"the day my inner anarchist lost out to the bourgeois me"

[ed miliband]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/26/my-inner-anarchist-lost-out-bourgeois

monbiot is another one those privately-educated oxbridge grads who appointed himself a "leader" of protest movements in the past and has since made a nice bit of cash as a result of his "involvement". both his parents were tory mps, and he quite clearly inherited their hatred of the poor. i'm sure monbiot wrote this thinking it unveils some grand truth about "anarchism" ("it's unworkable because there are bad people!"), but i think the only thing that has been revealed is that he's a racist who hates travellers.

they sound dead cool though:


They wound their dogs up, making them snap and snarl at the other occupiers. At night they roamed the camp, staffies straining at the leash, cans of Special Brew in their free hands, shouting "fucking hippies, we're going to burn you in your tents!"

[hetz]

Defending yourself against provocateurs and vandals has nothing to do with your "inner anarchist or your inner bourgeois".
The author seems like a liberal spineless slime, and no self-respecting leftist gathering (which the "Occupy" isn't and wasn't BTW ) would allow such degenerates harassing people.
And they don't sound cool, they sound like miserable thugs.

[ed miliband]

yes, they were probably nasty bastards but i dislike george and his ilk more. plus i like the line "fucking hippies, we're going to burn you in your tents!"

[hetz]

yes, they were probably nasty bastards but i dislike george and his ilk more
Yes but they didn't go around beating people. If you dislike Occupy types just move on, they won't follow you and harass you.


plus i like the line "fucking hippies, we're going to burn you in your tents!"
Why would you "like" that? It's something fascist street thugs or some ordinary "apolitical" street hooligans would say. They are scum.
I don't like hippies but I'm not a sociopath who goes around threatening people.

[l'Enfermé]

Should have burned this Monbiot instead.

[ed miliband]

Yes but they didn't go around beating people. If you dislike Occupy types just move on, they won't follow you and harass you.

i have many issues with occupy but i wasn't referring to "occupy types"; i was talking about posh twats who try to impose themselves on struggles in order to further their career. the guardian, new statesmen and independent (in britain) are full of this sort.


Why would you "like" that? It's something fascist street thugs or some ordinary "apolitical" street hooligans would say. They are scum.
I don't like hippies but I'm not a sociopath who goes around threatening people.

why would i like it? because i find it funny?

[hetz]

Should have burned this Monbiot instead.
Are you serious? Fuck Monbiot, but what kind of talk is this?
Burning people for being spineless liberals?
What's up with these sadistic "jokes" (?) on here?

[hetz]

i was talking about posh twats who try to impose themselves on struggles in order to further their career. the guardian, new statesmen and independent (in britain) are full of this sort.
If such scumbags can "impose" themselves on a struggle of all the "99% percent" you know that struggle isn't worth two shits.


why would i like it? because i find it funny?
That's nothing funny about that, at all.

[ed miliband]

i don't think any of this really happened anyway, so i don't feel bad laughing at it.

[hetz]

Yes but remember this is a public forum, with a lot of guests possibly reading this thread.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Rahhh rahhh I hate left-wing academia but Eric Hobsbawm makes a cool cover pic...:lol:

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

i don't think any of this really happened anyway, so i don't feel bad laughing at it.

So if you think the account is fictional, what do you think Monbiot's intentions were in writing that piece?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I love posting in the wrong thread.

Meant that for the other thread about verso books or whatever. oh well fuck it.

[hetz]

It doesn't pass me by when i'm working that I need to work 7-8 hours just to pay for some shitty, overpriced textbook. Ever thought of getting a copy from the library / borrowing it from someone and then paying a few pounds to get it copied at the nearest copy-shop?

[ed miliband]

So if you think the account is fictional, what do you think Monbiot's intentions were in writing that piece?

you know how every summer the newspapers have a "silly season" when they'll print any old dross because they have no other stories? i think a similar sort of thing happens between christmas and new year. this is a humorous (or... meant to be, anyway) story, probably based loosely on events that actually occurred. also monbiot has slagged his youthful "anarchism" off before, so this is another example of that -- "anarchism is impossible because look at these bad people..."

