Have you ever seen a relaxing X/Twitter thread?

Have you ever seen a relaxing X/Twitter thread? No, me neither. I hardly ever write them. And when I do, it’s usually about bad news. But I recently tried to transmute some upset into celebration… here is the text of that x/twitter thread. 1/29

A surprise to end the year was @JustCollapse founders Tristan and Kate posting across social media that I am a “far right promoter”. Unfortunately, they didn’t yet reply to my emails about their misunderstandings. But I realised I could take that as an invitation to publicly celebrate my decades of Leftiness 🙂 You might not admire that, but it’s a big part of who I am, so here begins an indulgent Lefty thread! 2/29

A highlight was in 2017, co-writing with Jeremy Corbyn and Marc Lopatin the first speech Corbyn gave about why he sought to become Prime Minister. Biographer Alex Nunns thought his best ever. It was part of a 6 week General Election campaign that gained about 20 points in the polls.  Watch here:  https://youtu.be/P0Cr8CVkdMs 3/29

A second highlight was co-writing his speech at the restart of the campaign after a heinous terrorist attack. The mass media were waiting to savage him on foreign policy, so he reminded the British public what our own security services think of the connection between foreign wars and domestic terror. We also used that moment to declare what a responsible approach to the Armed Forces would involve. https://www.ft.com/content/b249730a-4170-11e7-82b6-896b95f30f58 4/29

A third highlight was how my advice on communication strategy came together in one piece of writing – the foreword to the Labour Manifesto of 2017. The thinking was nicely explained by Steve Howell in his book and a Guardian article. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/11/bernie-sanders-jeremy-corbyn-labour-for-the-many 5/29

I went on to train Labour Together, Morgan McSweeney and 50+ Labour Party operatives in the strategic communications methodology I applied. I’d wrongly anticipated there would be a more Lefty political agenda than the one pursued by them with Sir Keir. So I’ll accept the criticism for naivety! Fortunately I also integrated my learning from that into my last 6 years teaching Leading Through Collapse. As I’m moving on, the final 2 online cohorts start soon. Join us? https://www.katie-carr.com/leadingthroughcollapse 6/29

My previous 20 years were mostly focused on international rather than UK politics. In 2004, I wrote the only UN report on the movement variously termed the global justice movement, anti globalisation movement, and the anti capitalist movement, which came to prominence internationally in 1999 in Seattle. Read ‘Barricades and Boardrooms’ here: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/525108 7/29

I was happy to analyse that movement as I’d been involved as a grassroots activist in Brighton, organising groups to protest at intergovernmental summits in Gothenburg, Prague and Genoa. I protested against corporate globalist rule in Genoa and Evian. We pretended to paddle across the channel, and the BBC did a segment on that, so we’ll be on their archive for summer of 2001. 8/29

Prior to that in my PhD research I engaged communities in Latin America who were resisting being poisoned, oppressed and sexually abused by managers in Western multinationals. Conclusions included a far more gender aware approach to social auditing standards. Here. 9/29

Some may not consider concern for women workers on the sharp end of imperialism to be a solely Leftist concern, and indeed it is not. But what was important in this context was defending the rights of trade unions to organise rather than be sidelined by private social auditors or fake worker representatives. That was another key argument in my research and related advocacy. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4029968 10/29

When I became a full Professor of leadership in the UK, I was naturally drawn to Critical Leadership Studies and its anti-patriarchal and anti-managerialist approach. That’s what a Leftist attitude looks like within organisations. I wrote a review article about it (below). I integrate and refine the ideas, making them more widely accessible as #CriticalWisdom, in Chapter 8 of #BreakingTogether. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/sampj-08-2016-0048/full/html 11/29

After Labour’s electoral near miss in June 2017, I took a year off Uni and initially moved to Exarchia in Athens to learn about the Voluntarist and Anarchist ethos involved in both refugee support and mutual aid. I also returned to studying primary climate science for the first time in 20 years, which led to the #DeepAdaptation paper the following July. https://jembendell.com/2019/05/15/deep-adaptation-versions/ 12/29

