Novara Media

It's odd how the focus group people can't easily say 'smarmy' and say 'swarmy'.

I think if I were being filmed for a focus group I would try to make an effort to talk clearly and incisively. I might fail. But the people who actually get filmed for these things don't even try.

it's not even worth calling a strategy if it's success is almost entirely dependant on the Tories imploding

I mean to know what he means we would have to click on and read an Unherd link which

Bastani's emphasis in that post is not that KS has been effective, but that KS is seen as dishonest and this could be a problem for him if he does get into government.

Is that true?

It appears plausible.

AB can be relied upon to say things that are hilarious as well as insightful.

Here he is seriously saying that William Shatner is "worth reading".

(He's right.)

“Grief”. This is worth reading by Shatner on his flight to space.

I think it’s likely any attempted colonies on Mars or the Moon would create a renewed sense of how extraordinary our planet is, & how we have a duty to protect it. Analogous to seeing Earth from Space as a moment. https://t.co/7YzVnOyld9

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) October 9, 2022

I mean to know what he means we would have to click on and read an Unherd link which

― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 9 October 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Not really, he's not like a deep thinker. Quite happy to assume based on his tweets.

Deep thinkers are the only ppl you should assume the positions of without reading them, actually.

That's right

"There was a public accusation but I heard it was "lawyered off the internet", seen little bits about his behavior on forums but not much."

I read the wayback archive of the essay that was removed and TBH, it is practically incomprehensibly overwritten, and at no point does it seem to actually outline what I think the courts would call 'abuse'. it sounds like he was dishonest and perhaps fucking around. maybe I'm missing something.

Good post. AB often strong on housing.

The thing driving unaffordability is rent-seeking by the ultra rich who, in a context of low returns elsewhere, view real estate as the golden goose. This mindset below just ends up basically accepting slums and doss houses. https://t.co/9974HDHdwr

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) October 9, 2022

All we need to do is fix the tax codes lol

Tax cuts which save ordinary people a few hundred quid but the ultra rich a few hundred thousand don’t leave everyone better off.

Why? Because the rich put that money into assets, which appreciate in value, and make ordinary people comparatively poorer. pic.twitter.com/1eIBYQGqIg

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) October 9, 2022

Strangely Novara also hosts this recurring audio series about ... music? ACFM. I don't know what it stands for.

https://novaramedia.com/2022/10/09/acfm-trip-27-magic/

Not my scene but demonstrates how much Novara Media offers.

ACFM is a podcast: FM is the old-tiems radio frequency indicator, AC apparently stands for "Acid Corbyinism"

Getting back to the parallel CM discussion:

"There was a public accusation but I heard it was "lawyered off the internet", seen little bits about his behavior on forums but not much."

I read the wayback archive of the essay that was removed and TBH, it is practically incomprehensibly overwritten, and at no point does it seem to actually outline what I think the courts would call 'abuse'. it sounds like he was dishonest and perhaps fucking around. maybe I'm missing something.

― akm, Sunday, October 9, 2022 7:38 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Serial headfuckery probably isn't illegal but it's still wrong, and people that do it need to be called out otherwise they just continue making other's lives a misery. Assuming it's true of course, which I'd guess it is.

A tweet on Eagleton's piece (I'm not reading it).

I think this is a really crass and insensitive piece to have run. I'm aware that many of the dissenting responses are from liberal/centrist types, so it makes this seem like an issue of left versus centrist. I think it's worth saying (as a left voice) that's not what this is https://t.co/v1tR3roBB7

— Rachel Connolly (@RachelConnoll14) October 10, 2022

Sarkar will broadcast from Mexico.

