Stance
The magazine focuses on issues of freedom and state control, science and technology. It seeks to counter positions such as multiculturalism, environmentalism and what they see as a recent trend in Western foreign policy: humanitarian intervention.
Spiked claims that it opposes all forms of censorship, by the state or otherwise. Its writers call for a repeal of libel, hate speech and incitement laws. They have criticised laws targeted at paedophiles. Spiked also regularly critique risk society; animal rights; political correctness; and environmentalism. As regards the latter, a particular Spiked target has been what they see as "exaggerated" and "hysterical" interpretations of the scientific consensus on global warming.
Other notable positions of Spiked are their opposition to the post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and Western aid for or interference in developing nations in general.
Spiked has been described by journalists such as Oliver Kamm and George Monbiot of pursuing a right-wing and pro-corporate agenda under a guise of being left-wing. Some have said that Spiked's stance has more in common with free-market libertarians than with the left.
Frank Furedi, interviewed in Spiked, responded that the stance of LM and Spiked springs from the tradition of the "anti-Stalinist left". He argued that the reason why many in the left tradition have difficulties in identifying these ideas with the left is that they completely misunderstand the humanist political position of being progressive in terms of human progress, science, rationality and freedom, and yet be completely anti-state:
...much of the left in the twentieth century tended to be influenced by Stalinist and Social-Democratic traditions, which means they could not imagine that you could be left-wing and anti-state...so they were confused by us. But that was their fault, not ours. It was a product of their own abandonment of liberty in favour of ideas about state control.
Furedi listed Marxist activists, politicians and writers who he said had influenced LM and Spiked, including Roman Rosdolsky, Henryk Grossman, György Lukács, Paul Mattick, Christian Rakovsky, and Leon Trotsky.
The journalist Nick Cohen described Spiked's positions as mere attention seeking:
if you strip revolutionary defeatism of its revolutionary content, you have what modern editors and producers want: contrarianism, the willingness to fill space and generate controversy by saying the opposite of what everyone else is saying just because everyone else is saying it – an affectation most people get over around puberty.
Read more about this topic: Spiked (magazine)
Famous quotes containing the word stance:
“For good teaching rests neither in accumulating a shelfful of knowledge nor in developing a repertoire of skills. In the end, good teaching lies in a willingness to attend and care for what happens in our students, ourselves, and the space between us. Good teaching is a certain kind of stance, I think. It is a stance of receptivity, of attunement, of listening.”
—Laurent A. Daloz (20th century)