I was on the phone to my lovely girlfriend earlier, she’s asking me for a favour.  I make a lewd suggestion as to how she could pay me back.  “Eugh Damien,” she replies.  “You’re so base.”

Words come into the common usage, and words go out.  Some words stick around for longer than others.  I’d like to nominate the adjective ‘base’ for re-entry into common English.

It’s got a nice, monosyllabic, punchy feel.  Unusually for such a clipped word, it has a Latin root – but it retains it’s Romance sophistication.  The last half syllable is like a hiss, a sting in the tail.  But the first half, well that begins with a mampy ‘B’; you can inject it with all the same brute force you would with ‘booom’, ‘bbrrap’ or ‘bust’.

Say it a couple times.

“Base”

“Base”

Feel your lips pop on the ‘B’.  Think of that old acid house sample: “Drop the bass” – okay, that’s not the same meaning as ‘base’, but they’re verbally indistinguishable.

“B’ase!”

Yeah, heavy.

Now, when you see something nasty, you can say: “Eugh look, that’s base man!”  If you’re cussing off some girl, you can pull it out of the blue: “That bitch is base.”  People will know what you’re talking about, it’s almost onomatopoeic. It fucking is, I swear! At least in so far as onomatopoeia can describe something quite unphysical.

Shit.  It could even be a superlative, in a kind of reverse, post-modern ‘bad meaning good’ kinda way.  “Oh bruv!  This tune is base!”  Or: “That was the basest night out I’ve had in ages.”  But I think that it would be good to spend a while just using it in it’s original glorious meaning though.  Leave the irony to the kids.

What a fabulous word.

Here’s a quote from the Brothers Karamazov:

“There is force that will endure everything,” said Ivan, this time with a cold smirk.

“What force?”

“The Karamazov force… The force of the Karamazov baseness”

“To drown in depravity, to stifle your soul with corruption, is that it?”

“That, too, perhaps…

]]> http://damiengayle.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/eugh-youre-so-base/feed/ 1 blazingtemple http://damiengayle.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/far-right-clash-with-muslims-and-anti-fascists/ http://damiengayle.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/far-right-clash-with-muslims-and-anti-fascists/#comments Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:27:13 +0000 blazingtemple http://damiengayle.wordpress.com/?p=47 Continue reading →]]> It seems that there were clashes in North London tonight, after anti-fascists and muslims responded to far-right demonstrators outside a mosque in Harrow.

Guardian

BBC

The protests were called by the recently notorious far right group the English Defence League (EDL), in association with the less well known Stop the Islamisation [sic] of Europe (ISOE), to mark the eighth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

They were met by a fierce counter protest, including members of Unite Against Fascism (UAF), mobilised to ‘defend the mosque’.

I would have gone; not that I care that much about the mosque, but for a reflex aversion to fascism.  Instead, since I missed it, I’m going to develop some thoughts on the tactics of the groups involved.

The funny thing about this one is that each side accuses the other of being the fascists.

SIOE ‘exists to legally combat the overt and covert expansion of Islam in Europe.’ They believe that Islam and democracy are ‘incompatible’, but that, nonetheless, ‘Islam is being favoured above indigenous European cultures and … Muslims are being selectively protected by politicians and lawyers’.  To compound it all, there’s all that funding from Saudi Arabia ‘for the building of mosques and other Islamic institutions in Europe and elsewhere’.

EDL are at great pains to point out that they only advocate ‘Peacefully Protesting Against Militant Islam’.  Yet they are faced with violent reaction from ‘Muslim Thugs’ backed by a shady Government funded militant group in the shape of UAF.  In fact, that was the tenor of all their online reports of attempts to demonstrate: they were merely a harassed group of concerned citizens trying to exercise their right to free speech.

UAF are, of course, the gallant anti-fascists.  UAF supporters have assembled alongside Muslims to oppose pretty much every rally called by the above groups.  They are, to some extent, a mass movement, supported by politicians, popstars, and probably your mum.  They’ve taken action, sometimes violently, to make sure these demonstrations can’t take place uninterrupted.

This is, of course, the no platform policy in action. The problem being, the EDL claim that they are not a fascist party, and they deny any link with the far right BNP.  They claim to be merely a group of ‘English people who are tired of our Government letting Terrorists preach Murder on our streets.’  Of course, there is quite clearly something funny going on.

