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Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

swp.org.uk

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Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#481

Post by thesteamboat »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #386
simonh wrote: post #368

For any non-Brits, the SWP is the main left of Labour party in Britain. As a student in the 80s I remember them as an earnest, way too serious bunch of ideological zombies ranting into microphones at the Student's Union about the latest crimes against humanity perpetrated by 'Thatcher'. They're the kind of people that come up to you in the street with leaflets about some atrocity in Africa and shout "Would you murder…

You are over-stating the significance of the SWP. Maybe what you say is true of the 80s, but it isn't today. They are not the main party to the left of Labour, the greens are. The greens have 50,000 members and received 850,000 votes in the 2019 election, the SWP has a few thousand members and does not even field candidates. In my experience they have little influence on the Labour grassroots. The SWP's standing amon…

> The SWP's standing among young, idealistic socialists exploded after it emerged that ...

Not to take away from your otherwise excellent post, but your use of the word 'exploded' seems ambiguous. I take it you mean that their standing went down, i.e. their standing was reduced to rubble. However, I am much more used to seeing exploded used to describe a large increase, e.g. downloads for our latest app have exploded after reducing the price.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#482

Post by trident5000 »

frabbit wrote: post #479
pjc50 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CPGB-ML who are full on tankies It remains astonishing that a number of these people did a full 180 turn to right-libertarians and from there to Brexiteers, eventually leading to Claire Fox, apologist for the bombing of Manchester, becoming a member of the House of Lords. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Fox

Why is it surprising? A lot of Marxist functional description of the capitalist economy is coherent with events if you squint hard enough. If that is accepted then moral choices and personal preferences overlaid ontop lead to several different paths. Accelerationism is one.

I find it hilarious that these Marxist dimwits think they are coming up with some new idea. Its a fossil of an idea with a long track record of top-down oppression, corruption, and progression stagnation where nothing gets built in perpetuity. You can try to make the system more fair without going full neanderthal. The Marxist movement gets a lot of spoiled upper middle class kids who want the govt to take care of them like mommy and daddy did because they realize its going to take real work and slim odds to get the same standard of living they grew up with. And thats just called life. By definition not everyone can be above the average life quality. A great way to kill the standard you have and for everyone is to kill production and attack the capital markets.

At the end of the day life quality is a logistical issue above all else. Jeff Bezos is not going around the country buying up all the single family homes and hoarding all the doctors in the country for his knee injury. If you want better medicine you need to invent more efficient technology through the capital markets to serve people. If you want more homes you need to invent better home building techniques to cater to the masses. Thats how increased efficiency works and its why our lives generally get better with services and quality of live each decade. Thats not to say there are not tweaks and governing to be done to the capital markets (the govt is the conductor), but this is the general aspiration and trend.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#483

Post by dpwm »

frabbit wrote: post #479
pjc50 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CPGB-ML who are full on tankies It remains astonishing that a number of these people did a full 180 turn to right-libertarians and from there to Brexiteers, eventually leading to Claire Fox, apologist for the bombing of Manchester, becoming a member of the House of Lords. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Fox

Why is it surprising? A lot of Marxist functional description of the capitalist economy is coherent with events if you squint hard enough. If that is accepted then moral choices and personal preferences overlaid ontop lead to several different paths. Accelerationism is one.

You don't really have to squint too hard to see crises of overproduction.

I very much doubt that Claire Fox is an accelerationist.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#484

Post by concordDance »

Taniwha wrote: post #425
cm2187 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For tax fraud and falling into perjury traps. Not for colluding with Russia.

no one "falls into a perjury trap" - what one does is commit perjury - lie under oath, there's no trap there, all you have to do is tell the truth when you should and you don't get indicted .... in the US you even have the option of pleading the 5th

IIRC the details of that perjury make it fairly clear that it's the kind of perjury a reasonable normal person could end up doing incidentally. But I last read up on it a couple of years ago so check it out yourself.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#485

Post by CalChris »

cm2187 wrote: post #389
simonh wrote: post #368

For any non-Brits, the SWP is the main left of Labour party in Britain. As a student in the 80s I remember them as an earnest, way too serious bunch of ideological zombies ranting into microphones at the Student's Union about the latest crimes against humanity perpetrated by 'Thatcher'. They're the kind of people that come up to you in the street with leaflets about some atrocity in Africa and shout "Would you murder…

Antifa isn’t exactly a peaceful movement, I am not sure it is the best comparison.

