Archive for the ‘Nationalism’ Category
Clément Méric, Anti-Fascist, Killed by Far-Right in Paris.
Clément Méric, Anti-Fascist.
An 18 years old left wing anti-fascist activist, Clément Méric, a student at Sciences Po, was declared brain-dead this morning. He was attacked in the heart of Paris by skinheads.
“ Clément Méric, a student at the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (Science Po) known for his anti-fascist commitment, was killed yesterday in Paris, near the Saint-Lazare train station, by a group of right-wing extremists,” the national secretary of the Parti de Gauche, Alexis Corbiere has written on his blog.
Three young people of a “skinhead appearance”, including a woman, were involved in jostling, exchanges of insults, two groups of young people, according to preliminary results of the investigation by the 1st District - Judicial – Police (DPJ) based on ”eyewitness accounts.”
According to the first elements of the investigation, the skinheads came out and waited “with reinforcements” out in front of the store. The groups of young people then had a very violent altercation.” The victim, Clément, “was struck by one of the skinheads armed with a knuckle-duster. He dropped on the floor, hitting a bonding pad in passing.” (Nouvel Observateur)
The Parti de gauche has declared that,
“l’horreur fasciste vient de tuer en plein Paris”.
The horrors of fascism have just come and killed in the middle of Paris.
They have put responsibility on the Groupe JNR (Jeunesses nationalistes révolutionnaires).
Witnesses say that one of the gang had a Swastika tattoo and another had a Front National T-Shirt.
Links between the murderers and the FN have been vigorously denied by Marine Le Pen this morning on the radio station, RTL.
The FN leader then launched into what the Nouvel Observateur calls a “hallucinatory” defence of the far-right intellectual Dominique Venner who recently committed suicide outside Notre-Dame de Paris in protest at gay marriage.
The JNR have also denied any responsibility (see Libération for latest).
There have been calls to ban the far-right’s street-fighting groups.
Communiqué Solidaires (Hat-Tip Enty) Un militant syndicaliste et antifasciste tué à Paris par l’extrême-droite !
Extract,
Our anger and pain are compounded by the certainty that there remain many – anti-fascist activists, people exposed to homophobia and / or racism – who could and can still be victims.
Today all our thoughts are with his family and his family and his comrade students in Solidaires Etudiant-e-s.
We express our solidarity to all of them.
This heinous act is inseparable from the surge in racist and homophobic attacks over the last months by right-wing extremists. This is the result of a climate of hatred spread, principally, though not exclusively, by the Front National and fascist factions.
Entdinglichung comments on this crime,
Kein Vergeben, Kein Vergessen!
Not Forgiven, Not Forgotten!
Important Update: Suspected killers just arrested: le Parisien, “Mort de Clément Méric : les auteurs présumés ont été interpellés à Saint-Ouen.”
Details on le Point site.
RMT to Resurrect ‘Vanity Politics’ of No2EU?
Bob Crow looks to Publish His NO2EU Manifesto.
One upon a time there was vanity publishing.
Now we have Blogs.
These are unfortunately subject to the cruel competition of site statistics and the tender mercy of comments boxes.
Nevertheless, there remains a promising avenue for those big-headed enough to assume the figure of nationally important figures with no heed paid to naysayers: vanity politics.
Apparently this can withstand anything.
So (Saturday’s Morning Star),
Britain’s Communists are set to meet RMT general secretary Bob Crow to discuss a joint left and labour movement approach to the 2014 European Union elections.
The Communist Party of Britain’s political committee decided this week to accept an invitation from the rail union leader, noting the EU’s role in attacks on the state pension age and welfare budgets across Europe.
“It beggars belief that any intelligent trade unionist can still believe in the great ‘social Europe’ myth,” argued the party’s trade union organiser Anita Halpin.
International secretary John Foster explained that, unlike non-EU states, Britain and other members were hamstrung by treaties that enshrine monetarism, privatisation and the market power of the capitalist monopolies at the core of the bloc.
