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Miserable Old Town of London

Will | 28.02.2012 15:31 | Occupy Everywhere | Public sector cuts | Repression | Social Struggles

Although there are tons of moans you can have about Occupy London, it's sure as hell depressing to see the bile, spite and joy people have been sticking up on blogs and media articles cheering on the eviction. Is it just London or also the rest of England that's become so servile, uncritical and miserable?

What do people want then - to work hard, to kiss the bosses ass and to pay through the nose for every single thing you need to survive because that's the dignity of the great individual doing it for him/herself?

People just seemed to obsess on Occupy costing taxpayers money and that they couldn't understand what it was about because there were no bullet point manifestos. These two things seem like reflections on the simple-minded self really that can't think and speak critically (even if you disagree with Occupy) and wants to hate any bogeyman that seems to take money away from you although you put it as taking money from the vague mass. It's an incredibly infantile mode of being that stamps it's foot and says 'that's my hard earned money' and 'I don't understand it so it must be bad!'.

(As an aside, and this was always gonna be the dismal failing of the 'we are the 99%' strategy. is that it's just so obviously a bad strategy because we are not all a 99% soundbite. We are a much more complex set of communities and individuals and politically we need to organise with this in mind. I have very little in common (apart from the alleged 99% tag) with cops, screws, low-paid but bastard civil servants, middle-class gentrifiers struggling to pay their mortgage in Dalston, TFL ticket inspectors, shitty Housing Officers, community-minded do-gooding artists, buy-to-let working class investors, mean spirited petit-bourgeois shop keepers, liberal reformist University lecturers and so on...)

Capitalism is just so good at masking the fact that it is a society run on just another set of ideas. Seemingly so good that people have forgotten this and so seem a bit closed-minded to anything alternative that could encompass radical changes to people's lives in a way that things were more equal and less disastrous for the planet itself. It was noticeable how when the austerity regime began to kick in (and some people seemed to be begging for it because 'we all did so well out of the previous good times'...blah blah) the then current vogue of greening production and consumption went out of the window!. It's dog eat dog world now, eh?

All of these attitudes would probably explain why the unthinkable happened a long time ago when first Boris Johnson won the Mayor of London post and then Cameron was elected to power. Seems pretty indicative of how people are spineless and crave simple soundbite culture and wacky leaders against a possible more intelligent and common sensical society that could deal and negotiate complexities and foment of ideas and invention.

If we could put the population of London into a time machine and take them back to 1974 for just one day, people would probably have no idea (or even reference points) of how to deal with all the alternative and radical ideas that were floating around in and out of mainstream society re: family, sexuality, waged labour, housing, culture and so on.

If we were to take the population of London from 1974 and whizz them forward to 2012, they would similarly fail to recognise the society they landed in and if told that this was where all their struggles would lead would probably commit mass suicide!

So big up to anyone in London and beyond who isn't like this...and there are a lot of us wading and surviving in the London Pig Shit City, the mecca for the super-rich, over-regulated and dangerously policed and the ever ongoing triumph of the look over the content.

The Rat Race gets tougher everyday. Keep on running til you drop or...Or what? That's up to us to discuss and plan and plot.

Will

Comments

Hide the following 9 comments

You are your own answer

28.02.2012 16:25

The fact that you can't understand why the majority of people are celebrating the demise of Occupy London is a perfect example of why:

It failed
It never communicated its message well enough
The people involved were not representative of the wider populations views
The camp was there too long (way after there was even a modicum of support)
Future camps will not have any broad support



We have grabbed defeat from likely victory.

Londoner


@Londoner

28.02.2012 22:15

Your four points don't make much sense to me:

'It failed". Failed to do what? It was a space for debate and activities. I think it was nothing more than that. That's about all that can be expected in these dismal times.

What are 'the wider population's views'? Are they similar to the ones I outlined in my post? If this is the case then you are right. I can't understand 'why the majority of people are celebrating the demise of Occupy London' even if I think Occupy London was pretty crap. It just shows what a bunch of uncritical and servile dimwits people have become that they would pour out their hate and bile on something as well-meaning as Occupy London. Not only pouring out this miserable crud but using the crud to celebrate there own embracing of reactionary and infantile outlooks on life.

