dontfeartheringo wrote: Thu Jun 06, 2024 12:53 pm

Gramsci wrote: Sat May 18, 2024 12:09 pm Exactly what happens when the left only offer vibes rather than policies that materially benefit people’s lives.

Jesus Christ, this all day. THIS.

This guy nails it.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t give a fuck. But at the same time know the only fuck I can give is voting - blah - or as a member of the “managerial class” be as nice and empowering to the people on my team as possible. At work I “work” for my company but have a small but expanding team of people I manage. I basically hire people I can trust then give them complete autonomy. Zero micro management, “here’s a task, I know you can do it, speak Friday”… The result is people that have said it’s the best job they’ve had. That’s the little part I’m playing, making working for a company not soul destroying.

There’s you go, being decent. The least I can do.

And you is, as they say, a glitch in the M.

It's not even about being smart enough to get involved or know what to do. It's that not everyone has the fucking time. Like, my immediate concerns are my job and my family, which leaves me very little time for anything else. It's really ruined things that I like, such as making music. Because, why do I spend the scant amount of time out of my immediate concerns to do something a frivolous and selfish as making music? It all just feels totally pointless against the massive weight of our current political turmoil.

cakes wrote: Thu Jun 06, 2024 3:35 pm It's not even about being smart enough to get involved or know what to do. It's that not everyone has the fucking time. Like, my immediate concerns are my job and my family, which leaves me very little time for anything else. It's really ruined things that I like, such as making music. Because, why do I spend the scant amount of time out of my immediate concerns to do something a frivolous and selfish as making music? It all just feels totally pointless against the massive weight of our current political turmoil.

This is where the notion of activism gets complicated for me. No one who participates in good faith should ever feel anything but whatever humble kind of pride you can get out of using energy and saying "well ,we're fucking trying". But simultaneously I don't think anyone who hasn't been rallying hard should feel ashamed. It's hard to know what even moves the dial. I guess what I'm struggling to articulate, in a kind of "both things are true", is that activists are great but nonactivist shame is pointless.

To wit, all of the UK, NZ and US political problems recently mentioned on this thread are simultaneously an active threat to their respective democracies and popular movements that have captured the imagination of sizable percentages of their electorates.

What is the appropriate response to that? Fighting like hell and hiding in the basement playing guitar both seem like rational responses.

I don\t think being smart is going to do much, just read something by those exiled Russian types. The Gulag was bad, but the Big Mac is worse. Pretty grumpy lot.

The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive. You can feel their pressure, yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?

Probably the best you can do is try to cultivate the biggest culture of righteousness that you can manage in your own life. Your basement, your job, your family. your band, your neighborhood, your town. That is hard enough. Beyond that you can only hope someone recognizes what you are doing and takes it forward from there. No guarantees, McDonalds is open 24/7. That is hard to compete with.

It’s pretty depressing that just exhibiting basic decency towards fellow humans in your life has become a radical position.

Can a European explain the EU elections? I hear that the far-right is on the rise in some cases, but then see the overall elections the ID got abysmal numbers. What happened in Germany and France that was a big deal?

cakes wrote: Mon Jun 10, 2024 9:53 am Can a European explain the EU elections? I hear that the far-right is on the rise in some cases, but then see the overall elections the ID got abysmal numbers. What happened in Germany and France that was a big deal?

EU citizen here…

Overall the rises isn’t that serious. The balance of the EU parliament is the usual centre right / social democrat split.

However, the far right did make a huge gain in France. In Germany, the cause for concern is left wing voters in the east jumping ship to the AfD.

France was the real issue. The far right have spent decades detoxifying their messaging there. European far right parties are boiling it down to anti Muslim immigration and suppression of things like mosque building, headscarves and religion divorce courts.

Often the far right are stealing left wing economics policy, so appeal to normally leftist voters. I’m expecting them to even drop anti LGBT measures. The EU far right is almost entirely anti Muslim above all else.

I blame decades of liberalism - in the European sense, which is woolly centre right policies.

Turnout was only 51%

Curry Pervert wrote:The Workers Party manifesto looks really good.

Are we reading the same text? There's a whole section on "mass migration", and then a bunch of paranoia about foreign influence and "alien values".

One of the techniques of international liberalism is to encourage divisive culture wars. From the top down, it seeks to impose its values on populations at home and overseas without informed consent through the educational system, the public relations, marketing and human resources departments of major corporations, through the ‘chilling effect’ of regulation and legislation and through arts and cultural patronage. This has created a class of intellectuals which has declared war on its own national and working class cultural traditions.

The British working class is known for its easy-going tolerance and welcoming stance towards new ideas and cultures. It challenged the racism imported by American troops in the Second World War ...

jfc

However, this tolerance is very different from top-down ideologically-driven progressivism, imported from the very different conditions in the US with its understandable racial obsessions and lack of any tradition (due to brutal repression) of a collective working class politics.

Progressivism fails to allow communities to live and learn alongside one another but imposes alien values through incentives and threats from above. It is manipulative. We particularly oppose all attempts to impose identity politics and division in our communities.

The WPB’s cultural policy will start with a radical overhaul of the funding of the arts, the charitable sector and the educational system to re-emphasise critical thinking, free debate, free speech and mutual respect.

... we will restrict the ability of private wealth, directly or through the increasingly sinister international NGO-industrial complex, to engage in cultural engineering.

Also I don't know the UK context but what tips off their conservatism as being specifically aimed at muslims? It doesn't sound qualitatively different from similar messages by right-populist parties. And the "mass migration" section doesn't seem aimed at muslims.

There goes western Europe trying to reclaim The Holy Land again...