Anarchist speech on the 80s Bash the Rich campaign.

[RedSunRising]

xtm82b2zpws

Makes a lot of brilliant points. :)

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

I love Ian Bone, he's one of my favourite political speakers. Check him out on Johnathan Ross's show for a laugh, its on youtube I think.

[I.O.T.M]

I love his no bullshit style of speaking.

[RedSunRising]

Class War were cool. I would love to get one of the calendars they put out.

[Ocean Seal]

"We don't make any demands of the rich. We just want to get rid of the bastards."
Quoted for truth

[RedSunRising]

Why do most anarchists though seem like radical liberals now in the UK? What happened?

[Ocean Seal]

Why do most anarchists though seem like radical liberals now in the UK? What happened?
I think most of the left in general seem like radical liberals in both the US and UK. Its in part because Reagan and Thatcher smashed the working class so throughly that were just picking up the ashes of the worker's movement and trying to inspire people to actually do something by using issues around the fence to bring people into the worker movement.

[RGacky3]

radical liberal? what the hell does liberal even mean?

[Ocean Seal]

radical liberal? what the hell does liberal even mean?
Ehh well you know. Basically adpot a series of liberal platforms and ask for more.
Ie: Liberals: Raise the minimum wage; Us: Raise it even more
Liberals: Support the worker's in Wisconsin; US: Support a potential general strike in Wisconsin
Liberals: Stop the war in Iraq but continue those in Afghanistan and Libya; Us: Stop all wars

I think the main point here is that we as leftists don't really have a coherent agenda for stopping capitalism or at least empowering the working class and raising class consciousness so we focus on peripheral issues that liberals like.

[RedSunRising]

radical liberal? what the hell does liberal even mean?

For me it means someone who is into socialism because of "niceness" as opposed to understanding the nature of class war.

[RGacky3]

Ehh well you know. Basically adpot a series of liberal platforms and ask for more.
Ie: Liberals: Raise the minimum wage; Us: Raise it even more
Liberals: Support the worker's in Wisconsin; US: Support a potential general strike in Wisconsin
Liberals: Stop the war in Iraq but continue those in Afghanistan and Libya; Us: Stop all wars

I think the main point here is that we as leftists don't really have a coherent agenda for stopping capitalism or at least empowering the working class and raising class consciousness so we focus on peripheral issues that liberals like.

Thats a false dictomy, you can support the workers in wisconsin NOW, as a step to supporting a general strike, you can support ending both wars now as a step to ending militarism, you can support minimum wages NOW as a step towards empowering workers and so on.

[Ocean Seal]

Thats a false dictomy, you can support the workers in wisconsin NOW, as a step to supporting a general strike, you can support ending both wars now as a step to ending militarism, you can support minimum wages NOW as a step towards empowering workers and so on.
Agreed, but we don't really have support from the workers. We aren't really organizing them such that we facillitate their victory in class war, and we even fail to use terms like wage slavery, anti-capitalism, or even socialism (which is something that we really need to take back from the likes of The Last Word). We take these steps now as you said, but in fact we have merely taken some liberal platforms and made them more extreme in order to eventually reach a stage where we can have a coherent anti-capitalist ideology.

[#FF0000]

radical liberal? what the hell does liberal even mean?

Basically you.

[727Goon]

radical liberal? what the hell does liberal even mean?

lib·er·al   
–adjective
1. Favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.

"That Democrat is a liberal"

2. Favorable to Classical Liberalism, or Dead White Men-ism

"Thomas Jefforson was a liberal"

3. Favorable to neo-liberal economic policies

"Bill Clinton was a liberal"

4. Anyone and everyone who tankies don't like

"He doesn't want to send political dissidents to the gulags to have their fingernails ripped out? What a liberal!"

[Rafiq]

^


/facepalm.

[RGacky3]

Basically you.

Aka "I don't have anything to say except you suck."


Agreed, but we don't really have support from the workers. We aren't really organizing them such that we facillitate their victory in class war, and we even fail to use terms like wage slavery, anti-capitalism, or even socialism (which is something that we really need to take back from the likes of The Last Word). We take these steps now as you said, but in fact we have merely taken some liberal platforms and made them more extreme in order to eventually reach a stage where we can have a coherent anti-capitalist ideology.

Have you seen what happened in wisconsin? A lot of it was about class war, working class solidarity, even socialism, it does'nt matter what terms you use, say socialism, say democracy whatever, as long as the idea of class solidarity and anti-capitalism is the idea, that IS what happens, you don't need red flags for a revolution.

What your last sentance says is totally correct, but thats what we SHOULD be doing, we SHOULD be taking what people (people not the liberal establishment) are actually worried about and address them, we should'nt be trying to write our own narrative, we should follow the actual narrative of the working class and bring it to the left.

What happened in Wisconsin WAS and IS class war.


lib·er·al   
–adjective
1. Favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.

"That Democrat is a liberal"

2. Favorable to Classical Liberalism, or Dead White Men-ism

"Thomas Jefforson was a liberal"

3. Favorable to neo-liberal economic policies

"Bill Clinton was a liberal"

4. Anyone and everyone who tankies don't like

"He doesn't want to send political dissidents to the gulags to have their fingernails ripped out? What a liberal!"

1. None of us here, really.
2. Then it includes Karl Marx, Castro and so on.
3. None of us here.
4. There we go.

[Forward Union]

Still not sure why someone from a middle class family in Wales has an incredibly London working class accent. :D

[Devrim]

Class War's 'Bash the Rich' campaign was pretty much a farce. It must look better in retrospect because it looked like the worst sort of stuntism at the time.

Devrim

[black magick hustla]

class war was p. much a joke im glad it dissappeared

[RedSunRising]

Still not sure why someone from a middle class family in Wales has an incredibly London working class accent. :D

Evidence of that assertion?

Also people are missing the point, they exagerated things to point out facts that the left in general has and had forgotten, at least in the first world, such as that capitalism isnt some computer program but a system run by humans to dominate other humans and those dominating humans and their allies have faces, names and addresses, that left often loves to play itself and the working class as essentially victims which can be pretty naseuating for normal people, and that class identity and pride are necessary for there to be class solidarity in a meaningful, revolutionary way. Im not saying that they showed a shining path forward, but credit where credit is due.

[Devrim]

RSR, what the Bash the Rich campaign ended up with, was about two hundred punks, having been diverted from their planned route through Hampsted, marching through North London council estates holding a banner saying 'behold your future executioners', sad but true.

Devrim

[bricolage]

Wasn't it a predominantly Bengali estate too?