Novara Media

fwiw I doubt Novara will go full on "hooray Starmer" in the near future because, aside from everything else, it's not a good business decision - the vast majority of ppl who give them money can't stand the guy and would withdraw if the site became that

more likely to have an era of conflicted back and forth ending at a "regretfully, we still encourage you to vote labour" message when elections come around

as I said before, my personal problem with the place is less about its ideological dodginess than the emphasis on low effort punditry which you could get from many free sources

Was Michael "sweet" when he supported an immigration points-based system?

Daniel RF: I agree with most of your comment - it would not be pragmatic for them to alienate their own base. I also think there does seem to be a 'conflicted' attitude emerging, or rather: to my surprise, Walker for instance seems quite keen on a Labour government.

I don't much agree about low effort punditry: as far as I can see, they use experts and people who are based on the places they write about. Brazilian commentator this week one of dozens of examples.

Getting experts on isn't actually high effort tho! I mean it's fine, a necessary part of the picture, the low effort punditry I was refering to was the novara host's own, not the interview sections. As I said, what's missing is actual research based investigative journalism, which is in v short supply in the UK from any corner and near non existant from a leftist pov.

I accept the explanation that they don't have the money for that yet but I do doubt they'll ever be interested in going down that avenue.

hard to trust them not to melt with any proximity to power - they sold out everything else for corbynism when it was big and will sell out corbynism for some kind of "critical" starmerism if that's all there is going in terms of mainstream relevance. I'm sure they do some good reporting but punditry-wise they seem to aspire to be the leftmost mainstream or most mainstream left media and will punch left if that helps them get there

my language sounds a lot more disdainful than I intend it I know it's just a job for most of these people and a huge part of my problem is just bastani

you just *know* they would have supported the british war effort in WW1

Is there not room for an alternative to Novara? That can reach similar or larger numbers of people. Maybe there already is/are, it seems there should be more than enough room for a range of choices in this sphere (whatever this sphere is). They don't really seem to have much competition (unless they're competing with US channels, which I guess they probably are)

I agree with most of your comment - it would not be pragmatic for them to alienate their own base

The low effort comment, maybe, it feels quite...comfortable? like they are coasting. I don't really know who their base is though

I guess Tribune would be that? I will say the Politics Theory Other podcast is consistently more illuminating than Novara for me.

Tribune has a better set of writers and is more consistent with their opinions.

THE OWEN JONES SHOW or Youtube channel is roughly parallel to Novara. I think he talks to relevant people, but I don't think he is as good at this particular job (hosting, anchoring, interviewing, etc) as his Novara counterparts.

Daniel RF: I don't share your impression that Novara don't do investigations, though accept it's not their #1 activity. They claim to have 'broken the Labour Leaks story'; they disclosed new information about the mistreatment of Apsana Begum MP; etc. Rivkah Brown is the main reporter on that front I believe.

Bastani also wrote an article in c. January 2020 questioning the funding and personnel of KS's campaign, issues which were ignored by the people who went on to vote for KS as LOTO.

Novara are kind of first entrants ito being populist leftist media that does social media and attempts to reach young and youngish people where they are. Personally can’t stand any of the men except James Butler. Ash Sarkar I will nearly always defend despite her being daft more often than not cos she gets huge amounts of racism, but I’m reminded of a leftist I follow whose take when she first started to become prominent was “finally there’s someone on TV as left wing as me…but why does it have to be Ash Sarkar?”

Somebody that listens as little and interrupts as much as Jones shouldn't be taken seriously by anyone

Novara aiming at younger and first entrant audience sounds right on paper, but I don't see how it works in practice. They don't really stream, they don't do debates or have people call in, their funnel seems to be mainly from TV stuff, arguing with the likes of Piers Morgan, and its not that clear there's much in the way of insight

They feel like a recreation of legacy media. I think the only reason they're any kind of first step is due to the free advertizing they get on TV shows, and name recognition out of that. And does their audience even skew younger? (not saying it does or it doesn't so if stats show it does fair enough)

I mean they don't do debates on their channel (as far as I'm aware). I don't mean their TV appearances

They didn't break the Lab leaks story, did they? The Begum story isn't theirs either (though Rivkah seems an ok reporter on it). Overall, these stories are widely reported in this left crank ecosystem and they are no better at commentary than a loud twitter account with a Mario avatar.

