Review of "Single and Single" by John le Carre

Set against the background of the end of the USSR, and in the context of a company that facilitates dodgy deals, money laundering, offshore ownership, and eventually the logistics for heroin distribution. Not le Carre's usual intelligence agencies setting...the "white hats" are customs officials rather than spooks, though they seem to use much the same methods and have similar access to tradecraft and stuff. Some lovely descriptions of places and people...though the main characters do seem to shimmer a little and not feel as consistent as they might. Still, carried me along and an enjoyable read.

Review of "Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action" by Rhiannon Firth

First up - we read this in the Stroud Radical Reading Group, and my friend and comrade Mar Florence wrote a really good summary, which I have pasted just below.

"Here's the longer version of my book summary of Disaster Anarchy by Rhiannon Firth (5-10 min read).

Capitalism and neoliberalism make disasters more likely to happen because they prioritise profit and maintaining power.

Mainstream disaster management is focused on restoring order, maintaining capitalism, and keeping power in the hands of the existing governments.

The human cost in every sense - lives lost, suffering, negative and traumatic experiences - only matter to the extent to which they impact the capitalist system.

She describes non anarchist critiques of mainstream disaster relief, such as ones that point out that existing systems contribute to and unevenly distribute the impacts of disasters.

She says these don't go far enough because they often posit a state led solution, when the state will always prioritise it's own power, and so will fail at prioritising the experience and safety of its citizens.

She then describes an anarchist theoretical approach where rather than asking for help from a state, people help each other through horizontal organising (between peers) and in the form of mutual aid (in which everyone is a helper and everyone is helped).

She describes some ways capitalism stops or reduces the effectiveness of these social movements -

Recuperation - which is when anarchist organising gets absorbed back into the system, eg by becoming part of an ngo or the state or a private company. This imposes hierarchies, reduces the energy of a movement, limits what the movement can do and who can be part of it (she gives the example of excluding immigrants from helping if official papers are required, which would push them into the role of only receiving help, removing the mutual aspect), and prevents more radical action against the status quo like resisting evictions.

Repression - when anarchist action is clamped down on directly by the state. She gives the example of mutual aid after hurricane Katrina.

She describes how some people criticise anarchist ideas as unrealistic because they think people are fundamentally selfish, she calls this Hobbesian.

Terminology.

She uses the words prefiguration, post-Fordist and cybernetic a lot.

I think prefiguration means creating something with an idea that it is part of the future.

Post-Fordist seemed to mean neoliberal capitalism, maybe post industrial?

Cybernetic seems to mean feeding back into the current system in a loop - I always thought it meant something to do with robots.

She then has two chapters of case studies, the first about occupy sandy, a mutual aid movement in new York after superstorm sandy, which was modelled on the occupy wall street movement and involved some of the same people. And covid mutual aid groups in London during the early pandemic.

In the examples she talks about how the different disasters are tackled differently but there are some similarities. In both cases mutual aid groups are faster and more effective at meeting people's needs than the official groups. In both cases the state and ngos try to piggyback on the grassroots efforts, impose rules, and take credit for their successes.

She talks about difficulties such as people joining with different politics who disagree with how things are done or want to impose rules or hierarchies on the groups. She also talked a bit about inclusion and how to solve problems of making sure everyone has the opportunity to help as well as be helped.

Occupy sandy used more in person organising, turned up at people homes to clean out their basements and used community centres and churches to distribute food, blankets and medical supplies. They received a lot of financial donations from the public to do this work and she talks a bit about the difficulties when managing money in this sort of movement. I read in hot money (naomi klein) that they used a shop front as a makeshift medical centre where volunteer doctors and nurses could help people. Occupy sandy used amazon wishlists so people could buy and donate supplies directly. Occupy sandy used bike couriers and bike powered generators so people could charge their phones.

Covid mutual aid groups organised mostly online but had some social centres, and she says where they had some physical space that really helped the organising and distribution of help. Covid mutual aid groups organised people to do shopping for other people and collect their medications, as well as giving individuals money from donations when they applied for financial help. There was a similar discussion about transparency and the difficulties and ethical concerns of managing money.