Antifa does exactly what it says on the tin.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#486

Post by specialist »

Adjacently:

An org's online presence should be claimed, verified by the host. Any actions taken wrt that presence should cc that org. With options for appeal and so forth clearly spelled out.

This Kafka-scape of automated curation wouldn't be so fubar if authenticated speech via verified identities and claimed accounts were front loaded to begin with.

I understand automated methods for combatting bots and trolls.

I don't understand not having procedures and infrastructure for authentic speech.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#487

Post by GrantSolar »

_Understated_ wrote: post #463
simonh wrote: post #368

For any non-Brits, the SWP is the main left of Labour party in Britain. As a student in the 80s I remember them as an earnest, way too serious bunch of ideological zombies ranting into microphones at the Student's Union about the latest crimes against humanity perpetrated by 'Thatcher'. They're the kind of people that come up to you in the street with leaflets about some atrocity in Africa and shout "Would you murder…

If I had to guess, they were banned because of this: "The SWP Facebook page regularly posts in support of Palestine, Black Lives Matter and against Boris Johnson’s Covid policies" In particular, the COVID part is where I'd put my money.

What makes you say that? People against Boris's policies are not to be conflated with anti-maskers. We are currently the worst performing nation per capita.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#488

Post by belorn »

simonh wrote: post #368

For any non-Brits, the SWP is the main left of Labour party in Britain. As a student in the 80s I remember them as an earnest, way too serious bunch of ideological zombies ranting into microphones at the Student's Union about the latest crimes against humanity perpetrated by 'Thatcher'. They're the kind of people that come up to you in the street with leaflets about some atrocity in Africa and shout "Would you murder…

There exist an important finding in social science when it comes to conflicts between groups. The Out-group homogeneity effect.

When people of an in-group (and those who feel a slight relation to them) describe themselves, it one of complexity. In-groups are always a group of individuals with individual graces and faults. Out-groups however is not complex, but perceived as being more alike with their out-group stereotypes being the defining nature of them.

The result of this is that people tend to marginalize extremist views of the in-group, while at the same time defining the out-group by their extremists. This makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to have discussions that relies on the distinction between a group having a small number individual impressionable young people that occasionally happen to do an obvious bad thing, and a other group where every member is evil and its obvious an evil group that need to be stopped at the core.

On a more local note regarding the far left here in Sweden during the 90's and early 00, a major distinction between them and the social left were that they believed in a violent/forceful revolution against capitalism (take from the rich, give to the people). As a party they have since tried to put some distance to that view in order to be more respectable, but 20 years is not that long ago. The far right and far left is often debated as both being parties with extremists in them and with troubling pasts for which they try to distance themselves.

Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain

#489

Post by monopoledance »

senorjazz wrote: post #475
simonh wrote: post #368

For any non-Brits, the SWP is the main left of Labour party in Britain. As a student in the 80s I remember them as an earnest, way too serious bunch of ideological zombies ranting into microphones at the Student's Union about the latest crimes against humanity perpetrated by 'Thatcher'. They're the kind of people that come up to you in the street with leaflets about some atrocity in Africa and shout "Would you murder…

> They're sort of our equivalent of Antifa in that they are a significant organising presence in lefty street protests Are you trying to give a wrong opinion of SWP. No "ultra violent, red army faction types" are joining the SWP. Also your use of "ultra violent" / "red army" surely is used to incorrectly ascertain that there are parts of the left that are much more violent than they actually are.

I think the "red army" is referring to RAF (Red Army Faction, "Baader-Meinhof complex" in Germany), Red Brigades (Italy) and so on, in 70s, 80s European history. Actual leftist terrorist organisations, unlike the "antifa" (lol, America...).

Edit: I think OP meant, it's not unlikely, if there was a real left terrorist organization, they would align with SWP, but the SWP is not the terrorist organisation. Same as with Antifa, for that matter. That's what people mean when they say Antifa is an idea... seriously, it hurts it's necessary to even say this.

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