“The society which has abolished every kind of adventure makes its own abolition the only possible adventure.” Paris, May 1968


Thursday 21 June 2012

Bone blog will be missed.

As I have said many times before, blogging is far from being the most important political activity; it's not even the most important on the not very important list. This blog certainly has no pretensions beyond being a bit of a hobby for me and an opportunity to amuse or irritate the two old blokes and a Jack Russell who bother to read it. But some blogs are more relevant and influential than others. Over the last few years Ian Bone's blog has provided sharp analysis and frequently on the spot reporting on everything from the G20 to the student rebellion to last summer's riots as well as being an online home for the libertarian left. Most importantly the blog was a huge source of FUN. Now after five years of pounding the keyboard Ian has decided to call it a day. The blogersphere will be that much the poorer.

13 comments:

Dr Llareggub said...

I am not so sure the Bone blog ought to be missed. Blogs have an important role in producing ideas and providing news that the orthodox media omit or suppress. The Bone blog hardly did this and most entries were copied from Guardian/BBC sources plus expletives. Oh yes, there was plenty of hostility towards the toffs, and repititious comments about 'scumbag cunts' for which the blog ought to be remembered. But little originality and much distortion. Discussion was tribal and simply followed the formula of attacking sources rather than addressing the content of arguments. A simplistic following of a leftist narrative on most issues, with hostile and abusive responses from the regulars towards anyone who disagreed. I don't find the abuse so terrible, but rigid censorship - in 6 months I collected 30 pages of censored comments - of replies to unfounded abuse is unacceptable in a radical blog. Thus when Bone took up the Travonne Martin killing, and his followers described Zimmerman (a one eighth black peruvian hispanic)as a white KKK supremicist, the objector was blasted for being a 'racist cunt' with no response permitted. And whilst Bone selectively supported the summer riots, and the Arab Spring, alternative analysis was suppressed. I sent content from Icelandic comrades, who described how they had defeated their government, ended the constitution, but this was censored out. Mockery of the Cambridge swan incident was deserved. The Bonists misreported higher education and the reality of class bias, going for a simplistic division between toffs in higher education and the working class. But then Bone, has never been part of the working class.I could go on. The Bone blog was a platform for old style leftist censorship and misinformation, supported by a variety of psychotics. We are all better of without it.

Gitane said...

Agree some but differ much. Bone's unspoken attack was very much targetted at the dull hegemony that the establishment ( old lefty rhetoric admitted but relevant here) has become. There is a wealth of new humanitarian thinking and analysis that has never found expression in Oxbridge.
The " fucking rich cunt" was encouraged to keep the dialogue alive to those who would normally back off from the intellectual debate that Bone is more than capable of holding. The blah, blah Derrida said, Marx said etc is very much alive in the comments but reduced to an essence of praxis and understanding from a point of view outside of academic and may I say it the middle class experience. The idea that the world is complicated is a falsehood; class war it was and class war it is. The rich vs the poor.
I shan't miss the stuntism or sometimes pathetic media projects, but the independent and often enlightening interventions into top line media issues were often funny, sometimes hilarious.
Ian Bone is no prole amd definitely not working class , but these days who is?

Vintage Scans said...

Erm...I am.
Also everyone I work with.

Gitane said...

But WDI are they conscious of their proletariat class? Or are you conscious for them? No one I work with understand what proletariat means. They're workers all but are not a class as such, they do however understand who and what the rich are and most of them want to be just that!

Vintage Scans said...

Ah, that's a different matter, Gitane.
Class exists regardless of class consciousness.

Gitane said...

Consciouness is power, existence is relative to consciouness, therefore no power no existence.

Vintage Scans said...

Is that from the Deepak Chopra Book of Meaningless Waffle?

Gitane said...

No it was out of a Xmas cracker that I stole from the pocket of an inebriated dandyist after the Xmas piss up.I also got one of those fucking ridiculous plastic moustache combs that proved marvellous at getting fleas eggs out of Fido's coat.

Vintage Scans said...

I find the opposite; that nit combs prove rather adept at removing wax from one's moustache.

Gitane said...

Fatally wounded I exit stage left.

Vintage Scans said...

Oh, were we arguing? You'll have to explain the plastic comb thing then and I can think up a decent riposte.

INCUBUS said...

I share the same sentiment-
IAN BONE’S BLOG: GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN!
http://incubusblog.wordpress.com/

Tod Palin/Llareggub need not apply...

Dr Llareggub said...

The Bone blog has gone, but the same information can be obtained from the Guardian. So the arch censor - Incubus - has already took control of its next incarnation and contributions will be restricted and heavily censored. If a blog has any value, it should open up discussion, face counter arguments. The Bone blog censored almost every response to Incubus's hostile comments to comrades. And even here he employs his Stalinist denuciations, revealing names. Yes. I am Tod Palin as well as Llareggub, and why not reveal my other identity too? I have a credible history of contribution to anarchist struggle.My stuff is widely available in anarchist circles. No fear I will not be attending plagiarism from the BBC/Guardian or engage with Incubus' attempts to heap plausibility on the next generation of would be middle east dictatorships. There is a class war to be fought; we need to open up more to the class, not establish a Stalinist personality cult.