A very British M-15
Posted on Monday 30 May, 2011
Filed Under International, The left
MARKETING consultants nowadays offer a more incisive guide to contemporary radicalism then leftist theoreticians of the more traditional variety, and the prediction seems to be that we will soon see a lot more of the youth protests now sweeping Spain and other European countries.
Gerald Celente, seemingly something of a celebrity in the US trend forecasting milieu, believes that the ‘los indignados’ phenomenon will ‘go global’ by this winter. Whether you have the man down as a genius or a neosurvivalist crank – and opinion on that score seems mixed – this is clearly not a difficult argument to mount. If anything, the timescale looks far too cautious.
I am, of course, far too old for this camping in public squares malarkey. If I do show solidarity in any such instances, it will be through booking a room in a moderately comfortable hotel with a good view of the street scene. But as a former long-term unemployed youth many years ago, my sympathy is total.
Already there have been attempts to bring M-15 to our colder climate in towns such as Brighton. If student politicos are not planning similar actions in London even as I type, they bloody well should be. But the key to success will obviously be to broaden the appeal of the movement to the sort of young people not currently involved in activism.
Clearly, that will be a challenge. The default assumption on the right will be that none of this could happen on any significant scale in the UK, where depoliticisation has been widespread since the 1980s.
That need not be a permanent state of affairs; there are obviously turning points in history where social consciousness does change, and an inspiring example set by peers in other countries is often a catalyst. But there is nothing automatic about such processes, either.
If things do take off, another obvious question is what impact this development could have on mainstream politics. M-15 is in part a protest against the policies pursued by PSOE, the local equivalent of Labour. At least in Britain the focus will be on a rightwing government.
Yet telling those involved that they should get stuck into routine social democratic party membership and work for change at the next election will persuade few. Nor will it help if the unions decide to ignore a social layer from which they can expect to draw few membership subs.
Unlike Mr Celente, I am not in the prediction business, and I have no idea how things will pan out, in the UK or elsewhere. But buena suerte to the kids in Plaza del Sol, and the best of British to anyone out to emulate their example here.
<<Go back
Comments
46 Responses to “A very British M-15”
Leave a Reply
woT iz Moany sUndial’S latest PROjECT? hee wiill be well placed to get involVed in this and RAise hiws commoditye profile sum more.
I haven’t bean keeping upP with all the high-level hunDal actiVisM recently. is he doing TwiTTEr gang rapes or somEThinG while telliNg peeplle to Vote For WIbbUrwulls but not labore or tOree — but then change mind to Civil libertarian hang and flogg em davis davis youtUbe it all and twitter sum more about stuff that cool kidz are into like wearing dodgy facial hair and hitting peeple with a rolled up newszpayper in pubic places and yoootube some more.
last i herdc hundel is orangaising a vegan crunk night to raze awareness about his gapp yah project to enoocorage brwon peeple to suppsot the toriues and everybodie elese to vote for a hung pparliment. he’#s the collest guy youlll ever kown.
yes. he is the real deal when it comes to meedjia nodal point star of the multimeedialanded gentry.
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/731/motorbikecelebchildr.jpg
“It’s time for brown people to switch to Tory”
-Sunny Hundal, 16 June 2008
on tellY Moandial
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/5305/69557454.jpg
Mr Jelly. Why not comment in English?
hashkeY ##### Moandial is trendinG on Twiotter
@3@™™±^^ ^∞∞∞¶¶™™¡≠≠≠––ººªªªª•••¶¶§§∞∞¢¢¢¢£££##@@ is trending on TwiTTEr DeckIng.
Ok that’s alright then. Glad we clearet that up.
Got me making spelling mistakes now.
wot I thINK on The mattER at HanD
the aims (whatever they friggin are because i haven’t took any fuckking interest in this latest phenomenon – based as it is, as far as i can see, around linux heads and Firefox fanatics and weirdo geek type IDioTS featured as in Nathan Barley) should be striven for in the tried and tested methods of real struggles and labor organization – an actual , materialist, historicised method, but also in the more general sense that Theory cannot, nor will it ever be, able on its own to transform for the better a world that we’re seeing day by day slipping into barbarism (and there’s too many liberals and soft gits involved). It all needs a class based perspective in other words.
and one more thing — all this “Orientation to youth and students” fuckking bullshit – that old chestnut, straight from the Gerry Healy/Tony Cliff/Tariq Ali manual on party-building. Fuck the fuck off. Move the fuck on and gerragrip.