[Jimmie Higgins]

That author seems to mistake anarchism for "liberal moralism". I knew activists (including a self-described anarchist who was more of a liberal lifestylist than revolutionary) in Occupy Oakland that expressed alomost the exacts same "inner-turmoil". There was petty theft and a couple of late-night fights - and a shooting (not by a cop) though just in virtually the same loaction, not some conflict between occupiers or anything. But the defeatism - and nievite - of people thinking that thefts and "chaos" meant that a liberated society can't be built, is sort of the deflated inverse of the liberal "lifestyle" illusions that they could create this bubble of liberation inside a rotting industrial city of capitalism that was somehow free of all the problems of that society. Please, that park is where homeless people live normally and where jobless youth gather and sell drugs or just hang out - there's always thefts around that park, so it's hardly a "failure of anarchist ideals" that in a corrupt society full of anger and inequlity, a small movement wasn't immune from those phenomena.

Edit: while not immune... occupy Oakland did make a impact in creating a temporary space for radicals and homless to organize and provide some support, protection, and community. It will just take a wholsale revolution IMO to actually "fix" the conditions which make people have to scrap and fight in self-interest to survive and act like assholes to eachother - a little solidarity and goodwill from a movement can make an impact, but it won't eliminate these sorts of things.

[Ravachol]

Are you serious? Fuck Monbiot, but what kind of talk is this?
Burning people for being spineless liberals?
What's up with these sadistic "jokes" (?) on here?

I don't know if you've noticed but this is a forum where everything from defending the Moscow trials to the DPRK or the Derg is not uncommon. So jokes about rightfully warming up this frigid closet-tory asshole a little bit is the least to go on about I'd think.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Calling Monbiot a closet-tory is a bit much. However much of a spineless liberal he is, I think (from what i've read of him, which isn't alllll that much) he's quite unequivocal in his opposition to the level of austerity imposed by the tories, lib dems etc.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Ever thought of getting a copy from the library / borrowing it from someone and then paying a few pounds to get it copied at the nearest copy-shop?

Well, that's what I do if it's just a book i'm using for reference, or if I only need a chapter or two, but it's kind of unavoidable when the course textbook is 22 chapters, 500 pages long and I need all of it, all year.

I guess otherwise, the publishing houses would lose a shit load of potential student profit!

[bcbm]

anarchists are bourgeois so i dont think much was lost

[Will Scarlet]

a guy with a shaved head, tattooed knuckles, wearing a stripey fleece he stole from George Monbiot. Sounds legit.

[bcbm]

sounds better than george monbiot anyway

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

anarchists are bourgeois so i dont think much was lost
Class struggle anarchists are bourgeois? Huh. :rolleyes:

[Os Cangaceiros]

That was one of the issues with OWS, that all of these do-gooder liberals, as a by-product of occupying public space, now had to deal with people that they'd spent their lives trying to ignore and avoid.

Reminded me of this video:

Ex71rPfU3RY

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I have an issue with the use of the word "do-gooder" in a negative sense. I don't get it, should these people be only looking after number one and kicking puddles into homeless peoples' faces, or what?

Are some people who want social justice naive, and unaccustomed to living closer to the margins of society? I think that's inevitable. I don't think however that the most productive response to such naivete is to dismiss them as "liberal do-gooders". I mean good grief, that sounds like the sort of facile and superficial shit dumbass conservatives say, and I thought communists were supposed to more nuanced than that?

I don't think Os Cangaceiros has such a simplistic view of things, but his use of the word "do-gooder" did remind me that there are those who do.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Well I was mostly referencing the fact that a lot of the people who were associated with Occupy Wall Street had ideals which, while they may have beared a superficially similar resemblance to some of the talking points of "the left", they actually had very different views on the state of things, and the rationale they used was quite different. I hate to use this word as an epithet, but they were idealists. That's not to say that communists are all from the coal mines and have a rock-solid materialist analysis because of this (lol) but how they frame their arguments is a lot different from us. I think there's a lot of elitism and hypocrisy in a lot of the liberal arguments, honestly (and unsuprisingly).

That's ultimately what I meant by the "do-gooders".

[o well this is ok I guess]

Didn't everyones occupy have people having hushed conversations about "the homeless problem" and suggesting various strategies for eviction?

[Rusty Shackleford]

Didn't everyones occupy have people having hushed conversations about "the homeless problem" and suggesting various strategies for eviction?