I don't know if Politics Joe counts as left, I've no idea what the rules are, but just has a quick look and view counts are killing Novaras (off marginally fewer subscribers)

Again, if you curate your twitter it was widely known who Starmer was hanging out with in 2020. These deficiencies are now being turned by Bastani, who is calling Starmer Machiavellic in 2022, when things have turned around purely because of timing.

yeah the Starmer aftertiming by Bastani last week just sums up what a self-serving muppet he is. There are plenty of non-affiliated nobodies on twitter who can comment on politics in a more consistent manner without all the grandstanding that comes from being involved with a content factory or doing all that "watch my video" bollox!

a lot of them seem like the kind of people who have always harboured an ambition to pursue a media career, so precisely the chirpy "influencer" types who are not aimed at grumpy old bastards like me. But I feel like anyone self-assured enough to upload videos of themselves talking shite every day is going to be politically dodgy and compromised because they love doing this shit so much!

This is pure guesswork on my part, but I'd imagine the "younger" demographic Novara targets is probably like thirtysomething millenials. Which is still younger compared to the rest of the UK media, sure.

Thats more or less my reading too, its difficult to see them as any kind of entry point for younger audiences and I don't see the effort or drive to do that. Which leads to its kind of cozy existence effectively advertized by guest slots on breakfast tv shows, and this generally coasting feel

Any left-wing landlords about?

Do I know any London estate agents and/or landlords who would be up for being interviewed for a podcast?

— Michael Walker (@michaeljswalker) October 5, 2022

like he hasn't got the contact details of LRM on his rolodex, the fooking tool. How many of them there are would an interesting subject. From a '21 audit there are 18 Labour MP/Landlords - seems to way too low to me.

Michael Walker has previously stated that all landlords should be abolished.

once you've previously advanced the class struggle by some weak lip service ya get a free pass on NOT advancing the class struggle, sounds pretty solid tbf!

Michael Walker has previously stated that all landlords should be abolished.

How would this work in practice?
(I know one answer is "have a revolution", but within the context of a parliamentary democratic framework, how would it happen?)

It doesn't. From what I can tell, in Germany (not Italy) you have rent controls, restrictions on landlord eviction and standard regulations but even then I don't think this is the case throughout Germany (just from the fact we see a lot more about Berlin in the media here...basically because a lot of writers spend their time in Berlin).

And Walker is a social democrat, he believes in regulation rather than forced land redistribution.

And land is the key fact of life here. The Royal Family are landlords, Universities are landlords, as are many bosses who buy a 2nd home. Many people who grow up by the sea/scenic areas cannot afford to live there as prices are pushed up by air BnB landlordship. It must all be destroyed and the last thing they need is to be talked to and understood in any way.

I agree with Grandpoint Genie - I was not sure what MW was actually proposing.

Was he saying that all housing should be social housing?

I assume that when MW talks to the landlords he will be critical. Or perhaps, as he's interviewing them, that won't be a viable strategy.

tbh my guess is that MW wanted a very specific "unmediated" reaction-shot response from a.n.other landlord(s) specifically to the mini-budget -- you don't set up an interrogation stroke show-trial of an entire social layer and political-economic structure by trawling thru yr own follows (which will at best supply the view from a novara-adjacent sub-niche of the class in question) and for a general whitewashing of the landlord perspective you can just pick up any other paper

i'm not going to say this is NO different from the old far-left nostrum that revolutionaries should read the financial times and ignore the guardian -- not least bcz conflicted dynamics within the hostile forces is useful to know and a reconfiguration of some sort is possibly unfolding right now -- but the differences are more abt the pay-offs of public performativity of yr craft technique than the wisdom the nostrum does contain (which is where you gain the most solid info to help shape tactics and strategy)

the pitiless panopticon of soc-med has actually made tactics and strategy much harder in all political quarters (left AND right), a point that's going to be historically very interesting if we can live thru to a point where histories get written

"the pay-offs of public performativity of yr craft technique" -- i.e. these are self-evidently mainly negative hence our response in this thread

transparency is good not bad but also bad not good to put it in ddd-speak

"the old far-left nostrum that revolutionaries should read the financial times and ignore the guardian"

Bastani repeats this frequently.

worth noting those same "far lefties" are *absolutely banjaxed* by the arrival of the internet and now subsist as tiny grumpy ageing sects

not that the nostrum directly entails this outcome BUT

the pitiless panopticon of soc-med has actually made tactics and strategy much harder in all political quarters (left AND right), a point that's going to be historically very interesting if we can live thru to a point where histories get written

always hard to predict the future but imho the current situation w.r.t. social media makes it harder, coz as far as I can see "social media will be dead within 5 years and the likes of Zuckerberg, Musk etc will be recognised as pernicious more widely" and "social media will continue to burgeon and be developed technically so we all* have (non?)invasive direct brain-to-site interfaces"** are pretty much equally likely outcomes.