BTW — have yoo any actual contact with YounG peeple these days (of whottevear class)? FFS — they are the thickest bunch of fuckking cretins you wooD evear have the misfortune of coming acroSS.* The space invader playing on their phone pieces of shit.
*See Mark Fisher and read his Capitalist Realism on this issue.
What is M15? I know of MI5 but this is confusing.
divvint wurrie abowt it panypoo. Ostler* will explain it all later (not). Or look it up in google news like the rest of us.
*Ostler — a misspellingg of Osler. In oreder to annoy.
Almost as good as “Andi Noooman”
Hold your horses, it’s not Ostler. (geddit?). Is it only us sad gits who are spending our Bank Holdiay on the Interweb?
Well it is cold and wet Sue.
wety and cold her
And where is The Great Escape?
I am spending a Bank Holiday Monday afternoon at home and I want to spend it watching old war movies on the BBC with no bloody adverts for shit I don’t want and can’t afford.
Wall-E?
Great film but just not the same…
‘oved Wall|e
needed more blood innit tho but
Mr Jelly should be labour dictator of the United Kingdom. That wuD sort shit out.
mr kamdinskyie
AYE == youoo make sensense.
I’ve googled M-15 and among other things I’ve discovered it could stand for;
a global cluster in the constellation of Pegasus,
a United States anti-tank mine,
a general officer’s varient of the M1911AI,
the bus route connecting Medavakkam with Mylapore in India,
an agricultural jet aircraft,
the nickname of a Finnish curling player, Markkyu Uusipaavalniemi.
Which is the one you meant?
Mr Jelly – you have surprising depths.
Next you’ll be telling us how you cried at the beginning of Up! (but that it should have had more blood in it).
Speaking of which I watched Kick Ass last night with my geeky teenage niece.
Rather entertaining if your idea of fun is an apparently 9-year old girl in a halloween superhero costume casually lopping off drug dealer’s limbs with a naginata.
Kind of like a Disney Channel re-imagining of Kill Bill.
Er have you considered it might be because it kicked off on May 15th?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Spanish_protests
And if your name is Markkyu Uusipaavalniemi you probably need a nickname.
Not in Finland. It’s very catchy there, quite like, I dunno, Brucey Forsythey.
Interesting to find out that they play curling in Finland. Now, did the Scots get it off the Finns, or did the Finns get it off the Scots? Or, did they both get it from some third party?
Kick Ass really was a great fillum Roger. have just finished woTchinG the thrid series of True BlOod on DVeeD the other week. has held up well – no Jumping of the sharK just yet (although the phrase ‘jumping the shark’ has long ago jumped the shark.
Fact: Golf was invented by the Dutch. Bagpipes are northumbrian inmvention. Shortbread was first discovered in New Zealand (made by Maories following special ancient recipe). and everyone knows about kilts and who invented them.
Don’t anyone tell Fisheidmacmoonfyace SNP bloke
ORIGINS
http://icing.org/game/history/historya.htm
Roger, of course you think jelly brain has hidden depths, he is a sensible just like you.
It would be ironic if mass protests took off here, seen as we have been bombing Libya to support mass protests (if you believe the sensibles). Though the fact Cameron’s crusaders have been training the Saudi army (that beacon of progressive politics) to put down uprisings in the Middle East should give even the sensibles pause for thought. (Yes I know it won’t!).
What we have actually seen is a lesson in damage limitation by the West (rather than the liberation the sensibles imagine)but will events overtake them? The economic data is looking favourable (to the rich that is) and who cares if some old folk are left to rot? I don’t see much prospect of mass protests here outside the student movement. So from that point of view I share the pessimism of the right. Though I would question if this is particularly right wing stance.
“Nor will it help if the unions decide to ignore a social layer from which they can expect to draw few membership subs.”
