The Political Correctness Haters' Club

[elfstone]

Jeremy Corbyn has won the first battle in a long war against the ruling elite

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To stop Jeremy Corbyn, the British elite is prepared to abandon Brexit – first in its hard form and, if necessary, in its entirety. That is the logic behind all the manoeuvres, all the cant and all the mea culpas you will see mainstream politicians and journalists perform this week.

And the logic is sound. The Brexit referendum result was supposed to unleash Thatcherism 2.0 – corporate tax rates on a par with Ireland, human rights law weakened, and perpetual verbal equivalent of the Falklands war, only this time with Brussels as the enemy; all opponents of hard Brexit would be labelled the enemy within.

But you can’t have any kind of Thatcherism if Corbyn is prime minister. Hence the frantic search for a fallback line. Those revolted by the stench of May’s rancid nationalism will now find it liberally splashed with the cologne of compromise.

Antonio Gramsci, the Italian communist leader who died in a fascist jail in 1937, would have had no trouble understanding Corbyn’s rise, Labour’s poll surge, or predicting what happens next. For Gramsci understood what kind of war the left is fighting in a mature democracy, and how it can be won.

 

Consider the events of the past six weeks a series of unexpected plot twists. Labour starts out polling 25% but then scores 40%. Its manifesto is leaked, raising major questions of competence, but it immediately boosts Corbyn’s popularity. Britain is attacked by terrorists but it is the Tories whose popularity dips. Diane Abbott goes sick – yet her majority rises to 30,000. Sitting Labour candidates campaign on the premise “Corbyn cannot win” yet his presence delivers a 10% boost to their own majorities.

None of it was supposed to happen. It defies political “common sense”. Gramsci was the first to understand that, for the working class and the left, almost the entire battle is to disrupt and defy this common sense. He understood that it is this accepted common sense – not MI5, special branch and the army generals – that really keeps the elite in power.

Once you accept that, you begin to understand the scale of Corbyn’s achievement. Even if he hasn’t won, he has publicly destroyed the logic of neoliberalism – and forced the ideology of xenophobic nationalist economics into retreat.

Brexit was an unwanted gift to British business. Even in its softest form it means 10 years of disruption, inflation, higher interest rates and an incalculable drain on the public purse. It disrupts the supply of cheap labour; it threatens to leave the UK as an economy without a market. But the British ruling elite and the business class are not the same entity. They have different interests. The British elite are in fact quite detached from the interests of people who do business here. They have become middle men for a global elite of hedge fund managers, property speculators, kleptocrats, oil sheikhs and crooks. It was in the interests of the latter that Theresa May turned the Conservatives from liberal globalists to die-hard Brexiteers.

The hard Brexit path creates a permanent crisis, permanent austerity and a permanent set of enemies – namely Brussels and social democracy. It is the perfect petri dish for the fungus of financial speculation to grow. But the British people saw through it. Corbyn’s advance was not simply a result of energising the Labour vote. It was delivered by an alliance of ex-Ukip voters, Greens, first-time voters and tactical voting by the liberal centrist salariat.

The alliance was created in two stages. First, in a carefully costed manifesto Corbyn illustrated, for the first time in 20 years, how brilliant it would be for most people if austerity ended and government ceased to do the work of the privatisers and the speculators. Then, in the final week, he followed a tactic known in Spanish as la remontada – the comeback. He stopped representing the party and started representing the nation; he acted against stereotype – owning the foreign policy and security issues that were supposed to harm him. Day by day he created an epic sense of possibility.

The ideological results of this are more important than the parliamentary arithmetic. Gramsci taught us that the ruling class does not govern through the state. The state, Gramsci said, is just the final strongpoint. To overthrow the power of the elite, you have to take trench after trench laid down in their defence.

Last summer, during the second leadership contest, it became clear that the forward trench of elite power runs through the middle of the Labour party. The Labour right, trained during the cold war for such trench warfare, fought bitterly to retain control, arguing that the elite would never allow the party to rule with a radical left leadership and programme.

