Far-right groups target press
Here is a recent article from the National Union of Journalists which can be viewed here.
Death threats for journalists covering far right demos
Tough and urgent action is needed in response to violence, intimidation and death threats targeting journalists covering far right demonstrations. The call by NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear comes in the wake of specific email threats against photojournalist and investigative reporter Marc Vallée, and video journalist Jason N. Parkinson. The emails follow verbal threats and intimidation aimed at photographers covering a march by the English Defence League in Leeds at the weekend and other EDL protests this year. Professional journalists covering the events have filed reports with the NUJ detailing physical violence, including one being punched in the head, verbal threats, and attempts to seize cameras and smash equipment. The union is to file complaints to the police. Jeremy Dear said: “In a week when yet more photographers have been targeted by right-wing hate website Redwatch, when out on the streets professional photographers are subjected to violence and intimidation by right-wing thugs, there must be tough and urgent action in response to these latest death threats. “These are not idle threats made by kids – these are direct, named threats made by individuals who can be traced – in one case an individual already convicted of stabbing someone. They are designed to silence the media and stop photographers showing the true nature of the protests and protestors. The police must act now before a journalist is killed or seriously injured”. Jason N. Parkinson said: “It is ironic the English Defence League claim they are protesting ‘peacefully’ against Muslim extremism. Then late Saturday night, after returning from covering the Leeds protest, I receive a threatening email from one of their Welsh and English division organisers entitled ‘Fatwa’. “This is exactly the behaviour and tactics of extremism the EDL claim they are against. Someone should remind the EDL that the fundamental root of all democratic society, including in the UK, is press freedom. Intimidation, violence, Fatwas and death threats are not.” Marc Vallée said: “I find it intriguing that only four weeks after attending a BNP press conference – at London’s City Hall – I’m targeted by Redwatch in this way. We should be free to go about our lawful and necessary work without such intimidation. I’m determined that when journalists are targeted in this way the only effective response is a collective one as well as journalistic one.”
I have to admit i walked past some obvious members of the EDL the other day and whilst i did so i covered my badges on my bag in case they worked out my political allegiances. It was later pointed out to me that they probably can not read what my badges say anyway!
A momentarily withdraw to a post-existance that is in paradox to our accepted pre-condition
…and now for something completely different.
Those who have met me and discussed with me the complexities of the human condition would understand that i am very anti-intellectual. By that i actually mean the communication between an intellectual and an-other.
Was it Orwell who said that a middle-class socialist will never connect with the working classes because they are so caught up with ideology and they communicate that ideology in a way that no one would understand?? Hence why socialism would not appeal to the masses in 1930s Britian.
This is what i mean when i say i am anti-intellectual – i’m more for speaking clearly and coherently so that anyone would understand. This view is especially prevalent when discussing politics because to get into power you need popular support (well…). There is no way a population of a country would talk with the same conviction of an ideology and then communicate it in a way that not even the narrator understands, as do many who study political theory!
Anyway, i came across a website that republished an article by Stephen Katz called ‘How to Speak and Write Postmodern’. Read, learn and enjoy:
by Stephen Katz, Associate Professor, Sociology
Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
Postmodernism has been the buzzword in academia for the lastdecade. Books, journal articles, conference themes and university
courses have resounded to the debates about postmodernism that focus
on the uniqueness of our times, where computerization, the global
economy and the media have irrevocably transformed all forms of
social engagement. As a professor of sociology who teaches about
culture, I include myself in this environment. Indeed, I have a
great interest in postmodernism both as an intellectual movement and
as a practical problem. In my experience there seems to be a gulf
between those who see the postmodern turn as a neo-conservative
reupholstering of the same old corporate trappings, and those who
see it as a long overdue break with modernist doctrines in
education, aesthetics and politics. Of course there are all kinds
of positions in between, depending upon how one sorts out the
optimum route into the next millennium.