He suggested: “The labour movement’s slogan here should be ‘No to the anti-social European Union’, for an exit with socialist policies.”
The party backed the Portuguese Communist Party’s call for “an exit from the eurozone with socialist policies” and reaffirmed their support for a referendum and Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.
In the 2009 European elections, No2 EU,
“No2EU – Yes to Democracy was initiated by the national Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) to . In n addition to the RMT, the coalition included:
- Socialist Party
- Communist Party of Britain
- Solidarity
- Alliance for Green Socialism
- Liberal Party
- Socialist Resistance
- Indian Workers’ Association
It also received support from some members of RESPECT and of the Socialist Workers Party.” Wikipedia
“No2EU received 153,236 votes or 1% of the national vote failing to win a seat at the European parliament and finishing in 11th place, behind Arthur Scargill”s Socialist Labour Party. “
The Independent Socialist Network gives some background to this latest vanity project,
European Elections 2014 – The May meeting heard the RMT have called a meeting of the original No2EU partners – SP, CPB, AGS, RMT – and TUSC– to discuss 2014. If it stands, TUSC was floating possible electoral titles including ‘Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts-No2EUNo to Austerity’. It was confirmed use of a veto would prevent TUSC participation in these elections. It was again agreed to ask the CPB to join the SC
Concerns were raised about the racism likely to be engendered during the Euro Elections, and this should influence our campaign and electoral title. The RMT suggested we make clear our socialist objections to the EU. There was a danger of being seen as being in agreement with UKIP with a ‘No2EU’ label.
Danger!
Too right!
The Portuguese Communist Party, (7-8% of the national vote) opposes the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union and the revised Treaty on the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).
They believe, wrongly in our opinion, that “the European Union cannot be reformed. The other Europe that will spring from the struggle will be built, as reality is already showing, upon the ruins of the European Union. “(Here)
But, other Communists, and much of the European left, call for radical change within the EU. For a radical ‘People’s European Union’, a ‘social Europe’.
The French Communist Party, and its partners in Front de Gauche, by contrast, stand for this,
Nous voulons une Europe affranchie du traité de Lisbonne qui respecte la souveraineté des peuples et qui soutienne des politiques de développement social et écologique.
We want a Europe freed from the Lisbon Treaty, one that respects the sovereignty of peoples and supports European wide policies of social and ecological development.
They offer a wider programme which begins from this idea,
La France prendra l’initiative d’Etats généraux de la refondation européenne en faisant appel à toutes les forces politiques et sociales disponibles en Europe.
France will take the initiative to call for a General Assembly to Reconstruct Europe appealing to all the available political and social forces in Europe.
This is, to say the least, ambitious,
But it’s a programme of hope, of unity between the peoples.
Unlike Bob Crow and his mates, who claim to believe in an “exit (from the EU) with socialist policies.”
The ‘socialist policies’ on offer in these conditions will be hard to find.
A withdrawal from the EU will lead to a carnival of reaction.
If this conceited enterprise has any effect it will help stoke the rightward fires of the anti-European UK lobby.
It will be: No2EU Yes to UKIP .
On the Woolwich Murder.
There will be time to discuss the Woolwich murder.
Time enough.
But let’s begin by dealing straight away with the wrong direction to take.
This sickening atrocity in London is exactly what we are paying the same kind of people to do in Syria
And this (BBC)
Asghar Bukhari said that while organisations are “rightly” condemning the suspected terror attack in Woolwich, they have “washed their hands” of the youth.
But he also blamed the government for failing to admit that there is a link between foreign policy and radicalisation.
The killers are clearly Islamists.
Apparently, according to some media, they originate from Nigeria.
The murdered man was a solider.
