Julie Bindel - article on allies

[Goosefoot]

Thought people might be interested in discussing this:

[https://unherd.com/2020/10/feminisms-dangerous-new-allies/]]

We've talked about this a lot here - I'm not sure Bindel has really said anything as worthwhile or interesting as lot of the regular posters here have, it seems a little one dimensional to me.

Maybe because she's really stuck on the left-good right-bad thinking and doesn't really consider whether there has been a change within those categories at all, or why the left has struggled with certain problems. It seems to me she sees it as almost random, and if we just take out the TRA stuff things can go back to normal.

@TheRealMcKenna

*This thread was actually about Bindel thinking we shouldn't align with people on the right to fight this.

Why are you wittering on?*

Well said. Another thread totally derailed.

I knew I'd get blamed for the derail.

But I don't think discussion of how the gender critical movement interacts with, and may at its extremes be influenced by conspiracy theories which have come from the right and far right, is off topic particularly, especially in a discussion about allegiances with Evangelicals who are riddled with conspiratorial and mystical belief almost by definition.

*I disagree that Posie Parker is mainstream right wing.

There is nothing right wing about accepting reality and disagreeing with enabling children to make choices they cannot possibly have capacity to make and may deeply regret.

AFAIK she is still supportive of a broadly left wing political agenda such as redistribution of wealth, equal ops etc.*

She holds some views that would be considered ‘socially conservative’ rather than right wing. Nowadays, this is quite enough to condemn someone. However, she has been ‘interviewed’ by some people who hold much more right-wing views and would be seen by many on the left as ‘alt right adjacent’ because of this.

This is where the dangerous territory lies. Alt-right adjacent has become a term that is used so liberally now that it’s more or less lost its meaning. I have lost count of the times that I’ve seen Andrew Doyle labelled as such, and Paul Embery has been labelled a fascist. Like the term ‘white supremacist’ which means something completely different from what it traditionally meant (as attached) the phrases are losing their meaning.

This is something to be concerned about. There are real Nazis, fascists and white supremacists (As this thread has shown) and they need to be identified and understood for the threat they are.

If by far left you mean seeks to abolish capitalism then you'd have to include pretty much the whole of second wave radical feminism, including Bindel herself

For me the abolition of capitalism is "far left" and a very extreme position. I'm surprised that anyone would or could think otherwise.

Grinitch thank you, I've only just been able to read your post and it was really informative and, as has already been noted, very much on topic.

I am at a loss over the direction this thread keeps taking.

jj1968, I don't agree that GC feminists on here are anti-trans or believe that trans people are conspiring against women. I think that's a fairly standard TRA stereotype. As Julie makes clear in the article, she (unlike the Trumpian right) supports trans rights. And GC feminists in general support trans rights - this is why the term TRA is used, to distinguish those who attack women while pretending to do so in support of trans rights, from transpeople themselves, many of whom are themselves GC and accept they have not actually changed sex. It is TRAs that women see as the problem in terms of women's rights, not transpeople.

I also don't agree with you that the far left are not in general anti-Semitic. I think the last few years have shown that is simply not the case. And it's hardly as though that's recent. Stalin wasn't big on capitalism but was big on anti-Semitism. The far left have a long and dishonourable history of anti-Semitism.

I think for me I'd distinguish the Marxist-Leninist left whether Trotskyite or Stalinists as a movement which has often been tainted by antisemitism, and in the UK that kind of far left warring cliques like the SWP/Morning Star/hard left wing of Labour/Communist Party as well as some pro-Palestine and anti-imperialist campaigns have tolerated antisemites.

But I don't think you could say the same about 70s radical feminism, and it's antecedents, the anarchist movement, and newer formations of the radical left like Black Lives Matter which I think have in some ways been more politically important over recent decades than the trots and their placards and endless aimless marches. I'm not saying these movements are perfect with no bad actors btw, but I don't think antisemitism is embedded within them in the same way it has been with Stalinist/Trotskyite groups.

I’ll just leave this here. Note the blue check.

@TheRealMcKenna

*I disagree that Posie Parker is mainstream right wing.

There is nothing right wing about accepting reality and disagreeing with enabling children to make choices they cannot possibly have capacity to make and may deeply regret.

AFAIK she is still supportive of a broadly left wing political agenda such as redistribution of wealth, equal ops etc.*

She holds some views that would be considered ‘socially conservative’ rather than right wing. Nowadays, this is quite enough to condemn someone. However, she has been ‘interviewed’ by some people who hold much more right-wing views and would be seen by many on the left as ‘alt right adjacent’ because of this.

This is where the dangerous territory lies. Alt-right adjacent has become a term that is used so liberally now that it’s more or less lost its meaning. I have lost count of the times that I’ve seen Andrew Doyle labelled as such, and Paul Embery has been labelled a fascist. Like the term ‘white supremacist’ which means something completely different from what it traditionally meant (as attached) the phrases are losing their meaning.

