Hacker News Reader

Comment by AsyncAwait | Hacker News Reader

> Whilst there have always been loony left, misandrist etc. articles in the Guardian

Speaking as someone on the left in the UK, I can assure you the Guardian has been more and more centrist as time goes on. I think the confusion is that they do in fact publish loony articles sometimes on social issues, because guess what? That's easy to do without really addressing any economic problems.

On the economic front they're as centrist as they get, regularly attacking the likes of Corbyn in ways that the Sun is starting to envy, smearing Assange once they're done profiting off him, printing puff pieces for the Saudi Crown Prince etc. The Guardian is no darling of the (grassroots) left, I can assure you.

View on HN

I'm regular reader and I'm not sure that I would agree with you. My problem with the guardian is that it doesn't currently know what it wants be.

The other annoyance - the frivolous clickbait articles.

They have articles on privacy yet have lots of trackers themselves. They're really no better than what they preach, at least the last time I checked.

Still, having said that, I prefer to read a variety of news sources instead of one to hopefully get a more balanced view.

> They have articles on privacy yet have lots of trackers themselves. They're really no better than what they preach, at least the last time I checked.

Isn't that a side-effect of having business and editorial separated? The individual journalists don't have any power to change the templates their CMS uses.

It would be useful if they made it clear to their own readership that they do it, too. Instead it just plays up to a certain readership.

> I can assure you the Guardian has been more and more centrist as time goes on

I don't disagree! Put an article in front of me on most hot topics and I think I would have difficulty telling you what publication it was from - it's the same cynical, smug, faux-progressive yet in reality complacently bourgeois, finger wagging, 'if you don't agree with us you're wrong/old/racist/uncool' attitude from all of them.

I was looking at their Wikipedia page and I noticed they supported internment in Northern Ireland during the early phase of the Troubles - that's hardly challenging the establishment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Northern_Ireland_...

[Internment was probably one of the daftest ideas implemented by a UK government for a long long time.]

Edit: Note, I am a regular Guardian and Observer buyer - occasionally get the Times for a bit of balance (though still in mild shock over contents of the Telegraph my wife bought at the weekend as everything else was sold out!)

Monbiot still has a regular article there, he's as far left as it gets. Maybe a holdover from the past but the Guardian is still really keen on nationalisation, regulation, state control over everything, the EU etc. The modern left doesn't argue in terms of direct state control anymore, just indirect control through vast and vague regulations.

he's as far left as it gets.

I'm going to cut you some slack and assume you are American, young, or both.. because as a guardian reader from the 1970s onwards I can tell you this is just not correct

> Monbiot ... is as far left as it gets

Not at all. See The Dangerous Cult of the Guardian by former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/28/the-dangerous-cult-o...

> George Monbiot, widely considered to be the Guardian’s most progressive columnist, has used his slot to attack a disparate group on the “left” who also happen to be harsh critics of the Guardian.

Media analysts Media Lens have written a lot on Monbiot too. http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/search-t...

I'm not sure that refutes anything. One of the hallmarks of far left views is the intense infighting between rival factions that seems to accompany them. Far left types attacking each other despite agreeing on nearly everything is not new.

He isn't traditional left wing. I assume he's a Green Party supporter, as most of his articles are on environmental issues. To prevent environmental damage, regulation of industry is often necessary.

Support for nationalization is nowadays limited to natural monopolies, and opinion polls show it's quite popular.

EU support isn't traditionally left wing either: historically, the left wing of the Labour Party (e.g. Tony Benn, Michael Foot, Peter Shore, Barbara Castle) all opposed membership. It was a Tory government which took us in, and Margaret Thatcher campaigned for our continued membership.

>Monbiot still has a regular article there, he's as far left as it gets.

Ah come on now.

>Monbiot still has a regular article there, he's as far left as it gets.

Monbiot is pretty much a social democrat. He may want to nationalise some infrastructure, but he is quite a long way away from being as far left as it gets.

>On the economic front they're as centrist as they get, regularly attacking the likes of Corbyn in ways that the Sun is starting to envy, smearing Assange once they're done profiting off him, printing puff pieces for the Saudi Crown Prince etc. The Guardian is no darling of the (grassroots) left, I can assure you.

That's the modern left: centrist (or, rather: "establishment corporatist consensus") on economic issues, centrist on societal issues, loony on SJW issues -- and pro-war/imperialism/against enemy-du-jour in establishment millitary-industrial issues.

quite a caricature they have become. It was still different when Occupy Wallstreet happened.

I agree with your characterization, but I'd call them 'corporate left'. There's still a grassroots left-wing movement in various countries that focuses on economics, the environment etc. it's just that they don't really have access to the sort of capital that would allow them to establish print/TV media in this day and age. For that you need corporate backing and corporations are not going to back such projects by definition.

Yeah, that's true. But they don't get any coverage, and are usually on the fringe of politics. And you have to go search for their media (e.g. things like Counterpunch, NLR, and so on), as opposed on having their messages shoved down your throat (like with the corporate left).

What's the difference between a societal issue and what you consider to be a SJW issue?

Well, as I see it, for the large majority of visible SJW types, their causes are LGBT rights, feminism, veganism, X-shaming, positive-X-image, and so on.

That is, (some token pro-black/immigrant activism aside, when it's comfortable) more or less non-problems, in an age where the respective groups never had it better and acceptance of them was never more in vogue and established (from Hollywood to major news outlets to laws).

Judging from 99% of their public output, most SJW could not care less for the vast numbers of homeless, the battered middle and working classes, for prison conditions. In fact the same "good souls" would go and openly mock "white trash" -- and they'd do the same for the "latino/black trash" if it wasn't frowned upon.

The difference between real societal issues and SJW causes, is that the former are cross cutting (across niches of people) and fundamental, while the latter are trendy and for the most part inconsequential today (when they don't get into the bizarro, e.g. the "cotton ceiling" thing).

Only a small brave minority fought for gay rights in the 60s and 70s, when gay was a dirty word. But now that it's in fashion, everybody fights the "token" gay fight, for ever more inconsequential rights. It's almost as if they're not pro-LGBT, they just take the winning side, and use it to prop their bios and popularity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com