Your Corbyn/Sultana Party - Discussion thread - Part 2

[fromorbit]

The YP starting conference is in the ACC in Liverpool between 29-30 November so only three weeks off. With competing factions involving Islamic conservatives, every variety of Marxist/Communist, former Labour members, trade union activists, entryists from SWP and SPEW, splitters from the Scottish Greens, trans activists and actual left wing feminists [not the nice kind] it is difficult to underplay how much controversy there is likely to be. So we will need a second thread in advance.

Thus far following the internal drama of the UKs newest left party has taken a whole thread. It has been a wild ride and the party still does not have a name.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5394557-your-corbynsultana-party-discussion-thread

Even there however - people are not groups. The experience of individuals are much more complex and variable, with so many factors. Wealth, sure, social group, sex, etc. But also personality, intelligence, good luck, good looks, and a thousand other factors.

As a way to decide who is good, oppressed, or even who is deserving, these categories have very limited utility.

Here is the list of things that I scratch my head over the current left vs right dynamic:

free trade vs protectionism
movement of labour vs protecting labour/union movement
attitudes to big pharma
free speech/authoritarianis
big agriculture vs localism
attitudes to home education
attitudes to global organisations like the UN, Davros, banks, etc

On the culture ones, what I particularly notice is that the scepticism of institutions like state run schools, or pharmaceutical companies, seems to have vanished, and instead they are sceptical of anyone who doesn't accept those forms of "authority."

I have just started reading "The Black Book of Communism" by Stephane Courtois and his associates,most of them ex Communists. The book exposes the 100, million assasinated by Communist regimes but also why this movement continues to be venerated in the West as "progressive."

I agree with this to some extent: but clearly European countries reacted in widely varying ways to emancipation. If emancipation produces a huge upsurge in anti Semitism, why do we see such varying responses across Europe : Denmark, Italy, France, Britain as you noted, Netherlands etc?

Re the Arab world, this is complex :'Antisemitism becomes widespread and open at about the same time as Jews begin to demand and receive treatment equal to the societal majority, or, even worse, form their own ruling class.'

In the Arab world as a whole, Jews definitely did have subservient status in that they were dhimmis (as were Christians). But historically, their situation was more complex than being 'poor' people who didn't 'own or manage anything' or form any 'ruling class'. Yes, they were minorities so intrinsically restricted by that. But within that, for centuries they did wield real power.

In Baghdad, Jews propsered in banking, long-distance trade & customs administration. Prominent Jewish families like the Sassoons were wealthy and politically connected. In Egypt, Jews well-represented in commerce, finance, foreign trade etc

Even in Germany, Jews within & without the country saw it as philo-Semitic, at least among elites, for a long time post-Emancipation in 1879. This wasn't incorrect...

I think the terrible violence of both Germany & the Arab nations should not be seen as a universally inevitable outcome of emancipation exposing latent anti Semitism. There are particular reasons why those countries descended into such an abyss of anti Semitism.

Other examples are several South American countries, which have historically had low anti Semitism often, and China & India. China's Kaifeng Jews and India's Cochin/Paradesi/Bene Israel Jews seem to have faced virtually no anti Semitism. They were tiny minorities in huge countries, and successful without being in the middleman minority position. However, I think it's also significant that they weren't majority Christian or Muslim countries, so historical slanders like blood libel accusations, deicide etc were not present. It's arguably these that gave anti Semitism extra power for a long time, taking it to conspiracy theory labels beyond middleman minority resentment.

I agree on these.

On these in particular though, I think a key thing is whether the authority of the day agrees with perceived left wing ideals. If it is seen to, then unprincipled people on the left will be uncritical of institutions even when they deserve it. This applies to the right as well : there's plenty of examples of unprincipled people on both political sides, imo, condoning things they wouldn't agree with if it affected their side.

This is hardly new. There were plenty of communist supporters of the 30s, for instance, who turned a blind eye to Stalin's terror while criticising fascism.

Re Sudan lack of attention, I found this video incidentally which I think is quite good on explaining how Sudan has unfortunately been affected by broader compassion fatigue and specifically African conflict fatigue which goes beyond left and right wing divides

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DUJg33WScloA&ved=2ahUKEwiXu-OQwp6SAxX6ZkEAHQVCIyAQFnoECBwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0GJtPFbh-CMQTKz3dtW07Q

On the culture ones, what I particularly notice is that the scepticism of institutions like state run schools, or pharmaceutical companies, seems to have vanished, and instead they are sceptical of anyone who doesn't accept those forms of "authority."

