Novara Media

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

there's an entry in Chris Mullin's diaries where he meets Charles and effuses about what an insightful thinker and great humanitarian he finds the prince to be.

I don't he has any deeply held convictions on anything, he's just a weathervane prick playing a calculated game to get numbers on twitter and maintain a career.

That's no way to talk about the King!

I know Big Bas has some very regal qualities about him: his nice voice, his muscles rippling under his expensive fitted shirts as he takes another *brave* foray into classic liberalism and his fluid hottakes in his debates with Hitchens ... etc etc ... but "King" is a bit of a stretch!

apologies I have flea-bombed my house this morning and I think the left-over toxic fumes are making me high!

If you run something with any kind of principles you are more likely to face closure

We are incredibly sad to announce that gal-dem is closing.

Several factors that have contributed to this difficult decision, including numerous challenges with running a small, mission-driven, independent media company. We’ve shared more here https://t.co/0jAK94fG55

— gal-dem (@galdemzine) March 31, 2023

Unusually weak edition of Novara Live on 31.3.2023.

https://novaramedia.com/2023/03/31/trump-indicted-awful-april/

Stories include AB discussing ... AB's tweets on the King. His defence of them becomes, itself, surprisingly weak - "the climate movement is going to need respectable people like the King". He wouldn't have dared to say that in his interview with Roger Hallam, who made him look rather a dilettante.

It's an oddly low quality AB - like watching an AB created by AI.

really feeling that luxury automated monarchism. He's been on a bit of a journey but if he can't see that so called respectable millionaires/billionaires need to be eradicated like the bloodsucking fleas that they are - then he's a fucking tool. If not for the sake of the planet then at least for some urgent social justice before it becomes uninhabitable.

"Respectable" millionaires all already pretend to be very concerned about climate change, but they're not gonna approve of any plan that eats into profits. Total waste of time to try to get them onside.

It would probably be easier just to liquidate the bastards rather than have pointless concerned royal guy campaigning for some weak gradualist greenwashing bullshit, when what he's really thinking is some Malthusian Africa/Asia blaming shit anyway.

When the Taliban were negotiating with the US installed regime, one of their leaders said why are even negotiating with you when we could overrun and defeat you much quicker than this is going to take. Not saying I'm a fan of the Taliban, but that's the kind of spirit I do admire!

AB has never been high quality. If he put in a prompt in AI on random opinions a socialist should hold it would probably give him a checklist which would improve what he's coming out with!

Issuing correction on my previous post about the taliban

Embarrassing.

I would have voted against that NEC motion but tell me how a man who has defied an instruction to withdraw his name from StW's pro-Kremlin BS, and named Lowkey as a patron of his foundation, passes our party's due diligence to be a candidate?

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) March 31, 2023

"defied an instruction" lol I know the Labour Party is as anti-democratic as Putin, but you aren't meant to say that if you are a Starmer supporter

Inspired by Pinefox, I watched the AB/Hallam interview...what an oddly intense thing that is.

Yes!

Spare a thought for Paul Mason who is wrestling with the dilemma of how long to keep the redundant Welsh translation in his bio after not getting selected in Pembrokeshire. pic.twitter.com/CVKC6E4tSJ

— Rich Simcox (@RichSimcox) April 3, 2023

I thought this too.

Post an album without one bad song on it. https://t.co/xgTjwxLeEN pic.twitter.com/rwqYhyt6VA

— Grace Blakeley (@graceblakeley) April 3, 2023

I'd forgotten about the existence of Grace Blakely. Then again I don't watch any of the new right-wing news channels that aren't Sky or the BBC.

In previous eras it has been young people driving a culture of nihilism – think punk in the 1970s or James Dean in the 50s. Today it is the old. As the nation goes from bad to worse, our most powerful elders, part of an enormous age cohort, are more interested in their begonias.

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) April 13, 2023

Not his best-judged statement, I fear.

Good for them.

It gives me life to think that while "progressive" outlets take blood money from arms dealers to organise boring talks with anthropomorphic wet wipes, Novara is funded by regular people chucking us a fiver and is now #3 in the UK news podcast charts. I love my job.

— Rivkah Brown (@RivkahBrown) April 14, 2023

Young AB. The 'lad' that Mark S remembers.

Incredible this was 10 years ago
“Que se vayan todos!” pic.twitter.com/UySz3EOdvp

— ARTIST TAXI DRIVER (@chunkymark) April 15, 2023

taxi drivers that don't watch the road whilst driving ... dud

https://novaramedia.com/2023/04/13/our-elites-are-on-autopilot-and-i-think-i-know-why/

The brief blurbs for this article make it sound dire - that AB is blaming retired people in an M&S café for the state of the country.

Now I've actually read it, I see it isn't mainly saying that. It's saying, I suppose, 'the older generation is well off, hence the lack of a sense of crisis'.

But then the M&S setting is just a distraction, which raises the question: if it's decadent to be eating a bun at M&S, why was AB doing it himself?

He's also surely omitting the fact that a) many older people are *not* well off, b) the people in the M&S café are *not* the people with 'power' that he keeps talking about.

