The Daily Hate.

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

The Blackshirt Parade: Emos, Flappers and The Daily Mail

On Saturday at least 200 people demonstrated outside the offices of the Daily Mail in London against its coverage of 'emo' - after a young My Chemical Romance fan committed suicide the paper ran a story headlined 'Why no child is safe from the sinister cult of emo’ (photo by Abbi London - more reports and reflections at Thrash Hits).

There's been some incredibly patronising coverage but I think it's great. The Daily Hate needs to be called to account more often for its ludicrous 'reportage', and hopefully these mostly young MCR fans will be inoculated for life against its daily tirades against migrants, gypsies and other affronts to the enraged Middle England Right Wing.

Flappers

'Emos' are far from the first group of young people to be targeted by The Daily Mail. Way back in the 1920s there was "an obsession with the moral and physical deterioration of British men and women" with the Daily Mail worrying about civilisation being destroyed by women not breeding enough thanks to short hair and lesbianism. Young women enjoying themselves dancing and partying – so-called ‘Flappers’ – were particularly criticised. There were "hysterical attacks in the Daily Mail and Daily Express on the irresponsible behaviour of the 'Flappers', those selfish and irresponsible young women who were alleged to be pursuing an energetic social life and sexual emancipation. In the process, the pundits claimed, they ceased to be real women in both the psychological and even the physical sense. Referring darkly to women 'with short hair, skirts no longer than kilts, narrow hips, insignificant breasts' the Express warned: 'this change to a more neutral type can only be accomplished at the expense or the integrity of her sexual organs'".

When it was proposed to allow women to vote at the same age as men, The Daily Mail waged a vigorous campaign against it, arguing that women would be more likely to vote Labour: "In a bizarre campaign the Mail carried daily headlines that screamed: 'Men Outnumbered Everywhere'; its editorials exploited Conservative fears by suggesting 'Why Socialists Want Votes for Flappers" and they urged 'Stop the Flapper Vote Folly'".

Fascists

In its recent tirade against emo, the Daily Mail described it as a 'trans-Atlantic import' whose 'followers dress in black, favouring tight jeans, T-shirts, studded belts and sneakers or skater shoes. Hair is all-important: often dyed black and straightened, it is worn in a long fringe brushed to one side of the face'. In the 1930s though the Daily Mail was quite keen on people dressed in black clothes - as long as they were members of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. It's quite well known that the Daily Mail once had an article headlined 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts', but this was not just a one-off throwaway comment:

"This pattern of support for the BUF in the Conservative journals culmin�*ated on 5 January 1934 when the Daily Mail published its notorious head�*line: 'Hurrah For The Blackshirts!', thus inaugurating six months in which it promoted the movement. There was nothing anomalous about this initiative. Lord Rothermere had been heaping praise on fascist dictatorship throughout the 1920s…. Rothermere controlled a large slice of the press including the Daily Mail, Sunday Dispatch and Evening News, as well as several dozen provincial newspapers. He lauded the BUF as a modernising, virile, British movement, above party politics and above all as 'the Party of Youth'. 'The Blackshirt Movement', enthused the Mail, 'is the organised effort of the younger generation to break the stranglehold which senile politicians have so long maintained on our affairs.' There followed a systematic campaign of promotion in which the Sunday Dispatch turned itself into a house journal for the BUF. Not content with regular features on 'What the Blackshirts Are Doing' and biographies of the leading personnel, it endeavoured to engage its readers' involvement in the movement. In April 1934 the news�*paper offered free tickets to major rallies including the one at Olympia in June 1934 and £1 weekly prizes for readers' letters on 'Why I Like the Blackshirts'. Winning entrants wrote: 'The Blackshirts place King and Country before personal motive. Up to the present, no party has done much good for the community', and 'I like the Blackshirts because they stand for Empire Unity, the re-establishment of British prestige and the reawakening in the British public of pride in the nation' The Sunday Dispatch also carried frequent reports on female fascists along the lines of 'Girl Blackshirt Attacked' and 'Beauty Joins the Blackshirts', as well as pictures of women practising ju-jitsu, fencing and physical exercise."

So you see whether you like My Chemical Romance or not, you should certainly be on the side of their fans expressing their disgust at The Daily Mail.

All quotes from Martin Pugh, Hurrah for the Blackshirts - fascists and fascism in Britain between the wars (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005).

See also: News of the World 1967; Mexico Emo bashing
Posted by Transpontine at 7:31 AM
Labels: 1920s, 1930s, 2000s, London, Nazis

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Change the world; join the communists
Issued by: CPGB-ML
Issued on: 01 October 2008 Introducing …

The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), Britain’s only consistently anti-imperialist and revolutionary political party, was founded in 2004.