That would be the "populism" we often hear about. I've even seen it argued that one of the hallmarks of fascism is undermining trust in institutions.

Sometimes I think of the evolution of Private Eye, and how its reputation is founded on its 1960s to 1980s incarnation as a scurrilous scandal sheet produced by public school anarchists who wanted to burn the institutions down.

These days it rarely takes aims at institutions but has a haughty disdain for anyone in public life who it sees as undermining the institutions.

The odd thing about the Eye is that its change can be pinpointed precisely to the Brexit referendum. Hislop used to be very anti-EU, and you can find online an epic rant against the EU that he did on HIGNFY in about 2003. Stories about EU corruption, many contributed by Farage sidekick Gawain Towler, were a mainstay of the magazine. All that disappeared immediately after the referendum - not only did Eye readers get literally months of the mag slamming half of the electorate as stupid gullible racists, but even after they calmed down, the Eye has been careful not to be associated with anything so low-status as criticism of the EU.

Trump compounded this, but Trump has scrambled so many brains.

Communist propaganda from the 1930s used to feature an idealised (male) worker from a factory or mine. I imagine the idealised worker from today's left would be a BBC producer or HMRC inspector or deputy head teacher. It definitely wouldn't be a tradesman in a white van who lives in somewhere like Romford.

Fantastic post. Left v right really doesn't exist anymore. Private Eye absolutely used to take no prisoners, was very apolitical, took on all hypocrites and authoritarian fraudsters. Now it's a pure organ of the left.
Hislop can certainly believe that Leave is a fraudsters paradise, but for him to have bent over the Genderwang shows he's not the outsider champion he claims he is.
He's as establishment as Boris Johnson or Michael Gove.
In conjunction with HIGNIFY on the BBC as mouthpiece for conventional wisdom on trans politics, critical race theory, Hislop is a total quisling.
Can you imagine the Hislop of 2003 not attacking trans ideology over Cass, WPATH Files, Phillipson inertia on SC ruling, the SNP dying on the hill of TIMs in women's prisons, if these were happening then? Issue after issue after issue he would have been tearing into all this.
Of course, Brexit affects him personally, trans ideology not so much.
In the top ten of most significant cowards over trans ideology.

The people who started private eye were born around the same time as my dad, so while wouldnt have served in the war, their fathers did, and would have completed national service themselves.

So i think they were from a generation when the classes did have key moments in common, so maybe understood each other and had similar attitude to institutions.

I dont think thats the case now. I dont know if theres anything to link Hoslop with any working class man his age.

Are there any working classes on the BBC full stop, anymore?
I seen to recall Frank Bough (yes, him!) saying he came up from nothing, and the BBC was moving away from taking a risk on anyone new like him...and that was in the 80s 90s.
A few decades on?...

It used to be a running joke in the SWP that Paul Foot did his national service in Jamaica, where his dad was governor.

But then he joined the Mirror as a journalist and got sent up to Glasgow to cover industrial disputes, so he did come into contact with the working class even if he never really understood it.

There's a story about the Eye explaining how Richard Ingrams, once he made a bit of money, moved out of London because he didn't want to meet his targets. The (maybe apocryphal) story behind that is that an ashen-faced Foot once came to the office and told Ingrams he'd just interviewed Enoch Powell, and liked him.

I often think of that in contrast with Charlie Brooker. He used to be an angry young man reviewing TV, angry because he loved the medium and had ideas for making it better, but he was an outsider looking in. Then he became famous and wasn't an outsider any more. He had a showbusiness wife and got invited to showbusiness parties where he met the people he used to ridicule. He got TV projects greenlit on his name alone. He wasn't angry any more.

We don't have an equivalent of the young Charlie Brooker writing on TV now, and if we did the Guardian wouldn't employ them. We've got a lot of people cosplaying Charlie Brooker, including Charlie Brooker.

Actually I suppose the nearest equivalent to old-school Charlie Brooker that exists today is Critical Drinker, but nobody at the BBC is going to offer him a series any time soon.

