Parasitical Pleasure
It was above all the theater, the vulgar “art”, the grand guignol productions of the beer halls and the street. It was the provocation, the excitement, the frisson which Nazism was able to provide, in the brawling, the sweating, the singing, the saluting. Nazism, whether one wore brass knuckles and carried a rubber hose or simply played along vicariously, beating up communists and Jews in one’s mind, was action. Nazism was involvement. Nazism was not a party; Nazism was an event.
Eksteins, M., Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, (Black Swan, London: 1990), 414.
Our office is in an incredible state. Dozens of people pass through every day and at any time there are 20 or 30 in the building. The sandwich bill alone adds up to £50 a day. There are people of all ages here, but especially young people who are outraged at what has happened….
Demonstrations can’t happen – or not on the scale we expect tomorrow- without this level of organisation and commitment. And movements only thrive when they begin to harness this energy and commitment in all sorts of different ways…
So this mood and involvement is something special again…Even at this last minute people are booking tickets on coaches, leafletting tubes and getting their friends and families to come. If we are right, this will be very large, and will catch the mood and the moment. A perfect storm is gathering, and the prime minister is at its centre.
Lindsey German,
Convenor, Stop the War Coalition
The point here, of course, is nothing as daft as the claim that the StWC are Nazis. It’s a point about the nature of mass politics; the psychology of mass political participation, if you like. Watching that morally bankrupt, anti-Israel march, it was striking that the marchers were having a party; and obviously a party that was parasitical on the suffering of the people of Lebanon and Israel. Read this, and tell me that Lindsey German isn’t just loving the whole thing.
Here are some people expressing their sorrow, anger and outrage at the events in Lebanon (and no, this is not selective photography).
This is Jerry (again), so don’t blame OB.
Well it was a nice summer day after all.
No but seriously – it’s true. It cuts both ways: the exhilaration and feelings of solidarity and excitement and comrades come rally can accompany good social movements as well as crappy ones: abolitionists felt that, so did suffragettes; union struggles, the Civil Rights movement, Stonewall, second wave feminism, etc. But that feeling can be harnessed for the most godawful social movements too. In at least some quarters there was probably a party feeling during the Rwanda genocide; the Cultural Revolution was fun for some; watching the twin towers fall was a huge party for some; Rapture fans think of that as a big colossal party. So yeah…that feeling is one to be treated with great caution.
Ian McEwan says much the same thing about the 2003 Stoppers march in Saturday.
What a motley crew!
Seeing the proponents of mohammed/quran/hadith/sharia commingling with atheist purveyors of The Worker’s Paradise is stopping the rotation of the Earth.
Spinoza is rolling in his grave.
Someone get me a drink.
Occasions of simple-minded leader-following like this always lead me to despair about the fate of the human race. So do militant fundamentalists, radical greenies, extreme right and left wing politicians…it’s a wonder I’m ever happy, really.
Enough has been written on this particular topic but I DO wonder how people like this can simply ignore the hundreds of rockets routinely fired into Israel from Lebanon.
While I disagree entirely with the viewpoint [I suspect] of most people on that march, I have to ask, JS, your point is what, exactly? Does the viewpoint of these people become less valid for being expressed by smiling? Would you have preferred to have confronted a sea of grim anger on that day? Or would you be making some other, equally critical point about how people should act rationally, and not give way to base and divisive emotions? What could they have done to protest that would not have drawn your ire, except perhaps not to protest at all?
And the notion that you can start with a paragraph about the Nazis, and then say you’re not comparing them to the Nazis, is laughable.
Sometimes it’s quite clear who is the real brains behind this outfit. [And to clarify further, that’s a compliment to OB, not an accusation of Zionist conspiracy.]
What strikes me, looking at the photos, isthat the muslim women in the first picture look particularly happy – (compared to many of the non-muslim looking people looking solemn behind them,say..)
I wonder if they are just happy to be out – as Ophelia said the feeling of going on a demonstration walking down the middle of the road with your friends and comrades is exhilerating – but for muslim girls and women who don’t get much other chance to do this kind of thing (…hang out in mixed company, draw public attention to themselves, be on the street at all for reasons other than shopping/the school run…)perhaps it is a particular highlight.
“Does the viewpoint of these people become less valid for being expressed by smiling? Would you have preferred to have confronted a sea of grim anger on that day?”