This is something to be concerned about. There are real Nazis, fascists and white supremacists (As this thread has shown) and they need to be identified and understood for the threat they are.

You make a really good point, that political views are a spectrum, and that where the boundary between eg right and far or alt right lies is unclear and not always agreed.

So I'd probably label Andrew Doyle or Posie as mainstream right, but can see that others like Julie might have different views. So this thread may be comparing apples with oranges in terms of how different people mean by the terms 'left' and 'right'.

That said, the fact that a bad faith actor chooses to deliberately misuse the terms Nazi or far right, as in your example, in a classic case of DARVO, doesn't mean the terms have no value. It is important to identify the alt right, who you mention, because they are at best a gateway to the far right, at worst a friendly mask of what is actually neo-Nazi (I tend to the latter view). The fact that we might not all agree on where the boundary lies, does not mean that Nazis don't exist or that the categories are pointless.

The fact that some people mislabel feminists as Nazis should not cause us to abandon the word Nazi or the ability to label people who are borderline Nazis.

It's really important that we retain the language to point out when someone is a neo-Nazi or an ironically-presented neo-Nazi or a white supremacist. The fact that someone might attempt to misuse the words should not lead to them being banned. Neo-Nazis exist. White supremacists exist.

The dangers inherent in failing to call out Nazis and deal with them are greater than the risks potentially faced by innocent people being mislabelled. Ie if you are called a Nazi, probably it will not impact your life very much. But if we let actual Nazis run riot, that will impact on the lives of many minorities, LGB people etc very much.

jj1968, you do sound a bit like you're grasping at straws. Anti-Semitism is rife on both the far left and far right. Obviously not everyone, but it's unchallenged enough that it makes no difference.

For me the abolition of capitalism is "far left" and a very extreme position. I'm surprised that anyone would or could think otherwise.

I presume that some of the people who say this as if it's a mainstream view don't really mean the seizure of all private capital and the establishment of a command economy by a totalitarian state.

Communism (the political system, not the vague theoretical utopia that Marx never really defined) has killed more people than any other ideology in history. Saying you are a communist is little different from saying you are a Nazi.

Thinking collective goods like schools hospitals and police do not function well in a market is just good economics. There are lots of ways you can deal with that issue but capitalist socialism has worked well in many countries and is a perfectly reasonable political position.

I knew I'd get blamed for the derail.

I contributed too- sorry. I honestly don't know what more there is to say about Julie's position, she's really clear about where she stands.

To some this is tribalist and shortsighted, to others it a sensible avoidance of any apparent connection with those who stand against women's rights and equality in general.

I frequently think she's wrong but she's done more for women/lesbians/humanity than I ever will, so she's earned the right to be.

she's done more for women/lesbians/humanity than I ever will,

Or me. I absolutely love JB but she's not our leader, and even if she were, I think we should still be able to say so if we think she's talking shite.

Maybe you're right and there isn't anything new to say about it, but I always feel a bit deflated whenever it happens, even though I know we don't all have to get on yada yada yada.

The other thing is that I've only ever known this kind of criticism come in one direction. I've seen Kate Scottow refer to Julie and her like minded Twitter friends as 'the head girls', which always makes me chortle - but hey, that's me and it does feel apt at times.

@xxyzz

jj1968, you do sound a bit like you're grasping at straws. Anti-Semitism is rife on both the far left and far right. Obviously not everyone, but it's unchallenged enough that it makes no difference.

I don't mean to downplay the problem of antisemitism, just that it is not even distributed amongst the braod church that could be considered the radical or far left.

But I also very much object to the oft repeated notion that the far left are as bad or the same as the far right. The left has indeed lost its way at times historically in the worst possible ways but you won't find many defenders of Stalin or Mao in far left wing circles beyond a few extreme sects. You'd find plenty of defender of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco on the far right. The left has braodly tried to learn from the terrible mistakes made in it's name, the far right celebrates the tyrannies they created.

To suggest that people like Dworkin or Angela Davies, both of whom would be regarded to be as far left as they come are in any way comparable to Josef Goebbels or even Tommy Robinson is completely without foundation and I would argue an insult to the many people on the left who have fought and died to defend against tyranny and build a better world and without whom we would probably wouldn't even have an NHS.

Hmm I'm now wondering whether it was the right thing to drag another poster into this thread when they haven't chosen to get involved? So I've reported my own post - I'll let MNHQ decide.

To suggest that people like Dworkin or Angela Davies, both of whom would be regarded to be as far left as they come are in any way comparable to Josef Goebbels or even Tommy Robinson is completely without foundation

I think there is a lot of lumping together there. Dworkin and Davies are not the left-wing equivalent of Robinson or Goebbels. I think you've even managed to be a little harsh on Tommy Robinson (never thought I'd say that!).