She talks a lot about the social principle vs the political principle and how they are mutually exclusive. As far as I understand it, the social principle is about helping one another as equals and the political principle always prioritises retaining power in some form between a smaller group."

Such a brilliant summary that there's no need for me to write any more...but I would like to say a bit about my feelings about the book. From the first sentence the language is academic and difficult. Being charitable, I suppose that's inevitable. Leftist thinkers are mainly academics these days - there's not much of an economic base for "organic intellectuals" in the Gramscian sense, so they have to write to the style of their community and their job expectations. And probably much of the market for this kind of book is students who want to learn to write in that sort of language so that they pick up the credentials of academic social science. It's just too bad for activists who are interested in the subject matter but don't have the academic hinterland.

Also, I wasn't all that taken with the actual arguments in the book, once I had decoded them. Yeah, there's a tension between wanting to advance your politics in a mutual aid group which includes others who don't share your outlook, and wanting the group to be effective. And yeah there is something problematic about using tools (especially technology ones with built-in surveillance) developed by exploitative capitalist corporations...though I suspect that the FAI-CNT militias in revolutionary Barcelona didn't worry too much about the provenance of the guns that used to fight fascism. There are great big gaps in the book too...very little about the actual working class history of permanent mutual aid groups, some of which were anarchist-inspired. She seems committed to the idea of spontaneous informal organisation, as if there were no other traditions or ways of organising on the left. Which, I think, is part of the reason why we are in the pitiful, disorganised, ineffective place that we are. We won't get anywhere, we won't involve more people, we won't achieve anything at all, without building permanent organisation that are here today, here tomorrow, and don't burn people out in a couple of years because everything is urgent.

One last thing...the discussion about whether mutual aid provided a sticking plaster for capitalism and actually helped prop it up reminded me of this poem by Brecht, which I will also paste in full.

Bertolt Brecht: A Bed for the Night I hear that in New York At the corner of 26th Street and Broadway A man stands every evening during the winter months And gets beds for the homeless there By appealing to passers-by. It won’t change the world It won’t improve relations among men It will not shorten the age of exploitation But a few men have a bed for the night For a night the wind is kept from them The snow meant for them falls on the roadway. Don’t put down the book on reading this, man. A few people have a bed for the night For a night the wind is kept from them The snow meant for them falls on the roadway But it won’t change the world It won’t improve relations among men It will not shorten the age of exploitation.

Review of "Oh Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie"

I was really disappointed by this film. The title says it all. Antisemitism in the Labour Party, and the movement, was just a big lie, something concocted by the Zionists - Israel and British Jews - to sink Jeremy Corbyn.

Some of the film is nice and heartwarming; some scenes of big rallies from the Corbyn moment, when we won the leadership, and the 2017 election campaign. Some of the parts about sabotage by Labour Party staffers are still shocking, even though I have read about them before. 

I have no doubt that Jeremy Corbyn is not an antisemite, certainly not in the sense of someone with a personal antipathy towards Jews. Nor do I doubt that people in the Labour Party and outside who don't care much about Jews, or racism, were keen to use and abuse the allegations of antisemitism for factional and party-political purposes without any concern either for truth or for the impact that their tactics would have on actual Jews. Claims about antisemitism were indeed weaponised and abused.

But it's also true that there were actual antisemites in the Labour Party. Not many - I've hardly ever met any - though even a few is too many. Some of them were and are people who are just clumsy in the way they express hostility to Israel and Zionism, and unthinkingly draw on anti-Jewish themes. Some are a bit nastier than that, and some are lot nastier. Pretending that this isn't so, or that it doesn't really matter because no-one is slaughtering Jews in the streets, is bad for our movement. Being stupid is never a good idea.

Sometimes Corbyn just made mistakes - like with the business about the awful mural in the East End of London, which he initially didn't denounce as anti-Jewish. When he did make mistakes he wasn't given much opportunity to admit that, apologise and move on - though who is these days?

