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Lady Sovereign - THE VOICE OF NEOFASCISM!

Posted about 5 years ago
*When asked to comment, Soveriegn replied, "Oi! Nobody gives Ali G dis much sheet!"*Fellow MOG "Fedge":http://mog.com/Fedge/blog_post/37020#comments recently posted about some unsavory, some may call "racist" imagery in the music video for the song "Love Me or Hate Me" by the Polly Pocket of British hip-hop, Lady Sovereign. *Let it be noted that it is nearly impossible to contend that images of apes stripping a luxury sedan and Asian ladies pushing faux Prada handbags do _not_ conjure racist stereotypes. Why? Because they fucking _do_.*However, I would contend this goes far beyond simple "racism." Mlle. Sovereign is the sassy young voice of a political movement spawned by the likes of Jean Marie Le Pen and modern working-class politicos of the East End. In the single in question she growls, "I'm the one with the non-existent bum/Now I don't really give a...ugh!" Nonplussed by her stunning articulation of the notoriously anti-tuchus Counter-Enlightenment, the philosophical cradle of fascism, national socialism, and really bad facial hair, the listener _must_ conclude that this little ditty is anything but nonsense. It is, in fact, a paean for the modern integralist movement, as defined by social anthropologist Douglas Holmes in his book, "_Integral Europe_":http://www.amazon.com/Integral-Europe-Douglas-R-Holmes/dp/0691050899/sr=8-1/qid=1168240685/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-0564199-0770201?ie=UTF8&s=books.(More about Holmes and the brilliant, politically-charged work of Lady Sovereign in comments)
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Comments (33)

  1. Wozniak
    Wozniak says I'm waiting... ;)
    Permalink posted 01/07/2007
  2. Smooth Hegemon
    Smooth Hegemon says In his not-quite-tome on the subject of modern European xenophobia, _Integral Europe: Fast-Captialism, Multiculturalism, and Neofascism_, social anthropologist and professor at SUNY Binghampton Holmes describes what he calls, "integralism." It is a new political order that emerged in full in late 20th century Europe, particularly among the working and lower-middle classes of France and the UK. Integralism is a worldview as well as political ideology, which carries fascistic and nationalist overtones and is marked by a narrative of alienation and a need to reassert a community where these individuals “belong.” Holmes also claims that integralism is distinct from more common notions of the "radical right" because it eradicates the line that divides the political “right” and “left.” Holmes describes the essence of what he means by integralism in the first chapter: “Integralism as I initially encountered it had four registers: as a framework of meaning, as a practice of everyday life, as an idiom of solidarity, and, above all, as a consciouness of belonging linked to a specific cultural milieu.” These are the four “voices” of integralism and how it is supposedly manifested in society. *On page 145, he also mentions that the fifth voice of integralism, while debated in the academy, is surely that of "phat beats."* Holmes goes on to claim that racism and xenophobia are the _symptoms_ of integralism and white nationalism, not the source. He argues that "fast-capitalism," or rapid globalization accompanied by the outsourcing of blue-collar manufacturing and manual labor employment and the demand for a technologically savvy workforce, is at the root of the reactionary problem. *Holmes also notes in a new preface that he did not steal the term "fast-capitalism" from the scantily-clad all-female Rage Against the Machine tribute band of the same name.*
    Permalink posted 01/07/2007
  3. Wozniak
    Wozniak says Love your sardonic wit. As an aside, that book sounds really interesting.
    Permalink posted 01/07/2007
  4. Smooth Hegemon
    Smooth Hegemon says Dude...so pushy! I've been out of school for a few weeks. It takes time to get the bullshit factory rolling again!
    Permalink posted 01/07/2007
  5. Wozniak
    Wozniak says I'm only messing. And avoiding research.
    Permalink posted 01/07/2007
  6. Smooth Hegemon
    Smooth Hegemon says Fair enough...I was only trying to mask my slow wit. _Integral Europe_ was read for a seminar on post-socialist Europe, and while the theory was interesting as well as Holmes' case-studies where he personally interviewed the very strange leaders of radical nationalists, his terms are pretty poorly defined, making it somewhat tortorous to slog through. By far the better book I read for that class was _Life Exposed: Biological Citizens After Chernobyl_, which describes how the nuclear accident and collapsed economy of the Ukraine converged to create a situation in which ill-health amongst its citizens became a commodity for them to exchange with the state. I learned a really important lesson from this book: DO NOT RIP ON FOUCAULT IN CLASS. He is in post-mortem bliss from all the cock-sucking he continues to receive from the academy.
