Archive for the ‘Anti-Fascism’ Category
Coronavirus and Communist Party of Britain: “Not Helpful”, when “Party members rush into the public domain with unproven theories and unsubstantiated claims.”
“Breach of democratic-centralism for Party members to make comments online which are not consistent with our democratically agreed policy…”
This morning I saw an elderly lady buying supplies of Breakfast cereal Town centre Sainsbury’s check-out.
We spoke.
They are for for her daughter.
It is hardly worth mentioning that very simple love of her action is deeply moving.
This set in train of thought that finished at the way we lot in Ipswich stuck together during the Steve Wright murders.
A protest, initiated by two young anarchist women, gallivised the town in solidarity.
The Salvation Army, the Trades Council, Tories, Liberals, Greens, the Labour Party, Marxist parties, we all marched to defend the sex workers.
Somebody’s Daughter, was our banner.
One would hope that something of that spirit, generous and selfless, by the lady looking out for her daughter and grandchildren, would be shown at the moment.
There is no doubt that it is.
I can seriously feel it.
Across the country people have responded to the Coronavirus crisis with real solidarity.
Alas, it not much in evidence here.
This reference is to the fact that the CPB, aka, the Morning Star and its allies, like Skwawkbox, have been fearmongering.
Communist Party advice on the COVID-19 CRISIS
It is a breach of democratic-centralism for Party members to make comments online which are not consistent with our democratically agreed policy. This is as true of the Labour Party (and non-participation in its leadership ballots) and support for the Morning Star as it is of women’s rights, the EU, Brexit and climate change.
Nor is it helpful when Party members rush into the public domain with unproven theories and unsubstantiated claims about the current Corovirus (sic) crisis.
Comrades who believe that democratic-centralism does not apply to them should consider whether they really belong in a disciplined, revolutionary Communist Party.
GIven the nutters that lot attract…
First Round of French Local Elections: Set Back for Macron, Greens and Left in Strong Position.
Second Round May Be Postponed.
The Right wing daily Le Figaro began its report on the first round of the French local elections by citing supporters of President Macron’s Party, LaREM, (1) lamenting their set-back, “Pas bon du tout», «catastrophique», «c’est un échec»…”
******
(1) I like this Wikipedia explanation, “La République En Marche ![a] (frequently abbreviated REM, LRM or LREM, officially LaREM; possible translation: “The Republic on the move!”), sometimes called En Marche ! (French: [ɑ̃ maʁʃ]; English translation: “Forward!”,[11][12] “Onward!”,[13] “Working!” or “On The Move!”)” Some might suggest this indicates a pretty transient name for a political party.
Putting back the Second Round will create a legal headache.
Despite the bizarre conditions in which the vote took place, the left and the Greens have still something to be happy about:
The Greens (EELV) are in a good position in Bordeaux, (an historic bastion of the right) Lyon, Strasbourg, Poitiers and Besançon as wella s to keep control of Grenoble, where most of the left have gathered on a united list.
EELV are encouraged by the results:
The Paris vote was good for the left.
The Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, (LaREM) did not win in the first round in Le Havre, his Communist Opponent performed strongly.
Municipales : c’est loin d’être gagné pour Edouard Philippe au Havre
Phillippe scored 43,6 % and his Communist rival, Jean-Paul Lecoq, backed by La France insoumise, won 35,88 %. The Greens, supposed by the Parti Socialiste, got 8,3% and the far-right RN, had 7,27%.
This prediction for the Second Round may be optimistic:
The French Communist Party (PCF) is encouraged more widely (l’Humanité).
Les maires PCF de Montreuil, Gennevilliers, Dieppe, Martigues, Vierzon, Montataire, Saint-Amand-les-Eaux et Tarnos ont, notamment, été réélus dès hier.
The far-right consolidated its position but apart from Perpignan (which is personally saddening) made no gains.
There was therefore no breakthrough for the far right.
The election atmosphere is reported to have been extremely odd.
The rate of abstention was, unsurprisingly, very high:
Green surge and low turnout as virus fears weigh on French local elections
France 24.
French voters cast their ballots Sunday in nationwide municipal elections marked by record-low turnout after the government imposed stringent restrictions on public life in an increasingly frantic effort to slow the progress of the deadly coronavirus outbreak.
- Turnout in Sunday’s first round of voting hit a historic low of 45%, down almost 20% from the last election in 2014, as critics questioned the wisdom of holding a nationwide election amid the deadly outbreak.