It would have been better if he could have admitted that "our movement" does not have a proud history on the subject of antisemitism, from labour movement opposition to the immigration of Jewish refugees and the antisemitic rhetoric that well-known labour and socialist figures used, the silence of the plight of refugees in the 1930s, the protection of Mosley's revived fascist movement in the 1940s by the Labour home secretary, and so on. It would have been better if he had occasionally denounced antisemitism without instantly adding "and all forms of racism"...like some weird left version of "All Lives Matter". It would have been great if he could have showed some understanding of why antisemitism is such an important dimension of far right thought, as a unifying explanatory theme for conspiracy theories.

But the film isn't about any of that. Although it has plenty of talking heads denouncing the accusations of antisemitism, it barely touches on what those accusations were. Watching it you would think that it was only about criticisms of Israel and Zionism.

And it doesn't help that some of the talking heads have absolutely turned out to be people who are antisemites. An obvious example is Professor David Miller of Bristol University...really, when Socialist Worker says you've crossed the boundary from anti-Zionism to actual antisemitism, you really have. Also appearing is Chris Williamson, who has recently joined George Galloway's red-brown "Workers Party". Galloway has appeared on platforms with Nigel Farage and with Breitbart's Steve Bannon.

And Jackie Walker. Jackie Walker appears more than anyone else in the film, and she seems to be clear and reasonable. From the film you wouldn't know that lots of people on the left have acknowledged that she has spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, and that the only shred of an excuse that anyone can make for her is that she didn't know this stuff was untrue and therefore her intentions weren't antisemitic. 

I'd like to hope that one day the left will realise that it needs to deal honestly and fairly with its own history of antisemitism, and that this film will be a terrible embarrassment. I'm not holding my breath though.

And in the final analysis, the politics of the film are really not at all thought through. Although there's quite a lot about how horrible Starmer is - much of which I don't dispute - there's nothing about how he came to be leader, by the same process that had previously allowed Corbyn to win. There's nothing except a prolonged "we was robbed" whine, nothing about what should happen now for the left. Because what the film appears to say is that not only is it impossible for the left to take control of the state and use it for socialist purposes, it's not even possible to take control of the Labour Party. 

I'm going to leave the last word to Andrew Murray, who does feature in the film as an adviser to Corbyn...but neither these words, nor the sentiment that they reflect, appear anywhere in the film:

“I do not believe that Corbynism was defeated by conspiracies in the common sense of the term. It was defeated by the class enemy, and its own mistakes contributed to that significantly. One can argue about which mistakes carried what relative weight, but that is where the debate needs to be.

“As far as antisemitism goes, it has always been my view that the Jewish community had real concerns which were not properly addressed. Bad faith actors in the mass media and those opposed to Corbynism for other reasons surely exacerbated the problem (that’s political life wherein any weakness is exploited by opponents), but they did not invent it. Antisemitism on the left is a complex issue that needs addressing in a sober fashion… [the film] would have done better to interview at least a more balanced range of those involved in the Corbyn movement rather than leaning heavily in the conspiracist direction […]

“To conclude, for anyone on the left to believe that Corbyn was defeated by a conspiracy by Jewish organisations is doubly dangerous:

“First, it risks stirring up animosity towards the Jewish community and breathing further life into antisemitism at a dangerous time.

“Second, it misdirects the Left down a blind alley and prevents it learning the lessons that need to be drawn from the achievements and failures of the Corbyn years.”

Review of Casablanca Beats

I watched this at the Lansdown Film Club, where there is a post-film "bead voting" system, and I was the only person to put a bead in the bowl marked "Poor".  I didn't enjoy it much. I was bored, I dozed off sometimes, and I felt that it was shapeless and bad storytelling. I'm all in favour of films that leave the viewer to fill in or imagine some of what's left unsaid, but this felt like there were gaps in the narrative that had just been overlooked. 

There were some great young Moroccans who were learning to rap with a charismatic teacher at a cultural centre called Les Etoiles de Sidi Moumen - Sidi Moumen is a poor district of Casablanca . The young people were playing themselves, and the teacher is played by moody Moroccan actor Abdelilah Basbousi. There are some really great set-piece debates between the kids, notably about whether young women ought to dress "decently" in order to be respected. There's a big dance "fight" between the kids and some religious fundamentalists.