"The camp was there too long". Too long for what? It should take the bilious outpourings of the media and twitters and Guardian comments types seriously and pack up because some people like to say boo to a goose on the Internet ad infinitum. The well-wishes of thousands of people received at the camp as just as relevant to the struggles to change to world than those resigned to their own mini-stake in the shit pile.

'Future camps will not have any broad support'. How lovely that will be then, as viewed through your hopeful crystal ball, as we all embrace our own individuality and entrepreneurism and screw everyone else.

Londoner. What would you suggest people do if they believe in justice and sharing the world's common wealth and resources?

Will


Let me explain

29.02.2012 08:20

It seems my points were not simple enough for some to understand so let me elaborate.

It failed
The point of the camp despite what is being claimed now was to achieve "change", no change has taken place.

It never communicated its message well enough
The wider public never understood what the camp was about, what it was trying to achieve.

The people involved were not representative of the wider populations views
The camp quickly fell into the 'activist mindset' that is completely divorced from the views of the majority in this country

The camp was there too long (way after there was even a modicum of support)
Self explanatory

Future camps will not have any broad support
The reputation of the concept is now tainted with the general viewpoint being "the usual hippies and eco warrior types"

Londoner


pretty massive clue

29.02.2012 12:51

a pretty massive clue came during the eviction when your own media liaison woman spoke to camera on the bbc complaining that the media had focussed on the negatives, on the "worst parts of the camp, the homeless people". my words not hers. if that's an attitude that members of the media group think is acceptable to share on national tv i am glad you are gone.

sherlock


We've heard that attitude before

29.02.2012 13:48

Remember the Democracy Village on Parliament Square? And the local homeless people who found it a safe place to shelter being castigated as 'freeloaders' by the activists? Some attitudes don't change.

Happy Camper


"Remember the Democracy Village on Parliament Square?"

29.02.2012 15:35

What the one full of grasses ?

PC Plod


@ Londoner again

29.02.2012 16:40

I was never a big fan of Occupy London for so many reasons. I won't list them here. Some are just obvious. But in some ways I am sad that it has gone. I guess if we are to think about whether anything or nothing changed then we can think by 'change' that we can include the hundreds of people who came down to find what they could they there. For some people nothing new, for others something new perhaps. Maybe in the exchange of ideas, something moves and something changes as people at least see a likeminded basic sense of trying to think and do something about how crap the world is.

I thought this 'Open Letter to Occupy London' was quite good on trying to deal with the horrible activist mentality that some people brought to Occupy London.

 http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/12/490403.html

But my original post was more concerned with the fact that lots of people seemed to relish in the eviction for all sorts of reasons usually spiteful and reactionary and wondered why such an outlook is so popular and fashionable. It was not that they just weren't interested in it but they enjoyed the removal of the protest camp and cheered it on. Not only this but it also seemed to be accompanied by the usual cliches of 'eco-warriors' (so 90's!), 'soap-dodgers', 'posh students', 'homeless people', 'nutters', 'druggies; etc. All quotes from various comments on the WWW. I doubt most of those who so easily hate actually went anywhere near Occupy. If they did, they would have found a huge variety of people trying to do something as an experiment.

Londoner, you never really did explain 'the views of the majority in this country' which you wrote twice. Are they like the ones that I was talking about in the first post - miserly, mean spirited, closed minded and so on. Because that was my main concern really.

Take some time to patronise me again please.

Will


What put me off occupy london

01.03.2012 00:28

and all the other occupies-except Oakland-was the word peaceful and fact that letting the cops fuck you over was fine and that if you resisted you are violent. The rich won't give up their stolen wealth and criminal power peacefully - so it's time to fuck them up non peacefully-in order to live in a peaceful world. Ironic but true.

Anon


Part of the problem

01.03.2012 08:41

Somebody here wrote,

"they would have found a huge variety of people trying to do something"

Regretfully that was not the case. I was incredibly excited by Occupy when it started feeling that this was the start of something big. Owing to work commitments I was able to get down until about two weeks after the camp was set up and within an hour or so of arriving was devastated to find all the same old liberal shit, the attempts to 'take control', the usual stoned losers who think the world owes them a living and the pathetic who tell anyone who listens that Mi5, Mossad and the rest are monitoring them.

Occupy was a massive missed opportunity it's as simple as that.

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