Laurie Penny going round in circles over the Spanish Revolution
This morning, Laurie Penny our fearless investigative reporter set out to research the stories covered by the papers, taking grave personal risk to read the Internet.
And a detailed investigation revealed the astonishing, and outrageous, truth:
I love the Pavolvian retweets, and I’ll leave aside that it’s a demonstration, not a revolution.
Fortunately the virtual Twitter research team were on hand to document the complete absence of the Spanish revolution from the British Media.
Unfortunately there are still some people out there who just don’t check their sources:
There’s are two serious points to this slightly trivial post.
The first is that Laurie Penny’s hyperbole, which is ever-present, doesn’t do her any favours.
The second is that there are plenty of people out there willing to swallow it hook, line and sinker.
To me that is a recurring theme in Laurie Penny’s output. She will first make a fairly random hasty assertion which has little or no basis in reality, whether it’s from a well of hyperbole:
When Robert Peel established the Metropolitan Police in 1829, he insisted on a gentle approach to the growing unrest among the urban poor. Almost two centuries later, more and more British people are convinced that the police’s role is to impose the government’s austerity programme, by force if necessary.
a transparent attempt to create an ‘anti-cuts revolution‘ narrative:
What happened in Stokes Croft has stirred up Britain’s growing anti-cuts and anarchist movements, with supporters travelling from across the country to Bristol today.
(which is rejected out of hand by people who are from the area)
or simply verging on the self-satirical:
“Avon and Somerset police moved in to disperse a long-running protest against a new branch of Tesco, whose appearance, in a community which is rebuilding itself with help of small businesses, has been contested by 95% of local residents, according to a straw poll on Twitter.”
(There’s a response to that here, as the original piece has been post-edited without full acknowledgement to remove the spurious “Twitter” reference.)
and then she will take a movement of lemmings with her over the logical cliff to unjustified conclusions.
That probably makes me one of those inconvenient attention-seeking, stalky haterz, who will insist on pointing out that national media organisations should make sure that people they hire have some level of competence. But there’s a need for a more careful critique of La Penny, so I may return to the topic occasionally.
Hey-ho.
On with the revolutions, comrades. The smaller the circles, the dizzier we get.
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May 22, 2011 at 19:25 -
And I thought people only twitted when they didn’t have anything better to do.
Am I wrong about this? -
May 22, 2011 at 20:45 -
As you say, it’s a demonstration, actually a large number of them, maintained over a period of days, and so far completely peaceful, as they were intended to be. It isn’t a revolution and won’t turn into one.
There are municipal and autonomous elections today and people are protesting the generally recognised corruption in politics and the privileges they give themselves with our money. I hope it continues long enough to make the government think, and if they do as badly as they seem to think they will, I imagine it won’t go away quickly. Not immediately, anyway.
It isn’t at all clear who is behind this. It is a cross party movement, but these things are never entirely spontaneous. I have seen a few anarchist symbols about, and a lot of people who don’t wash their hair, but anarchists always aim to create extremly violent protest, so they can’t be behind this, even if they support it.
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May 22, 2011 at 23:13 -
ICBW, but in the past demonstrations haven’t been banned around the date of the election. It’s only this time because of the strength of feeling against the government is feeling nervous and imposed it. And the demonstraton isn’t just against the socialists. It’s against polticians in general, just like the UK population is getting mighty pissed off with it’s own politicians.
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May 22, 2011 at 23:37 -
Indeed but Spain has a history of demonstrations which they seem to conjure up at the drop of a hat. The demonstations that saw JL Rodriguez Bean get power were MILLIONS on the streets in various cities after the madrid bombings were unbelievable, they were against terrorism but used by lying politicians for their own ends (Carod Rivera in Catalunya a prime example)
These ones are no differnet but the PP will no doubt gain as they are not the incumbents but are able to truthfully say that the Socialist lied about the crisis (“what crisis”?)
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May 22, 2011 at 22:17 -
I cannot understand how a totally smug lefty middle class wine bar anarchist cow does not have a full time job with the BBC.
She tries to manipulate the news along with the rest of the Marxist students living off other peoples taxes calling for an end to the state system that funds their degree in lefty media studies.
Numpty Shitebags in Skinny Jeans. I could choke them with their PLO Scarves until their faces turned redder than their political ideals.
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May 22, 2011 at 23:38 -
I concur with your sentiments
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May 22, 2011 at 23:53 -
Not sure what the Anna’s moderation policy is, @2mac, but that’s a bit close to the bone for me. Not my decision, though.
LP has been pretty successful in ‘capitalist’ terms, and should be making some real money from her writing, so probably not particularly living off the state any more. The degree was English Language and Literature.
Matt
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May 25, 2011 at 12:55 -
These modern day anarchists do not want to get rid of the state system nor even reduce it. They want to expand it and interfere with every facet of our lives.
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May 23, 2011 at 01:26 -
Thank you for the correction on the education of LP, you do realise I know they are not yet doing degrees in lefty media studies.
For clarity the choking was aimed at the anarchists rather than LP.
As for moderation I actually did tone down the comment, originally I had not used the word cow but another C-word and probably a more accurate word.
Anyway, try not to be sensitive. I was not being serious I was displaying synthetic anger and proposing direct action of a violent kind to confront a political ideal I disagree with in homage to LP.
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May 23, 2011 at 08:07 -
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May 23, 2011 at 11:22 -
I have poor form and no culture. In general most of my comments are tongue in cheek, unless we are discussing Labour leadership types where the call for their destruction is more hope than joke.
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May 23, 2011 at 03:07 -
The story percolated up from the Mainstream business pages a few days ago, which were and still are giving it column inches. From what I can see, the protests began developing around the 12th of May onwards.
You’d have had to have been blind to miss it.
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May 23, 2011 at 09:25 -
I would like to point out that this ‘Revolution’ she has been describing for days, has seen the Socilaists lose a lot of seats this morning.
The Centre Right party in Spain has gained control over many Socilaist Strongholds…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1389930/Spain-elections-Ruling-socialists-defeated-amid-high-unemployment-protests.htmlWell done Laurie. great insight into Spain’s peoples hopes and dreams.
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May 23, 2011 at 12:47 -
¡Viva La Revolución
http://tinyurl.com/3tvdurd -
May 23, 2011 at 13:50 -
Love her references to the student uprising here, after the demos. I keep asking her how the uprising is going, but she won’t reply. I think she’s a construct, created as the perfect stereotype of dipshit thick privileged Lefty. If not, then she’s doing a fine job of pretending she is
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May 23, 2011 at 18:21 -
Well Said Sir
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