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Strong People

Finnish writer and poet Märta Tikkanen once said: “strong people don’t bend, they break.”

How many times can you break and still be considered strong?

The strongest people often think they’re weak because they keep breaking. But who wouldn’t break when the world crashes down on you?

The strongest people are those who pick up the pieces from that crash and put themselves back together. Over and…

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Some thoughts on the way forward for the left

In the aftermath of the British general election, the liberal commentariat and the Blairites in the Labour party are currently doing their best to convince anyone who will listen that the blame for Thursday’s result lies with the Corbyn project and socialism. It’s difficult to have to listen to this narrative repeated non stop, especially on the BBC for whom Christmas has come early, but just try…

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Launching Labour Left Alliance Brighton & Hove

Last week the newly found Labour Left Alliance Brighton and Hove held its first public meeting. We had invited Chris Williamson MP to speak about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its relevance for a socialist Labour government, but had to change the venue of the meeting three times due to complaints, intimidation, and threatsmade by assorted Corbyn-critics and pro-Israel groups. Eventually we…

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Voices, Visions and ‘Persons Under the Floor’: Delusions and Hallucinations in Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry

Do you know the difference between a delusion and a hallucination? When I asked Google, the first answer I was presented with was from the website BrainBlogger, which defines delusions as ‘false or erroneous beliefs that usually involve a misinterpretation of perceptions or experiences’ and hallucinations as occurring ‘in any sensory modality (e.g., auditory, visual, olfactory, gustatory, and…

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Psychological Pain and Suicidality – Some Historical Considerations

Pain is a sensation – and a topic – that has recently attracted much attention among historians, particularly those working in the field of the history of emotions. This post interrogates perceptions of mental pain that link this feeling to suicidality, by tracing some of the historical roots of an assumption that is often taken for granted in the present.

‘What hurts more? Physical or mental…

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A few thoughts on Corbyn’s speech

Jeremy Corbyn’s speech on “terrorism” and foreign policy is a step in the right direction. But it’s a little too easy, a little too lazy, to suggest that “terrorism” in Britain is simply a response to our illegal overseas wars.

Patrick Cockburn wrote in The Independent that we need to address Britain’s support for Saudi Arabia and, by extension, for Wahhabism, as the latter is the cause of this…

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Blurred Lines? Assange, Rape Culture and Progressive Politics With Britain in the midst of an election campaign and Donald Trump on a mission to piss off anyone who might still be able to just about tolerate him, the latest turn in the case of Julian Assange, Enlightenment hero and alleged sex offender, has received comparatively lukewarm media attention.

On ‘Hard’ and ‘Soft’ Politics We have a choice between politics which foster empathy, and policies that foster greed, resentment, estrangement and alienation.

Mental Health, Capitalism and Solidarity

I came home late on Saturday after a tiring journey that involved the most dreaded words in the English language – ‘rail replacement bus service’ – and found that I’d left my Kindle in a hotel in Durham, so I had to find something in my bookcase that was suitably easy to read before bed. I decided to re-read Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation, which I first read in 2010, just before I started…

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From Self-Help to CBT: Regulating Emotion in a (Neo)Liberal World

As Nikolas Rose[1] and others have shown, our unprecedented ability to map, codify, record, and modify human biology – what Rose calls ‘life itself’ – is both directed by, and contested within, the political sphere. And if we dig a little deeper we can also start to see how we as subjects, consumers, patients, and citizens internalise the ethos of the prevailing economic system – free market…

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Socialism and the Rise of the Far Right: Challenges for the Labour Left

During the 134th Durham Miners’ Gala last Saturday, a group of people from former UKIP:er Anne Marie Waters’ party ‘For Britain’ attempted to enter the gala grounds carrying the Union Jack as well as a flag with their own party symbol. Local police prevented the group from entering the main gala areaas they did not have permission to march, and were being disruptive. The incident was filmed, and…

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Sex, Feminism, and The Fuckable Woman

The female body that is freed from the shackles of the paternal law may well prove to be yet another incarnation of that law, posing as subversive but operating in the service of that law’s self-amplification and proliferation. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1999) Surely no other type of society has ever accumulated – and in such a relatively short span of time – a similar quantity of discourses…

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#Beyonce #consumerism #feminism #heteronormativity #Mod Carousel #pop culture #sex #Victorian culture

Solidarity and the Privilege of Choice

Syndicalist union march, Gothenburg, May 1, 2015. Last year, on the occasion of International Workers Day, I wrote a blog post in defence of solidarity. One year on, the need for solidarity across identity categories and national borders seems more urgent than ever. And while I wrote most of this before the British general election last Thursday, the outcome (which can only be described as…

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#activism #charity #consumerism #David Cameron #democracy #empathy #fashion industry #feminism #International Workers Day #politics #solidarity

Introduction: On Writing and Being Wrong

In 2005 I briefly blogged about politics at some kind of social media-type website that MSN had for a while (think it might’ve been called “Live Space” – perhaps it still exists?). The endeavour was, however, shortlived, mostly because the obsessive perfectionist in me was unable to publish a post on any topic unless I was sure I’d covered all relevant angles, my argument was sound and supported…

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Western Borders and White Supremacy

In Jack London’s futuristic short story ‘The Unparalleled Invasion’, published in 1910 and set in the 1970s, the entire population of China falls victim to Western science in an act of biological warfare which is provoked by the sheer volume of the Chinese Empire’s expansion and the uninhibited and unquenchable growth of its population. London writes: There was no combating China’s amazing birth…

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If you’re asking yourself who is the lesser evil, you’re asking the wrong question.

