#48
2 Likes
#49
#50

Can’t get more independent than that

9 Likes
#51

Showing Sinn Fein how it’s done

#52

Someone sort this out cba on my phone. You get the idea

leonard-nimoy-was-the-greatest-simpsons-guest-sta-2-6730-1425071641-14_dblbig

2 Likes
#53

I have no idea what has happened here as it seems some people have deleted tweets / locked their twitter. But oh boy is this a bad sign:

Edit: found the below blog with screenshots of what’s happened

The Fellow Traveller Pass: Or how forgiving are we of things within our political movements?
#54

“Top political analyst” Katerji, is it

4 Likes
#55

The second article cites Oz Katerji as a “top political analyst” so I don’t know what to think.

edit: dammit dingers!

#56

GREAT MINDS!

In all seriousness I really wanted nip to be great lads doing a good thing, but… they just aren’t, are they? It’s like they exist purely for Twitter?

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#57

I took that bit as a sarcastic joke lol

#58

Yeah, sadly.

There’s another thing going on twitter at the moment which is reflecting really badly on white socialist twitter.

And there was an Insta post on Bristol Resists the other day warning people about the SWP in the context of them being everywhere at protests, immediate comments saying we shouldn’t be divided and how we should work with everyone to kill the bill.

I know that the joke is that socialist infighting is why we never get anywhere, but if it contains racism, ableism, homophobia, misogyny, etc then it isn’t socialism and I for one don’t want it.

6 Likes
#59

Thing is, as long as there are young people being left wing, there will be people who’ve not heard of SWP before; you’ve just got to list the shitty shitty things they’ve done, imho.

1 Like
#60

The ableism in question was apparently the founder guy calling something ‘stupid’. Which, yeah, that sort of language should be problematised, but it’s obviously ridiculous to render people who use it problematic.

I know what you’re saying but I’m increasingly of a very different opinion, which is that any left movement is immediately incapacitated by any allegations of some sort of -ism, regardless of whether they’re well-founded or not, and it’s not a good thing. People on the left should be able to stand up for things they believe in without collapsing into a moral-existential crisis whenever someone on the internet says “this person you like is bad actually”.

Don’t even like the NIP man. It’s just sad to see the consent manufacturing machine tear someone’s life apart like they’re doing to the founder, and watch left people who basically support the project just stand awkwardly by.

12 Likes
#61

If that is the sum total of what the guy did then it would be an excessive reaction to write him off IMO. I’m assuming, based on the noise it is generating, that he got defensive or doubled down rather than accepting the criticism and trying to grow from it. But I don’t know.

I agree that the left gets incapacitated by allegations of -isms and it is absolutely not a good thing. My worry is that we get into a situation where we cannot criticise a particular person or group because they are “good socialists”. What bad things do we let slide in the name of the greater good?

My strong opinion is that we (individually and the left in general) need to get a lot better at taking criticism, particularly from minority groups or marginalised people. And part of that, unfortunately, is to accept that we might have to put up with a deeper level of mistrust than we feel we are personally accountable for because of damage done by other people on the left.

I could ramble on more but perhaps I should start a thread not related to the NIP as it would be getting a bit off topic.

3 Likes
#63

Are Novara beyond the pale now too

#64

I didn’t know about the Novara connection with NIP. I can absolutely understand why disabled people would be doubly wary after that.

#67

You kind of just have to trust that because someone is talking to another person about something unrelated to the bad opinions they have on another topic, that doesn’t mean they share the bad opinions the other person has on the other topic that they’re not discussing. I agree Novara shouldn’t have done the chat with Peter Singer but that’s probably just a question of governance of their organisation, blind spots in their decision-making process and how guests are vetted. At least I think it should be taken as that until a pattern of behaviour suggests otherwise. But too many people are willing to look at a single incident like that and say “oh well that’s it, Novara are problematic.”

Also to get back on topic, I find this one doubly annoying because it legitimises the flattening of degrees of separation thing that happened with Labour during the whole antisemitism thing. Like, the NIP guy hangs out with the Novara people, who hung out with Peter Singer, which now means the NIP guy is disablist just like Peter Singer.

#69

If you request that @whiterussian change your username it automatically changes in every reference in the site.

I just see it as the Disney character as an octopus but I am not really a person affected by ableism

1 Like
#70

Yep, happy to help if needed, just DM me :slight_smile:

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#71

Ep 79.

A bit of interesting behind the scenes insight and context on how the Scottish Greens person from Praxiscast has been working with the NIP to help them take the step from shitposters to real deal full fledged party.

1 Like