For a start, I haven’t seen any terrorists preaching murder on my street recently.  To be honest, I really wasn’t aware that it was a problem.  This seems a facile excuse to victimise a minority community.  Muslims are, I imagine, in a conflicted enough situation as it is, without others making efforts to further alienate them.

The SIOE also claims to condemn racism as ‘the lowest form of stupidity’.  But, they argue, Islam is a pernicious ideology that will result in totalitarianism.  Their cause is not racial, they say, but ideological.  I think there is obviously a racial slant, as their appeal to ‘indigenous European cultures’ above shows.

Interestingly, the SIOE website posted a set of ground rules for their protest, including pre-approval of chants and placards, and banning political parties.  Why do they feel the need to tell their supporters what they can and can’t say?  A quick look at the comments section on their site will give you your answer.

Of course, it’s a difficult one.  As a rather committed atheist, I wouldn’t automatically jump to the defense of a religion under fire.  It’s the tactics employed by SIOE and EDL that I find worrying.  While I am generally against religion, I am generally for people believing what they want to believe, so long as they don’t bother me too much about it.  Yeah, I ‘ll try to persuade them religion’s just a con, they’ll try to persuade me that I need to see the light. We’ll both be nice about is, but some things never get resolved.

But SIOE and EDL are provocative.  They are trying to deliberately stir up tension against the Muslim community in general and creating divisions. These groups display a massive cultural insecurity. This insecurity is spreading.

Europe is not being overrun by Muslim fundamentalists; Sharia law is not being adopted in our criminal courts; we needn’t be worried about a Europe wide caliphate. Yeah, Saudi Arabia might be spending a few petrodollars to build mosques in Bradford; but let’s not forget that we’re spending £billions a year on a full scale military occupation of the Muslim country of Afghanistan, having just about bodged a workable economic colonisation of the Arab Muslim country of Iraq.

Nevertheless, the situation in this country is dire.  These internecine clashes in society weaken us all.

According to figures revealed by the TUC, the top 1% of earners accounted for pension tax breaks of £10bn, out of a total £37bn set aside by the Treasury.

Now, it’s true that equality and fairness are out of vogue in British politics, and although we’re ruled by a party nominally for ‘Labour’, they have shown that they are still intensely relaxed about people becoming very rich, despite the financial crisis.

But this is redistribution of wealth of a particularly disgusting kind. It’s social justice turned backwards, government sactioned social injustice.  That top 1% accounts for those earning £150,000 or above.  Do people earning that much money really need to be subsidised by the rest of us?  Of course not.

Most people my generation probably won’t even have a chance at retirement.  With the increasing debt burden being accrued by today’s government, and the already spiralling costs of looking after an aging baby boom generation, we’ll be working until they drag us us off, soiled and drooling, to the hospice (- some time around 2086, allowing for improvements in medical technology).

And even many older workers who already have pensions are technically fucked.  Company final salary pensions are a thing of the past, pension funds systematically gutted by corporate bastards trying to make a quick buck. Those private schemes still standing are in a precarious position.  The state provision is minimal, barely above subsistence.  Even now I’m starting to see more old people at work as I’m out and about.

In general, everyone here at ground level is too busy worrying about debts to think about saving for the future.

Up in the penthouses things are a lot rosier.  Not only are they enjoying all this tax relief, but they’re making the most of it: today it comes out that directors at leading companies have seen their pension provisions rise 23% in the past year alone, according to information also helpfully provided by the TUC.  Out of 373 directors surveyed, the average pot was worth nearly £250,000 a year; average total, £3.4m.

The state pension is £95.25 per week for a single person; that’s £4,953 a year.

Damn, I better write a book or something.

Factory output is up 0.9%, and bunch of mergers saw the FTSE rise to over 5,000 by the end of the day.  Overall, economists predicted that the UK economy start growing again at a rate of 0.4% this quarter.

So is it really all back to business as usual?  You’d think so from the financial pages.  Still, it all seems a bit suspicious to me.  A look at the details reveals that things might not be so rosy.

Let’s not forget that the economy is coming up hard from a massive adrenaline shot of public money.  Not only are interest rates at historic lows, with central banks virtually giving capital away; but the most troubled major banks remain in public hands.  Even those financial institutions that have avoided nationalisation have benefitted from massive taxpayer subsidies through quantitative easing – a suitably meaningless title for a very expensive policy.

There’s money everywhere, and it’s got to go somewhere.  Central Banks have pretty much thrown buckets of money at the bankers, who need little encouragement to use it to make more money.  The bubble is being quite dramatically reinflated.

