Mao: 40 Years On

'It is right to rebel.'
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Fagburn's Book Of The Year: Stalin's Englishman

Xmas present from my mum.

Gay, drunk, communist... but she still loves me.

PS Fagburn also liked Trigger Warning: Is The Fear Of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech? by Mick Hume and So You've Been Publically Shamed by Jon Ronson.

Two great guides through our modern afflictions of manufactured outrage, make-believe 'offence', and mass hysteria.

Religious News: When Francis Met Fidel

'Greetings, your holiness...' 'Hi, Frank.'

If I repeated some passages from the homilies of the Church Fathers, in the second or third century, about how we must treat the poor, some would accuse me of giving a Marxist homily. ‘You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich.’ These were St. Ambrose’s words, which Pope Paul VI used to state, in Populorum Progressio, that private property does not constitute an absolute and unconditional right for anyone, and that no one is allowed to keep for their exclusive use things superfluous to their needs, when others lack basic necessities. St. John Chrysostom stated that ‘not sharing your goods with the poor means robbing them and taking away their life. The goods we own are not ours but theirs’ ...

As we can see, this concern for the poor is in the Gospel, it is within the tradition of the Church, it is not an invention of communism and it must not be turned into an ideology, as has sometimes happened before in the course of history. The Church, when it invites us to overcome what I have called ‘the globalisation of indifference’, is free from any political interest and any ideology. It is moved only by Jesus’ words, and wants to offer its contribution to build a world where we look after one another and care for each other.’ 

Pope Francis, La Stampa, January 2015.

PS I do wish the media would stop saying comrade Francis 'leads 1.25 billion Catholics worldwide'. A ridiculously hyper-inflated figure. (Fagburn works on the assumption that if you see a SPECTACULARLY HUGE NUMBER! in a news story, you can probably move the decimal point one place to the right and it'll be closer to the truth).

David McLellan: Ardent Gay Stalinst

Andrew Burgin, Facebook.

As well as working at Housmans bookshop he was one of the original Gay Liberation Front members in the 1970s, and also co-founded Gay Switchboard, a phone line service that provided advice and support for people coming out - both groups had offices at 5 Caledonian Road, and both were groundbreaking in the work that they did.

Max had a strong personality with a cheeky and provocative streak - a unique and outspoken man who couldn't fail to make an impression on those he met. Truly he was one of a kind. (via Housmans)

FFS: The Week The Corporate World Turned Rainbow

All is fine.

They love us.

Everything look better rainbow!

PS I am stupid.

Book Of The Month: Takedown

We are witnessing a watershed moment in American cultural history: the sabotaging of family and marriage. Extreme-left radicals have made their arguments and tried different tactics, from the early nineteenth century to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, but at long last they have the vehicle to make it happen: gay marriage. Now, as the legal definition of marriage rapidly changes, the floodgates are open, and the fundamental transformation of the American family will take on new speed and new dimensions. Efforts to redefine the family structure have been long at work, and there have been some influential forces on the far left and communist left that cannot and should not be ignored in that process.

In "Takedown" Paul Kengor exposes these origins, starting with Karl Marx, and traces them through the sordid history of people like Margaret Sanger, Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse and assorted '60s radicals. What were once fringe concepts have become accepted by mainstream thought and are today welcomed by many legislators and judges. Kengor notes how in the not-so-distant past, today's leftists who are attacking traditional marriage would have loudly raised their voices but not caused any real damage. They would have been dismissed with no serious concern as left-wing cranks, crackpot German and Austrian atheistic philosophers and campus agitators. But now, with formal legalization of same-sex marriage afoot, they are getting what they’ve wanted for generations: the literal redefinition of the family.

"Takedown" exposes how gay marriage is serving as a Trojan horse for the far left to secure the final takedown of marriage that it has long wanted, and countless everyday Americans are oblivious to the deeper forces at work. "Takedown" takes no prisoners and bluntly shows the reader that even Karl Marx and his more anti-marriage comrade Engels would be dumbfounded at the mere thought that modern Americans would gladly join them in their rejection of God's design for natural marriage and the family.

Available NOW from WND Books!

PS V. important and wondefully arse-over-tit author interview!!!

Charles Moore: Or Less?

Now that Ireland has voted Yes to same-sex marriage, it will be widely believed that this trend is unstoppable and those who oppose it will end up looking like people who supported the slave trade. It is possible. But in fact history has many examples of admired ideas which look like the future for a bit and then run out of steam — high-rise housing, nationalisation, asbestos, Esperanto, communism. The obsession with gay rights and identity, and especially with homosexual marriage, seems to be characteristic of societies with low birth rates and declining global importance. Rising societies with growing populations see marriage as the key to the future of humanity, so they think it must be between a man and a woman. Only when countries like India, Nigeria or Egypt introduce same-sex marriage will I retract the above.

Charles Moore's Notes, The Spectator.

