MediOcs

If you want to read serious and considered analysis about the group formerly known as the Revolutionary Communist Party, have a look at a piece by Bob over here.

The RevCommParty members are band sluts who play in outfits like Libero!, London International Research Exchange, Transport Research Group and a festival line up of others as well as getting together for all stars performances at the Battle of Ideas while being the house band at Spiked (producer, Brendan O‘Neill, the hands-on head of the record company, Frank Furedi). They are the punk rockers of the left, who love to outrage the progressive dinosaurs, and their set list contains numbers like Dead Polar Bears - Who cares?;  Melt the glaciers! and Speech Free, Markets Freer.  After a while their riffs become predictable and their intellectual progression sticks at three chords but with their glossy production they get gigs all over the radio and the press.

One of their favourite themes is Piss off the Liberals (Any Way You can) and how they tackle that is best described here (scroll to August 22 - for some reason can’t do a proper link to it.)

This is the work of the Furedification Machine

1) Open a newspaper; grab the dumbest media spaz-out in it as your subject material, then put pen to paper.

2) Lay out the entire, sorry episode, making it entirely clear that it's an electorally-driven spankathon confected out of bugger all by insane right wing bigots for political purposes, with the support of dupes and cranks.

3) Concede that liberal criticisms of said spankathon are essentially correct in every major aspect.

4) Suddenly announce that the real issue is not the confected right wing spankathon, but is instead the fact that condescending Yankee liberals think they're so bloody clever.

5) Waffle at length about how out of touch with, like, working class concerns and shit the libs are by pretending that belligerent stupidity is a class issue.

6) Round it all off with a spurious declaration about how, if only those godawful libs weren't so obsessed with political correctness, they would somehow magically squash the controversy by focusing instead on some unrelated horseshit.

You can see the above method in action here.  The Tea Party, you understand, is all the liberals‘ fault. 

Liberal activists’ dismissal of the Tea Party as ‘insane’ only shows how cut-off they are from the American masses.

The masses, working class and sturdy proles are useful bricks which Spiked always keep at hand to hurl at the dismissive liberals.  I haven’t yet come across a piece about the liberal fear of and contempt for the EDL only shows how cut off they are from the English masses, but it must be out there somewhere.  The history revisionism wing of Spiked is working on very short monographs with the following sub-headings:-  “Liberal dismissal of lynch parties as “outrageous and murderous bigotry” only show how cut off they are from the Southern states masses” and going back to the nineteenth century, “Abolitionist dismissal of slavery as “vilely unjust” only shows how cut off they are from the secessionist masses.” 

So when I heard about the London Anti-Street Harassment Campaign I was waiting for Spiked to come out with an article that this was just a middle-class attack on sturdy proles.  Sure enough when I was listening to Weekend Women’s Hour a few weeks ago there was an item covering the campaign and the BBC’s obligatory dissenting voice was from Spiked's editor Brendan O’Neill (fast forward 15:41 minutes here).  Brendan O’Neill regards street harassment as a freedom of speech issue and describes guys shouting “Nice tits” as “interchange” or “banter”.  Then the sturdy prole moment came:-

BO: What’s really going on [very Spiked that, the “what’s really going on“] is that a really old style Victorian attitude is being rehabilitated because the idea that women are fragile and easily victimised particularly by working-class men really comes from the Victorian era when women would never go out. .

Women’s Hour presenter - It’s not just working class men

BO: This is the implication.  When you read these discussions, when you read the newspaper reports it is often the implication, dustbin men as we heard in the earlier report.

The answer to that of course is that 1) those are the men who work outside and so the ones you encounter in the streets:- 2) it’s only some men, not all or most; 3) men who work in the City can be total sexist bullying jerks as well but they’re tucked behind their glass walls.

BO goes on:-

Feminism used to be about liberating women and now feminism has become about policing men.  Policing men in the workplace Policing men on the streets.  Policing men’s speech.  Policing men’s thoughts and attitudes. This is actually what you’ve called for.  I think it is a great tragedy that feminism has sunk from demanding liberation and equality for women which I 100% support to demanding the closer policing and the authoritarian control of men. 

As no-one on Women's Hour pointed out a big part of feminism was getting the crime of rape to be taken more seriously and rape victims not to be sorted out into the chaste and unchaste.  Another part of feminism was getting domestic violence to be treated as a crime, not a private family matter.  In short, quite a lot of feminism has been about policing male behaviour when it is criminal. Also, the women on the programme were asking for policing against actual intimidation and for the rest thought education and campaigning were a good idea - which is not “policing thoughts and attitudes” but influencing them.

Anyway, that was the editor of Spiked in action calling for female empowerment, which, for a woman trailed by a gang of blokes in a car shouting remarks at her, could only come if she was armed with a Kalashnikov (something many women would like to have folded in their handbags at such times). Very Spiked, very predictable.  

Spiked are libertarians and lay great stress on not stifling individualism.  You could reasonably expect that this would be shown in the Spiked writers’ quirkiness and sudden, surprising opinions along with a highly idiosyncratic and distinctive expression.  When it comes to wide cultural range, wit, and richness of expression the Spiked stable should out gallop Howard Jacobson, Christopher Hitchens and H L Mencken.  They may of course be producing brilliant prose and original ideas but before any of these are published, they go through the special Spiked software MediOcs.  MediOcs, as well as filtering out any dissension from the Spiked political line, puts the style through a word blender.  Designed with advice from Tony Parsons MediOcs flattens any sparkling cascades into the bright shallowness of the overflow from an air-conditioning unit. and the result is the universal tabloidese that arrives at my in-box every Friday.

I do read Spiked, and find their freedom of speech absolutism meets my mood when the last government was passing its anti free speech laws and when some idiots are arrested for burning Korans. They are a funny lot though - a trained squad of contrarians who march in unison carrying the standard of individual self-development.

Comments

[Brendan O'Neill]

Good article. PS I'm not the Brendan O'Neill mentioned!

[Sarah AB]

Although I take your point about predictability, I thought all three posts on today's Spiked (I don't read it regularly but these pieces all caught my eye) were worth reading, in different ways.

[zmkc]

You listen to Weekend Women's Hour? To help you sleep or for actual pleasure?

[Rosie]

It's on at 4pm on a Saturday. I am usually dozing on the sofa at that point and do drop off during it. But I have to defend Women's Hour. I think it is a good magazine programme, and it does cover feminist issues.

[Rosie]

To be fair, today I did read a good piece Spiked ran about Mario Vargas Llosa winning the Nobel prize.