Ultimately though it was a disappointment. It feels a bit like it ought to have been a documentary, without the pretence of a plot, and with lots of interviews with the kids about why they felt that an American art form spoke to them as a young Moroccans.

Like I said, watched at Lansdown, and a testament to how bad the film was is that I managed to doze off even on the world's most uncomfortable chairs.

Review of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" by B Traven

An absolute ripping yarn about American hobo-adventurers in Mexico in the 1920s, written by a mysterious perhaps-German author about whom almost nothing is known. I've known about B Traven for years and have thought about reading this, but it was only when I picked up a free copy at a tube station book drop that I finally got round to it - partly as a way of avoiding reading a heavier non-fiction book that I was supposed to be doing.

It's in a spare, hard-boiled style, with little description and not much introspection, and yet it was absolutely compelling reading that carried me on. The characters are casual workers who become gold prospectors, set in a background of reforming post-revolutionary Mexico, with Indians and Mestizos and bandits. There's some nods in the direction of progressive politics - a paean to the railway workers' union, a brief speech in favour of Bolshevism and Communism by one of the characters - but there's some racism that would be unacceptable now too.

Review of My Sailor, My Love

Ireland-set, Scandinavian-made romantic drama about an older man finding love late in life with an older woman sent by his daughter to be housekeeper-carer, and the impact that has on the very troubled daughter who has spent her whole life traumatised by the effort of caring for first her mentally ill mother and then her deteriorating and unloving father. Lots of heavy emotional work, and lots of beautiful scenery and perfectly drawn interpersonal dynamics. It's not as unremittingly bleak as this makes it sound, but there aren't many laughs.

Watched on Netflix via phone and Chromecast, an unusual good film found there.

Review of "All the Light We Cannot See" by Antony Doerr

I really liked and enjoyed this lovely book. It's hard to imagine that something about a blind girl making her way through the world of occupied Brittany during WW2 could be so heartwarming, but it was, despite all the awful things that happen to the characters. There's a narrative that's split between different characters and switches backwards and forward in time, which can sometimes be annoying but wasn't here. One of the central characters is a very young German soldier, and I'm sometimes upset by books which foreground the experiences of people like that, but this didn't affect me that way at all. 

It was long and occasionally harrowing, but I'm so glad I read it and was sorry when it ended.

Review of Oppenheimer

The fact that it's been several weeks between seeing the film and writing a review says something. I know it's an important subject and that it's seen as an important film, but despite the length (3 hours) I was a bit underwhelmed. Visually it felt a bit trite. And I've often liked Christopher Nolan's films for complex narrative structures, but this one felt ponderous and contrived rather than interestingly complex. 

I thought I knew the story of Los Alamos, and I wasn't aware of any major surprises as I watched the film. It felt to me like the conflict with Lewis Strauss, which I didn't know about, was the dramatic centre of the film...I think I'd rather that it hadn't been so long and convoluted, and that it had focused on that more. The claustrophobic scenes of the private hearing that more or less finished Oppenheimer as a public figure, because his security clearance was not renewed, are really well done.

Despite the length of the film the tension between Oppenheimer and Strauss doesn't really feel well explained - was it really because Oppenheimer said something that made Strauss feel humiliated at a Congressional hearing of some kind? Was there really nothing more to it than that?

Watched at the Vue in Stroud with two good friends and an extra large popcorn.

Review of "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari

Forced my way through this, didn't like it so much. It's a "broad sweep" history, with a perspective that wobbles between neo-liberal ("hasn't capitalism made everything brilliant!") and neo-conservative ("medieval peasants were perhaps happier than modern people because they believed that their lives had a purpose in a way that secular people can't). As I read it I found myself coming up with objections to the broad sweep argument from stuff that I knew, and I suspect that people who know more about the disciplines he references - archaeology, anthropology, and so on - might find lots more.

Looking forward to reading "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" which I understand has a more detailed take-down.