However, I think the real gulf is not so much positional aslinguistic. Posture can be as important as politics when it comes to
the intelligentsia. In other words, it may be less important whether
or not you like postmodernism than whether or not you can speak and
write postmodernism. Perhaps you would like to join in conversation
with your local mandarins of cultural theory and all-purpose deep
thinking, but you don’t know what to say. Or, when you do
contribute something you consider relevant, even insightful, you get
ignored or looked at with pity. Here is a quick guide, then, to
speaking and writing postmodern.
First, you need to remember that plainly expressed language is outof the question. It is too realist, modernist and obvious.
Postmodern language requires that one uses play, parody and
indeterminacy as critical techniques to point this out. Often this
is quite a difficult requirement, so obscurity is a
well-acknowledged substitute. For example, let’s imagine you want
to say something like, “We should listen to the views of people
outside of Western society in order to learn about the cultural
biases that affect us”. This is honest but dull. Take the word
“views”. Postmodernspeak would change that to “voices”, or better,
“vocalities”, or even better, “multivocalities”. Add an adjective
like “intertextual”, and you’re covered. “People outside” is also
too plain. How about “postcolonial others”? To speak postmodern
properly one must master a bevy of biases besides the familiar
racism, sexism, ageism, etc. For example, phallogocentricism
(male-centredness combined with rationalistic forms of binary logic).
Finally “affect us” soundslike plaid pajamas. Use more obscure verbs and phrases, like
“mediate our identities”. So, the final statement should say, “We
should listen to the intertextual, multivocalities of postcolonial
others outside of Western culture in order to learn about the
phallogocentric biases that mediate our identities”. Now you’re
talking postmodern!
Sometimes you might be in a hurry and won’t have the time to mustereven the minimum number of postmodern synonyms and neologisms needed
to avoid public disgrace. Remember, saying the wrong thing is
acceptable if you say it the right way. This brings me to a second
important strategy in speaking postmodern, which is to use as many
suffixes, prefixes, hyphens, slashes, underlinings and anything else
your computer (an absolute must to write postmodern) can dish out.
You can make a quick reference chart to avoid time delays. Make
three columns. In column A put your prefixes; post-, hyper-, pre-,
de-, dis-, re-, ex-, and counter-. In column B go your suffixes and
related endings; -ism, -itis, -iality, -ation, -itivity, and
-tricity. In column C add a series of well-respected names that
make for impressive adjectives or schools of thought, for example,
Barthes (Barthesian), Foucault (Foucauldian, Foucauldianism),
Derrida (Derridean, Derrideanism).
Now for the test. You want to say or write something like,“Contemporary buildings are alienating”. This is a good thought,
but, of course, a non-starter. You wouldn’t even get offered a
second round of crackers and cheese at a conference reception with
such a line. In fact, after saying this, you might get asked to
stay and clean up the crackers and cheese after the reception. Go
to your three columns. First, the prefix. Pre- is useful, as is
post-, or several prefixes at once is terrific. Rather than
“contemporary building””, be creative. “The Pre/post/spatialities
of counter-architectural hyper-contemporaneity” is promising. You
would have to drop the weak and dated term “alienating” with some
well suffixed words from column B. How about “antisociality”, or be
more postmodern and introduce ambiguity with the linked phrase,
“antisociality/seductivity”.
Now, go to column C and grab a few names whose work everyone willagree is important and hardly anyone has had the time or the
inclination to read. Continental European theorists are best when in
doubt. I recommend the sociologist Jean Baudrillard since he has
written a great deal of difficult material about postmodern space.
Don’t forget to make some mention of gender. Finally, add a few
smoothing out words to tie the whole garbled mess together and don’t
forget to pack in the hyphens, slashes and parentheses. What do you
get? “Pre/post/spacialities of counter-architectural
hyper-contemporaneity (re)commits us to an ambivalent
recurrentiality of antisociality/seductivity, one enunciated in a
de/gendered-Baudrillardian discourse of granulated subjectivity”.
