Lebedev says he will use seat in HoL to protect free speech including JKR. Gender critical feminism getting lost in right wing agenda?

Ah, I'm straight mean so I used to read both the Guardian and DM online. (The Independent was just too unstable.) It was quite fun reading two often quite different takes on the same event and then coming to my own view.

A particular favourite was when Corbyn became leader of the LP. It seemed to take the Guardian about a week to work out its editorial line (the woke and metropolitan rag we now know) whilst the DM seem to have decided to hold back. Corbyn was too easy a target and better to let the left destroy themselves than to be seen holding the dagger.

Now Dacre is gone, the DM has got better and they have money when they need to do proper journalism, though there is a lot of poorly written slap-dash content. In about 2015 I stopped looking at the Guardian. It had be one too irritating. Rather than argue a point, they were telling me what I should think.

Perhaps I should actually pay for journalism.

Needmoresleep

The Guardian and Independent used to be my "go to" sources of news, but that finished around 2015, when comments were turned off for many articles. Back in 1997, I was astonished and delighted when Blair became PM, and then horrified four years later in the aftermath of 9/11, when a Labour government joined forces with a Neo-Conservative US administration.
The Labour party is so London centric, so metropolitan, it is like comparing Lancashire hotpot to houmous and smoked salmon washed down with Bollinger (other Champagne houses available).

A cherished memory is David TC Davis MP outside the Linda Bellos courtroom chatting to committed left wing feminists. Richard Littejohn, the DM columnist, had just written and article saying he agreed with very little of what Linda stood for, but defended her right to say it.

That is how it should be in a democracy. Equally papers like the Guardian should be willing to stand up and defend the right of free speech for those who they disagree with. I am not seeing a lot of that, though put it down to feeble minded wokeness rather than them being to the left.

The trans ideology made its amazing progress by clever PR, posing as the modern version of gay rights.

All nice, kind people wanted to protect what was presented as an ill-treated minority. Most people saw it as harmless and irrelevant to their lives. No one wanted to look nasty by questioning it.

This massive, worldwide and well-funded campaign made such rapid gains that women’s rights had been eroded before many of us even realised. We’ve always been struggling since then, to change the well-entrenched narrative in which women are nasty selfish bigots. The Left bought the whole crock as much as anyone else.

So I can’t complain if right-wingers and those who didn’t care about disapproval kept their eyes open. I’m glad someone did. Even more, I admire those on the Left, like the good old Morning Star and a few other activists, who didn’t change their principles to fit the new fashion.

It’s one reason given for Ireland’s surprising wokeness. Lots of US companies have their EU HQ in the RoI. Hence a level of cultural imperialism.

It’s true when Posie Parker went to America a few years ago the only people with enough power to platform their GC ideas were some ultra right Christian group.
I wonder how much autonomy the UK has left to set policies that are opposed by the social media empires, after all Facebook has more users than the population of China.
Laurence Fox said being attacked on social media “was like being attacked by a swarm of bees” and you can be attacked by activists around the English speaking world, in large numbers and so it’s getting harder for countries to maintain independence from the agendas set by the social media giants, USA.

Some cracking posts from BovaryX.

It’s free speech against totalitarianism. It’s not about left or right.

Currently it seems the left have got themselves tied in knots around intersectionality and identity and a weird desire to define right and wrong rather than debate and listen. Throw in academics and other intelligentsia hiring in their own image and a deadweight of uncritical thought is drowning left leaning politics.

The right wing press were more affected, so more aware and ready to fight back. The Daily Mail has been going strong on freedom of the press for a decade or more, fighting off Blair initiatives, advertiser boycotts, search engine deboosting, and general name calling.

It means that they are now publishing articles that the Guardian ought to have. The hope is that one day the Guardian will wake up and wonder what happened. Ditto the Labour Party. The left leaning readers and voters are still there. The weird truth is that at the moment the Times, the Spectator, the DM and the Tories seem more aware of their concerns.

I'm not entirely sure what the point is of your hand-wringing about it being only the right wing who are standing up for free speech.

Over the past few years there has been a kind of flip, where many conservative parties are actually embracing issues that would traditionally have been seen as leftist, while the progressive parties increasingly push what would have been considered right wing ideas - which really should be called liberal. So there are really three ideas there - conservative, leftist, and liberal. And both have grass roots versions and state control versions.

I am talking about the Conservative party. Theresa May's main claim to fame was apologising for being Conservative. She couldn't articulate a Conservative principle if she was given a hundred years. The dominant theme was Blairite, massive expansion of the state sector and repetition of redistribution of wealth talking points. The Conservative party in the UK doesn't even qualify for RINO status. While foaming fanatics on Twitter claim this is a 'far right ' government. It's laughable.

That landed on the paper much worse than it was in my head, should have read😁

The political landscape in the UK over the last two decades reflects a significant shift to the left. I think you'll have to define 'left' because I can't sense that shift. It might be true in London or other major cities but that wouldn't make for a shift to the left because the rest of the population doesn't appear to be left. Maybe left in economic terms but I don't sense culturally and I'm not even sure about economics. A forgotten about group are the self employed skilled workers and white van wo/man, these are definitely not on Labours left

The febrile stew which has been brewing in liberal arts campuses in the US since the collapse of communism in 1989 has led directly to the totalitarian #no debate fanaticism of 2020. The working class has always been a profound disappointment to middle class socialists. After all, it was millions of working class voters who put Thatcher in Downing Street and Reagan in the White House during the 1980s. This has been vaporized down the Memory hole. It doesn't fit the narrative.