- Poll clerks wore latex gloves, offered disinfectant and marked out lanes with arrows on the floor showing where people should stand while some voters wore gloves and brought their own pens to sign off their vote.
- Green candidates fared well in many big cities, leading the race in Lyon, Strasbourg and Grenoble, while a handful of candidates from the far-right National Rally were re-elected with outright majorities.
The report continues,
In the most keenly watched race, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo took a commanding lead with 30% of the first-round ballot, 8 points ahead of her conservative challenger; the candidate for Macron’s ruling party was a distant third.
Running for re-election in Le Havre, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe topped the first round but faced the prospect of a tough run-off vote against a united left.
The famous port, Le Havre, was Communist run City until 1995. I visited it, circa 1994, and out of curiosity, went to the union offices in the Bourse du Travail where a T & G card did wonders.
They recommended me the Town Hall, where I was received by the PCF run team with great respect, a snack, and they talked about their municipal politics.
Apart from the shock administered to Macron’s Prime Minister it is good to see how low the far-right vote was in that City.
Skwawkbox Spreads Panic on Coronavirus, “Johnson’s aim is to allow the virus to spread until at least 90% of the UK’s population has been infected – which will involve a huge death toll.”
Fake News Site Says, “Johnson’s aim is to allow the virus to spread until at least 90% of the UK’s population has been infected – which will involve a huge death toll.”
The fake news site says: JOHNSON’S HERD-IMMUNITY PLAN WOULD MEAN LETTING 90% OF UK CATCH COVID-19 – AND A MILLION OR MORE DIE
Johnson’s ‘herd immunity’ plan appears to mean a decision by the Tory government to stand back while – in the most optimistic scenario – hundreds of thousands of our people die.
To Johnson, Cummings and their fellow fans of eugenics, that might just mean ‘the herd’. But to you and me, that’s our loved ones, our friends, our colleagues – if we’re lucky enough to survive their plan ourselves.
The people the government says its first duty is to protect – and under that kind of a government, there is no reason at all for such optimism.
Postscript: Johnson’s refusal this afternoon to close schools, when Ireland will do so from tomorrow, is entirely in line with his ‘plan’.
Conspis are already commenting on the site,
Johnson, Cummings and the string pullers are revealing their true nature. What a tragedy that the ” moderates, centrists” Blairites, Labour first, Starmer, Thornberry et al all have played a part in these hideous people having the levers of power.
Another,
Bet those pensioners that selfishly voted Tory didn’t realise they were volunteering for a far right eugenics experiment with them as the guinea pigs.
Bet they are foaming at the mouth over their Daily Bile.
Not too long ago Swawkbox restricted itself to publishing stories attacking Keir Starmer, and Lisa Nandy , giving a platform to poor old Richard Burgon, “by far the outstanding candidate in that contest”, and this kind of piece,
Now it’s a return to the old days with scaremongering to the fore: endless stories about Coronavirus.
What old days?
These old days: “DISABLED CLAIMANTS TOLD: 2 YRS TO GET JOB OR BE SANCTIONED FOR A YEAR.” 17th of July. 2017
And this, also in 2017.
On 16 June, in an article headed “Video: Govt puts ‘D-notice’ gag on real #Grenfell death toll #nationalsecurity”, Skwawkbox took up the claim made by grime MC Saskilla on the BBC Victoria Derbyshire programme that the number of victims in the Grenfell Tower fire was far greater than had yet been officially admitted, with as many as 200 people having died.
Skwawkbox used this claim to give credence to rumours that the government was engaged in an attempt to prevent the media reporting the true extent of the disaster: “At the same time, multiple sources told the SKWAWKBOX that the government has placed a ‘D-notice’ (sometimes called a ‘DA Notice’) on the real number of deaths in the blaze.”
This was followed by a screenshot of an entry from Wikipedia, which defined a DA-Notice as “an official request to news editors not to publish or broadcast items on specified subjects for reasons of national security”. The Skwawkbox article then continued: “In effect, although voluntary, this amounts to a gag on the mainstream media — and note that it is applied for for reasons of national security only.”.
….
Faced with the collapse of its story, Skwawkbox was forced to back off and post a grudging retraction: “EDIT: the SKWAWKBOX is now satisfied that no D-notice was issued. No plain answer to this blog’s question of other restrictions on information about lives lost at Grenfell has yet been provided, but a ‘D-notice’ (or DSMA-notice as they are now termed) was not.”