The moment the Labour manifesto was leaked, and support for it took off, was the moment the Labour right’s trench was overrun. They retreated to a second trench – not winning, with another leadership election to follow – but that did not exactly go well either.

As to the third trench line – the tabloid press and its broadcasting echo chamber – this too proved ineffectual. More than 12 million people voted for a party stigmatised as “backing Britain’s enemies”, soft on terror, with “blood on its hands”.

And Gramsci would have understood the reasons here, too. When most socialists treated the working class as a kind of bee colony – pre-programmed to perform its historical role – Gramsci said: everyone is an intellectual. Even if a man is treated as “trained gorilla” at work, outside work “he is a philosopher, an artist, a man of taste ... has a conscious line of moral conduct”. [Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks]

On this premise, Gramsci told the socialists of the 1930s to stop obsessing about the state – and to conduct a long, patient trench warfare against the ideology of the ruling elite.

Eighty years on, the terms of the battle have changed. Today, you do not need to come up from the mine, take a shower, walk home to a slum and read the Daily Worker before you can start thinking. As I argued in Postcapitalism, the 20th-century working class is being replaced as the main actor – in both the economy and oppositional politics – by the networked individual. People with weak ties to each other, and to institutions, but possessing a strong footprint of individuality and rationalism and capacity to act.

What we learned on Friday morning was how easily such networked, educated people can see through bullshit. How easily they organise themselves through tactical voting websites; how quickly they are prepared to unite around a new set of basic values once someone enunciates them with cheerfulness and goodwill, as Corbyn did.

The high Conservative vote, and some signal defeats for Labour in the areas where working class xenophobia is entrenched, indicate this will be a long, cultural war. A war of position, as Gramsci called it, not one of manoeuvre.

But in that war, a battle has been won. The Tories decided to use Brexit to smash up what’s left of the welfare state, and to recast Britain as the global Singapore. They lost. They are retreating behind a human shield of Orange bigots from Belfast.

The left’s next move must eschew hubris; it must reject the illusion that with one lightning breakthrough we can envelop the defences of the British ruling class and install a government of the radical left.

The first achievable goal is to force the Tories back to a position of single-market engagement, under the jurisdiction of the European court of justice, and cross-party institutions to guide the Brexit talks. But the real prize is to force them to abandon austerity.

A Tory party forced to fight the next election on a programme of higher taxes and increased spending, high wages and high public investment would signal how rapidly Corbyn has changed the game. If it doesn’t happen; if the Conservatives tie themselves to the global kleptocrats instead of the interests of British business and the British people, then Corbyn is in Downing Street.

Either way, the accepted common sense of 30 years is over.

 

 

[SympathysSilhouette]

Whilst the Tories did a lot worse than they themselves were obviously expecting, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour still lost to what must be the very worst Tory government of the modern era.

[elfstone]

On 6/13/2017 at 0:33 PM, SympathysSilhouette said:

Whilst the Tories did a lot worse than they themselves were obviously expecting, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour still lost to what must be the very worst Tory government of the modern era.

On what basis are you saying that? Maybe you can say that in hindsight but to state it as self-evident is kinda hypocritical

Before June everyone, including Tories, media of all sorts, even members of his own party had predicted annihilation for Labour at the polls

Point being, Its not just Tories own expectations that they failed to surpass  

But to understand that you need to first grasp the backdrop of Corbyn's rise

https://jacobinmag.com/2017/06/jeremy-corbyn-attacks-media-labour-election-prime-minister

 

 

 

[SympathysSilhouette]

I am aware that Corbyn faced unprecedented hostility from the right-wing rags.

My point wasn't that this wasn't a huge failure for the Tories, rather, it was a huge failure for the Tories but Labour still failed to get back into power.

So whilst for the Tories this is a sort of victory that feels like a defeat, for Labour this is a defeat that feels like a victory.

But the end result is still them as the opposition party (albeit with more seats than they had before the election).

