What Hassan is doing, in effect, is imposing the political division he would prefer to see realised – the class division. There are those with education who know what they are doing because of where they were born into in society – “the more pragmatic,” and then there are those who are emotive, driven by passion and blind faith in a charismatic leader. This is why I have described his comment as both superior and sneering. Hassan’s “philosophical” gripe is that the movement appears to have transcended his class-based assumption...
Political Correctness: Un-Biting my Tongue
Our movement is not a leftist movement. It is a national movement embracing people and ideas from the entirety of the political and social spectra of Scotland. Our failure to realise this – and become truly inclusive – will be the death of the movement and indeed our dream of independence. Whatever shape the politics of Scotland takes after independence is a matter for then. Right now we must be authentically revolutionary and mobilise the nation – the whole nation – to the ends of the revolution.
Accidental ‘Fake News’ Experiment
A shark on the road is what it is. It’s a shark on a road. This is Ockham’s Razor 101. It didn’t happen. Yet it’s easy it grasp, it tickles the imagination, it allows us to be seen to be enraged or be one of the smarty pants who myth busted it. What it is, is bubble gum for the brain. But what we are missing is that this is precisely how the media – the “real” or “mainstream” media – has operated for decades. Now these techniques of mass anaesthesia are being used – thanks to the internet and social media – by people and organisations that have more sinister messages to spread than shark memes.
Identity Politics: A Narcissistic Intellectual Disease
Identity politics – the fragile and needy positioning of the self, the subjective, and the individual experience at the heart of all public and political thinking – to quote Brendan O’Neill, has become “the only game in town,” and we all have to play it.
Making a Difference
Every social crisis is the result of the conditions that govern society remaining as they are and functioning as they were intended. This is true in the case of racially motivated police brutality because the structures of law and order – as the hard edge of the hegemon – are inherently racist.
The Bureaucratic State, Fear, and the Kafkaesque
In this reality the author self-censors and conforms freely for fear of being seen and scrutinised by the now realised Big Brother state and state-dominated society. This is a democracy that behaves itself by conforming to the will of the state – to the will of power – en masse as a result of accepting as true the “promises of later success” and with vague hopes of the benefits and vague fears of the powers of the masters.
Who is Really Pulling the Strings?
Society, according to Gramsci, is comprised of two spheres of power; that is civil society – the private domain – and political government – the public domain. Each of these is subject to the hegemony of the dominant class.
Hegemony and the Problem of Resistance
Wealth, as one of the principal sources of power, was never democratised and so remained a source of power for the wealthy as they repositioned themselves both politically and economically in their respective nations.
Random Public Journal 