Did Skwawkbox apologise for getting the story wrong and offer assurances that there would be no repetition of this stupid and provocative reporting? You must be joking. Instead, Skwawkbox’s proprietor was stung by the well-deserved criticism of his article into posting an indignant defence of his shoddy journalistic methods. In a quite astonishing display of chutzpah, he declared that he himself had been the victim of “fake news”!
Soon-to-be-father of his 6th Child George Galloway’s Workers’ Party in New Campaign.
Soon-to-be-new Father Galloway Appeals to Those Disillusioned with Labour.
Who’s not sick of ” clean air cycle lanes lesbians gays transexuals genders..” ?
The Workers Party is unequivocally committed to class politics. Though the fashion of the times is to divide working people along identity lines, we seek to unite them, based on their shared class interest. It is not ‘homophobic’ or ‘racist’ for socialists to focus their attention on those contradictions that concern the whole working class in its struggle for socialism. While being totally opposed to discrimination on grounds of race, sex or sexual proclivity, we declare that obsession with identity politics, including sexual politics, divides the working class.
Introducing the Workers Party LEADER: George Galloway :: Deputy leader: Joti Brar
What progressive patriot cannot agree that the British people should be rid of a “unemployed feckless rump living off cheap imported food and the plastic-electronic consumables of global capitalist anarchy”?
Disillusioned supporters of Rebecca Long-Bailey are said to be flocking to the Galloway-led Workers’ Party of Britain,
Now comes this happy news….
Firebrand politician George Galloway to be dad again at 65.
The Daily Record reports.
The Scots former MP is expecting a baby with his fourth wife, Putri Gayatri Pertiwi, who is 30 years his junior.
The baby is due in the summer and will be the couple’s third child together and Galloway’s sixth in total.
Galloway posted a photograph on social media of his wife sporting her pregnancy bump after she attended a 20 week scan.
Galloway has not let his joy stop him from campaigning…
Galloway’s Workers’ Party of Britain is on the rise:
You can see why!
The Party has appealed to the “mob” to attend:
Coronavirus looms.
But, help is at hand:
Background:
The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) welcomed the announcement made by George Galloway in the days following the general election.
This formation of the Workers Party of Britain (WPB) represents a genuine effort to break a section of workers away from the stranglehold of the Labour party, which has once again shown itself incapable of leading the British working class to socialism.
The Corbyn period of leadership was the period which should once and for all kill off the myth that with a ‘socialist’ at its head the Labour party can deliver for working people.
Though communists may recognise the truth of the above statement, as yet thousands of well-intentioned workers do not. These sections of the working class are unable to take the necessary steps alone; they need to be guided, as any student must, in drawing out the necessary conclusions from their own practical experience.
The Workers party has the potential to assist in this process, which is of historical importance for the British working class.
Lalkar extends its congratulations to the CPGB-ML and to Joti Brar, one of CPGB-ML’s vice-chairs, who was elected the deputy leader of the Workers Party of Britain at its founding congress. This meeting also elected a large 40-person members council with strong working-class representation.
….
More than ever, the political analysis of Marxist-Leninists is needed by workers in Britain. Our job is to defend principles whilst wedding Marxism to the workers.
We hope that all those whose left-social-democratic illusions now lie in tatters will join the Workers Party as a positive step towards their total political redemption; there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance
More to follow:
Right-Wing Identity Politics and the Trans Debate: the New Reactionaries.
“In cultural matters the old division of right and left has come to look more like two Puritan sects, one plaintively conservative, the other posing as revolutionary but using academic complaint as a way of evading engagement in the real world.”
Robert Hughes, The Culture of Complaint. 1993. (1)
Trevor Phillips has been suspended from the Labour Party for alleged Islamophobia. What looks like a parting factional swipe at a long-standing opponent of Corbynism, only adds to the culture wars. After the crisis over anti-Semitism recent weeks have seen a new battle, over Transsexuals, reach a peak. Some have demanded that transphobes be added to the list of the expelled. Defenders of family, faith and flag from Blue Labour, self-identifying libertarians, and supporters of the Brexit Party in Spiked, full-blown national populists, and radical feminists have joined together to attack demands for trans rights.