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  7. Wozniak
    Wozniak says You must tell me just how you ripped on Foucault and what the punishment was.
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  8. Mike the Knife
    Mike the Knife says No. Wait. Let's get this back to Lady Sovereign: British, white, working-class female rapper/MC Louise Harman, raised in a high-rise council estate - the U.K. equivalent of America’s low-income urban housing projects. She records for the famed U.S. hip-hop label Def Jam. So, based on the video imagery, we're to assume that she's co-opting a popular African-American style of music to surreptitiously forward a divisive/racist/pro-separatist agenda in some perversion or inversion of Marcuse's "One-Dimensional Man," wherein a technological society assimilates and defangs potentially-dangerous cultural manifestations? I'm just askin'...
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  9. Smooth Hegemon
    Smooth Hegemon says All I can say is that I took a page out of Swift's _A Modest Proposal_ and wiped my ass with it. :)
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  10. Mike the Knife
    Mike the Knife says Hmm. I smell a solution to world hunger: We cook all the rabble-rousing pop musicians and eat them! (No more need for Band-Aid!) As Lady S. herself would say, Smooth, "Fank you!"
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  11. Wozniak
    Wozniak says I'd love to wipe my ass with shitty ethnographies. Wait...Smooth stole my idea.
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  12. Mike the Knife
    Mike the Knife says Satire is in the eye, ear, nose, throat and bum of the beholder?!?
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  13. RGM
    RGM says
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  14. Anonymous says When Smooth tells you you're full of shit, you stay told. Apparently she felt she had to drop on me a clutch of genuine intellectual bombshells (albeit employed in a pseudo-intellectual manner), rather than the one that would probably have done the trick. I'm easily flummoxed. (Never went to college on scholarship, myself, among other deficits.) But I'm flattered. However, I would contend that Smooth's humbuggery is essentially irrelevant. Lady Sov is peddling, among other bullshit cited by Smooth, sincere but unthinking racist attitudes which stand a good chance of being absorbed, and magnified, by listeners who won't really think about them either. It seems to me that we now live in a culture where this sort of patently racist imagery gets a shrug, and a pass. Mogger Scotty B calls it a desensitizing. I'll keep my oversensitivity to this sort of thing, if that's what it is, thanks. But, please Smooth, feel free to pay me this sort of back-handed compliment any time you like.
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  15. Anonymous says See Fedge go crazy with the Cheez-Whiz "here":http://mog.com/Fedge/blog_post/37020#write-comment.
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  16. Anonymous says I believe that Lady Sovereign is employing / deploying what a well-known scholar once termed the "Ambiguity Card". This essentially involves wrapping a nasty sentiment in terms that are open to endless interpretation and re-interpretation. It allows the user of the card the moral wriggle room needed to deny, if need be, that they meant anything at all, good or bad. Numerous examples of the use of the "Ambiguity Card" may be found by the curious here on MOG. A good "rule of thumb" for defeating the intended effect of the "Ambiguity Card" is to assume that if something seems nasty, it probably is nasty. If it turns out your interpretation is inaccurate, that's just the "tough shit" the user of the card deserves. ... In my view, invoking Sacha Baron Cohen even jokingly in this context is not only obfuscating but close to sacrilegious. Cohen is very tricky, yes, but attentive viewers have no doubts whatsoever of the moral hygiene of his comedy. ... Ali G is a character, a caricature actually. Lady Sov's type is the object of his satire.
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  17. Anonymous says (Mogger Anna says elsewhere: "Unless there is an English expression I am not aware of, the monkeys there don’t have to represent people with non white colour of skin.") Well, yes, Anna. Now that you mention it, there _is_ an English expression that employs the image of a monkey to insult those of African descent. The expression is: #_*"Monkey".*_ ...
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  18. Smooth Hegemon
    Smooth Hegemon says Seems MOG is only allowing viewers to see certain parts of my posts today. Clearly the bolded text at the very top is not showing up which says: *Let it be noted that it is nearly impossible to contend that images of apes stripping a luxury sedan and Asian ladies pushing faux Prada handbags do not conjure racist stereotypes. Why? Because they fucking do.* Holmes' thesis actually feeds your argument about LS representing the views of neoskinheads/the new right in Europe (and many would argue, America). In order to avoid sounding like a pompous, bloated member of the academy, I made a few jokes. Mostly because I don't credit LS or Jay-Z with reading works of recent social anthropology, I thought it would be fitting to make it serious _and_ funny. My mistake. Furthermore, please do not make fun of me as a "scholarship kid." I have worked my ass off for most of my life to get where I am, working 20+ hours a week on top of a fifteen hour course load. If it were not for many *need based* aid packages, higher education would not have been an option for me.