I think there is a serious point here somewhere, but lost in confusion and clickbait framing.

read that last paragraph in a parody Adam Curtis voice

"think punk in the 1970s or James Dean in the 1950s"

lol, what is he on about? seeing as though he is channelling Adam Curtis he might want to remember Airey Neave, the old bastard Colditz veteran who was a key player in making Thatcherism happen until he got a pressie in his car from the IRA. He wasn't a nihilist but this was conclusive proof that the elites have always in fact got older and they were not any younger in past eras!

I thought it was well established by now that the old poor tend to die earlier? Who survives to old age is class stratified like everything else in this cursed country.

I do find AB's argument here quite odd, at best.

Whatever serious point he has - there could be one! - is obscured by the fact that 'the elites' that he's interested in have nothing to do with pensioners at an M&S in Bournemouth.

But then the M&S setting is just a distraction, which raises the question: if it's decadent to be eating a bun at M&S, why was AB doing it himself?

Completely unfair misrepresentation, he had a chocolate flapjack. Totally different thing

Fair.

There's a vinyl stall in Lower Marsh playing Ian Dury songs, which all the Gen Z ppl in the street seem to know... the equivalent in the 1970s would have been playing Al Bowlly 78s from before the war. #Bifo 's slow cancellation of the future is alive and well pic.twitter.com/1IqQ2363UY

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) April 17, 2023

I'm not convinced this is such a bad thing.

Enjoying this, and I have to some of it has surprised me (particularly who the ‘new elite’ are).

Obviously I disagree with a great deal - but that will make for a better conversation! I’ll be interviewing @GoodwinMJ for @novaramedia this week. pic.twitter.com/jJVdqGADoP

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) April 18, 2023

much to disagree with in the garbage book by widely ridiculed pseudo-academic Goodwin, who would have guessed?

so this racist book-eating clown has some enlightening insights for the big lad - he just needs get an honest job at the Mail.

Why do that? It's the most popular of podcasts.

New media.

Oh yeah, sorry I forgot that our left-wing new media is the envy of Europe, as stated by Talk TV's Grace Blakely

Novara should interview John Virgo

— Gareth (@g_f_red) April 18, 2023

Plus AB says he quite likes some of MG's thinking so..

After all, what's nine decades of the accumulated experience of antifascist activism and organising when you just might be the guy who's come up with the One Weird Trick for platforming these creeps without them benefiting by it https://t.co/xrayInqjBG

— Peter Mitchell (@pdkmitchell) April 18, 2023

Reflecting on AB's interviews and controversy around them, what strikes me is:

I have mixed feelings about AB himself as interviewer. He's intelligent, well read, and charismatic. But he is not a forensic interrogator.

If you're going to interview someone with controversial views, then you probably need to be ready to read their work out line by line, make them explain it, and stick with the text, repeating yourself if necessary (think Jeremy Paxman even!), and make clear if you are *not* satisfied with the outcome before moving on.

I don't expect AB to do this but rather a variety of a) be polite, bantering ingratiatingly; b) say 'and up to this point, I totally agree with you', overemphasising agreement; c) interrupt rather than let the guest finish their own statement; d) be drolly anecdotal about himself ('so my dad's a cab driver, and he says...'). Some of this might be fine in particular cases, but in a controversial scenario it will obscure the examination that needs to take place.

Admittedly AB interviews many different people, mainly from the Left; maybe he should be judged on his full record. Most of us have never watched half his interviews.

I didn't see all of his very long encounter with Peter Hitchens but PH was able to correct AB on facts a number of times.

With Roger Hallam, as I've said, AB's approach was troublingly bad, and he appeared out of his depth.

re AB's jovial interest in interviewing Campbell:

I think it's possible to interview someone without rehab-ing their reputation - so it really depends on the interview.

— Dalia Gebrial (@daliagebrial) April 18, 2023

Has an interviewer on a visual medium ever read a passage from a work out "line by line, explain it, stick with the text". Paxman certainly didn't. Reading the words out loud of someone's book could be an excellent approach though! I feel a lot of these 'thoughts' tend to collapse the moment they are merely read.

Paxman and Bastani certainly sound like one another (not that I am ever watching a full Bastani interview but I saw the clip with Hallam). Lots of interruption, aggressive repetition if the question might not be answered. When I started watching Newsnight I felt entertained, but looking back I don't know what was the point of it. How many insights did I gain on the topic on any given day? I do remember the shouting.

Mostly a waste of time.

I wish AB would just shame the devil and admit he has decided having ethics and standards are an inconvenience for his career ambitions. And if that means platforming horrible morons who are funded by shady right-wing thinktanks - then he's happy to be the UI benefitting from the extra clicks and views.

It's not a careerist move! You see, we are all different.

Thanks Jacob. I’ve got similar mindset - but of course we are all different!

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) April 19, 2023

Goodwin has literally trolled people into reading this shit

Bastani is a fucking rube

Matt Goodwin@GoodwinMJ21h
Maybe you could convince New Statesman to host? We asked. They declined. Then "ideas editor" (Jacobson) called for the cancellation of thinkers he disagrees with.

even the NS are reluctant to boost Goodwin

it's good that all the people who hate antisemitism have been calling him on this thinly-veiled antisemitism tho

Quite a day on the internet for the boy.

https://t.co/Hy0nMm6NUp pic.twitter.com/vjvqC4th39

— hippo king archibald (@SamuraiApology) April 19, 2023