Political Personality of the Year?
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Thomas Piketty, Russel Brand or Nigel Farage? Who has had the biggest impact?
Lets hear your nominations and reasons.
I'll throw in a maverick – Naomi Klein – for her book on climate change, despite its weaknesses, directs attention to the the cause problem – capitalism.
Over to you, now comrades
No competition Piketty defends capitalism with 'science' and Farage is a nasty little prick edit : What about Clifford for his letter in the Standard?
Unfortunately, Farage has probably had the biggest impact on the political landscape in Britain. But not for any new or interesting ideas.It's the three R's yet again. The Right always Rise in a Recession.
If there had been a Yes vote in the Scottish Referendum, it would have been Salmond but, as is, it was Farage's year. Piketty, Brand or Klein don't even come close.
Perhaps Farage is a bit parochial choice, applicable only to the UK scene…In Spain it would be maybe Pablo Inglesias of Podemos, other individual countries will have their own particular person. Can i suggest a more global impact was made by Pope Francis and his papal reforms and pronouncements?Or even Putin as a mainstream leader on the world stage.
To the Pope's anti-poverty and anti-inequality campaign we can add his environmental concern In October he told a meeting of Latin American and Asian landless peasants and other social movements:
Quote:“An economic system centred on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it. The system continues unchanged, since what dominates are the dynamics of an economy and a finance that are lacking in ethics. It is no longer man who commands, but money. Cash commands.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/27/pope-francis-edict-climate-change-us-rightwing
If money is God then the vatican is certainly the house of God http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/how-rich-vatican-so-wealthy-it-can-stumble-across-millions-euros-just-tucked-away-1478219 Catholics are the biggest hypocrites of them all
SOYMB blogged earlier this month with this post and picture about the Vatican's wealthhttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2014/12/how-rich-is-vatican.htmlBut i still remember Anthony Quinn in that movie …The Shoes of the Fishermanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shoes_of_the_Fisherman
Just tweeted the pope with that info, just in case no one has told him yet.
Brand has twice as many followers as the pope
Obviously not all the Pope's followers are on Twitter…there are over a billion who claim to be at least nominally RC. But for those who want to understand the politics of the Catholic Church, you can read James Connolyhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1908/09/cathsoc.htm
Quote:the man who imagines that in the supreme hour of the proletarian struggle for victory the Church will definitely line up with the forces of capitalism, and pledge her very existence as a Church upon the hazardous chance of the capitalists winning, simply does not understand the first thing about the policy of the Church…when it realises that the cause of capitalism is a lost cause it will find excuse enough to allow freedom of speech and expression to those lowly priests whose socialist declarations it will then use to cover and hide the absolute anti-socialism of the Roman Propaganda.In other words, we may well find ourselves with strange bed-fellows on the morrow of the social revolution
alanjjohnstone wrote:In other words, we may well find ourselves with strange bed-fellows on the morrow of the social revolutionI don't know about the morrow of the revolution, but judging by the time it took them to rehabilitate Galileo it might be a few hundred years after it.And don't forget Pope Pius XI's bull of 1931 "Quadragesimo Anno":
Quote:We make this pronouncement: Whether considered as a doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains truly Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points which we have mentioned, cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the Catholic Church because its concept of society is utterly foreign to Christian truth.If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.And you want to hear what he said about "Communism" !Actually, we agree with him, don't we? So I nominate him for political personality of the year 1931 or did that go to his fellow countryman Mussolini?PS In the end of course Connolly turned out to be a good Catholic rather than a true Socialist.
Perhaps this Marx will disagreehttp://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/cardinal-marx-pope-francis-has-pushed-open-doors-church
Nigel Farage has been named “Briton of the year” by The Times, which hailed his “game-changing” politics. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-named-briton-of-the-year-by-the-times-9946110.html
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