WHY ISN’T EVERYONE A SOCIALIST?

Posted on June 28, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged authoritarian, benefits, capitalism, communism, control, featured, feminism, hardworking, margaret thatcher, neoliberalism, politics, poverty, practice, praxis, Reagan, socialism, state, theory, Thomas Mann, wealth, welfare.

by Jonathan Lee

It’s a dirty word for many who don’t really understand what it means. People often broadly sweep Socialism into a single ideology, which is much maligned as an unworkable and authoritarian regime, seemingly unsuitable for the modern day, and unpopular amongst the electorate.

I’ll start out being optimistic, and assume that this ignorance of what Socialism is explains why some people discount it out of hand. Because the premise of Socialism is generally one that I have to believe most people should aspire to in some way. “Every human being should be a moderate Socialist,” Thomas Mann said.

Why? Because Socialism is a general set of social, political, and economic views that places people first. And what’s the point of having a democratic society, in which we the people place power in the hands of a select few to manage our lives, if not to make things generally better for people as a whole?Continue Reading

ENGINEERING UTOPIA: CHINA’S PROJECT FOR DESIGNING ‘TRUSTWORTHINESS’

Posted on December 16, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged 1984, Alibaba, autarchy, Black mirror, Botsman, censorship, china, citizen score, citizens, control, dystopia, Eggers, fiction, firewall, hypermodernisation, internet, Jonathan Margolis, Orwell, protectionism, social credit system, social media, state, trust, utopia, we, Xi Jinping, Zamyatin.

by Justin Reynolds

Visions of a great civilisation enjoying ‘peace under heaven’ have haunted the Chinese imagination from the time of the sages to today, when President Xi Jingping’s ‘China Dream’ of a prosperous ordered nation is propagated ceaselessly by the state-controlled media.

Here hypermodernity is filtered through ancient virtues. China’s gleaming new cities, high-speed rail links and technology parks are studded with billboards urging honesty, modesty and filial piety. Its vast wired economy is screened for decadent Western influences, blocking Facebook, Google and YouTube, and magazines infatuated with celebrity gossip or ‘crude language’. This year the ‘Great Firewall of China’ was reinforced when the state banned VPN services used by millions to break through to the global web.

Now China is finetuning the ultimate technological fix for designing a virtuous society: a ‘Social Credit System’ that will use the data produced by a population of some 1.4 billion citizens in the course of their daily interactions with digital services to rank them according to ‘trustworthiness’.Continue Reading

THERESA MAY HAS LOST CONTROL OF THE NARRATIVE. HER PREMIERSHIP IS DOOMED.

Posted on October 22, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged Ancien Regime et la Revolution, Britain, change, control, deficit, dwp, elite, free market, French Revolution, globalisation, Hillary Clinton, inaugural speech, injustice, jeremy corbyn, lost control, Louis XVI, modern politics, MPs, narrative, neoliberalism, obama, Osbournism, party whip, policy, politics, post truth, public statements, seeds of change, tax breaks, theresa may, Toqueville, Tory, Trump, tuition fees, Universal Credit, Washington.

by Toby Gill

‘The most dangerous time for a bad government is when it begins to reform itself.’ – Alexis de Toqueville.

Give people an inch, and they will take a mile. This is what de Toqueville hinted at in his Ancien Regime et la Revolution, his celebrated account of the French Revolution. It was just as Louis XVI’s regime began to reform that the masses could take no more. Just as the promise of real change was made, the guillotine fell.Continue Reading

WHAT YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIPS: SOCIETY’S VICTIMS

Posted on August 31, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged abuse, art, arts, Britney Spears, control, DV, Eminem, emotional abuse, empathy, feminism, gender violence, Ghostpoet, harassment, Harley Quinn, internalising, Jekyll and Hyde, Joker, Margot Robbie, Massive Attack, microaggression, personal, Radhika Sanghani, reciprocating, Rihanna, Saurav Dutt, sexual abuse, Suicide Squad, Survivor, Taylor Swift, The Butterfly Room, threat, victim, violence.

by Sunetra Senior

CW: abuse, DV, violence

Male-on-female abusive relationships are often pictured as shows of overt violence and brutalism. You imagine a fragile feminine frame being thrown against a wall by a heaving, snarling man, as if a piece of precious china. But this is only a surface image, and what I would even go so far as to call a political smoke-screen. Though physical intimidation does despicably feature in many cases of male-on-female violence, the less acknowledged – and thus yet more prevalent– characteristic of abuse of women is deeply emotional, and moreover, disturbingly banal.Continue Reading

THE SPECTRE OF IDEOLOGY

Posted on November 18, 2015 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged 007, agency, anti hero, arms, bond girls, books, comment, conservative, control, Daniel Craig, Englishman, film, films, hero, Ian Fleming, ideology, Idris Elba, James Bond, MI5, movies, mysogyny, NSA, politics, review, security, Spectre, status quo, terrorism, totalitarianism, Waltz, weapons.

by Jack Brindelli

In the years following the Second World War, Britain had shifted in ways many thought impossible. In the 1950s, amidst the fading colonial legacy of a crumbling empire, with increasing levels of immigration and the decreased faith in the power of the free market led, the country’s middle class felt stranded. These revolutionary changes in the country’s fabric radically challenged the ideas they had been raised to adhere to in the name of success. Middle England was holding out for a hero – and boy did Ian Fleming’s gin-swilling womaniser give them one.

James Bond is a cultural artefact – an ideological snap-shot, emerging initially as the embodiment of the established order, in order to defend it. Such was the archetypal appeal of the character, and so in tune was he to the fears of the middle class, that he soon moved seamlessly between mediums. In a world where Britain’s influence seemed to be waning, and where marginalised races and genders were pushing for equality, Bond showed Middle England could still have it all – no wonder he’s cited as being David Cameron’s inspiration for foreign policy, 007 is a conservative’s wet-dream.Continue Reading

WHEN RESPECT GETS PREJUDICED

Posted on October 22, 2015 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged activism, app, control, Damon Young, drop out, feminism, Greg Savage, job, lateness, mental health, neo-liberalism, self care, study, studying, time, timing, university, women, women writing, work.

by Robyn Banks

Last year, I dropped out of uni. My life was falling apart around me, I’d run out of new excuses for extension requests on my assignments, I was failing to meet any of my responsibilities. My finances were in chaos, I wasn’t eating and I was totally failing to prioritise by continually allowing my grades and self care to slip in order to meet my obligations to other people, which I was barely doing anyway. I was always late, I couldn’t sleep, I managed to check my emails about once a month and consequently fell further and further out of the loop. I pushed my friends away, clawed them back, worried they all hated me and yapped on and on about just how irrevocably miserable I was. I was afraid of my lecturers, assuming they all had some kind of report card about me in their heads in which they totted up all of the missed classes, late assignments, and failings on my part and were sure to judge me for it. I became so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed, so I asked if I could drop out and try the year again in September.

control

WHY ISN’T EVERYONE A SOCIALIST?

THERESA MAY HAS LOST CONTROL OF THE NARRATIVE. HER PREMIERSHIP IS DOOMED.

WHAT YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIPS: SOCIETY’S VICTIMS

THE SPECTRE OF IDEOLOGY

WHEN RESPECT GETS PREJUDICED

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