FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE: SOCIAL MEDIA, CELEBRITY, AND MIGRANT RIGHTS ACTIVISM IN ITALY

Posted on March 29, 2021 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged Aboubakar Soumahoro, activism, agriculture, campaign, cheap labour, digital media, Donald Trump, exploitation, featured, human rights, immigration, Italia, Italy, labour rights, mafia, migrant rights, politics, popular support, Salvini, social media, trade union, twitter.

CW: Murder, suicide, abuse

by Alessandra Arpaia

In recent years, Italy has undergone enormous internal change as a result of mass immigration from sub-Saharan African countries. The situation has been exploited and manipulated from every angle by the Italian media, politicians and organised crime gangs, fostering hostility towards migrant labourers as well as fuelling their exploitation. Right-wing political elites are adept at harnessing the power of social media to influence the masses; but this is a tactic that needn’t be irreplicable for social justice movements and activists on the Left, too.

GLINNER’S GONE – WHAT NEXT IN THE FIGHT AGAINST TRANSPHOBIA?

Posted on July 25, 2020 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged allies, allyship, biological essentialism, featured, feminism, gender, Gender Recognition Act, Graham Linehan, ideology, JK Rowling, Kathleen Stock, LGBTQIA+, Mermaids, misogyny, oppression, Paul B Preciado, police, protest, trans lives matter, trans*, trans* erasure, trans* rights, transphobia, twitter, violence.

By Robyn Banks

Content warning: discussion of transphobia, genitalia

In June, the news broke that Graham Linehan, former comedy writer turned full time transphobe, was finally removed from twitter for his continued attacks on the trans* community. Whilst it is positive that twitter is finally taking the action that the trans* community have long been asking for, this should have happened years ago, when Linehan started doxing people who dared challenge him.

DON’T GET FIRED – ‘CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE’ GENRE ENTERS SOCIAL MEDIA

Posted on August 6, 2019 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged arts, Beyonce, Carmina Masoliver, choose your own adventure, CYOA, Don't Get Fired, featured, gaming, twitter.

by Carmina Masoliver

When I was told by fellow poet and She Grrrowls team member Ibizo Lami that there was a ‘choose your own adventure’ (CYOA) game-cum-story starring Beyoncé on Twitter, I felt compelled to write about it.

If you haven’t heard of it already (currently at 98.2K retweets and 256.7 likes), it works by imagining you are Beyoncé’s assistant for the day. Your goal: don’t get fired. Complete with photographs and gifs, each choice you make leads to another thread. Depending on your choice, you either face the termination of your contract or you are allowed to continue the game.

FUCK OFF, TERFS: DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERNET HATE MACHINE

Posted on May 19, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged bi erasure, female socialisation, feminism, feminist, gaslighting, gender, gender critical, gender reassignment, homophobia, intersectionality, LGBT+, men's rights movement, mental health, misogyny, Neo-Nazis, Neo-Nazism, online harassment, oppression, sex, social media, terf, trans exclusionary radical feminist, trans men, transgender, transphobia, twitter, twitter storm, women.

by Zoe Harding

Content warning: article contains strong language and mentions transphobia, rape, death threats, online harassment, homophobia, biphobia and bi erasure.

So this week a friend of mine said something on Twitter about accepting transgender people as people, regardless of genitalia. One of those reasonable discussions that occasionally ensue on the internet ensued, and ended with her getting dog-piled with sufficient angry, hateful messages to nearly crash her ageing iPhone and accusations ranging from homophobia to gaslighting and advocacy of corrective rape. While the barrage of tweets from a dozen accounts was polite by online discourse standards (for ‘polite’, read ‘no swearing but massively condescending, dismissive, pompous and worryingly intense’) the death threats and abuse that followed in private messages was significantly less so.