I’m back on #TyskySour (reporting from Novara’s unofficial Oaxaca City desk) tonight! Tune in from 7pm, as me and @michaeljswalker dissect the day’s biggest news. pic.twitter.com/pspC1UorWm

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) October 10, 2022

Not my style generally to say things like this, but I write for this outlet too occasionally and frankly I'm embarrassed by the association

oof! I'm not interested if British people have strong opinions on the Ukraine War and the support they are getting from the UK govt. I'd be more interested in what people who live there have to say.

zombie brezhnevism in the guise of anti-imperialism vs imperialism in the guise of liberal humanitarianism is such a dismal debate to be trapped in and the left needs to do *much* better (because the right/centre never will)

for a start forget about what "britain needs" for a moment ffs

Serial headfuckery probably isn't illegal but it's still wrong, and people that do it need to be called out otherwise they just continue making other's lives a misery. Assuming it's true of course, which I'd guess it is.

This is essentially what happened and the person who it happened to was once a very close friend, so I did not appreciate ~boys~ weighing in on how my old friend wrote about the way she was unwillingly turned into this creep’s victim, and the fallout that continues to haunt her interactions to this day. His MO seems to be to target women who are intellectual or professional equals and then act to diminish them. Another friend of a few of us here who knows him but who has never been involved with him *like that* said, after I mentioned knowing his victim, ‘that’s how he rolls…’

Looks like a good demolition of Eagleton Jr.

This is complete shit. Yes there are pro-NATO liberals in a tizzy about it, but this doesn't detract from the mundane realpolitik liberalism of the article itself which barely, if at all, sets out an anti-war perspective. https://t.co/JGOOuj7gRN

— libcom.org (@libcomorg) October 10, 2022

Seems accurate.

That means I don’t trust a thing he says. But there’s also a lesson there for the labour left and soft left: a laser like focus on ends (democratising the party, vanquishing toxic enemies, ensuring a permanent policy legacy). Without knowing what’s necessary you will rarely win.

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) October 11, 2022

This amounts to "Corbyn wasn't ruthless enough" which is hardly a novel take. And also imo ignores that achieving your ends when your opponents have just suffered a huge defeat and you have the entirety of the media establishment on your side isn't all that impressive.

Feel like I hear these kinds of criticisms every now and then about the right being pragmatic and strategically sound in a way that the left isn't, and you just can't compare ppl trying to change the system with ppl whose mission statement is to maintain the status quo, the challenges aren't equivalent.

The polling wasn't shifting much till Kwarteng's budget. To say that Lab is 30 points ahead today because Starmer pounced on a faction of the party is Labour brain worms.

Also ethically it isn't right to simply copy the Lab right. And anyway it isn't as if the right were good at doing this, as the Left took the leadership in 2015.

xp

Also going on about 'power' when the policy amounts to re-arranging the decks chairs on the Titanic is not using your brain and asking what is it all for.

I really like this short piece from @Maoskyist on what NS should be doing in the current context - and I hope it can open up wider discussion of what a left publication ought to be doing. https://t.co/5xN4WofPOB

— Tom Gann (@Tom_Gann) October 12, 2022

Look who's going.

The Strasser Brothers memorial festival pic.twitter.com/EQHwvDYivN

— Sunlight bathed the golden glow (@mypalfootfoot7) October 13, 2022

Why would anyone go to hear SPIKED! nonsense at the 'Battle of Ideas'

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) September 29, 2012

lol should've known xyzz would be quicker than me in posting this one

🤗🤗🤗

fucking glinner tho, I had the impression that even the terf-sphere had decided he was a liability/not the best messenger for their Reasonable Concerns.

He’s a liability alright but there’s always the chance he screams the quiet part loud

he is hardly the only liability there tho

Disappointed in Coppola, The Conversation is still a banger tho.

This is pretty good.

canal-boats, garment factories, sugar production & consumption, & the bourgeois machismo of the contemporary british left: presenting the ~director's cut~ of my talk at TWT!https://t.co/T9mBSw6Pro

— josie sparrow (@ofthesparrows) October 14, 2022

Slightly surprised by implication that Sarkar has strong views on Coltrane's extensive back catalogue of work.