We talk about there not being "real" democracy in the US, or here in the UK for that matter, it's a system that privileges the privileged, many people (in the US masses of people) are disenfranchised, etc. But this is what our Western liberal democracy is, it's what it's always has been, since it's foundation. It's always been a system for the privileged, for the ruling classes.

I know many of you don't agree with me, but the difference between Trump and Clinton is largely cosmetic. In terms of the impact on the lives of real people, I fear more for people in the US if Trump wins, and more for people in other parts of the world if Clinton does. But they are both ultimately wedded to the same system, they are both products of it, and they will both defend the status quo no matter what it takes, no matter how many lives it costs.

I don't agree with the suggestion that some have made that Trump illustrates a break in US politics, a rupture, something new and radical. He is merely an amplification. But that doesn't mean this election isn't the start of, or indicative of, a rupture. The current political and economic system may be reaching its pinnacle of absurdity, a sign of many that it is perhaps about to implode.

Politics isn't about politicians, we all know that, yet we often get swept up in the media frenzy. To quote one of my favourite song writers: "politics is not a fashion, it's not a cool and trendy thing, for most people it's a necessity of life". Across the globe we are increasingly seeing the resurgence of what was once one of the most effective weapons in the struggle for a fair and equal society: international solidarity. People for whom change is a necessity, it's urgent, it has to happen, because the status quo is unbearable, untenable; because the status quo means suffering, violence, death.

This competition we're all watching right now in the US, it's a fucking joke. Except it's not very funny, it is the source of immense suffering, of violence and death. But it's a farce. It's not politics. And if you're fed up, with this system, of which the US presidential election is only one of the more extreme and visible manifestations, if you're fed up, you need to ask different questions than the ones you're asking.

Forget about the US election. It's a distraction. Don't be distracted. Don't ask yourself "who is worse, Clinton or Trump?" The answer doesn't matter. Instead, ask yourself "how do we create a society that will not produce Clintons and Trumps and place them in powerful positions?"

#us elections 2016 #uselection #clinton #trump #neoliberalism #democracy

The Difference between Trump and Clinton (or I'm a Human Being, Get Me Out of This Web of Lies)

This fascination and obsession with the US presidential election is rather obscene: the outrage at Trump's "shocking" behaviour and remarks as if he is somehow an anomaly, as if our society isn’t full of Donald Trumps, full of men walking around assaulting women just because they can - at work, at home, in school, in the street, in bars and clubs, everywhere. Full of over-privileged entitled White Men who defend their privilege with racism and violence. Men who treat anyone who is not a cis-gendered White Man as a second class human. But the worst thing abut this preoccupation with Trump’s misogyny is that it distracts us from seeing what Trump and Clinton have in common (which is far more than what sets them apart), i.e, the massive meta-system of inequality that isn’t just about gender: neoliberalism. And what’s most obscene is not this outrage at Trump, it’s the illusion of choice. Here’s a little analogy to explain what I mean.

The Difference between Trump and Clinton (or I'm a Human Being, Get Me Out of This Web of Lies)

A One-Act Play by The Unpractical Scheme

*trigger warning - physical assault*

You've been arrested. Perhaps you had to "steal" some medicine or food in order to survive, or maybe you participated in a political protest, or an act of nonviolent civil disobedience, whatever. So you've been arrested and detained for an unknown number of hours or days in a small windowless room, light on 24/7, no phone calls, no lawyer, no food, etc.

Two guards come and take you away for questioning. You're mentally and physically exhausted, at the point of breaking. You're brought to an interrogation room and made to sit down across a table from two police officers. One of them, who you soon come to think of as Bad Cop, starts shouting at you, calling you a terrorist, a cockroach, a whore. We know what you've done, you will disappear into a dark hole somewhere, you'll never see your family again, they'll never know what happened to you. And we'll go after your family too, your parents will lose their jobs, and who knows, your sister might disappear one day on her way home from school. He pauses to laugh at this. Then he punches you in the face, pushes you to the ground, kicks you around a bit, sits on you and grabs your throat. He threatens to rape you if don't confess and give up the names of the others who were with you. And maybe he'll rape you anyway, just because he can.

The other officer has been sitting quietly, watching the scene play out. Until eventually he tells Bad Cop to stand down. Stop it, leave her alone. We're not savages for god's sake, we don't rape people. (Not with the cameras on anyway, he whispers under his breath) Good Cop kneels down beside you, asks if you're ok, gives you some water, helps you sit up. Apologizes for Bad Cop, says he loses his temper sometimes, but me, I just want to help you, I'm on your side, just let me help you, but I can't help you if you don't confess.

You start to warm to Good Cop, he seems like a decent guy. And he hasn't tried to rape you, so there's that.

Then he says, are you hungry, bet you haven't eaten in a while, how about we get you a sandwich and a nice cup of tea, would you like that? I'll get you some food, but if you want me to help you, you have to help me in return. All we want is your confession and the names of your associates. Help me here, I'm just an honest person doing my job. I'm just trying to protect Society.

In your exhausted state, disoriented and in pain from the assault, you start to think, hey, maybe I can trust this Good Cop, maybe he really is on my side, he seems a lot different to the other one, who's clearly just a misogynist brute. Maybe this guy really does just want to help me. Maybe it's best to just confess to whatever they want me to confess to, just so they’ll leave my family alone, just so I can get some rest, and get out of this awful room, maybe to a room with a bed and a window.

To be continued…….

Cast (in order of appearance)

You: everyone whose lives have been destroyed by the global neoliberal project

Bad Cop: Donald Trump

Good Cop: Hillary Clinton

Society: the global neoliberal project

One big happy family :) :)

#us elections 2016 #donald trump #us politics #neoliberalism #hillary clinton

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