yeah the Starmer aftertiming by Bastani last week just sums up what a self-serving muppet he is. There are plenty of non-affiliated nobodies on twitter who can comment on politics in a more consistent manner without all the grandstanding that comes from being involved with a content factory or doing all that "watch my video" bollox!
― calzino, Wednesday, 5 October 2022 12:48 (one year ago) link
a lot of them seem like the kind of people who have always harboured an ambition to pursue a media career, so precisely the chirpy "influencer" types who are not aimed at grumpy old bastards like me. But I feel like anyone self-assured enough to upload videos of themselves talking shite every day is going to be politically dodgy and compromised because they love doing this shit so much!
― calzino, Wednesday, 5 October 2022 13:12 (one year ago) link
This is pure guesswork on my part, but I'd imagine the "younger" demographic Novara targets is probably like thirtysomething millenials. Which is still younger compared to the rest of the UK media, sure.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 5 October 2022 13:18 (one year ago) link
Thats more or less my reading too, its difficult to see them as any kind of entry point for younger audiences and I don't see the effort or drive to do that. Which leads to its kind of cozy existence effectively advertized by guest slots on breakfast tv shows, and this generally coasting feel
― anvil, Wednesday, 5 October 2022 13:31 (one year ago) link
Any left-wing landlords about?
Do I know any London estate agents and/or landlords who would be up for being interviewed for a podcast?— Michael Walker (@michaeljswalker) October 5, 2022
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 5 October 2022 19:11 (one year ago) link
like he hasn't got the contact details of LRM on his rolodex, the fooking tool. How many of them there are would an interesting subject. From a '21 audit there are 18 Labour MP/Landlords - seems to way too low to me.
― calzino, Wednesday, 5 October 2022 20:41 (one year ago) link
Michael Walker has previously stated that all landlords should be abolished.
― the pinefox, Wednesday, 5 October 2022 21:47 (one year ago) link
once you've previously advanced the class struggle by some weak lip service ya get a free pass on NOT advancing the class struggle, sounds pretty solid tbf!
― calzino, Wednesday, 5 October 2022 22:04 (one year ago) link
How would this work in practice?(I know one answer is "have a revolution", but within the context of a parliamentary democratic framework, how would it happen?)
― Grandpont Genie, Thursday, 6 October 2022 09:14 (one year ago) link
It doesn't. From what I can tell, in Germany (not Italy) you have rent controls, restrictions on landlord eviction and standard regulations but even then I don't think this is the case throughout Germany (just from the fact we see a lot more about Berlin in the media here...basically because a lot of writers spend their time in Berlin).
And Walker is a social democrat, he believes in regulation rather than forced land redistribution.
And land is the key fact of life here. The Royal Family are landlords, Universities are landlords, as are many bosses who buy a 2nd home. Many people who grow up by the sea/scenic areas cannot afford to live there as prices are pushed up by air BnB landlordship. It must all be destroyed and the last thing they need is to be talked to and understood in any way.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 6 October 2022 09:40 (one year ago) link
I agree with Grandpoint Genie - I was not sure what MW was actually proposing.
Was he saying that all housing should be social housing?