Which again is interesting. Will Jordan (Critical Drinker) isn't a showbusiness insider, he's some guy in Scotland who writes military/spy novels and uses his storytelling knowledge to make amusing YouTube videos about how the latest Hollywood blockbuster falls down on basic storytelling. He isn't even very political - he complains about movies or TV shows having heavy handed political messaging, or takes the piss out of pampered stars like Emma Watson posing as 'activists', but he almost never gets into what he personally thinks about a particular political issue.

Yet somehow he's 'right coded' while entertainment corporations are 'left coded'. That tells us something about attitudes to powerful institutions.

He also assaulted a child though. Yes maybe he was drunk, and I don't like to castigate people forever for one mistake. But I think the BBC in particular should be more careful on future with overlooking the character flaws of the people they employ. They don't have to be saints. But I would fine with attacking children being where the line is drawn.

Communist propaganda from the 1930s used to feature an idealised (male) worker from a factory or mine. I imagine the idealised worker from today's left would be a BBC producer or HMRC inspector or deputy head teacher. It definitely wouldn't be a tradesman in a white van who lives in somewhere like Romford.

I used to work in Eastern Europe near a building with "guess the noble trade" exterior art. We used to joke about the modern UK equivalent.

I'm struggling to name current BBC presenters with a working class background. Sport seems the last route these days; Gary Linker's dad ran a market stall.

Hislop's a small "l" liberal & I don't recall him ever being bent on the destruction of our institutions although most of Rotten Boroughs, Street of Shame, HP, etc, are firmly critical of how they function.

There's no surprise in the Eye dropping EU reporting, we're no longer in the EU so not only is it of somewhat lesser significance to UK readers but most, if not all, of their sources in Brussels have gone. (The Eye though, is one of the very few publications to have looked in any depth at the former Reform Leader in Wales & quondam UKIP MEP, Nathan Gill, now serving a 10.5 year Bribery Act prison sentence on account of being a bought & paid for Russian asset, & AFAICS, it's the only organ to look in any detail at him & his intriguing family with regard to their business activities on Anglesey.)

The liberalism is of a piece with the Eye's failures on trans issues but more importantly Phil Hammond, a Girton alumnus [sigh], is still years behind the curve on the issue & IIRC, based at a Bristol NHS hospital, a context unlikely to have escaped years of misinformation & "be kind" manipulation.

Worse yet, is the case of the Eye's Adam MacQueen, a gay male journalist of great ability, who has determinedly donned the Gender Identitarian blinkers, convinced himself that it's all just gay rights 2:0, & goes from nought to frothing fury whenever he encounters pushback on the topic. It's a tremendously disappointing abnegation of his own talents.

Helen Lewis still seems to think there's a True Trans, although unlike MacQueen, she will write things disobliging to the GI project but thus far I haven't seen such copy in the Eye where she writes on US politics.

Andrew Hunter-Murray is liberal, wildly conflict averse & the New Boy. He knows the square root of feck-all about Gender Identitarianism & just jolly well wishes everyone could get along. 🙄

If you don't already know it, you may enjoy RedFem Podcast's ep from last week, "The New Political Roles Replacing Left & Right" https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/redfem/id1574074250 I don't suggest you'll agree with it all but it is interesting, as are their much older eps, "Should Feminists Work With the Left?" parts 1 & 2; https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-62-should-feminists-work-with-the-left-pt-1/id1574074250?i=1000645041964
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/episode-63-should-feminists-work-with-the-left-pt/id1574074250?i=1000646000966
& "Should Feminists Work With the Right?" parts 1 & 2; https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/episode-19-should-feminists-work-with-the-right-wing-pt-1/id1574074250?i=1000604598078
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/episode-20-kellie-jay-keens-aus-nz-tour-pt-2-of/id1574074250?i=1000605934792

Adam MacQueen's novels are rather good. It helps that they're set 40 odd years in the past. Strange that he can mention PIE when he's talking about the 1970s gay scene but not see parallels to the present day.

I must confess I skim the Eye these days rather than read it in depth. I'm sure they get value from Richard Brooks from their point of view, but if I want to read a HMRC house magazine, I have other sources.

I'm also rather sceptical of ideological gatekeeping (can we find common cause with someone who might be right wing on a different issue from the issue we actually agree on?) because it so often comes from left wing feminists who have no problems allying with Martin Smith and his mates. Turn the clock back a few decades and they'd be allying with Gerry Healy and his mates. Nothing changes.

I haven't tried his fiction, thanks for the steer, he's a good writer so they're worth a go however much he disappoints re GI & yes, his carefully-curated blindspots grate.