It all amounts to a massive transfer of wealth from the ordinary taxpayer to the global financial elite.  The liquidity is being provided for corporate largesse on a sickening scale, as we can see from the attempted takeover of Cadburys by Kraft and the merger of Orange and T-Mobile.  Don’t forget that every time something like this happens, a bunch of white guys in expensive, but still tacky looking suits pay themselves a shit load of cash in bonuses, pat each other on the back and fuck a stripper each.  Money flows upwards, that’s why the rest of us are all still skint.

I guess as long as all the money just stays in the hands of a select few that solves the inflation problem a bit.  After all, how much can any one person actually realistically spend on themselves any given day?

The problem comes when someone points out that this money is even flakier than the value of the complex financial instruments it has replaced.  Sophisticated investors know that all this supposed capital is just entries on balance sheets, with no real assets to back it up.  In fact, there’s not even spurious assets (like CDOs) to back it up: it’s all guaranteed on the future national incomes of, well, pretty much every ‘first world’ country in the G20.

The USA is the big guarantee in all of this, as the holders of the global reserve currency.  All it would take is one oil shock, terrorist attack or new war: some new, unexpected strain on the Federal Budget.  This sucker could still go down, to paraphrase someone or other.

No wonder investors are turning to gold, which has crept past the $1,000 per ounce mark for just the third time ever.  Gold is usually regarded as a safe bet when you expect the monetary system to fall down around your ears. I reckon they’re on the right track.

Why, even the celebrated neoliberal financial fuckwith Alan Greenspan has changed his tune regarding the stability of the markets.  He now agrees that the current financial crisis is unlikely to be our last.  Well, no shit Sherlock.   Former Fed Chairman Greenspan, arguably the leading architect of the global free for all that’s got us this shit, also predicted that our economy will be hit worse than others because “Britain is more globally oriented”.  He then also, paradoxically, went on to warn against regulation and protectionism.

Cheers Greenspan, you cunt.

I remember old Boonie when he was education correspondent at the Financial Times and I was an editorial assistant there.  He was something of a hero of mine: when all there journos there would be bashing the phones trying to get a lead, the Boonester would be leaning back, feet resting on a cluttered desk, staring into space – as though it was all somehow irrelevant.

I think Boone may even have pipped me to the post when it came to ‘most insouciant member of the FT staff’.

Anyway, Boonie (I never actually called him that, by the way) got shipped off to Afghanistan, because he made such a balls up of being education correspondent.  He and I were both victim, in the end, of the FT’s zealous purging of anyone who might be remotely cool and imaginative.  Now he’s freelancing out in the sandpit; and, from the looks of it, he’s going from strength to strength!

Jon Boone, I salute you!

Some Corporation news exec has decided that it’s a good idea to invite BNP fuhrer Nick ‘Glass Eye’ Griffin on to Question Time.

This is apparently in keeping with the BBC’s ‘impartial’ position.  According to a BBC spokeswoman, “By winning representation in the European parliament, the BNP has demonstrated evidence of electoral support at a national level. This will be reflected in the amount of coverage it receives on BBC programmes such as Question Time.”

Now, there is a long tradition of denying a platform to the far right in the UK.  Credit due to Health Secretary Alan Johnson who has gone on record to say that he will not share a platform with the fascists.  He’s drifted far, but he hasn’t totally forgotten his roots.

You see, this no platform tradition has been wavering, even amongst the those on the left who you would expect to be its strongest advocates.  My soon to be classmate Tom Jackson is one such wavering socialist.  He claims that the no platform policy needs a ‘rethink’.  “The BNP have no [sic] achieved some level of success, suggesting that the previous tactic of relegating it to the sidestream of British politics is not working,” says Tom.  He reckons that the best way to counter the BNP is to give other politicians the opportunity to argue against them on the telly, concluding: “I believe the best way to defeat the BNP is not to act like fascists ourselves, but to challenge them in free debate.”

Permit me to disagree.

Firstly, I don’t trust our mainstream politicians to make the case against the BNP in any cogent or convincing way.  For decades the mainstream parties have themselves exploited a racist agenda, using ‘race’, ‘immigration’ and ‘asylum’ issues to mask the real reasons for deepening inequality and increasing social problems in the UK.  This has prepared the hearts and minds of the British working class for far right parties like the BNP.

