Billy Bragg getting challenged in the Observer

I read that article. It's an interesting premise and I'll look into the allegations further.

What it isn't, is relevant to this discussion. It's overwhelmingly about abortion and reproductive rights. Trans is mentioned once, in the context of 'trans national'. Single sex provision isn't mentioned at all. Neither is child safeguarding.

Trying to say that women in the UK digging into their own pockets to support Rachel Meade, for example, are in any way connected to the far right on the basis of one piece about related but different issues is naive at best, deliberate and cynical smearing at worst.

I'm with you, saw him a couple of years ago and he was sharp and clever on stage and did a fantastic updated version of New England and spoke very well.

I am aligned with his thinking on a fair few issues the big exception being his appalling anti women's rights stance (he might see it as pro-trans 😉)

Does this mean that for everyone else who agrees with me on women's rights as a GC woman, but on nothing else at all (eg, Tory voters) think that my GC comments should be ignored because on other issues I'm sitting at the same table as Bragg (and JKR et al)? Or do we grown-ups understand there is nuance and the enemy of my enemy is not generally my friend by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm disappointed in him. Interesting take on Ash Sakar tho. Isn't he a millionaire by now too?

Even if I take that at face value, that 15,000 is less than one tenth of the crowd-funded (average donation around 25) costs of Maya’s or Allison’s employment tribunals- which are far more important legally.

No. Just that all the unrelated weak examples don't add up to an argument for anything.

Billy Bragg agrees with Theresa May, Maria Millar, Penny Mordaunt, Crispin Blunt...
Does that make Billy Bragg a right-winger, then?

The truly dumb thing about OJ's Dora Gaitskell rule is that is no evidence she applied it. She may have meant that the cheering would make her think again but does not mean she went in for the simplistic OJ nonsense of just doing the opposite because of the cheering and not even listening to the argument

Howvever Billy Bragg's statement was even more stupid as the only thing he says about Chris Dean is that he sat on the wrong side of the table. He does not explain why or what the argument as about just 'gotcha' you are on the wrong side of the table!

absolutely not. any event in the cunt Olympics is always won by Talcum-you know this, right?

Both useful illustrations of guilt by association, tribalism, and dumb-fuckery.

This may be the dumbest thing I have read all week

Then again, it may be this from Owen Jones

It's a photo-finish! 😁

What a strange litmus test OJ is using there. Presumably ' the wrong people cheering' , if one is a supporter of Gaitskell , would be the left wing of the Labour Party.

“The first Rock Against Racism concert [in 1978] was the spark for me,” he says now. “It was all there ready, but I needed to see those 80,000 kids just like me in Victoria Park [in east London]. On that day, my generation found our issue, as the previous generations had with Vietnam and CND. And it was to end discrimination of all kinds. Not just racism, but homophobia – we would be the generation that defeated apartheid and supported Pride.”

Rock Against Racism was great but what does he even mean by "we would be the generation that defeated apartheid".

Apartheid was defeated by the struggles of black people in South Africa, it seems a bit wrong to start claiming credit simply for attending concerts

It reminds me of a TV debate I did back with Red Wedge; on one side of the table was me, Jerry Dammers and Clare Short, and on the other Stewart Copeland, a Tory MP called Greg Knight and Chris Dean from the Redskins. Now, me and Chris had toured during the miners’ strike, but I looked at Chris, and pointed to who he was sitting with, and told him he was on the wrong side of the table. And that’s what I see with Rowling and the others: they are on the wrong side of the table.”

This may be the dumbest thing I have read all week

Then again, it may be this from Owen Jones

THERE’S a good rule in politics which has served me well. Let’s call it the Dora Gaitskell Rule. Dora was the wife of then-Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell. After a fiery speech at a Labour Party conference in 1962 opposing the UK entering the European Economic Community, she turned to him and said: “All the wrong people are cheering.”

As the Scottish Government is enveloped in crisis, that is what is happening here. Those cheering in this case include, variously, Tories, right-wing agitators, Muslim haters, and people obsessed with the existence of trans people. If they’ve got cause to be chirpy, the political situation undoubtedly gets two thumbs down from me.

https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24282585.owen-jones-wrong-people-cheering-snp-crisis/

Bragg is a one man peaking machine. He is not a useful addition to the TRA cause at all.

Fantastic article, thanks for posting it.

If we're going to disagree with people just so we don't "legitimize" their other views, even if the thing we agree on is true and important, we're basically screwed as a society.

I think a lot of people, and especially ones his age, have invested a lot of their identity in being rebel progressives. They don't actually avoid conservative ideas because they think they're wrong, it's because they would be embarrassed. It's lame.

I also think that this attitude, which is shockingly common among progressives, shows that they are in reality very unsure of their own positions.

The fact is, if I am watching something by some person or group I don't share much political ground with normally, or get to know some of those people, it is possible I will stop and think, maybe these guys are wrong about a lot, but they are not actually acting out of selfish motives, evil. Maybe they aren't entirely motivated by sexism or racism or whatever it is I've told myself before.

They may have reasons beyond that for their views. Maybe I'll wonder what they are, that they have come to such a differernt conclusion than me and look into it.

I think Billy Bragg and his type are totally terrified of people doing that. I have to ask, why? Why don't they have any confidence in their own positions and arguments?

Are you saying it's factually incorrect?

It's just not a very good article.

And for most women who've got involved in countering genderism, it's been the exact inverse.

We've had to learn to stand by the merits of an argument based on reason and evidence, even when nobody else would discuss, let alone agree.

If you've been paying attention over the past few years you've probably been inoculated against tribalism, at least to a degree.

Like this:

'the progressive male class warrior, usually middle-class himself, whose interest in women’s issues begins and ends with sex work, stripping and abortions'

Bragg gave up on punk and joined the British Army in May 1981. The month in which the republican hunger strikes that ended with the deaths of 10 prisoners began.

But I wouldn't accuse him of being an imperialist lackey and agent of repression on that account. Economic conscription innit? Actually the first time I saw him he was supporting the Smiths. Now he's on the same side of the table as Penny Mordaunt MP , Conservative. The Forces' Sweetheart.

You haven't read the article I posted have you? And I get the feeling if you had, nothing would meet your criteria for evidence anyway. Which is pretty much the position adopted by fundamentalists.

Personally, I have a problem with the far right or/and fundamentalist religious groups being involved in any political or cultural movement. Pretending they aren't involved seems dangerously disingenuous to me. Especially as, if you dare to point it out, you get accused of being a radical trans activist.

But back to Bragg, I'm wondering how long it'll be before his claim is that he never supported any of this stuff and it would have been way easier if all those nasty women hadnt also been pointing out the exact same thing he has been saying all the time.
I'm putting my money on within a month.

But you haven't pointed that out. You've mentioned one feminist group in the US, given some random links without evidence and somehow extrapolated that to all women on here.
So no, there was and is no 'clear and obvious support', nor have you pointed it out.
Glad to hear you don't support any of the things I pointed out though. Welcome to the gender critical side of the table.

Because when I get depressed or cynical, I have the privilege of being able to go out in the dark and sing my songs, and when everyone claps, I don’t feel so bad.

I think being ‘righteous’ is a source of narcissistic supply for him. He hasn’t yet realised that this bubble has well and truly burst.