hugorune wrote:
There's hope for Russel Brand.
Maybe he's just in it for the chance of getting extra shags.
Fucking hell, how many women does he need? Save a few for the rest of us, Russell.
I believe that Icke and AJ probably began with sincerity. Particularly for DI, it would be rather insane to quit a very profitable BBC sports presenter's job otherwise (have you ever seen what Gary Lineker is paid?). But I think somewhere down the line to some extent more cynical behaviours set in.
But that doesn't bother me all that much, I'm not bothered about how much money DI and AJ, or anyone else makes. There is no force or coercion involved in what they do, I suppose you could argue that they prey on weak and / or gullible people, but I'm not entirely sure that's true. I think that they generally make money from people who are genuinely concerned about the state of the world, and think or hope that buying Icke's books or contributing to AJ will make a difference.
This is much more of a concern for me - are they making a difference? I would inevitably conclude that they're not, at least not any more. I think there was a time when people did need a kick up the backside, or to be 'woken up', but that time has long passed. People are well aware by now that the world is fundamentally corrupt. I have seen this change radically over the last fifteen years from the point where people were utterly resistant to the idea, to where you see the notion completely dominating comments sections of newspapers, and now even being printed in the New Statesman.
What people who have a public platform should be doing – and I would include the likes of Noam Chomsky and Jon Pilger in this, although Chomsky is getting a bit old in the tooth, to be fair! – is promoting alternative socio-economic structures, and being actively involved in the organisation of activism and the creation of these structures at a grass roots level. At the very least, they should be pushing for direct democracy – Chomsky does state that he believes in anarcho-syndicalism and the “democratisation of institutions” – but I don’t see any evidence that they are.
It’s all very well and good cataloguing the abuses of the elite in infinitesimal detail. But if you have a large public platform and you're not seriously and explicitly working towards an alternative, and promoting it, and putting yourself on the line with getting involved with it, you might not be part of the problem, but you're certainly not part of the solution in my estimation.
@feather's new avatar 
: and his fellow pricks:
