BobFromBrockley

Johnny Otis and Etta James, z''l

2012-01-23T18:44:00.000Z

I was sad to read (at Stuart's blog) that both Johnny Otis and Etta James have passed away. Jimmy Castor, the less known cult legend, also died very recently. All three were "minor" artists in the sense used by Kafka in his note on "minor literature", and their passing has not been noted the way those of "great" or "major" artists. I knew several Johnny Otis songs, but I knew next to nothing about him. This Guardian obituary (h/t Jogo) captures something of how extraordinary he was. Born to Greek immigrants in Vallejo, northern California, he

one of the first white American musicians to cross the racial divide, aligning himself with the black community as a teenager and from then on regarding himself – and being treated as – a black man... His parents ran a grocery store in a black neighbourhood in Berkeley, and the teenage Otis chose to walk away from white culture. Black America, he wrote, possessed "soul", a quality he found lacking elsewhere. Having taken up the side drum in junior high school, he made his professional debut in 1939 with the West Oakland Houserockers before going on the road, playing in touring big bands

He backed Lester Young, gave Big Mama Thornton her break and thus helped invent rock 'n' roll (he produced and drummed on "Hound Dog", whose lyrics she wrote with Jewish kids Leiber and Stoller), was a politician and activist in the black community in LA, pioneered gangsta rap, and much more besides. His story says something about the way in which music always breaks out of ideas of culture as racial property.

He started Esther Phillips and Etta James, two of my favourite singers, in their careers. Here he is with Esther Phillips.

Here is Esther Phillips later, singing one of the most moving songs I know, "From a Whisper to a Scream", written by Gil Scott Heron, who of course also died this year. Phillips died aged 48; like Gil Scott Heron she was a heroin addict.

Here is Etta James, singing one of my all-time favourite songs, "I Would Rather Go Blind", a song which reminds me of the time of my life I spent more or less every Friday in the Marquis of Granby pub in New Cross, where it was on the juke box, and of the first flat I lived in with the woman I am now married to.

And another of my favourites, "Let's Burn down the cornfield".

Here is Johnny Otis with his son Shuggie, and the Scottish bluesman Roy Buchanan.

See also Soul Sides, 16 Corners, Popmatters, Sterogum, Hidden Track and 30 Days.

This week's stuff

2012-01-21T18:43:00.006Z

Some EDL stuff
Patrick Hayes in Spiked; New year analysis from the Indy; Flesh from Barking;

Chav hate and Stephen Lawrence
Paul Vallely, highly recommended.

LSE watch
The Commune on the Woolf report; Tanya Gold on the Nazi games.

MLK day
Morris Abram; Stuart Applebaum.

Fighters for freedom
London's funky Syrians.

Jean-Marie Le Pen
France's Ron Paul?

What can radical politics look like in 2012?

2012-01-17T17:43:00.001Z

It does genuinely seem to me that things changed in 2011, in ways that have major consequences for radical politics. Marko Hoare’s “The year the worms turned” and Kenan Malik’s more downbeat “Chewing over the old year, spitting out the new” summarise this shift well. I am allowing myself a small measure of hopefulness that some of the morbid fixations that have afflicted the left in recent years might loosen their grip a little in light of these changes, and that a healthier radical politics might emerge.

For a decade, much of the left has been fixated on the Middle East in terms of the wretched of the earth in the position of victims of an all-powerful all-evil “imperialist” West. Any futile and destructive act of terrorism has been excuses as “resistance” to imperialism, and any bullying thug or theocratic clique that “stands up” to imperialism has been given support. Now, we are forced to confront the fact (long obvious to the less myopic) that the anti-imperialism of tyrants has simply been an alibi for power, that the people on the Arab street desire freedom and self-government more than they hate “imperialism”, and that boring bourgeois liberal rights like free assembly are actually worth fighting and even dying for.

At the same time, here in the global northwest, with the financial crisis, the impoverishment and precariousness of masses of “formerly middle class” people (as the New York Times put it), the squashing of aspirations and squeezing of social mobility, and the naked aggression of “centre-right” governments to any kind of social safety net, the debate has been reframed away from anti-war protests and identity politics towards the bread and butter of life under capitalism.

It is a real measure of the sickness of the left, however, just how little forward movement it has made in the last couple of years, when even the financial press talks about capitalism being in crisis and suggests Marx might have been right. In a post on Margaret Thatcher’s death, James Bloodworth suggests that “the left should instead examine with clear-sightedness where it has gone wrong, how it has behaved and how it can do better – and boy, can it do better. Considering the complete failure to make any political inroads since the 2008 banking crash, this should be clearer today than ever.” (The title puts it pithily: “Instead of celebrating when Thatcher dies, the left should reflect on what a pig's ear it’s made of the past 30 years”.)

Similarly, Chaminda Jayanetti, in a post entitled "How the last year shaped up for left-wing activism", argues (correctly) that:

There have been massive shortcomings in how the Left has handled the public funding cuts in 2011, especially in two of the worst-affected areas – benefits and adult care. Much of this revolves around the fact that, from the militants to the wets, the leadership of the Left is not drawn from the ranks of those it claims to represent, and is therefore not much cop at representing them.

And proceeds to name some of the ways, such as:

Class: Across the Left, many people – especially in leadership positions – are middle class. They are not directly affected by most of the cuts – certainly not threatened by them – and have little direct experience of what it is like to live on a paltry income. The centre Left did little to encourage participation or leadership by people from outside its middle class demographic, while the hard Left was fearful of non-believers who might not share its doctrines. In both cases, the people who should have been at the heart of the movement found themselves marginalised by it. [...]

Networks: Middle class people have stronger networks than those on the wrong end of our economic system. Take cuts such as the forestry sell-off and library closures. These do not only affect middle class people, but there is a more middle class constituency here than with, say, housing benefit. So those middle class networks (including the liberal media) kick into gear and secure high profile for these causes. I certainly don’t support cuts to libraries or the privatisation of forests. But those networks are not made available to those who are bearing the brunt of the cuts – those who receive benefits payments, and those who rely on adult care and support services. So those concerns get heard less within the middle class leadership of the Left – until the backlash arrives, as 38 Degrees has now discovered.

The ‘squeezed middle’ strategy: We saw a bandwagon develop whenever government policy impacted on some imagined notion of a suburban south-eastern middle class earning well above average income. Meanwhile cuts affecting women only rose up the Left’s agenda when polls showed female support for the government falling – opportunism masquerading as strategy. Causes were left to compete for the Left’s attention based on how they might appeal to the centre ground.

Activist bubbles: The student movement waned in 2011 largely because the fees bill was voted through – this is entirely natural. But I would question whether, by becoming so heavily based around the university occupations, those at the heart of the movement unconsciously lost sight of the need to keep bringing students from outside the movement into the movement, instead of focusing on the activist centre. I observed a London Student Assembly meeting in December 2010 and it was not a pretty sight – turgid, sectarian, with many students leaving early. It bode ill for the year that followed.

These are some of the weaknesses to be addressed if the left is to do better. As James hints, central to the doing better is re-connecting to ordinary people. Of course, ordinary people are in some senses mythical – are we not all ordinary in some ways and extraordinary in others? – and a pandering to some lowest common denominator metropolitan stereotype of the common man is as reactionary and patronising as the academo-ultra-left’s “romance of the multitude”.

But it is an evident truth that the vast majority of people, despite feeling the squeeze of neo-liberal capitalism, are completely alienated from the language, style and vision of what passes for the left today.

Hence James suggests some “demands” – higher taxes for the rich, transparency about their incomes, recall of MPs, addressing the buy-to-let market crisis – that lefties should be making (in the UK), partly to show how it is addressing the squeeze people are feeling. I am sympathetic to all of these, and I think we should be demanding more of the rich, not politely asking for it.

But I don’t feel this is a completely helpful way forward. It is a valid criticism (made by TNC for example) of the Occupy movement that it has no demands, no programme – but one problem with a such a programme of demands is that it remains within the logic of parliamentary capitalism, for want of a better phrase; it suggests a way of managing ourselves out of the crisis, a nicer capitalism. In the absence of a revolutionary movement, perhaps this is the best we can hope for, but it seems inadequate.

On the other hand, the language of a series of demands like this reminds me of the Militant Tendency in the age of the dreadful Ted Grant: the reduction of Trotsky’s transitional programme to a turgid formula beginning, if I recall correctly, with the nationalisation of the “commanding heights of the economy”. That kind of politics was stale in the 1980s, and even staler now, and puts ordinary people off a lot more than it attracts them.

I liked, therefore, Chris Dillow’s response, “Should lefties really be making ‘demands’?” He suggests that making demands is a counter-productive way of framing the argument, and suggests three interesting ways of re-framing: an assertion of rights, stressing the benefit of policies, and using the language of inevitability (“things have to change”).

A further advantage of these sorts of approaches, perhaps, is that they keep open the possibility – closed down when a programme of demands is drawn up – a politics of coalition between different sorts of radicals: those who see themselves as “revolutionary” and those who want reform, anarchist occupiers and old-style trade unionists, those who don’t even see themselves as left-wing at all. If radical politics only appeals to those who are already signed up to the club, then it has no hope.

First miscellaneous round-up post of 2012

2012-01-12T08:38:00.000Z

Post of the week

Contentious Centrist on recognizing righteousness. (And while you’re there, read this interesting post on the Haredim, solidarity and tolerance in a multicultural society, and watch this interview with Irving Howe and this one with Roger Scruton.)

Fighters for freedom

Yoani Sanchez and her on-going struggle for freedom from Castro’s authoritarian regime (h/t Jogo).

The Arab spring’s Islamist winter

2011 was an extraordinary year. (Check out this funky interactive timeline at Wired: "Hyper-Networked Protests, Revolts, and Riots".) But what comes next? Hussein Ibish is cautiously optimistic about the role of Islamism in the post-Spring moment, focusing on Egypt. A more pessimistic reading can be taken from this report from libertarian socialists in Egypt, who describe Muslim Brotherhood collusion with, and even incitement of, SCAF repression of leftists. A very subtle analysis – in a long post, which I recommend you print and read fully – comes from Andrew Coates, less optimistic than Ibish, but more pessimistic than many. Meanwhile, on Syria, Carl at TCF cautiously acknowledges the benefits of military intervention to save the democratic uprising there, in a post which draws somewhat on a report by Michael Weiss.

Gilad Atzmon

Everybody Hates a Tourist relates on Atzmon and his relationship with the Nazi Alexander Baron. Also, this is from a while back, but I’m not sure if I posted it and I noticed while getting the link for the Islamism post linked to above, Hussein Ibish had this piece in October: Gilad Atzmon and John Mearsheimer: self-criticism, self-hate and hate.

Ron Paul

But I Am a Liberal remains the go-to site for dissecting Ron Paul. See, e.g. “What is it that Ron Paul fans fail to grasp?”, contra Andrew Sullivan. See also these fine posts by AJA on Ron Paul and cranky libertarianism and then the reactionary libertarian. On other candidates, Roland also writes on Rick Santorum as the trojan working class candidate, and on the Gringrich campaign's faux-populist demolition of capitalist Mitt Romney.

Press TV

I missed the BBC Radio 4 report about Iranian “soft power” in the UK, apparently focusing on the Iranian regime-controlled English-language broadcaster Press TV. Gene at HP gives a flavour, focusing on Tory grandee Norman Lamont’s whitewashing of the regime. (Talking of this, I’m not sure if I already linked to Rosie’s fisking of George Galloway’s anti-obit of Christopher Hitchens. This is the relevant bit: GG: Hitchens was “the Englishman in New York who discovered there were large bundles of right-wing dollars available for apostates like him. If they were prepared to betray their friends, their principles and sell the soul he didn't believe he had in the first place.” Rosie: “And I'm sure your work for Iran's Press TV is done for a small pittance, barely enough to keep you in cigars.”]

Christopher Hitchens

While we’re on the subject, here is Salman Rushdie on Hitchens – getting it both right and wrong, as Mick H and Norman G note. Oh, and I’m not sure if I already linked to this 2009 Platypus article on Hitchens by Spencer Leonard, which I reached via this argument between Ross Wolfe, Corey Robin and Doug Henwood, in which Wolfe comes across as verbose but basically right, and Robin and Henwood (someone I generally respect a lot) come off quite badly.

Yiddish

Two posts by Rokhl – whose blog has returned to life after a too long leave of absence – on Yiddish today 1 and 2.

South Africa/North Korea

A while ago, I posted about my youthful inoculation against the ANC, which was partly down to Paul Trewhela, who has recently written a hard-hitting piece “Kim Jong-il, blood purity, and the ANCYL”, which I read via PIIE, which I got to via Mick, whose post you should also read.

Stephen Lawrence

Another plug for some of the better best pieces I’ve read on the Stephen Lawrence verdict, by people who knew Eltham a little better than many other commentators: Owen Jones, Darryl Chamberlain, Sunder Katwala, and for my own first and second thoughts. Sunder returned here, and kindly linked to my pieces, summarising some of the issues clearly. And Darryl returns with a really interesting post here.

Militant anti-fascism

Phil D’s critique of Hope Not Hate’s “Beyond the BNP” document, and his thoughts in the wake of Infidel and other attacks on Occupy camps.

Vermishtes

More miscellany from Entdinglichung.

Stephen Lawrence, contrarianism and right-wing anti-elitism

2012-01-06T18:34:00.004Z

After I finished writing my first thoughts on the Stephen Lawrence verdict last night, I read two articles which gave me pause for thought. One, entitled "Stephen Lawrence and the politics of race", is by David Goodhart in Prospect; the other is "This isn’t justice – it’s politics" by Brendan O'Neill in Spiked. The two articles are very similar to each other, and have some similarities to my post, which is what gave me pause for thought, so in this post I intend to set out why I am not saying the same thing as them.

Both writers make some very good points in their articles. O’Neill makes a similar, but stronger, complaint to mine about the attenuated anti-racism of the post-Macpherson:

In short, courtesy of Macpherson, the problem of racism came to be divorced from questions of power and ideology, and started to be seen as a weird behavioural trait among thoughtless individuals, which was in need of urgent excision. Indeed, one of the key concepts promoted by Macpherson was the idea of ‘unwitting racism’ – the notion that people often discriminate ‘through unwitting prejudice [or] thoughtlessness’. Here, racism is reduced to a form of bad manners, an unthinking uncouthness, something ingrained in us without us necessarily knowing it. Such an historic rewriting of the concept of racism allowed the better-educated sections of society to pose as the guardians of racial etiquette.

Goodhart and O’Neill both, like me, decry the stereotyping of the white working class by what both of them, like me, called the liberal elite. O’Neill even quotes the same (excellent) Roger Hewitt book I recommended, White Backlash: “As one author argued, ‘journalistic expressions of hostility towards “racist thugs” dovetailed well with The Sunday Times’ return to the issue of the British underclass’, while the Guardian could pursue its metropolitan crusade against ill-educated Brits through the Lawrence prism.”

However, Goodhart and O’Neill on one level accept these stereotypes. O’Neill remembers the same insulting Mirror article I did, but mistakenly says Norris grew up on the council estate to which the reporters descended. Similarly, Goodhart writes:

Already by the early 1990s Britain was becoming more relaxed about racial difference and overt racism was becoming rarer, though not as rare as it is today. But there were certain places, like the working class suburbs of south London, and certain institutions, like the police force, where the liberal tolerance of metropolitan Britain was not embraced. That is probably still true today

But how true is the generalisation that the working class suburbs of south London did not embrace liberal tolerance? It is probably partly true in relation to 1993, but overstates the case, given that there was a substantial black community in Eltham by the 1990s. (Read Sunder Katwala on living in on Well Hall Road then.) It is completely untrue now, as Goodhart would know if he spent time in the area.

And how true is it that the killers were creatures of white working class suburbs? Although the Brook Estate is often mentioned in reports about the killers (usually preceded by the callous word “notorious”), David Norris, son of a wealthy gangster, actually grew up in privilege in a mock Tudor mansion in Chislehurst. I think Dobson also lived on one of the smarter streets in Eltham. Probably, in fact, it is the middle class suburbs that are most hostile to liberal tolerance. (As Sunder says in his recollections of the period, "Eltham was pretty white, by London standards, certainly by contrast with Plumstead and Woolwich, though not markedly more so than posh Blackheath a couple of miles up the road.")