(The "Should Feminists Work With...?" eps are challenges to purity politics.)

@SionnachRuadh PS, I think you'll find the RedFem women very refreshing re Smith, Healy, etc.

I enjoyed the books. His protagonist is a former underage rent boy turned detective, so it gives a view of the historic gay community that's very un-PC by today's standards, while having a real empathy with the people who were on the scene.

The first one touches on the Jeremy Thorpe scandal, and that reminds me of why I liked Michael Bloch's biography of Thorpe so much. Partly because he'd started writing it in the 1990s and it couldn't be published while Thorpe was alive, so the long gestation meant it had a lot of sources who were no longer around when Thorpe died. Partly because Bloch trained as a barrister, so he's particularly good on the conspiracy trial.

But I think also - and this is just background - Bloch as a younger man was in a relationship with James Lees-Milne, so I think that gave him an insight into the older generation of gay men whose tastes and habits were formed in a time of illegality.

The TV drama about Thorpe and Norman Scott is hugely entertaining, but I think there's a downside to Russell T Davies scripting, because his worldview is very much formed by 1980s gay politics, and he really doesn't have that insight into previous generations. So he portrays Scott as representing the out and proud future, and the closeted Thorpe as the despised past, when the real story is more complicated.

So yes, MacQueen is very capable of being insightful about the politics of male sexuality 40 or 50 years ago, but in the present day I think he feels he needs to adhere to the party line.

One of the most fascinating things I ever read online on the subject of trans and it's central role in The Madness Of Crowds, is that the whole phenomenon is a prime example of "horizontal radicalisation" as well as vertical.
So unlike eg Sun Yung Moon or David Koresh or Charles Manson or L Ron Hubbard etc heading up a strict heirarchical vertical radicalising of their subjects.
Trans ideology isn't being transmitted from any prominent leaders, sure plenty of high ups are signed up members, but there's no guru demanding adherence and fealty
Ie it's not "vertically transmitted" as a cult.
No, it's "horizontally transmitted", from member to member, either as enthusiastic group building of shared ideological leanings, or more often nothing more than a nod and a wink, simple lack of resistance to dissenting, and then levels of fear and anxiety to stop any rejection.
This can mean your fellow students in class at school or university, work colleagues, wider social circle especially in left scenarios.
And this horizontal transmission is augmented by constant vertical transmission, your teacher, lecturer, boss, intra academic/employment groups, those you have to impress and get along with to get along in your career.
Yet it's not apparent who's vertically transmitting to those high ups.
It's just "received wisdom" to be transmitted down, then the worker bees transmit horizontally amongst themselves.
So, for whatever reason, outlets like Private Eye and 101 other previously rigorous questioning skeptical organisations end up with individuals who in the modern day all horizontally transmit this virtuous worldview amongst each other, soon to focus on the next generation of individuals coming into their world, to vertically transmit to them.
The Q now is, will we get two generations of people you'd want to have maximum inquisitiveness and skepticism but will actually turn out to be self regulating pro trans ideology drones, or will there be enough individuals in the new generation who will ignore horizontal and vertical transmission, risk the shame and ignominy coming their way, and enough say NO!, it's time to slay the sacred cows that modern journalists have acquiesced to?
If a second generation goes slavishly TWAW, will there even be a third generation with a chance of returning to sanity?
One last thing...has any other cult like phenomenon ever seemingly had no visible leaders or personality driven profile, all the radicalisation been done purely from member to member?

One last thing...has any other cult like phenomenon ever seemingly had no visible leaders or personality driven profile, all the radicalisation been done purely from member to member?

I'm thinking of Scientology when it had its real high point in the entertainment industry in the 80s and 90s. Hubbard was in hiding (and died in 1986) and David Miscavige has enjoyed a personality cult within the Scientology organisation but is little known outside it.

A lot of its spread was peer to peer. Mimi Rogers is a key figure (her dad was an old Hubbard associate going back to Dianetics in the 1950s) and her roommate was Kirstie Alley, she was married to Tom Cruise etc etc. Actors who worked with John Travolta would hear him talk about this amazing book that changed his life.

(Former Scientology members often go out of their way to talk about what a lovely man Travolta is. You notice who they don't say that about.)

So, actors being very into self-help, it spread from person to person. I'd love to interview Mimi Rogers, but I'm sure she is NDAed up to the eyeballs.