Judith Butler wrote in her critique of ‘foundational’ identity politics, Gender Trouble (2007) “If I were to rewrite this book under present circumstances, I would include a discussion of transgender and intersexuality, the way that ideal gender dimorphism work in both ways to discourses, the different relations to surgical intervention that these related concern.” At present it looks improbable that differences between gender-critical, or “materialist feminists”, and those defending transsexuals, can take place within reasonable limits.
For Blue Labour, citing the inevitable Christopher Lasch on ‘narcissism’, Jonathan Rutherford asserts that, “Like other forms of identity politics, the language of its more extreme advocates has the same mix of moral self-righteousness and ideological certainty. Scientific facts that compromise ideology are dismissed.” “Identity politics becomes the singular pursuit of self-interest detached from social obligations.” He claims, “It is a struggle that many women feel is all the more threatening because of the involvement of powerful lobby and corporate interests.” (The Trans Debate And The Labour Party)The nastiness of a minority amongst those defending absolute ‘cis’ gender has shredded that hope to pieces. The Suzanne Moore affair has opened up a breach that is unlikely to be bridged. (2)
In 1993 Robert Hughes was one of the first to suggest that Marxism, dead after the collapse of official Communism, has had an afterlife by shifting away from “economic and class struggle in the real world”, theorising instead a variety of oppressions and “discursive” articulations and antagonisms. This ‘cultural Marxism’, exploring themes from German and French left theory, has become a target for conservatives railing against “multiculturalism”. Speech codes, the “PC wars” of the 90s, and. fast-forward. Today we have Mark Lilla’s 2018 left of centre critique of “liberal identity politics” (The Once and Future Liberal), and Douglas Murray’s conservative broadside against “identity politics and intersectionality”, “the last part of a Marxist subculture” (The Madness of Crowds. Gender, Race and Identity. 2019) (3)
National Populism.
Those attracted to national populism, who disdain the causes of minorities, have become champions of identity, of the “Somewhere” plain folks against the identity politics of the ‘Anywhere” cosmopolitan elites. This strategy is not confined to the English-speaking world. “The ambition is to imitate the activism of minorities – postcolonial or LGBT – fed by French theory …..in order to serve the cause of identity” writes Nicholas Truong in this Saturday’s Le Monde (Il s’érige contre la « dictature » de la « bien-pensance » : l’essor du national-populisme intellectuel et médiatique). In France, “national populism”, a “catéchisme néo-réactionnaire”, the theme of immigration, the fear of the “great replacement”, the ‘Islamisation’ of urban spaces, up to hostility to human-rights “mongering” (droits de l’hommisme) , and the “terror” of feminist campaigns against sexual violence and harassment. The denunciation of multiculturalist “bobos” (Bourgeois bohemians) parallels British sneers, from Blue Labour, Spiked to the Morning Star at the ‘Islington left”. Truong, with good reason, compares this to French Communist language of the past century attacking the “petty bourgeois”.
In Le rappel à l’ordre (2002) Daniel Lindenberg outlined the way a group of French writers had begun to denounce May 68, human rights, feminism, anti-racism, multiculturalism, Islam, and “globalism” (mondialisme). These “new reactionaries” had moved from the left critiques of market liberalism to national republicanism, He suggested that anti-globalisation could serve as a crossing-point
A “crude piece of work” commented Perry Anderson. It takes no more than a few minutes to see some names, Marcel Gauchet, Alain Finkielkraut, reappear in Truong’s article, some, like Eric Zemmour, and Jean-Pierre le Goff, author of a study that is recalled or its postscript on the enduring impact of “cultural leftism” post-68, had yet to come to wider attention. Others, like the once respected historian of the French left, Jacques Julliard are much more recent entries, though one was perhaps forewarned by his willingness to debate Jean-Claude Michéa, who asserts that the original sin of French socialism was its Dreyfus Affair alignment with democratic liberal human rights defenders. That one of these figures, Michel Onfray, a self-styled anarchist and pop philosopher has extended his openness to reaction by contributing to the pages of the Nouvelle Droite Eléments, is the occasion for sadness. (4)
Realignments to the right that have yet to go so far could be seen in the UK during the EU Referendum and Brexit process. The Full Brexit brought together left sovereigntists, Blue Labour, Labour Leave, activists in Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, and members of the Communist Party of Britain. They contrasted the real popular sovereignty of the nation against the workings of the globalist EU elites. Andrew Murray has expressed the widely shared views of these sections with his hostility towards “rancid identity politics”, pitting the rights of “peoples” against the “poisonous seeds” of human rights (The Fall and Rise of the British Left. 2019)
The French new reactionaries have, Truong outlines, a strong and highly visible media presence right in the mainstream, the MSM. For those inflamed with hatred for identity politics Britain offers the consolations of Spiked, the Spectator, and the hard right press for those hostile to all things Woke, with the occasional television platform like Sky Press reviews. As interest in Brexit has waned some of this new sect of plaintitive reactionaries has taken up the cudgels against transsexuals. Elsewhere Verso Books publishes Andrew Murray, who thanks Tariq Ali for his “support and political commitment., The journal of Perry Anderson, New Left Review, is home to Wolfgang Streeck, a supporter of the Full Brexit, who believes that national borders are the “last line of Defence”….
