It's not a revolution yet. Far from it. But the students (and schoolchildren, and lecturers, and teachers, and parents, and many, many others) are not taking this lying down, and god bless them for that.
Inevitably, and vomit-inducingly, the BBC hacks are condemning those protestors for their so-called "violence" (against windows and walls), yet no one mentions the brutal structural violence* of condemning an entire generation of human beings EITHER to gigantic and probably unpayable debt OR to a future with no formal education beyond the age of sixteen and a gruesome underpaid McJob or no job at all to follow.
This particular qlipoth (aka Anonymous) is heartened and inspired by what happened in London today. He supports it fully, especially the destruction of so-called "property" (it's stolen property: it's the former commons; it includes Government buildings). Good on those courageous, righteously angry and wise people for trashing, graffiti-ing and attempting to enter those government buildings. Good on them for defying the armed and armoured defenders of the corporate state and the brutally sanctimonious hacks who defend it no less. Good on them for understanding very clearly what the horribly-depleted BBC, the repugnant Aaron Porter and the fucking so-called Labour Party would love to obfuscate: that "peaceful" protest is worth considerably less than two shits.
Good on them, finally, for breaking the car windows of the heir-to-the-throne and putting the fear of god into him. And good on them, too, for neither killing nor injuring nor even slightly hurting him. (Who says they have no self-control? Who dares to call them VIOLENT?)
Today's London protests were the first battle in the international War on Thieves and Liars.
* one "Seventies" term that badly needs reviving. Babies should not be thrown out with bathwater.
ambiguity?:
ReplyDeleteThis time, unlike the first three big days of action, there certainly is violence on both sides. Whilst some students came prepared, even bringing a portable tea-and-cake tent complete with minature pagoda to the kettle, others have brought sticks and paint bombs to hurl at the police. In the face of fellow protesters screaming at them not to "give the coppers a reason to hit us", stones are thrown at horses as angry young people try to deter the animals from advancing.
Many of these young people come from extremely deprived backgrounds, from communities where violence is a routine way of gaining respect and status. They have grown up learning that the only sure route out of a lifetime of poverty and violence is education -- and now that education has been made inaccessible for many of them. Meanwhile, when children deface the statue of a racist, imperialist prime minister who ordered the military to march on protesting miners, the press calls it violence. When children are left bleeding into their brains after being attacked by the police, the press calls it legitimate force.
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2010/12/young-protesters-police
Sadly the violence never went away as gangs of youths from south London began running battles between each other and attacking students. Then the horses down by the back of the Abbey charged forward to drive away a small group of encroaching protestors. This mad scramble away from the horses turned into a full flow charge the other way as all the troublemakers flocked to this one location. The police horses were forced to retreat back down the street whilst being pelted by any objects the thugs could find – including flares. A lot of actual students were screaming at the troublemakers to stop attacking the horses but they didn’t listen and for the next half hour the horses advanced, sending the crowd into mass panic before retreating again with the crowd flowing back.
http://www.theyorker.co.uk/news/blogs/6064
11.25am: It's worth going back to take a look at the tweets from yesterday from my colleagues Adam Gabbatt and Esther Addley, who were covering the protests. You can see them all here, but here are a few key extracts:
ReplyDeleteestheraddley: though i shd add that at least until 7pm or so, protest overwhelmingly peaceful except at fringes. hope that not forgotten #demo2010
AdamGabbatt: Plaintive cries of 'help' from middle of bridge. Drum still going #demo2010 #dayx3
AdamGabbatt: about five boys just beat up another teenage boy. Diff gang collrcting chunks of concrete. Senseless #dayx3 #demo2010 "#solidarity"
estheraddley: Police horses pushing protesters back through parliament square, many now in grounds of wminster abbey #DEMO2010
AdamGabbatt: One is burning a GCSE mock exam paper. The subject? Economics. #demo2010 #dayx
blogger ate these two:
ReplyDeleteClare Byrne, a PhD student and teaching assistant at King's College, London, writes to explain her experience. She too says "I saw absolutely no violence of any kind until the police began containing and ramming people with a level of aggression that was utterly absurd in the face of the fact that, at that time, most people were standing about in clusters in Parliament Square chatting or perhaps chanting a little".
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3.32pm: Alex Thomson of Channel 4 News has posted an interesting account of the day's events yesterday. He says it was "inevitable" that there was going to be "considerable street violence".
Yesterday was markedly different from previous marches which I have been on concerning student fees. Even outside London University, forming up, there were at least 200 youths at or near the front of the march already masked up.
The police too were much more in-your-face. At this stage still hard baseball caps on the heads, but riot helmets already hooked up to their belts.
Then, the march stopped almost as soon as it began. There were a series of short speeches from student union leaders and an RMT union official. Over half an hour or so these speakers invited protesters to "bring down the government" and " bring this country to a halt" and there were a number of references to what was felt to be over-aggressive policing.
The crowd, by the end of all this, was absolutely itching to get going and set off at a fast walking pace. That's significant. There was urgency. Urgency to get to Parliament Square.
and this one:
ReplyDelete3.29pm: A police officer who wishes to be known only as Daniel has emailed to say he feels "betrayed" that the Guardian's "constant portrayal of the protests – all of them – have been deeply antagonistic and negative towards the police".
Unfortunately, as you know police were responding to serious violent disorder. The video clips have been quite clearly heavily edited to look like consistent "brutality" but if an officer commands to "MOVE AWAY" after four times, why should they not use the force to move them back? By this stage at night in Parliament Square/Victoria Street, the protesters should never have been there and so they were effectively breaking their part of the plea. I think it is fair to say that a lot of people at the front of these demonstrations are there to get their own back on the police; to be excited and if you're in that position, and do not move, you will be at the full front of the law.
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1.43pm: A Birkbeck student, who wishes to remain anonymous, has sent this message about being attacked by the police:
"...Next to him, a police officer spontaneously collapsed, apparently feigning unconsciousness. As the officer was not on the front line, had had nothing thrown at him and was wearing full body armour including helmet with visor down, he could not have been injured. The only nearby medic immediately tended to this officer, who had apparently faked an injury. Both medics and police ignored me and my friend who shouted repeatedly for assistance. Giving up, he half-walked, half-carried me to hospital. Once there he attempted to get police to take a statement from me but was told there were none available. I spent three hours in hospital, dizzy, bleeding from the head and being repeatedly sick. My speech was apparently slurred and I have poor memory of what happened for the rest of the day. I had been told to stay overnight but feeling scared and victimised from being hit I left and returned home."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/blog/2010/dec/10/tuition-fees-protests-charles-camilla-attack-aftermath-live
and this one:
ReplyDelete3.29pm: A police officer who wishes to be known only as Daniel has emailed to say he feels "betrayed" that the Guardian's "constant portrayal of the protests – all of them – have been deeply antagonistic and negative towards the police".
Unfortunately, as you know police were responding to serious violent disorder. The video clips have been quite clearly heavily edited to look like consistent "brutality" but if an officer commands to "MOVE AWAY" after four times, why should they not use the force to move them back? By this stage at night in Parliament Square/Victoria Street, the protesters should never have been there and so they were effectively breaking their part of the plea. I think it is fair to say that a lot of people at the front of these demonstrations are there to get their own back on the police; to be excited and if you're in that position, and do not move, you will be at the full front of the law.
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1.43pm: A Birkbeck student, who wishes to remain anonymous, has sent this message about being attacked by the police:
"...Next to him, a police officer spontaneously collapsed, apparently feigning unconsciousness. As the officer was not on the front line, had had nothing thrown at him and was wearing full body armour including helmet with visor down, he could not have been injured. The only nearby medic immediately tended to this officer, who had apparently faked an injury. Both medics and police ignored me and my friend who shouted repeatedly for assistance. Giving up, he half-walked, half-carried me to hospital. Once there he attempted to get police to take a statement from me but was told there were none available. I spent three hours in hospital, dizzy, bleeding from the head and being repeatedly sick. My speech was apparently slurred and I have poor memory of what happened for the rest of the day. I had been told to stay overnight but feeling scared and victimised from being hit I left and returned home."
the link to the guardian live update feed is apparently too large for blogger to handle -- sorry you'll have to find it yourself.
---
ReplyDelete1.43pm: A Birkbeck student, who wishes to remain anonymous, has sent this message about being attacked by the police:
"...Next to him, a police officer spontaneously collapsed, apparently feigning unconsciousness. As the officer was not on the front line, had had nothing thrown at him and was wearing full body armour including helmet with visor down, he could not have been injured. The only nearby medic immediately tended to this officer, who had apparently faked an injury. Both medics and police ignored me and my friend who shouted repeatedly for assistance. Giving up, he half-walked, half-carried me to hospital. Once there he attempted to get police to take a statement from me but was told there were none available. I spent three hours in hospital, dizzy, bleeding from the head and being repeatedly sick. My speech was apparently slurred and I have poor memory of what happened for the rest of the day. I had been told to stay overnight but feeling scared and victimised from being hit I left and returned home."
what do you think of all this?
