Archive for the ‘politics’ Category
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
1. Charles I – who was beheaded on 30 January 1649. The execution was at Whitehall in London. At the very least, the current British royal family need to be completely stripped of their titles and wealth – although there are those who think it would also be a good idea to behead, hang, or shoot them!
2. Cleopatra VII Philopator is by tradition said to have committed suicide on 12 August 30 BC by inducing a snake to give her a poisonous bite. She was following in the footsteps of her bigamous husband Mark Anthony, who topped himself after losing the Battle of Actium on 2 September 31 BC. Regardless of quibbles over the exact details of Cleopatra’s death, it marked the ultimate demise of the Pharaoh royal parasites in ancient Egypt.
3. Louis XVI – beheaded by guillotine at Place de la Révolution in Paris on 21 January 1793. This was an event that dealt a body blow to royal parasites in France.
4. Diana, Princess of Wales – who was fatally injured in a car crash in the Ponte de l’Alma road tunnel in Paris on 31 August 1997. It is unfortunate that her ex Prince Charles – current heir to the British throne – didn’t die with her!
5. Frederick, Prince of Wales – who died from a burst abscess in the lung on 20 March 1751 at Leicester House in London – nearly a decade before his scumbag father George II. There are, of course, millions around the world hoping that the arch-reactionary slimeball Prince Charles will follow in Frederick’s footsteps and drop down dead right now!
6. Nicholas II of Russia was condemned to death and then shot by Yakov Yurovsky shortly after 2.00 am on the morning of 17 July 1918. There is little in Bolshevism to be praised but getting rid of the Russian royal parasites was definitely one of its better ideas – much of the Russian royal family was shot at the same time as Nicholas II.
7. King Dipendra of Nepal – who shot himself with an AK 47 after going postal and murdering nine of his family of parasites at a house in the grounds of the Narayanhity Royal Palace on 1 June 2001. Among those Dipendra shot to death were his mother and father – King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya. Dipendra, who after shooting himself outlived his parents for three days, only got to be ruler while in a coma – making for a delightfully short reign!
8. Princess Grace of Monaco – who died in hospital on 14 September 1982, the day after suffering a stroke that caused her to lose control of her car and suffer serious injuries after it plunged down the side of a mountain.
9. George I of Greece – shot in the back by the anarchist assassin Alexandros Schinas at the White Tower in the city of Thessaloniki on 18 March 1913. Like Bolshevism, anarchism doesn’t have much to offer the working class, but Schinas’s practical opposition to monarchy and aristocracy is something with which most people will have some sympathy.
10. Queen Elizabeth II. Okay so she ain’t dead yet but there are millions of us in the UK looking forward to seeing the back of this particular royal parasite! But don’t forget kids, we still need to strip the entire British royal family of their titles and wealth!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Alexandros Schinas, assassination, Battle of Actium, beheading, bizarre deaths, British royal family, Charles I, Cleopatra, funny deaths, George I, George II, going postal, House of Windsor, King Birendra, King Dipendra, Leicester House, London, Louis XVI, Mark Anthony, Narayanhity Royal Palace, Nicholas II, Paris, Pharaoh, Place de la Révolution, Ponte de l'Alma, Prince Charles, Prince Frederick, Princess Diana, Princess Grace, Queen Aishwarya, Queen Elizabeth II, royalty, suicide, Thessaloniki, White Tower of Thessaloniki, Whitehall, Yakov Yurovsky
Posted in humour, obituary, politics | 22 Comments »
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
The Corporation of London and their representatives in the Church of England look all set to evict the Occupy London encampment sometime this week. For anyone approaching the Occupy London protest from the east along St Paul’s Churchyard, the sight of the tents with a branch of camping equipment shop Blacks also in clear view is probably enough to raise a chuckle. The manager of Blacks couldn’t have arranged a better advert for the store’s winter sale. Less hilarious is the effect of The Church of England on the protest. When I was down there on Saturday, some religious nutcase was banging on and on about how she’d become a more effective activist after finding Jesus five years earlier. Rather than concentrating on real issues, Occupy London has at times been diverted into debates that are about as relevant to the working class as theological hair-splitting about ‘how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’
That said, these arguments are not simply turning the focus away from how the City of London operates, they’re also causing splits in the utterly repugnant Church of England. First Dr Giles Fraser resigned from his post at St Paul’s Cathedral (canon chancellor), and he’s now been followed by the Rt Rev Graeme Knowles (the dean). Despite their insane religious delusions, these characters are apparently more sympathetic to anti-capitalist protests than the likes of the power mad and equally bonkers Richard Chartres (Bishop of London). Chartres may claim he is sympathetic to Occupy London’s views but he remains hard-line about removing their camp from outside St Paul’s precisely because his interests are completely aligned to those of both the City of London and the parasitic House of Windsor. Understanding that Chartres’ manoeuvres are necessary if he is to retain the support of his influential City backers goes a long way towards explaining the actions of this establishment toady. The City operates through unofficial ambassadors like Chartres, who it seeks to place in positions of power.