Well you see, Dave (if you don’t mind a short history lesson), back in nazi Germany you had the SA, them of the beer halls, the Hoom Pa bands, the comradeship and the brawling and murders in the streets, and then you had the SS, the deadly serious automatons, the grim war and extermination machine of Hitler. I am sure JS could find us a snappy quotation about that, too.
So, it’s quite handy really. If you go to the streets to express an opinion JS doesn’t like, you are damned if you smile and damned if you don’t.
JS, I know you said something about it some time ago, but I think there really is something right in this Godwin’s law.
Excellent point Maya — it also gave them a chance to trade their burkas for abayas…for a day. They wouldn’t want to freak out the IWW too much.
Just so there’s something to chew on, here are links to two pages of pictures of the recent pro-Israel demo in Berlin.
http://www.hagalil.com/archiv/2006/07/pro-israel-demo.htm
http://www.hagalil.com/archiv/2006/07/pro-israel-demo1.htm
If someone has a smile-o-meter, we can compare properly and then figure out what it must mean. I think I know what kind of point JS is trying to make, but two dozen photos (or less) is hardly a watertight way of making it (in any direction, I hasten to add). If they’d all been snarling and raising their fists in anger, a different (and also negative) connotation could have been evoked. Photographs are taken at individual moments and for many who go to a demo not on their own (and I suspect they will be in the majority), camaraderie, felt positively, is likely to be in evidence. Although the formulations on the placards are almost certainly the work of only a tiny percentage of those attending, they (and the verbal content – both speeches and chants) would seem to be a more reasonable gauge of what the demo is really about than a small assortment of facial expressions, however apparently telling.
Arnaud — Godwin’s Law is not applicable to a marching group of Mohammedians…where’s the Nazi datum that breaks the trend? Besides, it’s difficult to read their posts while watching the Parade.
“Sometimes it’s quite clear who is the real brains behind this outfit.”
Sorry Dave, I’ll try to become cleverer just for you. Because you know, lack of brains – it’s kind of morally reprehensible, yes?
Well Lindsey G’s lot have had a terrible time ever since the demise of Militant in the 80s. No support. Nor friends. No Eastern Bloc. No Trade Union infiltration. Only a few dusty academics writing barbed letters to the Guardian about how Milosevic had been demonised. Only the same old wretched infighting between Lenininsts, Trots, Communists, etc etc. Even Mi5 had got bored with them. And the cursed Identity Politcs had totally sapped what was left of the revolutionary mob. They must be just feeling all born again with this New Fanaticism making great strides accross European political landscape. Gleeful, elated, no less. Of course she’s smiling.
It’s difficult to refrain from gallows-humour when the Left marches with the Mohammedian. When the duck procreates with the frog, when the Tory does the Rumba with the Whig, and when Castro wears a Nike running suit stitched by child-labour, surely the End Times are at hand?
Besides, whose Utopian version of Social Justice are they marching for? Karl Marx, Mohammed, or Sir Thomas More?
I asked you a question, JS, you haven’t answered it. Why is it particularly worthy of comparison to the Nazis who might have worn “brass knuckles and carried a rubber hose” to note that these individuals were smiling — *smiling*, oh the horror — on that demo?
Seriously, there are thousands of blogs out there where one can read the most outrageous hyperbole on either side of this tragic and ghastly conflict into which our culture finds itself hurled by competing bands of maniacs and their deluded followers. But B&W is an oasis of reason, isn’t it?
I also note that no one else has agreed with you here yet, either. Except maybe Nick, and I’m not sure he’s with you on the Nazi thing.
“would seem to be a more reasonable gauge of what the demo is really about than a small assortment of facial expressions, however apparently telling.”
Stewart, I actually think that’s fundamentally wrong (with respect, etc).
But I don’t have the time – or the brains (sorry Dave, I’m doing my best) – to justify my claim.
Well, since we’re all so busy, just admit you took a cheap shot and we’ll call it quits for now. It’s not as if anything you or I think will affect any of those people anyway, is it?
Dave
I don’t know why I’m bothering, but my point is about the psychology of mass political participation.
That’s actually an interesting topic…
Keith McGuiness writes:
>Enough has been written on this particular topic but I DO wonder how people like this can simply ignore the hundreds of rockets routinely fired into Israel from Lebanon.< The Sunday Times had a letter from one Adam Abelnoor, Chief Executive, Inaura the Inclusion Charity, London, which includes the following:
“The Israeli Defence Force issued a press release (Main events on the Israeli-Lebanese border since the IDFs pullout) which indicates that between October 2000 and the start of the present escalation, only 10 Katyusha rocket attacks occurred, wounding one civilian and one Israeli soldier. Ten attacks in 2,000 days cannot be described as a ‘near daily bombardment’.