ReplyDeletewhat grounds do you suppose laurie penny actually has for identyifying the perps of violence as she does, the evocation of this violent way of life? that tell-tale portraiture - they've grown up dreaming of escaping poverty through ballet, and now....
i think she really has no evidence at all and is just recycling the packaged tv sociology.
i think it would be very hard to deny the police at least are deliberately provocative even if you insist they are all marked and identified.
ReplyDeleteits possible this is the wrong bet on the part of the government though - if the idea was to escalate in order to drum up public antipathy to the protestors against the cuts as a substitute for the impossible drumming up of approval of the cuts. but it's not wroking - the public are in sympathy with the kids despite the reports of violence, however accurate or not; i also think participation in this kind of thing radicalises; being under those mounted cops is very scary and it radicalises
ReplyDeleteitake it back about laurie penny - it's a good piece
ReplyDeletei'm skeptical about any attempt to distinctly identify the 'violent' minority from the peaceful majority; calling them chavs is included in that skepticism. sure, working-class kids (mostly boys) and anarchists were there as well as students, and i can even accept that they caused most of the minor vandalism, but there is an undercurrent of finger-pointing in some of the accounts that i think betrays the larger significance of the actions. like i've said before, i think the 'rogue elements' should be accepted within the movement and pressure to ostracize them and moralize about them should be resisted.
ReplyDeletebut this term 'violence' -- hasn't it been rendered basically incoherent at this point? i mean not moving when a cop tells you to is cause enough for him to bash your head in. it seems to me that sympathetic people who might be turned off by indiscriminate use of the word, or by kids provoking police without the consent of the rest of the demonstrators, things that might be seen as justifying escalation, should be forced to accept that all these things constitute any actual confrontation with established authority today. that is radicalization. i don't think the presence of police inflitrators changes that. that the government's plan backfired is evidence that people are capable of being mature about this.
"i'm skeptical about any attempt to distinctly identify the 'violent' minority from the peaceful majority"
ReplyDeletei still think it's premature or an exaggeration to talk of violence until they hurt someone
the reports made it sound like anti-protestors inflicted injury and serious beatings of other protestors, but it seems to be just rumors so far, no?
anticuts protestors that should say -
ReplyDelete"but this term 'violence' -- hasn't it been rendered basically incoherent at this point? "
ReplyDeletebut it won't be meaningless at trial
and its interesting that penny is determined to finger kids from "violent communities" - we know prosecutions and charges will go harder on kids of colour, and she's already laid it out, the rationale for believiong certain kids committed serious crimes
juvenile offenders but still this is reallyt something very bad for kids - that kind of trouble, a police record, and i don't think these petty bourgeois white girls quite get what they are saying when they claim to have witnessed certain "types" committing violent crimes which could send them to prison. i also believe they are making it up. i don't think laurie penny witnessed any violence or stopped to ascertain anything about the perpetrators.
but this iomage is very damaging - many young men's lives have been ruined by presumptions of their guilkt fashioned of nothing but these kinds of insinuations and oh so sympathetically understanding "explanations" peddled by the new statesman now. its like now basically progressive middle class people who form public opinion are obligedn to disbelieve kids of color pleading not guilty. they are obliged to do so if they want to feel truly lefty - to say of course they stomped that kid but its understandable! that's what this formula accomplishes.
but at least she focussed this time on the insane police brutality
yes i agree oif course with your main point - i hope i wasn't seeming to dispute that. i think actual violence is often in order and in any case only the protahonists, not i, are in positions to decide this - but even if one is going to throw i=up ones hands in the face of all this flippant use of the accusations of violence, that doesn't actually oblige one to contribute to it oneself
ReplyDeletenotice everyone is stressing that the kid who was bleeding in his brain was not violent, as if it would be justified to beat his brains out wzere he to have engaged in what is now going under that term - that is, it is justified for the police to beat bloody the brains of the tough kids who spraypaint and throw rocks at armored stormtroppers, or maybe shoot them.
there is nothing to be gained by going along with the propagandistic discourses of repression i think. clerks feel so sly, their ironies and witticisms an,d subversive rhetoric feels so powerful - rubbish. there's nothing to be gained by allowing everything but utter passivity to be termed violence seems to me
yuor reading i think of nina power in the guardian was that she was championing violence against the ridioculous liberal squeamishness, but clearly that can't be right since her view today is:
ReplyDelete"Alfie is not a violent person. He wouldn't have done anything silly. He's not the sort of person who would have been carrying weapons.
"He's very political, engaged and passionate, but he's not a violent person at all."
incredible -is this really constructive in your view? the pose just vanishes as if it were nothing but puff; this is the radical subversive shifting of the discourse of dissident action, force and violence? this is what you want to establish - there are violent types of person, you are or you aren't the type, only such people would carry weapons, their conduct would be silly and only rightly rewarded with a possibly fatal beating in the head?
the thing is finally the msm pundits, their staff radicals, sound like little blue haired ladies always reading the tabloids at the kitchen table...well i never! this iranian lady wants chocolate in space! the baby boomers are pulling up the drawbridge, now they've got their holiday flats in marbella...and its the same with this, it's not serious, just posturing, not thinking, just delivering routines.
so one minute its the beautiful violence, the next it's oh he's the sweetest boy not the one who should have had his brains bashed in
Confirmed in today's Independent: the plan is indeed, quite explicitly, to create a population of lifelong debt-slaves:
ReplyDelete------------------------------
Only a quarter of all graduates will pay off loans
The rest in debt for life as Government's own figures suggest new university fees system is unsustainable.
By Brian Brady
Independent, Sunday, 12 December 2010
Only one in four graduates will pay back the full cost of their tuition fees under the coalition's new system for financing higher education in England.
Internal government figures, seen by The Independent on Sunday, reveal that a small minority of students paying fees of up to £9,000 a year are expected ever to pay them off in full. Ministers believe most graduates will spend their whole working lives making monthly payments to cover their loans and interest – without ever being able to settle their debts.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/only-a-quarter-of-all-graduates-will-pay-off-loans-2158168.html
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And these conniving bloodsucking creeps have the audacity to complain about "violence". Well, they ain't seen nuthin' yet.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThe Mullinator's word-salad binned, because unfit for human consumption.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteAw shee-itt, I thought if I used 'cunt' she'd leave it. Sigh....after all, she sucks nothing else, and it has to be brownfemi...
ReplyDeleteleninino's writing has gotten really GREAT with the protests! She writes like a true 'sow in heat' now! How great for a Communist! Arpege Klein knows NOTHING about music, was just raised in rich Jewish family where they value 'culture'.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI had to delete that one because 'the cunt' whose head needed bashing might have been read by the tuborgist Valium-addict filth as referring to Ms. power, instead of herself. Stupid fucking hated cunt. NEVER gets laid, NEVER.
ReplyDeleteit is interesting that the romanticism of violence all but vanishes from the left pundits now that the consequences of police repression have been judged too serious to ignore. i'll take that as evidence that you are basically correct that the word can't be responsibly appropriated.
ReplyDeletebut i maintain that there is a problem of language (and maybe of 'ethics') here that goes beyond the careerist egotism of some of these editorialists (some of which i can excuse insofar as i think it important that some left-wing pundits have careers). and that's the ambivalence about property damage. this post is one of the few that's willing to actively affirm it. breaking windows and burning signs are not violent, but they're also not the same thing as 'peaceful protest' in the official, cameron-approved sense. it seems difficult to discuss the protests without splitting them into the 'violent types' (working-class, anarchist, undercover cops) and the martyrs (i.e. alfie, "not the sort of person who would be carrying violent weapons"). it does seem to me that, after every participant be accepted on equal terms, some sort of official position will need to be taken on this for purposes of self-justification. i mean it IS illegal to graffiti monuments. despite the fact that the vast majority of protesters were perfectly law-abiding.
if the term 'violence' is being used to create an absolute boundary between supporters of protests and the forces of law and order (in the name of a version of emergency sovereign power that makes everyone guilty by association), then direct opposition to it calls for a clear position beyond the law. i don't know how else to fight judgment of the paintball & stick-flinging minority.
btw, sorry i had to exit the older discussion prematurely. and i'm not trying to suggest that you're against violence in the abstract.
the official narrative, from the left in the msm (there are some really smart leftists with careers in journalism - Naomi Klein, Jeremy Scahill, for example; i don't object to leftists having careers in journalism, i object to pseudo-leftists usurping the voice of leftists)
ReplyDeletethe official narrative from the left in the UK progressive msms is the demonstrators initiated "the violence", rampaging through tory hq and causing bodily harm to one another and to police, and that what ensured is the police reaction to this violence which has been steadily escalating.
this is just untrue. the fact that it is untrue is a problem regardless of whether it would be cool to say "well good!" if it were true.
this is the zizekian tactic, as seen in the celebrations, for example, of Aristide's non(-existent incitement of ordinary folks to do battle with the army and the macoutes.
the state outguns the students; the students cannot win an armed struggle. doesn't mean that it's necessarily fatal to the project here to engage in such a struggle anyway (those willing to take those risks have to make that difficult choice) but why should reality be thrown out the window for fantasy? if one is willing to say that the students were violent when they weren't because one would wish them to have been, why not just say the bill was defeatred and the fees have not been raised? that's what everyone wants, just print that this is true - the students in their violent struggle triumphed and the government backed down. that's the most pleasing story; if the criteria for what one publishes is what's most gratifying, publish news of the student victory alongside the reports of the student violence. if bullshit matters...