Richard Chartres (born 11 July 1947) has been Bishop of London since 1995. Before this appointment he was Bishop of Stepney (1992–1995) and Gresham Professor of Divinity (1987–1992). Gresham College is ‘an institution of higher learning’ located at Barnard’s Inn Hall off Holborn in the City of London. It was founded in 1597 under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham (the founder of the stock exchange). Gresham professorships are handed out to City of London insiders. During a lecture Chartres gave on the History of Gresham College at Barnard’s Inn Hall, he described the institution as a ‘magical island like Atlantis’ which disappeared and re-emerged from the ocean. This was a reference both to the Invisible College of the Rosicrucians and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. In a non-Gresham lecture in east London a few years later, Chartres let slip he wanted to build a church in the pyramid at the top of Canary Wharf. Chartres may or may not be a genuine ‘Christian’, but he’s clearly influenced by barking mad occult ideas, and will invoke them to please his influential City of London friends.
Chartres was born in Ware, Hertfordshire and educated at Hertford Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge (where he read history). After that he went on to study at Cuddesdon and Lincoln theological colleges. Chartres was ordained as a priest in 1973. He was chaplain to Robert Runcie, then Bishop of St Albans and later Archbishop of Canterbury. Subsequently he’s sucked up to the British royal family, and his faux ‘green’ church campaigns seem designed to make him attractive to ultra-reactionary tossers like Prince Charles. In 1997 he was one of the executors of the will of Princess Diana and he also delivered the address at her memorial service in 2007. He confirmed Prince William. On 12 September 2009 he presided at the marriage of Lord Frederick Windsor to actress Sophie Winkleman at the Chapel Royal in Hampton Court Palace. More recently he preached the sermon at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
Here’s how Wikipedia describes Chartres in relation to Occupy London: “In October 2011, the Occupy London group camped in front of St Paul’s Cathedral in order to protest at the use of taxpayers’ money to reward bankers who were perceived to have initiated the financial crises leading to draconian cuts in public spending which had affected the poorest hardest. Canon Giles Fraser requested the police to withdraw and condoned the actions of the demonstrators. This was in stark contrast to Chartres who wanted the protesters to leave – he offered to mediate between the demonstrators and a panel of representatives from the financial sector but only if the protesters disbanded – he also stated he was considering asking the police to evict the demonstrators – this prompted Canon Fraser to resign on the grounds that he could not condone violence against peaceful demonstrators.”
From the above it should be obvious that Richard Chartres is a greedy and ambitious toe-rag who is acting in the interests of the City of London and the British establishment. His offer to mediate between protesters and the financial sector is a sick joke. Anti-capitalists shouldn’t trust Chartres any further than they can throw him. He’s a City of London puppet. It’s high time some real pressure was put on wankers like Chartres who act as secret ambassadors for The City. If we really want to Occupy London then we need to bash this bishop!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Archbishop of Canterbury, bash the bishop, Bishop of London, Bishop of Stepney, Blacks, Canary Wharf, Chapel Royal, City of London, Corporation of London, Francis Bacon, Giles Fraser, Graeme Knowles, green issues, Gresham College, Gresham Professor of Divinity, Hampton Court, Hertfordshire, House of Windsor, Invisible College, Kate Middleton, Lord Frederick Windsor, New Atlantis, Occupy London, Prince Charles, Prince William, Princess Diana, Richard Chartres, Robert Runcie, Rosicrucians, Sir Thomas Gresham, Sophie Winkleman, St Paul's Cathedral, stock exchange, Ware
Posted in activism, politics | 25 Comments »
Friday, September 30th, 2011
The racist murder of Antiguan carpenter Kelso Cochrane on 17 May 1959 is the centre-point of this book, but it spins off in a lot of other directions. No one was ever convicted for the butchery but Olden makes a strong circumstantial case that a painter and decorator called Pat Digby wielded the knife that killed Cochrane. Digby denied that he was the culprit, and had he not died from a heart attack four years ago, then stringent British libel laws would have forced Olden’s book to take a very different shape to the one it has now. There is no smoking gun in this case, although this book suggests Digby’s bloody knife may still lie hidden under some Notting Hill floorboards. Olden’s text is in part a narrative of his attempts to identify the killer, and the naming of Digby represents its climax.
Murder In Notting Hill is much more than simply a true crime book, it is also a social history. There are uplifting paragraphs about the struggles of those who in the 1950s were newly arrived in London from the West Indies, and far less edifying passages about racist teenage gangs and organised fascist activists. Over the years it has been claimed by some commentators that either Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement or Colin Jordan’s White Defence League had a hand in Cochrane’s murder. Olden is dismissive of this idea and if his identification of Digby as the killer is correct, then he is almost certainly right on this score. The lives of all Notting Hill residents are portrayed as pretty grim in this paperback, so Olden hits on the fascist ideologues and a toff copper – Superintendent Ian Forbes-Leith (“The Governor in the Bowler”) – as figures from whom he can wring a little humour. Describing a fascist meeting in defence of a gang of teddy boys imprisoned for a series of extremely vicious racist attacks the year before Cochrane’s murder, Olden writes:
At a meeting at Oxford Gardens School, just off Ladbroke Grove, the campaign to free the nine young men was growing. A tall thin Welshman – rarely seen out of the same jacket and trousers – held aloft a newspaper with their grinning portraits. “Thugs. That’s what they were called,” he said. This was outrageous. “These,” he shouted, “are some of the finest faces you could wish to see in Britain.” He vowed they “must not be forgotten as they lie in prison during the best years of their lives.”… The speaker was Jeffrey Hamm. He was 43-years old, had lived in Notting Hill for the past six years and was Secretary of a far-right political party called the Union Movement.