You should be able to hear a postindustrial pin drop on the
retrocultural floor.
At some point someone may actually ask you what you’re talkingabout. This risk faces all those who would speak postmodern and
must be carefully avoided. You must always give the questioner the
impression that they have missed the point, and so send another
verbose salvo of postmodernspeak in their direction as a
“simplification” or “clarification” of your original statement. If
that doesn’t work, you might be left with the terribly modernist
thought of, “I don’t know”. Don’t worry, just say, “The instability
of your question leaves me with several contradictorily layered
responses whose interconnectivity cannot express the logocentric
coherency you seek. I can only say that reality is more uneven and
its (mis)representations more untrustworthy than we have time here
to explore”. Any more questions? No, then pass the cheese and
crackers.
{Posted to news:alt.humor.best-of-usenet by Andrew C Bulhak on 20June 1995, found in news:alt.postmodern. – It is also reprinted in “The
Truth About the Truth” (Putnam, $13.95, 1995)}
Laughter is the best medicine… part two
If you have not heard of Cassetteboy then you are missing out. From the Cassetteboy site comes another gem of a video, this time it is what Nick Griffin should of said (or more accurately, what he and very one else knew he was thinking). Please sit back and enjoy these 60 seconds of bliss:
This is how to protest the BNP, not through anger but through satire and with the intention of making them look like the clowns they are.
In the wake of fascism… part two
Whether you like it or not, the BNP have now been on Question Time; unfortunately, the reaction to the show after it was shown maybe a bit ill-judged and short-sighted.
Of course Griffin made a right idiot of himself. When asked about why he used to say what he said about the Holocaust he mentions that ‘I can’t explain why I used to those things’, when discussing with Jack Straw the Second World War and the different ethnic backgrounds fighting for Britain, Griffin launched into a personal family attack on Straw. The panel were dumbfounded by what is a schoolboy tactic by resorting to personal attacks when threatened by a tangible attack on your ideology. Nearly everybody on the panel and in the studio were prepared and firmly against Griffin. And this is the problem.
Griffin knew what he was going to be facing. Sure, he looked like a dimwit, but at the same time he has come across (in the eyes of BNP supporters at least) as misrepresented. The BNP will turn what happened and Question Time as a personal attack on Griffin, the BNP and the ‘indigenous’ British public. They will argue that Griffin never really got to represent what his party stood for. They will argue that he will look like a martyr. And looking back over the show you can see their point. For example, when asked a question not about race or immigration, Griffin said that the sight of two men kissing is ‘creepy’ – we could argue for days on end the extent to which this comment was homophobic, but as soon as he said that there was heckling from the audience. Now I understand this reaction to Griffin, but at the same time this plays into his hands.
What also play into his hands are the protests outside the BBC and the build up to the show. It has to be said that the BBC will, and did, exploit the publicity surrounding the show in order to increase its viewership (around 8 million according to the Guardian). This at the same time gives the BNP so much more publicity than they would of if it was just the show and nothing else. It does not matter that the publicity surrounding the show was opposition to the BNP, as the saying goes, any news is good news. The BNP grow support from exploiting the idea that politicians and elites are out of touch with the ‘common folk’ in Britain, and the strength of opposition will be used by the BNP as examples of how the BNP are the only party that stand for what the ‘common folk’ believe. This is not to say that the ‘common folk’ they are appealing to are racist as you’d notice from last night that issues of race stemmed fully from the panel and the people asking the questions – Griffin, as I have said previously, is a PR man, he knows focusing on race will not win him support. This is supported by a video from YouTube I posted on this blog a few months back which was quoted last night; talking with members of the KKK, Griffin explained that you have to focus your efforts on things such as security and democracy, that if you go out publicising your ideas on race then you will never gain mass support.