* prolly actually not all
** and if you think things are bad now, that's when the sh*t really hits the fan!

"Predictions are a fool's errand" -- Dr Aaron Bastani

"It'll go higher"

my prediction

this:

Everything happens so much

— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) June 28, 2012

but more of it

I've often heard left people say you should read The Economist or the FT because you get into The Capitalist mindset. Well done Bastani for regurgitating this stuff, he'll probably get to work in his beloved media if the world doesn't burn first.

when we are mining asteroids so 15 billion people can take a crap on a 24 carat gold toilet and during adverse El Nino seasons there are no famines because ppl can make synthetic steaks on a 3d printer, then people won't be laughing at him then

If Bastani haggled ppl to read Trotsky I'd respect the trolling.

I get put off by the dissonance between their modern presentation (i.e. pretty good website and slick youtubing) and old fashioned content (not much changed since Tribune of the 80s, ie. on-point but poorly sourced and edited). That said the sweep of reporting on the site was surprisingly broad to me - I had written them off based on Bastani et al’s obnoxious screen presences and the gloomy sense that they’re all en route to being future Parsons and O’Neills

"the gloomy sense that they’re all en route to being future Parsons and O’Neills"

What is the cause of this sense?

yeah I could imagine Bastani going totally Brendan in later middle age.

not sure precisely what i wanted to prove with this but i went off and checked their relative ages:
parsons b.1953
o'neill wikipedia doesn't say but since he wrote for living marxism my guess is not later than 1980; probably somewhat earlier (he edited spiked! from 2007)
bastani b.83/84 (unsure why wikipedia is unsure lol)
sarkar 92

butler doesn't have a wikipedia entry at all but i think he's much the same age as bastani

my half-baked point is that by now the novara kids are all some way older and set in their ways than TP and BoN were when they became entirely unreadable (i suspect BoN was always entirely unreadable)

i guess sarkar still has time to do a tony parsons but this seems quite unlikely

I think that gets closer to the problem, they're just not all that interesting. Why would you watch one of their videos? What would you learn from it?

And it shows in their view counts. Their videos on Ukraine are averaging around 30K views. This is terrible for a channel with 250K subscribers. Similar sized channels are getting 10x, 20x, 50x that, and don't have the advantage of free marketing from the BBC or Sky. High(ish) subscriber count and low view count tells its own story

They're not really adding anything, what is the reason to watch them? Who is watching them? They need to be more interesting, get better guests, show some insight. Having the 'correct' opinion on anything is irrelevant if people aren't watching

Don't really agree with that. I think if they were exploring communism, or what would make for a better world, in an interesting way I might tune in.

I think Sarkar shouting "I am a communist" at Piers Morgan is v good. If they, as a collective, explored some aspects of this, it could be better, whatever the viewing figures.

Right, and there are other channels where you can watch that, you don't need Novara for that. And there are other channels that do other things better than Novara, so we don't need Novara for that either

Which then leads to the question, who needs Novara, and for what?
And I think this is what their view counts are showing

Sakar was decent when talking about the German communists on the bbc Hitler program, it was a refreshing change to hear a perspective from someone who isn't Applebum. But then they dropped her for the chess clown Kasparov in S2, because the USSR were as bad as the Nazis etc...

Sad to read the editor's letter. Horizons narrowed, bits of writing around the five minutes' worth of possibilities is all that's there.

We're really excited to (finally!) publish the first batch of pieces in our CLASS edition. Lots more still to come, but for now, we hope you enjoy it! https://t.co/o6elnDbTQm

— New Socialist (@NewSocialistNS) September 30, 2023

https://newsocialist.org.uk/more-than-meets-the-eye/

If Bastani went on his right-wing shows like this it would be better, but also he wouldn't be allowed to go after a few weeks.