There are laughs to be had from filthy fascists who always dress in the same clothes, and such amusements very effectively lighten the mood and prevent the reader getting bogged down in Olden’s serious and at times very depressing subject matter. Occasionally the jokes are recycled, such as the chapter heading “One Foot In The Grove”, which will be familiar to those who have read Tom Vague on Notting Hill (and I wouldn’t be surprised if Vague had filched this one-liner from an earlier source). For those that aren’t acquainted with west London and/or English idioms, The Grove refers to the area around Ladbroke Grove in Notting Hill, and Olden’s chapter heading is a play on the hackneyed phrase ‘one foot in the grave’. That said, ultimately Murder In Notting Hill makes for compelling reading because Olden deftly and very confidently walks us through his own investigation into Cochrane’s murder – as well as the failed police enquiry. The book works on one level as a whodunit, although obviously there is far more to it than that.
Murder In Notting Hill explores the long lasting detrimental effects of Cochrane’s murder on both the victim’s family and the killer (assuming, of course, Digby was the thug responsible for this repugnant act). It is also a timely reminder that neither institutional racism, police corruption, nor the old bill being in the pockets of the media, are anything new in London. Like the majority of historical works I read, Murder In Notting Hill relies a little too heavily on an established history to provide a backdrop to the main story. Olden writes well about the working class (both black and white) of Notting Hill but omits to deal with the hipsters who by the late-fifties were also an established part of the area. For example, Terry Taylor and his circle go unmentioned, despite the fact that Taylor provided the inspiration for the first person narrator of Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes.
Moving on, the dry as dust far-Right splinter groups Olden disinters are old news to anyone who is au fait with the history of post-war British fascism. Less well documented – and completely passed over by Olden – is the Spartacan movement, which was organised by a group of right-wingers associated with the angry young man literary scene; they lived together at 25 Chepstow Road in Notting Hill from the mid to the late-fifties. The Spartacans appear to have had close links to Oswald Mosley and his Union Movement. They are viciously satirised by Bernard Kops in his 1958 novel Awake For Mourning. Obviously only so much material can be included in any one book, but I was nonetheless disappointed that in sketching the backdrop to his story, Olden – like the overwhelming majority of writers working today – stuck to such a well-beaten historical track.
No author or book is perfect, and despite some slight and inevitable imperfections, Murder In Notting Hill is an impressive piece of historical detective work. That said, one of Olden’s footnotes really pissed me off:
Among the speakers at Kelso’s graveside was the Notting Hill hustler Michael de Freitas, who later re-styled himself into the revolutionary Michael X, aka Michael Abdul Malik, Britain’s supposed answer to Malcolm X. De Freitas finished up more like Charles Manson, his life spiralling into megalomania and murder in his native Trinidad, where he went to the gallows in 1975.
For all his faults – and clearly de Freitas had many – to compare him to Charles Manson is deeply obnoxious. De Freitas may have engaged in criminal behaviour but he was not a deranged maniac. Anyone who looks dispassionately at the de Freitas trial will see that it was a miscarriage of justice and he should not have been hanged on the basis of the ‘evidence’ presented in court. De Freitas may or may not have been guilty as charged, but he was not a complete nutjob like Manson.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1950s, Absolute Beginners, angry young man, Awake For Mourning, bent cops, Bernard Kops, Charles Manson, Chepstow Road, Colin Jordan, Colin MacInnes, Ian Forbes-Leith, institutional racism, Jeffrey Hamm, Kelso Cochrane, Ladbroke Grove, Mark Olden, Michael Abdul Malik, Michael de Freitas, Michael X, Murder In Notting Hill, Notting Hill, Oswald Mosley, Pat Digby, Pentonville Prison, police corruption, Spartacans, Terry Taylor, The Grove, Tom Vague, Union Movement, White Defence League, Zero Books
Posted in books, politics, True crime | 20 Comments »
Friday, December 11th, 2009
John Latham and the Artists’ Placement Group came up in conversation the other day. While I liked much of what Latham did, I always found the theoretical justifications for his work extremely dubious. Thus when through Latham I came into direct contact with the Artists’ Placement Group (APG) in the 1980s, I found it utterly ridiculous. Now that the APG is no longer a going concern and The Tate has purchased its archives, it is unfortunately easier for for those coming across it for the first time to take it rather more seriously than was the case with old hands who encountered it as a live entity.
I have heard rumours of a Leninist critique of the APG in an issue of Artery Magazine (edited by Jeff Sawtell and published from 1971 and 1984), but to date I have been unable to trace this. I wrote my own brief appraisal of the APG a year or two after first encountering the beast ‘up close and personal’, and this was published in Smile Magazine No. 10 (London 1987). It seems worthwhile reposting that here to remind people of the reactions the APG elicited when it was a going concern. Strangely (or perhaps not), in my encounters with Stuart Brisley and Ian Breakwell from the 1980s onwards, neither ever mentioned the APG to me.
