#322

but he has admitted that behaviour? I guess this comes down to whether the band/groupie dynamic is an exploitative arrangement, i’d say while at the individual case level it doesnt have to be, in general and historically it clearly has been. Even if it was all completely above board and wire was really responsible with it, still think it is a remnant of a really toxic macho music subculture and think they deserve criticism for that. While the michael stipe comment is completely unrelated, it does affect my opinion of him, doesnt seem like a nice guy, therefore not someone i’m inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to on anything

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#323

I think that’s a totally fair point and that clearly their behaviour and comments were totally incompatible with being feminists and decent human beings.

The reason why I joined in the pile-on on TTF is because I think his original stance basically equated ‘politically left wing’ with ‘nice people’ and I think (as others have explored much more eloquently than me above) that is a very damaging and problematic misrepresentation of both politics and human behaviour.

2 Likes
#324

I made this point multiple times

I clarified this is not what I meant multiple times

#325

mate

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#326

I am saying left wing people’s actions should be in line with their beliefs, and if not are open to criticism of hypocrisy.

that is quite a different thing to saying left wing=nice people and you know it

#327

genuinely dont understand how people can’t comprehend this

#328

I personally believe the tides have significantly changed over the past 5 or so years but I’m not someone that would’ve been effected by this directly and was even naive to it in my formitive years going to gigs.

Maybe its because more guys are openly talking about it these days that I stand up and take notice? Maybe thats part of the problem? Or maybe thats a sign that the message has finally started ringing louder and clearer to most?

I dunno - frankly I’d be interested in hearing what someone who has to deal with potential unsafe spaces to shed some light on the matter as I may be ill-informed to make such statements. But to me at the moment it does seem like a recent tide change - a result of something that was kick-started by movements such as RiotGRRL.

#329

There might be a slight
outside chance
that it was a poorly worded statement
with implications you didn’t mean.

I do it all the time.

#330

Apart from the slight semantic difference between ‘nice’ and ‘decent’ I have literally no idea what your are finding so hard to understand. You equate being ‘left wing’ with being decent. They’re not the same thing. You can be very passionately left wing and yet not be decent in the slightest. E.g. Lenin during the Red Terror or The Manics during the mid 90s. You can accuse the Manics of a lot of terrible stuff which they absolutely deserve, I have no particular axe to grind but either a) accept that you said that ‘left wing = nice /decent’ and commit and argue your case or b) accept that you said ‘left wing = nice/decent’ and now you’ve changed your mind due to all the various posts upthread if you want to move this on.

#331

nah, I said:

Clearly this is a sentence that has two parts, where the second part is connected to the first, ‘pretty offensive stuff’ is being contrasted to ‘progressive politics’, implying a contradiction.

yes it is possible for ‘pretty offensive stuff’ not be things that contradict progressive stances, but that wouldn’t make much sense in the context of that sentence, think most reasonable people can grasp what I was getting at, but if not I clarified several times, and it certainly wasn’t something that justified your strange tone of saying I had been ‘called out’, and had certainly been completely clarified before @Scagden waded in. just completely draining levels of internet pedantry

#332

Are we going to do Stonehenge tomorrow?

1 Like
#333

But they didn’t present themselves as the bastion of ‘progressive politics’ in the sense that you mean it now! At all. This is the fucking last time I am going to explain this to you because I’m not sure how I can be clearer.

They were not labelling themselves as ‘progressive’ but as ‘left wing’ and those two terms (especially in the context of UK politics) were in no way synonymous. Their politics were a very Welsh, very socialist reaction against the Thatcher politics and Tory Neo-liberalism. They weren’t ‘progressive’ in the way that we would use the term today to talk about bands’ attitudes to minority representation, treatment of women, trans issues etc. I have explained and explained and explained this to you and I fucking officially give up.

5 Likes
#334

But you also said, and this is the one you’re being called out on. Not on the one you keep on quoting

“I think it is implicit, when a band takes on the mantle of left wing politics they should be decent, otherwise they are just using it as part of an image.”

Which I simply replied with. Gosh I cant be arsed to up and check. Something along the lines of ‘its dangerous to assume someone is a good person because they’re left wing’

Then you took exception by arguing that wasn’t what you said whilst I replied to your quote above and started going on about progressive politics and claiming I misunderstood different posts I never directly referred to.

#335

Nah, I haven’t changed my mind at all. My point was that if a band purports to have certain values and beliefs, but their actions contradict that (which there are many examples of), then they deserve to be criticised for hypocrisy. Manics did purport to be feminist, anti-racist, inclusive, their words and actions contradict that, they should be held to account for that.

I have not argued left wing people ARE automatically decent, but left wing beliefs are decent and people SHOULD aim to act in line with those beliefs.

Find it quite ridiculous to extrapolate to Lenin, over and argument as to whether the manics were hypocrites when they clearly are

#336

according to you. I was a fan of theirs, I read the interviews, the various quotes over all their records. yes a lot of it was old school socialism, but a lot of it was from other perspectives. do you really think it is just socialism underlies little baby nothing, or ifwhiteamericatoldthetruth?

#337

Agree with all of this.

Richie even wrote an anti-PC song - P.C.P.

You can be right wing and not say hateful things against minority groups just as you can be left wing and lambast them. Being ‘nice’ is very clearly an issue of personal morality, not politics. And being ‘left’ certainly doesn’t denote being ‘progressive’. It’s worth pointing this out as down this way danger lies.

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#338

SHOULD be decent, not automatically ARE decent. they SHOULD act in line with their purported beliefs, this is entirely consistent with my hypocrisy argument, entirely

#339

He also wrote a pro-death penalty song if I interpreted it correctly, which is a fairly right wing stance.

#340

Otherwise they’re just posers right? Despite being very pro political reform. Its not like there are varying to degrees to both sides of the political spectrum.

Left wing politics doesn’t automatically = decent values and people. I personally think you feel personally betrayed that their left politics weren’t the same as yours and find it hard to digest that they may have been marching along a similar, yet different, political drum to you after all these years. I mean thats the message I got from your first post today and I personally feel this is blinding you to the fact that when you say something as broad as all LEFT wing people should be decent then you’re casting a very wide net.

#341

Fair enough, if I have have conflated progressive and left wing. But think even if you seperate them my argument stands. The manics have a progressive (whether they subscribe to the term or not) stance on feminism, racism, gay acceptance, which they have contradicted through their words and actions, even if they weren’t fully onboard with political correctness there is enough there to say they are hypocrites