Another point Goodhart makes is that the case has contributed to an “excessive racialisation of the public domain” and a racial grievance culture. This might partly be true, and the Diane Abbot twitter storm in a teacup illustrates it well. But it is also the case that some racisms remain utterly acceptable. While terms like “nigger” and “paki” have been eliminated from the public domain, partly due to the liberal trend the Macpherson report was part of, but insults about “pikies” and “bogus asylum seekers” are completely commonplace, as are racism against Eastern Europeans and Muslims.

And if Goodhart and O’Neill are partly right in seeing the Lawrence campaign as part of a grievance culture and as taken up for the wrong reasons by metropolitan elites, this is only half the story. The heart of the campaign was the Lawrence family itself, supported by the wider (overwhelmingly working class) black communities that rallied to them long before the Daily Mail did. Is it not possible that the sentencing this week was both a victory for justice and (surely less importantly) for certain elites, rather than claiming it was the triumph of the latter at the expense of the former?

Goodhart also argues that the case has helped create a white grievance culture too, once again associating this with the working class (and not just the suburbs now):

This is not because many people in Eltham sympathise with the obviously extreme and anti-social behaviour of Gary Dobson and David Norris. But there is a widespread feeling that the whole area, perhaps the whole culture of white working class south London, has been traduced as dumb, violent and racist throughout the Lawrence story.

Again, Goodhart gets it partly right here. But the grievance is also fed by well-off members of the chattering classes, like Goodhart, telling them that they ought to have a grievance.

Boris Johnson, for example, described the police as victims in the case, and wrote a series of articles for the Telegraph and Spectator from 1999 to 2002, undermining the Lawrence family and casting and the Macpherson report as a left-wing witchhunt against the establishment and police: “It is an article of faith on the Left that those five, seen on video engaging in racist rants, were guilty, and that only police incompetence failed to nab them.” The likes of Johnson, Goodhart and O’Neill encourage and sustain grievance culture at a local level.

But who are Goodhart and O’Neill to pronounce on these issues anyway?

Goodhart is a formerly centre-left journalist who edited Prospect, which became known for its excellent quality writing and "contrarian" dissent from centre-left received wisdom. For example, Goodhart, along with Trevor Phillips, was one of the leading centre-left voices of the early noughties "death of multiculturalism" meme. Prospect also regularly published the Stoddardian/Spenglerian racial eclipse fantasies of David Coleman, the intellectual guru of MigrationWatch.

O'Neill, editor of Spiked, is another ex-leftist, part of the shadowy cult once known as the Revolutionary Communist Party, who now writes for the Conservative broadsheet the Telegraph. A fine writer, he claims a "contrarian" mantle, using his columns to attack "well-off liberal commentators", "the sisterhood" of "cliquish and pious feminists" and other such targets. A number of RCP cult members have written for Prospect too, such as the brilliant Munira Mirza, who guest edited a 2010 feature on the failures of multiculturalism. Mirza is an advisor to Boris Johnson and wife of a David Cameron speech-writer.

Spiked and Prospect have both provided a huge amount of the intellectual substance for the David Cameron project (Cameron himself, and his closest allies, being distinctly lacking in substance): setting out a plausible "muscular liberal" critique of multicultural failure, which Cameron has adopted; a harsh numbers-based restrictionist agenda on immigration, which helped him carry the 2010 TV debates; a curmudgeonly libertarian critique of health and safety legislation and other forms of "nannying" regulation, which gave him cover for dismantling much consumer and worker protection; skepticism about climate change and other ecological issues, which has excused the complete lack of green action from a government claiming to be the greenest ever; and so on.

In particular, in the one surviving remnant of their former leftism, Prospect and especially Spiked have made their interventions in the name of a supposed working class constituency and articulated it as an attack on the elite. The word “elite” occurs 16 times in O’Neill’s short article: “new political elites”, “the cultural elite”, “the authoritarian elite”, as well as “the chattering classes”. Goodhart talks about “minority-friendly elite liberalism” and “middle class liberals whose lives had not been changed at all” (as if Goodhart’s life has been particularly affected by the demographic changes of the last decades, or as if he knows what it’s like to live on the Brook Estate)*.

This apparent anti-elitism and claim to speak for the benighted sons and daughters of toil is particularly useful for a Tory government led by some of the poshest people to rule the country in several decades.

These writers claim to have some privileged access to the souls of the proletariat. Maybe some (such as Mirza) come from working class backgrounds. But if the term "elite" means anything, they are surely part of it. Mirza graduated from Masfield College, Oxford; David Goodhart was educated at Eton; David Coleman is an Oxford fellow. They have sinecures paid for by public money, write for influential publications, advise prime ministers and mayors – and yet they deride leftism for being the politics of the elite.

O’Neill argues that: “Having occurred at an historic moment when the working classes were losing their political clout, and when the elites were becoming ever more estranged from the masses, [the Lawrence case] became the perfect tool for elite expressions of both fear of and pity for the mob.” However, the politics O’Neill and Goodhart prescribe offers no political clout to the working classes. It offers no solutions to the everyday problems on the Brook Estate. It merely offers targets for blame: the immigrants and the elites.

And their “contrarian” anti-elitism lets off the hook the real elites – the financial elites, the parliamentarians, the old Etonians, the Oxbridge cabinet ministers, the businessmen – who actually make the decisions that make the difference to everyday life on the Brook Estate.

*I know nothing about David Goodhart’s private life or upbringing; apologies in advance if I am wrong.

Previously: No-one like us, we don't care
Further reading: Sunder Katwala "Why we will remember Stephen Lawrence"; Roger Hewitt "Young Racist and White"; Nick Jeffrey "The sharp edge of Stephen's city [pdf]"; Yasmin Alibhai-Brown "To craft a new society"/"Imagining New Britain [pdf]"; Paul Thomas "Youth work, racist behaviour and young people Education or blame? [pdf]"
Listen again: Roger Hewitt on Thinking Allowed.
Books: White Backlash: and the Politics of Multiculturalism; and Routes of Racism.

Thoughts on the Stephen Lawrence verdict

2012-01-05T18:05:00.004Z

Chris Ofili: No Woman No Cry

So, the jury has decided and the judge has sentenced and David Norris and Gary Dobson, two of Stephen Lawrence's five or six killers, will be serving time. The wait has been long: almost the same length as Stephen's short life. And the time they serve will be short: the pair have been sentenced today as juveniles. And of course at least three other men took part in the killing, and they have not been brought to justice.

Although I can't claim any ownership of this tragedy, I feel as if I have lived closely with Stephen's death this past eighteen years. I was close in age to Stephen Lawrence and to his killers. I moved to Southeast London in 1991, I think, just months after Rolan Adams was stabbed by a racist gang in Thamesmead, just months before Rohit Duggal was killed in Eltham, Ruhullah Aramesh in Thornton Heath and Sher Singh Sagoo in even closer to home Deptford. I went on marches, memorials and vigils in Eltham, Welling and Thamesmead, and was active against the BNP in other parts of South London too.

I live barely four miles from where Stephen was killed on Well Hall Road, and I drive past the site frequently. Eltham, along with Mottingham, New Eltham, Kidbrooke and Lee, marks the eastern edge of my part of southeast London. It's is tangibly different - whiter, leafier, quieter, less quirky, more suburban, more air to breathe, less pedestrian-friendly - than my manor.

I can't say I know Eltham well, though. In fact, I live much closer to Catford, which featured in the infamous secret video recording made of the young David Norris:

"I would, I would go down Catford and places like that, I am telling you now, with two sub-machine guns and I am telling you I would take one of them, skin the black cunt alive, mate, torture him, set him alight … I would blow their two arms and legs off and say, 'Go on you can swim home now.'"

In that rant, Catford symbolises inner London and its multicultural drift: the world that the killers' parents and their generation had fled in moving out the leafy white suburbs. Stephen Lawrence and Duwayne Brooks were attacked, and Stephen slain, because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time: black men in a landscape the racist killers saw as their territory.

As the sociologist Les Back has suggested, it is therefore appropriate that the Lawrence Inquiry was held in Elephant and Castle, in the heart of heterogeneous inner London, and that this was where Norris, Dobson and the other alleged killers, Neil and Jamie Acourt and Luke Knight, were called to account.

The kind of racism that produced this tragedy was fuelled by the presence of the fascist British National Party's bunker in nearby Welling, and the years of the BNP's presence correlated with a wave of horrific acts of violence in the area, of which Stephen's murder was only the most high profile. Transpontine reminds us, for example, of the killings of Rolan Adams, Rohit Duggal and Ruhullah Aramesh in the period. And the killings did not end with Stephen: there was John Reid in Plumstead in 1996, Ricky Reel in Kingston in 1997, and Remi Surage in Orpington in 1998.

On the other hand, there were racist killings across Britain in the 1990s, and in some ways Eltham and its surrounds were not exceptional. However, the aftermath of the murder helped mark Eltham, and outer South East London in general, as an inherently racist and blighted location, beyond the pale of respectability. The national media would send reporters to the area, like Victorian pith-helmeted explorers to "darkest Africa", and they would bring back headlines about "London's deep South" and its recalcitrant redneck population; the worst I can recall (I think it was the Mirror) headlined the article "Into Hell". (This string of cliches from the liberal Independent is a recent example of the genre.)

Arguably, the projection of entrenched bigotry on to the disreputable transpontine netherlands of the metropolis allowed the political class north of the river to feel good about themselves, but didn't help tackle the root causes of the racist culture that formed Norris, Dobson and their gang.

It was also an unfair and inaccurate portrayal of the complexity of the area. This BBC item, quoting Les Back, catches it well:

"It needs to be remembered too about how many people went to the police to try and do the right thing, to speak with their consciences about what they knew and what they'd heard about the people involved in this murder."

Local people have long denied police claims that they put up a "wall of silence" during the original investigation.

In the nearly two decades since the murder, Eltham, London and the UK as a whole have changed, in some quite fundamental ways. The murder and its aftermath played a major part in this change, both locally and nationally.

Hopefully, the verdict will allow Eltham to heal, to continue to move forward. A good sense of the local changes that have already occurred can be read in two responses from two contemporaries of Lawrence and his killers from the same area: Darryl at 853 and Dan Hodges in the Telegraph. Both pieces are excellent and well worth your time. People like Darryl and Dan, not people like Norris and Dobson, have become the norm in outer London, and, although racism still exists, areas formerly seen as no-go areas for non-white people are now far more cosmopolitan, in a mundane, unspectacular way.

Both liberals and conservatives in the political classes like to stereotype white working class people as bigots, but (at Owen Jones notes) the statistics show that white working class people not only live amongst but also work and sleep with people from other backgrounds far more than middle class white people, and this is as true in Charlton or Abbey Wood too.

Nationally, too, there have been significant changes: in policing and in the way public services deal with black citizens. More importantly, the quiet dignity, impressive perseverence, articulacy, moral backbone and, well, ordinary-ness of the Doreen and Neville Lawrence made a huge difference over time to the way in which the mainstream media, and thus Middle England, viewed black Britons. An indicator of the sea-change is the excellent reportage of the issue from the right-wing media, including the Daily Telegraph but especially the Daily Mail.

Black people are, at least conditionally, much more included within the space of the British nation than they were in 1993, partly due to the Lawrence family and their campaign. But anti-racism has weekened rather than strengthened in the process.

Anti-racism is no longer a movement or a form of politics. It is no longer rooted in the (working class) urban communities that birthed it. In the aftermath of the July riots, I was struck again how little the older languages of radical anti-racism spoke to the young people on the English streets, an indicator of the attenuated presence of radical politics in our inner cities.

Anti-racism as politics has been replaced by anti-racism as litigation, as lawfare, as grievance procedure, as managerialism, as code of conduct. It is now owned by solicitors, barristers, parliamentarians, civil servants - some of them black, but almost all of them far distant from racism's cutting edge on the street.

Meanwhile, racism remains, but it has mutated. Its targets are different, and it is not about skin colour. Its targets are now more often white European migrants, Gypsies and Travellers, or Muslims (or people who might look Muslim). The BNP are no longer in their Welling bunker, but the English Defence League are active, and promoting a culture of thuggery and terror in London as elsewhere. And the mainstream newspapers which have been so clear in denouncing the racism that killed Stephen Lawrence continue to promote a wider climate of hatred against Islam and against migrants.

The Institute of Relations claims that close to 100 people have been murdered since 1991 "in cases where racial hatred was either clear cut or suspected. At least 15 remain unsolved – either because charges were dropped or because no one was ever convicted."

A Pakistani beaten to death in the immediate aftermath of the July 7 bombings as his attackers cried "Taliban!" An Asian man stabbed through the heart in Scotland. A Ghanaian found hanging from a tree after a racist gang threatened to kill him. A Sikh whose body was found in the Thames hours after he was attacked by another mob.[...]

In November 2009, Christopher Miller, then 25, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for the racially aggravated murder of Indian sailor Kunal Mohanty, 30, in Glasgow in March that year. Mr Mohanty, who was about to become a father, was slashed in the throat by Miller with a knife in the unprovoked attack, which was carried out after the attacker called his victim a ‘black b*****d’.

In October 2009, George Austin, then 22, was jailed for four-and-a-half years for the manslaughter of Mohammed al-Majed, 16, from Qatar, who died from brain injuries three days after hitting his head on the pavement after being punched by Austin. Austin was part of a gang of youths shouting racist abuse that attacked the teenager in Hastings, East Sussex.

Stephen Lawrence is a household name, but how many people have heard of Mohammed al-Majed or Kunal Mohanty? And behind the murders are the thousands, yes thousands, of incidents of racist violence and harassment recorded every year.

That is why we still need an anti-racist movement. So, we should be thankful for the partial justice the Lawrence family received this week; we should honour their work in making Stephen's legacy mostly positive; we should celebrate the changes in both South London and Britain at large. But much work remains to be done.

UPDATE: Second thoughts here.

Previous: Policing anti-racism in the 1990s;
Elsewhere: Owen Jones "Beware the assumptions"; Harpy "Justice 18 years on"; Stella Duffy "Everything is Connected"; Mark Easton's original 1993 Newsnight report; Francis Sedgemore "Justice, not quite"; London Raven (an Elthamite) on the local Twitter reaction.
Added: Sunder Katwala "Why we will remember Stephen Lawrence"
Further reading/wathcing off-line: Roger Hewitt White Backlash: and the Politics of Multiculturalism; and Routes of Racism; Critical Eye Living With The Bunker; Vron Ware and Les Back Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics and Culture.

2011 at Bob From Brockley

2011-12-30T14:59:00.000Z

2011 has been a strange year at BfB. Lots of guest posts, some of them inciting considerable controversy, and sometimes acrimony. The controversy made me think I was doing something right, but the acrimony made me think I was doing something very wrong, and there was a period in the middle of the year when I came close to shutting up shop. However, my most persistent irritants moved on after leaving a few stinkbombs, and things have returned to normal, with some of the more interesting regulars from the bobmunity returning quietly.

I also feel I have become even more obsessive in posting about a few topics again and again - the English Defence League, Gilad Atzmon, the "Arab Spring", the Occupy movement, left antisemitism - and neglecting all sorts of other topics - from books, films and music, to the Coalition government. I have also retreated from blogging about Brockley or Lewisham, partly because of the proliferation of very good local blogs, of which the very comprehensive Brockley Central and the excellent Transpontine are leaders. In 2012, I plan to spend more time on UK politics and also on non-political topics, especially music.

Greatest hits
So, these are my most read posts in 2011. Some of them were written before 2011, and I guess I should be pleased at their enduring appeal.

1. So, the time has come not to renew membership of the Green Party.
23 Feb 2011, 205 comments, 3,165 Pageviews
This is one of the guest posts, by Toby Green, on antisemitism in the Green Party, which circulated quite widely.

2. Triangulating Bobism 1: Harryism and indecency
24 Aug 2010, 96 comments, 2,064 Pageviews
I am pleased this older post has a high spot in the greatest hits, as it is one in which I set out something of the core agenda of the blog.

3. Uzbekistan porn
6 Oct 2005, 1,253 Pageviews
On the other hand, it is really irritating this has such a prominent position, as it is basically completely content-free, and its enduring popularity speaks of everything wrong with the worldwide web.

4. Jewish Hero or Israeli Criminal?
19 Apr 2011, 56 comments, 1,028 Pageviews
Another guest post, by HP regular Michael Ezra, on a fascinating post-Shoah story.