When I first met Latham and his wife Barbara Steveni (who struck me as the real power and key activist in the APG), both spoke to me about the importance of the APG but neither seemed to understand my criticisms of it for retrenching the role of the artist as a specialist non-specialist (to resort to caricature, it was as if Latham and Steveni ‘had never encountered left-communism in all its originality, nor understood the nature of its break with the Third International…’). Anyway, here’s what I wrote way back when:
ARTISTS’ PLACEMENT AND THE END OF ART
“Artistss’ Placement is intended to serve Art rather than provide a service for artists.” Barbara Steveni ‘Will Art Influence History?’ (in AND Journal of Art No. 9).
In the same article from which the preceding quote is extracted, Steveni elaborates that the ‘APG (Artists’ Placement Group) was never created as an agency to help artists find employment, or to create new forms of support for artists. APG is a means of generating change through the media of art rather than through verbal proceedings only, in the context of organisation’. Thus the APG seeks to propagate the concept of the placement of artists in government and industry. The ‘placed artist’ is to play the role of ‘incidental person’ and carry an open brief.
Such aims are at best reformist. For those who do not adhere to a ‘revolutionary perspective’ the idea of placing ‘incidental persons’ in government and industry might appear ‘radical’ if the concept were removed from the conservative framework within which the APG attempt to contain it.
However, close examination of the APG’s theory shows that in terms of its actual practice, the propagation of the concept of artists as ‘incidental persons’, is only a second order activity. Its first priority is clearly the maintenance of a belief in ‘Art’, and the role of the artist, in a society where such mystifications are increasingly viewed as irrelevant not only by the general population, but also by those whose system ‘Art’ once helped to maintain.
In effect, the APG is calling for the utilisation of specialists (artists) in a non-specialist role (the ‘incidental person’). Thus the APG hope to create for themselves (artists) a preserve as professional non-specialists, while excluding ordinary workers and the unemployed from fulfilling any ‘incidental’ function.
The APG are a professional self-interest group. Like all artists they stand in opposition to the aims and aspirations of the impossible class.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1980s, AND Jouranl of Art, APG, Artery Magazine, Artists Placement Group, Barbara Steveni, Ian Breakwell, incidental person, Jeff Sawtell, Jeffrey Sawtell, John Latham, Leninism, Smile Magazine, Stewart Home, Stuart Brisley, Tate, Third International
Posted in art criticism, politics | 21 Comments »
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
One of the things that really depresses me about post-graduate fine art education in London is that the Nazi thug Martin Heidegger has become central to the teaching of many theory modules on practice-led courses. Heidegger wasn’t your ordinary Nazi party member, he not only wanted to introduce the Fuhrer-principle into the German university system, he actually attempted to take on the position of spiritual leader of National Socialism – which had he been successful, would have placed him above Adolf Hitler (the political leader) in the Nazi hierarchy! Heidegger’s so called ‘philosophy’ is clearly rooted in the same rotten shit as Nazi politics, and as a consequence it is so reliant on etymology that aside from the fact that it is a puerile waste of time, it is probably also completely pointless for those who don’t speak German (the overwhelming majority of fine art post-graduates in London) to read very much by him. On top of which, this self-styled ‘philosopher’ and hardcore Nazi moron believed it was only possible to think deeply in German anyway – so he wouldn’t have much cared for being read in translation.
In a piece entitled The Evil Of Banality: Troubling new revelations about Arendt and Heidegger, published at the end of last month, Ron Rosenbaum observed: “In general, I’m in favor of separating the man (or woman) from the work, but it was Heidegger himself, his defenders don’t seem to recognize, who claimed Nazism for his own. He didn’t make the separation between man and philosophy that they conveniently claim to excuse his personal racism.” A new round of arguments about Heidegger’s status in the Anglo-American academy have been triggered by the fact that Yale University Press are about to publish an English translation of Emmanuel Faye’s Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy. While I welcome this publication, surely we don’t need a new book to convince us that Heidegger was a Nazi scumbag, we already have works by the likes of Victor Farias and Hugo Ott that do just that. So, as Faye suggests, let’s remove Heidegger from the teaching of theory and philosophy, and instead let those who wish to study him do so in the form of historical and political research relating to the ideology and development of Nazism and the holocaust.
While those reading Heidegger should be doing so in the context of a familiarity with crud like Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Alfred Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century, they might also like to hear one of the best put-downs of the clown prince of fascist ‘philosophising’ – a thirty year-old song by Dutch punkers Panic. In Requiem For Martin Heidegger, Panic satirise the meaninglessness (‘intellectuals’ might call this opacity) of Heidegger’s pseudo-philosophical Nazi propaganda. The lyrics to this tune include the following: ‘Is he in heaven? Is he in hell? Where has he gone? No one can tell!” Likewise, the presence of German language elements and an exaggerated count-in, leave this listener in no doubt about the fact that Heidegger was a Nazi cretin!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Adolf Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, Emmanuel Faye, Hannah Arendt, Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy, Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger, Mein Kampf, Myth of the Twentieth Century, National Socialism, Nazism, NSDAP, Panic, Requiem For Martin Heidegger, Ron Rosenbaum, The Evil Of Banality: Troubling new revelations about Arendt and Heidegger, Victor Farias
Posted in politics | 51 Comments »
Monday, October 26th, 2009
When I first heard about Children of the Sun, I assumed the title was taken from the classic sixties psyche single of the same name by The Misunderstood, but anyone who reads the book can see that it actually invokes Savitri Devi, a particularly bonkers and unpleasant exponent of post-war Nazi occultism, and one of the founding members of the World Union of National Socialists. That said, the focus of this ‘novel’ is very much on English neo-Nazi scum of the Thatcher era; although Devi does appear in extended fictional form, partly on account of the fact that she died in England on the same day that the moronic bonehead band Skrewdriver played their comeback gig in London.
