Where is Modern Movement?

All the Spiked-baiting earlier today got me thinking (and not about revisionist interpretations of Marx): where has their front group, Modern Movement, disappeared to? Earlier this year anti-expansion campaigners were terrified at the prospect of the Living Marxism cult's latest offering: a bunch of ex-RCP types demanding we all keep flying lest it stop progress.

For those of you who didn't get the memo, Modern Movement, Spiked and the Institute of Ideas are all part of the amorphous Living Marxism network. LM, which itself spun out of the Revolutionary Communist Party, is built around the cult of Frank Furedi, a radically revisionist Marxist humanist who thinks that progress = unalloyed goodness and that anything which stops progress (like toning down the number of flights we take) is part of a Culture of Fear designed to keep us all in check.

Things which go against progress include: telling people about Swine flu, the environment, debating the merits of GM food, Plane Stupid and labour rights (except when they don't - LM/RCP types are nothing if not fluid in their thinking). Brendan O'Neill, editor of Spiked, really really dislikes us, and goes out of his way to invent new angles on the same, tired old story: greens are anti-progress and anti-fun (and a bit posh). It's like the only thing Furedi and his clan learnt from Marxism was to take tractor production as the sole measure of happiness.

For a while I thought that MM might have flown to Ireland to support the Thomas Cook workers, given that we've been down at Vestas and the Spiked/MM/LM/RCP lot seem to think that supporting green jobs meant opposing workers in high-carbon industries. This idea of a just transition is why the Workers' Climate Action movement has been helping everyone suffering from climate and labour issues, including the workers at the Visteon car plant and Lindsey oil refinery (workers who should, by MM's analysis, be our uber enermy, but of course, aren't) while MM have contributed sod all except some pithy text on an online magazine no one reads.

Then I stumbled upon a lead, which might indicate where Modern Movement have gone. The above video, posted on Myspace, suggests that Suzy Dean and others have reformed as an American thrash-rock band - a move I can only describe as progress. I can’t help but feel I’d feel more warmly towards them if they’d been doing this outside parliament. After all, who can forget Voltaire's famous saying: "I may not agree with what you say, but I will die to defend your right to say it loudly and angrily through the medium of thrash-rock. Dude."

P.S.: Joy of joys, I've just been handed a delightful video by another LM/RCP/IoI front, Worldbytes. Worried about the rainforests being destroyed? Chill out man, it's progress, says a very stoned Jay Kaplinsky.