5. STOP RAISE YOUR BANNERS FROM HOSTING THE RACIST GILAD ATZMON
22 Nov 2011, 28 comments, 998 Pageviews
The most recent hit, on the antisemitic jazz maestro Gilad Atzmon at a festival in Bradford, with a Lewisham angle.

6. Influential left-wingers
18 Sep 2010, 25 comments, 948 Pageviews
Another semi-oldie I'm pleased to see here, with five good influences on the left, five bad influences, and five who ought to be more influential.

7. Triangulating Bobism 2: The Furedi cult
29 Sep 2010, 38 comments, 885 Pageviews
This is my long analysis of the former RCP/Living Marxism cult, now mainly known as Spiked.

8. Guest post: Islam and the left – against secular fundamentalism
11 Oct 2011, 15 comments, 832 Pageviews
A strange unsolicited guest post by one Ali H calling for Islamic communism.

9. "Influential left-wing ideas"
21 Dec 2010, 45 comments, 732 Pageviews

Similar idea to the influential leftists above, but ideas not people. This post circulated fairly widely by my modest standards, provoking interesting debates in various Zionist and anti-Zionist circles, for example.

10. Political influences 4: John Lennon19 Sep 2011, 3 comments, 696 Pageviews

Not one of my finest posts, but OK. About listening to "Imagine" in view of the Occupied Territories.

Bob's picks

Here are the posts that I'd have liked to you to have read.

Top Referrers

1. Harry's Place

2. The Contentious Centrist

3. Shiraz Socialist

4. Working Class Tory

5. Engage

6. David Osler

7. Norman Geras

8. Fat Man on a Keyboard

The other top ones are odd aggregation sites I'd rather not link to. Thanks, though, to all of you guys.

Search terms

The top search engine terms (linked to where they take you).
1. Bob from Brockley - a bit obvious I guess. Variations on this fill a few of the other top ten slots, so I've removed them.
2. Occupy Wall Street - actually, bizarrely, my re-posting of a Jewish Labor Committee statement on OWS gets more google juice than any of my own posts, but still.
3. Fuck Washington - hmmm. What on earth were they looking for?
4. uzbekistan porn - see above
5. leonardo dicaprio hairline - another demonstration of why the internet should be banned
6. conspiracy theories - actually links to a proper post
7. sarf london - am glad to be the go-to place for that.

8. christopher hitchens portrait

Other reviews of the year: Keith Kahn-Harris.

Last miscellaneous round-up post of 2011, probably

2011-12-23T21:02:00.009Z

Post of the week: Johnny Guitar: Defending the indefensible with the absurd.

Kellie rounds up some of the commentary on the passing of Vaclav Havel. And here’s a superb Hitchens post I would’ve included in the last one if I had read it sooner. Oh, and another from Rosie.

Two blogs to add to the blogroll: Sean Lynch's Coal not Dole and Will Bradshaw's eponymous blog.

Congratulations to our friend Carl Packman on his very interesting looking book plans.

Via Engage, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s “top ten anti-Israel/anti-Semitic slurs” [pdf]. I find some items on the list a little problematic. The no.1 “slur” is Mahmoud Abbas talking about Palestine as a Holy Land without mentioning Jews – a sleight, perhaps, but hardly a major league slur. Similarly, this at no.10 from (Obama’s mentor) Reverend Jeremiah Wright: “The state of Israel is an illegal, genocidal place… to equate Judaism with the state of Israel is to equate Christianity with [rapper] Flavor Flav.” That’s excessive rhetoric, but it’s not antisemitic. It seems to me that the inclusion of these two examples at the bookends is pure politics and also dangerous self-defeating politics. On a related topic: Bill Weinberg on the apparently paradoxical normalization of anti-Semitism and anti-Arab racism. A very interesting review by Daniel Johnson in the Weekly Standard of Gertrude Himmelfarb’s new history of British philosemitism, which looks to make an interesting companion to Anthony Julius’ book.

I visited Occupy LSX at the weekend. They had done a poll amongst occupiers about what their politics were. “Anti-capitalist” came to something like 20%, with the largest number being “anti-central bank”, and “anti-corruption” second. Which I think gives weight my earlier diagnosis of Occupy as populist rather than anti-capitalist. There was also quite a strong presence of the bizarre Twelve Tribes Christian cult (also known as the Stentwood Farm/Stoneybrook Farm/Morning Star Ranch/Yellow Deli. While I was there, I picked up the latest Occupied Times which had some worthwhile content, in particular a welcome attack on fake-leftist conspiracy theory re-printed from New Internationalist and an interesting text on the global anti-capitalist elite. From America, I haven’t yet read this on the Platypus view of the Occupy movement but will. Related reading, I liked Russell Arben Fox on why “the protestor” was the person of the year in 2011 (via New Appeal to Reason). And here’s Hakim Bey’s pronouncements on Occupy Wall Street.

Which leads nicely to this: a fantastic dismissal of anarchism from the late Murray Bookchin via the excellent Radical Archives blog, extracted from “The Communalist Project”. Here’s an even smaller extract:

anarchism – which, I believe, represents in its authentic form a highly individualistic outlook that fosters a radically unfettered lifestyle, often as a substitute for mass action – is far better suited to articulate a Proudhonian single-family peasant and craft world than a modern urban and industrial environment... the history of this “ideology” is peppered with idiosyncratic acts of defiance that verge on the eccentric, which not surprisingly have attracted many young people and aesthetes. In fact anarchism represents the most extreme formulation of liberalism’s ideology of unfettered autonomy, culminating in a celebration of heroic acts of defiance of the state.”

I have a long post half-drafted about the EDL and the British Freedom Party, but it’s not getting finished, so I’ll post a link to this useful article on the EDL at the IRR site.

History is made at Night on two massacres.

An interesting blog: that of rabbi Howard Cooper.

Finally, I’ve been meaning to link to this, for ages, from A Jay Adler: Myanmar, Not Forgotten in the Darkness.

Right to reply: John Hamilton

2011-12-23T10:27:00.001Z

Bob: John Hamilton, of Lewisham People Before Profit and the Strawberry Thieves Choir, has been mentioned in a few posts on this blog. I should probably have contacted him to inform him, but didn't get around to it (this is, after all, a personal blog written in my spare time, and not a form of public service broadcasting). He has posted a comment in reply to one of them, and I am publishing it here. The relevant posts are: Holocaust memorial day in Lewisham (a guest post by Councillor Michael Harris), STOP RAISE YOUR BANNERS FROM HOSTING THE RACIST GILAD ATZMON, and The virulent Zionist conspiracy versus the Strawberry Thieves, and other sad footnotes to the Gilad Atzmon Show. For those interested, you can find coverage of some of the local activities John has been involved in at various places on the site, such as on the Carnival Against Cuts or Save Ladywell Pool.

Dear Bob,

I didn't know you had referred to me in your blog until a fellow member of Strawberry Thieves Choir said she had found a reference to me and Karl Dallas while searching for Karl's address.

I don't know if we have ever met, but I am surprised that you can write so much about someone without asking them if it is true. You know that you can contact me either through the Strawberry Thieves website or the Lewisham People Before Profit website.

So, you say I am an acolyte of Gilad Atzmon. I went to his concert in Bradford because I had read a review of him and preferred an evening of Jazz to the alternative concert on offer. I did not know anything of his background or his political views. I learned that evening that there had been attempts made by Jewish groups to have him out-vited.

Some of your commentators seem to be unable to read: the line in War Crimes [pdf] says quite clearly on your blog:

Is it a war crime, to kill 6 million Jews? Yes!
Not much doubt that I think it was a war crime, then!

Funny that you don't print the whole of verse 4, which is about Palestine, only selecting a few lines.

Verse 4:

War Crime! Sixty year War Crime! Is it a
War Crime to murder, bomb and maim?
Yes! They've seized the land of Palestine,
Behave like gangsters all the time.
Abducting civilians, bulldozing homes,
Shooting children for throwing stones.
Diverting water, ruining crops,
Will these war crimes ever stop?

Yes! But not while Israel exists as a state made for the chosen few
Where lives of Palestinian folk are worth much less than lives of Jews.
Peaceful co-existence is not possible with a country governed by war criminals.
Encouraged and financed by the United States, we need to pin the blame on all who perpetrate

War Crimes there will be war crimes
Unless we take a stand and put these criminals on trial.
Do you agree with these words, Bob?

Do you agree that those who divert water, bulldoze homes in occupied territories, shoot children and impose collective punishment are war criminals? The Geneva conventions does define these acts as war crimes.

Do you agree that there can be no peaceful co-existence between Israel and Palestine while such criminals are protected and are even in leading positions in the state apparatus?

Do you use the label "anti-semite" for everyone who criticises the state of Israel, such as Richard Goldstone who investigated war crimes in Gaza for the UN?

You say elsewhere in your blog that I have been a member of various maoist groups and name one. You are wrong.

You say that you support the political activities I have been involved in over the past 10 years in Lewisham, such as the New School Campaign, the Save Ladywell Pool Campaign and the campaigns to prevent privatisation of Lewisham's libraries. What kind of support have you given? Have you been down at the town hall at 8am? Have you performed street theatre in Lewisham town centre? Have you leafletted street after street to inform people of what is happening to their facilities? Or have you sat at your cosy computer allowing people to call me an arsehole, a cunt, a tankie, someone who should be "taken out" without exercising your option to moderate comment on your site.

Your source Mike (I support democratic cuts) Harris misled you when he claimed I shouted "Gaza" at a rabbi, demanding that he apologise. I did say (not shout) "..and Gaza" because I think it is important that Jews should not ignore the massacres being carried out by Israel. The rabbi agreed with me and repeated my words. Let us not forget that Cllr Mike Harris is a political opponent of much that you and I stand for.

I am not going to get involved in a debate via your website but I would appreciate you checking your facts in future before referring to me. I look forward to your answer by email via the choir website.

On reading obituaries of Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-21T16:45:00.004Z

Even in death he stands tall and apart from the parochial, bien-peasant, trilling, beard-stroking mediocrities – face-timers and time-servers of the writing life, men and women who have never written a good line of prose or provided a single insight into our universe or touched a human heart. Fuck them. – Max Dunbar

I’ve barely started going through the flood of obituaries and memories of Christopher Hitchens. I started writing my own, but it seems a little surplus to requirement. Kellie provides the definitive list of links (as well as Hitchens commenting on totalitarianism, in light of the departure of the North Korean dictator), and a good first point of call is Vanity Fair. Rosie sums up the rest: “The tributes are pouring in, the reminiscences, the summings ups, the paying off of old scores. The famous, the obscure, the mandarin and the meanest of spirits are all having their say. I've read a few of their pieces and liked David Frum's best of all for its warmth and this final paragraph from Jacob Weisberg.” Terry Glavin’s, of course, is especially lovely, as is George Szirtes’. And, although it feels strange to say it, given how little regard I’ve had for Peter Hitchens up to now, his lovely brotherly obituary in the Mail is probably the single thing most worth reading.

Francis Sedgemore comments on the throwaway nature of many of the obits, and in a highly recommended short post shows how journalism has changed for the worst since Hitchens entered the trade. Francis is right, and most of the ones I’ve read have irritated me more than anything else.

Some of the Hitchens posts are worth checking simply because they are illustrated with some wonderful photos of the man I’d not seen before, such as this one by Tigerloaf, which also has a great quotation. I especially like the photo that illustrate Max Dunbar’s fine post, with curl of cigarette smoke. More harrowing, of course, are some of the final pictures of him raging against the dying of the light, such as that by Michael Stravato which illustrates Hitchens’ last (and especially wonderful) Vanity Fair piece, which is about death. Some are illustrated with the wonderful Jamie James Medina portrait, with poppy and rumpled hat, that I particularly love. But only a few have anything interesting to say.

Drink-Soaked Popinjay

I think this post at Harry’s Place best captures what Hitchens meant in the last decade or so to people like me, who groped for “an anti-Islamist, anti-Saddam, pro-democracy left” in the new world order opened up by 9/11, as we watched our former comrades on the left go deeper and deeper into the abyss of isolationist, anti-American, anti-democratic “anti-imperialism” and its alliance with various forms of right-wing politics, an alliance we could not have imagined a few years before. As the author says, Hitchens was an inspiration for the early noughties trans-Atlantic political blogging explosion (of which this blog was one of the later, smaller tremors), due to the strange synchronicity between the availability of Web 2.0 as a platform and the locking out of morally decent people from the old platforms of the mainstream left.

This point is made too when Francis describes Hitchens as a “fellow drink-soaked popinjay”, taking up as a badge of pride the wonderful term of abuse coined by the eloquent George Galloway, which of course was the name of the collective blog Francis was part of a few years back, which defined the range of anti-totalitarian radicalism so well.

I’m not sure what the connection is between the drink-soaked thing and the anti-totalitarianism, but there is one: totalitarianism is based on the suppression or deferral of human desires and pleasures. Marx, a spendthrift, hard-drinking bon viveur beloved by small children, would have been unable to live under the regimes he gave his name to, while Chomsky’s priggish hatred of sport, music or anything fun illuminates why his brand of libertarianism is ultimately actually authoritarian. Hence the contempt from the puritans Ian Leslie calls “thin-lipped disapprovers”.

Here’s Nick Cohen, who famously turned up splendidly drunk to denounce the right-wingers honoured with a prize named after George Orwell (a truly libertarian socialist, as well as a man who liked to smoke and drink), on the BBC’s mean-spirited obituary:

[It was] delivered by its media correspondent, Nick Higham, a ferrety cultural bureaucrat who has never written a sentence anyone has remembered. He assured the nation that Hitchens was an "alcoholic". Hitchens could certainly knock it back. But [if] he were a true alcoholic he... would he have been loved, for addicts are too selfish to love. Something else the BBC broadcast inadvertently explained was why the world feels a more welcoming place for the tyrannical and the censorious without him.

Francis Wheen makes a more important point: “Even when he reached for another late-night whisky, his perception remained unerringly sober.” And Michael Weiss: “Friendship was his only real ideology.”

Former Trotskyist Bushite

Leninists (not least those of bourgeois origin, i.e. most of them) would no doubt call the imperative to not speak ill of the dead a form of “bourgeois morality” to be dispensed with. Of course, they’re right, and Hitchens would agree with them: Kim Jong-il’s passing does not exempt him from derision and hatred, and nor would that of, say, Ahmadinejad or Kissinger (example: Hitchens the day after Jerry Falwell died). But I was irritated by the petty-ness of some of the vindictive lightweights coming out to kick Hitchens’ corpse and of some of the Leninist inquisitors coming out to confirm his ex-communication from the sect.

The reliably appalling Guardian paleo-conservative Simon Jenkins come out with one of the standard lines: writes: “The identikit Trot of our early friendship had became a rabid Bushite defending the Iraq war”. It’s worth noting that his Trotskyism was of a very particular sort: he was inducted into the International Socialists (the forerunner of the current, dreadful SWP) by Peter Sedgwick, in its most heterodox, intellectually vibrant period, a time when its publications were open to several non-party members, and when it was as much in thrall to the anti-Leninist Rosa Luxemburg as it was to Trotsky. (Hitchens, in turn, helped induct Alex Callinicos into the party of which he is now a leading member and Callinicos has written a nice and surprisingly generous obit for the Socialist Worker.) The IS did an important job, in a period when the left dominated by the authoritarian Third Worldist fantasies epitomised by Tariq Ali’s IMG, of retrieving a libertarian, democratic tradition within Marxism, the tradition of William Morris, Hal Draper, Victor Serge, CLR James, Sylvia Pankhurst, Max Shachtman and George Orwell. Arguably, it is this anti-Stalinist left that has been the model for the anti-totalitarianism of the so-called decent left, especially its more left-wing varieties.

HP retorts against Jenkins: “Although he was a Marxist to the end and certainly a Trotskyist for many years, I find it hard to imagine Hitchens as ‘identikit’ in any way. And, of course, he certainly never became a ‘rabid Bushite’. I’ll get to the Bushite bit later, but want to amplify the point about Marxism. Here’s Michael Weiss: “Well unto the toppling of Saddam, the only time I heard Hitch use the word “conservative” in a laudatory fashion was when it preceded the word “Marxist.””

