In the meantime
I've got lots of half-written posts in my drafts folder. In the meantime, here's what other folk are blogging.
Ross Wolfe is a blogger with taste. Greens Engage on the Palestinian Tahrir and Modernity on Hamas' torture regime. Red Star Commando on Marinus van der Lubbe, anti-fascism and Stalinist falsification. Flesh is Grass on the objectively pro-fascist John Rees. Adam Holland on Gaddafi's stooge Cynthia McKinney. History is Made at Night on squatters against tyrants, now and in 1986. La Brigada will be much missed, and we all hope he'll be back soon. Andrew Preview on the EDL and the Paramilitaries. Paul Stott on the SWP's defence of multiculturalism. Modernity on why Chomsky should stick to his day job. Eamonn on Oloixarac, Galliano And Making Light of Genocide. Lisa Goldman from Cairo. Norm on the Guardian, Iraq and Libya.
Ross Wolfe is a blogger with taste. Greens Engage on the Palestinian Tahrir and Modernity on Hamas' torture regime. Red Star Commando on Marinus van der Lubbe, anti-fascism and Stalinist falsification. Flesh is Grass on the objectively pro-fascist John Rees. Adam Holland on Gaddafi's stooge Cynthia McKinney. History is Made at Night on squatters against tyrants, now and in 1986. La Brigada will be much missed, and we all hope he'll be back soon. Andrew Preview on the EDL and the Paramilitaries. Paul Stott on the SWP's defence of multiculturalism. Modernity on why Chomsky should stick to his day job. Eamonn on Oloixarac, Galliano And Making Light of Genocide. Lisa Goldman from Cairo. Norm on the Guardian, Iraq and Libya.
Comments
i amore proud of my reply to socialist unitys attempt to witchunt anarchists as 'enemies of the labour movement'
http://redstarcommando.blogspot.com/2011/02/there-is-nothing-between-us-but-river.html
Objectively pro-fascist- is a term coined by Orwell isn't it?
Yep, it's from "Pacifism and the War".
By the way, I notice Stop the War are one of the organisations, with Friends of Al-Aqsa and the BMI, on the new, and appallingly named "Britain 2 Gaza" boat.
You'd figured all that out about StWC long ago hadn't you Skid.
And as far as Noam Chomsky sticking to his day job, I see it as indicative of how far the Left has fallen that he remains such an icon associated with it. He's become really nothing more than a moral voice that's supposed to express the guilty conscience of the soft left here in America. His supposed "radicalism" is non-existent. No one takes his self-proclaimed anarchism seriously. I mean, the man voted for John Kerry. But perhaps it's not his fault after all. Maybe the widespread notion disseminated by the media that the Democratic and Republican parties represent truly antithetical principles and wildly different constituencies perhaps "manufactured his consent" to the point that he could not do otherwise than to vote for "the lesser of two evils."
haha
It is a very different use of the term than I'm used to. In AFA, it was generally used to describe those who claimed to be anti-fascist, while refusing to support effective anti-fascist tactics. An obvious example would be Labourites who fetishise the International Brigade, while condemning the illegality of modern physical force anti-fascism. The term arguably covers a much wider spectrum of arguments.
Googling quickly, I find the following.
1. Orwell, "What is fascism?" 1944: "Conservatives: All Conservatives, appeasers or anti-appeasers, are held to be subjectively pro-Fascist. British rule in India and the Colonies is held to be indistinguishable from Nazism. Organizations of what one might call a patriotic and traditional type are labelled crypto-Fascist or ‘Fascist-minded’. Examples are the Boy Scouts, the Metropolitan Police, M.I.5, the British Legion. Key phrase: ‘The public schools are breeding-grounds of Fascism’." Here, Orwell is scorning the notion that fascism should be stretched this far, and he may well take exception to my stretching to include Hamas and Hezbollah.