Yes, but you still had L Ron Hubbard, a name that almost everyone knew about.
The Moonies, Manson crowd, Waco, even Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha etc are individuals you can point to and say "Him! That's where it started".
Which individuals represent trans ideology?
The Pritzkers? Hardly known, can't imagine India Willoughby knows them.
The Matrix trans brothers? Again, a bit niche.
Judith Butler? A dry academic who couldn't raise enthusiasm to save her life, hardly the figurehead.
Foucault and the other post modernists? They had their fingers in lots of pies, trans is tangential to their schtick.
No, trans radicalisation started when society at large, those in institutions, instead of saying "on your bike!" right at the start, bent over, and the messaging viralized.
Within a few years, one member in the NHS and universities and civil service etc seamlessly transmitted to another, the ease of communication and adherence and fealty expanded as the fear of cancellation for dissent accelerated. Until civic society became a self radicalising organism.
The two best places to see this right now is the NHS (Nurses Peggie, Mellie, Darlington group) and the SNP/Scottish Greens unholy alliance.
The captured NHS managers would rather spend £millions trying to strike off nurses, the SNP would rather prioritise the most dangerous men in women's prisons, than either of these bodies tack to the reality we had just 15 years ago.

I'm not entirely comfortable referring to Jehovah's Witnesses in the cult bracket - I know others do - but they definitely are a group not driven by a charismatic leader. I doubt that your average Witness knows who sits on the Governing Body of the Watch Tower Society.

I once read a memoir by someone who worked at their HQ, and meeting their long-term leader Fred Franz, was amazed that this shabbily dressed little old man could be the leader.

JWs are driven by doctrine, and recruits by personal relationships with those who recruited them. They might have had charismatic figures when they started out in the 19th century, but not now.

That goes into the Max Weber theory about how personal charisma - in start-up movements centered around the founder - gives way to institutional charisma based on loyalty to the organisation. That's how the sect becomes a denomination.

You might think of a group like the SWP - anyone who met Tony Cliff will have an indelible memory of him, but Cliff died in 2000 and there's a whole generation of SWP members who don't remember him at all. Cliff himself hated being photographed, so there isn't even a residual iconography of him.

JW not on my list, but many exposes on how badly they treat the ones who've left, especially under a cloud.
May not be a cult, but certainly there's no shortage of controlling behaviour and humiliating of ex-members.
Does the fact I can't ID a single leader of trans activism mean that trans is not a cult?
Is it a neo religion? Again, who are the movers and shakers?
Is it a self generating caste system? Which elite names set the rules and levels?
Is it actually the greatest example of the law that says the most intelligent people are the most prone to magical thinking, and their intelligence makes them immune to ever even contemplating they could be in the slightest bit wrong, all the while the most intelligent believe themselves to be the most virtuous, on the side of the angels (trans golden children, and the put upon adult TIMs), thus come down hardest on those stupider than them, proved by their refusal to believe and their punching down on those who are the last minority victims needing saving.
This potent cocktail is rocket fuel to change society.

Where you find the original "thought leaders" it's men in senior roles in medicine, law & politics who were moved by an access of pity for any man who, as they saw it, would so humiliate himself as to pretend to be a woman in public. Then there's the visceral pity for a man who would seek to surgically unman himself & the ick factor relating to castration & penile modification that made & makes these self-styled compassionate men shy away from thinking about the issue in any rigorous detail.

Of course there were also the more anonymous men in such roles who had niche sexual interests of their own like BDSM & saw the utility of eg; "absolute bodily autonomy" in advancing their own interests. And, always, always on the qui vive for ways to advance their cause, always networking, always seeking ways to normalise transgression & dismantle boundaries - the paedophiles who are now minimised if not ignored or retconned when their involvement in "Queer"/ "LGBT" activism is discovered.

The reason there's no single source is that the TQ is no one thing & the Q itself rejects boundaries & classification, which, in the most generous view of its more naive & gormless acolytes, leaves it wide open to opportunist exploitation, while the T was happy to artificially inflate its consituency by co-opting anyone & everyone. Think of all those "trans" MIllenials & older Gen Zs in bog-standard heterosexual relationships - but the bloke wear nail polish or the woman calls herself "nonbinary", soo transgender.

(A charismatic leader isn't a prerequisite of a cult. It's a commonplace but not essential although in overtly religious forms at least, you'll usually be able to trace its inception to a v few people if not a Great Leader.)