Hipsters: Scourge or Irrelevence

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DannyL

Wild Horses
Fascinating, thank you John. I would say though one of the things I get out of reading Reich is his celebration of gentleness and emotional openess. The former is not the most evident theme in his work but it's there especially when he talks about children. I would um, question Ian Bone's understanding of Reich on this basis, Reich is the opposite of that machismo we mentioned upthread, but having said that, it's great to see him mention him. I will read his book.

He's talking about Mass Psychology of Facism and it's still relevent. I've read a couple of pieces lately about the emotional damage boarding school does and have wondered about writing a piece about The Mass Psychology of Tories or somesuch.
 
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john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
I think you're right about Reich and gentleness, Danny. Also some of the Class War rhetoric is classic "character armour" I suppose.

He is right about that quote and the failure of the broader left to connect with people though.

I can lend you the book but I think it's available quite cheap in Housmans etc.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Yeah I agree re the quote. Would be nice to see Reich applied to contemporary life in more precise terms. Maybe I should initiate that project.

I'd like to borrow that book, please. It's the sort of thing I'm only going to read the once so a borrow is preferable.
 
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C

comelately

Wild Horses
luka said:
me too. dont have a problem with a cereal cafe in brick lane at all tbh
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Neither do I particularly. They're not really doing anything that people in the food trade aren't doing - I mean even Beigel Bake charge quite a lot to slather Nutella on a 25p beigel.

I actually walked past the Camden one the other day and saw one of the grey haired twins. It's actually quite deep in the Stables so I think footfall outside weekends is quite low - the storefront does look very pretty. I'm generally of the opinion that eating out is a bit rubbish 90% of the time - London has a pretty good food culture these days and great food at good prices are certainly out there, but a lot of what is out there remains an overpriced nonsense. And I've eaten at Noma.

But I also get they kinda trolled for attention, and ended up getting some.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
comelately said:
But I also get they kinda trolled for attention, and ended up getting some.
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I'm not sure about that. Surely all this was a spin off from that C4 interview where Twin No 1 was suprised to be asked a (fucking stupid) question about his prices in relation to Tower Hamlets poverty. And as Rich said elsewhere they've become poster boys for the evils of gentrification because of that.

This is one of the things that bothers me about the Class War involvement - it seems so tabloid and kneejerk. It's responding to news agenda rather than questioning them. Class War have always had that element about 'em. I remember the "Hospitaled Copper of the Week" thing and it always struck me that coppers were working class people too, albeit CLASS TRAITORS. (I used to work with a guy who had a long term back disability due to a kicking he'd received at Broadwater Farm in the riots. I think he got pulled off his bike - was a motorcycle cop. Thaty always struck me as a bit fucked up).
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Maybe that's just showing my privelege? If I'd been the recipient of police violence or a stitch up maybe I'd have felt less charitable towards him.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
It's amusing to see anarchists protesting against hipsters. Hipsters are a consequence of the world anarchists helped to create, so the whole affair has a futile quality. I think there is a similar dynamic at work with a lot of contemporary activism. As we undergo a kind of left-wing revival, it will be interesting to see if the left can recognise and resolve these tensions.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
It's amusing to see anarchists protesting against hipsters. Hipsters are a consequence of the world anarchists helped to create, so the whole affair has a futile quality.

Good point. The word is such a floating signifier that who knows what it means, but one track of associations for me is the people who colonised Old Street and Shoreditch years ago i.e. artists looking for cheap live/work space. Artists with the class baggage attached might not be Class War's vision of anarchism but it's an interesting counter-proposition.

More on that here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/01/hipsters-food-stamps-and-the-politics-of-resentment/
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
And "futile" seems right for some of the rhetoric surrounding the event. The idea of "taking back the community" - what community? Whose? What does that even mean in London in the 21th Century, in and around a fashion/trend nexus like Brick Lane? It's weirdly simplifying - though a broader "fuck off" to insane rental costs and so forth is welcome.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
To me, a hipster is someone who expresses their identity in an ironic and playful way rather than as something which points at "higher goods" like religion, family, the nation, and so on. The hipster fits well into the current mode of consumerist capitalism, with its emphasis on individualism, self-discovery, perpetual youth and lifestyle choices, but he also lives out an anarchist ideal, which is the rejection of truths and goods that cannot be chosen and are "above" the individual.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
DannyL said:
Short and on a slightly different topic, but I thought this piece absolutely nails it:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/rose-gibbs/frieze-art-and-gentrification_b_8279760.html
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Interesting, but the first 2/3 didn't really tell me much I didn't know and the latter bit of it was a tad opaque to someone who doesn't follow art closely (or at all, if I'm honest), mentioning as it does

...many practices that observe and focus in on a neoliberal behaviour, which is then extracted and placed in a clean white space.
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Wouldn't it have been a much stronger article with a couple of examples of this, even if just left as links in the text?
 
Woebot

Woebot

Well-known member
john eden said:
But my actual politics are much more about doing the unglamorous legwork in working class communities / workplaces which requires talking to all sorts of people about more mundane stuff and then actually sticking around and trying to do something about it - an entirely different skillset.
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you're a good man jon eden.
 
Woebot

Woebot

Well-known member
DannyL said:
I've read a couple of pieces lately about the emotional damage boarding school does and have wondered about writing a piece about The Mass Psychology of Tories or somesuch.
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yes there's a lot of this about now. and certainly there is something in it.

however i think to assume that its what the "tory problem" is all about is to fall into the old trap of "hating the bullingdon boys". someone like boris for instance - he detests his own behaviour at university and has gone on the record to denounce it as adolescent hubris.

if corbyn has made any decisive shift in my mind it has been to very sensibly abandon this whole rhetoric - to try and shift the conversation. to concentrate for instance on the reality of people's lives without tax credits.

boarding schools are deeply unhealthy institutions but turn out a whole variety of different people - and many students come to different conclusions. also, and while i couldn't necessarily agree, with really loving parenting it can be possible to turn out balanced individuals.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Surely Boris Johnson is being disingenuous, as in many things he says? Whatever plays best, he'll say - he's nothing if not canny.

Agreed on Corbyn. There's nothing to gain by vague ad hominem attacks on Conservative backgrounds; the Tories will always end up winning that game, given their vast media advantage. What they're vulnerable on is the truth of how many people's lives they have damaged, and how many of those voted Tory in 2015 only to now regret it.

Which is not to say that there's not an awful lot to be said for the idea that vicious right wing ideologues (and everyone else for that matter) are often playing out early family dynamics in the way they govern.
 
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