[elfstone]

15 hours ago, SympathysSilhouette said:

I am aware that Corbyn faced unprecedented hostility from the right-wing rags.

My point wasn't that this wasn't a huge failure for the Tories, rather, it was a huge failure for the Tories but Labour still failed to get back into power.

So whilst for the Tories this is a sort of victory that feels like a defeat, for Labour this is a defeat that feels like a victory.

But the end result is still them as the opposition party (albeit with more seats than they had before the election).

Of course. Labour failed (in the sense you describe cause I dont think they really failed ) because their MPs did everything in their power to undermine their leader. Imagine what the outcome would have been had they actually got behind Corbyn. As for Tories, I'm sure whatever victorious scenarios they had envisioned for themselves, losing their majority in a hung parliament wasnt one of them

BTW had you actually read the piece you would have known that it wasnt just the right-wing rags throwing shit at Corbyn

[Neils von Zeppelin]

Politics is not my passion... But many things shock me and not only Donald but the Middle East...

 

I think of Iran...

Iran is a great country, with a great history, it is one of the few democratic country of the region...

Its President Hassan Rohani is fighting against the conservative, he was re elected with a large majority, he is a moderate and very intelligent man...

The scientific spirit is present in Iran... And technology... Iranian youth is in love with a new freedom...

But many people believe that Iran is the home of the Devil...

For business reasons the US supports Saudi Arabia... A feudal country...

 

I think of the State of Israel...

There is no question of questioning the State of Israel... To sink into anti semitism...

But the State of Israel practices an insidious form of terrorism... Jewish settlements... In Europe we speak of Jewish colonies...

There were 30.000 settlers in the Palestinian Territories ten years ago... Today there are more than 300.000 settlers !!...

[elfstone]

Brad Pitt’s “War Machine” Offers an Absurd and Scathing Critique of America’s Delusional Generals

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How do military leaders persuade their soldiers to fight an insane war?

Here’s one way. The setting is a bitter outpost of the American war in Afghanistan. The years-long nightmare has no prospect of ending so long as American troops stay in a country that has a nearly unblemished record of grinding foreign armies to ashes. A bullish general is trying to generate a dose of enthusiasm in the hearts and minds of his unenthusiastic men.

“You boys,” the general says, “are the only things that count. If it doesn’t happen here, it doesn’t happen. End of story.”

“What doesn’t happen, sir?” a Marine asks.

“It, son,” the general responds.

The Marine knows it would be unwise to demand a full explanation.

“Okay, thank you sir.”

The general, who doesn’t know better, bulls ahead.

“Does anyone here know what it is?” he asks.

Silence.

“Anyone? Anyone?”

This scene is familiar to me — I heard similar calls and responses while covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — and at the same time this scene is utterly invented. It comes from the just-released “War Machine,” which is one of the best war movies of the post-9/11 era, yet has been panned by movie critics who know everything about basic cable and nothing about basic training. While the movie is uneven in content and performances (let us resolve that Brad Pitt will never again play a general), it achieves greatness in the way it uses absurdity to assassinate the logic and reality of counterinsurgency warfare.

But you wouldn’t know the movie’s strengths if you read the reviews. “War Machine” has a 56 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has been largely dismissed by film critics whose closest encounter with a warzone is the bar at Balthazar on a Saturday night. They don’t like it because, as one wrote, there is an “absence of intimacy, of psychology, of characters’ self-revelation in thought and desire.” Yes, that particular reviewer graduated from Princeton with a degree in comparative literature, so there you go.

There is one particular group of people who love the film, and we should pay more attention to them, because in the matter of war movies they are the experts who matter the most: soldiers. They now have more skin in the game than usual, after President Trump gave Secretary of Defense James Mattis a green light to send more soldiers into Afghanistan. Helene Cooper, a military correspondent for The New York Times, noted in a podcast the other day that “everybody at the Pentagon is talking about” the movie, and she added, “the guys who you think would be offended by it, love it.” Retired Gen. David Barno wrote with co-author Nora Bensahel that it “should be must-see TV for our current generals and all those who aspire to wear stars.”