Once more, my friend had attracted the ire of the TERFs.Continue Reading

THINGS ONLY WOMEN WRITERS HEAR AND THE TROUBLE WITH TWITTER

Posted on April 29, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged #everydaysexism, #readwomen, #thingsonlywomenwritershear, #whatwocwritershear, chocolat, comments, echo chamber, family, gender, genre, harassment, Joanne Harris, Laura Bates, misogyny, online, online community, Paul Friere, publishing, rolling stones, sharing, social media, trolling, trolls, twitter, Virginia Woolf, wombles, women writers, writers, writing.

by Hannah Rose

Virginia Woolf stated in her 1929 seminal essay A Room of One’s Own that, because women remain unequal to men in society, they are less likely to succeed as writers. A writer has two basic requirements in order to write productively: an independent income which provides basic necessities—food and shelter— and uninterrupted writing time. In 1929, the majority of British women were either working to provide the basic necessities for others, and did not have a private space in which to pursue a creative life or an independent income. This, says Wolf, is why the literary canon is dominated by men. “Intellectual freedom,” she writes, “depends upon material things.”

Almost a century later, some women are still having to argue their right to a creative life.Continue Reading

WHY SADIQ KHAN IS WRONG ABOUT RACISM AND NATIONALISM

Posted on March 6, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged Better Together, Brexit, conservatives, Donald Trump, English, imperialism, jeremy corbyn, Labour, nation state, Perth, racism, sadiq khan, Scotland, scottish independence, Scottish Labour, twitter, uk, uk politics, unionism.

by Tara Debra G

Sadiq Khan really put his foot in it last week when he tweeted out his intended speech for the 2017 Scottish Labour Conference. The section that read “There’s no difference between those who try to divide us on the basis of whether we’re English or Scottish and those who try to divide us on the basis of our background, race and religion” created a fierce backlash on social media. He was forced to clarify that he was “not saying that nationalists are somehow racist or bigoted – but […] we don’t need more division and separation.” But the damage was already done, and Khan’s controversial comments (coupled with some missteps by Corbyn and Dugdale) hung over the conference like the smell of rotten egg.

ENVIRONMENTAL WARS: THE CORPORATE AND POLITICAL WAR ON NATURE

Posted on February 14, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged access, America, china, climate action, climate change, coal, dakota, dakota pipe line, DAPL, department of energy and climate change, energy, environment, environmental protection agency, epa, global warming, GOP, Green, Green Investment Bank, keystone xl pipeline, Myron Ebell, NASA, national parks, obama, oil, paris, Paris agreement, pipeline, pollution, republican, SEC, solar, stream protection rule, Trump, twitter, us army corps of engineers, war on nature.

by Gunnar Eigener

The Republican Party’s war on the environment has begun in earnest.

The US Army Corps of Engineers have approved the final easement to complete the Dakota Pipe Line (DAPL). The Keystone XL Pipeline has also been approved. Republican senators have introduced a bill to disband the Environmental Protection Agency. The Stream Protection Rule has been repealed using the Congressional Review Act. The Securities & Exchange Commissions (SEC) transparency rule has been repealed. The Interior Department methane rule is currently going through the repeal process. Trump has promised to disband the Clean Power Act and the EPA website has removed all pages relating to climate change. Trump’s America First Energy Plan neglected to mention solar energy jobs and, although the initial plan to sell of 3.3 million acres of national land has been withdrawn, proposals have been put forward to transfer federal land to state control. In the UK, the government is pushing forward with the intention to sell the Green Investment Bank and renewable energy ventures look set to slashed even more. A report by the Energy and Climate Committee has predicted that the UK will fail to meet its renewable energy targets. The closing of the Department of Energy and Climate Change led to its operations being transferred to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, casting doubt of the ability to prioritise the environment over business. Continue Reading

HOME OFFICE STATEMENT

Posted on November 30, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged 1984, communication, data, digital, George Orwell, government, Home Office, internet, Investigatory Powers Bill, journalists, privacy, response, satire, Snoopers Charter, spying, statement, theresa may, twitter.

by Zoe Harding

(Note: The below is based on an actual statement released by the Home Office, which can be found in its unadulterated version here. The adulterator takes no responsibility for the government seeing that you’ve visited this web page, even though they will)

Dear Concerned Citizen

The Investigatory Powers Act dramatically increases transparency around the use of investigatory powers by making it so we can see everything. It protects both privacy and security for MPs only and underwent an unprecedentedly low level of scrutiny before becoming law because everyone was distracted with Brexit.