I think some pretty good plans were kind of sidetracked by a combo of provocateurs and complicit left pundits. I think the strategy of the radical student leadership - occupations, direct action - has been thwarted in an effective way by the state's strategy of violence - in its own dress and travestito. But as mainly a spectacle for mainstream public this strategy of the state seems to have failed; perhaps because so many of the protestors are really schoolkids, and because the cause is not infused with any critique of the state or the social order.
another curious thing is the pundits keep insisting that it's not about the fees and cuts alone, as if that were a lickpenny lowly issue. and also the profs are insistent that it's not about their jobs, oh no they are too high minded for that - not a labour dispute, but about "higher things", basically about "culture" and art or whatever. the university is insistently identified by these spokesfolks as not a workplace, as this charmed realm, a place heretofore free of filthy mercantile concerns, where exploitation was unknown, where students come to seek spiritual elevation - its absolutely creepy and ludicrous. the students interviewed by the press however are much more frank and sane - its about the fees and the money, its about the state trying to take away from them a stake of theirs in the public equity. The punidts and profs spew contempt on this, trading in the most conservative bourgeois myths about "education", peddling a creepy aristo vision of their profession and the institutions of the state, lamenting how their holy places are being soiled by vile commerce and their sacred missions thwarted.
that is, the political positions being avowed by those with media access are conservative and mystical and icky, preoccupied with denying that this is class struggle, while the great mass of protestors apparently know it is nothing else.
"another curious thing is the pundits keep insisting that it's not about the fees and cuts alone, as if that were a lickpenny lowly issue."
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's fair, colonel, nor is it productive. They are perfectly right to insist that it's not about the fees and cuts alone. Because it isn't. It's about the entire unendurable neoliberal and plain-vanilla capitalism "vision" of what a human life is and what it's for. That's why that 15-year-old boy's speech was so impassioned and so encouraging.
No one - literally no one serious on the left whom I've read or heard - has ever even once remotely insinuated that the fees are cuts are "a lickpenny lowly issue". On the contrary.
"also the profs are insistent that it's not about their jobs, oh no they are too high minded for that - not a labour dispute, but about "higher things", basically about "culture" and art or whatever. the university is insistently identified by these spokesfolks as not a workplace, as this charmed realm, a place heretofore free of filthy mercantile concerns, where exploitation was unknown, where students come to seek spiritual elevation - its absolutely creepy and ludicrous."
ReplyDeleteWhom are you talking about, exactly? Certainly what you describe is "absolutely creepy and ludicrous", but then you made it up yourself, in the form of a parody.
What I see is people insisting - very rightly - that they are sick of seeing their workplaces either abolished overnight, or else degraded into factory farms for the middle-management and technocratic sub-elite required by that repulsive neoliberal "vision".
What I see, in short, is The Shock Doctrine at work, and people responding to it exactly as they have responded to it everywhere else in the world: with repugnance and indignation and righteous anger. Not least at losing their "lickpenny lowly" "jobs", or at seeing a vocation they struggle to defend reduced to yet another way of making even more money for even fewer capitalists.
colonel,
ReplyDeletewell, first, i don't think it's possible or fair to say every last theatrically aggressive person at the protests was a provocateur or a dupe. i think all the evidence (anecdotal, just like the evidence for the prosecution) suggests otherwise. a case could be made for the legitimately violent ones (the ones who beat up on 'fellow' protesters). this position plays right into the msm liberal narrative of a couple bad apples ruining it for everyone, wouldn't it have been better if they'd just marched where they were told and didn't provoke the police. but we've been over this, so i'll leave it at that.
second, we're in a situation where not doing exactly what a cop says while in the press of a crowd is enough to get your head bashed in. yelling angry things at cops is enough, or pissing on a stupid statue while prevented from leaving. breaking things is enough. from a legal perspective the police can always claim the students started it, all of the above is illegal. they are all things establishment groups like the NUS think are irresponsible and should have been dispensed with. where the students win is in the fight over whether police response was 'appropriate,' which the cops seem to have lost. people seem to think the illegal actions of some students are more or less justified. who says they lost a street fight?
i'll wait to see your response to your doppelgänger before saying anything about the profs and the scope of the protests.
Re: that PressTV video - The point about that gang of violent masked thugs "inexplicably attacking students" (and reporters) in the kettle is that they went far beyond being typical provocateurs. They weren't necessarily even trying to provoke any counter-violence against the police at all. They were just fucking beating people up - well behind the police lines, though still in clear sight of them.
ReplyDeleteIn other words: they were simply terrorising those protesters, plain and simple.
The message to those schoolchildren (and reporters) was clear: This is what happens when you try to protest, or try to report on it; so don't any of you ever dare get so uppity again.
- And I would appreciate it if anyone reading this thread would publicise that PreessTV report. This has had far too little publicity so far, and the police and govt should be forced to issue an official response to it.
"We are involved in a defence, not just of our jobs, but of the values which brought us into higher education, reflecting the wider significance of education to society. The Coalition’s proposals to slash funding for the arts, social sciences and humanities risk losing, not just a generation of artists (The Guardian, 15 November), but also a generation of critical and creative thinkers"
ReplyDeletethis is absurd. the UK's university is an institution of indoctrination; it does not make 'critical and creatrive thinkers' and successfully protesting the cuts and fee hikes would not be about preserving such a realm. I'm sure high tuition doesn't mean fewer critical and creative thinkers are produc ed by Yale and Duke than by Goldsmith's.
The profs confuse issues here - arguing for the uniqueness of their workplace and industry and its lofty distance from the rest of social production wxhen they ought be taking this opportunity to recognise that that is a pernicious illusion.
the kid, Barnaby is a slick speaker, but notice that what he says is absolutely vacuous. He is a new kind of media personality. What are his politics? You can't tell. He doesn't actually say anything of substance. He's poised and he delivers something with predictable rhytms and cues, he presents his allegiances as a magnet for sympathies, but he actually says nothing.
the kids i've seen interviewed on video are general much more cogent and speak much more substance. this kid's presentation is put forward because of its lack of substance and the blandness of his views; he's packaged the opposition for media consumption, drained of concreteness and of political position.
this is all expected - that the defenders of public universities would paint them as virtuous high minded institutions and paint themselves as critical thinkers whose work is somehow elevated and special, that the chosen kid spokesman would portray his own fellow protestors as middle class brats (wgho see strikes as inconveniences) awakening to civic spirit.
"We are involved in a defence, not just of our jobs, but of the values which brought us into higher education, reflecting the wider significance of education to society. The Coalition’s proposals to slash funding for the arts, social sciences and humanities risk losing, not just a generation of artists (The Guardian, 15 November), but also a generation of critical and creative thinkers"
ReplyDeleteit is after all these institutions - their humanities and social sciences departments - and their graduates who produced "neoliberalism" and its defences.The "values" of higher education in britain are reflected in the products of those institutions. not all bad but dominatly bad.
"or else degraded into factory farms for the middle-management and technocratic sub-elite required by that repulsive neoliberal "vision". "
ReplyDeletebut this is what uk universities are and the stake that working class kids have in them is concrete social capital - the fact is the class divide is very stark among the opponents of the cuts, with the professional classes sniffing at exactly what the university is for the working class and the working class fighting to preserve its stake (which may mean marketing classes and IT etc).
