12 Comments
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Neil Rogall's avatar

What a great review Shanice. Much better than any others I have read. Keep on writing

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Shanice McBean's avatar

Thank you Neil!

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Miguel González Cabezas's avatar

Thanks for the great review! I am already waiting for the book to arrive and finally read it. I was expecting more proposals about how the left should articulate the question of identities (precisely why I want to dive into it), but anyway until I read it can’t say more.

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Shanice McBean's avatar

Let me know what you think when you read it!

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EverybodyisAnAnimal's avatar

Great review. I'm glad I am not the only one who thought Bastani missed the point entirely about harassment. I would love to read a longer take on Novara media, I sometimes feel that they have a monopoly on how far the British left can be.

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Mark Bergfeld's avatar

Thanks for this. Have just started listening to the audio book version. You are strong writer Shanice. Keep it up!

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Shanice McBean's avatar

Thanks Mark! Really appreciated 🙏🏿🙏🏿

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JAMES REDMOND's avatar

You’ve a decent burgeoning critique there of the problems that often face “radical” media. I still hugely respect the Novarra project and all they have achieved, but no doubt feel they’ve fell into the trap of both subverting and then becoming wedded for survival to algorithmically driven formulae.

I wonder does Democracy Now represent a different mode of media to you? In that a lot of its talking heads come from “within” movements and are less ivory tower? I’ve definitely drifted from Novarra as a news source since the pandemic.

I live in Dublin and it was very much daily wallpaper for my circle during the Corbyn era. Absolutely impossible to not notice how utterly devoid of any content or discussion of the six counties on the show historically.

I’ve probably heard more discussions on Ancient Rome than the still live issue of scandals of occupation here. And this, despite shows like Say Nothing marking them out as topics of HUGE global interest.

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Nathaniel Morris's avatar

Hats off to @beansrevolution - this post is a great example of about 4 different ways in which Substack is a better place than Twitter for anything even approaching complex thought. Not that you get the same audience reach on here, of course; but do we really want every leftist's random brainfarts reaching a potential audience of hundreds of thousands of 'normal' people? Especially if Musk's new algorithms are likely gonna try and deliberately boost the more ridiculous and off-putting inter-left hairsplitting to increase popular hostility to 'wokeness' or whatever... Maybe keeping the more complex debates between closed doors - ie. in the pub or on here! - before broadcasting a more reasoned, common message out to the world on social media might just be a good pivot in these frightening times...

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Shanice McBean's avatar

Thank you! Glad it's useful!

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Alana Lentin's avatar

Does she cite Houria Bouteldja’s new book? She also talks about the need for unite the Black/POC and white working classes (les beaufs et les barbares) but she’s not concerned with the media and questions of identity politics and much more with a theory of revolutionary change.

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Shanice McBean's avatar

She doesn't - I've read Bouteldja's book - very good! I think my first note on here was a short review of it

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