The book intercuts two narratives, which are joined at the end. One is about a lumpen south London secretly gay Nazi skinhead called Tony; and the other concerns the middle-class liberal James, whose family is financially supporting his research into the far-Right, so that he can write a TV script about British Movement activist and amateur porn star Nicky Crane. Schaefer uses the first narrative to undermine reader expectations, his main character Tony is complete low-life, and in every fight sequence I was rooting for him to be annihilated; so it was a major disappointment that this piece of trash survives right the way through to the end of the book.
Although Tony is a member of the British Movement, his depiction often led me to think of a Strasserite plonker on the ‘far left’ of a 1980s photo of Ian Anderson ‘manning the deliberately provocative National Front stall in the Asian area of Brick Lane, East London’, which is available from photographersdirect.com (search for “Ian Anderson Brick Lane”). In the ‘Tony’ parts of Schaefer’s book we encounter fictional depictions of figures such as Nicky Crane, Ian Stuart (of Skrewdriver), Savitri Devi and even Nick Griffin (now the BNP’s leading Nazi twat, but back then in his national ‘revolutionary’ phase an associate of a motley crew of Italian fascists with a string of criminal convictions implicating them in more than one mass murder, as well as a huge fan of Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi).
Children of the Sun not only takes the reader through a very lightly fictionalised version of key incidents in the development of British neo-Nazism, it is peppered with genuine historical documents relating to these events. What will most immediately grab many people’s attention is documentation relating to Nick Griffin’s unbelievably unsavoury past. However, of more interest to me was the resurfacing of two press clippings I’d appraised some time ago – an October 1986 news item from Searchlight linking Tony Wakeford’s National Front band Above The Ruins (the name was subsequently changed to Sol Invictus) to Nazi bonehead Nicky Crane as well as Michael Walker of The Scorpion, plus a 1986 review from the fascist zine English Rose that suggests top Nazi prick Patrick Harrington was a member of Wakeford’s group during its early days. Above The Ruins are mentioned more than once in the ‘fictional’ sections of the text, and these invocations prove extremely suggestive. For example:
“I was reading the Scorpion, this would-be intellectual journal put out by Michael Walker, who used to run a tour company with Nick Griffin and Roberto Fiore. So in summer ’93, just before Nicky died, Walker published an article by Stephen Cox, who ran something called the Jarls of Baelder, which as far as I can tell was a sort of occult, quasi-nazi homoerotic naturist group. Baelder had, or has, a secret inner order called the Fraternitas Loki, devoted to ‘covert aeonic action’: aeonics is a key Nine Angles term, and in Norse mythology Loki was the father of Fenrir, the wolf, right? The Above The Ruins album was Songs of the Wolf, and Fenrir was the in-house journal of the ONA… Anyway, Cox’s piece is this barking analysis of European history that says we need to reappraise the Third Reich and seek our destiny among the stars. And it’s illustrated with diagrams that say, at the bottom: copyright Order of Nine Angles. So this is explicit Nine Angles material appearing in the major British journal of the new right. They’re all over each other…” (pages 252-253).
There are, of course, other ways of linking Wakeford to David Myatt and the Order of Nine Angles, and Children of the Sun provides more than enough information to encourage readers to do just that and much else besides. Therefore, I’m not sure I’d describe this book a novel, it seems to me to be closer to what the Wu Ming collective call an ‘unidentified narrative object’; in fact, it reads a lot like recent work by Iain Sinclair crossed with gay porn for Nazi fetishists. The tome is incredibly well researched, and is guaranteed to stir up a lot of debate about links between the music scene and neo-Nazi politics (especially as, yet again, it blows away the threadbare argument a number of fascist musicians and their apologists have used for years in order to attain a fig-leaf of respectability; viz, they couldn’t possibly be Nazis because either they or some of their associates are gay). Likewise, although this is by no means the last word on why some extremely sad non-fascist gay men are turned on by Nazi uniforms and related trash (like Nicky Crane), it explores the area much more effectively than say Bruce La Bruce’s ill-conceived film Skin Gang/Skin Flick (1999).