The Government is clear that, at a time of heightened security threat (Current threat level: Be Very Afraid, Trust Us. We Won’t Tell You Why), it is essential our law enforcement, security and intelligence services have the powers they need to keep people safe. And the powers they need to see what you’ve been doing on the internet even if you aren’t a criminal. Maybe you’re buying them Christmas presents but they hate surprises. Have you thought of that?Continue Reading

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

Posted on July 14, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Student and tagged #BlackLivesMatter, America, Aston Sterling, ayesha jones, black lives matter, BLM, bodycams, Diamond Reynolds, Eric Garner, facebook, grief, Hong Kong, kingsley burrell, mark duggan, media, MSM, Philando Castile, racism, Ramsey Ortega, sandra bland, social media, solidarity, Trayvon Martin, tumblr, twitter, uk, umbrella movement, US.

by Candice Nembhard

There is something to be said for the recent solidarity protests in London, Birmingham and Manchester as organised by the Black Lives Matter movement. Never have I seen such a positive, unionised display of blackness that has caught the eye of not only the media, but also the average citizen. As more articles are released, I am becoming more intrigued by the role that social media has played in galvanising mass movement, and implementing revolutionary politics that will leave behind a long lasting message for people of colour to come.

My experience in the UK regarding institutional violence against people of colour was that the baton was always passed to our stateside counterparts. It is not difficult to see why, when sites such as Twitter and Tumblr opened us up to the lives of Trayvon Martin, Ayesha Jones, Eric Garner, and Sandra Bland — long before it caught the attention of popular news sites and news networks. It was important that these narratives were being discussed, as it gave people of all races an insight into the practices within forces that are designed to safeguard us —especially in a society of 24-hour surveillance.Continue Reading

THE GENERATION GAME

Posted on June 29, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged baby boomers, ballot box, blame, Brexit, Britain, divide and rule, EU, EU ref, eu ref results, EU referendum, european referendum, fear, Free Education, generation, inequality, media, NHS, older generation, pensioners, pensions, privitisation, referendum result, Remain, tuition fees, twitter, vote, voting, young people, younger generation.

by Kelvin Smith

The older people I know are not rejoicing about the result of the referendum. They are sad, angry, shocked. They are doing what they can: signing petitions, writing to their MPs, looking for rays of hope in (to borrow and reclaim the phrase purloined by the current xenophobic tendency) a country they do not recognise. An additional hurt comes from a feeling that, on top of this, they are being demonised; portrayed as self-satisfied and uncaring as they bask in their privilege of free education, secure pension rights, a place to live and a little money in the bank. The word ‘baby-boomer’ has become a term of abuse. ‘Pensioner’ has become code for selfish old bastard.

The principle of the secret ballot means that the British voting system cannot provide definitive information about the demographics of the ‘leave’ and ‘remain’ votes, but this has not stopped the press from putting forward as fact the idea that older voters were the reason for a ‘leave’ majority. I have not seen any statistics that explain this except for a reliance on polls that we all now know are unreliable. But then this has been a referendum based on lies so there’s no reason to think this should be any different.Continue Reading

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GLINNER’S GONE – WHAT NEXT IN THE FIGHT AGAINST TRANSPHOBIA?

By Robyn Banks

DON’T GET FIRED – ‘CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE’ GENRE ENTERS SOCIAL MEDIA

WHY SADIQ KHAN IS WRONG ABOUT RACISM AND NATIONALISM

ENVIRONMENTAL WARS: THE CORPORATE AND POLITICAL WAR ON NATURE

HOME OFFICE STATEMENT

THE GENERATION GAME

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