Now, I am not suggesting that protestors should stop. I like the idea of wherever the BNP are, UAF or some other group will be as well. However, there was a very interesting interview on BBC News 24 during the day yesterday from the President of YouGov. He suggested that protests should not be based around anger (despite anger being the obvious emotion in this case) but that protests should be based around showing people that Griffin is a pillock. They should be based around custard pies and eggs. They should satirise and embarrass Griffin. This he would argue will make it harder for the BNP to turn the protestors’ anger around to their advantage.
So whilst many of the Twitter and Facebook generations will rejoice at how ridiculous Griffin came across (Twitter and Facebook are not the BNPs target audience), we have to proceed with caution before declaring a victory. It’s too soon to say a battle has been won, but it is safe to say that the war is far from over.
A racist Spitfire?
After Military generals apparently had a go at the BNP’s use of military symbolism in their racist propaganda (i say apparently because they did not mention the BNP by name, although we all know who they meant), Griffin came out saying that “the Spitfire represents the British fighting spirit against Continental totalitarianism” and as such they would not stop using it.
Well, i was wondering whether the BNP would acknowledge pilots from these countries who fought for Britain during the Battle of Britain; Australia – 32, Barbados – 1, Belgium – 28, Canada – 112, Czechoslovakia – 88, France – 13, Ireland – 10, Jamaica – 1, Newfoundland – 1, New Zealand – 127, Poland – 145, Rhodesia – 3, South Africa – 25, United States – 9.
Do they also acknowledge the effort of the Jamacian pilot who i blogged about a few months back? Or Pilot Officer Mahinder Singh Pujji who came from India to fight in the Battle of Britain who said:
there were other Sikh pilots who readily took off their turbans and put on helmets. But I told them that I didn’t want to because of my religion. So they allowed me to have a special headset with the oxygen mask and microphone that came over the turban.
All of these fought for Britain against a regime going on a racist crusade across Europe. But then it does not look like the BNP would denounce the Nazis as quickly as history and the majority of British people during 1939-1945 [and long afterwards] have:
Nick Griffin:
“Yes, Adolf went a bit too far. His legacy is the biggest problem that the British nationalist movement has to deal with. It just creates a bad image.”
“I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that 6 million Jews were gassed and cremated or turned into lamp shades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the earth is flat … I have reached the conclusion that the ‘extermination’ tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie and latter witch-hysteria.”
Mark Collett (BNP Director of Publicity)
“Churchill was a fucking cunt who led us into a pointless war with other whites standing up for their race”.
What’s interesting is that it appears that Collett believes it was Churchill who led us into war… You’d have thought the ‘defenders’ of the ‘indigenous’ British race would know British history.
…or
Howabout this picture of John Tyndall, the founder of the BNP: link.
Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes – A Short Twentieth Century – MA Level Review
With this work, Hobsbawm tries to guide us through the history of the twentieth century through his own eyes. This, a period of time other commentators have described as the end of history, has otherwise been acknowledged by Hobsbawm as not his specialist area and as such he notes that not only his, but other historians works on the topic would be influenced by their own life experiences during the period.
It is with this introduction to his work that we can catch a glimpse of the direction this book will take. Hobsbawm was an active member of the Communist Party, and as such it would not be naive of us to assume that this book will focus heavily upon the USSR, the development of communism and a constant attack on capitalism – and this is exactly what this work does.
It is interesting to look at the period that Hobsbawm has chosen as his Short Twentieth Century, starting in 1914 with the start of the First World War and ending in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. This ensures that the whole work is written in the pretext of the USSR being in existence and the ability to parallel capitalist and liberal democracy throughout the period with communism in the USSR.
Divided into three main sections – Age of Catastrophe (Hobsbawm likes to categorise periods of history into ‘Ages’), The Golden Age and The Landslide.