Holy SHIT this man is COOKIN pic.twitter.com/SPZ44J3K45

— 🫡🏴 (@corncommunist) October 5, 2023

so fucking concise and sharp, everything Bastani isn't

These people will @ you as if you wrote the 2019 Labour manifesto. I'm not a pacifist. I believe oppressed people deserve to fight for freedom in the ways that they deem appropriate. Incidentally, you believe this too, but only if the victims are imperial powers. https://t.co/Ev98hViZER

— Rivkah Brown (@rivkahbrown) October 7, 2023

Rivkah is solid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL5ACBwO9cg

good short piece on Palestinian voices on UK media. Imagine being Palestinian and getting accused of "minimising" by Boris fucking Johnson's sister.

well not strictly UK, but they face the same shit in the US

Bastani is a cop part #2722556271

hope you’re happy to have promoted this https://t.co/IJQaxWNPMZ

— Nihal | نهال (@nihalist___) October 16, 2023

Bastani has seriously fucked any remaining good will he had from the left and i'm amazed he's continuing to defend this

It's bro-y doubling down, which is often my default mode online, but not when it comes to handing people over to the pigs.

Lol

I couldn't be opening my mouth as big as you are doing right now, when you were throwing rocks at bank back in 2011. Want to talk about shame? Let's talk about your criminal record. https://t.co/WsRT5p8STy

— Dan🇨🇴 (@LTAD_98) October 17, 2023

agree that Bastani is not good and is actually getting worse. Ash Sarkar meets Gary Younge was a good interview though.

did somebody say doubling down?

it shouldn't need saying at this point, but this man is not a comrade, not part of anything worth calling a left, he is a fucking clown pic.twitter.com/7mjieXV6Pq

— michael richmond (@Sisyphusa) November 12, 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBU8fM34Jkg

this compact and insightful Ash Sakar interview with Rashid Khalidi is very good. The Brits thought a Jewish population in the Palestinian Mandate could be like a Middle Eastern loyalist Ulster doing their Arab oppression for them, the Jewish population told the Brits "suck it"!

The El Salvador elections are a real challenge to liberal left (of which I'm generally part).

Due process went out the window, human rights quashed, but crime fell dramatically and the vast majority loved it.

— Michael Walker (@michaeljswalker) February 5, 2024

Human rights groups say that thousands have been arbitrarily arrested during his anti-gang drive.
Amnesty International criticised the "gradual replacement of gang violence with state violence".

the pro-Duterte wing of the liberal left, what a fucking tool he is.

I don't know that much about El Salvador, but the impression I got is that Bukele's policies have 'worked' in as much as crime has reduced dramatically? So it's a challenge to the liberal left in as much as the liberal left often argues that tough-on-crime policies are counterproductive, don't actually reduce crime because other criminals take the place of the ones you've taken off the streets, when you eventually release the people you lock up they are more likely to be involved with gangs and commit serious crimes - Bukele has shown that if you brute force it, lock up enough people, get around the problem of what happens when you let them out by just not letting them out, then you can significantly reduce crime this way. And if the negative consequences of eliminating due process are concentrated on a specific 10% of society then that still leaves you with the support of 90% of the population.

Has Bukele's success in reducing crime been overstated? I know some have pointed out that crime was already falling before he took office and have accused him of secretly negotiating with gangs, but even his critics seem to acknowledge that what he's done has had a big effect. Or is his policy unsustainable, something that 'works' to reduce crime for a period of time but will eventually lead to negative consequences even for the 90% who aren't currently targets of the crackdown?

Only eight months before the election, the Legislative Assembly passed a reform that introduced a new method of counting votes. The D’Hondt formula is a proportional seat allocation system, which, for many analysts, implies favoring the majority parties. This could even go against the pluralistic system of political parties guaranteed in the Inter-American Democratic Charter because there is a high risk that Nuevas Ideas -Bukele’s party- will become the only ruling party in the Assembly, leaving out the political opposition necessary in any representative democracy.

erasing all opposition parties through dodgy electoral reform bills, mass arbitrary arrests - but at least crime is down. It shouldn't even require a 2nd thought to condemn this shit if you are the so-called liberal left.

of course the liberal left should condemn it, but if they condemn it and it's still wildly popular and their condemnation is entirely ineffectual then that's still a 'real challenge'

How can you know it is wildly popular when there is no electoral oversight, and a strongman leader who is getting rid of judges, doing away with the constitution. Making himself the only power.

Not entirely clear which ‘liberal left’ this is meant to be a challenge for, tbh. Is the expectation that external condemnation from people who can’t make a dent in their own political processes would have a meaningful impact on El Salvador’s? Is the ‘liberal left’ here meant to mean Biden and Trudeau, who have sort of ineffectually condemned bits of it? Is the idea that because it’s popular in a country that had a murder rate 100x that of the UK’s the same
could potentially apply here?

lol, I took it as meaning himself. I read that the Biden administration sanctioned them for bribing crime gangs to cut down on the homicide, lads.

