Fascism!

[nomadthethird]

I was just thinking about this earlier, the way you always hear conservatives banging on about how "you can't say anything these days" because of "the liberal (sic.) media". There's a comparable situation over here with the Daily Mail, which seems to regard the BBC as little more than a front for the Socialist Workers' Party, the coming EU superstate and/or al-Qaeda. This despite the BBC's tendency, for example, to give Israel an unreasonably easy time in the news (as documented extensively here by droid a few months back).

Exactly the same way over here. Fox News is constantly whining about how persecuted conservatives are by the "liberal media", when not a single "liberal" network outlet would even *quote* someone saying something critical about the Iraq war without a hysterical negative reaction on the part of the anchors. The mainstream media got behind the "War on Terror" rhetoric almost 100%.

I still remember seeing Brian Jennings shaking his head, disgusted, when the Dixie Chicks spoke out against the Bush administration and its handling of 9/11 and the "war"...

 

[massrock]

alright, let's drop it then. in the name of fostering better communication. I'm still hardpressed to understand the (seeming) fixation on the U.S. in the 80s but since that seems to be holding up any other discussion, let's just drop it.

Cool.

I don't have an argument with you, but if someone won't accept an assurance of a misunderstanding they effectively say it's a lie and where I come from that won't stand.

 

[nomadthethird]

You could always...I don't know...explain yourself in further detail? In order to better communicate what you actually meant?

I've done it several times...it's really not that difficult. Unless you only have the energy to write two-sentence posts, I guess...

 

[massrock]

Padraig, don't let him try to make you feel like you "hallucinated" that stuff about 80s fixation...he threw that out there at least 3 times before you even responded to it, and then continued the debate after you did. So fuck all of the "I didn't say that!" bullshit.

It's not my fixation, there you go mentioning it again!

Look, there was a discussion about attitudes to communism, I mentioned the late cold war period and Ronald Reagan and then everyone was talking about the 80s, you know how these fads are! It was a digression but that happens sometimes. I even said I didn't want to get hung up on that point and yet you still go on about it.

 

[nomadthethird]

I have no interest in going on about anything. I was only interested in responding to your numerous allegations about American attitudes toward communists in the 1980s. They did not match up with the reality of the situation as I experienced it.

Still curious, though...how do you know when I was born?

 

[massrock]

Allegations.

 

[nomadthethird]

huh?

Yes, allegations. As far as I'm concerned, if you've never lived in the U.S., you can't make truly informed statements about what Americans "think" or "thought" in the past. You can only allege, make allegations based on things you've--read? seen on TV?

 

[nomadthethird]

So do, tell me...when was I born? When were you born?

 

[massrock]

Do you have a learning disability?

Do you talk to people like this in real life?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Oh, there's a huge amount of glamorization (among self-proclaimed radicals) of the "good old days" when fashionably communist artists were oppressed in the West...

tbf tho the desire to be validated by persecution is by no means limited to communists. of, again, communists not actually living under communist regimes (I reckon Orwell really nailed this, maybe more than anything else). in more anti-authoritarian circles I think it takes a different form, a kind of doomed romanticism. to be noble & pure in pre-ordained defeat.

The persecution complex is something you don't just see in artists, or communists, either...look at evangelicals in the U.S.

this is true tho I reckon it's not really the same complex. one is what is established, fighting against change, the other is (at least noiminally) transgressive.

 

[nomadthethird]

Ahh, I see what you mean.

I don't know if I believe in transgressive. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

 

[massrock]

Do you have a learning disability? That was not serious, for fuck's sake. That came after my fucking LIFE had been threatened by Nikbee--which, of course, I had the good sense not to take seriously, either, but to make fun of instead--so who's the "victim" here? Get a grip.

See, it's ok for "communists" to go around talking about who they're going to send to labor camps when they get into power, as long as they're "joking", but then if anybody else makes similarly silly claims to draw out the inherent nonsensical nature of "communist" threats, that's no joke.

Really, you don't think that sometimes people have a go at you because you invite it?

WTF? Who is this guy? Is he for real at all?

Hello dere.

 

[massrock]

Hey Padraig, it's not that massrock didn't communicate well, it's that you just "misread" him. Of course.

How about this, can you at all see the errors in your reading of this little exchange.

I'm not the first one to make this point, it's safe. a way to be in opposition w/o really having to risk anything.

I think there must be any number of lines that are easier to take if someone was aiming for a kind of cynical pseudo-stance.

What a great pro-communism argument: "anyone who questions the communist hypothesis is just a cynic."

Quite a solid, convincing bit of political rhetoric, that.

I also like the idea that the only "pseudo" stances are cynical.

I can think of all kinds of very sincere pseudo-stances.

I mean you just got that so wrong in every way I don't know where to begin.

 

[massrock]

Padraig, don't let him try to make you feel like you "hallucinated" that stuff about 80s fixation...he threw that out there at least 3 times before you even responded to it, and then continued the debate after you did. So fuck all of the "I didn't say that!" bullshit.

Yeah, fuck all that bullshit!

And the 'shoe' was actually something else, you still can't read.

 

[massrock]

so do, tell me...when was i born?

1997?

 

[massrock]

really, tell me what risks Alain Badiou or you or anyone else in America or Western Europe is taking by calling themself a communist in 2009?

I've never called myself a communist if that's what you think btw. Just to be clear.

 

[massrock]

Yes, allegations. As far as I'm concerned, if you've never lived in the U.S., you can't make truly informed statements about what Americans "think" or "thought" in the past. You can only allege, make allegations based on things you've--read? seen on TV?

I asked a question about the US in the 80s.

And I talked about my impressions of the political climate in the 1980s in Europe and the US.

Impressions.

At least I was eating solid food for all of the 80s.

But so what? I wasn't having a pop at your country or trying to prove something.

I mean what it was really was about some reactions to someone talking about Badiou stuff on this thread.

And I wondered where that was coming from. If there was some particular anti-communist or anti-Badiou vibe or consensus I wasn't aware of or something.

 

[massrock]

I think sometimes people have such a head full of politics that they see all kinds of isms and affiliations and 'smears' and agendas everywhere when sometimes people are just people you know.

 

[scottdisco]

If there was some particular anti-communist or anti-Badiou vibe or consensus I wasn't aware of or something.

there's no vibe or group-think or anything like that, no. (though i enjoyed Craner calling him a "corrosive influence" about, ooh, fifty pages ago )

 

[scottdisco]

Is the BNP fascist?

By their friends you shall know them

that second one is quite interesting, some very interesting photos.
there's a disclaimer.

Just a quick note, I don’t think that the rise of the BNP can be halted solely by calling them Nazis or pointing out that they are fascists but this was too good of an opportunity to miss.

"BNP agitates against Kosova’s independence"

that last one from Marko Hoare who i know is not everybody's cup of tea sometimes, but there's a couple of smashing images there, make sure you check out the map at the bottom if bothered.