I assume that when MW talks to the landlords he will be critical. Or perhaps, as he's interviewing them, that won't be a viable strategy.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 6 October 2022 11:05 (one year ago) link
tbh my guess is that MW wanted a very specific "unmediated" reaction-shot response from a.n.other landlord(s) specifically to the mini-budget -- you don't set up an interrogation stroke show-trial of an entire social layer and political-economic structure by trawling thru yr own follows (which will at best supply the view from a novara-adjacent sub-niche of the class in question) and for a general whitewashing of the landlord perspective you can just pick up any other paper
i'm not going to say this is NO different from the old far-left nostrum that revolutionaries should read the financial times and ignore the guardian -- not least bcz conflicted dynamics within the hostile forces is useful to know and a reconfiguration of some sort is possibly unfolding right now -- but the differences are more abt the pay-offs of public performativity of yr craft technique than the wisdom the nostrum does contain (which is where you gain the most solid info to help shape tactics and strategy)
the pitiless panopticon of soc-med has actually made tactics and strategy much harder in all political quarters (left AND right), a point that's going to be historically very interesting if we can live thru to a point where histories get written
― mark s, Thursday, 6 October 2022 11:17 (one year ago) link
"the pay-offs of public performativity of yr craft technique" -- i.e. these are self-evidently mainly negative hence our response in this thread
transparency is good not bad but also bad not good to put it in ddd-speak
― mark s, Thursday, 6 October 2022 11:18 (one year ago) link
"the old far-left nostrum that revolutionaries should read the financial times and ignore the guardian"
Bastani repeats this frequently.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 6 October 2022 11:22 (one year ago) link
worth noting those same "far lefties" are *absolutely banjaxed* by the arrival of the internet and now subsist as tiny grumpy ageing sects
― mark s, Thursday, 6 October 2022 11:26 (one year ago) link
not that the nostrum directly entails this outcome BUT
always hard to predict the future but imho the current situation w.r.t. social media makes it harder, coz as far as I can see "social media will be dead within 5 years and the likes of Zuckerberg, Musk etc will be recognised as pernicious more widely" and "social media will continue to burgeon and be developed technically so we all* have (non?)invasive direct brain-to-site interfaces"** are pretty much equally likely outcomes.
* prolly actually not all** and if you think things are bad now, that's when the sh*t really hits the fan!
― Grandpont Genie, Thursday, 6 October 2022 11:59 (one year ago) link
"Predictions are a fool's errand" -- Dr Aaron Bastani
― the pinefox, Thursday, 6 October 2022 12:02 (one year ago) link
"It'll go higher"
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 6 October 2022 12:17 (one year ago) link
my prediction
this:
Everything happens so much— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) June 28, 2012
but more of it
― mark s, Thursday, 6 October 2022 12:18 (one year ago) link
I've often heard left people say you should read The Economist or the FT because you get into The Capitalist mindset. Well done Bastani for regurgitating this stuff, he'll probably get to work in his beloved media if the world doesn't burn first.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 6 October 2022 12:24 (one year ago) link
when we are mining asteroids so 15 billion people can take a crap on a 24 carat gold toilet and during adverse El Nino seasons there are no famines because ppl can make synthetic steaks on a 3d printer, then people won't be laughing at him then
― calzino, Thursday, 6 October 2022 12:30 (one year ago) link
If Bastani haggled ppl to read Trotsky I'd respect the trolling.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 6 October 2022 13:16 (one year ago) link
I get put off by the dissonance between their modern presentation (i.e. pretty good website and slick youtubing) and old fashioned content (not much changed since Tribune of the 80s, ie. on-point but poorly sourced and edited). That said the sweep of reporting on the site was surprisingly broad to me - I had written them off based on Bastani et al’s obnoxious screen presences and the gloomy sense that they’re all en route to being future Parsons and O’Neills
― Chuck_Tatum, Thursday, 6 October 2022 14:37 (one year ago) link
"the gloomy sense that they’re all en route to being future Parsons and O’Neills"
What is the cause of this sense?
― the pinefox, Thursday, 6 October 2022 14:55 (one year ago) link
yeah I could imagine Bastani going totally Brendan in later middle age.
― calzino, Thursday, 6 October 2022 14:56 (one year ago) link
not sure precisely what i wanted to prove with this but i went off and checked their relative ages: parsons b.1953o'neill wikipedia doesn't say but since he wrote for living marxism my guess is not later than 1980; probably somewhat earlier (he edited spiked! from 2007) bastani b.83/84 (unsure why wikipedia is unsure lol) sarkar 92
butler doesn't have a wikipedia entry at all but i think he's much the same age as bastani
my half-baked point is that by now the novara kids are all some way older and set in their ways than TP and BoN were when they became entirely unreadable (i suspect BoN was always entirely unreadable)
― mark s, Thursday, 6 October 2022 14:58 (one year ago) link
i guess sarkar still has time to do a tony parsons but this seems quite unlikely
― mark s, Thursday, 6 October 2022 15:00 (one year ago) link
I think that gets closer to the problem, they're just not all that interesting. Why would you watch one of their videos? What would you learn from it?