“Even taking into account all rocket attacks, mortar shells, anti-tank missiles, small arms fire, roadside charges and anti-aircraft fire which led to injury or death for civilians or military personnel, the IDF states that only one such event occurred in the 12 months preceding the current violence.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2309944_5,00.html
In the last couple of days I read somewhere else in the UK press (online, I think) entirely different figures for Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel in the years immediately prior to the current conflict in Lebanon. (Sorry, strain as I might, I just can’t place the source.) How does one obtain reliable information on such crucial matters in the face of contradictory assertions circulating in the media and online?
Maybe it is, but is it helped to be made in the fashion you made it? Really, take another look at that post:
Paragraph on Nazis
Wittering from clearly well-meaning but evidently daft woman [talking about her sandwich bill? Jeez!]
Unsubstantiated assertion of moral bankruptcy.
Photos of people smiling — and incidentally, have you noticed that, for every person smiling there, there’s at least one who isn’t — are those ones less morally bankrupt?
You can call it the psychology of mass political participation, I call it a cheap crack. I do believe OB herself has remarked in the past on your tendency to throw responsible argument out of the window on occasion to score a point or provoke outrage — is this another one of your little games?
Dave
The Nazis are an exemplar for the psychology of mass movements.
Lindsey German (the woman wittering) is probably the major player in the StWC. The office is the office of the StWC.
I said nothing about people smiling – you made that leap. But the photos are representative of the atmosphere of the march.
You’re accusing me of cheap cracks, yet you’re the one engaging in ad hominem arguments.
And you might be very suprised to hear what OB thought of the post when I checked it with her last night. I’d post her email here, but unlike you, I’ll let her speak for herself.
And finally, if I were playing a game with you, you wouldn’t know about it…
JS — As far as I can tell, you are being accused of using Reductio ad Hitlerem, personally, I would have gone with Reductio as Stalinum, but the substance vs. style debate often leads to whimsical diatribes concerning “What is Aesthetics?”
On another note, I am morally outraged!
Here’s a list of my demands.
n.b. Please note the stapled addendum which contains a concise list of my personal grievances.
Atheist_Kafir
“you are being accused of using Reductio ad Hitlerem, “
Well, to the extent that I think that mass movements rely on similar psychological dynamics – and I do think that (and indeed wrote my PhD about it), then the accusation is fair enough.
Except, of course, that one would not assess the merits of a mass movement on the basis of what drives it from a psychological point of view.
Though, having said that, I am pretty distrustful of mass political mobilisation (even where I support the aims).
Well I thought my comment above was pretty clear about what I thought about the post – it resonates quite strongly with me. I recognize it, I recognize what it’s talking about. In fact, I remembered while writing a reply to JS, I had much the same reaction to the local New Left when I was at university, because (I think because) much the same kind of thing was in play. Jubilant ego-parading, ecstatic ‘get me I’m radical guy’, vainglorious limelight-occupying. One does know the sort of thing – at least, I do. It always has kind of influenced my idea of what (often, at least) is going on in radical politics. I think the only demonstration I ever went on where I didn’t feel about 75% creepily involved in mass showing-off was the one the day after the coup in Chile – that one I thought was real, and unfaked up. But the others always seemed horribly mixed.
to be continued
Now, admittedly, I did later look more critically at the photos and note that they could just be pictures of random moments of people smiling – as one can look at, say, Dorothea Lange photos of Dust Bowl refugees from the 30s and realize that they could be just bad moments as opposed to permanent states of tragic misery. Photos are always interrogatable. But JS was at the march, and I take him to have given a fair representation of the atmosphere.
I do think this subject is genuinely and highly interesting, and worth looking at. And, again, Ian McEwan made exactly the same point about the Stoppers’ march in 2003 – a widely quoted passage of Saturday – objecting precisely to the horribly festive, self-congratulatory, self-indulgent atmosphere; the ‘Not in My Name’ thing – who cares about your name, why is it about you? I say that just to point out that it’s not a willfully eccentric thing to say.
There are many more photos of the march I could put on here (but I won’t). These are representative (though, of course, there probably are photographs where nobody is smiling, but not many I’d warrant).