The left wing equivalent of Goebbels is Molotov or Mao or Guevara, all of whom did terrible things.

I agree that anti-Semitism is often more intrinsic to far-right ideologies and often something of a side-hussle for left-wing nutters but any totalitarian is equally a threat to all disadvantaged minorities.

The left and right have both had plenty of monsters, along with millions of decent honourable people who tried to make the world better.

Trying to paint such broad groupings as intrinsically better or worse is as daft as those who think a particular ethnicity/religion/nation/sexuality/skin colour are the cause off all the world's ills. Context is king.

People are just people. Loads of Genderists are probably lovely. Just wrong :-)

The left and right have both had plenty of monsters, along with millions of decent honourable people who tried to make the world better.

Hmm, we were talking specifically about what is considered far left/right rather than those closer to the centre. I think there are many many people who have what are regarded as far left beliefs who have done a great deal of good in the world and to whom we owe a significant debt. I don't think you can say that about the far right.

The left has indeed lost its way at times historically in the worst possible ways but you won't find many defenders of Stalin or Mao in far left wing circles beyond a few extreme sects.

I'm not so sure about that. This was a Portland Mayoral candidate a few days ago.
nypost.com/2020/10/08/photo-shows-portland-mayoral-candidate-wearing-communist-themed-skirt/

@OvaHere I think she's rather foolish for doing that but she's hardly a Stalinist and neither could she be characterised as far left, although obviously that's how her opponents will seek to present her. If you look at her policies on her website she's fairly centrist by the UK's standards.

I think she's rather foolish for doing that but she's hardly a Stalinist

But that's part of why I think you are wrong about the left's propensity to learn from it's mistakes. You wouldn't get even the most rabid Republican candidate in a Hitler/Pinochet/Mussolini skirt, yet Stalin and Mao each murdered more than all three of them put together.

@raddledoldmisanthropist

For me the abolition of capitalism is "far left" and a very extreme position. I'm surprised that anyone would or could think otherwise.

I presume that some of the people who say this as if it's a mainstream view don't really mean the seizure of all private capital and the establishment of a command economy by a totalitarian state.

Communism (the political system, not the vague theoretical utopia that Marx never really defined) has killed more people than any other ideology in history. Saying you are a communist is little different from saying you are a Nazi.

Thinking collective goods like schools hospitals and police do not function well in a market is just good economics. There are lots of ways you can deal with that issue but capitalist socialism has worked well in many countries and is a perfectly reasonable political position.

Well that's quite a qualification and I think I'd need to hear those who espouse the abolition of capitalism (such as BLM) to say themselves what they mean by it (before I avoid them like the plague)

Even supposedly left wing countries such as The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland unquestionably operate a capitalist system, albeit with certain controls on the free market. That does not make them "socialist" (which frankly is a meaningless term anyway beyond being used to sound less scary than Communism - although its users seem oblivious to what the "S" in USSR stood for)

[quote jj1968]@OvaHere I think she's rather foolish for doing that but she's hardly a Stalinist and neither could she be characterised as far left, although obviously that's how her opponents will seek to present her. If you look at her policies on her website she's fairly centrist by the UK's standards.[/quote]
Foolish? She's a complete idiot and that's being kind to her.

What she is wearing is as vile, crass, indefensible and lacking in any sensitivity. I almost hope she is a Trump 5th columnist as that is the only way such stupidity would make sense.

but you won't find many defenders of Stalin or Mao in far left wing circles

Oh ha, ha.

I take it you haven't heard of John McDonnell then? The worst Chancellor the UK would ever have had who openly flaunted his own copy of Mao's Little Red Book in the House of Commons.

If you look at her policies on her website she's fairly centrist by the UK's standards.

Oh dear. You really have no clue about the situation in Portland, do you?

Spare me the reply. You are clearly not interested in listening to opinions other than your own very deluded ones.

The left has braodly tried to learn from the terrible mistakes made in it's name

Really? Who do you have in mind? The lunatic in Venezuela? Corbyn is a fan.

@DidoLamenting

but you won't find many defenders of Stalin or Mao in far left wing circles

Oh ha, ha.

I take it you haven't heard of John McDonnell then? The worst Chancellor the UK would ever have had who openly flaunted his own copy of Mao's Little Red Book in the House of Commons.

John McDonnell is not a Maoist for goodness sake, it was an inept stunt to make a point about UK assets being sold to China. The Corbyn/McDonnell leadership were broadly social democratic with views that would not have been seen as in any way extreme in the Labour Party prior to the Blairite take over. They are not revolutionaries, they certainly aren't Stalinist, they may have been influenced by Marx but they are committed to attempting to implement socialism by democratic means.