The profs are defending the bourgepois ideal of the university, a big joke, and the mass of protestors are defending their stake in this social production, their entitlement to participation in its (yes economic) value.
this is absurd. the UK's university is an institution of indoctrination; it does not make 'critical and creatrive thinkers' and successfully protesting the cuts and fee hikes would not be about preserving such a realm.
ReplyDelete- Which university?
- So if it's "an institution of indoctrination" per se, and if it "does not make 'critical and creatrive thinkers'" (none?) then you support the fees and cuts, right? How could you fail to do so?
2. The "values" of higher education in britain are reflected in the products of those institutions. not all bad but dominatly bad.
"Not all bad." This directly contradicts what (1). And if it's "not all bad" (which it isn't), then there is hope of making it better. But not after it's been destroyed, and not before there's been a long-overdue debate about what might make it valuable and therefore worth both preserving and changing.
2. So if it's
else degraded into factory farms for the middle-management and technocratic sub-elite required by that repulsive neoliberal "vision".
ReplyDeleteçi mean what are you saying here? who are you vilifying? most of these kids don't want to go and sit for three years listening to babble about deleuze or raptures about proust. they want to get economically professionally useful degrees so they can work in telecom or do cgi for movies and yes go into finance or retail or fashion. they are not out there demanding a purer ivory tower - that is not what's behind the ferocity of this defence. they are defending concrete assets associated with "middle class" lifestyle provision which the ruling class is stealing from them. they are not there to scorn the middle class lifestyle and demand the state fund islands of artists and "thinkers" who sniff at such petty matters.
So, now that you've informed the working-class youth of the UK that their universities are not just not worth attending, but positively damaging to their innocent young souls, why be content just to reserve tertiary-education access to the rich alone? Why not abolish such evil institutions of indoctrination altogether?
ReplyDeleteWhat's the plan? I think we should be told.
" it "does not make 'critical and creatrive thinkers'" (none?) then you support the fees and cuts, right? "
ReplyDeletei don't think critical and creative thinkers are made by universities, though some find work in them. or in narcotrafficking or fashion.
no, i don't support the cuts and fees. this university is part of the system of social production - the more equal distribution of the wealth the better.
What universities? I dunno - all. It seems the BBC is full of graduates of cambridge and york in the higher levels. the bbc shouldn't become a commercial station either. not because it's staffed full of critical thinkers.
i didn't inform them, they informed me of course
ReplyDelete'Why not abolish such evil institutions of indoctrination altogether?'
well eventually that would be the idea, right? or very much transform them.
also i know you are engaging in hyperbole, but seriously the point is not to have only the ricg get higher ed. what they want is like the namerican system, to start workers off in life deep in debt. it makes a population obedient among other benefits to the creditor class. debtors can be as critical thinkers are non debtors, but they have different concrete pressures, they have less freedom.
ReplyDeleteExcuse me, but contact between the ages of 17 and 20 with people such as (say) Stephen Clark and Philip Hobsbaum and Alasdair Gray - and with the books I found myself and found through them and others, and through my fellow students - was something I would hardly have had if I hadn't (unlike my parents) had a grant to go to university (and no fees to pay), and it was valuable me to me not because it gave me the chance to "babble about Deleuze or Proust" or about anybody else, still less because it enabled me to get "qualified" for a good fucking JOB, but precisely because it was neither a fucking JOB nor a fucking preparation for any fucking JOB, but the nearest thing to a free space I had experienced in my then very young life. And yes, I had had JOBS even beforehand. Fucking horrible they were. And many of the ones that came after were no less horrible.
ReplyDeleteCould it have been better? Yes.
What's the plan?
when the profs say "this isn't just about our jobs but about the values we chrish and are devoted to" sort of thing, they disguise the whole lesson here, which is that the reason these protests are so ferocious and broad is that interests are at stake, not "values". i am sure everyone on these protests actually thinks the genocidal attacks on iraq are greater affronts to their values than tuition fee hikes. the reason the profs are behind the protest is preciusely because itys their jobs. none of them would consider the values that brought them to education more important than the lives of the victims pof their countries imperial aggressions. i am sure. but that's not their lives, its just their values. and this is their lives, because it is their jobs.
ReplyDeletethis is why only self emancipation is possible. we could learn this from this experience, it would be the most radicalising lesson. the reason that iraqis under occupation fight that occupation and students in the uk fight the attacks on their interests.
what they want is like the namerican system, to start workers off in life deep in debt. it makes a population obedient among other benefits to the creditor class.
ReplyDeleteThat's precisely why I myself posted an Independent article here only two days ago making PRECISELY that point, and demonstrating, to boot, that their filthy neoliberal late-capitalist Shock Doctrine plot is entirely conscious and intentional.
Still, not to worry: the working class can always get jobs instead (perhaps as weavers or butlers or ladies' maids or little flower girls), unless they can't, in which case tough shit. In any case, removing their access to those evil centres of mass indoctrination is sure to better their lot.
One thing about that working class: you can't trust 'em to know what's good for 'em. (And do they think money grows on TREES? By god, how contemptibly uneducated they are.)
"but the nearest thing to a free space I had experienced in my then very young life. "
ReplyDeletei too found the resouces of my university incredibly useful and delightful.
so why should this be as it is, with exams, and competition, and degrees? qshouldn't these resouces just be there? why should others be excluded frpm the resources you found so enriching because they don't perform as well as you do on exams or don't want to use them in a regimented wya?
shouldn't the resources the university controls as it does be available more broadly for uses as the public desires?
but that's not on the table now - but for the future. meanwhile there are plenty of students who do want to use their access to the university to get qualified for middle management jobs and get mortgages and don't really care about literature and art. they too have a stake here and they are fighting for it.
" In any case, removing their access to those evil centres of mass indoctrination is sure to better their lot."
ReplyDeletewell the profs who support these protests all are celebrating institutions in which their roles have always been restricting access to these centres. the institutions being celebrated are not open to all and there are lots of rules for participation and use and the funding and grants and jobs go to the obedient.
oh listen believe me, i've seen and heard wealthy bigshot bourgeois blowhards in the theatre (for example) squealing sanctimoniously and dishonestly about how 'the world needs theatre' just because their subsidies were in danger, when the most obvious thing about their work was that they knew little about the world, understood less, and cared hardly at all about anything whatsoever except their own egos and salaries. And yes I have met similar academics, both as an undergraduate and later. Not to mention headmasters.
ReplyDeleteSo tell me how you're going to cure that bad bad disease in the universities, the theater, the opera, the schools, and indeed at the top of the union hierarches and everywhere else. What's the plan? Maybe we should abolish everything.
i think the protests here are a great thing and a really encouraging sign, i just am pointing out that they are not accurately represented in the media which is portraying them as wild eyed mystical violence in the service of abstract "values", some pundits to praise and some to condemn
ReplyDeletethat is we have a clear instance of militant class struggle here which the bourgeois media - its array of pundits covering the spectrum - is misrepresenting as some kind of petty bourgeois spiritual experience.
so why should this be as it is, with exams, and competition, and degrees? shouldn't these resouces just be there? why should others be excluded frpm the resources you found so enriching because they don't perform as well as you do on exams or don't want to use them in a regimented way?
ReplyDeletecolonel, excuse my intemperate tone hitherto, i'll try my best to moderate it. but here again you are presuming that neither i nor anyone else in these comments boxes nor - most importantly by far - ON THOSE DEMONSTRATIONS IN BRITAIN has ever bothered his or her tiny mind with such weighty questions. I can assure that you I have. They are very serious and vitally important questions, not least personally to me, and not only because i have a child of my own and several nephews and nieces, two of the latter in Britain and in their mid-teens. And practically everyone I have read or heard who is involved in those protets directly is also (and has long been) thinking very seriously about such matters.
Others, many of them very young, may in fact be thinking about (and more importantly, talking about, and much more importantly taking action about)those questions seriously for the first time, not least because of the ongoing sit-ins & demos and the free space they have opened up for real feeling and real unfearful thought.
shouldn't the resources the university controls as it does be available more broadly for uses as the public desires?
Yes. But a university that is abolished controls no resources whatsoever. And a university that agrres to admit only the rich is not making its resources more widely available. On the contrary, obviously. And that's precisely what nearly all of the people you're currently castigating are so furious about and trying very hard to prevent.
ON THOSE DEMONSTRATIONS IN BRITAIN has ever bothered his or her tiny mind with such weighty questions.