Public sector workers do constitute a sizable bulk of union power. But the ruling class, aided by their lackeys and stupid sensible apologists, have played a great game of deflection and have spent years builing a rift between public and private sector workers. This, I predict, will pay off big time as the Tories will see austerity pushed through just as the rich get ever richer. Still we do have a free press to be proud of!
Jelly Belly. The cloth piano was invented by the Jordanians. The kilt was invented by Sir Wally Scott 18th cen. Shortbread was invented by Crawfords.
Why do we have to put up with Deviation from teh Mean’s dribbles about Crusaders (does he mean the Caped variety) and mumblings about about a divided working class. He hasn’t aalysed the source of the murders in the various battlezones, he says nothing about the attaks on non-Muslims by intransigents in Muslim countries, and basically he never says anything of any sense. Just a mean-spirited anti-socialist.
[insert fucking utter toss that spills out of the tiny cavity that is head of Divvi FRom The Moon heeR]
Divvi From the Moon says some incantations to his mysterious deities. sensibles blah blah blah sensibles blah. Blah blah i know a werD sensibles blah. plucked out of arse and sprayed guff all over oslEr blErggh blah.
Sue R – “debate” or even a rational exchange of views with someone as absolutely convinced of his own rectitude as Divvi From The Mo0N is as pointless as debate with an astrologer or a palmist. Why shuD he care about anything other than his own anal leakages, when, by his own account, he’s in direct mystic contact with the several billion masses around the world: in that elevated state, why worry about inconvenient facts, or about anyone’s arguments, ad hominem or other?
Divvi From The Mo0n shud just do us all a favour and project himself – permanently – into another dimension, where the Nazis are well-meaning and misunderstood German natuionalists, Pol Pot is a kindly intellectual with an interest in farming, Slobo is a bank manager who has lots of Albanian friends, and Divvi From The Moon is not an amoral, child-molesting, liar and fantasist buffoon?
Divvi From The Moon needs to get down on his fuckked up knobbly knees and apologise in a grovelling fashion to everyone here for scrawling green inkage and self-righteous filth all over this site and then fuck off for good — and/or the Guardian offers him a regular column.
http://fatmanonakeyboard.blogspot.com/2011/06/cassandras.html
apologies in advance to Peter for sending him any crankpoTTS from here who will no doubt leave ‘deposits’ with an odour at his blergH.
Quite a block is forming against me here and what a block! Quality stuff, real quality.
Oscar, Jelly, Divvi,
Don’t you have some new torture porn you could masterbate over? I would imagine your pictures of Abu Ghraib are a bit sticky by now, your comments hint at frustration (and mental retardation). Seriously, are you posting from some maximum security facility? -do hope so! I know the other sensibles think you are perfectly normal (well those lovers of mass murder and torture – as long as it is done by ‘our’ crusaders would) but speaking as a neutral I would say you have severe problems.
fucksponge. Idiot. pissflap that is broken.
Not my ‘crusaders’, nate, I ain’t even a Christian. Just go and have a wank, I’ve heard it can be very calming.
Divvi From The Moon — a rapist. Apparently he fucks his neighbours children. and then posts video of the terrible acts on the internet. a rotten Peedofile cuernTjerb.
“apologies in advance to Peter for sending him any crankpoTTS”
Any bloody reader will do these days – I am a wanton hussy
The kilt wasn’t invented by Walter Scott. He only popularised it.
noT the first time Glesga has talked shite. another blerghh commentaytyor full of shit tosspotT
Got anything in the pipeline to add or subtract freom this Ostler?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/31/chav-vile-word-fractured-britain?INTCMP=SRCH
Dubrovna. It was a fufkin joke aboot the kilt. No one invented it. The Scots were never a fashionable lot so they just had throw overs like you put over an old coach like SueR.
glEsga is a real tosser. I wood not sell him ONE singlE commodity from my collection(s). He would not know how to look after them. noT to be trusted.
Oscars crackledspeckledstained underwear. You should not trust me or want to meet me ootside a Glesga pub on a dork night. On a serious note what do you collect!