And it shows in their view counts. Their videos on Ukraine are averaging around 30K views. This is terrible for a channel with 250K subscribers. Similar sized channels are getting 10x, 20x, 50x that, and don't have the advantage of free marketing from the BBC or Sky. High(ish) subscriber count and low view count tells its own story
They're not really adding anything, what is the reason to watch them? Who is watching them? They need to be more interesting, get better guests, show some insight. Having the 'correct' opinion on anything is irrelevant if people aren't watching
― anvil, Thursday, 6 October 2022 15:11 (one year ago) link
Don't really agree with that. I think if they were exploring communism, or what would make for a better world, in an interesting way I might tune in.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 6 October 2022 15:27 (one year ago) link
I think Sarkar shouting "I am a communist" at Piers Morgan is v good. If they, as a collective, explored some aspects of this, it could be better, whatever the viewing figures.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 6 October 2022 15:30 (one year ago) link
Right, and there are other channels where you can watch that, you don't need Novara for that. And there are other channels that do other things better than Novara, so we don't need Novara for that either
Which then leads to the question, who needs Novara, and for what?And I think this is what their view counts are showing
― anvil, Thursday, 6 October 2022 15:34 (one year ago) link
Sakar was decent when talking about the German communists on the bbc Hitler program, it was a refreshing change to hear a perspective from someone who isn't Applebum. But then they dropped her for the chess clown Kasparov in S2, because the USSR were as bad as the Nazis etc...
― calzino, Thursday, 6 October 2022 15:38 (one year ago) link
"Right, and there are other channels where you can watch that, you don't need Novara for that."
Even if there are, they could do it. Instead we Luxury communism, which a dead on arrival concept.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 6 October 2022 15:45 (one year ago) link
i know we all had fun with the meme but did anyone actually read the book? (i did not)
― mark s, Thursday, 6 October 2022 15:48 (one year ago) link
As I've mentioned before on old UKpol threads, I don't really understand the ILX downer on Novara. Tysky Sour is really good, has excellent and informed guests on everything from Brazilian politics to macroeconomics to Covid policy - I don't think there is anything similar broadcasting regularly on UK current events. Especially during lockdown it felt quite vital?
The Downstream slot has had outstanding extended interviews with people like Andreas Malm, China Mieville, Kojo Koram etc. And now they have some funding they are actually doing useful investigative journalism - see Polly Smythe as the new union/labour movement correspondent, and apparently more to follow?
― Piedie Gimbel, Thursday, 6 October 2022 15:49 (one year ago) link
I really enjoyed China Mieville's October book
― calzino, Thursday, 6 October 2022 15:51 (one year ago) link
I think he is a v bad writer but Ash's Novara interview with him was outstanding!
― Piedie Gimbel, Thursday, 6 October 2022 15:53 (one year ago) link
I don't know what Luxury Communism is, but why does it matter whether Novara create this type of content or not when other channels are already creating it?
― anvil, Thursday, 6 October 2022 15:54 (one year ago) link
Lol I did hear good things about that interview! xp
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 6 October 2022 15:55 (one year ago) link
well I am now tempted to watch that interview now
― calzino, Thursday, 6 October 2022 15:57 (one year ago) link
He’s awful, and has somehow not been visited by the MeToo fairy.
― put a VONC on it (suzy), Thursday, 6 October 2022 16:46 (one year ago) link
mieville or bastani?
― mark s, Thursday, 6 October 2022 16:48 (one year ago) link
always bet on the bad one being the baldy!
― calzino, Thursday, 6 October 2022 16:50 (one year ago) link
Mieville.
― put a VONC on it (suzy), Thursday, 6 October 2022 16:54 (one year ago) link
I never heard this before about CM, but it is never surprising.
― calzino, Thursday, 6 October 2022 16:56 (one year ago) link
one of the things I like about Ash is she's not afraid to ask "what does senescence mean?" because I sure as hell didn't know either!
― calzino, Thursday, 6 October 2022 18:28 (one year ago) link
I think one of the elements about class identity that writers and commentators are bad at understanding is that it isn't totally a conscious or intellectual stance, it's something ... erm different, borne out of decades of being shat on from a great height and never seeing things getting better. I'm not saying that criticism applies here, there was some good stuff about the latte sipping/mushy peas false dichotomy
― calzino, Thursday, 6 October 2022 18:46 (one year ago) link
senescence is my lived experience!