ReplyDeleteive not criticised the dmeionstrators at all - i am remarking on the pundits and the elf appointed spokesfolk; i think the real radical student leadership has been great (solomon especially) and all the "on ther street" reportage talking with the students is very enlightening. abnd a contrast to how they are portrayed by their chastisers and champions in the uk media
http://adswithoutproducts.com/2010/12/12/pennyred-thedailymail/
ReplyDelete"And I would appreciate it if anyone reading this thread would publicise that PreessTV report. "
ReplyDeleteok
the real radical student leadership has been great (solomon especially)
ReplyDeleteshe's not been that great. she has to stop evading and talking past the question of whether "violence" (i.e. occupation of and/or damage to property is ever justified. it is very clearly justified. it is also almost certainly necessary. so she should stop stuttering and prevaricating every time that inevitable question is raised on the bbc or anywhere else, as if it's some weird supernatural phenomenon she had no inkling of and absolutely no reason to expect.
and no, not all of the "violence" was caused by provocateurs, not even most of it, if any at all. those kids would almost certainly have occupied (and quite possibly trashed) Parliament had they not been stopped. and they would have been entirely justified in doing so.
'And that's precisely what nearly all of the people you're currently castigating are so furious about and trying very hard to prevent."
ReplyDeletethe people i am currently castigating are the agents of neoliberalism, those who carry out the production of these policies and their justifications, at the Guardian, the BBC, and the universities.
i am not castigating the protestors, but tbose who falsely claim to have witnessed their violence. i am not castigating the students who are contesting the ruling class' theft of their assets, but the professors who claim it's about values they also claim to serve when they implement all the reactionary policies which permit the university to serve its purpose for capital. which it does!
i.e. occupation of and/or damage to property is ever justified.
ReplyDeleteshe has been clear about this, she is not ready to equate it to the infliction of grievous bodily harm. qshe stressed police violence
bugt you are castigating her even though i am sure you agree she opposes the fees and cuts. so you don't really think that's enough to place one beyond criticism.
and no, not all of the "violence" was caused by provocateurs, not even most of it, if any at all.
ReplyDeleteokay well sincn everybody injured survived this should be very easy to verify. how many injured parties claim they were injured by demonstrators and what injuries did they sustain?
honestly i have only seen reports of named victims who claim to have been injured by police. if those claiming to have been injured by demonstrators really greatly outnumber those injured by police, this must inevitably come to light i think.
that blalaclava'd gang on PressTV were not "provocateurs" in the normal sense of the word. they were (as far as i can tell from the avilable evidence) police-protected thugs, intent only on harming and frightening the already kettled protestors, thereby deterring them from any future protest. (nor did they look like members of the black bloc, nor even like convincing imitations.)
ReplyDeletethe normal sense of the term "police provocateur" is someone who attacks the police (usually harmlessly, but in an ugly-looking way), hoping thereby to egg on the protestors to emulate them, and (whether successful or not in such egging-on) providing a ready-made pretext for violent police action in putative self-defence.
two very different things.
i hope that film will get lots of publicity.
"hat blalaclava'd gang on PressTV were not "provocateurs" in the normal sense of the word."
ReplyDeletethey were earlier, then they were just terrorising.
but you are castigating her
ReplyDeleteI am not castigating her (quite clearly not): I am criticising her, and not for no reason. (I explained the reason.)
even though i am sure you agree she opposes the fees and cuts. so you don't really think that's enough to place one beyond criticism.
Of course I don't! That's why I'm criticising her!
okay but i also have gviven reason =s for my objectuin to the pundits false attributions of violence to demonstrators and to the managerial class in the university attempting to distance their objections to the cuts in their industry from wider class struggle
ReplyDeleteand that is what they do when they claim that that their industry - producing culture commodities and training producers of same - is all benevolent and uniquely valuable "to society as a whole" (the society is not a whole, nothing can bnenefit it as a whole as it is an arranbgement of classes in conflict, whose interests conflict)
its ludicrous for the managerial class of the university to claim to produce critical thinkers, and if that was where their power and right to their living derived, they would have little claim to continuation of it
i think the mainb point you were making is "peaceful" -n meaning polite supplication - protest, such as against the iraq invasion, doesn't work. since the attack went ahead. so "violence" - meaning actually nonviolent direct action - is necessary
ReplyDeletebut it doesn't "work" either. not alone.
it has proven a remarkable convenince for the state that the liberal msm pundits launched their coverage with this "violence" story, utterly absuyrd and exaggerated but vivid and easily commanding the imagination, centering itself in the public narrative. It happened to set up some kind of acceptable condition for the amazing police repression now happening. without those early visions, quickly established, of unprovoked violent spontaneous rioting, the whole suite would not have gone this way, would it?
because these are kids, many middle class, and education professionals. it has to look as though the police had some reason to respond so brutally. in fact bthey did not, but pundits in the guardian, the bbc, laurie penny in the new statesman, provided the illusion of a mass of unruly illegal rioters from the first instant, to which the police were portrayed as only responding, at first insufficiently firmly...and so it escalated frpoùm there.
colonel,
ReplyDeleteyes the protests are about class struggle, but class struggle over education goes a lot deeper than just fees and access to middle management. just to elaborate on what your counterpart has already argued, if this were all university was about it could not even be about that. it needs to justify its indoctrinating and gatekeeping function with actual content. an actual service that includes education, not just resources lying around for people to use at will. if you don't admit that you end up with stanley fish style sophistry - the humanities and softer social sciences are 'nice' but useless, and we should defend them because we (his audience) have a material stake in them. but this leaves his followers with nothing to defend them with. the sciences are easier to justify but it's the same principle. attacking philosophers and literature faculty for whining that their "holy places are being soiled by vile commerce" is of course a legitimate criticism in cases but still a caricature if applied generally. every socially useful endeavor is in some way undermined to the extent that it's directly involved in reproducing a capitalist social order. biology is as perverted by neoliberal U as french lit. fighting expropriation also means figuring out what would be desirable in a free and just society. every protest has to think about the future of struggle or there will never be a movement "infused with any critique of the state or the social order," just individual unsuccessful demonstrations against rate hikes.
and unless i've been misled there were quite a few literature and philosophy students in that crowd, which maybe i'm assuming too much about the UK, but you certainly can't get jobs with those degrees in the US.
"every socially useful endeavor is in some way undermined to the extent that it's directly involved in reproducing a capitalist social order. "
ReplyDeletethis is the complaint of the professors, not my complaint. they are saying "we are being absorbed by commerce". i don't care about this. of course they are absorbed by commerce, the university has been the tool of capital since long before any of these people were born. it is their complaint, not mine. you can say everything is "undermined" by being part of the reproduction of the capitaliost order, its sort of meaningless, the sun and moon are undermined, its just the typical petty bourgeois moralising. the university has a function, it hasn't really changed, and the increase of fees will not really change it just adjust how it performs; the function of the university in the US is not that different from the function in the UK. The battle here is simply about access to resources - who will have it? who will get cheap credit? who will get degrees? this is wealth concentration. the people who work in your profession claim their possession fo capital is a benefit to those from whom they have expropriated it - that is, they claim their own knowledge of philosophy is a benefit to the janitorial staff whose labour prioduced it and "the society as a whole". its the foundation of the bourgeois ideology on whicxh is laid the legitimacy of the society's arrangements. certainly the university does not produce thinkers to consider this crticially but rather fanatics who feel their faith in such ideas is more proof of their superiority.
the universty is a workplace, a place of value production. it has workers, management, and a market it serves. i am amused when i see all these professors aghast that the students are beibng treated like a clientele, consumlers of a product. they are nothing else in fact. this fantasy of a community seeking enlightenment for the vbenefit of humanity should not be indulged, and its pretty laughable to hear it and then hear those who produce that fantasy praise themselves for critical thinking.
"terature and philosophy students in that crowd, which maybe i'm assuming too much about the UK, but you certainly can't get jobs with those degrees in the US."
ReplyDeletesure you can - what kind of degrees do you suppose people have at j walter thompson and google and miramax? what kinds of degrees do lawyers get? all culture industry is staffed with people who have humanioties degrees
Nick Clegg studied social anthropology at cambridge. there he was fashioned into the critical and creative thinker he is for the good of society as a whole. Jeremy Paxman was fashioned into a critical thinker at Cambridge too where he read English.
ReplyDelete(to call something a commodity is not to deny it has use value but to assume that it does.)
ReplyDeleteAlways better to shout out, imperfectly, than to be quiet, perfectly.
ReplyDeleteyes, of course the university is a tool of capital -- and just like factory workers, or telecom, or any other industry, university professors complain when the whip cracks. this is neither surprising nor a matter for knee-jerk contempt.
ReplyDeleteif the priority really is to abolish or drastically transform the university system, then a long-term matter of concern has to be what should be done with the university and its resources. and to think in those terms means going beyond the notion of the university as a warehouse full of goods ('skills'), just sitting there ready for 'use' -- aka the commodity fetishism of the modern university degree.
you can't limit your fight to higher wages and expect the wage system to abolish itself. you can't limit your fight to access to degrees and expect the university system to abolish itself. yes, access is what this particular fight is about. how many times do you want to keep having (and losing) it?