Bloodthirsty maniac

Another related line of attack, to put it at its pithiest, as expressed by Negative Potential here, is that he was a “bloodthirsty maniac”. Less pithy, but no more subtle, Richard Seymour weighs in here, pontificating about why Hitchens was not “an intellectual” because he did not understand “theory”, and by Corey Robbins, who calls Hitchens a provincial narcissist. In a more thoughtful version of the critique, Simon at Latte Labour argues that there was a connection between Hitchens’ “cult of reason” and his support for war, and suggests that Hitchens’ talent as a propagandist and reputation as a liberal gave Bush moral cover. For these people, Hitchens’ position on the Iraq war is the start and finish of any assessment of him.

But was he bloodthirsty? Of course, Hitchens was always a courageous man and he came to value what would once have been described as manly or warrior virtues. (Michael Totten’s account of a slightly slapstick but potentially deadly escapade in Beirut, involving Hitchens defacing a poster of a Syrian fascist and nearly coming a cropper for it, has been widely circulated, but worth re-reading for a good sense of Hitchens in extremis.) But the large number of essays he wrote about war (such as his essay on Mark Daily, the young American soldier whose death in Iraq he could be said to have inspired, or one of his last Slate articles, on Armistice Day) show a more visceral understanding of its horrors than the moralism of the “anti-war” camp does.

Corey Robin claims that Hitchens’ war-mongering is forgiven because

we have come to a point in our culture where war is viewed as a neutral tool of state or an instrument of national salvation and human progress—and, in either case, as something that simply does not touch “us” in its concrete facts of blood and death. Us being the people who are not the victims of our wars and the men and women who are not required to fight those wars.

But it seems to me that this anti-war position simply reverses the terms: for the stoppers, “war” acquires a different sort of abstraction and neutrality. The pious denunciation is all about an “us” that requires flagellation, while the “them” are never consulted. Thus in the Seymour/Robin worldview, there is no difference between Vietnam, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Libya, Iraq, World War I, World War II: they are all just “war” and thus evil. (Ian Baruma, for instance, talks about the “irony” of anti-Vietnam Hitchens being pro-Iraq war.)

Hitchens, though, was not in favour of war in general; he was not a bloodthirsty war-monger. Rather, he was in favour of specific wars, specific interventions, at particular times, with particular aims, and under particular conditions. He might have been wrong about Iraq (and I’m not sure whether he was or not), but surely the principle that some wars are worth fighting is correct, even if the ones doing the fighting do not appeal to us.

And likewise, the anti-war brigade pose as being against war in general, but they only seem to mention some wars – specifically those fought by Western powers in the Middle East. You don’t see the anti-war marchers mobilising to stop the devastating wars in central Africa, for example. Although perhaps the “we” of their partial universalism includes Sunni Muslim Arabs but not Africans.

Traitor

The hatred of Hitchens from the Seymours is the hatred of the cult-member for the apostate. He betrayed the left, and it can't forgive him. Most of them frame Hitchens’ right-ward turn as literally selling out, as exchanging correct thought for the yankee dollar. As David Aaronovitch puts it:

Typical was this, written in May last year, from the high-table revolutionary Terry Eagleton in the New Statesman, claiming that "those who, like Christopher Hitchens, detest a cliché turn into one of the dreariest types of them all: the revolutionary hothead who learns how to stop worrying about imperialism and love... Paul Wolfowitz". In other words, he was the lean young man corrupted by proximity to power and need for money, and turned into the fat shill of the people's enemy.*#

Smarter critics understand Hitchens’ turn in the context of the religious structure of leftist thought. Andrew Coates’ review of the book explores the issue of Hitchens’ relationship with the faith of leftism, and faith is exactly the right term. Leftism is a religion, and Hitchens’ boring obsession with religions in general must be connected to his own relationship to the leftist faith. A more interesting analysis of his apostasy was written up by Guy Rundle in the Spiked Review of Books a year of two ago (h/t AC). Worth noting that Spiked’s origins are also in the IS of that era: its guru Frank Furedi left “in 1975 on issues that remain obscure to all concerned”. Like other escapees from the Tony Cliff cult, Furedi’s RCP also eventually became apostates for the left, right-wing libertarians who make Hitchens’ alleged Bushism look like orthodox Trotskyism. Rundle suggests that Hitchens

took from the IS/SWP’s oppositionality, not a mode of doing politics, but a form of political moralising that rapidly becomes a tiresome and inecessant [sic] judgement on the taking and wielding of power itself. Thus in the early Oxford Union years we continually encounter revolutionaries, activists, writers and so on held to be bursting with brilliance, only to be tagged with the premonitory phrase about the thugs, monsters or moral failures they became. Overwhelmingly this is because they took the power they were campaigning for, and having done so, had to make some grisly choices. But for Hitchens, the result is an endlessly repeated political Fall, in which oppositionality becomes a series of impossible standards.

Perhaps this says less about Hitchens than it does about Spiked’s cringeful adoration of power in the form of the Conservative party (for Rundle, Hitchens reached his “low point” when he slagged off Matthew Parrish for being... a Conservative!) and their pose of oppositionality to the “liberal elite”. But it rings true on one level.

However, the notion that Hitchens abandoned the left is simplistic. First, it ignore the fact that in some ways he was always a dissident within the left. In Hitch-22, he describes the double life he led in his early IS days, when by night he dined, drank and fucked with the most decadent dredges of the ruling class in Oxford, and later his early (limited) enthusiasm for Margaret Thatcher. His support for Solidarity and other Eastern Bloc rebels was shared with the rest of the anti-Stalinist left (including, I think, the SWP). His support for Western intervention in the 1990s also presaged his post-9/11 position. As Aaronovitch puts it:

Rwanda provided the embers, Bosnia the fire. Any internationalist, any progressive, any leftwinger would want to intervene to try to prevent such horrors - and not just because they were horrible either, but because they made the world worse for everyone.*

And the idea of Hitchens as turncoat also ignores the continuity in his leftism after 9/11. Not just the obvious points that he continued his crusade against Kissinger and Mother Teresa, against the moral majority dominant strand of American conservatism, and so on, and pretty sharp criticisms of Bush, as well as his attacks on his friend Martin Amis’ ignorant anti-communism in Koba the Dread and his championing of Trotsky on Radio 4. But more fundamentally that his opposition to Ba’athism and to Islamism was rooted in left-wing values not conservative ones. In short, the caricature of Hitchens is, again quoting Aaronovitch, “a self-comforting lozenge that the lazy intellectual Left sucks on to make its pain and doubts go away.”

What the meme reveals is the extent to which the Iraq war, even more than Israel, has acted as a cultural code, a shibboleth, for the self-definition of a left that has lost its moral compass as it has abandoned its core constituency and core values. Aaronovitch again: “When the Iraq war finally began in the spring of 2003 after almost a year of argument, it became clear that many on the Left now regarded being against the war as the test of belief, as the essential membership card for comradeship.” Perhaps now, as the last American troops withdraw from Iraq, the left has the opportunity to let go of its obsession and move on. But probably not...

Antisemite

Another line of attack on Hitchens, from the opposite angle, is the absurd notion (for example, in a TNR comment thread) that he was an antisemite, despite discovering well into his adult years that his mother was Jewish. The notion is based on two things: his fierce anti-religiosity, which led him to say harsh things about Judaism as a religion and its rituals, and his sharp criticisms of Israel, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. Of course, the leap from militant secularist anti-Judaism or Israel-criticism to antisemitism is a leap others have taken, but that Hitchens did is an absurdity. It is true he made some mis-steps in this area: his refusal to condemn David Irving, for example, and his insistence that Irving’s historiography[hy should be admired (which, as John Podheretz puts it, “is a little like praising Josef Mengele for his medical skills”).

However, on the whole, the indictment is weak. The Forward delves a little into Hitchens’ Jewish question, and comes up with some good stuff, including this on Walt and Mearsheimer’s original Israel lobby article: “Wishfulness has led them to seriously mischaracterize the origins of the problem and to produce an article that is redeemed from complete dullness and mediocrity only by being slightly but unmistakably smelly.”

Zionist

Even more bizarre than the notion that he was an antisemite is the notion that he was a Zionist. Dave Rich gives examples: “First up is Craig Murray, with the approval of Inayat Bunglawala, claiming that Hitchens was a “zionist propagandist”.” Murray, a strange hero for many on the anti-war left, says that “British journalism is full of people of the same generation who have lurched from the Trotskyist far left to a crazed neo-con agenda with no intervening period of sanity. I suspect the available riches for zionist propagandists are a major factor. Hitchens, Aaronovitch, Phillips, Cohen. You can probably think of others. A strange and extremely unpleasant manifestation of intellectual prostitution.” Note, all the names are Jewish, as if no gentile writers lurch from the left to the right or endorse the “neo-con” agenda. It’s not even worth pointing out how wrong Murray is on this one, given the consistent anti-Israel line Hitchens continued to take post-9/11.

Parochial and provincial

And then a whole lot of commentators, including several that rarely stray from ivy league campuses or the Beltway bubble, are obsessed with Hitchens’ “parochialism” and “provincialism”. Seymour, Robin and Glenn Greenwald go on about it. Greenwald cites his buddy Aaron Bady on Hitchens’ commitment to a

“we” that never seems to extend to the un-grievable Arab casualties of Hitch’s favorite wars. It’s also a “we” that has everything to do with being clever and literate and British (and nothing to do with a human universalism that stretches across the usual “us” and “them” categories).

I don’t know which Hitchens these people actually read, but the Hitchens I read was one of the most internationalist of writers, and one who (like George Orwell, Robert Fisk or Patrick Cockburn) put himself in the line of fire in lands distant from that of his birth.

The Portuguese carnation revolution, the struggle against fascist dictatorship in Greece and against military dictatorships in South America were central to his 1970s politics, and continued to be reference points; and he did not simply offer solidarity from afar, he spent time in these countries. Ian Leslie writes: “It wasn't really until I read Hitchens that I understood what it meant not to be parochial. He was deeply English in manner and yet deeply global in his thinking. His points of view were enriched and strengthened by first-hand knowledge of the place and people he was writing about, as well as by his reading of history. He hardly ever wrote about a country he hadn't visited, even if it was North Korea or a war zone in Bosnia.” And, of course, his “bloodthirstyness” against Saddam Hussein was based on a long and deep relationship with Iraq and especially Kurdistan.

In 2005, he was in Iran, a place I would not be brave enough to visit, and Iranian Sohrab Ahmari here records how well Hitchens understood what he saw there. And here’s Roya Hakakian, another Iranian:

Only one belonging to a forsaken people or a forgotten cause can know the value of her flag pinned to his highly-visible lapel. He may have been born in England, but the blood that flowed in his veins was Third World blood. The depth of his kinship with the suffering of those with whom he has nothing in common can’t be otherwise explained. He lived in Washington, but his moral time zone was set to Evil Standard Time. Like those from that zone, he operated according to the urgency that dictatorships instill in their subjects. He understood that to be leisurely is to forsake possibilities, even lives.#

In fact, he was the opposite of provincial and parochial; he was a true internationalist. As his friend Francis Wheen wrote the day after his death, Hitchens’ life and mind “contained multitudes. England itself may have been too small to accommodate them, as the puritanical small-mindedness of that BBC report yesterday confirmed”.

In good company

Finally, the proximity of Hitchens’ death and those of Kim Jong-il and Vaclav Havel seems indicative of something, but I’m not sure what – maybe just “the cosmic lattice of coincidence”, to quote the immortal lines of one of my favourite films. Anyway, here’s
Hitchens’ pre-posthumous obits for his fellow dead.

*Aaronovitch is behind the Times paywell. Extracts via Norm and Mick Hartley.

Previously: “Hitchens, with poppy and rumpled hat” (November 2010); “Old soldiers, broken promises, class prejudices” (Hitchens at 61); Carl P’s review of Christopher Hitchens’ ‘The Enemy’.

He was a friend of mine

2011-12-20T19:17:00.002Z

I drafted this late last week. However, I read through lots of obituaries since then and before tidying it up. It now seems a little pointless to post, when so much has been written by much better writers with much more to say than me, but having written it it seems silly to leave it un-published.

I was thinking of Christopher Hitchens on Thursday morning as I passed through Oxford train station. Coachloads of soldiers in desert colours were being deposited at the station, having arrived back in the damp wintery greyness of Bryce Norton for Christmas, on leave from service in Afghanistan. Big men made bigger by the bulk of the kit they were carrying, they were quiet and looked tired and disoriented, but at the same time walked with a certain upright bearing that further amplified their incongruous presence among the students, tourists and Christmas shoppers. It made me think about courage and morality and manliness, and the ethics of this particular conflict our soldiers have been caught in for nearly a decade, now no longer so often in the news. And, that, of course, made me think of Hitchens. He is thought of by his detractors as a cheerleader for war, but that’s a grossly unfair reputation; still, the question of war, and of soldiers, has been one he has returned to again and again in his writing, a question he has worried away at from several angles, in a serious and often profound manner, most importantly in his moving essay on Mark Daily, a young American soldier killed in Mosul, but also in one of his final pieces of writing, an extraordinary essay on Armistice Day.

I can’t remember when I first became aware of Hitchens. I suppose it was in the late 1980s; my grandparents were readers of The Nation, where Hitchens was a regular fixture. (Having lost their Jewish faith in their teens, and lapsed from their Communist faith in their middle years, The Nation was something of a religious commitment in their later years.) But it was actually through TV rather than the printed page that Hitchens made his impression on me.

There were two programmes specifically. One was a documentary he presented about Mother Teresa, puncturing the humbug of her myth so thoroughly and skilfully it was almost literally breathtaking for me. The other was a late discussion show that seems almost to good to have actually been screened that now I recall it I almost wonder if I invented it: it featured Hitchens with three other towering intellects of his generation, his friend Edward Said (now also sadly lost to us), Camille Paglia and Robert Hughes, discussing postmodernism of all things. Again, Hitchens’ lucidity eloquence presented itself to me as something to (impossibly) aspire to.

But I think it is on the page that he shines the brightest. Several of his essays could be counted, in my view, among the very finest pieces of non-fiction writing in the English language. They could keep company with the best essays of his hero Orwell, or of Irving Howe, Thomas Carlyle, or Hannah Arendt, to name some of my other favourite essayists.

At the same time, though, I found some things deeply distasteful about him. The aggressive debating society display of verbal dexterity, where besting an opponent in an intellectual fight that seems to matter more than whatever is at stake. The boozy boorish persona. The aura of confidence, privilege and entitlement bred by an expensive private school/Oxbridge education. (Some words in the attacks on him that have come out since his death that ring true: overstatement, obsessional, haughty, pugnacious, sniggering, swaggering, hectoring, self-righteous indignation.)

I also didn’t understand the viciousness with which he attacked Bill Clinton, in my view one of the least bad American presidents of my lifetime, and thought he was wrong to back Ralph Nader against Clinton’s sidekick Al Gore (especially when it looked like the Naderite vote helped give us George Bush II, one of the most bad presidents of my lifetime). But I savoured the way he expressed his viciousness. Even if you disagreed with him Mother Teresa (and I didn’t), how could you not savour this:

Mother Teresa was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti, whose rule she praised in return, and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan.

In the period I came aware of him, one of Hitchens’ particular campaigns was against identity politics, and the retreat into the narcissism of minor difference that was deflecting the left from its historic goal of achieving a fairer society for all. The embrace of identity politics was in fact one of his issues with Clinton:

The only thing that Clinton is good at, according to Hitchens, is appealing to the myriad of special-interest lobbies that make up so much of what thinks of itself as the American left: “He has manipulated images so that people in the gay movement, the feminist movement, the civil rights movement and the Hispanic lobby feel that privately he’s on their side... The left has falsely convinced itself that there are all of these individual emancipations going on, and I think it’s going to be disappointed. What’s missing in all this is any conception of citizenship or comradeship or the common good. And that’s too precious to give up for any special claim.”

This line of critique against the left, rooted in both the Enlightenment values and Marxist worldview that were the originally foundations for left-wing politics, has felt more accurate as each decade has gone by.

In the last decade, I have found more and more to admire about Hitchens. The more I read his writing, the more serious I realise it is. As George Szirtes puts it:

Hitchens was essentially a moral writer who grounded his morality in literature as well as in history, philosophy, and politics. That is to say he 'heard' language for what it is, not just as a polemical tool. The morality is in the style. A moral writer remains a moral writer even if his earlier admirers turn away from him or he turns away from them. His later opinion may be different from the earlier but the moral force is the same, in fact stronger as the style in which it is asserted develops.