― mark s, Thursday, 6 October 2022 18:47 (one year ago) link
I'm definitely feeling the deterioration and loss of power
― calzino, Thursday, 6 October 2022 18:53 (one year ago) link
Bastani is a cop part #2722556271
hope you’re happy to have promoted this https://t.co/IJQaxWNPMZ— Nihal | نهال (@nihalist___) October 16, 2023
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 16 October 2023 20:22 (five months ago) link
Bastani has seriously fucked any remaining good will he had from the left and i'm amazed he's continuing to defend this
― no gap tree for old men (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 17 October 2023 08:58 (five months ago) link
It's bro-y doubling down, which is often my default mode online, but not when it comes to handing people over to the pigs.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 17 October 2023 13:59 (five months ago) link
Lol
I couldn't be opening my mouth as big as you are doing right now, when you were throwing rocks at bank back in 2011. Want to talk about shame? Let's talk about your criminal record. https://t.co/WsRT5p8STy— Dan🇨🇴 (@LTAD_98) October 17, 2023
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 17 October 2023 14:09 (five months ago) link
agree that Bastani is not good and is actually getting worse. Ash Sarkar meets Gary Younge was a good interview though.
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Tuesday, 17 October 2023 15:16 (five months ago) link
did somebody say doubling down?
it shouldn't need saying at this point, but this man is not a comrade, not part of anything worth calling a left, he is a fucking clown pic.twitter.com/7mjieXV6Pq— michael richmond (@Sisyphusa) November 12, 2023
― no gap tree for old men (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 12 November 2023 13:21 (four months ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBU8fM34Jkg
this compact and insightful Ash Sakar interview with Rashid Khalidi is very good. The Brits thought a Jewish population in the Palestinian Mandate could be like a Middle Eastern loyalist Ulster doing their Arab oppression for them, the Jewish population told the Brits "suck it"!
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Monday, 27 November 2023 08:24 (four months ago) link
The El Salvador elections are a real challenge to liberal left (of which I'm generally part). Due process went out the window, human rights quashed, but crime fell dramatically and the vast majority loved it.— Michael Walker (@michaeljswalker) February 5, 2024
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 6 February 2024 08:03 (one month ago) link
Human rights groups say that thousands have been arbitrarily arrested during his anti-gang drive.Amnesty International criticised the "gradual replacement of gang violence with state violence".
the pro-Duterte wing of the liberal left, what a fucking tool he is.
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Tuesday, 6 February 2024 09:37 (one month ago) link
I don't know that much about El Salvador, but the impression I got is that Bukele's policies have 'worked' in as much as crime has reduced dramatically? So it's a challenge to the liberal left in as much as the liberal left often argues that tough-on-crime policies are counterproductive, don't actually reduce crime because other criminals take the place of the ones you've taken off the streets, when you eventually release the people you lock up they are more likely to be involved with gangs and commit serious crimes - Bukele has shown that if you brute force it, lock up enough people, get around the problem of what happens when you let them out by just not letting them out, then you can significantly reduce crime this way. And if the negative consequences of eliminating due process are concentrated on a specific 10% of society then that still leaves you with the support of 90% of the population.
Has Bukele's success in reducing crime been overstated? I know some have pointed out that crime was already falling before he took office and have accused him of secretly negotiating with gangs, but even his critics seem to acknowledge that what he's done has had a big effect. Or is his policy unsustainable, something that 'works' to reduce crime for a period of time but will eventually lead to negative consequences even for the 90% who aren't currently targets of the crackdown?
― soref, Tuesday, 6 February 2024 10:20 (one month ago) link
Only eight months before the election, the Legislative Assembly passed a reform that introduced a new method of counting votes. The D’Hondt formula is a proportional seat allocation system, which, for many analysts, implies favoring the majority parties. This could even go against the pluralistic system of political parties guaranteed in the Inter-American Democratic Charter because there is a high risk that Nuevas Ideas -Bukele’s party- will become the only ruling party in the Assembly, leaving out the political opposition necessary in any representative democracy.
erasing all opposition parties through dodgy electoral reform bills, mass arbitrary arrests - but at least crime is down. It shouldn't even require a 2nd thought to condemn this shit if you are the so-called liberal left.
