meaning slightly lower turnouts.

You would have to assume that Starmer would be able to drain off enough of the 2019 LibDem vote that he might put Labour back into contention in areas of the South but beyond that I don't think anyone can predict what effect the current crisis will have on seats anywhere, things are just moving too fast right now.

turns out if you want to do those things you're better off using orgs & networks other than existing parties

I suspect the presence of party colours of any kind would be actively offputting to a lot of people who would otherwise want to get involved. Can't really blame them for that tbh.

meanwhile (sorry for digression but it's bothering me) a friend just forwarded a new david icke vid to me -- i watched gloomily so i cd push back against anything really toxic -- and even more gloomily realised that there's nearly nothing *in it* to push back against (for example he carefully doesn't mention aliens or blood-drinking 12 foot lizards, tho tbf i probably will dark lol).

"they planned this to do what they wanted to do anyway, which is put all power in the hands of the 1%" (he doesn't say "the few")
if you mean the virus was manufactured with this in mind i don't think it was, but if you mean that the various evolving responses very much favour the already powerful…
"it's not classic fascism, it's not classic communism, but it is going to be a tyranny, a technocratic tyranny"
me doing fishmouth a bit here w/regard to pushback: no it's not not it's not erm is this impossible i am not going to say no
"they want to destroy small and medium-size business, hand everything over to giant corporations, amazon is a prime example"
not sure who "they" is (i mean i have suspicions but this vid gives no hint, it might just be "the boss class", he's already mentioned the 1%) or that they *knew* they wanted this and could achieve it before a few days ago but POSIWID (as stafford beers wd say): the purpose of the system is what the system does. and peter thiel is built into the system.

the obvious thing missing -- aside from giveaway lizard-talk -- is any hint what we shd be doing to fight back against the thiel-system: icke (it turns out) is by no means trotsky

w/my silliest (but is it) conspiracy hat on, "they" have deployed icke etc as sinister vaccinations against genuine bottom-up political transformation -- bcz the bits you're drawn to ("the very rich are very bad") can be shown in this well produced instance to segue unthinkingly into batshit freemen-of-the-landism (cf also Qanon)

anyway i don't think i've been sent it bcz my friend is fully sold on it (they know me better), more in a "so what do you think of this theory?" and i have to put my non-shitposting hat on to respond carefully (my friend is a volatile mix of as bit small-business brexit-cranky anti-guardian daily-mailish, but very aware of racism as they're british POC, plus flashes of calz-flavoured guillotines-now radicalism)

also a v lovely kind but somewhat isolated person who is currently very angry abt what's happening to the NHS

can't be bothered to make a poll for it but curious what ppl think wld happen if you had another election right now/removed the brexit factor (& corbyn factor i guess, tho that wld be curious too ofc). I think labour wld have to really fuck it not to win back a load of the seats they lost by tiny margins, but don't think starmer will do more than wld have happened anyway.

I suspect the presence of party colours of any kind would be actively offputting to a lot of people who would otherwise want to get involved. Can't really blame them for that tbh.

I mean I obv can blame them and every other ice statue gen x+ liberal. the inability of ppl to get over themselves is totally shameful & a key point re: the generational split

some good discussion this morning but i just wanna chime in and lol at domcum being struck down with the 'rona

w/my silliest (but is it) conspiracy hat on, "they" have deployed icke etc as sinister vaccinations against genuine bottom-up political transformation -- bcz the bits you're drawn to ("the very rich are very bad") can be shown in this well produced instance to segue unthinkingly into batshit freemen-of-the-landism (cf also Qanon)

yeah I think rhetorically this is absolutely true. as ever I think the toilet of social media is instructive here: there's been a lot of work invested in building this archetype of the crank left, somewhat overlapping with the naive/student left, and v much overlapping with the antisemitic left. it's a simple and strong idea and it has v broad utility as something that can be projected onto all sorts of left/labour actions to explain/dismiss them

domcum

if we all keep looking at it eventually we’ll develop herd immunity

herd impurity

some good discussion this morning but i just wanna chime in and lol at domcum being struck down with the 'rona

very much otm

I'm not going to clap for Dom. I'd much rather we had an adequately funded grim reaper.

they neednt be grim if that adds to the cost

the jolly reaper

i have done the deed at last

weighed up a lot of factors in my deputy vote ordering but recent john mcdonnell retweets was decisive

Full solidarity with the Italian people in this, their hour of crisis pic.twitter.com/zA8oipvrkS

— LEFT NUDGE UNIT - RENT STRIKE NOW (@wariotifo) March 30, 2020

commentariat melt causes grave offence to a nation already on its knees :(

jesus wept that is a crime

i've been fuming about the self-aggrandizing cunt Oliver for a week or so, maybe another thread for it tho

Mail so take with a massive pinch, but supposedly government is buying around 20 million tests to be available mid April.

i mean i never take photos of my own stews or curries bcz for that terrain of food to look yummy you need professional lighting, deep-focus photography, and every sprayed in inedible lacquer

but

tbf Frances Barber spends more time tired and emotional than i do

There’s usually a fair bit of overlap between food that tastes good and food that photographs well

but

is that an after?

