Rhodesian-born British political theorist
Callinicos's mother, the Honorable Ædgyth Lyon-Dalberg-Acton, was the daughter of the 2nd Lord Acton, descended from the 19th-century English historian Lord Acton. [1]
Callinicos was educated at St George's College, Salisbury... student at Balliol College, Oxford, He also received his DPhil at Oxford. In 1977, Callinicos married Joanna Seddon,[1] a fellow Oxford doctoral student.
Sometimes you grow up in the belly of the beast and come out as one of its fiercest critics.
That said...
he read for his BA and came to know Christopher Hitchens, then himself active in the International Socialists (the SWP's forerunner).
Yeah, please see yourself to the door.
Where they friends? Or did they just know each other through the radical student movements there? At hat time Hitchens was still larping as a revolutionary Marxist.
Oh, he's with that party, I guess they'll take on anyone who's prepared to be loyal to them no matter the allegations.
Yh i think this is a bit superficial tbh unless it has to do with their actual reactions to their class position. If someone is objectively a class traitor then that’s what matters.
Given the Rhodesian background has been brought up, see Joe Slovo: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Slovo
He was a white South African from a Jewish Lithuanian family, an ML, a key theorist of the South African Communist Party, and head of the armed wing of the ANC during Apartheid.
If Joe Slovo were anything but an extreme exception to the rule, they wouldn't have needed to engage in armed struggle in the first place.
The vast majority of Rhodesians and white South Africans are rabid reactionaries as a result of their material relations to the land and people. Being anti-Rhodesian is a heuristic that's going to serve you correctly 99.99% of the time.
All of that goes withouth saying. Apartheid South Africa and white Rhodesia were fascist settler colonial states and the offspring of those societies consequently tend to have the ideologies that they do. But I'd say the exact same thing about most white Americans, Europeans and Australians. White westerners elsewhere liked to distance themselves from white-rule South Africa and Rhodesia as if their shit didn't or doesn't stink. Also it doesn't affect the basic point that what really matters in the end is how they position themselves in reaction to their social position. Are they willing to declass themselves? How do they engage in politics? The latter was not their choice, but the former is. A heuristic is just a heuristic. It's based on probabilities based on experience (and media consumption). But yeh so indeed remain deeply wary of all white south africans and especially rhodesians (modern white south africans have tried to liberalize themselves like the anglos).
For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure I'm far more intimately familiar with the rabid reactionary views of white south africans than the vast majority of people on this site, given that my impression is that it's mostly crakkker yankies, as I've come across a lot of white South Africans (and also some white rhodesians) in my life. Many of those you meet outside South Africa (who also probably let because they didn't feel comfortable living in a post-apatheid society) are more explicit in their racism than they would be inside (e.g. white farmer massacre conspiracy theories, obvs one the surest signs of fascism and white supremacy) but most will still publically espouse liberal views instead of more explicitly white supremacist views. Most were liberal and were therefore racist in that sense we expect of them (they had a tendency of always talking about Mugabe - who became their bogeyman - as the AntiChrist, while conveniently ignoring or whitewashing their own dictatorships and leaders like de Klerk). One weird thing is that I got the impression that alot of young white south africans, born post-apartheid, at least if they're anglo or from cities like Cape Town or Durban, were very culturally liberal, really marketing their progressive social credentials. I could be mistaken though so South African comrades would hopefully educate me on this if so. That being said I've also met some white south comrades who were MLs.
The proportion of the white population in South Africa dropped, but they still have an overwhelminingly superior economic position overall, even if they can be classified in broad economic terms as working class. 8/10 of the richest South Africans are white, if I recall correctly, and South African is one of the most economically unequal countries in the world, with race remaining a fundamentally important factor. This also shows, and the panic that set in during late apartheid where the white media starting talking about how black communists were going to 'kill all the whites' also had a long-term effect.
My impression is that the antidote to this for most white south africans who stayed in SA is that they attempted to get on board the liberal train of forgiveness, reconciliation, etc. Obviously there was a huge amount of selfish calculation here, because most of these people hadn't paid too much mind to the conditions that produced their conditions of life beforehand (or claimed that they were ignorant of them or propagandized) but again, neither do the vast majority of the white people in the West; USAmericans lifestyles and conditions of life are supported by imperial exploitation of an even larger scale than apartheid south africa (not that there's any moral difference). But I'll still support rad yankies, instead of disregarding their political views because of who their parents were.
the Honorable Ædgyth Lyon-Dalberg-Acton
The Victorians really did popularize a lot of sphere and orb-based games, didn't they? From cricket, to marbles, to surname Katamari
stupid post. Engels was a bourgeois failson, Kropotkin was a literal prince
Death to America