Party Discipline
Another purge.
This post is what they are not happy about. I knew at the time it would put my 37-year membership of the party in jeopardy but I was not going to sit back and stay silent while leading members of the Green Party went out of their way to trash the findings of the Cass Review. pic.twitter.com/FlpmZfFXt0
— Darren Johnson (@DarrenJohnson66) May 28, 2024
Anyway, thanks people for your supportive comments. I'm genuinely touched. Stepped off the train after getting my disciplinary email and decided to go for a curry and a Cobra while I contemplate this latest news. pic.twitter.com/SZrdQPppRl
— Darren Johnson (@DarrenJohnson66) May 28, 2024
Updating to add:
Shocked & outraged at news suspension of my dear friend @DarrenJohnson66 an inspiration to me for so many years. Pic from 2013 exemplifies his infectious smile a Green who wouldn't take himself too seriously precisely because he understood life, liberty & humility. Solidarity 💚 https://t.co/eaHOsUbVSP pic.twitter.com/UFsmtlo4II
— Shahrar Ali (@ShahrarAli) May 28, 2024
Maybe it’s time the Green Party gives up its pretense of being an environmentally-oriented party. It could rename itself the Pink and Blue party. Or maybe the Alphabet Soup party.
It’s a further example of the mission creep organisations head into as their main goal is either won or being done better by others.
No, the environment is not perfect, and there are many issues the Greens raised yet to be resolved, but it is no longer the Greens outside the tent, the tent is bigger with other parties taking up the cause. Are they doing it better than the Greens? Remains to be seen, but people agreeing with and trying to mitigate climate change, as just one example, are found in greater numbers in Labor and Labour Parties than in the Greens.
We have seen the same with other single issue groups. The Aids Council of NSW cast around looking for a way to keep the money flowing and the jobs well paid after AIDS was not defeated, but reduced to a matter of good health care. So ACON is now Australia’s biggest adherent to and promoter of QUILTBAG nonsense.
In Why Marx Was Right Terry Eagleton wrote:
Marx certainly was right about a lot, and the current state of Capitalism is an indicator of that, but Eagleton is surely wrong. Activists, however we define them, are rarely satisfied with achieving a goal, they seek out another project. From the counter-culture Hippies who then became the protectors of the culture, to the born-again Xtian who became the atheist bore at every party, and the politician who changes policies with the hint of a wind change,
Green parties were, pretty much by definition, the early adopters of caring for the environment. As such they filled with (a) people who were committed to fighting environmental harm, and (b) people who were sympathetic to that, but more generally rather progressive in character. A part of that very progressive and nature oriented attitude was often being a bit, shall we say, prone to rubbing crystals, smoking dope, and generally trying to be kind and nice and inclusive. Gradually that very socially conscious crowd have taken over the green parties around the world, slowly forcing out the more technocratic greens with a single focus (and not necessarily socially progressive). I’m unlikely to ever vote for the NZ Greens again based on their current positions, especially since the last of their really effective technocratic leaders has recently gone.
There was always a New Agey, hippyish side to the Greens, as well as the well-informed science wing. But it does now seem to have gone the way of other movements that had Trotskyist entryists who would push it to a more extreme and ultimately self-destructive. I was in the CND in the 80s and our local group was led by a Trot, who do have a lot of energy and purpose. But they were directed from the Socialist Workers’ Party, with a particular ideology.
For the Greens I don’t think this is co-ordinated entryism from a party like the Socialists Workers’ Party in the same way. It’s an intersectionalist vibe, with those who can claim victimhood having the bigger voices, and changing the direction and focus of the party.
I am very depressed about how the Greens in Scotland have gone – “lost its way” as a cycling campaigner told me recently. I would guess that those who have been ejected would not have the heft and will to start a Sane Greens’ party. But it’s heart breaking that those who have manned stalls and campaigned over the years are wasted like this.
But I still don’t get – and probably never will – why trans people can claim victimhood while women cannot – while women in fact have morphed into the victimizers.
The maelstrom of ‘intersectionality.’ Every group, and every event, is required to genuflect to ‘Death to Israel, Trans Women are Women.’
In some cases, as others discuss above, it doesn’t require winning the cause, or being done better. Feminism has always been charged to be inclusive, even before that word was being used casually every day. They were expected to fight racism, not just within their ranks but everywhere, and often before feminism. They were expected to fight homophobia, again, not just within their ranks but everywhere, and often before feminism. It is the only movement that gets crapped on because it does things for its members and not everyone else.
In the third wave, it seems a lot of self-proclaimed feminists accepted this and generated more and more mission creep. Any second wave feminists, who made the grievous error of assuming feminism was for and about women, were to be vilified. Sex work became work, in spite of the fact that most sex workers are exploited, often violently. Rape became kink. Strangling women became kink. Trans women became women. All of these things are in direct opposition to the things most second wave feminists believed and worked for.
A lot of things happened under second-wave feminism. Women won a lot of rights, though there is still a ton of work to do. The next generation didn’t get that; they had these rights and assumed they were always there and would always be there. They worked to remake feminism to be more about fun and sex than breaking the patriarchy. This, of course, morphed into ridiculous ideas like “math is colonialist” “science can’t be done by women, hence shouldn’t be done at all” and perhaps most dramatically (or not): “second wave feminism is the equivalent of Nazism”.
@Rob (a little late now) – I used to vote Green as a kind of lobbying vote. I would have been disconcerted if they had actually formed the government, on defence especially, but I thought it gave the other parties a nudge that Green policies did have support, and they have taken some green policies on board.
Edinburgh has had a record breaking wet May, which strains the city’s infrastructure badly, not to mention the difficulties for agriculture and gardening. And the party gets tied up in pronouns.
Marina Hyde has a sharp article about how the Greens don’t dwell too much on their policies:
“No one’s saying that the less you know about the Greens, the more attractive they are … but knowing more than 50% of the things about the Greens can lead swiftly to the Steve Carell grimace gif. I like knowing they want to renationalise the water industry; I don’t want to know that in practice they seem to oppose a slew of housing developments and solar farms in their council areas. I’m very up for knowing that they won’t ditch climate crisis targets; I’m not crazy about the fact they’ve just suspended a former London Assembly member and two-time London mayoral candidate for comments lamenting some of his party’s renunciation of the Cass review of gender identity services for children and young people.”
I wonder if “renunciation” should have been “denunciation.” Seems like a better fit.
#8 KBPlayer
“oppose a slew of housing developments and solar farms in their council areas.”
I would certainly oppose solar farms in Scotland. Waste of effort.
Use them to power things closer to the equator where there is a useful amount of sunlight even near the winter solstice.