Unlike all other political parties in Britain, our party has no interests separate from those of the international working class and oppressed peoples. We are proud to stand in the tradition, and to base ourselves on the teachings, of such great revolutionary leaders as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao.

We stand in solidarity with nations and peoples around the world who are fighting imperialism, whether it is with a gun, a pen or a voice.

We support the brave men, women and children of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Venezuela, Nepal, Bolivia, Zimbabwe, Congo, Somalia, Ireland etc in their struggles against imperialist aggression.

We defend and uphold the building of working-class power, socialism, both in the Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin and in such countries as China, Korea, Cuba and Vietnam today.

Socialism is humanity’s bright future

You don’t have to reach far into the belly of the beast that is the bourgeois press to hear and read the lies that have been spreadover the years about socialism. It won’t take them long to wheel out tired old lines like “It’s killed millions, hasn’t it?” Or the old favourite, “It’s never worked.”

The fact is that millions of people worldwide are still embracing the ideals Karl Marx and Frederick Engels laid before us 160 years ago in the Manifesto of the Communist Party.

For it is only when socialism has been hijacked by traitors such as Trotsky, Khrushchev and Gorbachev that it has failed, and it is these failures that are trumpeted by our bourgeois journalists and academics, who are paid to ignore, passover , malign or abuse the heroic successes of socialist construction; successes that brought an immeasurably better life to hundreds of millions of people.

Millions of oppressed and superexploited peoples all over the globe, feeling the sharp end of imperialist aggression and exploitation, recognise that socialism holds the key to escaping forever from the downward spiral of poverty, disease and war that is all that imperialism offers to the overwhelming majority of humanity.

Reformism in Britain

Even though the CPGB-ML is a relatively young party, many of our members have been active within the working-class revolutionary movement for many years.

We are the only organisation in Britain that both firmly opposes the Labour party, which represents the acceptable (ie, bourgeois) face of so-called ‘left’-wing politics, and consistently defends all socialist states and all anti-imperialist, national-liberation movements.

Sadly, today, the British working-class movement is permeated with reformism.

This means that instead of fighting against the whole system of oppression and exploitation, workers are, at best, encouraged merely to try to win small concessions from the ruling class within the framework of capitalism, while never questioning the real cause of their problems – capitalism itself.

Basically, while the ‘haves’ let the ‘have nots’ believe that that they are free to stand up for their rights, this is actually just rhetoric, designed to make the masses think that their voice will be heard, that their ballot paper will be counted, that concessions and change in their favour can be more than just a passing pacification tactic.

This is sadly far from the truth. A milder, less aggressive, more ‘acceptable’ and ‘ethical’ capitalism does not exist.

Reformist ideology is nothing but a prop for capitalism. It encourages the prejudice that it is possible to win a decent level of existence under capitalism.

It gives the false impression that if only we could make the capitalists care, if only they knew about our suffering, they would be overcome with benevolence and would immediately set about putting things right.

Organise for revolution!

There can be no doubt that, in order for humankind to be freed from the evils of poverty and destruction, monopoly capitalism must be overthrown. There is no point talking about nicer capitalism, or a return to small, ‘free market’ capitalism.

Imperialism is ruthless and will not give up without a desperate, ferocious struggle. The capitalists really would prefer to be ‘dead than red’; they will always choosefascism over socialism, war and profit over human rights and equality.

As Lenin famously said, the only weapon the working class have in their battle against capitalism is organisation; and without a disciplined party of the working class, steeled in revolutionary theory and practice, to lead the struggle for socialism, we have no chance of winning. The CPGB-ML strives to become such an organisation.

You can read more about our party and our policies on our website.

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Time to face it: capitalism must go!
Thinking Man's Idiot

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Daily Telegraph Plugs Holocaust Denier!

October 24, 2008 · No Comments

Now far be it for us to call the Daily Telegraph a bunch of dodgy old nazis but it seems like they’re finally coming out of the closet and showing their true colours.


Although it seems to be gardening boots rather than jackboots that this bunch of doddering tories will be wearing.


The Telegraph website today features an article on the joys of gardening in line with the cycles of the moon. Like good little Himmlers it seems they like a bit of hippy new age nonsense to go with the gas chambers. The story itself is basically a harmless enough piece of nuttiness, something for the wife to natter about as she has her blue rinse touched up before shagging the gardener.


But who should crop up at the end but holocaust denier extraodinaire and all round fruitloop Dr Nick Kollerstrom. The Torygraph plugs his daft book and website about ‘moon gardening’ at the end of the piece.


For those not in the know, this is the man who claimed that Auschwitz was like a holiday camp and that the gas chambers were a ‘legend’.
Next week in the Torygraph read Nick Griffen’s guide to windows boxes follwed a new series on pest control by green fingered David Irving.


→ No CommentsCategories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Daily Telegraph, kollerstrom