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  19. Anonymous says ("Let it be noted that it is nearly impossible to contend that images of apes stripping a luxury sedan and Asian ladies pushing faux Prada handbags do not conjure racist stereotypes. Why? Because they fucking do.") *_This_ from a debate coach?* I thought you _*must*_ be joking. In fact, you say you were "joking". But a joke can exist on many levels and cut a lot of ways, and this joke was a little sloppy in my opinion , if your intention, ultimately, was to be understood as making serious points on the issue, rather than to be thought of as "that funny Mogger we like". If I get an interpretation wrong here, which I evidently did, well, I've kind of missed your whole point, no? My mistake. ... My reference to scholarships was not intended as a denial of anyone's hard work _or_ intelligence, but if anything, an affirmation. From this point forward, you need take no offense at "scholarship" remarks, unless you want to. ... The invocation was made mainly to deprecate my own not-terribly-intellectual (I've never cited any outside sources), but very dogged and sincere, need to make myself heard on this subject. Unlike some I could name, I'm not using this subject as a prop with which to demonstrate my 20-mule-team intellectual prowess and/or education and/or incredibly droll sense of humor. ... Further, I submit that if you thought you were being "Swiftian", you misapprehend Swift, and his little "eating babies" tract. Your piece can easily be read, and in fact was, not as support for the notion that some in the the white "lower-class" have it in for people of color, but as a "laughing wild" denial of such an idea. You were the one, after all, who said that your main source was poorly written, and said nothing in response when Woz spoke of "shitty ethnographies." Consider your loyalties having been, with good reason, in doubt. ... Also. the notion that Sov knows at bottom what she's doing, let alone is programmatic about it, is off-base _*even as a satirical premise.*_ As noted several times already, her intentions are irrelevant to the fact that her spew may indeed influence others.
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  20. Smooth Hegemon
    Smooth Hegemon says I am not going to get into a pissing match over the sloppiness of my attempt to further your argument and do so in an entertaining way. If it offended in form or content, my apologies, but I don't think it calls for this level of vitrol. I already made it clear that my intention was not to be backhanded in any way - if you want to call me a dumbass, then just call me a dumbass. Let it be noted that I did not claim _Integral Europe_ was a poorly written source. It's argument is solid and supported by fascinating case studies of leaders like Le Pen, it is just difficult to fully comprehend because the author is trying to suss out an entirely new theory of modern European political thought.
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  21. Anonymous says You cited Holmes' failure to define his terms. Sounds like a major intellectual reservation to me. Sounds like an undercut. Sounds like you're calling him, just a little, a dumbass. ... And what of allowing one of your readers to assume you thought the work "shitty"? _You_ have put yourself in a position that obliges you to take responsibility for such a misreading, and correct it. ... While you are at it, a personal request from me: please tell Wozniak that Fedge thinks he's "a douchbag". ... Hope I'm not getting too vitriolic there.
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  22. Anonymous says I have just consulted a very interesting scholarly work, and feel obliged to point out that Wozniak is, in fact, "a douchebag", with an "e".
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  23. Smooth Hegemon
    Smooth Hegemon says I will make the following points before I wash my hands of the subject: 1. I mentioned in my original comment about Holmes' work that the vaguely defined parameters of his concept of "integralism" are poorly defined makes it a _hard_ book to really dig into. This shortcoming is common in works of original research. It was not an indictment of the argument presented in _Integral Europe_. 2. I find the idea that I have a 'readership' pretty funny and highly improbable. If anyone wants to know more about the book, I'll send them my copy or the review I wrote for my seminar course 3. My overall point is this: Lady Sov's video is undoubtedly racist, and a good case could be made for her association with the integralist/radical right in Europe. I just don't think getting pissed off at people who don't agree or aren't riled up by it is particularly of consequence. If I got on the warpath about every unflattering Jewish or Middle Eastern stereotype that showed up in the media, I wouldn't have time for anything else. I didn't find her impressive enough to purchase her music before, and certainly won't know. I think Hattie made excellent arguments as to why she'll be showing up on some shitty Celebreality show in 5 to 10 years on your original thread, Fedge. I think it is more important to become involved in efforts that try to deal with the tangible problems of systemic racism and classism. When I am teaching my inner-city 3rd graders, most of whom will not be white, I will make sure one of our class projects is to send a letter to Jay-Z and Lady Sov. asking them what the fuck is up. No joke.
