11 August 2008 | The Royal Gazette

Jonathan Starling's online blog about Bermudian current affairs has seen a dramatic rise in visitors recently with almost 30,000 hits during July. The staunch PLP supporter — who leaves the Island to return to university this month — told The Royal Gazette what sparked his interest in politics and how he views the current Government's form.

****

It's not every day in Bermuda that you get to interview a self-proclaimed libertarian Marxist. Perhaps there are a few more out there in the furthest reaches of the Island but for now Jonathan Starling — blogger, proud PLP member and soon-to-be postgraduate student — is the public face of the far left.

And recently the 29-year-old, an aquarist by profession, has been making quite a name for himself.

His blog Catch A Fire — set up for him by Limey in Bermuda creator Phil Wells — started off quietly in January 2007 but is now getting about a thousand hits a day.

His posts on the issues of the day, from Premier Ewart Brown's Playboy Mansion excursions to the need for more militant action from disgruntled workers, have been getting noticed by those at the top and sparking heated — sometimes frenzied — online debate.

Not bad for someone with dyslexia who considers himself "not very computer savvy".

"I have no illusions that my blog is popular," he says of Catch A Fire, which is named after the Bob Marley album. "It's just a place I put my ideas."

Plenty of people have wanted to read those ideas lately — to the extent that the number of hits a month jumped from about 5,000 in May to 15,000 in June and 29,500 in July.

"It's not a popularity contest," Jonathan, the son of Scottish expatriates, insists. "The ideas are there for my own benefit of clarifying my own thoughts. But also I have an ideology and I would like to see change."

He launched Catch A Fire because he felt most of the Island's online journals were anti-PLP.

"A lot of it is hysterical and very over the top," he says. "There are some that I consider serious and thought-provoking blogs.

"My blog itself, I actually started it up to rival Christian Dunleavy's blog politics.bm.

"I consider his to be one of the best blogs out there but ideologically we have different views. I decided it was time for a pro-PLP blog."

He's certainly dedicated to the cause — after working his shift at Bermuda Aquarium and Zoo he spends about an hour-and-a-half each day writing posts and monitoring comments from readers.

He doesn't even have the internet at home so has to pop to a neighbour's house to post his online entries.

Recent posts have tackled topics as diverse as topless sunbathing (he supports it for Bermuda on a "sex positive" basis), drinking alcohol (he does not enjoy drunkards) to this light July 24 offering: Xenophobic Diversions from the Class Struggle. Try reading that after a few drinks.

When he went away on vacation recently he politely asked visitors to continue the debate in his absence. "Try to avoid using obscene language and avoid personal attacks," he requested.

He returned to a glut of 233 comments, ostensibly in response to a 'thread' on the historic labour march in June, but which had descended largely into uncontrolled name calling. "I am not exactly amused," chided his next post.

So how does he have the patience to deal with the extremists — from both sides of the political divide — who hang around on his blog trading insults?

"I enjoy the comments more than anything else," he says. "I think in a debate you have to be careful not to be too strict because that shuts down discussion. It's good to have people who disagree. I think what happened there is absurd extreme positions. I think they got it out of their systems though.

"Right now we still have those same people discussing on threads and it is a bit more reasoned. I think the blog is achieving its goal of greater communication."

Some of his own posts have proved controversial within his party and he was told recently that Premier Ewart Brown claimed he had a personal vendetta against him.

He's unsure whether Dr. Brown actually made the comment but is adamant he has no axe to grind with the PLP leader.

"I do think he is the best leader for the party out of the MPs that we have," says the former Saltus student. "I have a lot of respect for him. I think he's incredibly intelligent. I would love to play a game of chess with the guy. He plans moves way ahead."

He's not too concerned to have butted heads with others in the PLP whom he terms the "orthodox party apparatchiks" who try to stifle debate and are intent on deference to party leaders.

"I think they only retard the party," he says, adding that he has no truck with "democratic centralism", i.e. being expected to toe the party line.

"I think that's counterproductive for the party. I think it's necessary to have people who are independent thinkers. It's always better to have an opposition within your own party."

Jonathan, from Smith's, joined the PLP aged 18 — just days after the historic 1998 election which swept the party to power. He voted in that election for the first time, flying back from Trent University in Ontario on a plane he thinks was paid for by UBP supporters. "Ironically, a lot of people voted for PLP," he smiles.

He found a warm welcome among PLP members but was disappointed that change didn't happen faster once the party became government.

He remains frustrated that its policies are barely distinguishable from the Opposition. "They are both very much in the political centre," he laments.

Jonathan is probably as far from the political centre as it's possible to be.

"I would call myself a communist," he says, before explaining that he became politicised as a child after realising that most of the black friends he had in his neighbourhood lived in working class homes, while his white school pals enjoyed "richer enclaves".

"Eventually I started to question why that was," he explains.

A defining moment came in about 1989 when the Soviet football team came to Bermuda and he got to meet them because of his dad's involvement with Bermuda Football Association, later pinning the Soviet pin they gave him to his Saltus blazer.

"I always grew up to think of the Soviets as monsters. When you finally get to meet the Soviets they weren't any different to anybody else. It shook some of the perceptions I had growing up."

Their visit, the books of George Orwell and the first Gulf War — which he saw as "both hypocritical and imperialist" on the part of America — cemented his socialist views.

He helped found the Trent Socialists while studying for his biology and anthropology degree, leading them on strikes in support of local workers in Ontario. And he remains a strong supporter of militant action here.

The Government's latest troubles with workers, he argues, have been caused by them allowing small issues to become major ones. "It reflects a disconnection between the grassroots and the leadership."

He adds: "I don't see why the workers can't seize their workplaces. I wouldn't like to see any of this happen but I don't think that we have much of a choice.

"A lot of the workers have been very patient in trying to see these issues resolved for years. Hopefully people will be able to solve these issues without further demonstrations but I'm not too confident."

He supports Independence for the Island, arguing that the UK should give Bermudians and those in its other territories British citizenship as a "form of reparation".

"It's the least they could do for the crimes that were committed during the empire," he states.

He is also pro-conscription — he served in Bermuda Regiment from 2003 to 2006 — but wants both men and women to be called up and for them to receive "urban guerrila training".

He remains as committed to the PLP as ever and wanted to run as a candidate in the last election but was beaten at branch level in Smith's by Jane Correia. "I would have loved to have run but there's always time in the future. I would put my name forward again."

Politics in Bermuda, as he is all too aware, continue to be complicated by race. "We still have institutional racism here," he says. "The legacy of apartheid, of slavery, I don't think we have dealt with yet.

"The working class is overwhelmingly black and the upper class is overwhelmingly white.

"I do think the UBP doesn't grasp the race situation here very well. I think the PLP recognises that institutional racism needs to be confronted whereas the UBP seems to think racism was eliminated with the end of segregation."

Jonathan's next step is to return to education. Later this month he will head to the University of Edinburgh — alma mater of one of his heroes, Dr. E.F. Gordon — to begin a master's degree in ecological economics. But he has no plans to stay away from the Island for long — or to shut down his blog. Catch A Fire, he says, will continue although its focus may shift a little.

"One idea of the blog was to show that anyone could do it," he adds. "It's not anything I ever expected to be doing. I'm always amazed anyone reads my blog."

* Find Catch A Fire at http://jonnystar.wordpress.com.

Full Story