"sure you can"
sure, as long as you're more than working class - if your family can afford to support you while you work your unpaid internship and pay off student loans, or you have family connections, or you have the money for a professional degree. for anyone else it's a pretty risky choice.
thanks pink, indeed.
ReplyDeletetraxus i have lost hold of our disagreement here -
"sure, as long as you're more than working class"
ReplyDeletethere are no longer undergrad degrees that guarantee jobs to kids without connections.
" and to think in those terms means going beyond the notion of the university as a warehouse full of goods ('skills'), just sitting there ready for 'use"
ReplyDeleteits a place where you are trained and indoctrinated. what else? you can get an education in universities, with or without a degree, or you can avoid one and get a degree; the students aren't actually little products but people with some agency. unis are for networking and the acquisition of both social and cultural capital. people who graduate in the humanities and go into culture industry really acquire most of their actual skills on the job not at university.
" access is what this particular fight is about. how many times do you want to keep having (and losing) it?"
ReplyDeletei'm not really following you - what should these students be doing now do you think? they are trying to defeat a specific ruling class expropriation. what should they be doing? an increasing number enroll in things like media studies, kinda fun and interesting but also practical. do they want their unis more isolated from the private sector? they do not. they want to be taught by working professionals and they want murdoch org to send recruiters to talk to them. that's a lot of the students who don't want to get out of university tens of thousands of pounds in debt.a lot of them are all excited about capitalist enterprise, about apple and prada and virgin and hbo. they're no tall some mad acetic monks seeking enlightenment or radical anarchists. the bulk are strivers aspiring to good incomes and interesting work in prestiger culture industry etc
Re: the thugs in that PressTV video: this is from the comments box at Lenin's Tomb:
ReplyDelete"Someone Who Was There
I was at the protest, and saw this lot.
They aren't EDL, a few of them were non-white. They *were* a nasty bunch of thugs, who seemed to spend most of their time attacking other protesters. With my own eyes I saw them:
- Smash a telephone box with someone sitting on-top of it, then attack someone who was filming it. When she told them to fuck off, she was filming the police; they mockingly replied "fuck off".
- In a dispute over something which was unclear to me, bash another protester in the face with a lump of metal.
- Try and wrestle a genuine black blocers shield from her. She refused to let him, successfully staring him down. Another BB came over and asked the man (who seemed to be a leader of some kind) what the hell he was doing. About a minute of aggro resulted, with the WTF-he-was shouting "Why you acting like a big man?" in the genuine protesters face.
There was definitely a tiny but tightly knit group of the nasty buggers. Wore Christmas hats and balaclavas. Fucking odd, very worrying. I saw them move towards the police at one stage along Whitehall, but not get stuck in. I am uncertain if I'd go so far as to say they were probably police infiltrators, but they were certainly doing a good jobs of helping at the cops (whether that was their plan or not)."
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2010/12/agents-provocateurs.html#disqus_thread
- I've also posted this account under the qlipoth post entitled "Beyond Provocateurs..." above.
So. This is a very different kind and category of violence from either:
(a) standard police-provocateur violence against uniformed police;
or
(b) standard uniformed-police violence -- mounted charges, batoning, kettling, etc. --, for which (a) often serves as a pretext, though not always (because among reasons it's risky: they've often been caught doing it, as very recently in canada, for instance);
or
(c) desperate and enraged acts of self-defence by otherwise entirely peaceful protesters who use their fists and feet against police officers who are attacking them;
or
(d) genuine black bloc insurrectionary-anarchist violence (including but not restricted to counter-violence) against the police;
or
(e) window-breaking, monument-graffiti-ing, pissing on churchill's statue, crashing of "crowd-control" barriers, miscellaneous damage to inanimate objects of any kind, occupation of buildings, etc., all of which is routinely and indiscriminately described as "violence" in the media;
or
f) "invisible" or structural violence, such as that embodied in the fees-and-cuts and the numerous other ongoing shock-doctrine "reforms" to "the economy". I.e., acts of ruling-class class-warfare that are not even perceived as violence by the clerks and hacks and courtiers.
These are essential distinctions which the bbc and the police and the government have a vested interest in fudging. Spokespeople for the protesters (and the protesters themselves) should be fully prepared for that and well able to respond forcefully by insisting on those essential distinctions - above all, the root distinction between damage to property and damage to persons. Because the word "violence" in itself is already a very powerful propaganda weapon. QED.
PS No doubt even finer distinctions can be made, but it's equally important not to be lured into pointless nitpicking, especially by seasoned and crafty verbal bullies such as Jeremy Paxman & Co.
" above all, the root distinction between damage to property and damage to persons. Because the word "violence" in itself is already a very powerful propaganda weapon. QED. "
ReplyDeletei agree here but then don't get what your objection is to my objection to the guardian, new statesman, bbc and otgher reports describing spraypainting and dancing as "the violence"
i agree here but then don't get what your objection is to my objection to the guardian, new statesman, bbc and otgher reports describing spraypainting and dancing as "the violence"
ReplyDeleteNow you've lost me completely, colonel. When did I ever object to that? Never! On the contrary. It's the very distinction I've been insisting on all the time.
so then who am i wrongly chastizing?
ReplyDeletewhoM
ReplyDeletecastigating
Maybe it was another qlipoth? (It's like Whicker Island in here.)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn8Pua5rhj4
the guardian, new statesman, bbc and otgher reports describing spraypainting and dancing as "the violence"
ReplyDeleteAh now, I think this is where we do differ. Yes, the media do indeed conflate those things with violence. But it's not just "spraypainting and dancing" I'm defending. And if you go on the BBC and say "Those poor innocent kids were just spraypainting and dancing!" then you're shooting yourself, and them, in the foot. Because you'd be both telling a plain and demonstrable untruth (watch the videos) and doing much less than justice to the protesters themselves.
Maybe the distinction I'm trying to make is clearer if we look at the occupation and trashing of the Tory Party HQ at Millbank House on Nov 30. I wasn't there personally, but I want to say unambiguously that I fully support both the occupation AND the trashing. It was a thing of beauty and a joy forever. In my old age, if ever I'm feeling blue, I'll look back fondly on that and think, "Ah yes... there are indeed moments of truth and justice in the world, however brief and fleeting."
And those protesters weren't just spraypainting and dancing - that's precisely the point. They trashed the foyer completely and broke flatscreen TVs etc. upstairs. And if you watch those videos, you will see them walking happily en masse through the foyer as the windows get kicked in to a chorus of cheers, ***while not laying a finger on the three or more Millbank House employees who were staffing the reception desk.*** (nor even verbally abusing them, as far as I can tell).
What I don't defend - what I condemn and despise - is the throwing of that fire-extinguisher off the roof. Now, that is violence, and it's not just stupid and morally repugnant, it's also politically deeply counterproductive.
But I don't think the trashing of the building was politically counterproductive. On the contrary. I think it was a justified and forceful and proportionate and intelligent first response by those protestors to the new acts of class warfare currently being conducted against them.
The occupation and trashing of Tory Party HQ made it clear to the government that they were not just faced with a gaggle of harmless kiddies, and that the opposition would amount to something considerably less easy to ignore than "peaceful protest" (a pointless stroll down Oxford St., then back home for tea & further news of the cuts on telly) or the equally ignorable "spraypainting and dancing".
- There is of course more to be said about all this, but I have to dash off soon so i'll cut this post short.
when `lenin` is good, he's sometimes very very good, as here:
ReplyDeletehttp://leninology.blogspot.com/2010/12/no-confidence.html#disqus_thread
ive seen the videos and the scenes did not look a bit scary to me; with all that glass and nobody getting hurt you have to conclude everyone was actually insanely careful. the place was not set on fire; the staff in hq were not dragged out or harmed or killed; nothing was hacked up; no explosives were employed; above all there were no serious injuries and no fatalities. I agree to call that scene of trashing - which looks like azny number of joyful occasions - violen,ce in a world where daily people are dismembered and blow up, where people are tortured and tortured to death, where occupying soldiersd in helicopter gunships blow up a car full of kids, where settlers attack and beat farmers bloody, where a kid that age may be dragged to death behind a car for being gay, where another may be arresredn cuffed, raped and tortured by police for being a woman or man of color or without papers, is insultiung to the victims of all this violence. its true that damage to the lobby is a forceful act, indictating not just some overheatred "anger" but determination and objection to the situation, but that is why this is called non-violent direct ACTION and not non-violent PASSIVITY.