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  24. Anonymous says Allow me to quote the prominent scholar, Fedge McMoggington, as seen elsewhere on this site: "When I hear a good counter-argument, one that is not riddled with factual errors, I will be sure to acknowledge and support it. I’m *kooky* that way. What can I say. Haven’t heard it yet." ... Well, I've just heard Smooth's solid counter-argument to various charges I recently made, and/or _seemed_ very much to be making. *Consider yourself acknowledged and supported, Smooth.* ... I hope you will continue to observe the distinction between my getting pissed off at things as toxic as racism, and my getting pissed off (sometimes mistakenly) at remarks you have made. And I hope you will continue to observe the distinction between my getting pissed off at remarks you have made, and my getting pissed off at _you_. I am far from pissed off at you.
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  25. Anonymous says ANYBODY ELSE GETTING _REALLY FUCKING SICK_ OF _LOOKING AT,_ AND _THINKING ABOUT_, LADY _FUCKING_ SOVEREIGN? #_LET'S GO GET A BEER, EVERYBODY!!!..._ ... #FIRST ROUND'S ON ME!!! ...
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  26. Smooth Hegemon
    Smooth Hegemon says Count me in! If I'm going to be moving to a borough shortly, I really need to hone my "drinking and sitting on a stoop at odd hours" skills.
    Permalink posted 01/08/2007
  27. Kevbo
    Kevbo says I for one enjoyed all the words and stuff and things above and stuff. I am further convinced by what has been said above that my life will continue without related detriment should I choose not to investigate further the oeuvre of the formerly cited Lady Sovereign who was thankfully hitherto unknown to me. In this case, continued ignorance will be bliss on my part while Lady Sovereign's ignorance will continue to just be ignorance. Hey! There's a page missing from my copy of Swift's A Modest Proposal! This does indeed call for beer.
    Permalink posted 01/09/2007
  28. Anonymous says Seriously, Smooth. I'd be so grateful if you'd delete that photo of Sov, and/or find another. Gives me the willies like I can't even say. It's become Pavlovian at this point.
    Permalink posted 01/09/2007
  29. Anonymous says ... Believe me, Kev, you don't want that missing page _back._ Just "take my word for it", and buy a replacement copy for yourself.
    Permalink posted 01/09/2007
  30. mybluewristband
    mybluewristband says I haven't read any of the comments, but I'm just going to assume from the photo of this Lady Sovereign character that she probably doesn't have anything philosophical to say.
    Permalink posted 01/10/2007
  31. Anonymous says mybluewristband , So, you vote "NO", on changing her name to Lady Philosophereign, huh? Good call. Noted. And just as well. Didn't look like Sov was _ever_ going to give "Socrates":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates the run for his money everyone had hoped for. Except in terms of CD/download sales. _("Sheeeeee-it!!!"_ said the white girl. "Compared to what Lady Sov already be pulling down?! Socrates broke-ass "foundation o' Western thought" shit ain't doin' _NO bidness! No bidness a-TALL!!!")_ _(*SnnnnnnnnAP!!*)_ ... *Come to think of it, somebody check Socrates' papers. We might just have to _"try and deport him"!!_*
    Permalink posted 01/10/2007
  32. Jess Horrible
    Jess Horrible says Very interesting. Now I've got to go read her lyrics, because I can't understand her most of the time... thought it was better that way, but perhaps not. I grok the concept of integralism, would certainly recognize it on the street, and will even, perhaps, buy it a beer if it comes to the bar with us. But only to make it feel included. Despite the fact that he is trying so desperately hard to change the world through humor, Sascha Baron Cohen is no pillar of society. And I will leave it at that.
    Permalink posted 01/12/2007
  33. Anonymous says Thank you, Jess, for what I take as compliments directed at our reflections and statements. The lyrics won't be very enlightening, though, because they aren't all that racist. Her video images carry her poison. As for Cohen, "fair enough".
    Permalink posted 01/13/2007

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