I could say a lot more about this stuff, but I’ll just reiterate that people were having a wildly good time at this demonstration. I found this distasteful (though it isn’t the reason that the march is morally bankrupt), but even that isn’t the point – the point is simply that this seems to me to be a large part of the nature of mass politics.
Jerry S — What I would find interesting, about this “March To Ensure Stan’s Right To Have Babies”, would be a comparison between those placards made by the Vanguard, the slick mass-produced variety, and those made by individuals, you know, the hastily scrawled “demands” and “grievances”. It might shed some light on mass-psychology…argumentum ad verecundiam aside.
For example, here are interesting thoughts form the “Workers for Social Justice” :
http://www.zombietime.com/stop_the_us_israeli_war_8_12_2006/
I “made the leap” to smiling? Oh get over yourself: “Here are some people expressing their sorrow, anger and outrage at the events in Lebanon.” Either that’s sarcasm, pointing directly to the smiles, or there’s no actual point to your post. Disingenuousness will get you nowhere.
I wil gladly retract my ad hominen if you actually address why you think it’s reasonable to juxtapose those pictures and that wittering [and I know who she is, thanks], with that paragraph on the Nazis, in the context of a debate in which accusations of antisemitism are routinely laid as a substitute for argument [as are, of course, equally pointless charges of Zionazism].
Can you honestly say that Nazism is the most reasonable comparison to put up-front in such a short post? Especially that passage, with its clear invocation of a kind of street-thuggery entirely different from the light-heartedness you evoke to criticise: “beating up communists and Jews in one’s mind”. Come on, can you not see how absurd that comparison actually is? There are plenty of people in the world who do want to act like the Nazis. I decline to accept that those you picture are amongst them — unless you have a reason, so far unarticulated, to think differently?
“And finally, if I were playing a game with you, you wouldn’t know about it…”
You are welcome to try, it won’t matter, such game-playing lowers you, not me.
I hope this doesn’t look like trying to speak for JS, but I want to defend the use of the passage on Nazism. I’m not speaking for JS, I’m speaking for how the passage struck me. It interested me because I think the psychology of the mass appeal of Nazism is intrinsically interesting, very interesting in fact; and I think that’s why that quotation is there, not by way of doing the Nazi-equation. JS did write his PhD on this (I’ve even read some of it), so he’s not just pretending to be interested in it. In short, I think he put that passage there for the reason he stated in the post: “It’s a point about the nature of mass politics; the psychology of mass political participation, if you like.”
Sure, people sometimes use the Nazi equation for smear purposes, but that’s not a reason to rule all mention of Nazism out of bounds in discussions.
And to clarify – I have said JS plays games sometimes – as I did in the Little Atoms post for instance – and he later confirmed that he was kind of playing there – but with the collusion or at least acceptance of the hosts. Anyway he’s not always playing.
Dave
I really don’t know what is so complicated here.
I’m interested in the politics of mass participation.
Nazism is the defining example of such a thing (you know, Nuremberg rallies and the like).
I said quite explicitly that I’m not comparing StWC to Nazis. I said quite explicitly that my point is about the politics of mass participation.
And then you say – Ah yes, but that’s not really it, really you are saying that these people are like Nazis. You’re saying they are anti-semitic like the Nazis.
But I said explicitly that this wasn’t what I was doing.
There might be something to your point if it weren’t the case that Nazism was the paradigmatic example of this kind of thing. But, you know, it is.
The point isn’t about smiling. It’s about the party atmosphere: the excitment, the frisson, narratives of significance; it’s about deindividuation, le Bon, emotional excess, mass sentiment; it’s about the erosion of complexity, the ritualistic division of the world into categories of “Us and Them”, the sense of belonging engendered by relations of exclusion.
It’s about all that kind of thing. And again – Nazism is paradigmatic.
I’m not going to say any more about this because I’m struggling to avoid resorting to your kind of ad hominem attack.
‘it’s about the erosion of complexity, the ritualistic division of the world into categories of “Us and Them”, the sense of belonging engendered by relations of exclusion.’
And, see, I think that’s important stuff. Important in the same kind of way Nazism is important. Just for one thing, it’s a good idea not to underestimate how easy it is for these divisions into Us and Them can get very badly out of hand and cause horrible things to happen. Just read the opening pages of Sen’s Identity and Violence, for instance. Kader Mia was a Them killed by an Us, during a period of Us-Them division that had come into being with nightmarish speed. It’s useful to try to think about these things.