When the Deep Adaptation paper’s conclusion about the collapse of modern societies due to environmental change suddenly went viral, I decided to apply my anti-patriarchy leadership philosophy in the formation of the @DeepAdaptation Forum (DAF). That meant it was partly governed by its leading volunteers and overseen by a board that was required to have a majority of women and strong representation from the Global South. I quit DAF after 18 months as I wanted both it and the DA movement to evolve according to its participants, not my views, which I guessed might be more radical than others’. If you subscribe to @JustCollapse you could ask about their governance (nicely and constructively). https://jembendell.com/2019/10/31/leadership-for-deep-adaptation/ 13/29 

Although my politics is Left Libertarian (I’ll come back to that), the Deep Adaptation ethos, framework and movement is a far bigger tent than that. Diverse political views are held by people who want to help others because they perceive #societalcollapse as possible, probable, inevitable, or already unfolding. https://jembendell.com/2019/03/17/the-love-in-deep-adaptation-a-philosophy-for-the-forum/ 14/29

Despite the obvious defect of not being invented in Tasmania, it is difficult to see why @JustCollapse cofounder Tristan says he wants to disrupt the Deep Adaptation movement. DAF might not yet be as world changing as some of us hoped but it’s rather nice people doing nice things. I must be the world’s worst “wannabe cult leader”, as I quit the Forum (cult?!) over 4 years ago. 15/29

So @JustCollapse got me to flash my politics. But does Left and Right even matter anymore? Yes, because the Left has traditionally been about recognising that people with less power need to organise to struggle against the powerful to claim more power. Whatever the power structure is, shapes the nature of that struggle. So some degree of anti-feudalism or anti-capitalism is involved in Leftist politics in either feudal or capitalist societies. Just because people who accept corporate ideology on various public issues have hijacked the apparatus of the Left doesn’t mean there isn’t still a need for a real Left. 16/29

What is #LeftLibertarianism? It’s a term for a broad range of ideas and experiments at economic self-governance. It contrasts with the state-centred and sometimes authoritarian Left, which has often been violent towards Left Libertarians. In #BreakingTogether I describe it as I articulate an environmentally-informed left libertarianism (#Ecolibertarianism). I also criticise Right #Libertarianism as incoherent for ignoring corporate and banker power. For instance, Milei is enriching himself and other international bankers by crashing the currency and prices of real estate and businesses, to be purchased cheap with international capital, and then sold on to Chinese investors. Elite freedom to steal is not liberty. https://braveneweurope.com/jem-bendell-what-is-ecolibertarianism-its-the-freedom-loving-environmentalism-we-need 17/29

Many reformist Lefties in the West are not anti-imperialists. For instance, when the Western media says that revolutionary movements in West Africa are bad, they’ll accept that view. They won’t consider how a wave of #antiimperialism across the Global South might be the only way to drive a reduction in resource profligacy in richer countries. I regard Western dialogue on global affairs as mostly shades of comfortably weak opposition to global #imperialism. This is the issue I brought up when interviewed by (the lefty) Novara Media. https://novaramedia.com/2023/09/22/novara-fm-is-it-time-for-post-doom-politics/ 18/29

Some people have become blinkered by corporate media on the pandemic. Therefore they can’t conceive of any Leftist involved in the #MedicalFreedom movement. Or any green. Well there are huge numbers of us. Including the black green caucus. See: https://www.blackcaucusgreens.org/we_say_no_to_mandates 19/29

It’s sad that many people were coaxed to feel disgust at people with different views so they’d join in bullying tactics to pump up #BigPharma’s profits. It was such an obvious use of moral psychology to hoodwink uncritical thinkers, explained below. So it’s no surprise that the @JustCollapse folks decided I must be a “far right promoter” because of my participation in the medical freedom movement. To see how the Left was duped: https://substack.com/@kimgoldbergx1/p-46243495 20/29

The reality is that a true Leftist agenda on the pandemic would have focused on supporting people in the gig economy, on zero hours contracts and in precarious work to be able to make wise health choices. I explained that in October 2021 here:  https://jembendell.com/2021/10/23/its-time-for-more-of-a-citizens-response-to-the-pandemic-for-a-real-planb/ 21/29

There are important discussions to be had about a solidarity-based politics for an era of disruption and collapse. As I explained to @JustCollapse co-founder in an email, people could raise meaningful questions, such as, does left libertarianism identify enough of a role for the state and how to shape that?  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism 22/29