*****
- Page 60. The Culture of Complaint, The Fraying of America. Robert Hughes. Harvill. 1994.
- Page xxviii. Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Judith Butler. Routledge 2007.
- Lecture 2. Multi-Culti and its Discontents. Robert Hughes. Op cit. “PC Wars” in Chapter 8. New Consensus for Old. One Market Under God, Thomas Frank. Vintage 2002.
- Page 169. Perry Anderson The New Old World. Verso. 2009 Jean-Claude Michéa and Jacques Julliard La Gauche et le Peuple. Champs. 2014.
- Page ix. Andrew Murray. The Rise and Fall of the British left. Verso, 2019
As the Weekly Worker Group Prepares for Split Socialist Fight (SF/Continuity, Gerry Downing) and Socialist Fight (SF/Real Core, Ian Donovan) Battle it out.
“This is a temporary phase of course, reminiscent in some ways of the days of Marx and Engels, but it is where we are at today.”
As the Weekly Worker (CPGB, Provisional Central Committee Group prepares for a major split its mighty organs are silent on the dispute.
The Labour Party Marxist is said to be in turmoil
The future of this faction, central in running Labour Against the Witch-hunt (LAW), a campaign backed by Tony Greenstein, Noam Chomsky, Alexei Sayle, Ken Loach and others, including Jackie Walker, may be in doubt.
Will LAW survive the turmoil?
Fight the Weekly Worker Purge!
By contrast this week’s, late, issue of the Weekly Worker publishes this letter by a Cde Ian Donovan.
In a measured he tone explains the background to the split between Socialist Fight (SF/Continuity Gerry Downing) and Socialist Fight (SF/Real Core, Ian Donovan)….
Gerry Downing’s pathetic letter claiming that the ‘Trotskyist Faction’ including myself were ‘expelled’ from Socialist Fight is pure fraud (February 27). He does not have a majority of full members of SF willing to vote for such a measure. No meeting of members has or will be called to do so. Nor has he been able to exclude our supporters from the international forums of the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International. When he tried to do so, in defiance of the most basic tenets of workers’ and party democracy, his actions were repudiated by other comrades internationally and our supporters were reinstated. This ‘expulsion’ is dead in the water.
It is just about Gerry Downing farting out his denunciations on a stolen website, using a stolen banner. The joke is that a “unanimous vote” in his fantasy version of ‘Socialist Fight’ is when Gerry Downing, Ella Downing and his race-baiting, Islamophobic, white South African crony, Gareth Martin, each put up both of their hands. Their six hands outvoted all the members of Socialist Fight who failed to vote for Gerry’s pro-Zionist statement the last time Socialist Fight had a genuine national vote, in January. And he calls that “unanimous”! That’s where Gerry’s ‘majority’ comes from.
…….
His fascist-baiting, mendacious half-quotes are designed to ‘prove’ that those in Socialist Fight who failed to salute his fascist-baiting attack on Gilad Atzmon are worshippers of the Ku Klux Klan. …
And so it goes….until it (mercifully) ends with this:
Well, we in the Trotskyist Faction don’t accept that move to the right and will fight it to the bitter end. Gerry may have stolen our website, which our subs paid for over the past several years just as much as his did. But we don’t accept his common theft – of our website, our publication or our name. The Trotskyist Faction has its own website up and running, on http://www.socialistfight.org, or alternatively trotskyistfaction.org, and in due course we will have our own publication to replace that which has been stolen. We will continue the politics of the old Socialist Fight. Renegades and capitulators to Zionism will not be allowed to steal our banner.