Let me be quite clear — I don’t disagree with what emerges as being your point. I disagree with your attempt to semaphore it with a few pictures and a reference to Nazi violence. I’m sure you would agree that there is a difference between “Not comparing someone to the Nazis”, and “mentioning the Nazis and then denying that a comparison is being made”, wouldn’t you? The latter is just a rhetorical move — how are we to know, on-screen, when a denial of such intent is real, once the spectre of the comparison has been raised?
As I said before, one can barely turn a corner on the internet these days without confronting people making the most absurd excuses for arguments on both sides of this issue. That is why I have been perhaps a little more than usually sensitive to the shadow of an outbreak of such things at a site where they are mercifully usually absent.
I must admit, I was with Dave right up until Jerry S’s last post, which clarified his intention quite nicely.
Back when I used to go on demos, I used to cringe at some of the ignorance displayed in the speeches at the post-march rallies. It was enough to make you think that certain speakers volunteered just because they wanted to be seen as participating rather than for any particular expertise they possessed.
Atheist_Kafir
Richard from “Unedifying…,” is that you in a new persona? He was much funnier.
“The latter is just a rhetorical move”
No Dave, it precisely is not *just* a rhetorical move. It might be a rhetorical move; no doubt it often is a rhetorical move. But in this case it wasn’t.
And, as I say, the point is that Nazism is the paradigmatic example of this kind of thing.
I don’t know what else I can say about this (I’ve already broken my vow not to say anything more). This is partly what makes the Godwin thing so bloody stupid. I’m not going to not mention the Nazis, when they are quite clearly the best example of the kind of thing I’m talking about, just because – in this instance – some people won’t take at face value my explicit statement that I’m not making any simple comparison. (I didn’t qualify it, there were not ifs and but – I even called the idea that I might be saying the StWC were like the Nazis “daft”).
This whole argument is absurd, frankly. But let me just repeat the point:
The Nazis are absolutely paradigmatic of the kind of thing I’m talking about. My PhD thesis has a bloody great big chapter on them. It is because they are paradigmatic that I mentioned them. Because I realised that some people might think I was calling the StWC people Nazis, I explicitly said that I wasn’t. I then said that my point was about mass political participation.
> Atheist_Kafir
> Richard from “Unedifying…,” is
> that you in a new persona? He
> was much funnier.
I don’t know who Richard is. Is this a new conspiracy theory that I’m unaware of? I’ll try to be funnier, if you also take the Pledge.
I promise to do my bit.
Sorry for the wild guess, A_T. It’s just that I miss Richard. He was a gem.
I promise to do my bit.
Sorry for the wild guess, A_T. It’s just that I miss Richard. He was a gem.
Sorry again. This time for the double post.
Nobody asked me, but I’m going to give my opinion anyway. I disagree about the ‘semaphore’ thing. I think it’s a good juxtaposition – I think the two passages are very interesting read together. In a way the point is precisely that the second one is not Nazi – that’s why it is interesting that some of the same underlying psychology seems to be at work.
JS did the same thing at the beginning of chapter 6 of Why Truth Matters: a passage from Marxism Today 1986 and one from Madeleine Bunting in the Guardian 2003. The point was certainly not that Bunting is a Marxist, but that an element of the underlying thinking was similar.
Crikey! Never thought I’d see that again. The internet scares me sometimes.
I don’t know who “allowed the events of 9/11 to occur,” but I’m pretty sure there were many more involved than 19 highjacking terrorists. Whoever was involved was certainly radical, and, IMHO, very likely on the far right.
> Crikey! Never thought I’d see that
> again. The internet scares me
> sometimes.
> I don’t know who “allowed the events
> of 9/11 to occur,” but I’m pretty
> sure there were many more involved
> than 19 highjacking terrorists.
> Whoever was involved was certainly
> radical, and, IMHO, very likely on
> the far right.
Doug,
Thanks for taking the time to answer my query, but I now have a new query…
Isn’t it always like that?
Regarding “very likely on the far right”: Who are the “far right”? Do you mean Mohammedaens on the “far right”, or governments of the West, or an International Cabal? I’m still confused.
And now for the funny part…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrShK-NVMIU
That’s really funny. It’s been ages since I saw that.
Maybe, like Rene Descartes, I’m a drunken fart, but I suspect elements of the military-corporate complex.