The Stop the War Coalition makes this ill-judged comment on the media’s reaction,
This reaction is one which manifestly fails to deal with the political causes underlying such attacks. The simple truth is that there were no such cases in Britain before the start of the ‘war on terror’ in 2001, which led to the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. The consequences of those wars have been devastating for the people of those countries and further afield. Up to a million died in Iraq and 4 million were made refugees. Tens of thousands have died in Afghanistan. Fighting still continues and in Iraq looks like descending into civil war in some parts of the country.
Nigeria is not the focus of British foreign policy, let alone military intervention.
This is was one killer is reported to have said,
In mobile phone video footage first broadcast by ITV News, one of the suspects was seen brandishing a cleaver and a knife. With the body of the victim lying yards away, the man said: “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
Speaking in a British accent, the man said: “We must fight them. I apologise that women had to witness this today. But in our land, our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you.
“You think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start bussin’ our guns? You think politicians are going to die? No it’s going to be the average guy, like you, and your children. So get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so you can all live in peace.” In the footage, the man then walks away and talks to another suspected attacker, pictures of whom were also circulating.
This is the language of religious war, “because Muslims are dying every day”.
The religious cause is, it looks likely, is where to begin with.
Jihadists may identify with Muslims everywhere.
They are not unique.
The racists of the EDL take the same line and were out last night, as was an individual in Braintree Essex (BBC).
Identifying with other people’s suffering and causes can take a very different form
Some, at least some, of the left, identify with the left everywhere.
Some of us back the Iranian opposition, fighting Islamist tyranny, and the secular-left (and Muslim) Awami league in Bangladesh fighting Islamism there, the Tunisian left, battling an authoritarian Islamist-led government and the Egyptian left, demonstrating against the Moslem Brotherhood.
In this we do not murder or assault anybody.
We want freedom, not violence.
If I were a conscious Moslem I would be extremely concerned, above all, with the inter-Muslim massacres taking place daily in the Middle East.
If I were a commentator in the national media I would point out the immense suffering, with thousands dead, this is causing.
A full-scale inter-religious war appears to have been started there, and is reaching heights of cruelty in Syria.
This is the biggest story emerging in a vast area of the world – extending far beyond the Middle East.
In looking at this I would not make political points about the West’s backing for those Galloway claims they are “paying for”.
I would try to offer something that could help people find a way out of the horrors they are undergoing.
And if Nigerian events are implicated in the Woolwich atrocity I would refer to them.
I would then, perhaps then, go into a world-encompassing explanation, if I felt it was appropriate.
But firstly, dignity should be the key-note of any response: we oppose murder, full stop.
Ipswich People’s Assembly.
Last night Enrico Tortolano, spoke on neo-liberal economics and politics to a public meeting at he UNITE offices held by the Ipswich People’s Assembly Against Austerity.
Up to 30 people turned up her brother Tortolano, who has worked on human rights with social movements in Latin America, and now is a research officer for the PCS union as well as writing for Tribune.
Enrico gave a talk of great clarity on how the wealthy have established free-market economics as the foundation of state policy in many countries. Everybody is told to be ‘self-reliant’ as taxes are lowered for the well-off and all forms of redistribution are undermined. We have, Tortolano said, crept back to pre-First World War levels of inequality.
In Britain attacks on welfare and privatising the state were being pushed through as part of what Naomi Klein called the “shock doctrine”. That is, taking advantage of a crisis to push through extreme free-market ideas.
He noted that the first to apply this method had been Augusto Pinochet , the Chilean dictator.
The recently deceased Margaret Thatcher had admired the leader of the Chilean coup, which had left thousands of left opponents dead and many more imprisoned and tortured.
From annual get-togethers in Davos (Switzerland), to thousands of ‘think-tanks’ and sympathetic media, their message has been relayed by all the main political parties in the West.
British politics seem to be restricted to the limits set by the ‘orthodox’ free-market economics.
The People’s Assembly, Tortalano said, offered a real opportunity for the left to unite and to put forward a different economic and political strategy. Ultimately the threat to the planet’s resources from the market would affect everybody.