Ian Donovan
Trotskyist Faction, Socialist Fight
Key documents are only just emerging on the split between Socialist Fight (SF/Continuity Gerry Downing) and Socialist Fight (SF/Real Core, Ian Donovan)….
Published on the Trotskyist Faction site:
Trotskyist Faction takes on the mantle of Socialist Fight.
Extracts:
GD, was an oppositionist in the Healyite Workers Revolutionary Party at the time of its 1985 explosion and collapse, one of many active participants. He then went through various organisations: the Revolutionary Internationalist League, International Socialist Group, the Workers International League, Workers Fight with 2 other ex-WRP cadre with varied politics, then the Committee for a Marxist Party in alliance with the CPGB/Weekly Worker.
He then founded Socialist Fight in 2009 with two other ex-ISG cadre, whom he then split from over the issue of their defence of the film director Roman Polanksi, who admitted to statutory rape of a 13 year old girl and appears from the evidence to be guilty of actual rape. After breaking with his initial collaborators he then fused his rump group with some Brazilian and Argentinian Trotskyists groups in 2013 as part of an anti-imperialist response to imperialist intervention in Syria and Libya, to form the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International (LCFI). This gave an international dimension to his politics that meant it was no longer his operation.
Ploughing through the documents, which include reference to Hannah Arendt, and many, many, others, we reach this key point, “all this is just a means to an end for GD. The real target of all this rancid pro-Zionist hate propaganda was the Draft Theses on the Jews and Modern Imperialism.” “In conversation with Atzmon in 2018, GD rejected criticisms of its supposed ‘anti-Semitism’ as ‘Zionism’. But now as the concluding point of his renegade, pro-Zionist faction he writes:
“We now repudiate the use of the term ‘the world “Jewish-Zionist bourgeoisie”’ and the whole notion of a Jewish-Zionist imperialist vanguard as antisemitic tropes. We will in future use the term ‘Zionism’ alone in describing the political tendency within the Jewish ethnicity that commits such dreadful crimes under international law against the Palestinian citizens of Israel and those expelled Palestinians primarily in 1948, ‘67 and ‘73, all of whom have the right of return.”
Donovan does score one major point.
However, GD had a problem even with this, as he had stood on a public platform at a joint Socialist Fight public meeting in July 2017, a rather large meeting attended by around 150 people, with Vanessa Beeley, a defender of the Syrian regime and an uncritical Assad supporter, speaking in defence of Syria against the US/UK/Israel backed jihadist destabilisation and proxy war. She has written regularly for Veterans Today for several years. So in denouncing ID for sharing material from Veterans Today calling into question the legitimacy of the result of the UK General Election, GD was also implicitly attacking some of his best known work. If it was impermissible to share articles from Veterans Today, then surely it was impermissible to share a platform with Vanessa Beeley?
For those who can be arsed to read it there is plenty more!
Here is Donovan’s nemesis, Gerry Downing giving his side of the story.
Socialist Fight, Ian Donovan and the Trotskyist Faction
We have been now forced to set up a new bank account because Ian and Turan have control of the Socialist Fight bank account and this, they believe, should give them control of the group. Ian has refused to accept the votes of the majority of the group. He has decided that John Carty is not a member and his membership subscriptions are ‘donations’ and not subscriptions. My daughter, Ella, Gareth Martin, and Charlie Walsh cannot join as candidate members for six months because he disagrees with them over what Gilad Atzmon’s politics are. He has refused to bank their subscriptions that I sent to him, said I was buying their membership and he was keeping the cheques as evidence of my ‘corruption’.
Let us not ignore the outright fascism of Gilad Atzmon: “Fascism, I believe, more than any other ideology, deserves our attention, as it was an attempt to integrate Left and Right: the dream and the concrete into a unified political system. … It was “overwhelmingly popular and productive for a while because it managed to bridge the abyss between the ‘fantasy’ and the ‘actual.’”
This row would not be complete without Tony Greenstein getting his oar in:
Morning Star, “recycled fragments of the ultra left now line up with the main vehicles of the Labour right wing and much of the liberal and neoliberal media.”
Be Alert: Keep a Copy of this Handbook Close at all Times!
The leadership contest has revealed new contours in Labour’s ideological topography. Nick Wright.
(5 Retweets).
The former Straight left stalwart writes in the Morning Star, independent of the Communist Party of Britain and owned by the Co-op.
