Your Journey to the Alt-Right.

[craner]

This reminds me that a lot of former Italian fascists found a new post-war life in the PCI.

 

[line b]

This reminds me that a lot of former Italian fascists found a new post-war life in the PCI.

PCI?

 

[DannyL]

Was she ever hip? It's a genuine question, her NME era was before my time and anyway I grew up preferring Smash Hits

I'm too young to have read NME when she wrote for it, but I do remember it being a great read. She was certainly seen as "hp" but perhaps that's just London meeja types self-mythologising IDK

 

[craner]

PCI?

Sorry, the Italian Communist Party. It was one of the most powerful Communist parties in post-war Europe and one of the progenitors of Eurocommunism.

 

[craner]

One of my favourite opening lines is from a piece in Burchill's Love It or Shove It anthology which begins: "Poor Nancy Reagan, she's got egg all over her facelift."

 

[IdleRich]

Was she ever hip? It's a genuine question, her NME era was before my time and anyway I grew up preferring Smash Hits

I dunno, i think hipness is in the eye of the holder but the reason I used that phrase is cos that (edit: by which I mean "hip young gunslingers") was the wording of the advert that the NME used to admit that it was woefully out of touch while at the same time signalling its desire to be dragged forward into a super cool future. The advert led to the employment of Burchill and Tony Parsons I believe, neither of whom, I'll wager, had ever gunned down a man over a game of poker or even so much as ridden into town on a horse shouting yee-haw

You say vaguely on the left, but she was an open and enthusiastic Communist. She thought the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was brilliant because it would civilize the backwards Afghan tribes.

To be honest, most of the time her politics (and her everything else for that matter) seemed pretty confused from what I could glean of them. I'm sure you're right but I'm happy enough to say something that fits with what I wrote about going in this thread and which is not factually wrong.

 

[boxedjoy]

yeah the impression I get is more of bold careerists willing to be ~controversial in order to build a reputation, more than any kind of principles driving them. There's a Scottish newspaper columnist who is known for not actually caring what her own personal stance is - she just asks the editor what position she has to take and writes the piece they want from her.

 

[Mr. Tea]

yeah the impression I get is more of bold careerists willing to be ~controversial in order to build a reputation...

Or, as I saw someone put it on Facebook recently, "shitting herself in public for clicks".

 

[hucks]

Burchill’s politics is harder to read but essentially she’s just a horrible, terrible person. Looking at the Tommy Robinson in Russia stuff, seems to be the case there too. Sure he’s a racist nationalist but that’s just an outgrowth of the fact that he’s a massive cunt.

 

[john eden]

She wrote some good things in her Guardian weekend column about working class campaigns for justice, for example about respiratory conditions people got due to their work.

The punk book she did with Parsons has not aged at all well and includes racist jokes iirc.

she just got high on her “saying the unsayable” supply.

 

[DannyL]

I think she's always been an unlikeable attention seeking controversialist, its just this was hidden by her subject matter at the time, music or wider trends in culture. As she's got older the focus becomes just generating controversy thus the shitty positions she takes.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Remember when she compared the PLO to the KKK? Haha, good one Julie, that's "bare jokes" as a hip young gunslinger might say.

 

[Slothrop]

Is there a basic issue that saying "we care about people and it's okay with us if you're an arsehole provided you're being an arsehole to the bad guys" will attract a load of people to your cause who don't actually care about people but like the opportunity to be an arsehole more or less at will? I mean, it feels like a lot of the TERF Wars bollocks, for instance, is down to people who are used to laying into people with impunity because they're "punching up" being ticked off for laying into people when they aren't, and having a strop about it.

 

[wg-]

Has it always been the case in this country that a late middle-age lurch to the right is generally a profitable career move?

Certainly a lot of it recently but to be honest most of this stuff seemed to happen without me paying attention to it before twitter ruined it all

 

[IdleRich]

Has it always been the case in this country that a late middle-age lurch to the right is generally a profitable career move?

Certainly a lot of it recently but to be honest most of this stuff seemed to happen without me paying attention to it before twitter ruined it all

Not sure anything she (JB) has done lately has turned out to be a good career move.

 

[boxedjoy]

she's got people talking about her and when she inevitably pops up on that new fake Fox News channel there's a ready-made audience for her. I wish I could get #cancelled, it's a great way to get your name in the media.

 

[craner]

she's got people talking about her and when she inevitably pops up on that new fake Fox News channel there's a ready-made audience for her. I wish I could get #cancelled, it's a great way to get your name in the media.

You’ve got be at least semi-famous first, don’t put the cart before the horse.

 

[wg-]

I don't necessarily mean the Royal baby joke, that was the stupidest thing I've saw in a while.

But there are dozens of middle aged bastards transitioning towards a career of being a spiteful right-wing knobhead. Is this a new development or have I just not really noticed before?

 

[martin]

The punk book she did with Parsons has not aged at all well and includes racist jokes iirc.

Nah – she does rip into Rastas though (particularly Black Slate) for being anti-abortion. Terrible book, all the same.

Apparently she was at Lewisham in ’77, and her and Danny Baker grabbed a bunch of Hitler World Tour T-shirts from a shop in Covent Garden and threw them into the street on another occasion. She also pilloried Siouxsie for her nazi armbands, and the original lyrics to ‘Love In A Void’, in her NME review of ‘The Scream’.

But there’s this idea that if you’re anti-nazi, you must automatically be a sussed, cool and compassionate individual. Which I think is bollocks, and a pretty low bar.

Mind you, reacting to Julie Burchill is already losing the game.

Somebody deleted their post about this here (can’t remember now, Version?) but I also saw the tweets dredging up her son’s suicide and thought, what a bunch of sad, pathetic cunts.

 

[Mr. Tea]

But there’s this idea that if you’re anti-nazi, you must automatically be a sussed, cool and compassionate individual. Which I think is bollocks, and a pretty low bar.

Prince Philip, for example.