He articulated so well the revulsion that morally decent people felt to the inanity of the mainstream left’s “chickens coming home to roost” response to the 9/11 horrors – and he was ex-communicated from the left for it, giving him an independence of position that made him even less popular with his former allies, while also allowing him to explore new intellectual avenues. This gave him a brief moment of popularity with the hawkish right, but he never gave up his harsh judgements of Republican politicians or Christian moralists, and after a while the neocons drew back.

In this period, he wrote brilliant books about Orwell, Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine, all three of which should be obligatory reading for anyone interested in politics or in writing. The Orwell book is probably my favourite of his monographs (although his essay collections are both better and capture his style more perfectly). Many of his detractors found some hubris in the project, as if Hitchens wanted to claim Orwell’s mantle, but this is more true of that book than of, say, David Harvey or EJ Hobsbawm writing about Marx. (And in Hitchens’ case, although he couldn’t come close to claiming Orwell’s mantle, I can’t think of anyone who comes closer.)

In recent years, Hitchens devoted more and more time to what I think is his most tedious crusade: against religion. (See Russell Fox and Carl Packman on this issue.) In my view, Hitchens’ wit and intelligence has been wasted on this battle, to which he has added nothing but a little bit of bare knuckle entertainment.

I read his book of memoirs, Hitch-22, this year, and found sections of it – about his private schooling, his Oxford undergraduate high jinks, and his boyish adult ex-private school chums and their in-jokes – even more tedious. But the opening chapters, where he talks about his parents, are quite simply superb pieces of prose, which brought a lump to my throat a number of times in the subtle way they explore the psychodrama of family life, but also the psychodrama of the corrosive British class system and its genteel racism. Reading those chapters, I came to view him in a fundamentally different way, as a friend I never met.

Also read: Christopher Buckley, Terry Glavin, George Szirtes, Max Dunbar, Marc Tracy.
Previously: “Hitchens, with poppy and rumpled hat” (November 2010); “Old soldiers, broken promises, class prejudices” (Hitchens at 61); Carl P’s review of Christopher Hitchens’ ‘The Enemy’.

In Egypt

2011-12-19T13:39:00.000Z

Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears.

The brutal suppression by the forces of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the un-elected junta that rules Egypt, of the pro-democracy forces in Tahrir Square has taken a severe turn for the worse this weekend, to the relative lack of interest from the so-called international community and the mainstream media of liberal democracies. Michael Collins Dunn of the Middle East Institute has been reporting on it. The video he posted on Saturday is almost unwatchable for the vicousness of the military police beating civilian protestors. Those of you who pray, pray for Egypt now.

Mini-misc

2011-12-16T18:43:00.004Z

Two very lovely posts honouring Christopher Hitchens, from two of my favourite bloggers: "Decline and fall" by Rosie Bell and Noga on Hitchens' "Vocabular Cornucopia".

Also: Alan A: Gilad Atzmon: Honorary Raelian Priest; Jim D: Morning Star’s “fellow feeling” with Cameron on EU; Ben Six: Multicultural muddles.

Mixing pop and politics 1

2011-12-13T18:30:00.000Z

This is the first in a short series on the music played by political blogs. I think there'll be three instalments with three blogs in each. In this one, I'll focus on three of the grand old fellas of the genre.

Inveresk Street Ingrate

People, people just, people want to dream
Just look at their graves and you’ll see what I mean
Let’s leave them to dream

Darren's blog is seven and a half years old (that's geriatric in blogging terms); it recently past its 3000th post. Darren kind of defined mixing pop and politics as a blogging approach, although in recent years books have taken up more and more space, and of course football and films. In his case, it's impossibilist socialism and post-punk jangle specifically, and I guess that reduces the overlap between our tastes a little. (Actually, it took me a little while to dig out, but Darren once cruelly satirised my musical taste, but I'm not bitter:

Going by Bob's selection I'm guessing that he is a bit of a muso. Has been known to subscribe to Record Collector magazine, and has index carded his record collection. Back in the day he was more of a Charlie Gillett groupie than a John Peel groupie. Been known to not only buy CDs that have been reviewed in the New Internationalist, but he's also been known to listen said CDs voluntarily.

So, delving into the small area of overlap, here's a song that I'm posting because I couldn't find a youTube of "Kingdom".

Ultramarine: Instant Kitten (by Robert Wyatt)

I note I'm filed under the "People Just Want to Dream" section of the blogroll, named for a Microdisney song (listen here). Microdisney were a New Cross band, I think (yes, they are, just checked), and I'm in not bad company, along with Socialist Unity and Shiraz Socialist, but I think he's making a dig at non-SPGB socialists. Here's what he said, back in 2008:

Being the lazy type, I've fallen back on Andy Newman's Top 101 Left Blogs post from last September, to reintroduce the blogroll. Those were the halcyon days of British Left blogging when the Shiraz Socialist bods were still on speaking terms with Socialist Unity blog, and the SWP's rank and file had yet to truly fall out of love with Gorgeous George. Who'd have thought back then that those times qualified as the good old days?

Socialist Unity Blog - Andy Newman and friends. Yeah, I know, you're supposed to be dismissive about the blog. Andy Newman is a supposed megalomaniac . . . the blog did a flip on Gorgeous George . . . it's soft (or hard?) on China's imperial adventure in Tibet . . . yada yada yada. What can I say, it's a readable blog that is regularly updated and for every four posts that aren't my cup of tea there's one that's of interest. And you have to have a sneaking admiration for anyone who's able to put a rocket under the collective arses of the SWP's Central Committee. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of political chancers.

Andy Newman's Grand Ol' Opry

Dear Uncle Sam I know you're a busy man, And tonight I write to you through tears with a trembling hand. My darling answered when he got that call from you; You said you really need him but you don't need him like I do.
Don't misunderstand I know he's fighting for our land. I really love my country but I also love my man. He proudly wears the colors of the old red white and blue, While I wear a heartache since he left me for you
Dear Uncle Sam I just got your telegram. And I can't believe that this is me shaking like I am
For it said 'I'm sorry to inform you'

So, here we are. Although I have increasing doubts about the politics of the Socialist Unity blog (obsessed with Gorgeous George, soft on Chinese imperialism, yada yada yada) but its main blogger, Andy Newman, has great taste in music. He posts fantastic country and western, with the emphasis on twanging honkytonk Nashville mainstream of country, sometimes straying into high camp rhinestone territory, and other times edging towards grittier Americana. He recently noted that "Even when it’s bad, country music is brilliant, especially when redneck bad" (exemplified by Gretchen Wilson, singing "I'm a redneck woman, ain't no high-class fraud"). I love the fact that he rubs this in the face of the viciously anti-American middle class British left, but he also does make a strong case for a radical tradition in country. Here's some of his tracks:

Johnny Cash: Singing in Vietnam Talking Blues

George Jones and Hank Williams Jr with Audrey Williams: I Saw The Light

Also check out Sunny Sweeney, who I'd never heard before. The lyrics above, by the way, are Loretta Lynn's "Dear Uncle Sam", a Newman favourite.

Unfortunately, Andy's colleague Jon Wight has less good taste in music, as exemplified by Lowkey's well-meaning but appallingly rhymed Palestine solidarity rap.

The Poor Mouth

Speaking King's English in quotation / As railhead towns feel the steel mills rust water froze / In the generation / Clear as winter ice / This is your paradise

The lovely Jams O'Donnell mixes more photography than either pop or politics into the mix these days. And his musical taste has large areas of non-overlap with mine, but it was him (I think) that introduced me to the extraordinary Sephardic music of Mor Karbasi. So, here's her, then our mutually favourite Clash song, then some beautiful Iranian rebel music.

The Clash: Straight to Hell

I realise that (although I'm not as old as Jams), it's about a quarter of a century since I first heard this song, and it has been intriguing me ever since. What is it about? I thought it's about imperialism, and the Vietnam war, and Graham Greene, and migration, and racism. So, inspired by writing this, I found that crowd-sourcing, via wikipedia and yahoo answered my queries perfectly, and the mystery is over. (Incidentally, if you don't know the song but there's something familiar, it is brilliantly sampled by MIA in "Paper Planes", which is also about migration, and which is in turn used to great effect in Slumdog Millionaire, mixed by the awesome AR Rahman.)

Mor Karbasi: El Pastor

Marzieh: Sange Khara

If you are interested,

An Bйal Bocht (The Poor Mouth, 1941) was the only book which Brian O'Nolan, alias Flann O'Brien, alias Myles na gCopaleen, wrote in his native language. Why only one, and this in particular? The answer may lie in the identity of the persona to whom the narrative was entrusted, Myles na gCopaleen... On his first day at school, Bonaparte O'Coonassa is asked to repeat his name for the roll-call. The litany which follows is a long-winded tribute to ten generations of noble aspiration, which have resulted in a total erosion of Gaelic identity:
Bonapairt Michaelangelo Pheadair Eoghain Shorcha Thomбis Mhбire Sheбn Shйamais Dhiarmada.. (Bonaparte, son of Michelangelo, son of Peter, son of Owen, son of Thomas's Sarah, grand-daughter of John's Mary, grand-daughter of James, son of Dermot...). [7]
At this point, the hopeful litany is cruelly interrupted by a blow from the English-speaking master and the terse announcement in a foreign language that "Yer name is Jams O'Donnell", a sentence which is uttered to every single child in Corcha Dorcha on arrival at school.

Bonus track: Fairport Convention: Jams O'Donnell's Jig

Mixing pop with politics
In case you didn't already know (although I'm sure you did), the title of this post comes, via Darren, from Billy Bragg, and the song "Waiting for the Great Leap Forward".

I think the lyrics sum up my own blog pretty well:

In the Cheese Pavilion and the only noise I hear
Is the sound of people stacking chairs
And mopping up spilt beer
And someone asking questions and basking in the light
Of the fifteen fame filled minutes of the fanzine writer
Mixing Pop and Politics he asks me what the use is
I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses
While looking down the corridor
Out to where the van is waiting
I'm looking for the Great Leap Forwards
Jumble sales are organized and pamphlets have been posted
Even after closing time there's still parties to be hosted
You can be active with the activists
Or sleep in with the sleepers
While you're waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

This weekend's mix

2011-12-09T17:36:00.034Z

First, Andrew C's books, blogs and journals of the year, which includes a good book selection, but also this:

Dave’s Part pursues a vigorous public debate, and very readable posts, on key political issues for the Left. Socialist Unity , while going adrift on Iran – part of its tenderness for the pious Islamist bourgeoisie, and publicising pantomime dame, George Galloway – produces useful contributions to trade union and anti-cuts politics. Harry’s Place bores the arse off everyone with its obsession about Israel, and reheated indignation about leftist totalitarians. But it publishes worthwhile criticism of muddle-headed thinking on Islamism and the far-right and shows concern for social issues.

Rosie Bell shows continued fineness of spirit. Delicateness is not always a feature of Shiraz Socialist but it produces informed insights into the movement, particularly the inner workings of UNITE union, and much on international issues that others ignore. Organised Rage equally brings news to our attention that we’d miss otherwise, particularly obituaries of left figures. Harpy Marx is a significant Blog that underlines the importance of welfare issues and poverty. The Spanish Prisoner has become a must-read for its film reviews – up there with Philip French and Mark Kermode, to exaggerate only slightly. Obliged to Offend is a heartening read, as is Representing the Mambo.[...]

Entdinglichung is one of the most valuable, multilingual, left resources around. Poumista also covers many countries, bringing to our attention the often forgotten heroes and heroines of the independent left.

Bob From Brockley is the clear front-runner in the UK. Bob writes acute commentary, principally on British politics, and offers a stunning range of material and Blogging links.

Now for the rest:
Matthew Lyons on the Occupy movement: Anti-capitalism versus populism (quotes me). Peter R on literature, history and conflict. Lucy Lips on Gilad Atzmon leading the pleasant white middle aged middle class church-going fascists of Bradford in anti-Jewish chanting. HiM@N on N30 in London. Kenan Malik on the marketplace for outrage. Sarah AB on "honour" killings in the UK. Martin Bright on antisemitism in Scotland. Dave Douglass on Keith Pattison and David Peace on the 1984-85 miners strike. Chris Strafford on "21st century Marxism" the Morning Star-sponsored meeting of nationalists, anti-Semites, and homophobes. Coatesy on Leftists, Secularists and Workers confronting Islamists in Tunisia.

Music: Shahryar Ghanbari’s "Forbidden", via Maryam Namazie

Vices and insensibilities

2011-12-03T23:55:00.006Z

When the liberal intellectual thinks of himself, he thinks chiefly of his own good will and prefers not to know that the good will generates its own problems, that the love of humanity has its vices and the love of truth its own insensibilities.- Lionel Trilling

Bloggery

Let’s start with this week’s blog recommendation. The Soupy One started blogging in October, and also tweets (twits?) as InTheSoupAgain. UK-based with a firmly left-of-centre perspective, the ground covered is strikingly similar to the ground I cover, or that covered by the much-missed ModernityBlog: racism, fascism, antisemitism, Gilad Atzmon, the Middle East, Julian Assange. For example, there is a link to a fine article about why the University and College Union (UCU) is increasingly irrelevant, the revelation that Gilad Atzmon is a Honorary Raelian Priest, and much more besides. And a repeat recommendation for The Big Picture, e.g. this recent post on “progressive” infoolectualism about gay Republicans.

Posts of the week

Marko on whether or not we should regret Libya. Nick Cohen on the Ken and Boris show. Noga on Israel Derangement Syndrome.

The Hitch

Checking in at Letters from a Young Contrarian, I was reminded of the grandeur of Christopher Hitchens, and spent a bit of time with his recent writing. This is a very profound article on remembrance day, and this is a good piece on American exceptionalism. And here is an account of the recent tribute event in London.

AtzmonWatch

I wasn’t going to post anything about the tedious unhinged self-publicist Gilad Atzmon,, but I'll just note that there are lots of updates at Harry's Place, mainly focusing on the position of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Chronologically, we have: More Opposition to Atzmon, The Dean of Bradford should apologise to Hope Not Hate, A statement from the Dean of Bradford, Lauren Booth: Attacks the PSC, Defends Atzmon , A Crux Moment for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and The Parable of the Boy who Didn’t Cry Wolf. Here is the Dean of Bradford's clarification. There is also interesting material from Tony Greenstein: Atzmon & Friends Declare War on the Palestine Solidarity Movement and Andrew Coates issued a ringing denunciation of Atzmon’s supporter Lauren Booth.

And over at the anti-Zionist JsF blog, Gabriel spends an inordinate number of words de-bunking one tiny passage from Atzmon’s book. It’s hard to justify the energy on demonstrating the incoherence of a thinker as obviously incoherent as Atzmon, but Gabriel deserves some thanks, and if you have an interest in Jacques Lacan or the Coen Brothers (I have no interest in lacan, but am a fan of the Coens) you’ll get something out of it. I liked this bit:

In what way does Israel function as a ghetto? It does function as such as a simile. There is one aspect of Israel that is like the Jewish ghetto/shtetl of yesteryear. Both are geographically bounded areas in which Jews live among Jews (in Israel, to the extent that Palestinians are segregated). Thus, the simile “Israel is like a ghetto” can be useful if one makes an illuminating argument on the basis of that aspect, but the simile does not exhaust its terms. In other key aspects Israel is not like a ghetto. It is a sovereign state possessing an army and nuclear arms, something the Jewish ghetto usually lacked. It is much larger, much more internally differentiated by class and race, much wealthier in the aggregate, etc. Why is the similar aspect determinant while the differences are not? Ultimately, Israel is like a ghetto in the same way that a gun is like a penis. The simile may illuminate why some men worship guns. But you cannot deduce from knowing that one needs a license to own a gun that owning a penis requires a license as well. What gives Atzmon’s false inference the appearance of solidity is, again, the sliding through the signifier ‘Jewish.’

Occupy

On Occupy, I’ve been posting both positive assessments, negative assessments, and especially ambivalent ones. TNC’s guest post at Roland’s place falls squarely in the negative category. He makes some interesting points about scourge of “consensus decision-making” and the fact that the anarchist movement up to the Spanish Civil War coped perfectly well with democracy rather than consensus. I tend to agree on this.