Children of the Sun is at times an extremely unpleasant read, but it will nonetheless prove an eye-opener to those who run the literary world (anti-fascist activists will already be familiar with much of this material). I’m very much looking forward to some of the debates this book is likely to spark when it is published early next year. A couple of the ‘fictional’ Nazi scum turn out to be copper’s narks, and this might well lead to heated arguments about whether or not they are based on certain real-life characters. Schaefer has written an arresting debut that makes me extremely curious not only about what he will be doing next, but also what will happen to the huge amount of as yet unused research he’s done into the Nazi music scene and its fellow travellers.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1980s, Above The Ruins, Brick Lane, British Movement, British National Party, Bruce La Bruce, Children of the Sun, Colonel Gaddafi), David Myatt, English Rose, Fraternitas Loki, Iain Sinclair, Ian Anderson, Ian Stuart, Jarls of Baelder, Libya, London, Max Schaefer, Michael Walker, National Front, Nick Griffin, Nicky Crane, ONA, Order Of Nine Angles, Patrick Harrington, Photographers Direct, Roberto Fiore, Savitri Devi., Searchlight, Skin Flick., Skin Gang, Skrewdriver, Songs of the Wolf, Stephen Cox, The Misunderstood, The Scorpion, Third Reich, tony Wakeford, World Union of National Socialists, Wu Ming
Posted in books, music, politics | Comments Off
Saturday, October 24th, 2009
Two weeks ago I received an email informing me that an attempt to sell titles in my Semina series at the New York Art Book Fare had descended into farce because the books had been impounded by US customs. Book Works told me they’d flown from Europe to America to sell the novels, but ended up manning an empty table. The publications have now disappeared and may have been destroyed; from New York any unsold copies should have gone on to a distributor in Los Angeles, but there is still no sign of them on either the east or west coast. I was reminded of this a couple of days ago, when the following message from Bubble Entendre author Mark Waugh turned up in my inbox:
“Hi, could you expand on the rumour that Bubble Entendre has been impounded by US customs? In a week when the Tate flirted with showing Spiritual America, and then withdrew the work, I am curious about a conspiracy to regulate the flow of subversive literature into the homes of bourgeois America? Best wishes, Mark.”
Word on the grapevine is that the Semina books were impounded because a US customs official took a look at Bubble Entendre and decided it was a blue-print for a terrorist attack on the 2012 Olympic Games. The novel does contain a narrative about an entirely fictional kidnap incident during this event; but I’d like to stress that I only accepted the text for publication because it was, in my opinion, critical of terrorism.
For the benefit of customs officials and cultural cops around the world, I’d like to clarify that I am 100% opposed to all forms of terrorism – regardless of whether it is committed by the US and British governments (as is currently happening in the Middle East and Afghanistan); or by religious fundamentalists (Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu or any other variety). It should go without saying that terrorism is always vanguardist and can never be justified.
To reiterate, I do not write, edit or endorse books that in any way condone terrorism. I’d also like to know what happened to the missing Semina books – Index by Bridget Penney, One Break, A Thousand Blows by Maxi Kim, Bubble Entendre by Mark Waugh and Rape New York by Jana Leo. I trust that the several hundred missing copies of these works have not been mindlessly destroyed by US customs, and that they will be delivered to Book Work’s LA distributor in the very near future.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 2012, 2012 Oympic Games, Afghanistan, Bridget Penney, Bubble Entendre, Europe, Index, Jana Leo, Los Angeles, Mark Waugh, Maxi Kim, Middle East, New York, New York Art Book Fare, Olympic Games, One Break A Thousand Blows, Rape New York, Richard Prince, Semina, Spiritual America, Tate Modern, US customs, USA
Posted in books, politics | 28 Comments »
Monday, September 14th, 2009
1. A situationist skinhead is a skinhead who engages in the construction of situations. This means the construction of concrete momentary ambiances of life and their transformation into a passionate and superior quality based on the principle of a permanent revolution of every day existence, from which, several of the principles below evoke a number of observations linked to the study of the situationist skinhead in his/her natural environment. If s/he realizes it by reading this, all skinheads can become situationists. All situationists can become skinheads for the same reasons, but not from one day to the next. As we know, even if all roads lead out of Babylon, the situationist hacienda will not be built in a single day but will in fact be a project of ongoing transformation. An intense cultural curiosity is necessary and must be accompanied by the sensation of a quasi-orgasmic osmosis, an effect well appreciated by situationist skinheads due to their enjoyment of skinhead reggae. Let’s state with candour that an authentic situationist skinhead, regardless of the way s/he first became involved in beating down Babylon, will recognize him/herself in what follows. In fact, a true situationist skinhead won’t care much for this manifesto because it is something they will want to move on from. A dyed-in-the-wool situationist skinhead is suspicious of manifestos, of anythings fixed, and thus this text is is 100% dispersible but nonetheless necessary. This manifesto does not prescribe; it dissects the situationist skinhead so that s/he might renew his/her attack on the Babylon, and finally destroy the false idols of capitalism.
2. The situationist skinhead is above all else working class by filiation or affiliation. Whether s/he is employed, working or not, whether his/her work is artistic, salaried, illegal or not, the situationist skinhead identifies with all attempts of his/her class to create a new, emancipatory and revolutionary situation. The situationist skinhead loves strikes and knows of nothing better than a good factory occupation.
3. The situationist skinhead absolutely rejects all isms –and for that reason all definitions of so-called “situationism” or “skinheadism”- which are nothing more than revisionist and reductive transformations of his/her culture into sterile stereotypes, and thus another reactionary set of doctrines. Therefore, s/he escapes all reifications and refuses to become invisible in the manner profit and bureaucracy demand. The situationist skinhead rejects authoritarian so-called “communism”, since all Bolshevik and Maoist regimes were in reality capitalist states. Isms are the instruments by which the dominant society transforms the proletariat’s endless reforging of the passage between theory and practice into doctrines. Thus certain “thinkers” define “anarchism” and thereby reduce its possibilities to the reproduction of individualist and western consumerist patterns of behaviour and thought. The situationist skinhead does not wish to replace one reductive system with another. S/he will destroy false representations or will be destroyed by them.