Luj el ni ankoraŭ teni kandelon por Esperanto kaj komunismo.*

* [Some of us still hold a candle for Esperanto and communism].

May Day: Solidarity!

Ukip: Wake Up Sheeple!

Via Craig McVegas. x

Guy Burgess: Stranger In Moscow

An interview recorded with Soviet spy Guy Burgess in Moscow in 1959 and lost for over 50 years has been discovered.

Recorded by Canada's CBC it is believed to be the only filmed interview with Burgess.

The notorious old poove appears to be very, very drunk.

More footage can be viewed on the BBC News website - a full report will be shown on Newsnight this evening. [Edit: 10.45 in here. LOL intro by Evan Davis; 'He was gay before it was allowed...']

PS Here's Benedict Cumberbatch as Burgess in The Turning Point. 1982 Newsnight feature on the opening of Another Country, with Rupert Everett as 'Guy Bennett'. Thought Alan Bennett's An Englishman Abroad would be on YouTube, but sadly no... [Edit: A devoted reader has pointed out it's on something called Vimto x].

East Germany: With Love

As I researched a book about East Germans (To Prussia with Love), it was impossible to ignore the hankering not only for a lost childhood, but for an elusive sense of community that only seemed to flourish when the Wall was standing. “We fought hard for our little private freedoms and we don’t like it now when this is shrugged off by westerners who have simply inherited their liberty and squandered it,” one historian told me. He teaches in Bavaria now and loathes the smugness of his pupils.

In the western world view, the East was simply uniformly grey. “Commies love concrete,” proclaimed the dyed-in-the-wool Republican satirist PJ O’Rourke after an exhaustive reporting safari — oh, three, four days at least — behind the Iron Curtain. “Everything is made of it,” he decided. “Streets, buildings, doors, walls, ceilings, roofs, window frames, lampposts, statues, benches, plus some of the food.”

Yet that’s not quite how it seemed if you lived behind the Iron Curtain. It wasn’t all O’Rourkian concrete. It wasn’t all grey and it certainly wasn’t North Korea. Allotment gardeners in Brno started to talk politics with each other after long years of silence. In Bucharest you bought a dog as a pretext for chatting freely with like-minded chums in the park, away from Securitate microphones. A nudists’ association on the East German Baltic coast that met under the guise of being a solidarity group with an African socialist state chucked a local party official into the water when he tried to interrupt proceedings. Nobody is quite as resolute in the protection of his or her rights as an East German naturist.

The wonderfully named Roger Boyes, The Times.

This was Fagburn's favourite building EVER, btw.

Such a shame they knocked it down.

Pride: The Daily Mail Sure Does Love It!

Daily Mail.

Also very popular with The Sun!

Is it only right-wing cunts who love this movie?

It's heart-warming, adorable etc etc Zzzz...

'You shall judge a film by its fans as well as by its foes' Joseph Conrad, probably.

PS The wonderfully thick Andrew Scott strikes again!

So it's just a film that happens to be about The Gays, then?

You stupid fuck.

What makes a film 'gay'? Craig Johnson, The Advocate.

PPS Seen the film, buy the t-shirt (that cost £4 to make).

Or you could just give the Orgeave Truth And Justice Campaign £4.

Cut out the middle-man and not buy a shitty, politically vacuous, over-priced t-shirt!

PPPS The Daily Mirror thinks it honks of sentimental, apolitical crap...

Let me say again, the story has all the components for a fantastic film, a tale of unlikely brothers in arms united against an evil enemy in a desperate climate.

But sadly the makers rely on the clichés we see in way too many light-as-a-feather British comedy-dramas – see, in particular, Made In Dagenham, Cemetery Junction and Kinky Boots.

Slap your forehead as the hostile locals are won over by West dancing on the table in their community hall; feel your toes curl as two biddies show their innate lovability by calling their new pals “the gays” or “my lesbians”; and sink even deeper into your seat as the same swap talcum powder tips with a man in a gimp suit.

Bless them! Aren’t they surprisingly tolerant?

And then there’s an overwhelming, cloying, knuckle-chewing score signposting when we’re meant to laugh or cry.

Meanwhile, the grit of the strike – the out-of-control coppers, the vindictiveness of the National Coal Board and the miners’ desperate poverty – are largely glossed over so we can get to another scene of Staunton proving her broadness of mind by dancing in a gay club where (and I’m not making this up) she attempts to talk to a man wearing a ball gag.

The Times.

Yes! It's the feel-good comedy guaranteed not to offend anyone who wanted all miners and queers to be killed at the time!

Mark Ashton.

And finally, from the Morning Star...

Often when a film with LGBT themes is produced there can be difficulties of prejudice along the way and I was curious to know if the prodcuction team had encountered something similar.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the change in attitudes in recent decades, it wasn’t the LGBT but the socialist theme that people had an issue with.

