Novara Media

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

this feels like the absolute moment of fucking himself forever

we see you, you sad twat

and now i've got "Everybody Wants to Be a Melt" stuck in my head, to the tune of that Aristocats song

Yeah, as I've said before on this thread, I don't expect integrity from left journalists, but I do expect enough intelligence not to become this useful an idiot.

I'd like a bit of integrity.

Anyway, saw a tweet that speculated that their subs base has struggled due to inflation/gas bills and hence this turn but idk I think it's just the way it's gone since 2019. Integrity (that word again) is not in the vocabulary anymore.

I don't think integrity is something journalism is structurally built for.

From that point of view very little functions...I agree to an extent though on a personal/small group level I reckon it's possible to exercise a bit of control about certain behaviours. I think with a left leaning platform it's not an impossible ask.

This is designed to troll me

This letter from David in Bristol didn't put landlords in a good light.

But @AaronBastani had a pretty incredible story about a landlord he and his mum had when he was a child. (3/5) pic.twitter.com/jN251yB7t1

— Michael Walker (@michaeljswalker) April 19, 2023

Imagine spending 1h and 40 mins of your time on this

love to hear uplifting stories about good landlords with hearts of gold, or it might not be that at all. But I don't feel a strong compulsion to find out either.

the mythical good landlord that gifts you a nice bottle of wine before hesitantly giving you a section 21 notice rather than just telling you to fuck off, scumbag

Actually it turns out that AB says his former landlord was good because religious and landlords are now worse because 'we live in a society that is moving away from the ethical anchoring of religion'.

Jesus didn't approve of black mold or greedy scumbags who make gain from their neighbours by means of extortion, imo

AB is doing a Pasolini style act!

From that point of view very little functions...I agree to an extent though on a personal/small group level I reckon it's possible to exercise a bit of control about certain behaviours. I think with a left leaning platform it's not an impossible ask.

The bottom line of any private media company, left leaning platforms included, is always going to be profit, what happens on a personal/small group level is irrelevant to that, you'll always end in "is mastercard a queer ally?" territory. So instead of individual morality, I prefer to think of left media in strategic terms, a little like the structures of the labour party: something that can occasionally be mobilized to the left's advantage, but not something you should ever invest loyalty in or expect loyalty from.

Like I was thinking of certain publications around libcom that I've read bits from. Small groups, publication is erratic at best and so on. A different set of problems there but at least they know what they are talking about wrt landlordism.

Of course the preening “Gary’s Economics”, the man in the know, telling unexpected truths to a reverent audience (look at Walker & Bastani’s faces) is incapable of this sort of argument though.

— Tom Gann (@Tom_Gann) April 22, 2023

Agree with this. I don't like the person being discussed.

"@garyseconomics thinks anti-landlord politics can - at times - look like middle class people punching down."

lol, what an utter prick

if you are going to defend the politically indefensible and haven't got any coherent argument, just accuse anyone from the left of being myopically middle-class.

I fear that 'preening' is correct. Not keen.

They’ve definitely got our vote Basti.#WorldBollardAssociation

— World Bollard Association™ (@WorldBollard) April 24, 2023

AB on GB News ... at Buckingham Palace!

The @Telegraph & others are campaigning for the U.K. taxpayer to subsidise Tom Ford shoes & Gucci handbags for tourists who come to the U.K.

If you buy a suit you pay VAT, but if a tourist buys the same suit your taxes pay for their discount.

WTF?! pic.twitter.com/oby739x8Qz

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) May 4, 2023

who even gives a flying shit about subsidising tourists? The eejit wants to be a spokesperson for the Taxpayers Alliance now

Novara is good now.

The thing the East German Communist dictatorship was most successful at was building a wall to prevent people leaving and shooting those who tried.

Disgraceful to think people who write this nonsense were welcomed by the hard left leadership that poisoned Labour under Corbyn. https://t.co/aMLPSVN4Es

— Ian Austin (@LordIanAustin) May 8, 2023