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Tuesday, 6 February 2024 10:31 (one month ago) link
of course the liberal left should condemn it, but if they condemn it and it's still wildly popular and their condemnation is entirely ineffectual then that's still a 'real challenge'
― soref, Tuesday, 6 February 2024 10:34 (one month ago) link
How can you know it is wildly popular when there is no electoral oversight, and a strongman leader who is getting rid of judges, doing away with the constitution. Making himself the only power.
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Tuesday, 6 February 2024 10:45 (one month ago) link
Not entirely clear which ‘liberal left’ this is meant to be a challenge for, tbh. Is the expectation that external condemnation from people who can’t make a dent in their own political processes would have a meaningful impact on El Salvador’s? Is the ‘liberal left’ here meant to mean Biden and Trudeau, who have sort of ineffectually condemned bits of it? Is the idea that because it’s popular in a country that had a murder rate 100x that of the UK’s the same could potentially apply here?
― ShariVari, Tuesday, 6 February 2024 10:51 (one month ago) link
lol, I took it as meaning himself. I read that the Biden administration sanctioned them for bribing crime gangs to cut down on the homicide, lads.
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Tuesday, 6 February 2024 10:55 (one month ago) link
Yep, basically they had a deal with the gangs to allow them to operate / have a degree of protection from extradition to the US in order to keep violence to a minimum - which hit a barrier, iirc because they were getting pressure to extradite one of the leaders, which led to the gangs murdering a bunch of people. After that, Bukele pretty much mandated arresting anyone who was loosely suspected of gang affiliation, including 1000+ children.
Whether the murder rate declining indicates that organised crime has decreased or if it has just been monopolised by the state / state-affiliated gangs who don’t need to murder their rivals if they’re all locked up is not completely clear.
― ShariVari, Tuesday, 6 February 2024 12:27 (one month ago) link
"Bukele has shown that if you brute force it, lock up enough people, get around the problem of what happens when you let them out by just not letting them out, then you can significantly reduce crime this way."
Starmer fans are logging on.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 6 February 2024 13:06 (one month ago) link
Amazing if you can't see the problems with this.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 6 February 2024 13:07 (one month ago) link
now let's have a grown up discussion about the merits of imprisoning thousands of children without charge or trial, says I the self-proclaimed liberal lefty from Novara Media.
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Tuesday, 6 February 2024 13:35 (one month ago) link
Many people mouthing off how bad things are now good without thinking through repercussions is a huge problem for the left. They must play catch up.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 6 February 2024 13:50 (one month ago) link
I think Bastani was going on about how deporting refugees who commit crimes is not necessarily good but definitely understandable and popular last week too.
― ShariVari, Tuesday, 6 February 2024 13:57 (one month ago) link
I did manage to miss that..
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 6 February 2024 14:15 (one month ago) link
I listened a Bastani interview with a total dickhead, a godawful ex-macroeconomist (whatever the fuck one of them is) podcaster with nothing insightful to say about anything. His schtick was "we used to live in unipolar world but since the collapse of the USSR it's a multipolar world" - wow, mind blown. It was just two horrible men talking over each other. Somehow I lasted an hour, but I was busy cooking and it was on in the background.
― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Tuesday, 6 February 2024 14:52 (one month ago) link
Guys is the quashing of human rights a bad thing if it gets the trains to run on time, I’m a “liberal leftist”
― Roman Anthony gets on his horse (gyac), Tuesday, 6 February 2024 15:04 (one month ago) link
From late last year but found this interesting on Bukele and El Salvador, which filled me in a bit more on something I wasn't too familiar with
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEI6gDJBCZ0
― anvil, Tuesday, 6 February 2024 15:24 (one month ago) link
Its a bit more focused on what might happen next and likely directions than anything else, at least with 2 of the 3 guests. Probably old news but instructive for me at least
― anvil, Tuesday, 6 February 2024 15:48 (one month ago) link
y'know, the word Strasserite is overused (by me) but
― wang mang band (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 6 February 2024 16:36 (one month ago) link
An interesting development
I’m a Christian. I think killing unarmed civilians is bad. That’s why I think Israel should be isolated like never before by the entire international community. What they did was daft, yes. I said that and I believe it.— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) February 15, 2024
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 15 February 2024 17:49 (one month ago) link