He also makes the commonly made point that Occupy lacks a positive vision or programme, rather than just a complaint. He points out that classical anarchists always had a clear vision of what they were for as well as what they were against. I disagree with this criticism: I think we need a platform for making a complaint about the world we live in, and like the fact that agnosticism about a programme enables very different sorts of people to come together in the big tent.

He also contrasts the positive coverage of the movement in the mainstream media to the latter’s denigration of the tea party movement. He is correct to point out the imbalance (although leftists won’t recognise that it’s there). However, I think he is overly generous to the tea party movement, which was linked to plenty of acts of violence (such as the attempted murder of a congresswoman), and whose non-kooky mainstream conservative figureheads, such as Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, have a very loose grip on reality.

While I’m on Occupy, I want to link again to some of the other things I’ve linked to, in case you missed them: Roland’s own travelogue amongst the tents, eM’s account of the fizzle in the drizzle that is Seattle Occupy, and David Schraub’s posts.

George Galloway and British fascism

James B has a post on what British fascism would look like. It’s completely implausible in some respects, but in others actually describes the present rather than an imaginary future (which I guess is part of the point). This bit I liked especially:

“Initial nationalisations see elements of the far-Left align themselves with the new Government in the manner of previous alliances with ‘anti-imperialist’ movements abroad. A former member of the Respect party is perhaps the most prominent Left-spokesperson for the new regime, playing up the Government’s anti-American credentials while ignoring Government suppression of minority rights.”

Global trade union solidarity and anti-Zionism

An interesting article in Solidarity by the great Eric Lee of LabourStart. It shows how corrosive anti-Zionism has been in the labour movement, but also that Middle Eastern trade unionists are smarter than Western ones, and that solidarity can sometimes trump the divisive shibboleths of the Western left.

The autumn of the Arab spring?
I'm not sure if I've already linked to Marko's great peice on Libya, but you should read it anyway. Among other things, he says "Those of us who backed intervention in Libya did not do so in the belief that, if the revolution there were to succeed, Libya would turn overnight into Denmark or Holland." This phrase jumped back into my mind when I read Anshell Pfeffer's interesting piece on the democratic ideal on the Arab street, where he says:

If it seems strange at first that Arab demonstrators are using the hated Zionist entity as their democratic ideal, rather than say Sweden or Holland, it is only because they have no experience of living in a society where freedom of expression is guaranteed and members of the government are accountable to parliament and the law courts. Israel is constantly on the news agenda of Al Jazeera and the other Arab news channels, and while most of what they broadcast is soldiers shooting at Palestinians, over the last few years they have also seen the Katsav and Olmert trials, generals and ministers being hauled in front of civilian commissions of inquiry following military failures, and the wave of social protest on Rothschild Boulevard last summer.

Issandr El Amrani reports from Tahrir Square:

In Egypt you get the feeling that the upper class has completely ignored the social roots of the January uprising, and at the same time backed a return to similar kinds of politics of patronage, where parties and movements try to buy the poor with handouts and cheap meat at Eid. People don't want to be given charity, they want to be given social rights. This too is political — it's not about economic mismanagement. It's not about an uprising of the poor. It's about the political vision for a social economy.

Whether it's about police brutality, social change or politics, my feeling is that Egyptians want to feel like they've actually had a revolution. Whoever gives them that feeling might win the people in Tahrir over.

And here's some powerful photos from Egypt's unfinished revolution, in the Atlantic.

Antisemitism
"The Suicidal Passion": a very well-written and thought-provoking article by Ruth Wisse on antisemitism and especially what it does to the Arab world. More on antisemitism from Gotz Aly.

Kenan Malik
Although a former member (possibly still is) of the RCP cult, Kenan Malik is one of my favourite current writers and thinkers. I've been reading his very interesting material on "the myths of a Christian Europe" and "myths of assimilationism and multiculturalism". Malik fishes in his archives here, in preparation for his submission to the Orwell prize, and you could do welll to sup on some of his catch. But weirdly, he has a local connection to me, as these photos are taken in one of my favourite Lewisham parks, Blythe Hill. (Here's his photoblog.)

And also

Mopping up some other recommendations: Carl Packman on patriotism in Britain today; Anton Grinevsky and Alesia Grinevskaya on The invisible crisis in Belarus; Rowenna Davis on the unionisation of Brick Lane curry houses. Finally, here's a fuller round-up by Roland.

November 30, and after

2011-12-01T21:48:00.005Z

Four thoughts on the central London N30 march.

1. No damp squib. Unsurprising but incredibly irritating how devious David Cameron and his henchmen are. On Monday the news headlines were that the government said that agreement was near in negotiations and so the unions were being irresponsible in disrupting the process by striking, but then it emerged (but not in the headlines) that the government has not sat at a negotiating table for weeks. And on the day of the strike, they span the story that the strike was a damp squib, even though the numbers out seem to have been exactly as the unions anticipated: some two or three million off work, including half a million health workers, half of London ambulance workers, and just 16% of England’s state schools open. There were literally hundreds of actions and events across the UK, involving tens of thousands of people. The UCU reported thousands of new members on the day, and other unions have reported record numbers joining. So: no damp squib.

And the mood at the main central London demonstration had a quality I’ve not felt for some time, I can’t quite put into words. People were angry. There was almost an exultant feel. I had a sense, from a few conversation I had or overheard, that lots of people were striking for the first time or marching for the first time.

Not surprising that people are motivated to get active. Daily reality for public sector workers in Britain in 2011 is grim. It’s your department manager being told to find 20% cuts in the next budget; it’s weighing up whether voluntary redundancy now might be the better option than compulsory next year; it’s a significant proportion of your friends being made redundant; it’s wondering if your own job will be there in a year. It’s being that bit more tired when you do your ward rounds because everyone has to work harder; it’s knowing that there are not enough text books this year to go around the whole class; it’s having to tell woman who survived a cancer scare that she has to wait six weeks to find out if her mammogram results are good news or bad news.

But the feeling on the march yesterday was not bitter at all. It was almost exultant, as marchers experienced their own workplace tribulations as something bigger. Knowing that there are two million of you taking action, refusing a day’s work, is a powerful feeling, an empowering feeling. There’s a simple joy in pushing back a bit, and having the collective strength to do so.

2. We are the 99%. Spending too much time on the internet, as I do, you come across a lots of kooks and cranks on the left. If you are used to the images of demonstrations on ZombieTime and PJMedia and even Harry’s Place, you come to expect a lot of moonbattery on marches. These folks have had a field day with Occupy, particularly its New York and California incarnations, which have attracted flocks of damaged souls and cultic weirdos. So it was something of a comfort to be marching yesterday surrounded by the most ordinary of people, people who seemed like a statistical cross-section of a standard High Street crowd. There were off course the parasites touting Trotskyist papers around the edges, and a smattering of V for Vendetta masks, but the dominant feel was, well, very ordinary. (Look at Louise's photos from Bristol, for example.)

In some radical circles, there is thought to be a virtue in standing out from the crowd, in proving your independence of mind by looking unusual. But the result of this, of course, is that these self-proclaimed radicals end up in their own alternative conformist uniforms. (In my youth it was donkey jackets, stripey pullovers and woolly hats; later it was black hoodies and big boots.) I was always faintly embarrassed, when I became an ultra-leftist, that we must have looked like a bunch of freaks to the public we were ostensibly trying to appeal to. Now that I am a something of a normal person again, it is reassuring to march with other normal people.

3. The tedium of protest. On the other hand, one thing I didn’t like about the demo was the series of speeches at the end from trade union hacks, parroting identical phrases, and all talking in one of around three identikit ostentatiously “working class” accents. It was the tedium of this kind of labour movement politics that drove me out and into the anarchist camp half my life time ago. At big marches, where the collective effervescence, as Durkheim put it, is particularly intense, it’s fun. There are a couple of OK songs (Blake’s “Jerusalem” of course, but lots of the songs are ruined from being co-opted by the totalitarian regimes, or by New Labour) and some nice hand-made union banners. But otherwise labour movement politics can be quite boring. It would be nice if there were more of the sense of mischief that you get from anarchists (or, for that matter, from the tea party crowd). But I guess that would put off the normal people.

4. Agitationalist flim-flam. To compensate for the tedium and keep the collective effervescence on the boil, union hacks and their Trotskyist commissars have to constantly inflate the self-importance. I take the wonderful phrase “agitationalist flim-flam” from a pretty good AWL article (reproduced at Shiraz Socialist) on the hollow rhetoric of the Socialist and Socialist Workers Party papers: reading those papers, after this strike it will just take one more push, comrades, to overthrow Cameron and his cronies.... The reality is that no better alternative is just around the corner. The Labour Party is possibly at its weakest and most toothless since its formation, and I don't trust any of the national anti-cuts coalitions or left parties further than I could throw them.

This seems a terrible way to end this post, but I don't see much around the corner apart from a prolonged and increasingly bitter social conflict. We will need to fight over every school, every hospital, every housing estate, every college, every children’s centre, every youth club. And the other side, in this conflict, understands it is engaged in class war and has no qualms about fighting dirty. On our side, we have a left that has frittered away decades in self-indulgent flim-flam of one kind and another. We urgently need to re-assemble the value of solidarity, to re-boot our politics, and to start crafting an alternative. Still, we can be proud of what we did on November 30.

ADDED 2 Dec: Transpontine's report and round-up from across South London, linking to a nice Lewisham report from Ionnek. There's another good South London report here, with some audio; more central London pics here; lots of local reports from the AWL. I was struck by two reports on international solidarity, with hundreds of Bangladeshi garment workers rallying in our support in Dhaka, and a statement of support from Iraqi unions.

Strikes and South London

2011-11-29T12:15:00.004Z

A quick post in solidarity with tomorrow's public sector strike. The explicit issue is public sector pensions, but of course the strikes also represent the anger and bitterness of stupid and pointless spending cuts which put public service workers into unemployment or precarious employment and extra work, as well as drastically affect services to the most vulnerable members of our communities.

It seems the strike is popular with the public, despite efforts from the government and mainstream media to create panic and blame. As I wrote the other day:

Private sector workers have no solidarity with public sector workers, who they see as tax-eating parasites with cushy pensions. Working people have no solidarity with the benefit claimants who are falling into deeper and deeper poverty because of austerity measures, because they resent them not working. The low-paid have no solidarity for the “squeezed middle”, who they see as privileged whiners. The settled have no solidarity with immigrants, who are among the most vulnerable in the crisis, because they see them as jumping the queue and taking what others are entitled to.... This challenge, the reconstruction of solidarity, is the most important task we face today.*

Locally, Transpontine provides some news from the frontline in New Cross and Lewisham and screens a strike video made locally, and ELL covers the higher education sector.

While I'm here, a story from South London that caught my eye: the South London Solidarity Federation intervened in a pay dispute at a Bermondsey pub, and got a result. Big society from below. See also Josh Hall's report. He concludes:

November 30 will be an important day in recent labour history – but it will be but the faintest taster of what is coming in 2012. As the crisis deepens, as job losses increase, as youth unemployment continues to spiral, and as employment rights are decimated, we should be prepared to organise – inside the union infrastructure when it is convenient, and outside it when it is insufficient.

ADDED: List of activities across London via Jim J. Also activities at Goldsmiths here and an interactive map from False Economy. On Twitter, follow #N30, #nov30, #righttostrike, and Phil, Transpontine, and Jim.

*Self-quote lightly edited.

Lines in the sand

2011-11-28T21:31:00.003Z

I actually wrote this post a week ago, but it was not published due to a technical glitch. (That’s a self-serving way of saying due to my incompetence.) So, I’ve added a couple of links to make it less out of date, and hope it is still of use, in drawing the lines in the sand between good ideas and bad ideas, between good politics and crap politics. I think the overall point is that fixed positions and big labels (left-wing, right-wing, Zionist, anti-Zionist, anti-capitalist, populist) are not a useful way of thinking about politics, but that the key divisions, the ones that matter, cut across these lines.

1. Occupy, again, and good and bad anti-capitalism

I posted a long one on Occupy last week. One thing I missed from the links was this excellent post by David Schraub on some of the issues I touched on, including how the Israel/Palestine issue intersects with the politics of Occupy: go read the whole post, as I tried to extract some of it here and ended up quoting the whole thing.

The antisemitism angle was the topic that Daniel Siedareski commented on in the thread, noting some factual inaccuracies in my post. Among other things, I made comments on “Occupy Wall Street”/”OWS” that were not specific to the New York OWS action but referred to the Occupy movement as a whole or even to other occupations, such as the particularly militant Occupy Oakland, whose Jewish contingent is also not connected to Occupy Judaism. That’s the thing, I guess, about these virally networked leaderless movements: hard to keep a track of!

Negative Potential made a different point in the comment thread. While agreeing that capitalism is systemic and structural, he argues that it is not magically self-reproducing and is based on the acts of capitalists. He is of course correct in this. However, I don’t see any notable current within the anti-capitalist movement arguing that capitalism is magically self-producing. If a structural understanding of capitalism became the norm within Occupy, and a moralistic condemnation of bankers’ greed became the exception, then we’d need to speak up, but that’s just not the politics of the situation. Boris Johnson and Warren Buffett can make the argument about bankers’ greed well enough without us.

2. Zionism/anti-Zionism

Following from the above and quoted in his comment, I like Dan’s characterisation of his position on Zionism, which (in a week when I have been called a “notorious Jewish supremacist” by none other than Gilad Atzmon) resonated with my own convoluted insistence on refusing the Manichean politics of Zionism/ant-Zionism:

On any given day of the week, I vacillate between a variety of positions on Israel and Zionism. I often say that I am a religious anti-Zionist, an ideological post-Zionist, a pragmatic progressive Zionist, and (mostly kidding) a Kahanist under fire. To be clear: I believe in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. I believe the Jewish people have an immutable connection to the land of Israel... In other words: I am a reluctant Zionist, a critical Zionist, some days a borderline anti-Zionist, but a Zionist nonetheless — much to the chagrin of both the anti-Zionist Left and the Zionist ultra-Right.

3. Right-wing populism and left-right convergence

Paul C has an interesting “spiky” review of the two recent Demos reports on right-wing populism (one on findings from 11 European countries, another on the English Defence League specifically). Paul questions the notion that significant numbers of people are concerned about the cultural erosion caused by immigration (and therefore the left needs to “engage with” them), a claim Demos make, and also the notion that the new populism is in some sense left-wing. Marleymorris, author of a LibCon post on the report, defends it in the comment thread, which is worth reading.

This last point of debate relates to a criticisism Negative Potential makes in the comment thread at this ANT post. Dislike of finance capital, NP notes, is shared by some people on the far right and some people on the far left, just as Mulder notes “the Left in the UK may be opposed to free trade, but not for the same reasons that the far right are opposed to free trade.” This is, of course, correct, and it is dangerous to overplay the “right woos left” card: large numbers of leftists are not about to join fascist parties because some oddball right-wingers come along to an Occupy event or because the Front National talk about multinationals.

But that is not where the danger lies. The danger lies in the grassroots, in the unconvinced majority. Most members of the “99%” don't see themselves as left or right, and aren’t signed up to grand ideological narratives. Looking at what data there is, there is a considerable overlap in the US between the support for the tea party movement and the Occupy movement. Most people feel ripped off, fucked over, exploited; many of us are feeling squeezed, watching our debt increase, feeling a growing gap between our expectations and what we can afford. Articulating this concern is traditionally the role of the left, but the left has failed at this quite spectacularly the last few decades, and this opens a space for the right if it can articulate these complaints more effectively.

I would also argue, and I know I’m entering slippier terrain with this, that the same points hold true for the Enlightenment-derived political values that were once the foundation of the left: individual liberty and freedom of expression. The left has not only failed to articulate these concerns in the last few decades; a large part of the left has rejected these values. And so, again, when right-wing populists “lay claim to the mantle of the Enlightenment”, as Demos puts it, it doesn't matter how sincere they are; it matters that they are convincing.

The weekend miscellany

2011-11-25T19:35:00.004Z

Villains of the week

Obviously, I have been a bit obsessed with Gilad Atzmon this week and his local acolyte, John Hamilton's Telegraph Hill ant-Zionist choir, the Strawberry Thieves. Atzmon, incidentally, is endorsed by right-wing foreign policy wonk John Mearsheimer, who was a disciple of Henry Kissinger, who, it has just been revealed, called the Jews self-serving bastards in 1972.