I mean, *this* is the best Robbie Coltrane bit isn't it? https://t.co/QD7cjbnnL8

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) October 14, 2022

Obviously this is not a good way to win hearts and minds to activism or the climate movement, but it does get people talking about oil. I'm more interested in getting people talking about new oil than the reputation of climate activism, so I have some respect! https://t.co/NR0X8Gtq9O

— Michael Walker (@michaeljswalker) October 14, 2022

Unsure that this protest did "get people talking about oil" as MW hopes.

I've heard a little. less so than talk about the action itself (which is whatever) but the cynical reaction bothers me more

I hate to half-agree with michael wanker who's been the most blue labour of the lot as far as I can tell

it did get manage to get people talking about oil paintings

I'm touched by this statement from a noted art critic.

I’m totally on protesters’ side on this. VG can take it. The planet can’t.

— matthew collings (@matthew51691936) October 14, 2022

Recent Shaun video on JK Rowling's mates casually mentions the Big Brane Festival Bastani went to is funded by the UK branch of the ADF, a US christian right org dedicated to stopping "the homosexual agenda".

https://www.paulmason.org/vote/

if the big brane fest is the spiked event, bastani has said he *didn't* actually attend in the end

I don’t agree with myself 12 years ago on lots of things. One of which is speaking to people who disagree with you. Nothing is more rewarding than reading feedback about how NM content changed someone’s mind. In any case I’m not doing this as my dad has had a stroke.

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) October 14, 2022

p sure spiked is koch- if not thiel-funded these days -- tho (if it hasn't already been written somewhere) a deep dive into the various dark moneys funding of all such projects, complete with receipts, wd be a welcome thing (we shd be working to get the opposed wings of evil fighting one another more)

Sorry to hear about your Dad, Aaron. I wish him a speedy recovery.

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) October 14, 2022

"I've grown up" = I am talking to right wingers = you are a melt!

Yeah that was the one, was it an official Spiked thing? I know it's got that vibe.

I don't really buy Bastani's stance because being the Token Lefty on a long bill of reactionaries means accepting a wrong framing from the get-go. Also, I'm sure most posters itt are familiar with this, but there's this thing certainb types of right wingers do where because they believe themselves to care about Free Speech and the Exchange Of Ideas above all else they enjoy being able to debate leftists within a genteel context because it makes them feel like they're open minded. Zero chance of anyone who'd buy a ticket for this walking away thinking "actually that Bastani guy made some good points", but they sure would have left patting themselves on the back for having heard a leftist out, flattering their self-image as free thinkers.

Re: financing, might as well post that Shaun video. It's specifically about funding of TERF movements from the US right, I'll admit I didn't know how far these connections extended. Fair warning his style is, err, not for everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou_xvXJJk7k

battle of ideas is a spiked thing yes. they've been running on absolute-freedom-of-speech since the early 90s at least, when they were still (sortakinda) marxists (RCP) hammering a USP / branding that distiguished them from all the other trot groupuscules, and their platform was "living marxism" (the other marxisms were DEAD bcz the working class was dead iirc etc)

not at all endorsing bastani's argument here, just noting that he apparently didn't actually attend (the ad listing him was of course signed off days or weeks in advance)

Wow. @novaramedia has hit a quarter of a million subscribers on YouTube. 250,000. That’s:

2.7 x Wembley Stadium
4 x Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
25 x Bournemouth Vitality Stadium

A lot of people!

Congrats to the video team, who want to redefine what mainstream news looks like 🙏🏽 pic.twitter.com/PLT5KMlIb8

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) October 17, 2022

"4 x Tottenham Hotspur Stadium".

I'm touched.

much less than half the amount of people who subscribe to Paul Mason on twitter!

Absolutely fascinating number of ghost QTs here... pic.twitter.com/ehtAbkgcIr

— Tom Gann (@Tom_Gann) October 17, 2022

not at all endorsing bastani's argument here, just noting that he apparently didn't actually attend

No I understand, but dropping out due to a family emergency means he would've if he could've.

There in spirit some might say