Anarchist Bookfairs, Left-Wing Fascists, RPG Review

[tcpip]

For the local community I've produced another issue of The Willsmere Whispers. Also locally attended the Melbourne Anarchist Bookfair and Workshops at the delightful surrounds of the Abbotsford Convent, which really is a location I must find more excuses to go to. This was a very well attended and vibrant event which included catching up with the delightful Paula (who had purchased a suitcase of books, compared to my single purchase of a study on John Anderson).

It contrasted well with the absolutely dire address at the Unitarians the following day where a handful of aging and irrelevant Stalinists engaged in a talk claiming that Kruschev and Gorbachev had betrayed the Soviet Union. The irony of running such an event on the fiftieth anniversary of the Berlin Wall was quite clearly lost on such rigid minds. The request that they at least considered the comments from the leaders of Unitarians in Eastern Europe who were repressed under such regimes didn't garner much sympathy. In way of a motivated response, I have written: Left-Wing Fascism: A Senile Disorder.

Finally, I have released a very late edition of RPG Review Issue 12. A history special issue, it almost became an item of history in its own right. Nevertheless, I'm pretty happy with the content; my own contributions include an overview of historical RPGs, the use of Pendragon for the one thousand year history of the Britannia boardgame and a review of Deadlands, the horror-western RPG. The latter will make its way to rpg.net as well..

Comments

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

Indeed, one could say that fascism is like socialism without the values. Either term could come to represent aggressively authoritarian, totalitarian and collectivist attitudes, and it's important not to take that Stalinist turn.

The last socialist thing I read was by Orwell. Can you tell?

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The last socialist thing I read was by Orwell. Can you tell?

One the best; evocative and with a clear sense of what could go very, very wrong.

You have also made me think of how left fascists can apparently engage in actions that would cause cognitive dissonance in normal people; they have trained themselves in doublethink.

I really should update the essay with that.. Thanks :)

Re: We have always been at war with Eastasia.

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

Yep, one or more of his works is standard in Canadian public high schools as I recall. This time my read was The Road to Wigan Pier, which touches on some of the same themes in the context of coal miners in the 30s. He has a whole section on why socialism at the time didn't seem to be making any headway with the miners and why socialism had become a sort of dirty word that would make people instinctively recoil at the mention, even if it was something that when explained properly should appeal to them. I didn't like how he was blaming "vegetarians and sandal wearers" and other urban fringe people for scaring people away; they need liberation too.

Re: We have always been at war with Eastasia.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I confess to have only read 1984 and Animal Farm. although I've been meaning to read Homage to Catalonia for years.

I have enormous respect for Orwell; I suspect we would have agreed on a great many things. I note that at times he was a member of the Independent Labour Party, an organisation which I personally find a lot of historical connection with. When he described himself as a "Tory-Anarchist", I understood that as well; a cultural conservative, even elitist, but a political libertarian and egalitarian.

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

It contrasted well with the absolutely dire address at the Unitarians the following day where a handful of aging and irrelevant Stalinists engaged in a talk claiming that Kruschev and Gorbachev had betrayed the Soviet Union.

I would agree with that assessment, and think that the world is better for that betrayal. We are not still consciously living with the immanent threat of nuclear war (though the risk has actually only declined slightly) and if dismantling a oppressive state system is betrayal, then I think we ought to have more of that. Maybe the US Homeland could be betrayed next?

I guess they'd prefer an "Iron Man" like Stain to have kept running things. Some of that may be misplaced nostalgia for a simplistic life under an oppressive regime. Easier to be focussed on less things (survival?) under a state run by secret police than to have to many choices? I saw ONE GERMANY on SBS last week and it was all about folk there pining for Trabants and such things. It's always easier to embellish and glorify a past, athn live in the present, even if that present is "better".

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

There is a sense that a degree of "positive liberty" was provided for in the Soviet Union in terms of basic necessities, although that was dependent on political approval.

It must be noted, for example, that the economy of the Soviet Union still hasn't recovered. The best period was actually during Gorbachev. But you won't find either the pro-capitalists or the pro-Stalinists admitting that.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Soviet_Union_GDP_per_capita.gif

A special comment for readers who don't understand logic.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

A person can be aged and irrelevant.
A person can be young and irrelevant.
A person can be aged and relevant.
A person can be young and relevant.