The audience, which included trade unionists, local Labour councillors, library campaigners, and activists from the Green and socialist parties, joined in a fruitful discussion on this talk.
It was suggested that the People’s Assembly should take up the issue of low pay (very important in Ipswich), of the Bedroom Tax, and the fight against the wave of further cuts in public spending that will affect council (above all County Council) services in the coming months.
The Secretary of the Trades Council, Teresa Mackay pointed out that 80% of the cuts were still to come.
It was argued that the People’s Assembly needs a constructive and a positive message. It was not enough to just fight neoliberal economics and the hatred of the poor and migrant workers stirred up by the Liberal-Tory Coalition.
The left has to offer a democratic and egalitarian way of creating institutions for equality and collective need.
A co-ordinator will organise E-Mail contacts for the Ipswich People’s Assembly.
Transport will be available from Ipswich to take people to the London Assembly.
In the coming weeks we will be organising a campaign locally to draw attention to the links between Primark and other retail outlets and the terrible deaths of garment workers in Bangladesh.
As an activist said, “The numbers of the dead just keep rising.”
Italy and the Left.
Some Left Hope in Italy?
Italy and the Left.
Few people on the left are looking forward with much hope at the Italian elections this Sunday and Monday. The centre-left alliance, led by Bersani, might be preferable to outgoing Monti government. But, faced with a surprisingly resilient Berlusconi, it looks as if any future Italian ‘centre-left’ government would be a coalition between the PD-SEL and Monti’s allies. This would mean a programme of further austerity, though not, it has to be said, the less than appealing sight of a bunga-bunga Prime Minister.
The British left is fortunate in having an excellent guide to Italian politics, Toby Abse. Toby’s detailed articles in left outlets like the Weekly Worker and (most recently) in Solidarity, are superior to anything in the mainstream media. I would simply recommend reading Toby’s material.
To the above scenarios, he adds this possibility,
Now there is the menace of Grillo.
“The general election of 24-25 February will see the arrival in Italy’s parliament of a large contingent from a new political movement, the Five Star Movement (Movimento Cinque Stelle or M5S) of the 64-year-old comedian Beppe Grillo.”
… beneath the superficially attractive surface, is a rightwing demagogue whose movement’s structures are as top-down and as authoritarian as the Lega Nord in the heyday of Umberto Bossi.
Grillo has publicly opposed the granting of Italian citizenship to the children of immigrants and proclaimed his willingness to work with CasaPound, an extremely violent neo-Nazi movement whose rules require all its members to read Mein Kampf but never to deny the Holocaust on Facebook. (Solidarity 20th February 2013)
It is hard to look at present-day Italian scene, particularly at the left that is trying to oppose all of the above, without considerable sorrow.
The evolution of the majority of the once powerful Italian Communist Party (PCI) into the “Democratic Party” (the prefix ‘social’ was apparently considered too left wing) remains an open wound. For those influenced by more radical currents, the failure of the left-wing Rifondazione Comunista, to secure Parliamentary representation in the last elections, was another blow.
But….Abse has also noted this,
The one ray of hope in the current scenario is that the leftwing alliance, Rivoluzione Civile, seems to have a real chance of gaining parliamentary representation, with the possibility of crossing the national 4% threshold for the Chamber and attaining the required 8% for the Senate, at least in Sicily and Campania. Whilst this belated amalgam of the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista, the Partito dei Comunisti Italiani, the Greens, Antonio Di Pietro’s Italia dei Valori and some anti-Mafia or anti-Camorra mayors and magistrates is far from perfect, it does represent the only real opposition to both the corruption and criminality of the PdL and the more strident neoliberalism of Mario Monti’s followers. (Weekly Worker January 24th 2013)
There remains a lot of good will towards the Italian left across the continent, combined with what can only be called despair.
All we can say is that we wish Rivoluzione Civile the best.
The British Left and Italy.