 

“War Machine” is directed by David Michod and stars Brad Pitt as a thinly-veiled version of Stanley McChrystal, the gung-ho general who led U.S. forces in Afghanistan until he was fired when a Rolling Stone journalist wrote a revealing article about him and his slightly out-of-control staff. The movie, released by Netflix, is based on the article and book by the late Michael Hastings. What Hastings and the film got precisely right is the impossible strategy behind America’s never-ending ground wars. There is no hero in this movie, and if there’s an anti-hero, it’s the war itself, which is profane, vicious, complex, and a bit naïve. By what I think is design, the war has more character than any characters in the film (attention critics: sometimes it’s not about actors and their self-revelations).

The scene in the desert, with Pitt’s character trying to encourage his unencouragable men, doesn’t end with the initial silence that greets his appeal for someone to explain what “it” is. Pitt goes on to provide a summary that his troops know to be ridiculous: they must protect civilians while killing the enemy. The skeptical corporal who spoke out at first, played brilliantly by Lakeith Stanfield, responds by pointing out the fallacy embedded in the general’s nonsense.

“I can’t tell the difference between the people and the enemy,” Stanfield says. “They all look alike to me. I’m pretty sure they’re the same people, sir.”

“I don’t know, sir,” he continues. “It seems to me that we’re all here with our guns and shit trying to convince these people that deep down we’re actually really nice guys. And I don’t know how to do that, sir. I don’t know how to do that when every second one of them or every third one of them or every tenth one of them is trying to fucking kill me, sir.”

I’m not going to argue that “War Machine” is the “Battle of Algiers” of our time. There is too much exposition, the movie tries to touch too many bases, and did I mention that Pitt is unimpressive? But the film is reminiscent, in its satirical marksmanship, of one of the best war movies of the late American empire: “Three Kings,” directed by David O. Russell and starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, and Ice Cube as three U.S. soldiers during the Persian Gulf War who steal a secret cache of gold. “Three Kings,” like “War Machine,” was cinematically insane with moments of superhuman lucidity.

 

“War Machine” isn’t anti-war as much as it’s anti-general. Pitt’s character manifests the willing delusion of senior officers whose egos and ambitions are the pillars of perpetual warfare. He seems to really believe that he can defeat the Taliban. The skewering of this type of general is a timely corrective, because we live in an era of general worship, thanks in part to our general-loving president. We have a retired general as the secretary of defense, another as the head of the Department of Homeland Security, yet another as the president’s national security advisor (actually two — the current one, H.R. McMaster, and his fired predecessor, Michael Flynn, who also happens to be the basis for one of the mad characters in “War Machine”).

One of the movie’s best scenes takes place in a conference hall in Germany, where Pitt is trying to drum up support for more allied troops to fight in Afghanistan. He comes armed with a whiteboard, and he deploys a bewildering flow chart about the dynamics of insurgency and counterinsurgency, but Tilda Swinton, playing a German member of parliament, blows it all to hell. She points out that the reason for invading Afghanistan was to crush Al Qaeda, which was based there with Osama bin Laden, and was pretty much chased out of the country in the first months of the invasion. After so many years of stalemate against the Taliban, what is the purpose of continuing to fight?

 

“As an elected representative of the people of Germany, it is my job to ensure that the personal ambitions of those who serve those people are kept in check,” Swinton says. “You have devoted your entire life, general, to the fighting of war, and this situation in Afghanistan for you is the culmination of all your years of training, all your years of ambition. This is the great moment of your life. It is understandable to me that you should have therefor a fetish for completion, to make your moment glorious. It is my job, however, to ensure that your personal ambitions are not entirely delusional and do not carry with them an unacceptable cost for everybody else.”

