being intimately involved with the UK left

[shakahislop]

I work with lots of folk "on the left", it seems to me like they are keeping their heads down and staying away from the toxic public discourse until the next government arrives, but none of them are bonkers culture warriors - my sense is that they connect to radical leftism precisely as far as it gets before veering off into grandstanding nonsense. But obvs painting them as rabid nutters serves various political purposes.

I'm talking about old school left: unions, activists and campaigners, journalists and so on, who have their own networks and don't have much connection to or need for the likes of Novara

I can't take Novara seriously. There's something ridiculous about the whole setup. The way they pop up on the same current affairs programs as everyone else and partake in the game. The way they carry themselves. The titles of their books. It all strikes me as a collective of hollow media careers, whether they're sincere in their politics or not.

This extends to all political coverage and current affairs content, but Novara ostensibly being on the left makes it seem particularly ridiculous because they have to pretend they're doing something more important.

i found them (novara) incredibly annoying to begin with. but they cover a lot of things i'm interested in and i think either i've adapted or they've got better at what they're doing. ash sarkar in particular i hated for a while. but by this point i find her pretty insightful and quite a good interviewer. i suppose its obvious that novara is a differently aligned version of tucker carlson red scare etc etc, the mediation of reality through a worldview that you can access several times a week. the UK left thing in a new media form.

 

[shakahislop]

i got into being 'on the left' (in that way that you can without actually being involved in anything except talking in the pub) coz i) it was very obviously cooler and ii) i was poor and it gave me a way of understanding my life. the first made it easy for me to get into if i wanted to and the second was the emotional driver

 

[Benny Bunter]

Most entertaining thing novara have done is the Peter Hitchens interview where Bastani owns himself massively just by having him on. I bet he regretted it afterwards,lol!

 

[Benny Bunter]

He says in the intro that they got him on 'cause it forces you to hone your arguments, then proceeds to lose every single argument

 

[shiels]

i found them (novara) incredibly annoying to begin with. but they cover a lot of things i'm interested in and i think either i've adapted or they've got better at what they're doing. ash sarkar in particular i hated for a while. but by this point i find her pretty insightful and quite a good interviewer.

Speaking of emotional drivers id say a lot of the hate here comes from envy of younger, cleverer more successful writers / journalists

 

[shiels]

He says in the intro that they got him on 'cause it forces you to hone your arguments, then proceeds to lose every single argument

one of novaras strengths is reasoned in depth debates with opposing views that arent just about pwning for social clips

 

[craner]

one of novaras strengths is reasoned in depth debates with opposing views that arent just about pwning for social clips

Definitely not, not a shred of it

 

[shakahislop]

Speaking of emotional drivers id say a lot of the hate here comes from envy of younger, cleverer more successful writers / journalists

i had to 'check in with myself' (sorry my girlfriend does a lot of therapy and the vocabularly is catching) with ash sarkar, about why she provoked such a negative reaction. i'd recently been told by the left-wing internet that i was a racist for disliking dianne abbot as well which made me hesitate in trusting my reaction. with ash sarkar she was annoying to start off with because she was trying to do two things, she was trying to take this serious media space and also be cool, being an oxford graduate but also show you that she was cool and street etc. also she was about 25 and suddenly in the public eye which sounds like a total nightmare. i think she's class now though.

 

[shakahislop]

but since you raise it shiels there is something to envy with the novara lads i think. and all the writers etc that get to be a part of that london left-wing thing. who wouldn't want to be paul mason hanging around at dinner parties and flying off to greece to go to parties in squats? getting to write books about what you think with cool titles that people actually read. the dream as well is always to not have to do very much work, just show up and get your make-up done and talk to the camera for an hour. these are enviable lifestyles from the outside.

 

[sufi]

I think Ash Sarkar's folks iive around here, so I occasionally see her on the transport
Paul Mason is universally despised as a creep as far as i understand, so if he gets invited to dinner you would probably not want to be there

 

[craner]

Paul Mason is universally despised as a creep as far as i understand, so if he gets invited to dinner you would probably not want to be there

Yeah, I wouldn't send my daughter to his seminar

 

[craner]

Speaking of emotional drivers id say a lot of the hate here comes from envy of younger, cleverer more successful writers / journalists

Definitely not, not a shred of it

 

[Mr. Tea]

i had to 'check in with myself' (sorry my girlfriend does a lot of therapy and the vocabularly is catching) with ash sarkar, about why she provoked such a negative reaction. i'd recently been told by the left-wing internet that i was a racist for disliking dianne abbot as well which made me hesitate in trusting my reaction.

Remember when Abbott made a complete tit of herself in that car-crash interview where she obviously hadn't read even a summary of the white paper or whatever it was she was meant to talking about? I remember FB and Twitter being full of people I knew going on about how brave she was, and how anyone who didn't think she was the best thing since sliced bread was obviously a racist and a misogynist, etc. etc. But actually it was an objectively pretty poor performance she gave, and would have been exactly as embarrassing if she'd been a white man, so I was left with the impression that the correct progressive opinion to have was that she'd done pretty well for a black woman, which sounds pretty fucking weird to me.

 

[shakahislop]

Remember when Abbott made a complete tit of herself in that car-crash interview where she obviously hadn't read even a summary of the white paper or whatever it was she was meant to talking about? I remember FB and Twitter being full of people I knew going on about how brave she was, and how anyone who didn't think she was the best thing since sliced bread was obviously a racist and a misogynist, etc. etc. But actually it was an objectively pretty poor performance she gave, and would have been exactly as embarrassing if she'd been a white man, so I was left with the impression that the correct progressive opinion to have was that she'd done pretty well for a black woman, which sounds pretty fucking weird to me.

yeah i do remember that happening, although i can't exactly remember the internet reaction. these were interesting convulsions. probably everyone has been through this process by this point where something they've thought has been attacked as being racist mysogynist etc, and had to weigh it up, square it with themself.

 

[Mr. Tea]

yeah i do remember that happening, although i can't exactly remember the internet reaction. these were interesting convulsions. probably everyone has been through this process by this point where something they've thought has been attacked as being racist mysogynist etc, and had to weigh it up, square it with themself.

I mean, I can see why many people would have that kneejerk reaction, because she obviously does get a lot of abuse that has nothing to do with her performance as an MP or a shadow cabinet member (as she was then) and is both racist and misogynist, and progressives would obviously not want to find themselves on the same side, even incidentally, as the people who were saying "look at this idiot!" and obviously taking great delight in it.

A similar thing happened when Cathy Newman interviewed Jordan Peterson, and was obviously on such a mission to make him look like a total cunt by doing nothing by coming out with crude strawmannish travesties of everything he said for 30 minutes straight that it had an effect exactly opposite to the intended one.

 

[version]

i had to 'check in with myself' (sorry my girlfriend does a lot of therapy and the vocabularly is catching)

This is the worst thing you've ever said on here.

 

[version]

Paul Mason is universally despised as a creep as far as i understand, so if he gets invited to dinner you would probably not want to be there

There was that thing a while back about him working with the security services going after people on the left too.

 

[craner]

There was that thing a while back about him working with the security services going after people on the left too.

He got into Orwell's harder later stuff

 

[thirdform]

one of novaras strengths is reasoned in depth debates with opposing views that arent just about pwning for social clips

yeah and that's why they are hopelessly bourgeois. Do you debate flat earthers? no. It has nothing to do with pluralism, you must be organic and not democratic. Either you are correct or you are not. Debating with opposition doesn't need to come into it, unless you're unsure of your positions, which of course a venal ketamine wank bank are. I told you to stop with drugs!

 

[thirdform]

I have never debated in my life and never will.