*doesnt photograph well, sorry that picture infected me with brain worms

I mean I obv can blame them and every other ice statue gen x+ liberal. the inability of ppl to get over themselves is totally shameful & a key point re: the generational split

Interesting you jumped to that archetype whereas a lot of these people will be just well-meaning individuals who have minimal interaction with political parties in general and just want to get involved but might be intimidated by something that feels like an explicit party vehicle, or just feel like it's not something that's meant for them. Obviously the Labour Party and members can and should be prominently involved here, as they are with food banks etc, but it doesn't need to be the central fronting organisation.

that's no better than just being scared off of anything affiliated w/ a church imo

In the same way I'm sure that churches and other religious groups are doing a lot of good work right now but there are people who just won't get involved because of who's organising it.

(hah, xpost)

if ppl who see themselves as normal folk (i.e. some of the weirdest & most clueless ppl you'll ever meet) find labour more offputting than I find the church then I think it's all over. this mindset ofc only one step from "why are you making this political?"

"I would be involved in my community if only it didn't feature any of the ppl who exist in my community"

update on my newly ickean pal: they responded to my pushback w/o comment at all, just nice "hullo good morning, glad u slept well" ketchup stuff

from this i deduce:
(a) they aren't in fact newly ickean, just bored and surfing like me (i've been chid for responding gravely to a forwarded vids, bcz i think they've taken something seriously they haven't)
(b) they are totally thinking "lol wot a sheeple, oh well, no need to spoil my quiet morning shouting at this fool"

It's not even necessarily about being intimidated, or "scared", or an "inability to get over themselves". People just look at a poster and think 'that's for Labour members not me', or 'that's for church people, not me'. There's no point in being judgemental towards these people particularly when there other ways in which they could be drawn in to actually doing some good.

passivity is one helluva drug

Matt DC correct, its not necessarily "I dislike those kind of people", it can just as easily be "those kind of people dislike me and wouldn't want me there""

I think the oppositional stance is counter-productive after a point, even if unintentional (eg thinking about how Bernie could have pivoted not in substance but in tone. Similar to Leicester City's 2015/2016 campaign where they were an insurgency in the early part of the season but started acting like league leaders once January hit, closing out games 1-0 instead of 3-2

"why are you making this political?"

This ties in here as well - the correct response to this is NOT "everything is political you clown" which concedes the framing, its "I've no idea what you're talking about lets get out there and do this". We don't have to acknowledge these traps and we don't have to walk into them

"those kind of people dislike me and wouldn't want me there"

this is ofc v powerful but it's also striking that there aren't many of these grassroots orgs devoid of any potentially offputting associations or affiliations, bc if they stick around long enough to be effective they tend to develop these associations all by themselves. this thinking is an excuse that symptomatic of underlying complacency

"I've no idea what you're talking about lets get out there and do this".

the focus on tangible action is ofc right but pretend incomprehension is imo at best a tactic not a strategy

this whole conception of the public as confused & mistrustful flowers who need to be carefully coaxed and guided is ultimately limited by being patronising and rests on a view of political (non)agency that is itself a major enemy of the left

i'm probably talking slightly at cross purposes here, in regard to actual right-wingers rather than regular members of the public that aren't necessarily political. Pretend incomprehension is too strong a term its more about deciding what you want to engage with people over. Inclusivity based on matter at hand, keeping focus on such and not going down sidestreets.

that sort of pretending not to understand is too yorkshire for me. you need to pick your battles but you also can't endlessly avoid stuff without consequences. tell them politics is power bb.

that sort of pretending not to understand is too yorkshire for me. you need to pick your battles but you also can't endlessly avoid stuff without consequences. tell them politics is power bb.

Never heard of it pal

i'm actually finding my current chats with friends who were bemused or even hostile last year (not pro tory but definitely not persuaded by lab) to be more heartening than i expected

i have a very very left-anarcho acquaintance who when you exasperatedly say "gah, people are such ____ !!" always says "people are many things", which i find useful

(i mean, she doesn't mean elon musk here, she means ppl she encounters when organising, which she does a lot of)

xp it's a wicked county

Still haven't received my letter from BJ, maybe they were all sent second class? Hopefully not signed for, that'll spread the virus like wildfire with poor old postie being the unwilling vector.

― threnody for the victims of alan shearer

I would like to register my strong approval of this display name.

Underlying what I'm saying is something about focusing on where there is agreement not where there is disagreement and building from there. Right wingers are adept at focusing on or creating disagreement (not just right wingers!) and its easy to fall into the trap, which is to shift the focus to where they want it, and not you. "China Virus" is a classic of the genre

xp seconded!