There was a Eulogy/Ode to Occupy article talking about how Occupy Oakland had a separate camp for the mentally ill, junkies, and homeless or whatever that was a few blocks away from Oscar Grant plaza. But, im sure most Occupys had poeple discussing the issue of homelessness in a bad way. For one, at the Occupy in my area, there was an issue with people who were not homeless going to the camp at night to just get drunk or whatever. There were some homeless people who ended up becoming core organizers/functionaries/non-leaders/leaders though. Not to say hecklers and mentally ill types(which is generally very rare) weren't an occasional annoyance, though hardly ever a 'problem' in my experience. What im saying is i didnt see any of these discussions and my greatest concern was taking over a place where the homeless congregate, interrupting their regular routines.

[l'Enfermé]

Calling Monbiot a closet-tory is a bit much. However much of a spineless liberal he is, I think (from what i've read of him, which isn't alllll that much) he's quite unequivocal in his opposition to the level of austerity imposed by the tories, lib dems etc.
Then he's fine with austerity but not too much of it?

[human strike]

I don't have anything to add, only that it's funny to call him George Moonbat. :)

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Are you serious? Fuck Monbiot, but what kind of talk is this?
Burning people for being spineless liberals?
What's up with these sadistic "jokes" (?) on here?

Because fuck liberals, they'll talk nice but when push comes to shove they'll go Khumer Rouge on your ass. So why should I pretend to care about their well being? If a few liberal twats get beaten than good on them, I don't expect any of them to care about my humanity if the police decide to unload a couple rounds on my comrades.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Because fuck liberals, they'll talk nice but when push comes to shove they'll go Khumer Rouge on your ass.

I thought liberals were too spineless and wishy-washy to do that sort of thing? Make your mind up.


So why should I pretend to care about their well being? If a few liberal twats get beaten than good on them, I don't expect any of them to care about my humanity if the police decide to unload a couple rounds on my comrades.

What is it precisely that makes you think that all liberals everywhere are just like you and have a complete lack of empathy?

Do you think liberals never get attacked by cops? In that case I guess all the people who've gotten their heads smashed in by police batons for taking part in Occupy aren't liberals.

[Will Scarlet]

Remember when carjacking became much more of a thing as a result of authorities talking about it as a problem? I hope the same thing happens with stealing clothes from liberal journalists. Just sweaterjacking them in the street.

[Rugged Collectivist]

Do you think liberals never get attacked by cops? In that case I guess all the people who've gotten their heads smashed in by police batons for taking part in Occupy aren't liberals.

Liberals get attacked by cops but that's because cops will attack anyone for any reason. If you actually fight back or if (god forbid) the protesters actually do something illegal the liberals will probably say you deserved it for breaking the law.

I don't think they should be beaten for no reason, but they aren't friends or allies.

[#FF0000]

eh i'd defend liberal dummies from police brutality as insufferable as they are.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

anarchists are bourgeois so i dont think much was lost

You are wrong. Just because anarchists do not follow marxism does not make us bourgeois.
I live in Portugal, a country very hurt by the crisis, and at this rate by next year we will be like Greece. Every day more people loose their jobs, unemployment is way higher than 10%, the ones who recently got their degree cannot get jobs, and those who do have a job work for below minimum wage, that's less than 400€ a month.
The PS (socialist party) were in charge before, but they lost the 2011 elections for trying to aprove changes to the salary and to make unemplyment even worse. They lost and the PSD (social-democratic party) won, on the promise that they would never lower minimum wage nor take away subsidies. The first thing the PSD did was invite the troika in, and lower the salaries, take away subsidies, destroy the health system, make the education system worse, take away holidays, etc, etc.
All parties lie, no matter if they are conservative, liberal, or even communist. The portuguese people knew this, and 40% of the population did not vote on the 2011 legislative elections, and 50% of the population did not vote on the 2011 presidential elections. Yet the few who voted beleived a certain party could fix the country, they were wrong.
The PS betrayed the people when they stole from us, the PSD betrayed the people when they let the troika in to steal even more from us, the PCP (the communists) betrayed the people when they did nothing to stop them.
The two main syndicates are the CGTP and the UGT, but the UGT betrayed the people when they agreed to the conditions of the troika. The only organizations that still hasn't betrayed the workers is the CGTP, but they know it is better to stay on the people's side.
This crisis has showed the portuguese people how politicians are all liars, all of them, no exception, it has showed us how no party is on our side, they all want to rob us, none wants to help us. This has led to many adults and older people that were stalinists, to drop stalinism, and go for social-democracy, while the young are atracted to anarchism, because they see it as the only hope to save their families.
If you think anarchism has something to do with the bourgeosie then you are terribly mistaken. Anarchism is what brings hope to the young, it is what makes them dream of a better world, it is what makes them hope, it is what makes them fight. Marxism can never hope to achieve the place anarchism has found in the students.
A party will not save you, your revolution will be for nothing if you rely on a state. You will still be in misery while the party takes the luxuries for itself.


