My centrist mates

[DCI Harry Batt]

Christ, but that TP Quietus piece is bloody rotten, isn't it? Sorry, only just read it.

[Lang Spoon]

Caitlin Moran always annoys the fuck out of me with that inane as fuck Sunday Times column, that tweet mkes me feel all Calvinist justified in my dislike now. Fucking disgusting. The reek of Concerned Homeowner. Probably straight out with a sweeping brush after, making a righteous show of cleaning up.

[Felicity, I guess so]

It was all just mindless criminality. Not like the proper riots when they were a lass/lad.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

It was all just mindless criminality. Not like the proper riots when they were a lass/lad.

The venn diagram between people who complain about "tankies" and people who wanted the army sent in to crush civil unrest in London in 2011 has a zone of intersection that includes most mainstream columnists.

Maybe that's the syncretic nature of centrism - it takes the "complaining about tankies" from the libertarian left and also the "ruthlessly crushing dissent" from authoritarian tendencies.

[Flynnie]

Caitlin Moran being a conservative isn't that surprising really, since who wouldn't think life is a meritocracy if you turned feckless parents* and a sixth grade education** into being a millionaire?


* not very lefty of me, but stories of her childhood turn me into a reactionary.

** probably worth reminding people that Moran has less education than your granddad who went down the mines and thinks the Muslamics are taking over Britain

[wingco]

Absolute rage among my centrist mates that Palestine was on the agenda at the Labour Party conference today. They considered discussing the plight of those blockaded in Gaza, or those now formally discriminated against in Israel itself as eating into valuable time that could have been used to stop Brexit. Some quite extraordinary stuff from friends of friends. I just don't get it; how some people reserve their most heated indignation at left-wingers for raising the topic of Palestine, while considering themselves to be reasonable and humanitarian on the subject. I just don't get the mentality.

[ad hoc]

^this

[Tactical Genius]

I really need to post something on here. However I have so much to say and it would take me a long time to write a post to clearly convey my thoughts. When I have a free hour I'll contribute.

[Johnny Velvet]

Absolute rage among my centrist mates that Palestine was on the agenda at the Labour Party conference today. They considered discussing the plight of those blockaded in Gaza, or those now formally discriminated against in Israel itself as eating into valuable time that could have been used to stop Brexit. Some quite extraordinary stuff from friends of friends. I just don't get it; how some people reserve their most heated indignation at left-wingers for raising the topic of Palestine, while considering themselves to be reasonable and humanitarian on the subject. I just don't get the mentality.

The only way I can understand it is by interpreting it as an expression of some form of ethno-nationalism.

"Brexit is something that's going to affect British people - you are a British political party - therefore you must do something about it. Palestinians aren't worth worrying about because they're not British, they're a long way away and, well, Israel massacring Palestinians is just what Israel does - deal with it."

Which goes against everything that socialism represents, at least the form of socialism that I believe in. The very idea that Brexit could be reversed if it weren't for a few hours of discussions on Palestine at a party conference... well, it strains credibility.

[Snake Plissken]

AIUI, there are eight “slots” for various policy topics. Momentum have four and the unions have four. Momentum didn’t pick Brexit because the unions did so it would have been a doubling up.

[Johnny Velvet]

You just don't get centrist Brexit culture, Snake.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Also, any avoidance of Israel/Palestine would've just compounded a sense of Corbyn/Labour running away from accusations of anti-semitism, hence probably ramping up the pressure from the Labour Right and the media.

(That's a bit convoluted logic-wise, what I mean is they HAD to do this/thank fuck they did this)

[Snake Plissken]

You just don't get centrist Brexit culture, Snake.

BTW, I’m reading Authentocrats at the moment. It really is excellent.

[Lucy Waterman]

Does anyone know what time this debate is? It's hard to find clear info online (at least where I've looked).

[Nefertiti2]

Does anyone know what time this debate is? It's hard to find clear info online (at least where I've looked).

Seems to be going on now, Lucy

https://twitter.com/rachshabi/status/1044586553308176385

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The perhaps obvious point of this history, which is nonetheless lost on confessed American centrists, is that “the center” is defined only by what it’s in the center of.

This is the obvious problem with centrism. Centrism is fine if you have a politically stable system where both sides are basically variations on an agreed mean. It becomes useless say if the Right has decided that instead of keeping the status quo, but tilting it a bit towards the rich, they want to roll back every advance since the 1890's.

[EIM]

Anyone else sing this thread title to 'My Lovely Horse' in their head?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I do now.

[EIM]

Cox and Osman are unbearable. So is that LBC wanker that people post on Facebook all the time; you know, the patronising cunt who speaks down at people who support Brexit ignoring the fact we've all been spoon-fed shite since the very first day, and we're not all well-educated journalists with access to the facts and truth. And that little cunt from Ray Donovan who's part of the centrist cabal of bastards on Twitter. Let them have their own party. All dozen of the pricks can sit round in their church hall and circle jerk at how smart they all are.

I also hated Johnathan Pie before that became popular, his mask slipping from being an anti-Tory voice of the people, to being a free-speech, libertarian voice of the dickheads, but that's by the by.

[HeavyDracula]

Osman, Webb, Cox, Marsan, Rowling... they can all fuck off.

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/roisincaird/status/1046361429224411136

https://twitter.com/guardian/status/670273095098310656

[Nefertiti2]

are these what you're looking for?

https://twitter.com/polychromatose/status/1043855989403877376

https://twitter.com/polychromatose/status/1043863166298386434

https://twitter.com/polychromatose/status/1043867520984174592

Nothing more repulsive to may way of thinking than the sudden and intense wave of philosemitiism from centrists who in my experience were quite happy to make antisemitic remarks about Jews in the entertainment business or the banks and who now want to talk about the Judaeo-Christian tradition, (which when you consider it was largely Christians massacring Jews.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Oooh, I've got to say that Pie set my teeth on edge the first time I saw him. A populist is a populist. Am also V unconvinced by the dynamic underlying those James O'brien videos. The people he's talking to aren't simply suffering from limits to their available knowledge though. The thing I don't like about those videos is that the people he's talking to are particularly fucking stupid. Maybe he talks to brexiters who aren't thick as a post, but those aren't the videos that get shared. It's a self selecting thing I suppose, I mean you'd want to be pretty confused to be ringing him up in the first place, but by the time we're seeing those videos, they've been selected for "maximum Pwnage."

Then again watching the two fucking party conferences, this is pretty much how everything is in the UK at the moment. What a shitshow.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Cox and Osman are unbearable. So is that LBC wanker that people post on Facebook all the time; you know, the patronising cunt who speaks down at people who support Brexit ignoring the fact we've all been spoon-fed shite since the very first day, and we're not all well-educated journalists with access to the facts and truth. And that little cunt from Ray Donovan who's part of the centrist cabal of bastards on Twitter. Let them have their own party. All dozen of the pricks can sit round in their church hall and circle jerk at how smart they all are.

I also hated Johnathan Pie before that became popular, his mask slipping from being an anti-Tory voice of the people, to being a free-speech, libertarian voice of the dickheads, but that's by the by.

Jonathan Pie is cowritten by someone from Sp!ked Magazine - an organisation which claims that university anti sexual harassment policies are a threat to free speech.

[Snake Plissken]

I like James O'Brien.