The first third of the book looks at the two world wars, the rise of communism during this period and to a lesser extent the rise and fall of fascism – both of which have been tied together with a chapter on the crisis of liberal democracy. Hobsbawm brushes aside socialism and social democracy in favour of focusing fully on communism, and especially Soviet, Marxist and Leninist communism – Hobsbawm even goes as far to mentioning the role of Trotsky and Trotskyism in the development of communism only in passing.
Hobsbawm within his introduction to this work correctly makes the point that history should be all encompassing, this means that history should not just focus upon the elites and what did happen, but also upon how decisions and events effected the society as a whole. It is therefore surprising that this first third of the book is highly a narrative of events and the development of ideology. Hobsbawm notes how the First and Second World Wars were the first truly total wars that effected all aspects of a society (there is room for debate here as a civil war would effect all of a countries society as well), however, he does not examine the extent of the impacts of war upon the people in a country. Take for example the effect of the Luftwaffe’s Blitz upon the peoples of London. There is still a debate here as to whether the war had a unifying impact upon London’s citizens, or whether this united front perpetrated during and after the war was essentially a myth.
But this would go against what the book is really about. Hobsbawm seems to have not gone out with the intention to add to the historiographical debate on twentieth century history – he is, as he mentions, a historian who specialises mainly in nineteenth century history. It is with this context that an examination of the further two sections of the book can be taken. Furthermore, this book is a study of the economical ideological history of the twentieth century, so there is no room for Hobsbawm to talk about world changing events such as the Holocaust, the Civil Rights movement in the US or apartheid in South Africa. Although, perhaps inclusion of events such as the Holocaust would lead Hobsbawm to look at Stalin’s own purges and as such question a Stalinist and Soviet system that Hobsbawm appears to be loyally defending.
The following two parts, The Golden Age and The Landslide are very dependent upon each other in order to piece together Hobsbawm’s train of thought. Whilst the Age of Catastrophe set the background to the later twentieth century, these two parts paint the picture of the state of the world in 1991.
The Golden Age is the period of time, 1950-1975, that Hobsbawm sees as the glorious period of capitalism and also the stability of Soviet communism. Far from living in harmony, both systems – assured of mutually agreed destruction – flourished during this period (this applies mainly to capitalism). The Landslide looks at the beginning of the end of the USSR and communism, the faults of capitalism and the rise of social democracy as an attempt to find the ‘middle way’. As we would have come to expect from Hobsbawm the Landslide begins and ends with the fall and collapse of the USSR as a world power.
Throughout the work, Hobsbawm has attempted to bring into the history of the twentieth century the impact of ideologies on other parts of the world, from Asia to the Far East, to Latin America to the Third World – although it is firstly within Europe and then later in the USA and USSR that key movements and ideologies in the world develop, and it is the combination of these three entities that shape the period. Going back to the Age of Catastrophe, Hobsbawm seems strained to include ‘the rest of the world’ in his chapters, often as a side section towards the end of a chapter. He does pay more attention later in his work to the Third World (Africa) as he devotes whole chapters to this topic.
The other aspect of Hobsbawm’s work is the devotion given to art and culture by assessing art during 1914-1945 and then 1950-1991. Even here however, Hobsbawm cannot get away from his commitment to Avant-garde as he seems to bemoan its demise in the later half of the twentieth century. As this work focuses heavily on ideology and economy, the inclusion of the arts is a rather peculiar one. I have previously mentioned that focusing on economics allows Hobsbawm to sugar over sociological issues such as the Holocaust, but then this narrative of the development of art and culture seems to contradict this.
Hobsbawm also gives attention to the developments in science and technology during the Short Twentieth Century, as even Hobsbawm acknowledges that technology has shaped the world by the date his work was published.