I am anarchist, I will fight for liberty, not a state or a great leader.
I am anarchist.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

I should have been more precise.

When I was referring to liberals, I was referring to the liberal ideology that the state uses to justify it's existence, while liberalism refers to a philosophy of human rights, Representative democracy, welfare and "free market" capitalism, Liberals are the ones who defend this ideology and uphold it. While they may oppose the state in some instances, generally speaking it is only when the state fails to uphold "true" liberalism by betraying the principles it is supposed to represent, instead of opposing it based on these very principles that we revolutionaries oppose. Therefore, far from being our friends, they merely represent a sort of puritan capitalism that is only persecuted for wanting to put the rhetoric of the state in practice, rather than opposing the state it's self. When it comes to a revolution, they would oppose it tooth and nail because they realize that despite the fact their state isn't the best Representative of the world view they wish to impose, revolutionary socialism is the exact opposite of their world view and hence they won't feel any mercy for us. Likewise, the state won't fight for capitalism, they will fight for the holy cause of liberalism, since liberalism is the de facto state ideology of capitalism. Liberals are not revolutionaries, they are not even in opposition to the capitalist state, instead they support the abstract ideology of the state and not the state directly, but of course, the ideology of the state and the state it's self are inseparable.

[Drosophila]

[...]

I don't think bcbm was being serious....

[TheRedAnarchist23]

I don't think bcbm was being serious....

Maybe he should have pointed that out better, and he would have spared me all that writting.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

I'm pretty sure bcbm, if not an anarchist, has great anarchist sympathies......

[Vanguard1917]

Monbiot has never had any right to portray himself as a progressive of any sort. The only motivation for his radical-sounding past articles was his belief that capitalism is destroying the planet via working-class 'overconsumption'. Hence his desire for a greater-regulated capitalism in which the masses are made to consume less. He was quite explicit about this back in the mid-2000s, though i'm not sure if he'd have the balls to be as open nowadays, what with the current Tory government reminding us what austerity actually looks like.

"[T]he campaign against climate change is an odd one. Unlike almost all the public protests which have preceded it, it is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. It is a campaign not just against other people, but also against ourselves."
- Monbiot (2006)

[human strike]

http://travellersolidarity.org/2013/01/02/to-george-monbiot-and-the-guardian/


To George Monbiot and The Guardian…

Racism against Travellers leads to violent attacks, verbal abuse and continued impoverishment. In 2011, hundreds of riot police evicted and destroyed the largest Irish Traveller site in the country, Dale Farm, leaving dozens homeless, including children. Over the past year, Romani people in Hungary, France and Italy have been attacked and killed by right wing groups. Anti-Traveller racism is far from a laughing matter. That George Monbiot decided it was appropriate to devote an entire article to a racist anecdote about meeting a Traveller man is unforgivable. (‘The day my inner anarchist lost out to the bourgeois me, December 26th (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/26/my-inner-anarchist-lost-out-bourgeois)‘).

At length, Monbiot describes the Traveller man he meets as ‘filthy’, telling crude jokes, being interested only in animals, and – for the greater part of the piece – as a thief. He implies that all Travellers are stupid and bestial. This caricatured sketch of a nameless representative of an ethnic group is as venomous as far-right propaganda against Muslim or Jewish communities, and should be answered with as little tolerance and as much opposition. The apologism he offers the reader by stating he has written about, or even campaigned against, the harassment of Travellers only serves to make this drivel appear more socially acceptable, the equivalent of stating “but some of my best friends are black.” The title essentially states that although his “inner anarchist” would like to be open-minded about Travellers, this is impossible due to the harsh facts of the “reality” he constructs through a generalisation of Travellers. One incident he recounts, in which a couple of men (who he describes as Travellers) are violent and dishonest, serves to criminalise an entire group of people: a case study in modern day racism.