A replacement for Marxist class analysis emerged from the rubble of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Thirty years later, the toxic doctrine of identity politics dominates the academy, it is entrenched in the private and public sector. The tech companies which exert unparalled control promote it and censor its heretics. It is one of the most successful examples of US cultural imperialism. The political landscape in the UK over the last two decades reflects a significant shift to the left.

The philosophical difference between Conservatives and left wing parties was that the former valued individual freedom whilst the latter were welded to 'equality'. Now? No party defends freedom of speech. It is sheer nonsense to claim that the 'alt right' is responsible for the virulent attacks against freedom of speech, debate, Enlightenment values. The Conservatives, who in the UK don't even qualify for RHINO status, have failed to articulate any defense of their definitionalvalues. Meanwhile, the Robespierre faction denounces anyone who doesn't obediently chant the new liturgy as 'far right.' Even when they are lifelong left wing feminist Labour voters. It is important to be honest about why we are where we are.

highame

Yes, it's a very odd circumstance when we can say a group seems "hard left" when they reject class analysis, have nothing but distain for the working classes, and their political program mainly serves the middle class. And when somehow moving back to its labour movement roots could be seen as "centralising"!

There is something completely weird about the language and I find it makes it extremely difficult to talk about it.

@Goosefoot here's something to add to the mix....Labour is now predominantly a m/c metropolitan party. It's been a long time since it was a party for labour, in fact the intellectual Labour was never fond of the w/c.

It has become a melting pot of woke/socialist worker party idealism that looks like hard left when I watch from the sidelines (because Labour hasn't been my party for the last 2 elections, spoilt ballot was the best I could do) because woke has the same overarching need to control without debate or dissent as yer average Marxist.

The working class is still the working class I knew as a kid but Labour has changed. I think Lisa Nandy was the closest to recognising just how far away the party is from it's roots. I don't know how Labour can adjust because it will have to square quite a few circles before getting back on track. I think it will only be able to centralise itself without tackling some very difficult issues, otherwise the party will just split

I think this is a bit Janet and John but I hope you get the feel of how I'm thinking

For one thing they don't seem to give two shits about workers, which is kind of an existential issue for a leftist in the most basic way.

But they also have latched onto identity politics like its nobody's business, and that replaces their class politics. And undermines the possibility of a class politics. The whole program of any kind of Marxism is to explode class, and they are instead replacing it with identity which they then essentialise.

That doesn't serve any kind of leftist program.

The only way this could masquerade as leftism is in the way it gives a lot of power to the state to administer social programs. But that isn't inherently leftist, you can have social programs administered by the state in all kinds of systems, from feudalism to fascism.

I think in this case it serves a neoliberal/right libertarian agenda, maintaining without real challenge the actual stratification of class so long as it reflects demographics. Even the state programs end up amounting to the corporate sector using the state as an arm dedicated to maintaining their worker base and their consumer base.

You know the other thing that enrages me about Labour?
The way they go for the player instead of the ball.
Learn to tackle.

I have voted Labour my entire life, including the December 2019 debacle.
But I am sick and tired of them refusing to own their shit.

And Floisme, aren't you a Conservative voter yourself?
No.

"Tanith - hard left Trots have been let into the Labour Party by Corbyn."

Not quite true. Everyone was let into the party by Milliband. Local Conservatives were delightedly signing up to cause chaos and boasting openly about what they'd done.
Personally, I think any Conservative that did this should be thrown out of their own party, but there you go.

And Floisme, aren't you a Conservative voter yourself? I'd expect you to make an analysis that, incidentally, isn't entirely correct, either. Of course less GC people as party members will mean they can't voice their views. Did you imagine it would strengthen their voice?

I agree with what nauticant is saying. Like many things at the moment, this really isn't a Left vs Right debate.

So we've had:
Labour leadership candidates endorsing a pledge to expel GC women from the party.

The treatment meted out to women attending the WPUK meeting in Brighton - applauded from the Labour Party conference floor the following day.
The ongoing abuse of Rosie Duffield.

And yet it's women leaving the Labour Party who have diluted the GC voice?

Give me strength.

Btw for those interested in free speech this from a few years ago - and the initial column (which he links to) - are eye opening https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/the-liberal-blind-spot.html

Haven't read the piece yet but don't forget that as a middle-aged Russian Lebedev grew up under the Soviet Union - where free speech was anathema. My family is Eastern European and one of them said recently they feel cancel culture reminds them of the regime they fled.

I also meant to say, that therefore focusing too much on the left vs right aspect of this saps energy and leads to a dead end.

In its broadest sense I think what's going on is that some people have spotted that there are all kinds of different identities up for grabs and that some of them come with the feature of being able to opt out of certain responsibilities about acceptable behaviour and what society can expect of the individual. This naturally conveys power.

In an environment in which, inexplicably, parts of this have captured, and are being enabled by, the majority of government departments, institutions, and companies, the main obstacle to the resultant use of the conveyed power is free speech.