4 . The situationist skinhead has no leaders (not even Joe Hawkins); he is not a Marxist – indeed, Marx himself was the first person to deny he was a Marxist. The situationist skinhead is not a Leninist, Trotskyst, Guevarist or Buddhist either; and most emphatically not a Castrist or Maoist. S/he does not raise statues, temples or churches and does not put corpses in mausoleums. S/he says let the dead bury their dead while we blaze a trail to new modes of being. In brief, s/he does not idolize, does not pray, does not implore and does not even ask but takes what is his/hers as a member of the class that will abolish all classes.
5. The situationist skinhead stresses that the fundamental characteristic of this society is its division into classes. Therefore s/he is skeptical of the perfidious attempts of the ruling class (the bourgeoisie) to recuperate her uncontrolled rebellion. The situationist skinhead rejects the trajectory of petty bourgeois mods, or worse, that of those former revolutionaries who landed jobs in academies, whose writings are now studied by postgraduate students and recuperated by his/her enemy the bobo (aka “bohemian bourgeois”). For the contemporary situationist skinhead, this rank breed of socialite recyclers is far worse enemy than its ancestor, the baba cool (hippie). The bobo recuperation of elements of skinhead culture (shaved head and Dr. Martens), an attempt to “hipsterfy” a sterile vision of the world, has a far more deleterious effect than the baba who merely took drugs and attempted to withdraw from the material realities of capitalist exploitation.
6. The situationist skinhead rejects cults such as the “spirit of 69″ because, aside from rejecting all nostalgia, s/he knows that the skinhead movement, as a youth rebellion against the ruling order, is demographically much older today than during those years (but then we follow Isidore Isou in seeing youth as essentially a function of social position rather than age). Nevertheless, the situationist skinhead still refers to “the spirit of 69″ since it expresses the triolectical nature of his/her movement. To that effect, and leaving aside the delights of this egalitarian sexual position, the number 69 expresses the contradictions and semantic inversions that characterise the situationist skinhead. Let’s note that Sham 69 are and remain one of the seminal bands of situationist skinheads, since they helped purge punk rock of its socialite hangers-on. Furthermore, 1969 was marked by some of the most enthralling rhythms of skinhead reggae, including the mighty Liquidator. Likewise, in 69 the last issue of the Internationale Situationsite review appeared.
Communiqué of the International Situationist Skinhead, Combative Cell Yul Brynner In Sta-Prest
As far as I can tell this first appeared as a printed text around 2002 and can now also be found as a comment to a post on the L’En Dehors blog (scroll down to find it). Translated and adapted into English, there were a couple of points I wasn’t in complete agreement with in this section, so I modified them (I still don’t agree with everything here). This represents roughly 25% of the French language manifesto, I may or may not run more of it on future blogs. You can always go read the whole thing in French! I’m not in complete agreement with everything in the rest of this either, but it is amusing and curious, so I thought it more than worth running an adapted part of it here.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Internationale Situationiste, Joe Hawkings, Karl Marx, L'En Dehors, Liquidator, reggae, Sham 69, situationist, skinhead, skinhead reggae, Yul Brynner
Posted in counterculture, humour, politics | 31 Comments »
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
After the mass protests last week and demands for the resignation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) political gangster Narendra Modi, I’ve been checking out the follow-up reporting. The demonstrations were a spontaneous outpouring after more than a hundred people died from drinking toxic bootlegged alcohol in India; many more were poisoned. Modi is a hardline Hindu nationalist whose fundamentalist political positions have exacerbated Hindu-Muslim discord in Gujarat, the only part of India where there is an outright ban on alcohol. It should go without saying that Modi’s inflammatory policies play a significant role in contributing to social misery in Gujarat. Prohibition of drugs and alcohol doesn’t work, and the criminalisation of either is an authoritarian insanity.
Over the past couple of days news about Modi was mainly focused on matters other than toxic alcohol. For instance, former Gujarat chief minister Suresh Mehta’s insistence that Modi should be cross-examined by the GT Nanavati Commission of Inquiry over his role in the post-Godhra riots of 2002. In an article for Akhbar (#3, July 20o2) entitled Ethnic Cleansing In Gujarat, Tanika Sarkar addressed these horrors, and responsibility for them must ultimately rest in part at Modi’s feet: “Communalism Combat published a comprehensive report of the situation in April (2002). According to its estimate, based on painstaking research, the death toll is at least 2000, economic losses among Muslims amount to Rs. 3500 crores, and more than 270 mosques and dargahs have been reduced to rubble. Of course, the death toll is necessarily underrated, since very large numbers of corpses were burnt to ashes after the killings. After April, moreover, there have been many more flare-ups, more of destruction and terror. What is going on there, judging from the nature of selected targets of violence, is clearly a process of ethnic cleansing, an elimination of the cultural, economic and demographic presence of the Muslim.”
Other news coming in yesterday on Modi included this from The Hindustan Times: “The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a plea seeking a probe against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for the March 2003 killing of former state home minister Haren Pandya.” There are lots of pressures on Modi, and let’s just hope that one or more of them leads to this murderous creep being forced out of office. Returning to the toxic alcohol scandal, a few days ago much newspaper coverage was devoted to India Inc’s booze baron Vijay Mallya launching ‘a war of words’ against Modi by calling for an end to prohibition in Gujarat. Today, Express India reported that the Opposition Congress were demanding Modi give up his Home portfolio and that Minister of State for Home, Amit Shah, be sacked. I’ve lifted the following from that newspaper’s report:
“Making a startling revelation, the Opposition Congress leader (Shaktisinh Gohil) alleged that ‘notorious bootlegger’ Rasik Sodha Parmar, who is also a BJP councillor in Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, was the main person behind the hooch tragedy in Ahmedabad. Parmar was also the Mahemdabad municipality president between March 2003 and September 2005, and had been detained under PASA and was refused bail by the Gujarat High Court, he said.