ReplyDeletewhile the kids were trashing stuff, carefully, the cops were manhandling them. on the video the contrast is clear between the way the demonstrators behaved toward other bodies and the way the cops behaved.
"I agree"
ReplyDeletewith p gopal that should say
"to call that scene of trashing" -
she said:
http://www.zcommunications.org/students-revolt-the-end-of-the-phony-war-by-priyamvada-gopal
Q:Aaron Porter president of the National Union of Students was unequivocal in his condemnation of the violence that occurred at Millbank. What was your view of the violence and the use of direct action in protests more generally?
PG: As I have said publicly, most of what happened at the Millbank Tower does not qualify as ‘violence’ except in the most cartoonish ways. We live in a world where war and exploitation are routine, as is the loss of life and limb both in inner-cities of the Western world and the killing fields of places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Kashmir (where violence is inflicted by the militaries of countries like Britain and the USA as well as those who claim to resist them). It is actually quite insulting and demeaning to those innocents who lose their lives and limbs in these places to describe smashed windows and minor scuffles as ‘violence.’ We have to ask why ‘collateral damage’ at such a high level—maimed children and bombed wedding parties—are normalised, on the one hand, as something that ‘can’t be helped’ in situations of conflict and on the other hand, such outrage expressed over broken windows? What sorts of hypocrisy, entitlement and double-standards are operating here in the definitions of and acceptance of violence?
we have to not forget that while the spectacle of rejection that is made by the busted windows and tossed about computers and the haze of the low tech fx is energizing, inside the lobby of milbank tower that day was one of the safest, most peaceful, most comfortable and secure places on the planet to be. the discourse of "violence" here has as one of its purposes to help us forget that and to further normalise the unimaginably violent status quo in which humanity lives and the unimaginable violence the protagonists of these opposed policies deploy every day to maintain their domination and property
ReplyDelete"
ReplyDeleteWhat I don't defend - what I condemn and despise - is the throwing of that fire-extinguisher off the roof. Now, that is violence, and it's not just stupid and morally repugnant, it's also politically deeply counterproductive. "
well yes but he looked stoned and it wasn't a nuclear warhead. he could have killed someone. but is one then wanting violence only if nobody gets hurt? my poinbt being clearly this demo was non-violent, absoltuely and militantly non-violent/ everyone was mad at the fire extinguisher thrower, even though he hit no one and even if he had he maybe could have killed one or two people. its not a helicopter with missiles. he wasn't spraying the crowd with fire from an automatic weapon. it wasn't napalm. all these are actually quotidian tools in the use of violence in our world. so i think in context - the context of the real world - you have to say outrage over the fire erxtinguisgher which hit nobody indicates deep and extreme anti-violence convictions.
obviously in this context killing a cop would be bad for the cause. but it is a little bit difficult to imagine actually achieving the window smashing demonstrators goals - expropriate the expropriators, abolish the capitalist state - without some considerable bloodshed of the ruling class and its bodyguards. so in principle the use of a fire extinguisher tossed from a height on cops has to be seen as premature not morally intolerable.
or we are not being honest about departing from these conventional positions about violent resistance to the violence of exploitation and domination.
the lenin piece is excellent, precisely because he stresses this is wealth concentration, redistribution of resources upward, not some vulgarisation of lofty culture issue.
ReplyDeletei'm not sure who you're referring to re: the faculty complaints. those i ever bother to read -- including recent stuff from the brit-blogger power-fisher circuit -- are about academic workplace conditions and department cuts when they're not directly about the protests. defenses of the humanities in say the new york times by u.s. academics are all against cutting departments and tend not to be radical, some citing the intrinsic value of culture (which i guess is what you're after here), others trying to put the humanities in a 'business-friendly' context (human capital), others insisting that the humanities do make money and are just habitually exploited. and there are labor critiques and critiques of student debt, like marc bousquet's stuff.
ReplyDeleteat any rate, it is true that many faculty try to put their complaints in the larger context of neoliberal reforms to education, and a few speculate as to how the university should work, as a free, public institution (it's mostly graduate students, like my friends at berkeley, who i've read argue this). also i've read some (like fisher) discuss the effects of neoliberal reform (i.e. overworked adjuncts) on the quality of the students' education. some of your arguments make it seem like you don't care about that part (or think students don't care about it).
anyway, i don't think it's fair to assume that the protests are merely about the cuts because the cuts aren't merely about the cuts. it's unfair to assume none of the students have been radicalized even to the minimal degree of thinking about what they're doing in the context of student radicalism in other parts of the world. but you tend to dismiss the published writings of actual students actually involved in the protest, so it's hard to argue this point with you except to say given the scant, anecdotal nature of the evidence there is about the protesters, i think it's better not to assume that their defense of their class interest is unconscious and all they individually care about is middle management and making cgi for movies.
which isn't that bad, but it's just the defense of a liberal ideal of working class mobility that mainstream liberals have abandoned. in that sense it's reactionary. if the current protesters don't broaden their struggle (though i'm sure many of them will) the organization and solidarity they've built so far is going to fizzle out; it's not like the con-dems are going to cave.
i'm not sure who you're referring to re: the faculty complaints. those i ever bother to read -- including recent stuff from the brit-blogger power-fisher circuit -- are about academic workplace conditions and department cuts when they're not directly about the protests. defenses of the humanities in say the new york times by u.s. academics are all against cutting departments and tend not to be radical, some citing the intrinsic value of culture (which i guess is what you're after here), others trying to put the humanities in a 'business-friendly' context (human capital), others insisting that the humanities do make money and are just habitually exploited. and there are labor critiques and critiques of student debt, like marc bousquet's stuff.
ReplyDeleteat any rate, it is true that many faculty try to put their complaints in the larger context of neoliberal reforms to education, and a few speculate as to how the university should work, as a free, public institution (it's mostly graduate students, like my friends at berkeley, who i've read argue this). also i've read some (like fisher) discuss the effects of neoliberal reform (i.e. overworked adjuncts) on the quality of the students' education. some of your arguments make it seem like you don't care about that part (or think students don't care about it).
anyway, i don't think it's fair to assume that the protests are merely about the cuts because the cuts aren't merely about the cuts. it's unfair to assume none of the students have been radicalized even to the minimal degree of thinking about what they're doing in the context of student radicalism in other parts of the world. but you tend to dismiss the published writings of actual students actually involved in the protest, so it's hard to argue this point with you except to say given the scant, anecdotal nature of the evidence there is about the protesters, i think it's better not to assume that their defense of their class interest is unconscious and all they individually care about is middle management and making cgi for movies.
ReplyDeletewhich isn't that bad, but it's just the defense of a liberal ideal of working class mobility that mainstream liberals have abandoned. in that sense it's reactionary. if the current protesters don't broaden their struggle (though i'm sure many of them will) the organization and solidarity they've built so far is going to fizzle out; it's not like the con-dems are going to cave.
"actually achieving the window smashing demonstrators goals"
ReplyDeleteyou don't actually know what those goals were, or if anyone even had goals. my initial interpretation is that they did it for the same reason the kid threw the fire extinguisher -- because it felt good and they knew it would get a reaction. if that's the case, it worked.
that's a good taxonomy of violence, colonel, but the next step is for leftist activists to decide which of them they consider acceptable then defend them forcefully in public. otherwise it's confusing and encourages (usually racist and classist) divisions. that is really all i'm saying about the 'violence' issue.
ReplyDeletei think you"
ReplyDelete've really misread me -
the goals of the anarchists, i should say, not "window smashers"
"the quality" of sgtudent education - i care about that i just don't accpet this naive and romantic view of the matter - that is, that better at the things graduates do is "good for the whole society" and that it's as simple as that. i bert you don't either but in this instanjce you accept suchj a pose rhetorically.
i ghaven't read fischer on this but i think their opinions are always opportunistic and incoherent. some montsh ago fisher and power declare d middlesex no longer deserving of the term university, now they are defending it as a university and something promoting the "good of the whole society."
" i think it's better not to assume that their defense of their class interest is unconscious and all they individually care about is middle management and making cgi for movies. "
i don't know what you are reading
but i didn't say defence of class interests is unconscious. the studentsd however have been protesting to protect their access to existing universities, to thje marketing and media studies and reactionary philosophy and econ departments, to all this stuff - they are defending their assets.
"also i've read some (like fisher) discuss the effects of neoliberal reform (i.e. overworked adjuncts) on the quality of the students' education."
the effects of overworked adjubncts on the adjuncts are demonstrable and terrible. how they impact "the quality" of student's education is less clear. notice traxus that this model, the supposition here, depends on exactly the vision of commodity-graduate production fisher and so many others claim to abominate. The idea that "the education"' produced in the stuidents might be marred by fatigued adjuyncts. Seems unklikely - the "quality of education" achieved by students varies enormously, and is surely not easily correllated to adjunct work conditions, as if the adjyuncts were just opening heads on an assembly line and the more they have to do a day the shoddier the work is.
jeremy paxman and terry eagleton's educations were from the same vendor.
