Novara Media

@ paul mason news pic.twitter.com/N55FASyEqk

— wariotifo (@wariotifo) March 3, 2023

Good commentary on PM from the Calzino / Sinker double act here !

And what did Campbell do to the BBC?

Finally some honesty about the disgusting treatment Jeremy Corbyn received from figures at the BBC. And it’s coming from…Alistair Campbell. pic.twitter.com/sBhNOMFrIL

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) March 10, 2023

Obv it's a knowing tweet - it doesn't mean you promote it.

Damn I’m really glad my ‘left’ media platform didn’t give this guy an exclusive interview in which he was presented as authoritative, reasonable and agreeable pic.twitter.com/TJ6KCfx8PH

— tom (@tomrade_) March 13, 2023

Wow! Coming in and out of London yesterday was quiet. Empty trains, emptyish tube.

Today, by contrast, it’s packed. I guess the phenomenon of ‘TWAT’ workers (who go to the office on Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday) is real. Sadly I’m not one of them! 😅

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) March 14, 2023

pic.twitter.com/hoxIjc0BzU

— Michael Rosen 💙💙🎓🎓 (@MichaelRosenYes) March 15, 2023

booming tweet, not sure why it's on this thread, is it the hitchins connection?

it's madness that Hitch is saying a regime that was murdering and putting trade unionists and commies into concentration camps was left-wing, he's off his bloody rocker these days!

First they came for the people with legitimate concerns

😴

Only one person can host this. It’s time for @michaeljswalker - the ‘sober judge’ of British political journalism.

Let’s get it on @rustyrockets!!! https://t.co/w1FgBeBYJ6 pic.twitter.com/LzGlQTfhwd

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) March 14, 2023

The hits keep coming.

I once asked Alastair on @novaramedia and he refused the offer because I’d used unsavoury language on twitter (it may have been something like ‘war criminal’). But at least he had the kindness to respond.

The offer still stands, by the way. https://t.co/h9RvyHoXnB

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) March 15, 2023

And if the green movement gives up on that it will lose, and lose badly. The task isn’t just highlighting issues, we need new people (literally in the future) to build different kind of energy and social systems. This absolutely requires thinking & deliberation! (8/9)

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) March 20, 2023

"we need new people (literally in the future)"

nice for alumni of the 2010 student movement to reunite at right wing events, held by fash-adjacent publications, alongside a patriotic labour style reactionary trade unionist leader turned shockjock dweeb. what a few years it has been. pic.twitter.com/hCFsKFWizv

— michael richmond (@Sisyphusa) March 20, 2023

Really pathetic.

An absurd position for Bastani to take! Obviously the position of the imperial core in relation to Asia and Africa plays a significant determining role in how their relationships to capitalism and climate change evolve! So we have responsibilities to fight it here! pic.twitter.com/8X6CKsBF8R

— John Duncan (@Johntheduncan) March 20, 2023

I don't know who the older guy is but in a few seconds he seems to have the measure of this tool. I can't even tell what Bastani is trying to say, perhaps clumsily trying to put his own spin on what some of his right-wing Malthusian discussion panel buddies have been saying recently.

It's the XR guy, who is actually worse in terms of actions. Amazing how he just calls Bastani out on his grift.

Why did people take Bastani seriously in the first place? Genuinely curious.

bastani put a lot of energy into reasonably entertaining twitter memes at a time when ppl were feeling very low and defeated (early 2017), when his affect (roughly speaking) wasleft-corbynism-for-the-lads-wahyey! afterwards he gave us fully automated gay space luxury communism etc, tho i don't think anyone took his line on that especially seriously, they just enjoyed the phrase (it's a good phrase). the book itself wasn't particularly well reviewed and i actually don't know a single person who read it lol (maybe it's great!)

as sysiphusa sourly notes he's a 2010 student-movement legacy kid (tho he was active then as aaron peters; he switched from his mum's to his dad's name for some personal family reason i don't recall)

anyway i feel that's the beginning and the end of the time ppl had for him?

wahyey s/b wahey

Unlike Mark S I think it's a bad, not good, phrase.

I own the book. It starts with a series of speculative fiction vignettes about how technology could shape the future.

I never did to the extent I've ever watched Novara, paid subs, but he was hard to avoid during the Corbyn years as the thing has been taken in (at various degrees of seriousness) across "left twitter". And I think James Butler is a serious person, a good writer and fairly solid commentator.

I think it's worth watching how (though not too hard, this is stuff I see in passing), as Corbyn and many of his supporters have been hounded out of mainstream political life,he has given up any pretence of "luxury communism" (that clip is basically don't even look at the West) as a thing altogether and is now being assimilated by the commentary class.

xxxp - maybe that's something Mark s has seen a few times but I haven't, much.

not really no (if you mean have i seen many ppl take AB seriously): i think he's always largely been treated as "our knockabout buffoon", with some apparently thinking "but it's probably good we have one of those" and others routinely saying "ffs get a grip u clown"

in the abstract -- in terms of building a robust left media project -- i'd probably include myself with the first set* (with the instant caveat "this buffoon tho? really?")

*that abstract is i guess a version of mark-fisher-encounters-rusty-rockets: our project shd include battalions that we hipsters are inclined to disdain etc, but i can't pretend that episode ended well (mark's dead and r.brand is whirling wildly off in QAnon-world) and it's not an instinct (of mine) that i've ever interrogated, beyond "we need more than just the chaps the LRB will publish"

"not really no (if you mean have i seen many ppl take AB seriously)"

No I mean ppl who start in left-wing media/projects and then you see them turn right, or be assimilated in to the right-wing media ecosystem.