2. On the other hand, a couple of years before, Orwell wrote this in his diary, about Britain's Tories and early war-time anti-Nazi propaganda: "But how can these people possibly rouse the nation against Fascism when they themselves are subjectively pro-Fascist and were buttering up Mussolini till almost the moment when Italy entered the war?"
3. Roger L Simon, a conservative writer at PJ Media, asked if Obama is objectively pro-fascist for aiding and abetting the likes of Castro and Chavez. I think Orwell would like that stretching of the term even less, because, although he would hate them both, he would know fascist is not what they are. Anyway, one Sholom Beck in the comments responds: "No, Obama, like his mentor Bill Ayers, is subjectively pro-Fascist — or, if you prefer, “Bolivarist.”"
It's important to note it's not the same as accusing someone of being either a fascist or a fascist fellow-traveller. Indeed, the vast majority of people who fall into this category would genuinely see themselves as opposed to fascism.
Most of the Harryites would fit, as an example, because of their refusal to support illegal direct action against fascists.
And I think taking it to include Hamas and Hezbollah is a stretch. Not every reactionary far right movement is a fascist movement. If you're going to include them, why not include Thatcher? (Hostility to trade unions and other working class organisations, fondness for aggressive military action, moustache). I think you're running dangerously close to 'Rik from the Young Ones' territory here.
On the "objectively pro-f" designation, I think I'd not use it for someone whose crime is refusal to support illegal direct action against fascist. I'd call that "liberal anti-fascism" but think it's unfair to call it objectively pro-fascist.
I don't think I recall the term being used much in AFA. In the South London branch it might have sounded too high falutin!
To pick an example that's possibly a bit closer to home for ex-AFA members, do you agree with the analysis that loyalism is the "country cousin" of fascism?
On liberal anti-fascists, I actually think using the term "objectively pro-fascist" there is very close to Orwell's original usage. He wasn't claiming that pacifists were fascists or even ideological fellow travellers. He was pointing out that their political stance, regardless of good intentions, was one that harmed the fight against fascism, hence strengthening the fascists through inaction. I think the parallel is obvious.
I would say that "objectively pro-fascist" as a lot more utility as an adjective than a verb. And is probably best used to describe specific tactics and arguments, as opposed to describing someone's ideological stance in general.
I think that in the historical period of classical fascism in which Hamas was rooted, which also formed Jabotinsky and the Hindutva movement, fascist ideas permeated the political culture. These include the cult of the leader expressing the authentic will of an integral, pure, organic "people"; the cult of the uniform and of ascetic, muscular warrior/military forms of masculinity; the notion of women as breeding adjuncts of militant men; an "occidentalist" anti-liberalism, anti-urbanism and anti-cosmopolitanism and contempt for "bourgeoiis" mediated parliamentary forms of politics; an ambivalent attitude towards science and modernity; conspiracy theories; antisemitism; a teleological idea of history with the rise and fall of races and/or civilizations as its driving force; anti-communism combined with an interest in certain collectivist themes of socialism; hostility to finance capital; crushing alternative or autonomous sources of authority especially in the working class (e.g. unions). I agree that doesn't add up to fascism, but is a close kinship.
On Loyalism, I do see it as British fascism's country cousin. Red Action were right to place emphasis on it: you cannot understand British fascism without understanding its close kinship to Loyalism (and this is missed by, e.g. the ortho-Trotskyist analysis which underpins the SWP lin). But they also over-emphasised it: Loyalism is the key to the specificity of British fascism, but itself has little relationship to fascism as such.
On objectively pro-fascist: I am wary of stretching it too far, because ultimately everyone not part of the solution is part of the problem, and just staying at home instead of going to an "action" might make me or you objecively pro-fascist strictly speaking. I think it takes something more. But I'm not sure how I'd draw the line.
PS: But why do you expect illiterate and rather apolitical ex-SWPers to have actually read Orwell? A bit of wishful thinking, surely ? :)