My other villains of the week are the Israeli right, both the theocratic right and the ultra-nationalist right. Every week, I find the news from Israel more disheartening. As Mira says, not everything in Israel is complicated: the shutting down of a pro-peace radio station, eroding press freedom, the dispossession of the Bedouin, a proposed ethnically exclusive Israeli identity law, the removal of images of women from the streets of Jerusalem, the spread of gender segregation in public space, as well as the ridiculous proposed NGO law. A few years ago, I would never have thought I'd see Tzipi Livni as one of the good guys. Here she is: "We have always prided ourselves on being the only democracy in the Middle East. We were a democracy, and the others were dictatorships," she said. "While Egypt is trying to become a democracy like us, we're passing laws that will turn Israel into a dictatorship."

Heroes of the week

I only just read about this appalling incident in St Louis, in which an Iraqi poet, Alaa Alsaegh, who converted to Christianity was dragged for his car and had a Star of David carved into his back in revenge for an Arabic poem, "Tears inside the Holocaust" posted on Nonie Darwish's Arabs for Israel website. It should not be an act of great bravery to write a poem in America, but sadly it is.

Another hero this week is Aliya’a Magda el-Mahdi, the Egyptian blogger who posted pictures of herself naked as an act of resistance to the growing power of Islamism in Egypt. The revolution continues in Egypt, where Islamism on the one hand, and the military junta on the other, stamp down on freedom. So, the people of Eygpt are the other big hero for the week. Here's some links from Entdinglichung:

The Egyptian masses rise up again to complete their revolution! Testimony from an Egyptian anarchist (anarkismo.net)
The Sharraf government resignation bluff will not stop the people’s struggle in Egypt (anarkismo.net)
Egypt: Independent Union Federation joins Tahrir sit-in (ESSF)
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies: Urgent Appeal for Action on Egypt (ESSF)
Aliaa is not obscene; you are! (Maryam Namazie)
More from LabourStart

And one more from Abu Faris, introducing another hero, Alaa Abd El Fattah.

Ambivalences of the week

The RCP's Brendan O'Neil keeps up his barrage of interesting contrarian negativity about the Occupy movement. Here he gets curmudgeonly about the hubris of the movement in comparing itself to the civil rights movement. Some of his points I agree with, others not. Barry Rubin is, of course, even more negative, and this piece channelling Karl Marx on Wall Street is worth a read. Terry Glavin is negative too and a great read. eM is more ambivalent, with a wonderful piece on Occupy Seattle. Roland is also ambivalent. Read his report from the West Coast.

The virulent Zionist conspiracy versus the Strawberry Thieves, and other sad footnotes to the Gilad Atzmon Show

2011-11-25T16:29:00.002Z

[update: John Hamilton has replied here.]

There have been a few updates to the Gilad Atzmon in Bradford story I posted about at the start of the week, with Atzmon's gig almost certainly going ahead tonight. Most notably, the Dean of Bradford came out against Atzmon being hosted, and then apparently changed his mind. A key figure in the whole kerfuffle seems to be Karl Dallas, a Bradford Christian folk singer. I have created a bitly bundle here for some of the key links. They include: Hope not Hate, the CST, Joseph W, Engage, the Soupy One.

I have gained a little bit of an insight into the Atzmonite worldview from the blogging and Twitter activities of Atzmon's followers, including Dallas who describes the complaints of the Jewish Socialist Group, Hope Not Hate and others as "Extraordinary Zionist virulence". Not to mention one "Someoh" ("TruthSeeker, Being in time, synchronicity awareness #collective mind focus 4 #Global Evolution, #Liberty #Enlightenment #Peace"), who describes me as an apologist for Israel's war crimes. Not to mention Atzmon himself, who drops the pretence of "anti-Zionism" when he tweats "In spite of all the Jewish pressure, we are at RYB tonight. small victory ha."

Meanwhile, as I reported, SE London has provided a few walk-on players in the drama, mainly Telegraph Hill's John Hamilton and his Strawberry Thieves socialist choir, and Brockley chanteuse Sarah Gillespie. They featured in a Harry's Place post by Joseph W. Joseph notes the Strawberry Thieves' connections to the former Camden Palestine Solidarity Campaign activists involved in Holocaust denial, reminds us of Mike Harris's post on John Hamilton's disruption of Lewisham's Holocaust Memorial Day this year ("John Hamilton the leader of Lewisham People Before Profit shouted at the Rabbi “Gaza”, as if the Rabbi ought to apologise himself for the events in Palestine. The Rabbi added, “Gaza”, and lit the candle"), and links to some of the choir's lyrics:

War Crime! War Crime! Is it a war crime to kill 6 million Jews? YES!
But carpet bomb a German town or raze Hiroshima to the ground.
War crime? That’s not a war crime, for history and justice are made by those in power.
Will these war crimes ever stop?
Yes! But not while Israel exists as a state for the chosen few
where lives of Palestinian folk are worth much less than lives of Jews.

HP wisely deletes all comments after a certain time period, to save themselves the bother of policing the nutters who hang out there, so I'll take the liberty of preserving some of the more thoughtful ones for posterity below.

For the record, although I don't share Hamilton's Stalinist politics, I have no personal animosity towards him and indeed greatly appreciate the work Hamilton (and the choir) have done within a number of local campaigns, including fighting to save our libraries, pools and schools from various cuts, and attempting to hold Lewisham's mayor and other elected officials to account. I don't think he is "an antisemite". But I do think that the content of this song at least borders on it, and that he is a good example of the corrosive influence of anti-Zionism (especially its extreme Atzmonite variety) on the thought patterns of the British far left.

Here's some of the HP comments.

On the Holocaust Memorial Day incident:

vildechaye

22 November 2011, 5:26 pm

Look I can’t stand these guys any more than anyone else here. But I think B from B’s interpretation of the Rabbi-Gaza incident is entirely wrong. It’s made out as though the individual who shouted “Gaza” wants the Rabbi to apologize for Gaza. To me, it’s fairly clear that the shouter wanted Gaza to be included in the list of genocides. Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe there is or has ever been anything remotely like a genocide in Gaza. I think the shouter is an asshole for including it in a list of genocides. However, I simply don’t believe he was seeking “an apology from the Rabbi,” simply an inclusion in the list. For what it’s worth, I think the Rabbi was wrong to then say “gaza,” as it implies that there was a genocide in Gaza, when there clearly wasn’t. It’s also curious why the shouter didn’t add “Syria,” not to mention dozens of other Arab or Muslim countries where something a little bit closer to genocide can be said to be occurring.

Dcook

22 November 2011, 6:54 pm

What extraordinary dignity by a Jew, the Rabbi. He took no political issue with that lout shouting out at such a moment and in his mind he said “OK, Gaza, I’m not here to be political or shill for Israel. There is no harm in remembering the dead of Gaza”.

Ignorance is Bliss

22 November 2011, 7:12 pm

I often go to funerals and memorial services and, during a quiet moment of remembrance (say, a lighting of candles) scream out obscenities about the living descendants of the deceased. It’s so dignified, don’t you think?

On the song "War Crimes":

Sarah AB

22 November 2011, 5:42 pm

It’s a horrible song. It undermines the Holocaust by suggesting that it’s only seen as a war crime because those in power say it is. As well as the way it juxtaposes the Holocaust with I/P. The second stanza would be bad enough on its own, but it’s the way the two points are combined which is really offensive.

Lynne T

22 November 2011, 5:49 pm

Isn’t it equally horrible to suggest that the Allies, in their efforts to defeat the forces that were conducting the Holocaust, were somehow morally equal? I mean, who attacked who, with the object being ultimate world dominance for 1,000 years?

Joseph W

22 November 2011, 5:55 pm

The lyrics are deliberately ambiguous. They could be implying that killing 6 million Jews is not a war crime, but carpet-bombing Dresden is.

The song doesn’t tell us whether killing 6 million Jews is actually a war crime, “for history and justice are made by those in power.”

zkharya

22 November 2011, 6:13 pm

The implication is that the Holocaust monopolises all claims to war crimes; that, because of it, nothing else can be if it happened to non-Jews, another implication from the the juxtaposition of Israel as a state ‘for the chosen few’.

STOP RAISE YOUR BANNERS FROM HOSTING THE RACIST GILAD ATZMON

2011-11-22T13:36:00.010Z

[update: John Hamilton has replied here.]

RAISE YOUR BANNERS is a festival of political song in Bradford, partly funded by a public body, the Arts Council. It has been going for sixteen years.

GILAD ATZMON is an Israeli-born jazz musician increasingly prominent (in the UK at least) in the last few years for his bizarre politics, and in particular his vitriolic hatred for Jews and his “iconoclastic” insistence on questioning everything we know about the Holocaust. A group of radical writers including the SWP’s Richard Seymour recently argued that “The thrust of Atzmon’s work is to normalise and legitimise anti-Semitism”. Trade unionist and Socialist Unity blogger Andy Newman accused him in the Guardian of “a wild conspiracy argument, dripping with contempt for Jews”. Cristina Odone has said his recent book “splutters with anti-Jewish sentiment”. The Community SecurityTrust, the organisation dedicated to combating antisemitism, says that “he has been condemned as antisemitic by Jewish and non-Jewish anti-Zionists as well as mainstream Jewish organisations. This is not simply a case of harsh disagreements over Israeli policy. If somebody else made similar comments about Muslim identity, or black British identity, they would be generally condemned as Islamophobic or racist. We see no reason why Gilad Atzmon should be treated any differently... Anybody considering giving Gilad Atzmon a platform to spread these views, needs to ask themselves whether they want to help facilitate the spread of anti-Jewish hostility in this country.”

Gilad Atzmon is a man who finds throwing Jews into the sea amusing. He is a man who thinks that eventually some “brave people will say that Hitler was right after all”, that it might actually be the case that medieval Jews murdered gentile children for their blood, that Jews in America are “the enemy within”. He is a man who uses BNP websites as a source for information. He is a man who thinks the Nazi death marches were “actually humane”.

Hot from speaking at Exeter University (where, apparently, he said “Hitler was right” and “anti-Semitism doesn’t exist”*), Atzmon is due to appear at Raise Your Banners on Friday. Raise Your Banners has received complaints from supporters of the event going since April 2011, including the Jewish Socialist Group, Bradford Trades Council and Hope Not Hate. Bradford TC said: “"There is no way that Atzmon should play. The evidence against him is overwhelming. We are appalled at this decision and believe that this is a serious point of principle. Bradford TUC has long been at the fore of the anti-fascist movement in the area and it is in this tradition that we demand the withdrawal of Atzmon’s invitation."

In response, the festival’s secretary made this oblique comment: “we have discussed the matter with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and are satisfied that PSC have no boycott of Gilad Atzmon or events that he is involved in.” That reflects badly on the PSC, but is about as relevant as the price of fish. The director, Ludi Simpson, has said: “We do not believe the claims of anti-semitism. If we did believe them then we would not have invited him. All our artists have signed up to our equal-opportunities policy. Our audience would not tolerate racist behaviour.” Presumably, if Nick Griffin signed an equal opps statement, you could invite him. Or you could actually read Atzmon’s words and realise that the “claims” of antisemitism are quite easy to believe. They also concede that "Gilad Atzmon’s philosophical and political writings stir up... a strong reaction from their main target the Israeli government." In fact, the Israeli government is probably not that interested in this small fry, and this claim only works by ignoring the persistent criticisms of Atzmon by Zionism's harshest UK critics, such as Jews Against Zionism.

The Arts Council has stood by the festival, arguing that Atzmon was participating in the event “as a musician and not in his capacity as a political writer”. As Waterloo Sunset notes, this is a disingenuous response: “As is clear from their own description, RYB does not separate music and politics in the way the Arts Council suggests. Atzmon is there as a political figure- the remit of the festival means he couldn’t be anything else.” The Arts Council also says it doesn’t want to "restrict an artist from expressing their views" and it believes in funding events and artists that show "a diverse view of world society". Presumably we can look forward to their funding of Skrewdriver concerts next, or hosting lectures by author Anders Breivik, because why restrict their diverse views?

SARAH GILLESPIE is a Brockley-based singer-songwriter with a gorgeous voice, also playing at the festival alongside Atzmon. I wrote this about her last year, giving some examples of her own straying into dodgy territory. She has also been (along with Atzmon and Ernst Zundel) thanked by Paul Eisen in his text “My life as a Holocaust denier” for standing by him.

More recently, she has written a “defence” of Atzmon, circulating widely on the internet on Holocaust denial and 9/11 Truther sites, far right and white supremacist sites, as well as fringe leftist sites. Her defence claims that Atzmon is “on an intellectual quest for truth”, a familiar trope among Holocaust deniers.

She has in the past accused the BBC of being biased towards Israel because its Director General had a Jewish wife (“the man is far from ‘impartial’. His Jewish wife, the scholar Jane Blumfeild, hails from an American family that attends Yeshivas.”). Despite this, she was invited on to the BBC, appearing on Andrew Marr’s “Start the Week” on Radio 4 yesterday, along with Paul Kominsky of The Promise, to discuss art and politics.

THE STRAWBERRY THIEVES are another Southeast London group booked at the festival, a socialist choir led by John Hamilton, based in Telegraph Hill (that’s the posh northwestern corner of Greater Brockley). Hamilton ~~has been long-term involved in Maoist sects (I get them all mixed up: I think it’s the one called the Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain Marxist-Leninist!) but more recently~~ has been a tireless activist in Lewisham, in the New School for New Cross and Save Ladywell Pool Campaigns (both campaigns I supported) and fronting the People Before Profit group in local elections.** Local Labour councillor Mike Harris had a guest post here when Hamilton used the opportunity of a solemn Holocaust Memorial Day service to shout “What about Gaza?” to a local rabbi who was talking about genocides.

The Strawberry Thieves’ songbook is on-line. One of its songs, “War Crimes” [pdf], describes Israel "as a state made for the chosen few, where lives of Palestinian folk are worth much less than lives of Jews". Commenting on this sort of language, a Guardian editor recently wrote “‘Chosenness’, in Jewish theology, tends to refer to the sense in which Jews are ‘burdened’ by religious responsibilities; it has never meant that the Jews are better than anyone else. Historically it has been antisemites, not Jews, who have read ‘chosen’ as code for Jewish supremacism.” Here’s how the Thieves describe their contribution to the festival: “We will be singing in the choirs concert on Saturday afternoon in the cathedral and running a workshop on Saturday morning, 10-11am on countering Zionist propaganda in song!”

TAKE ACTION! I think it is outrageous that Raise Your Banners has invited Gilad Atzmon to perform, not as a musician but as a political figure. They claim that they want to promote a “diversity of views”, but I notice that they have not this year or in any previous year invited White Power skinhead bands, for example, or Ulster Unionist pipe bands, or even Tory folk musicians. Would they invite homophobic and misogynistic rappers, for example, because they had also written excellent left-wing songs? Would they invite a fine socialist songwriter who had a track record of anti-black racism? It seems to me there are a number of ways we can take action.

Put pressure on the organisers. Express your disgust that the festival is inviting a racist performer. Sam Jackson is the event secretary who put out the odd PSC statement. Ludi Simpson is variously described as treasurer, director and organiser of the Atzmon bit. (Is that the same Ludi Simpson who does excellent statistical research at Manchester University? If so, his research skills have failed him here, as googling Gilad Atzmon would be enough to put anyone sensible off.) Contact details are here (the phone number is 07530 243874), and you can also follow the festival on Facebook or Twitter.
Put pressure on the Arts Council. It seems to me that at a time when public money is so tightly rationed, it gives a lot of ammunition to the enemy of arts funding that they are spending taxpayers’ money on a festival that hosts a known racist. How would they feel if their budget went towards someone like David Irving or David Duke as to show "a diverse view of world society", because that’s basically what they are doing.
Put pressure on the Co-op, who are also a funder according to the website. I am a member, and I don’t like this use of Co-operative funds. Website here.
Put pressure on the venue. In this case, that’s the Church of England! A HnH commenter writes: “This event happens at Bradford Cathedral (01274 777720). You need to speak to diocesan Bishop of Bradford Nick Baines, and if that doesn't work, make a direct appeal to the Church of England hierarchy. Giving a forthright anti-semite permission to play his concert at a cathedral would make disastrous headlines for the Church of England, if the media were to get hold of it. http://www.visitbradford.com/thedms.asp?dms=13&feature=1256&venue=1570382 UPDATE: Apparently, due to poor ticket sales, the venue has shifted from the Cathedral to the smaller Kala Sangan, also funded by the Arts Council. You can follow them on Twitter too, by the way. And, in an outbreak of sensibleness, the Dean of Bradford has come out against Atzmon.
Ask other performers to pull out if Atzmon is not dis-invited. Apart from Martin Carthy, Peggy Seeger and Roy Bailey, I haven’t heard of many of the performers, but they’re listed here: John Tams and Barry Coope, Ewan McLennan and Robb Johnson, Amsterdam, Seize the Day and the Hall Brothers, Tina McKevitt and Matt Hegarty. (The great violinist Omar Puente has pulled out: I can't find information about why, but I’d like to think it is because he prefers not to share a stage with a racist.) These performers might be swayed by Richard Seymour’s letter to Zer0 Books.
Urge your union branch to follow Bradford TUC in condemning the event.
Consider picketing or even disrupting the event. Everybody Hates a Tourist has a post about the event, and urges anyone interested in taking action to get in touch with him.