A major US distributor went so far as to abandon the project entirely because it deals with socialism and from an early stage the crew were advised not to use the word “communist” under any circumstances or there’d be stiff opposition to marketing the film in the US.

This presented some difficulty not least because one of the main characters of the film and a founding member of LGSM is Mark Ashton, beautifully played by Ben Schnetzer. At the time he was the youngest-ever general secretary of the Young Communist League...

So in fine - the message of this movie is; the miners' got fucked, but you got gay marriage.

But everything now is alright for ever.

PS Also from the Morning Star, Pits And Perverts: The legacy of communist Mark Ashton.

Cuba: Mas Libre

Yet another revolutionary tradition has been broken in Cuba - a lawmaker voted 'no' in parliament. And it wasn't just any lawmaker.

Mariela Castro, the daughter of President Raul Castro and niece of Fidel Castro, gave the thumbs-down to a workers' rights bill that she felt didn't go far enough to prevent discrimination against people with HIV or with unconventional gender identities.

While it is the first time in living memory that anybody can remember a lawmaker voting against a bill, critics say the vote has more to do with Castro's unassailable position, rather than a changing attitude towards democracy on the island...

Daily Mail.

Fagburn is astounded how many British journalists are experts on the Cuban parliamentary system and its history. 

This is a much-regurgitated Associated Press story all quoting the same American 'experts', about a bill outlawing workplace discrimination based on gender, race, and sexual orientation.

Which went further than any similar US legislation, incidentally.

As this was such big news here I asked Cenesex - Cuba's National Centre for Sexual Education - for a statement.

They said they were a bit confused as the vote took place in December - it's also not exceptional.

But you can't trust these people, they are GODLESS COMMUNISTS!

Anyway here's Mariela Castro's latest statement...

The recent publication in the Official Gazette, Act 116 of the Labour Code, has raised strong criticism associated with the no inclusion of gender identity as one of the reasons against discrimination. These critics, as it was stated in the First Conference of the Communist Party of Cuba, highlight a growing sensitivity in Cuban society regarding the related-issues with the rights and the fight against any kind of discrimination, including gender identity. This situation requires the full attention of our society, and warns about the need to strength the work of the citizens and their representatives to achieve these goals.

From my point of view, it means that this is part of the creative tensions of any revolutionary process. Revolutionizing is not to face the newness by a hit; it is to analyze contradictions, overcome hegemonic social imaginaries that have stigmatized for centuries many people suffering the consequences from social exclusion, it is to work for social structures, including concrete actions, to realize the political will expressed in the Cuban Communist Party documents, and it is working to review the mechanisms on which we build ourselves as historical subjects, from where we produce and reproduce what emancipates and alienates us. Revolutionizing is a brave and generous act that allows us to recognize the contradictions to strengthen our critical awareness in favor of revolutionary social transformation.

I still keep in mind that discrimination based on gender identity remains pending in our legislation, so I applaud the revolutionary critical journalism that has been doing its best contributions. The permanent and committed self-criticism must lead us to keep fighting for what we believe is just enough and necessary for building an emancipated society.

As a committed citizen with this historical project and from my professional and institutional responsibility, I take charge of transmitting more and more clearly the reflections that help our people to discuss about these issues, to keep moving forward in our hopes to conquer all justice.

Oh, and here's an interview with her after last year's vote.

PS The centre photo comes from a series Queerty published Monday, The Secret Homoerotic Lives Of Cuban Men.

Though as all the men were quite happy to have their photos taken and published, Fagburn isn't sure how they can be said to be living 'secret' lives, but that's Americans' rather odd worldview for you.

The photographer, Kobi Israel's last book was a collection of photos of 'hot' members of the Israeli Defence Force, make of that and this what you will.

And finally... a belated happy 88th birthday to Fidel Castro last Wednesday. x

The Hot Grits: The Ballad Of Joe Stalin

The best thing about bouts of chronic insomnia is sometimes you stumble across stuff like this.

Now back to trying to get back to sleep...

Jovanka Broz Tito: 1924-2013

Hi world, thanks for fucking all that up.

Jeffrey Lewis: A History Of Communism In China

I'm done.
Have a nice weekend.
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Fagburn: Readers' Club

This is good.
Bought it in a remaindered book shop.
But that's capitalism for you.

Berlin Wall: Erich Liebt Leonid

Jonathan Jones reports for The Guardian on the row over how the last remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall is having its actual historical graffiti replaced with recreations of some of the old wall's more "iconic" images - such as Dmitry Vrubel's mural of USSR President Leonid Brezhnev kissing East German leader Erich Honecker.
And it is iconic - if you visit post-reunification Berlin you'll see it staring out everywhere from posters to postcards to mugs.
Arguably more homophobic than homosexual ("Two old dudes kissing - ugh!"), it must positively baffle most people under 30.
I wonder if anyone's said that David Cameron wants to ban it?
More from Fagburn later - first I have to try and summon up the enthusiasm to vote...