People who enjoyed this may also enjoy the Blocked and Reported podcast's episode about Glasgow's Pink Peacock cafe, "the only queer Yiddish anarchist vegan pay-what-you-can café in the world". If I remember it right, it closed among similar drama, also specifically involving issues with the building's toilet. I have to admit to finding these things hugely entertaining. But for balance I'll point out that Housmans ha…
The death of east London's most radical bookshop
141–150 of 191 posts
Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#142People who enjoyed this may also enjoy the Blocked and Reported podcast's episode about Glasgow's Pink Peacock cafe, "the only queer Yiddish anarchist vegan pay-what-you-can café in the world". If I remember it right, it closed among similar drama, also specifically involving issues with the building's toilet. I have to admit to finding these things hugely entertaining. But for balance I'll point out that Housmans ha…
Radical left-wingers subdivide into two groups: 1. Those who intuitively understand power dynamics and endeavor towards a "don't kill, and don't be killed[0]" mentality, even if they understand that the radical change they want is generational 2. People who want to wear the boot To be clear, every organization and movement has #2. Libertarian conservatives are chock full of Trump bootlickers, neoliberals were basical…
Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
>and they hadn't been paying attention when Ed Miliband had changed the voting rules and accidentally made Labour a democratic party. Great line. I think it's fair to say that both conservatives and labour have simply been riding on Margaret Thatchers coattails for the last 3 decades. If any of them have come up with any great original ideas of their own i haven't noticed. On the subject of democracy it has been very…
Fortunately, the status quo was bravely rescued by the Guardian's non-fact-based yet effective discovery of Corbyn's antisemitism. Gotta love such center-left newspapers.
Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Performative radicalism" is a problem left and right Look at UKIP, blaming the cluster fuck of the Brittish economy on immigrants, who are weak, other and easy to blame for damage caused by making taxpayers pay for banker's misfortune and Brexit I am in New Zealand and we have the same problems, on the left and the right.
Given that UKIP don't really exist anymore as a major party may I gently contend that it may be slightly more complicated than you imagine
Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#145I know this is a tangent, but I just want to share this oddity. I am 38 years old, and I have been trying to buy Neuromancer since 1999. I have been in Santiago, Rome, London, Miami, Madrid, Bogota, live, in situ looking for the book on mainstream bookshops and I have never found a copy to buy. I know Neuromancer by heart but I have never been able to buy a copy of it. 38 Years.
Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#146> Since opening, the Scarlett Letters hadn’t made a month-by-month profit, but had been kept afloat by savings and a monthly donation of £10,000 from an anonymous “angel investor”. Sounds like it wasn't so much a business as a piece of performance art.
I understand the dynamics of book stores and see how you could carry something like this for a long time with a not-crazy amount of money but what weirds me out are the people involved in the project who get mad at the "angel investors".
Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
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That reminds me, yesterday a friend told me she believed the Trump assassination attempt was staged to make him look good: that the shooter had missed on purpose and the ear wound was fake. I mean… it’s not impossible. I just don’t think Trump is that smart, though.
Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#148People who enjoyed this may also enjoy the Blocked and Reported podcast's episode about Glasgow's Pink Peacock cafe, "the only queer Yiddish anarchist vegan pay-what-you-can café in the world". If I remember it right, it closed among similar drama, also specifically involving issues with the building's toilet. I have to admit to finding these things hugely entertaining. But for balance I'll point out that Housmans ha…
Radical left-wingers subdivide into two groups: 1. Those who intuitively understand power dynamics and endeavor towards a "don't kill, and don't be killed[0]" mentality, even if they understand that the radical change they want is generational 2. People who want to wear the boot To be clear, every organization and movement has #2. Libertarian conservatives are chock full of Trump bootlickers, neoliberals were basical…
Umberto Eco wrote a fair bit about it. it's not exclusive to left wing movements but historically has been very apparent in such groups[1].
In short, You got a group of people whose main objective is to improve the condition of their community and it's inclined to bend the purity of their message in order to achieve some realistic objective (to the point sometimes of fully betraying the original ideology altogether)
And then you got a group of people whose idea is that philosophy trascends their or anyone else life, and the point is the fight itself. As an italian song of the '70s cynically puts it (very loosely trasnlated) "The fight has to be endless, comrade, otherwise I won't be a general for the people anymore."
Truth is, you need both of them to make a movement capable of actually going somewhere, despite ironically having in itself the main cause of its own collapse.
Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also incorrect. The current crop of so-called conservatives are extremely radical.
The so-called conservatives are radical centrists at best. While today’s „far-right“ would have been considered moderate conservatives not so long ago.