There are strong underlying ties between our lefts. Italy’s most celebrated Marxist Antonio Gramsci has, in different shapes and forms, have been extremely influential here since the 1960s.Italian ‘workerism’ (a conventional but inadequate translation of the highly developed theory of Operaismo), has had an impact on the far-left, which can be traced back to the publication of Red Notes in the 1970s. More recently Toni Negri, who comes from this current, has played a part in many international left debates.
The Italian Communists’ attempts to ride to power in the 1970s through a proposed ‘Historic Compromise’ with Christian Democracy, the ‘Years of Lead’, of terrorism and leftist infighting, the explosion of the ‘system’ of corruption after the Mani pulite investigations in the 1990s, were closely followed across Europe.
Perhaps it is significant that of three best known intellectuals who played a role in linking our lefts, Tom Nairn, Eric Hobsbawm and Quintin Hoare, all developed, to different degrees, away from socialism.
Tom Nairn, who helped introduce Gramsci to the New Left, today is enveloped in Tartan, and the Scottish National Party. The labour movement, and the Labour Party, is, in Nairn’s eyes, corrupted through their enduring rapport with the British State. It is hard to see any benefit for the left, let along any socialist advance, from an independent Scotland, though there are those like Nairn who relish above all the chance to be alone with their ain folk.
Hobsbawm was sympathetic to the PCI’s ‘Italian Road to Socialism’. His book-length interview with PCI leader Giorgio Napolitano in 1977 marked a high point in the international sharing of their hopes. But in the UK Hobsbawm spent the early 1980s attacking the “illusion of trade union power” and the “mixed minority of sectarian left-wingers” that tried to capture the Labour Party leadership. This is noted, did not win. “After the 1980s the defeat of the traditional left political and intellectual, was undeniable”. He looked elsewhere. By the end of that decade he was swept up in hysteria about the ‘dictatorial’ British Constitution and calling for “tactical voting” for any ‘centre-left’. (Interesting Times. 2002).
Hobsbawm the historian remained a – theoretical – Marxist. However his position as a respected Watcher on the left had been fatally undermined by these engagements. In 1998 he announced that “market fundamentalism” was dead. Calling for New Labour to shift its policies towards “positive government action” and “regulation” failed to restore his reputation on the left. (Marxism Today. One-off Special. 1998)
Quintin Hoare, of New Left Review, was Gramsci’s principal, and lucid, translator. At one point, a member of the International Marxist Group, ended up associated with the anti-Communist Henry Jackson Society, no doubt fighting a replay of the Vietnam War, this time on the side of the USA.
To which one can add that the Italian Marxist, Lucio Colletti, whose writings were highly esteemed by the British New Left, was from 1996 until his death in 2001, elected on the list of Forza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi’s political party, in the Italian parliament.
Let us hope that better links with our Italian comrades will one day emerge.
* These are some more important points from Abse’s analysis: More of the Same. Weekly Worker. January 24th.
“There are five principal forces involved in this contest: the rightwing coalition led by Berlusconi, the centrist cartel headed by Monti, Pierluigi Bersani’s centre-left alliance, a radical left coalition led by Antonio Ingroia – and Grillo’s M5S. Of the minor formations not linked to the five principal forces, the only one to the left of Ingroia’s Rivoluzione Civile to be mentioned, however summarily, in the mainstream press is Marco Ferrando’s hard-line Trotskyist Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori.
Also participating in Berlusconi’s electoral coalition is the ‘post-fascist’ Alleanza Nazionale led by Ignazio La Russa, the former defence minister with a vampiric appearance and a youthful record of street violence against leftists in Milan. Having seceded from the PdL, the Alleanza Nazionale has renamed itself the Fratelli d’Italia-Centro Destra Nazionale1, which will be joined in Berlusconi’s electoral coalition by Francesco Storace’s La Destra – a more blatantly nostalgic split from the old Alleanza Nazionale.