Jerry – after having been on Miner’s marches, anti-privatisation demos, CND rallies and peaceamps in the 80s I can attest to a great number of people just seeming, well, far too f@cking *happy* considering the unspeakably awful, and grave situations we were facing and purportedly there to fight against. It actually felt so incongruous I occasionally worried that some of my comrades were mentally ill. Mind you, perhaps some of them were.
Atheist_Kafir. “March To Ensure Stan’s Right To Have Babies” Yes, it covers some considerable ground that scene. BTW – the Zombie link was educational.
Also, I had assumed that ‘Richard from “Unedifying…” ‘ was actually Bruce Willis. I think we should be told, OB.
Nick
I was on those same marches and demonstrations. It was exactly how I got interested in this stuff (i.e., the awareness that actually for a lot of people these events were the highlight of their lives; in other words, their necessity – to the extent that they were necessary – was by no means regretted).
Jerry – a thoroughly non-academic response, but, God what a depressing thought. Interesting, because it was also probably the dawning of my realisation that people on the as-was left-green alliance to which I was affiliated could actually be living in some quite serious denial about their real aims and ambitions and any of our chances chances of real political success. I started out going on anti-Nazi demos on the 70s and early 80s, and they had a bit more gritty realism about them, and what was being done on the streets mattered more, or maybe I was just younger. But by the mid eighties, the demonstrators were apparently just so proud to wear the duffle coats, or live on ratty old busses, or carry the outdated slogans on placards, even though the City and Murdoch and Thatcher had been patently and succesfully wrapping up the debate in the greater public’s mind since back during the Falklands War. The Left’s battle with Thatcher had truly already died in 1982/3. Yet they all seemed so evangelical…
I felt bad because on the one hand I couldn’t display the unselfconsciously deluded determination some of my singalong fellow subersives were so happily emanating, like benign radioactive auras; at the same time I felt – self-consciously – intellectually weak and dumb marching along next to them – that I too would be judged on their braying, stultifying slogans about fascists and pigs, about mother earth overcoming, about men all being rapists, and Scargill being god. I felt worst of all because I knew we really had no chance, so what the f@ck were we doing… yet couldn’t allow myself to be called ‘defeatist’. Any of this familiar ? Sorry to blether on abit, but then the times were emotional, if not changing ;-)
I can relate, Nick S. I participated in quite a few demos in the late 70s and 1st half of the 80s, and I always took note of the punk contingent, who always seemed to have their best Sunday-go-to-meetin’ punk gear on. You know, the stiffest mohawks, the sleeveless shirts so you could see the tatoos, and the baddest lookin’ boots. It was particularly notable in San Francisco. Not so much in Berkeley, where I think protest was less a fashion statement.
Oh yes, somewhere I’ve got a lot of photographs of those late-70s, early-80s demonstrations. Maybe sometime I’ll post them up on here, just to show that they weren’t very different to the StWC marches. The same psychological dynamics were at play then (which is actually a very obvious point).
Jerry – f@ck do I remember those arguments… Militant totally f@cked it for Labour in my view, and CND were succesfully portrayed as dangerous and dirty commies to the public when all they did was practice tai-chi amd finger-painting half the time . I was suspicious of Benn’s motives a long while – he couldn’t get the leadership, so wrecked the party… that’s not a debating point though, have revised it since (not an awful lot though.)
Doug. Yeah, protest as fashion statement. And there is a much – much -larger amount of cool to be obtained for a young chap going anti-war or anti-global these days than there was back then.
NickS: “cool to be obtained for a young chap”
Yeah. Another thing I just remembered is that most of those marches seemed to be about 70-30 men to women. A bit martial, you know?
Oh yes. That was part of what I meant about the New Left and the showing off – that was a guy thing (frankly). Big deal Mr Rads with downtrodden woman following them around. If you’re so rad, I always wondered, why is that woman you’re with walking ten paces behind you?
Doug, not sure of the percentages, but it seemed any anti-establishment types were treated with more suspicion and paranoia if not as dropouts and idiots. There’s more cool associated with today’s gesture politics of demos in general – perhaps because the heart of real politics is so tied up with pR and media-play? Any young thicko belching out pro-Hisbullah nonsense on a provincial street corner is treated like a reperesentative of the ‘yoof’ instead of what he is.
Jerry – yes those pictures may be illustrative !
“Militant totally f@cked it for Labour in my view”
Yes. In that they caused the SDP founders to split away, thereby fragmenting the vote of the Left. One of the great political moments of the 1980s was when Kinnock took on militant at that Labour Conference.
