Twilight zone bleg
It seems there may be trouble on teh outer fringes of decency. Both Drink Soaked Trots and General Theory of Rubbish have disappeared and Hak Mao no longer links to either. The DSTFW url still works, but links to a cat which switches to a list of approved blogs (not including anything involving Will). Anyone with insider knowledge of the loons should update us in comments.
posted by Captain Cabernet at 8/05/2009 07:47:00 AM
30 Comments:
Will's been making noises about the uselessness vacuity of blogs and the people who write them for months. My guess is he's finally decided that it's more fun to call people cunts to their faces and to copy out huge chunks of Zizek speeches by hand rather than online.
For what it's worth, I think this is fairly unfortunate. The DSTFW had some seriously wacky views about the utility of violence, but they certainly spotted Ollie Kamm and HP for what they were, albeit belatedly. Plus, unlike most of their Decent Left brethren, they were actually left wingers.
...About the uselessness vacuity of blogs
As demonstrated by myself, in that sentence.
The DSTFW url still works, but links to a cat
How much bigger an improvement could you wish for?
It didn't even link to a cat for me. Or had they moved from blogspot? I largely agree with FR, but I'd just like to note that as they seemed to hate everyone, "spott[ing] Ollie Kamm and HP for what they were" was just their usual "who is a traitor this week?" thing.
What I find sad is that I quite liked both Hak Mao and Will personally, and they were for a time good friends to each other. Will's recent blogging suggested that he didn't have many others.
Does anyone know who SIAW are/were? He/they/it popped up on my blog when I criticised Euston, & were quite spectacularly unpleasant as well as rather obtuse. (Since you're clearly unable to explain... "I just did, you morons!") Will was never that bad, but I couldn't see much to like about his approach. But I hope the guy's OK.
SIAW was Socialism in an Age of Waiting. It was a group blog run by a few ex-Trots in the early days of Decency. It was more intellectual and irritable than Harry's Place and they used to post images of Max Ernst paintings now and again for some reason. Whether the SIAW on Drink Soaked Trots was all of the contributors or just one I don't know.
I'm in agreement with FR on this. I reckon they had long since parted company with mainstream Decency and were definitely not apologising for past 'leftist excesses'. Their attitude to Israel was more hostile after the Gaza affair last year and Iraq and Afghanistan took up a lot less blogspace. As such there was a lot more I agreed with. The more eccentric part for me was the support for Hitchens, a man with some bizarre views and little opinions remaining that could be described as left-wing. Presumably it was his militant atheism that appealed.
Igor Belanov
It was a group blog run by a few ex-Trots in the early days of Decency.
I knew all that, just wondering if anyone knew who they actually were (what kind of ex-Trot, e.g.) I did some digging once into the group that preceded the blog, but only unearthed an RCP-like fondness for writing savage attacks on received wisdom under pseudonyms - albeit, in SIAW's case, silly pseudonyms ("Ben Illin" et al).
Was there "Robby Tussin" as well? I understand he causes hallucinations after a while.I'm not sure I'm in much of a position to sit in judgement on silly pseudonyms.
I see the cat briefly.
Don't know who they were, but they used to own the domain name "marxist.org.uk" and used it to post some old essays. That appears to be gone now, though.
WR was anathematising HP at least five years ago: ircc he excluded one of the other founder DSTs, debord-style, for hesitation in proper condemnation of wardytron
(this was a long time ago and i may have compressed two events)
Belle, I think you're right, although it's a vague memory for me too. I just looked up the Normblog profiles of Will and Hak Mao. Four years ago, he clearly didn't rate Harry's Place, as his favourite blogs were his mates and co-bloggers. Even now, I still find him amusing. Hak Mao (I never knew her real name) appears more serious, which was a little unfair to her then. She was better humoured than that.
I've said I liked them both and that's true. And they are left-wingers, as FR says. But they're the sort of left-wingers the Labour Party (when I was a member anyway) would be wary of. They talk of solidarity but they're too good at fallings out. It's not really a surprise that none of that lot seem to be talking to any of the others.
I'd like this whole thread translated. Who, what are you talking about, and more to the point, why?
There is a big world out there, boys. You have disconnected yourselves.
i can't count, it's only just over four years since galloway was in washington and gave them the name in the first place
Is there any reason for giving a fuck?
Lobby Ludd
I always thought that SIAW was an individual pretending to be a group, rather than an actual group.(Especially as he/they kept using 'we' even when posting individual comments on other blogs. Surely each of these weren't run past the group for their approval?)