The Tories have always had a fascist wing, and Labour is terminal decline.  Since effective trade unionism has been illegal since Thatcher, there is no credible left wing replacement on the cards.  This has led a lot of white working class to turn to fascism, doubtless attracted by the socialist aspect to National Socialism.  But the nationalism and racism remains an integral part and the BNP are not shy about it.  Their voters know what they stand for.

These are sad days for British politics.  What passes for representative democracy in this country is really a fucking sham.  Few vote because there are no viable alternatives offered by mainstream politics.  The BNP can get seats because their supporters are militant and will always turn out to vote.

Secondly: tolerance isn’t a virtue, patience is a virtue: tolerance is a principle, and it has to be defended.  Tolerance is not just a flabby acceptance that anything goes; it is an ethical demand that everyone respect everyone else’s rights and liberties.  The BNP cross that line when they start to talk about racial superiority and sending people ‘home’.  Their views are not legitimate, and should not be aired.

The BNP are a physical threat to personal freedom and cultural diversity in the UK. Their stated goal to repatriate all ethnic minorities in the UK goes beyond simple ‘free speech’ to an explicit promise of violence, i.e. forcible deportation of millions of people.

The hatred and intolerance that the BNP peddle are poisonous to a free society. They not only hate, but want to eliminate anything different from themselves. They eventually want an ethnically pure nation, but propose as a stop gap solution to institute a kind of apartheid regime where whites have priority of access to all public goods – jobs, public services, bus seats, etc.

I strongly believe in free speech; but consider this. A man is threatening you with violence, and you have every reason to believe him. “Just wait,” he tells you, “as soon as I’ve got my strength up, as soon as I’m certain I can defeat you, I’m going to kill you.”

What would you do? Would you wait?

My bloggings petered out a bit back.   Now it seems I better get on the case.  Welcome to my eponymously entitled stream of pointless ramblings : Damien’s Blog

I’m feeling quite nervous about all this now.  What if everyone’s well better at writing than me?  I thought I was pretty okay, but –

Richard Partington has a most professionally laid out blog.  My girlfriend thought it looked like something out of the the Guardian.  Richie’s won awards for his work too, as his CV shows.  Sorry to hear that unemployment’s seen you drop to a ‘New Low’ Rich, the jobcentre is a rite of passage for any new graduate these days.  Give it a few years and you’ll be an old pro with the fortnightly job checks.

Another award winner with a great portfolio is Alex Richman.  He loves up his football; which, as a total football illiterate, makes me rather unable to comment.  Still, I like the notion of the ‘new media social online interactive community web presence 2.0′, very droll.  It’s not all fun and games though: the account of the ‘Future of the Media’ talk at York Uni made sobering reading.  I’ve wondered if my enthusiastic pursuit of City’s pricey journalism MA isn’t a bit foolish too.

Another Alex – popular name – coming large with the satirical Illegitimi Non Carborundum.  According to Wikipedia – that eternal friend of the lazy hack – this is Latin for ‘don’t let the bastards grind you down’.  Now that’s a sentiment I can totally agree with.  This is quite nice stuff really; I like a good piss take.  A future Private Eye editor in the making?

Gregor Hunter is an internet guru, giving us the benefits of his insight through his Map of the Internet.  Lots of very knowledgeable commentary on internet phenomena like Twitter, Google and Tiny Url; as well as on the media generally.  I don’t even have a Twitter account.  The limits of my online knowledge extend to clicking the ‘I am over 18′ button.  Maybe he’ll let me copy his online journalism homework…

Last, but by no means least, we’ve got Tom Jackson’s The World is Red.  This is more my cup of tea: proper political stuff.    My sympathies lie with the left too; and yet, funnily enough, I can’t help but disagree with everything Tom says.  Especially alarming is his comment on The BBC and the BNP, a subject close to my heart.  Tom, have you never heard the antifascist battle-cry No pasaran? More on this later, I think.

Really, I’m quite surprised that I acually got a place on the course.  City Uni’ s newspaper journalism course is premier league.  It costs a wad of cash and takes on only the best candidates, making me something of a wildcard.  My journalism portfolio is by no means as prestigious as this lot; I haven’t won any awards; I haven’t even blogged in ages.

In fact, my whole journalism experience can be summed up in a few weeks work experience at local papers, a few nightclub reviews (- or ‘gurnalism’, as my friend puts it), and one whinging polemic for the NUJ.

Shit.