This is such a disingenuous figure. Sure, if the global financial crisis never happened, & preceding (& unprecedented) boom in financial services had continued (literally impossible) we would be this much wealthier.

If I kept growing like I did from 10 to 16 I’d be 20 feet tall. https://t.co/aEs6xTJP57

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) March 20, 2023

"If I kept growing like I did from 10 to 16 I’d be 20 feet tall."

ppl who start in left-wing media/projects and then turn right or be assimilated

oh right, yes, i've seen that happen quite often -- and am very interested in it historically (john ganz has written abt it illuminatingly in the french third republic, viz from the 1870s to the 1930s; christopher hitchens wrote a long and i think still good 1980s essay* on it in re conor cruise o'brien before himself -- hitch i mean -- taking the exact same floor-crossing path)

(the latter perhaps suggests that "taking an interest" soon betokens "doing it yrself" so let me just dispel yr doubts now… !!)

*it quotes tom paulin in the form of the excellent phrase "creon's think-tank" (which is a very effectively weaponised ref to sophocles' play antigone)

Yeah I haven't seen it happen in real time much but the history of the left is littered with those people really.

Tom Paulin is one of Mark S's most cited authorities. I suspect you could find Mark S referring to Paulin on ILX in 2002.

i love him!

first ilx ref: 4 june 2001
post by: mark s

:)

This demonstrates that I am to Mark S as Mark S is to Tom Paulin.

❤️

Superb deep dive on the Met and police corruption from @trillingual in the next @LRB, published early online and of screaming, appalling relevance today: https://t.co/M4DQPyeqt9

— James B (@piercepenniless) March 21, 2023

Not that Bastani is an intellectual but thoughts bits of this are relevant to today's discussions

Here's a bar https://t.co/gro0tVkW3e pic.twitter.com/iyJwijYjX8

— Adam Serwer 🍝 (@AdamSerwer) March 21, 2023

I finally watched the whole Bastani / Hallam interview. It's a different experience from a brief clip.

It's quite disturbing, a bit of a painful experience. Why?

1: What they're talking about is so serious and bad. It has no upsides whatever till in the last moments, quite inspiringly, RH talks about 'the joyfulness of resistance'.

2: RH is maybe a disturbing figure. The grey prison sweater, the Gandalf beard, the intense eyes, the accent, the intense delivery. A strange combination of utter insistence on action here and now ('Praxis') and reference to academic research (which he says tells him the truth about human nature - this usually seems simplistic).

3: The fact that it's so combative; simply, watching people so antagonistic is uncomfortable.

4: AB, unfortunately, mostly does a bad job. I could describe this at length but will stop at saying that he interrupts far, far too much - something cited by most of the YouTube commentators.

I don't think that AB quite grasps that RH doesn't want to conduct an interview on AB's terms, but to stage an intervention, reach the Novara audience - and, repeatedly, to request that AB himself 'lead a march' (would that be popular? Not very; AB is for once wise in realising this) and potentially get arrested. AB's diversions from these demands are, again, embarrassing in a way that's painfully awkward. It's as though Novara Media has been 'called out' and can't respond.

And yet, the intensity and unusual character of this conversation does make it different from almost anything else I've watched for a long time.

The Port Vale speech is the most effective blow @Keir_Starmer has ever landed on the Tories and will resonate in every working class community 💥 pic.twitter.com/AFIGeyRqi5

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) March 23, 2023

cutting crime and more bobbies on the beat pledges might sound impressive if you've had a frontal lobotomy and are hearing a politician speak for the first time in your life

I didn’t make the longlist in Labour's selection for Mid & South Pembrokeshire. Thanks to all here in the CLP who pledged their support. If you’re in St David’s tonight come and hear me talk about the cost of living crisis...and why I will always stand with workers on strike✊🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 pic.twitter.com/X1ognHYrom

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) March 25, 2023

loool! where next, Paul? "I've always felt an affinity with the people of The Outer Hebrides and have decided to stand for..."

does he have any other caravans?

This is Jeremy Corbyn defending Ralph Miliband a few years ago.

We won’t see another leading U.K. politician with this much integrity and backbone for a long time pic.twitter.com/xDUcxtZphL

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) August 2, 2019

enjoying Bastani's latest incarnation, Charles Windsor stan

A point not often mentioned about AB is his Catholicism.

Where are you going with that?

oh come off it Aaron

— James B (@piercepenniless) March 31, 2023

bookmarking for future use

"Nice voice, Drake's ties, radical green politics in an understated way, a quiet internationalism"

lol, is this cunt for real? His droning voice is awful. Well yes they are very quiet and polite when they need to be these days (including his German uncles who were members of the SS) and this isn't through choice. Yes, radical green politics from a hypocritical old rich cunt who flies everywhere in private jets and helicopters.

AB is a very traditionalist thinker in some ways. Religious, community-focused, very family-oriented. Maybe his appreciation of the King goes with that. He also opposes much modern architecture, as does the King.

I think AB's latest praise for the King may be somewhat naive, though.

I don’t think those things are related.

A general rule that will never steer you wrong is that when someone starts saying shit like “bleating about how everyone who disagrees with you is racist” you pretty much know what path they’re on and you can safely dismiss them as anyone worth paying attention to