It might sound like a lecture that only an anti-war leftie could write or appreciate, and it might sound unfair to the now-we-know-what-to-do generals who command, with square-jawed authority, the forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, but remember where the movie’s biggest fans are located — in the Pentagon. I met the kinds of officers and diplomats depicted so scathingly in “War Machine,” and while exaggerated in the movie, they are real. They probably mean well but they fail or refuse to see what everyone around them can see, and must pay for in blood. Our delusional leaders finally have the movie their insanity deserves.

 

https://theintercept.com/2017/06/17/brad-pitts-war-machine-offers-an-absurd-and-scathing-critique-of-americas-delusional-generals/

[Sarah.Adams]

54 minutes ago, Neils von Wittelsbach said:

For business reasons the US supports Saudi Arabia... A feudal country...

 

instead of converting it to a huge crater which would be the solution to a zillion different problems  

[Neils von Zeppelin]

Corto Maltese finds it the most natural thing in the world to belong to the Political Correctness Hater's Club...

 

- In the way of Nietzsche he thinks it is of overriding importance to live dangerously... It is the only way to live...

- He does things in Grand Style...

- There is a strange irony in his eyes...

- And he smokes...

[gotportugal]

20 hours ago, SuperG.Girl said:

 

instead of converting it to a huge crater which would be the solution to a zillion different problems  

 Seriously THIS

[jj3]

And yes, law is law  And WTF in the US peeps are allowed to hide their faces in the official pictures ???... 

When you're so much into "respect", you should start by respecting the laws of the countries where you're travelling.

[elfstone]

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Secret Government Report: Chelsea Manning Leaks Caused No Real Harm

Prosecutors said WikiLeaks' disclosures about Iraq and Afghanistan posed a major threat to US national security. But it turns out the classified document they cited — newly obtained by BuzzFeed News — said almost the exact opposite.

In the seven years since WikiLeaks published the largest leak of classified documents in history, the federal government has said they caused enormous damage to national security.

But a secret, 107-page report, prepared by a Department of Defense task force and newly obtained by BuzzFeed News, tells a starkly different story: It says the disclosures were largely insignificant and did not cause any real harm to US interests.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/secret-government-report-chelsea-manning-leaks-caused-no?utm_term=.jqnr99RKn#.er2W22P8p

[Neils von Zeppelin]

About the State of Israel... I forgot to tell you about Gaza...

 

Gaza is an open-air prison of 365 Km2 where live about 2 millions Palestinians...

[Sarah.Adams]

1 hour ago, Niels von Wittelsbach said:

About the State of Israel... I forgot to tell you about Gaza...

 

Gaza is an open-air prison of 365 Km2 where live about 2 millions Palestinians...

 

Pat has a different opinion  

 

 

[Stromboli1]

The Jews and Arabs just want Jerusalem's milk & juice.

[gotportugal]

On 2017-6-13 at 8:33 AM, SympathysSilhouette said:

Whilst the Tories did a lot worse than they themselves were obviously expecting, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour still lost to what must be the very worst Tory government of the modern era.

True. Theresa May is just..

[gotportugal]

 

 

[Neils von Zeppelin]

1 hour ago, SuperG.Girl said:

 

Pat has a different opinion  

 

 

Pat Condell was known as a enthusiastic supporter of Israel... That is to say its objectivity in a very complex situation...

 

More than 300.000 settlers in the Palestinian Territories... Two millions prisoners in Gaza and no way to escape...

These are FACTS... 

[jj3]

40 minutes ago, Niels von Wittelsbach said:

 

These are FACTS... 

 

That's your facts. 

[Sarah.Adams]

2 hours ago, Niels von Wittelsbach said:

More than 300.000 settlers in the Palestinian Territories... Two millions prisoners in Gaza and no way to escape...

These are FACTS... 

 

Palestinians are 100% responsible for their fate. They should stand up, get rid of their vicious leaders, get rid of their idiotic beliefs and take corrective action  

 

https://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/28/gazas-millionaires-and-billionaires-how-hamass-leaders-got-rich-quick/