This was especially the case as a lot of their commentary was rather nasty and personal in nature, and it's easier to be nasty and personal if you're hiding behind a collective identity, even if it's only an imagined one.
Most of their actual 'thought' struck me as undergrad contrarianism, though they weren't plagiarising their material so obviously as 'Will' was.
> he excluded one of the other founder DSTs, debord-style, for hesitation in proper condemnation of wardytron
To be fair, proper condemnation of Wardytron is essential. I might have to start a will-you-condemn-athon in a minute.
McGazz, wardytron always takes a lower case "w" - there's no reason, it just always does. Anyway, as far as I can remember, Spirit of 1976 may have been excommunicated for not hating me, and I think Richard Sanderson aka bagrec chose to excommunicate himself.
Will was born in 1964. That's really sad. I'd always assumed he was in his early 20s and made allowances.
Eric the Unread was also one of them at one point; I can't remember why they chucked him out though.
Reading his last post, I see 'Snoopy the Goon' in the comments. Wasn't he the first signatory to the Euston Manifesto?*
* I might be getting confused with any of NTM's other vanity projects.
Sort of OT, but this made me laugh, cringe and puke all at once. Not for those who have recently eaten:
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/08/05/my-act-of-solidarity-with-the-iranian-people/
"Pleased with himself" doesn't begin to describe it...
i love that thread. brilliant. especially the bit where it transpires that he only did it for about half an hour. But made sure that it went up on youtube.
surely, also, if he has time to do that then he has time to organise his oh-so-important coalition against the BNP?
My favourite comment -
David T has an astonishingly massive head. It appears to have been photoshopped onto him by someone really, really malicious.
I'm all in favour of the protest and the solidarity campaign so good on him for doing it but the self-congratulatory tone of the piece is hilarious, and of course he couldn't resist a dig at the "progressive left" as represented by, er, Seamus Milne.
I notice that those commenters who would normally dismiss people who take part in any public protest as self indulgent and more interested in their own self-aggrandisement than the cause itself are conspicuously silent.
I find it hard to take David Toube as a 'blogger for justice in Iran' seriously when his campaigning journalism always, always, always contains swipes at people he thinks he's superior to. As usual, any genuine activism on the part of HP Sauce writers takes the form of oneupmanship in a sort of performative will-you-condemn-a-thon (the decentpedia entry on Israel protests nails this).
The reference to Milne there adds nothing substantial to the piece, and a lot of the discussion of his 'opponents on the left' is in thoroughly bad faith, especially since his two examples are classic HP Sauce hate figures.
Am I also the only one who thinks it's a bit dodgy to be making fun of Milne's christian name? it's a standard Scottish name, after all - even viewed with kind eyes, the playground pettiness of that (as well as 'Stalinist') rather deviates from the 'close to tears' Toube is meant to be just a paragraph earlier.
I don't really understand the decent beef with Milne, in any case. I don't agree with a lot of his columns but they're usually thought-provoking at the very least, and despite being an editor at tehgraun he's by no means representative of the editorial line. The 'gilded youth' piece has some poor quality suff in it, but the central idea behind that phrase isn't too far from the truth - that Ahmedinejad is genuinely popular in Iran, and that he enjoys a lot of working-class support.
speaking as a political ignoramus - I'm not sure I buy this:
The 'gilded youth' piece has some poor quality suff in it, but the central idea behind that phrase isn't too far from the truth - that Ahmedinejad is genuinely popular in Iran, and that he enjoys a lot of working-class support.
I think that phrase is, intentionally or not, a rather mean conflation of a *possible* assessment of a section of the Iranian population with a lot of other old baggage. Not clear that the newly affluent/bourgeois are descended from old wealth or standing, or have been hitherto lauded by the establishment - both of which I'd personally associate with "gilded youth".
(Disclaimer: am only working on a minute sample size of personal and unrepresentative Iranian acquaintances. But their particular contentions ring truer than Milne's analyses. The Tehran figure he quotes is not very good evidence either way.)
@ Chris Baldwin 'That appears to be gone now, though.'
http://www.marxist.org.uk/htm_docs/
There is a big world out there, boys. You have disconnected yourselves.
Says the J7 'truther'.
The noted thickist 'Lobby Ludd' even makes an appearance.
What an odd place
I am loving this comment thread.
arry on.
yeah and shit.
and that.
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