The title of the piece encourages the perception that all Travellers are thieves, and that any argument to the contrary is simply ‘anarchist’ fiction. He even jokingly acknowledges that this form of racism is bourgeois, as if by sheepishly admitting that he is speaking on behalf of the police and the state he can get away with it. By contrasting the man’s experience of the police assault that landed him in A&E with his portrayal of him a thief and violent thug, he delegitimises reports by Travellers of police violence, turning the victim into the accused.

Despite having reported on years of police attacks against environmental campaigners, Monbiot has failed to allow these confrontations with the law to open his eyes. Instead, the prejudice of the police and the injustice of the state are omitted from his account; forces which would otherwise be suspect are now affirmed for the sake of Monbiot’s racist monologue.

The petty version of revenge Monbiot enacts by writing this article only exposes further the intense inequality of power between the liberal establishment and criminalised communities, an inequality which he has no desire to examine. The Guardian is also implicated in this racist drivel, which shows it to be as blind, ignorant and malicious as the other British newspapers which continue to print the material which bolsters both vigilante and state attacks against Travellers.

The Traveller Solidarity Network believes that both Monbiot and the Guardian Group should apologise unreservedly for the article. But beyond this, journalists should understand the situation Traveller, Gypsy and Romani people face and the role the media could play in helping to put an end to this ‘acceptable’ form of racism.

Until then, this kind of writing should be seen to be as damaging to Travellers’ lives as fascists and riot police.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Seems like you're average, liberal toolbag to me.

[Blake's Baby]

One-time darling of 'anti-capitalist'/'green'-activist types, in reality a tool of the establishment - but such has been obvious for 15 years or so, really, hasn't it?

[human strike]

From Reinvigorating the Dialectic (https://www.facebook.com/reinvigorating.thedialectic.7)

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/47647_126094457556505_1995066552_n.jpg

[TheRedAnarchist23]

I decided to keep the great reply I made before and store it in a text file in my computer, so that I can just paste that whenever someone says something negative about anarchism.

[hetz]

What's the hell is anecdotal racism?

[Comrade #138672]

What's the hell is anecdotal racism?I suppose showing that a specific 'race' is inferior, not by explicitly saying this, but by providing a set of anecdotes about individuals that are supposed to belong to that 'race', who, according to the 'storyteller', do terrible things. Combining those anecdotes in a single story gives the reader the impression that there's something wrong with that 'race', because the 'examples' clearly show that, right?

Without literally saying it, a racist opinion can be propagated by those anecdotes.

[hetz]

But that's...anecdotal. Anecdotal, right? Like, anecdotal evidence?
I don't even know what's going on.
Would I be a racist for saying that a gypsy attacked and tried to rob me?

[Kotze]

George Monbiot: A letter to the Travellers’ Solidarity Network. (http://www.monbiot.com/2013/01/10/as-it-happened/)

I like him. George Monbiot is probably the most important leftwing activist in Britain today.

:P


The only motivation for his radical-sounding past articles was his belief that capitalism is destroying the planet via working-class 'overconsumption'.You can find lots of quotes by Monbiot about personal consumption decisions, but that's not the focus of his work. His 2006 book Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning is about what effect changes in building codes, public transport etc. would have on carbon emissions. There's nothing in his writing about how to get there, he is not a Marxist, but his writing is very informative on the technical side of things. He has debunked phony ideas about small-scale solutions like people individually owning tiny wind generators. He is certainly not neo-liberal, and his writing is in effect arguing pro central planning, whatever his intentions may be, simply from listing the technical aspects.

And now, to whoever supports that idea to decoat Monbiot: Ugh. You don't want him to call people thieves, so when you see him sitting somewhere with his laptop and coat, you steal the coat? How stupid is that. If you don't want him to call you a thief in writing, you have to steal the laptop, duh. (Hmm. Stealing sounds a bit too negative, I prefer the term sustainable borrowing.)

[goalkeeper]

he's quite unequivocal in his opposition to the level of austerity imposed by the tories, lib dems etc.

A few years a go he was hoping for a recession and a bit of austerity to "save the planet"

[skitty]

I don't think the writer was referring to Occupy(the movement), as the event was 5 years past-they were occupying a Digger site. As he was sitting in the ER and slowly recognising the attacker it reminded me of Clockwork Orange:lol:.