“Gohil also alleged that Parmar runs a huge distillery in Bodi Roja area near Mahemdabad, and gives Rs 1.5 lakh every week to the police in hafta. Parmar has employed as many as 14 agents and sub-agents to sell liquor, and Arvind Solanki who died in the Ahmedabad hooch tragedy two days ago was part of Parmar’s network.”
Modi’s response has been covered by the DNA website: “Reacting strongly to the criticism by the Opposition Congress, the Gujarat government… announced that it would amend the existing Prohibition law in the state, making it stricter by introducing capital punishment for guilty… the government said once the new law came into force, the guilty could be awarded even death punishment for hooch-related crimes. The law would also have provision for one-year imprisonment for police officials responsible for hooch crimes or any serious offence related to Prohibition…” So, as usual, it is one law for them – and far harsher laws for us!
On a lighter note, the recent toxic alcohol tragedy reminded me of the cult movie Street Trash. This 1987 horror-comedy was directed by Jim Moro and it details what happens when an unscrupulous New York liquor store owner flogs-off way past its sell-by-date bottles of Viper to derelicts at a dollar a pop. Anyone who drinks the poisoned booze dies in a spectacular shower of gore and melting body parts. Needless to say, one hobo is sitting on a toilet when he imbibes the toxic hooch, and there is even an infamous scene featuring a game of catch with the freshly dismembered dick of a down-and-out. Screenwriter Roy Frumkes has claimed: “I wrote it (Street Trash) to democratically offend every group on the planet, and as a result the youth market embraced it as a renegade work, and it played midnight shows.” Regardless, this flick simultaneously demonstrates via its ‘characterisation’ of bickering runaway brothers Fred and Kevin, that divided we are powerless but united we have a world to win. The working class needs to unite not just in Gujarat but also around the world, so that we can free ourselves not just from super-scum like Modi, but all politicians and bosses.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Ahmedabad, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, Akhbar, Amit Shah, Arvind Solanki, Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, Bodi Roja, bootlegging, Communalism Combat, ethnic cleansing, Ethnic Cleansing In Gujarat, Express India, Godhra, Godhra riots, GT Nanavati commission, Gujarat, Haren Pandya, Hindustan Times, hooch, India, India Inc, Indian People's Party, Jim Moro, Mahemdabad, Narendra Modi, prohibition, Rasik Sodha Parmar, riots, Roy Frumkes, Shaktisinh Gohil, Street Trash, Suresh Mehta, Tanika Sarkar, toxic alcohol, Vijay Mallya
Posted in film, politics, True crime | 14 Comments »
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
Waitrose is a chain of 200 UK supermarkets flogging high-quality nosh at extortionate prices. The company is run as a co-op and prides itself on its image of ‘corporate social responsibility’, despite its core client base being the over-privileged English white middle-class. Its branches are concentrated around London, there are only four in Wales and two in Scotland. Some readers of this blog will recall that way back in January we got into a discussion of Waitrose in the comments to my Anti-Capitalist Shop Closure Wish List. I made my feelings about Waitrose clear then when I wrote:
“Waitrose is part of the John Lewis Partnership but I object to their client base. Watching the mega-rich residents of the Barbican complex in the City of London campaign to get the supermarket that had been Safeway and more recently Somerfield on Whitecross Street turned into a Waitrose was pretty horrible, but all part of the (anti)-”social cleansing” of the area. When it was a Safeway, and latterly a Somerfield, this supermarket used to have a lot of working-class customers from nearby Peabody and council flats (social housing) but they’ve all pretty much disappeared. Instead middle-class Barbican residents shop at Waitrose, rather than having to trail all the way to the M&S Foodhall on Moorgate! These days it’s the poor who have to trudge further for their food, they’re not jumping in cars and taxis like the owners of flats in the Barbican would. Scumsuckers!”
This comment floated back into my mind as I was cruising for Waitrose reduced price bargains (food that had reached its sell-by date) in the Canary Wharf branch yesterday. While doing this, I noticed the stupid slogans on a line of Waitrose “Cooks’ Ingredients”. One thing that particularly offended me was the strap-line “Discovered by Columbus” on their red chillies. Christopher Columbus didn’t discover the Americas, there were indigenous civilisations and peoples on the continent for thousands of years before he arrived. Columbus was an imperialist! Which leaves me wondering whether or not Waitrose care that the fraudulent claims carried on its chillies will piss many people off (mainly those too poor to do their main shopping in their chain). And just how much did the idiot who came up with this offensive piece of marketing spiel get paid for the inanity?
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Canary Wharf, Christopher Columbus, City of London, council flats, east London, imperialism, John Lewis Partnership, London, M&S Foodhall, Moorgate, Peabody flats, Safeway, Social Cleansing, Somerfield, The Barbican, Waitrose, Whitecross Street
Posted in economics, politics | 42 Comments »