Yep, basically they had a deal with the gangs to allow them to operate / have a degree of protection from extradition to the US in order to keep violence to a minimum - which hit a barrier, iirc because they were getting pressure to extradite one of the leaders, which led to the gangs murdering a bunch of people. After that, Bukele pretty much mandated arresting anyone who was loosely suspected of gang affiliation, including 1000+ children.

Whether the murder rate declining indicates that organised crime has decreased or if it has just been monopolised by the state / state-affiliated gangs who don’t need to murder their rivals if they’re all locked up is not completely clear.

"Bukele has shown that if you brute force it, lock up enough people, get around the problem of what happens when you let them out by just not letting them out, then you can significantly reduce crime this way."

Starmer fans are logging on.

Amazing if you can't see the problems with this.

now let's have a grown up discussion about the merits of imprisoning thousands of children without charge or trial, says I the self-proclaimed liberal lefty from Novara Media.

Many people mouthing off how bad things are now good without thinking through repercussions is a huge problem for the left. They must play catch up.

I think Bastani was going on about how deporting refugees who commit crimes is not necessarily good but definitely understandable and popular last week too.

I did manage to miss that..

I listened a Bastani interview with a total dickhead, a godawful ex-macroeconomist (whatever the fuck one of them is) podcaster with nothing insightful to say about anything. His schtick was "we used to live in unipolar world but since the collapse of the USSR it's a multipolar world" - wow, mind blown. It was just two horrible men talking over each other. Somehow I lasted an hour, but I was busy cooking and it was on in the background.

Guys is the quashing of human rights a bad thing if it gets the trains to run on time, I’m a “liberal leftist”

From late last year but found this interesting on Bukele and El Salvador, which filled me in a bit more on something I wasn't too familiar with

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEI6gDJBCZ0

Its a bit more focused on what might happen next and likely directions than anything else, at least with 2 of the 3 guests. Probably old news but instructive for me at least

y'know, the word Strasserite is overused (by me) but

An interesting development

I’m a Christian. I think killing unarmed civilians is bad. That’s why I think Israel should be isolated like never before by the entire international community.

What they did was daft, yes. I said that and I believe it.

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) February 15, 2024

They haven't been on my timelines for a while

I think that’s a great way to raise kids, but it doesn’t mean it’s true!

— Michael Walker (@michaeljswalker) April 11, 2024

wtf is going on with these cunts. Bastani's been a lost cause for a while, now this guy's terfing it up, is this thew new RCP->Spiked pipeline or something?

I remember being surprised by Novara's low YouTube subscriber count before, given their profile booking by the BBC (250K subscribers didn't seem appropriate for something not entirely organic). I checked now and they've almost tripled to 732K which is a big move in 18 months and starting to at least be in the ballpark of respectable (great if not for their relative high media profile middling otherwise)

But then I checked Spiked. 97K subscribers, and their last video (on the topic of woke) got 14K views

aren't Spiked still funded by the Charles Koch Foundation? They can live with low numbers on YT

I presumed they were funded by someone like that, plus I assume still get the same promotional boost from the BBC that Novara does. Its just interesting that in both cases they don't really have any actual viewers of their own (though I'd say Novara's increase from looking last time is now pulling them out of that category).

That being said, the BBC or mainstream outlets that promote these kind of things probably don't have great viewership/readership figures either

not too surprised as walker never seemed like the most nuanced thinker in the first place. re the yt channel, i find the fox news editorialised presenting style (lots of rhetorical questioning to the viewer etc) v off putting. my partner and I were wondering what james butler makes of it these days.

it's embarrassing enough that Bastani keeps doing these sycophantic brownnosing sessions with Hitchens. He had this guest on called Gary Stephenson, who he introduced with effusive praise ... oh this guy is so insightful and amazing ... we had a zillion views last time he was on etc. He was a tedious mockney city trader caricature with nothing insightful to say about capitalism other than the bleeding obvious. Really annoying prettyboy who loves himself and has a book to plug. If it wasn't for Ash Sakar and Moya McLean I'd probably block this channel.

There's not much good news these but Spiked contributers regularly turning up on the BBC and Sky seems to be a thing of the past. I assume that's down to the advent of GB News and Talk TV.

I am writing this statement as unfortunately Novara Media have left me little choice. In light of the organization’s refusal to address the actions of one of its senior employees that led to the persecution of three young women of color and their ultimate conviction under the…

— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) April 15, 2024