This article may be seen as a response to the Guardian column, The Labour leadership contest has exposed new factions in the party ( ).
Sharper than a serpent’s tooth was this section,
The orthodox left still basically wants to implement the Communist party’s 1951 plan, The British Road to Socialism, with its vision of socialism being implemented in one country by a strong, centralised national government. They lean heavily towards a pro-Brexit position, while tending to interpret support for Brexit among working-class voters as incipient class consciousness rather than tabloid-inspired xenophobia.
Followed by,
The radical left is still a very new, fragile and inexperienced tendency that has a long way to go before emerging as a mature political formation. It brings together the more libertarian strands of the hard left, the more radical strands of the soft left, and a new generation of activists from outside the traditions of the Labour party.
Wright makes a clarion call for the whole of the left to support Long-Bailey, and follow the doughty progressive patriot for better reasons than the (official) left who back her, “mainly out of sheer loyalty to her mentor, John McDonnell, that most of the radical left have supported her.”
He aims to dampen down this deviation: “Privately, many on the radical left agree with former MP Alan Simpson that the dogmatic and authoritarian tendencies of the orthodox left smothered the creative and democratic potential of Corbynism, contributing to its eventual downfall.
The Communist Party of Britain sage writes of Labour’s General Election Campaign.
The disparate elements that Corbyn’s election united has ended and the wide legitimacy that Labour’s radical programme commanded is now challenged by people who attribute the election defeat to “socialist policies” which must be abandoned.
With the help of ace-reporters Wright discovers that Labour was, at one point, on the brink of victory,
…. a wave of popular participation, an effective social media operation, skilled targeting of swing seats and a bold manifesto (along with the divisions in the Tory ranks and a weakened Liberal Democrat Party) produced a surge in support that eroded a 20-point Tory lead and took Corbyn within a few thousand votes of No 10.
We may not have noticed that, but he did!
The fault lay in a failure to respect the decision to respect the Brexit vote, something which Wight and his comrades tirelessly campaigned for.
Instead of becoming a springboard for a further assault on a divided ruling class — this itself apparent in a highly conflicted Tory Party in government — this hopeful prospect was dissipated as Labour’s activists and mass base were sidelined by a parliamentary party intent on subverting the clear decision to respect the referendum result.
Worse was to come,
Labour (was) corralled into an increasingly Get Brexit Undone policy, the way was open for Labour’s manifesto to be driven to the margins of public discussion.
The People’s Vote campaign, a middle class mass movement, had sown confusion in Labour ranks.
The success of the Remain camp in conflating “internationalism” with a kind of shared European privilege to travel, study and work freely threatens to undermine the deeper internationalism that found an expression in the mass movement against neoliberal trade deals, in the Stop the War movement, the anti-racist and solidarity action with refugees and migrant workers and the Palestine solidarity movement.
The kind of internationalism that has stood by while Assad, Russia and Iran, attack Idid in Syria, in short.
Remain, unlike Boris Johnson and the ERG, had a “neoliberal project.”
Worse the pro-EU side has echoes of fascism, foretold in ” manifesto of Oswald Mosley’s postwar racist revival”.
He cites Gilbert (above), without mentioning (surely an oversight), the passage of the British Road to Socialism,
It is to Jeremy Gilbert, professor of cultural and political theory at the University of East London, that we owe the insight that the leadership contest has revealed new contours in Labour’s ideological topography and that the only way for Labour to win is to ditch “Labourism.”
Writing about Labour’s so-called “soft left,” he writes: “Despite the failures of both Kinnock and Miliband, their default assumption remains that progressive government can be achieved by selling moderate social democracy to the electorate, led by a guy in a smart suit.”
Worse is to come….
It is to this inspiring standard that the recycled fragments of the ultra left now line up with the main vehicles of the Labour right wing and much of the liberal and neoliberal media.
The Morning Star writer has a warning to them:
While it might suit some to reduce much of politics to the clash of cultures, no-one should underestimate the political potency of questions of nationhood, patriotism and identity.
As in progressive patriotism.
Cde Wright ends with a stirring call for unity behind the banner of the “Orthodox Left”- including these “recycled fragments”, supporters of a neoliberal project, who admire something with the odour of Oswald Mosley “?
A dog-eared copy of Betty Reid’s, ‘Ultra Leftism in Britain’, (1969. CPGB) would surely show the dangers of the “ultra left” in their true light.