" it's unfair to assume none of the students have been radicalized even to the minimal degree of thinking about what they're doing in the context of student radicalism in other parts of the world."
ReplyDeleteon what grounds do you accuse me of this? I specifically said one good thing is this is radicalising.
i am honestly having a hard time following your disagreement here...
you seem to have a kjind of lystical idea of class interests - so ytou are saying, the students are not defending their '"class interests" when they defend their access to degrees, but they are defending their "class inerests" when they declare "education"- that provided by exitsing institutions, not excepting weapons manufacture, IR, classical econ, corporate development, imperial administration and apology - "good for the society as a whole"
"one good thing"
ReplyDeleteabout the openly brutal and excessive repression - not the protests; everything about the protests is good.
" i think it's better not to assume that their defense of their class interest is unconscious and all they individually care about is middle management and making cgi for movies"
ReplyDeletethe students are defending access to middle management. Not because its a calling, but because it is the means of a nice lifestyle.
" but you tend to dismiss the published writings of actual students actually involved in the protest,"
no i haven't - what are you talking about?
I wrote this:
"but that's not on the table now - but for the future. meanwhile there are plenty of students who do want to use their access to the university to get qualified for middle management jobs and get mortgages and don't really care about literature and art. they too have a stake here and they are fighting for it."
You claim this is wrong. But what do you base that on? And are you saying there are no student protestors who seek middle management jobs, will be trying to get mortgages, and don't care about literature and art? Or are you saying there are some but they have no stake here? Or are you saying there are some, they have a stake, but they are not fighint for it?
What do you base your objection to these claims on?
(you are attributing such bizarre assertions to me, naturally without any quotations, I am wondering if you're being entirely honest here. I didnr'y say, fgor example, this isn't class struggle, I said it is.
ReplyDeleteCompare my remarks to your paraphrase:
Me: the political positions being avowed by those with media access are conservative and mystical and icky, preoccupied with denying that this is class struggle, while the great mass of protestors apparently know it is nothing else. ,
You: i think it's better not to ,assume that their defense of their class interest is unconscious ,and all they individually care about is middle management and making cgi for movies.
So why are you doing that? Is there some reason you would like me to be saying these stupid things you are attributing to me, in most cases the opposite of what I have written? I'm curious.
You say: "you don't actually know what those goals were, or if anyone even had goals."
ReplyDeleteand yet you assert a lot of knowledge about them which you also seem to insist I should in fact have:
" i don't think it's fair to assume that the protests are merely about the cuts because the cuts aren't merely about the cuts."
that is, you know, and so should I, that there were concerns beyond preventing the cuts. You know what they were, it is implied, though don't say.
" it's unfair to assume none of the students have been radicalized even to the minimal degree of thinking about what they're doing in the context of student radicalism in other parts of the world."
so you also know that the students are thinking about what they're going in the context of other actions. You don't say which but I assume you include California, Greece, France. Are you exempoting the students who participated in trashing stuff from your pretty broad knowledge of the goals of the makority? Or its just me who can't know what the goals of the students are?
"y given the scant, anecdotal nature of the evidence there is about the protesters, i think it's better not to assume that their defense of their class interest is unconscious" (but "you don't actually know... if anyone even had goals")
so if you can assume their goals including defending their class interests, why can't I azzume the same? Or do you mean to say you assume this for everyone except those who broke windows?
" and all they individually care about is middle management and making cgi for movies. "
this is i assume how you are interpreting this remark;
" meanwhile there are plenty of students who do want to use their access to the university to get qualified for middle management jobs and get mortgages and don't really care about literature and art. they too have a stake here and they are fighting for it."
if you really think you accurately represent the sense, and the point, of my remlark with your paraphrase, its probably pointless of me to respond. i will just finbish by saying it seems to be the fashiuon now to envision 'working class interests" as some kind of hollywood apocalypse and transformation, and to sniff at struggles for concrete gains in material lifestyle, leisure, security, political power with which to continue to increase all these until ultimately abolishing tyhe exploitative relations that exist. So you are inisting here that to see in this explosion of activism the struggle for those very things is to deny this is class struggle, since class struggle would be about something like getting more working class students studying and being spiritually enriched by the writings of carl schmitt and nietzsche.
"it's not just about the cuts" because the cuts aren't about the cuts"is the kind of locution - one is taught this at university - one gets from wendy brown and the like, as if anyone every would suggests "the cuts themselves" are the problem and not their effects on people.
Me:
ReplyDelete,,i think the protests here are a great thing and a really encouraging sign, i just am pointing out that they are not accurately represented in the media which is portraying them as wild eyed mystical violence in the service of abstract "values", some pundits to praise and some to condemn
,that is we have a clear instance of militant class struggle here , which the bourgeois media - its array of pundits covering the spectrum - is misrepresenting as some kind of petty bourgeois spiritual experience.
to me that seems really clear and unequivocal, as the other several instances of the same remark, so I really can't understand why you interpret it as you do.
" i don't think it's fair to assume that the protests are merely about the cuts because the cuts aren't merely about the cuts."
ReplyDelete" it's unfair to assume none of the students have been radicalized "
reeally who is assuming any of this? Where does this come from? I have gone over these comments now a couple times and cannot imagine what inspired these remarks. Can you explain from whence you derive evidence of these assumptions that "no students have been radicalised" and that "the protests are about the cuts alone"?
also you object to the assumption that the demonstrators had "any goals at all" beyond "feeling good" and getting attention, but at the same time that one must assume they were pursuing their class interests consciously. So can one then assume that your idea of the class interests of these (petty bourgeois and working class mainly) students is nothing but feeling good and getting attention for a day? or what?
i get this that since the uni is under attack, people think its appropriate to puff it uncritically and to portray it as the innocent and pure because only the very virtuous entites which have proven their deserts of capital's mercy have the right to survive.
ReplyDeleteso any actual honest understanding of the university and its function is thrown out for spin, because in this instant its easiest and
this is kind of understandable because everyone is braindamaged. uncritical. no critical thinking. you hate or love everything - the childishness of carl schmitt's politics is now normalised. friend and enemy. People have no capacity for seriousness and complexity, for grasping an historical reality that is not an eternal cartoon of pure good menaced by evil. All people cna manage is this simply love it or hate it - pitching and "liking" and fan declarations. Its worth trying to resist and undo this I think. You disagree. Could be generational. You suggest that when falsely accused of violence, the defendants should just "like" violence and that basically everything has to be like this, a war of fan devotions - I like violence, I like nonciolence, I like education - because argument and sense and information is just obsolete. Complexity, reality, too much for the spectators to deal with. And happily the spectacle like tv is brand new everyday, the context of no context, and no history, so today one can laud the noble mission of the university which the humanities profs carry out by organizing symposia on HBO serials, and how this is so much more indispensible to "the society as a whole" than cosmetology or statistical analysis, and tomorrow when one's job is secured one can call for the destruction of these institutions and rethinking what it means to work, to think etc.. A different channel.
I don't think this surrender to mere endless posturing bodes well; I don't think this promises successes even when there are demonstrably young people willing to go out and take batons in the head and scare the royals in their car. My opinion. I think it would be good to try to maintain the notion that analysis is possible and that reality can be grasped in its complexity - like leninino's excellent article on the effects of rolling back the access to higher ed.
a real understanding of what is happening has to avoid this idealist dream of the university as the ivory tower - the vision of the elite institution in the days before it became primarily a site of professionalisation and training, for sellers of labour, and subsidised production for military industrial complex. This nostalgia for the university of the idle gentry, the nostalgia for the haven, the realm of the mind is a nostalgia for the very exclusivity and social inequality that these policies are designed to restore. The university's "quality of education" will not sink when only the rich have access - it will probably rise by the standards those lamenting the quality now apply. what is underway here is a plot to indebt the sellers of labour at the very beginning of their working lives. Obviously also the assault on the unis as resources for dissidents is stepped up this way, but i don't know how significant that step is - the disciplining of the petty bourgeois intellectuals is not new and its not clear one could even improve the current state of things for capital, which has the appearance of dissidents and the distortion of radical intellectual product, with the unis doing a fine job of indoctrination. It would I think not be easy to argue that the existing universities have actually produced a vast population of critical thinkers who which is in hiding and signicantly more radical than the actual graduates whom we can see everyday at their jobs administering the reaction and empire.