But, you know, looking back, I think that really Labour needed the shock of Thatcherism to modernise properly. Okay, they’re not a left-wing party nowadays, but, you know, the whole collectivism thing that was characteristic of the Callaghan administration – by the early 80s that was a relic from a different era.
When I think about Tony Benn, I tend to start foaming at the mouth, so I’m going to think about other things!
OB, and that was surely what pissed off big tracts of the feminist movement in the 70s? It certainly seemed that way here, in retrospect. It was always the cool “right-on” swp or trade-union blokes telling their female comrades that their feminist agenda consisted of borgeous demands, not consistent with revolutionary aims. Plus ca change perhaps, non ?
Huh. You guys didn’t have the Weathermen. You guys didn’t have those bozos rejoicing over Charles Manson (‘dig it, sticking a fork in that pig’s stomach, man’). You didn’t have the Symbionese Liberation Army. Now, we know how to do stupid vanity politics right!
Jerry, heard about it but no, I haven’t read that, I’ll check it out. Gay rights and Cuba used to be a good collective kitchen argument as well.. as did the issue of Polish Solidarity, Catholicism and Thatcher.
I know what you mean about Callaghan’s era. People forget how unmittigatingly rubbish life was prior to 1979 for a lot of Brits anyways. Oil shock, 3 day week, still too little social or economic mobility, National Front scoring really high polls, IRA bombings and so on. Some pretty shite governance going on there too if you ask me. I do wish John Smith had lived though, that would have changed things a bit in the 90s, maybe held off PFI hell a bit longer, and not invaded sodding Iraq, which however you slice it, and without giving an inch to the Hezbollah sympathisers we could have all done without.
Nick, oh, you bet. It was one of the things that got second-wave feminism going. ‘Eh? This is the left, and they’re bossing us around just as if – hmmmmmm.’
OB
You’re right about our having more than our share of “stupid vanity politics,” but at least we didn’t have the Brigada Rosa or the Baader-Meinhof gang.
Or the Spanish Inquisition, Doug.
JS,
I would (and do) give more credence to your assertion that the photos typify the atmosphere than to the photos themselves, if you see what I mean. I also do not discount our human ability to sense mob feelings to a pretty accurate degree. Please don’t misunderstand my comment to be evidence of a leaning towards Hizbullah and against Israel. I was trying to be aware of how subjective the feelings (not necessarily the perceived facts) on both sides are. If you look at what can be read in the second lot you posted and the two links I posted, it’s mainly against attacks on either Lebanon or Israel. In the first lot, however, there is much nastier Jew-hating stuff, the kind of thing you can’t shrug off as being only anti-Zionist. Both lots may be both representative and non-selective in their way, yet leave different impressions.
The thing about the photos (it took me awhile to work this out) is that they’re not meant to be probative or evidentiary; they’re meant to be illustrative. ‘The mood was fastive; like this,’ as opposed to ‘The mood was festive; this is the evidence.’
Me, I wouldn’t mention the RAF and the BR in the same breath. Very different kettles of fish.
As for the whole ‘Not in my name’ schtick, too right. I’ve always gravitated towards actually doing something on a demo (NB, this doesn’t mean ‘doing something stupid’) partly because I began to despair about what they were actually doing, beyong giving me a chance to meet old mates. The thing that overtly irritated me was that there was sod all communication strategy, usually, even if the politics _were_ right. But more probably my real motivation for leaving the crowd was that I felt an idiot walking along in the middle of the road, often on a bus route.
OTOH . . . a few years ago along with a bunch of other lefties (though not the SWP for some reason) and others, I put some serious effort into making a local LGB Pride parade happen, in the face of (credible) fascist threats to attack it. That was worth a few grins when we got it through, I can tell you.
Doug if it was me I would have acused you of being so weighed down with post colonial white guilt that I am supprised you can get up in the morning, and when you responded in kind I would have bleated about name calling.
Glad you’re back, Richard! I missed you. But only a couple of misspellings? You can do better than that.
“I put some serious effort into making a local LGB Pride parade happen”
I thought of that, at some point after this discussion went into hibernation. I think gay pride marches are one kind of march where the party atmosphere is not only pardonable but necessary and a huge part of the point – as a countervailing force to centuries of irrational shaming and hiding.
I didn’t miss Richard; could we not start this stuff up again? Good.