I’m pleased to start having such discussions about the future of politics with people like Helena Norberg-Hodge and Michel Bauwens. When discussing, even if passionate, it’s important to hold all terms lightly – as they are all labels for somewhat fallible and contingent ideas on how to enable universal kindness through the systems we create around resources, participation, trust, reward and exchange. Interestingly, with a commons mindset, Michel is thinking about how to connect and scale the local: https://4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com 23/29

Not knowing much about the history of Left political thought and struggle, nor about the person you criticise publicly, is unfortunate but unremarkable. However, doing that while positioning yourselves as a force for good is problematic. Therefore some people now doubt the substance and style of the founders of @JustCollapse. At least we’ve had an early example of the behaviours that are possible and which we don’t want to support in the collapse preparedness field. There is always the possibility for returning to compassion, curiosity and respect – to learn from our mistakes. 24/29

The problem with toxic online arguments about political aspects of public affairs is that people are then put off from sharing their views and questions. Some people witnessed the recent hostility and told me they are appalled but don’t want to engage in political discussion. Yet we need open dialogue about what politics for an era of societal disruption and collapse might involve. That’s the reason why I decided not to let this unpleasantness go without commentary. So, let’s speak up, share nascent political ideas, and hear from each other! You could even ask @JustCollapse to share their own political ideology – during the mudslinging I didn’t see them clarify their politics. 25/29

To dialogue about politics we need to be curious rather than take cheap shots. For instance, when I lament the fact that people who object to the Covid orthodoxy are gravitating towards the hard right and hard left parties because they are the only ones demanding accountability, I’m not praising the hard right or hard left. I am claiming that electoral results demonstrate the strength of feeling about Covid. When I accurately predicted that Tucker Carlson’s interview with Putin will be the most watched ever, and lamented we haven’t had mainstream media grilling either Putin or other Russian officials, I was not being pro-Tucker or pro-Putin. I want political discourse to improve beyond us not even hearing what the other side claim. Otherwise there is no chance of a ceasefire. Which now, 100s of thousands of deaths later, even the mainstream media are OK with saying. #WarIsOver if you want it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flA5ndOyZbI 26/29

It is not pleasant to be smeared, but fortunately I don’t have much invested in my public reputation as I am stepping back from being an activist scholar on collapse risk and readiness. I am refocusing on music and organic farmer training. Even our grassroots efforts at free organic training for Indonesian farmers were branded “woo” by @JustCollapse cofounder Tristan. That was funny, as we are so far from the woo side of Bali life (Unless you think a tiny enterprise helping to remove poisons from our food, soil and water, while also protecting farmer health, and regenerating soils, is woo). We rely on donations to run the free training, so please check out the non-woo stuff we do!  https://chuffed.org/project/bekandze 27/29

The spat got me thinking about all the people who influenced me in my Leftiness over the years… not the authors I read but the people who accompanied me on the way. So I want to sign off for Xmas with gratitude. In the 1990s: thanks Mum for teaching me some political economy when you did your own degree in your 50s; thanks Tom Davies for introducing me to radical feminist epistemology when supervising my PhD; thanks Marina Prieto for helping me to understand the pragmatic Leftism of Latin American women activists; thanks Alistair Smith for helping me understand the philosophy of solidarity with trade unions in the Global South. In the 2000s: thanks Peter Utting for giving me opportunities to bring radical critique into UN reports; thanks Matthew Slater for introducing me to a deeper critique of (and answer to) monetary systems – something essential to any coherent Left. In the 2010s: thanks Richard Little for helping me understand critical social theory in a way that helped it live in me more than ever; thanks Sam Tarry, Jennifer Robinson, Seamus Milne, Steve Howell, and Marc Lopatin for involvement in the opportunity I had to work in frontline Lefty politics during a General Election; thanks Katie Carr for helping me sense more of the connections between non-dogmatic spiritualities and liberation from the #kyriarchy, and how to relate that back to everyday habits of being. In the 2020s: Thanks to Papillon, Simona Vaikute, and all those who helped me do the research for #BreakingTogether… I had my philosophical framework in place but needed a huge amount of support to get it done. 28/29

Thanks for reading this far! Was this a relaxing X/Twitter thread? A bit self indulgent perhaps? Well, please indulge yourself as well, by sharing what you feel happy or proud about and then thanking people for your journey so far. It doesn’t need to be about politics. #WeAreGoodEnough 29/29