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Yup. “Don’t believe anything you read in the news” is as mind-rotting as “don’t question anything you read in the news.” Plus, the bourgeoisie needs reliable news sources as well; it’s not in bourgeois interests for the “bourgeois media” to just tell blatant lies.
Also worth remembering that Marx frequently *wrote for* the “bourgeois media”. The idea that the bourgeois press (or the “MSM”, as conspiracy theorists like to call it) is just a transmission system for fabrications cooked up to delude or mislead “the people” is utterly facile.
There’s a specific critique to be made of the role of the right-wing tabloid press in public and political life in Britain, but even in that case, “everything they print is a lie” is not the way to make it.
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Daniel Randall
@therubykid
Consistency is a very laudable value in politics. These “anti-imperialist” types giving it, “the US and UK have no right to impose sanctions on China, their own human rights records are terrible!”... whilst also demanding the US and UK impose sanctions on Israel... that ain’t it.
State sanctions are a blunt instrument and often risk hurting the wrong people. And, until we have a workers’ government, any sanction any state imposes against another will be on some level hypocritical and self-interested.
I’d be against sanctions on China which would harm the Chinese people more than the Chinese ruling class. Ditto Israel. But if sanctions are targeted against the state and the military (arms embargoes, etc.), and could play a role in disrupting ethnic cleansing or annexation...
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Daniel Randall
@therubykid
I remain unconvinced by “defund the police”, abstracted from a wider set of transitional demands, as, like “welfare not warfare”, it suggests a finite pot of social wealth, with a struggle only over its distribution. But these are definitely the conversations we need to have.
I am for less funding going to the police. I’m against reversing the cuts the Tories have made to police funding, and for further cuts. But as we can see, the Tories having defunded the police doesn’t automatically ameliorate any wider social issue, or curb police powers.
Demands to reduce police funding should, in my view, be a constituent part of a wider programme that prioritises demands for increased taxation of the rich and the expropriation of banking and finance to fund a social levelling-up in terms of jobs, housing, and education.
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Daniel Randall
@therubykid
Setting aside the “Leninist” thing for a second, and the fact that, okay, sure, this is just one random tweet... this resonated with me. I’m always bewildered by how many people you encounter on the left whose fundamental motivations and instincts seem wholly illiberal.
I don’t mean “against liberalism”... I mean “against freedom.” People who’re desperate for mechanisms of command and control, and who seem to be involved in politics in order to insert themselves into positions of influence and power within such mechanisms.
The enduring, and intertwining, legacies of Stalinism and technocratic, statist social-democracy explain a lot of it. The fact that the left is weak and marginalised, and therefore especially susceptible to the development of sect mentalities, explains some more.
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