It should be said, that despite his attention to communism (which of course played a huge role in twentieth century politics, economics, culture and society), The Age of Extremes is an extremely good starting point for historians interested in the twentieth century, or for anyone interested in what factors have shaped the world that we currently live in. Although I have only briefly suggested discrepancies in Hobsbawm’s analysis it would be ridiculous for Hobsbawm to try and assess every sociological aspect of the short century in what is already an extensive piece of work. That would be more relevant to multiple volumes. But Hobsbawm’s extensive use of reference material and the powerful construction of the narrative and his arguments are merits to the long career of this esteemed historian.
More shame for Reading Buses
Some more embarrassment today for Reading Buses, where it has turned out that instead of running their number 17 route buses on sugar beet waste from Norfolk, they are actually running on wood pulp from Sweden…
The song ‘it’s not easy being green’ comes to mind.
How they can confuse wood pulp imported from Sweden with sugar beet from Norfolk goes beyond belief. The fact that Reading Buses used the number 17 route with this apparent unique quality as their flagship service makes even more of a mockery of Reading Buses. Which is a shame. Personally, i love to champion the use of buses, even if they are run purely on petrol.
The main problem with Reading Buses however, is that they appear to have the idea that to make more money they need to raise prices. So a few months ago, to make up for the £40,000 they were reportedly losing per week they cut services and raised prices. Now, i know i only did economics at A-Level, but i am sure even those more experienced with economic matters would agree with me that if prices were to fall, then it would entice more people onto the buses and therefore lead to a price rise… Maybe this would still not stop services being cut, but perhaps the increased demand would give Reading Buses more room for improvement…?
Power to the People
So it has been a relatively fantastic few weeks for the environmental movement, not just on a national level, but also on a local level.
Nationally, BAA have announced that they are scraping plans for a new runway at Heathrow and E.ON are throwing their plans for Kingsnorth power station away (at least for the time being).
This is fantastic news, as although blame has been put on the ‘credit crunch’, in reality, these are two projects that have drawn immense protest from the environmental movement, and it would be ridiculous to suggest that opposition to these projects did not play its part in their scrapping – although also ridiculous to suggest that other issues did not also influence the decision.
In Reading, after a 13 year struggle by campaign groups, Reading Borough Council have rejected current plans to build new homes on the Bath Road Reservoir. Elsewhere in Reading, groups campaigning to stop development on King’s Meadow have also recently enjoyed success.
In both these cases it previously looked as though Reading Borough Council were to give in to the developers, and although there is still a long way to go with both of these campaigns, their recent successes can only encourage fellow campaigners and local people in Reading that people power can win through. Exemplified further by BAA’s and E.ON’s recent news nationally.
So next stop is a campaign surrounding the future of Pincent’s Hill in Reading that i have previously written about (here, here, here and here). Blue Living, have recently put in a planning proposal, and the Save Pincent’s Hill campaign are working hard to ensure that as many letters of objection to this proposal are sent to West Berks as possible. Even Reading Borough Council are putting in a letter of protest to the plans.
Although i admit that my last few months in Reading i have been a bit lax in this campaign, i do know that there are some fantastic and committed people working hard to stop these developments in Pincent’s Hill, and i would ask everyone reading this to visit their websites, to send in letters of protest to West Berks Council (you don’t have to live in the area to do so) and to send messages of support to the group.
Let’s build on recent successes and really show what people power can achieve.
Interpretations of history
A short idea/extract that randomly popped into my head at work a few weeks back that I emailed to myself:
The reason why there are so many different interpretations of history is because humans and their rule of thought is too complex to generalise. There is no one reason for anything. Everybody thinks differently and everybody acts differently. In this sense, it is amazing that anything progresses at all. And it is no coincidence that it takes ‘big’ events to really change things; and there is no way to predict what big event will happen next and how that will change things. When it comes to describing what society was like during a short period in history, there are no limits to the amount of words that can be used, and to then conclude, summarise and generalise is to forget the fact that everybody is different and everybody acts in different ways. There are no characteristics of a society or a nationality, just assumptions and stereotypes placed upon them. Everybody is different and everybody acts in different ways.