*Some audio of Atzmon’s Exeter speech here – I haven’t listened to it.
**Hamilton says this is not true - see here.

Further reading: CST: “Gilad Atzmon: what you see is what you get”; Yaniv Halily “The protocols of Gilad Atzmon”.
Previously: Left antisemitism and its rejection; Atzmonism; Addenda.
All my Atzmon posts.

For deserts covered with olive trees

2011-11-20T19:20:00.004Z

First, some bloggery. I want to recommend a new addition to the blogosphere: The Big Picture. Strapline: “Omnivorous commentary on politics, policy, media, the Arts, pop culture, science, philosophy, and the multiverse at large.” So far my impression is of intelligent, contrarian liberalism and quality writing. One to watch.

I also want to recommend Facing the War, which first appeared back in 2009 but only really kicked off in the last few months. It comes from, I guess you’d call it, an anti-Stalinist, libertarian Marxist position. Most posts are snippets from the archive, but there are some pieces of original commentary, such as this wise one on the fruits of the Arab spring. I have recommended Ross Wolfe’s the charnel-house (focusing on anti-capitalist theory and the history of the Soviet avant-garde) a few times before, and it has really fascinating stuff and a very nice look, but suffers from the killer combination of tiny grey-on-black font and incredibly wordy posts.

The CST publish a nice obituary of Cyril Paskin, a veteran of the 62 Group and unsung hero of UK militant anti-fascism. (Minor quibble: Balham is not in South East London!)

I re-read this week Kenan Malik’s 2009 review of Christopher Caldwell’s Reflections On The Revolution In Europe. I think it popped into my Twitter feed because Malik’s reference to Lothrop Stoddard resonates with the current storm in a teacup between Pankaj Mishra and Caldwell’s fellow civilizationist Niall Ferguson, in which Mishra compares Ferguson to Stoddard, but I strongly recommend reading Malik.

I haven’t done an EDL round-up for a little while. Malatesta gives a précis of their Remembrance Day antics. Interesting that EDL activists have been attacking and threatening further attacks on Occupy camps in Newcastle and London, as well as attacking trade union buildings in Manchester. SWP front Unite Against Fascism claim this “proves” the fascist nature of the EDL. In their undergraduate ortho-Leninist analysis, anti-communism is “the” defining feature of fascism, the essence of its anti-working class nature. However, it seems to me the EDL’s thuggery against Occupy and leftists could equally well be explained as the politics of ressentiment, the kind of purported anti-elitist kicking at the cultured classes that also drives Class War, Richard Littlejohn and Spiked, or equally well again as part of the larger conservative kulturkampf that you get from highbrow American thinkers like Christopher Caldwell – see above.

Here’s Dan Hodge on the anti-establishment case for voting Boris not Ken for Mayor of London, and an ambivalent response from Carl Packman.

Read Noga's "A Conversation in D Minor", and follow the links. One of them I was already going to link to: via Norman Geras, an interesting article on “Camus the Jew” by Robert Zalesky in Tablet. I was especially interested in the part about Israel and Algeria:

Indeed, it is the theme of absurdity that most powerfully underscores Camus’ understanding of Jews, Judaism, and Israel. At the political and existential level, Camus felt a visceral connection with the absurd predicament of the young Jewish state. It was a political bond insofar as many on the French left, from whom Camus was estranged, had grown deeply anti-Zionist in the wake of the Suez War. In 1957, he publicly affirmed his sympathy and support for Israel. His reasons still echo today: Not only must Europe accept Israel’s existence as the only possible response to the continent’s complicity in the Final Solution, but Israel must also exist as a counter-example to the oppressive rule of Arab leaders. The Arab people, he declared, wished for deserts covered with olive trees, not canons. Let Israel show the way.

A naïve hope, certainly, but one that suggests that Camus’ attachment to Israel was existential: His plea for cooperation and collaboration between Jews and Arabs in Israel echoed his pleas to his fellow pied-noirs and Arabs in Algeria. In fact, Camus had flown to Algiers in 1956 to urge a civilian truce between Arabs and French Algerians. His desperate claim that Arabs and European settlers were “condemned to live together” proved wrong, of course. They instead concluded they were condemned to kill one another—a conclusion, were he alive today, he would urge both Israelis and Arabs to avoid while there is still time.

More notes on #Occupy

2011-11-17T18:14:00.016Z

Cross-posted at the Third Estate

One of the most depressing things about the period after 9/11 was the rapid disintegration and recuperation by the trad left of the energy of the 1990s “anti-capitalist” movement. The 1990s movement had several flaws – its narrow concentration on institutions like the IMF and World Bank as shadowy cabals directing the economy, the culturally conservative critique of globalism, the creation of a self-contained protest ghetto divorced from ordinary people and with its own exclusive dress and behaviour codes, the mindless insurrectionism of the movement’s “spiky” wing and empty-headed pacifism of its “fluffy” wing, and the routine repetition of spectacular but pointless counter-summits as a dominant activity – but it was also very inspiring. Its utopian promise of the possibility of another world, its clean break from the drab industrial statism of the workerist left, its sense of fun and pleasure, its affirmation of the transformative power of participatory democracy, and the sophisticated way it connected different local everyday struggles into a planetary worldview. (In fact, the concept of the planetary, put on the agenda by the Zapatistas, was a tremendous step forwards from the internationalism of the trad left, which was always an inter-nationalism rather than a genuinely global view.)

After 9/11, and especially after the start of the 2003 Gulf War, radical energy turned increasingly towards inter-nationalist geopolitics, and the orthodox left’s pseudo-anti-imperialist politics subordinated local struggles in both the global South and the global North to an overwhelming imperative to break American (and Israeli) “imperialist” power. In the pursuit of this imperative, radicals increasingly entered into alliance with reactionary nationalist powers and clerical-reactionary movements because of a common enemy. Radicals embraced the conservative idea of a clash of civilisations, taking sides with jihadists and authoritarian demagogues. Democratic, participatory, networked modes of organisation were repressed in favour of centralist party-building.

While the 1990s movement had been inspired by events in Chiapas, Porto Alegre, the Sertao, the townships of South Africa and the slums of urban India, the radicalism of the 9/11 decade became single-mindedly obsessed with the Middle East, as the lens through which everything was viewed and judged.

The #Occupy movement clings to some of the noughties themes – in particular, it seems obsessed with Israel/Palestine, and anti-Americanism seems a feature of its European incarnations. But it returns to many of the themes of the 1990s movements, and this is encouraging to me. However, it suffers from some of the flaws of the 1990s movement too. For example, just as many 1990s activists focused their fire on institutions like the IMF rather than the system as a whole, the new movement is obsessed with bankers and financiers who have been the folk devils of mainstream political discourse since 2008 but are in fact just a tiny part of the problem. “We’re not against capitalism; we’re against corporate greed”, say some of the protestors. And often this is related to a nationalist discourse, with protestors in Germany objecting to the propping up of Greece, and protestors in America arguing that (to quote Bill Weinberg) if Wall Street brokers acted with greater patriotism, capitalism could "work."

Second, the movement is narcissistically concerned with the form it has taken – the occupation of the squares – rather than the content of the politics, as it is the form which enables the survival of a big tent of contradictory impulses – reformers and revolutionaries, futurists and primitivists, ordinary folk and harder counterculturists. I like this populist, big tent aspect of the movement and like the fact that it expresses criticisms rather than demands. But the danger is, as with the summit-hopping of the late 1990s, the form is more and more fetishised and becomes an end in itself rather than a means, which will make it increasingly boring and irrelevant.

Another weakness of the 1990s movement was that it never understood class conflict as central to its struggle, partly because it emerged in the space opened up by the fall of Communism and the discrediting of old workerism. It understood the struggle as a simply war between humanity and neo-liberalism (as the Zapatistas put it). The 2000s resurgence of the trad left did nothing to address this, as the more successful Leninist parties grew through opportunistically playing to an abstract resistance to imperialism. The new movement again speaks for an abstract humanity (the 99%) and so far class politics has not had much traction in the rhetoric. The absence of class politics, and of the materialist analysis that used to come with that, leaves the movement open to all sorts of bad idea, including conspiracy theories, new age dreaming, and technocratic fixes.

The remainder of this post collects a few recent observations on the #Occupy movement, before returning to the ideas I started with here to come to some kind of provisional conclusion.

#Occupy as viral

It is more or less impossible to talk about “the movement”, as I have been here, because of its diversity. It has spread vitally, and like a virus it mutates as it spreads. For example, the violence in Oakland contrasts to the insistence on non-violence in London; the overwhelmingly white composition of the protestors in London contrasts to the increasingly diverse profile of some of the North American protests.

I had an interesting conversation with Scholem Libertad (the main blogger at Contested Terrain, who I met for the first time last week) about Occupy. He felt that one of the most inspiring things about the movement in America, which seems more or less absent in the UK and Germany, is the way it has been a platform for all sorts of people to express their grievances We are the 99%, although a problematic slogan, has opened up the space for people to talk about losing a job, keeping a job but being scared of losing it, having a job but being badly underpaid, losing a house, keeping a house but getting into unbelievable debt to keep it, paying underpaid, getting ill with no health insurance. Through each of these stories, everyone who participates brings their own meaning, their own vision, into the protests, and this makes for something rich but also incoherent, and thus for everything I say here there will be counter-examples. So, please take all of the following points as provisional and tentative.

Antisemitism in the movement

Antisemitism is only one thin thread in the rich tapestry of the #Occupy movement, but a thread worth tugging at. Zombie at PJ Media catalogues several more incidents from the US. From OWS Zuccotti Park, we have a bizarre mix of different antisemitic stereotypes from a protestor who claims to live off the earth and an anti-Israel protestor claiming Jews would put Palestinians in ovens if they had them; Israel Lobby conspiricism from Occupy LA; and so on.

Occupy Judaism

Occupy Judaism continues to develop its interesting but incoherent vision within the Occupy movement, mainly in the US. In New York, OJ put out a statement against antisemitism in response to the pogrom in Brooklyn’s Midwood, which was adopted by the General Assembly of OWS in New York.

In Oakland, Jewish OWS activists are signed up to the “Occupy Oakland, not Palestine” slogan, which seems completely meaningless to me. At the Meretz blog, Ralph Seliger gently points out their earnest reduction of complex issues to foolish simplicity.

Matt at Ignoblus is even more critical. He notes the failure of Occupy Judaism to deal with antisemitism in the movement; instead, he argues, Occupy Judaism seems more concerned with giving the movement an alibi for antisemitism and with blurring the lines between anti-Israel protest and undermining the possibility of Jewish cultural life in the diaspora. I recommend you read the whole of his short post.

Matt links to Marc Tracy in Tablet, who talks about some of the sillier targets of Occupy Judaism, including Hillel, but to be honest I find Tracy’s post pretty incoherent. Another post by Tracy, though, is more disturbing: on the “ethnocentric” obsession with Palestine in the American Occupy movement, from Mondoweiss-connected Occupy Judaism groups like “Young, Jewish, and Proud” and “Occupy the Occupiers”.

The commodification of protest

Another interesting feature of OWS is its sophisticated use of branding, and the way the creative energy involved in détournement of corporate branding is identical to that involved in recuperating it. Rocawear, the fashion line owned by rap entrepreneur Jay-Z, have brought out T-shirts with the words “Occupy All Streets”. Top Shop have a line in peace sign leggings and sweaters; modelled sitting outside tents, fashion pages use it to illustrate “the coolest protest-appropriate fashion options” for today’s political young things. Vivienne Westward, modelling her own naff “I’m not a terrorist” T-shirts, has been touring Occupy London, hot off the plane from touring China, where her garments are doubtless produced by not the most ethical of factories. Is this smartly putting neat slogans into public discourse, cynically and parasitically feeding off the movement’s energy, or what? And does Occupy London suffer from an excess of politeness in its mode of protest?

The astroturfing of the movement

On this side of the Atlantic, I was fascinated to read “The occupation will not be astroturfed” by Lisa Ansell, reporting on Blue Labour guru Maurice Glasman and his attempt to “atroturf” OccupyLSX and target its energies against the City of London. Ansell mentions the Ed Miliband camp’s use of methods derived from the US Democrats, and then claims that “This breed of politics does not work in a changing, leaderless organisation where consensus is needed.” In fact, it seems to me that the acephalous, networked, viral mode of Occupy’s organisation actually lends itself perfectly to this sort Alinsky-lite social marketing strategy.

Equally interesting, and not noted by Ansell, is the affinity between Glasman’s reactionary socialism (the dignity of labour, the nobility of industry, the virtue of vocation) and the prevalent defence in the movement of the “real economy” versus finance capital. In fact, it is precisely the City of London (and, in the US, Wall Street) that is targeted by the movement already, and not capitalism as such.

Right-wing populism and OWS

Among the efforts to come to terms with the deformities of the movement are Matthew Lyons’ “Rightists woo the Occupy Wall Street movement” and Bill Weinberg’s “Yes, we are anti-capitalist!” Lyons catalogues some of the unsavoury groups attaching themselves to OWS, from neo-Nazis at Occupy Pheonix and Seattle, the creepy Zeitgeist movement, right-wing libertarians, tea party groups, the anarcho-nationalists of Attack the System, the Lyndon LaRouche cult, and all sorts of other far right oddballs.

There is always a danger that some rightists will come to Occupy movement events to harass or attack leftists, or act as spies or provocateurs. More commonly, rightists see the movement as an opportunity to gain credibility, win new recruits, or build coalitions with leftists. When pitching to left-leaning activists, these right-wingers emphasize their opposition to the U.S. economic and political establishment--but downplay their own oppressive politics. In place of systemic critiques of power, rightists promote distorted forms of anti-elitism, such as conspiracy theories or the belief that government is the root of economic tyranny. We've seen this "Right Woos Left" dynamic over and over, for example in the anti-war, environmental, and anti-globalization movements.

Weinberg similarly runs through some of the parasites attaching themselves to the movement from the populist right, as well as antisemites.

Inevitably, anti-Semitism emerges in right-wing populist exploitation of rage against financial elites... [And] just because right-wing pundits use the charge of anti-Semitism as a baseball to beat OWS with doesn't mean (as the movement's defenders reflexively argue) that it is free from any taint of anti-Semitism. In fact, OWS web pages are positively infested with Jew-hating comments—possibly left by mere Internet trolls rather than actual activists, but still met with little protest or repudiation.

Weinberg suggests that instead of wooing rank and file tea party followers from their toxic leaders, there is a danger of “our own movement being subject to a stealth take-over by our worst enemies.” He concludes that “Bad ideas don't just go away. They have to be opposed.”

Some Estonian anti-authoritarians have alerted the world to another far right group, PrisonPlanet, who have taken the name “Occupy Tallinn”. Their communiqué talks about the movement being “hijacked” by the Nazis.

However, Facing the War suggests that Weinberg and his ilk are over-optimistic about the movement: he “suffers from the misplaced certainty that its ideas are somehow the true heart of Occupy, rather than a minority position that needs to be defended, explained, and promoted.” In other words, perhaps, the core of OWS is muddled thinking, populism and crackpottery, and it is the clear-thinking radicals who are the interlopers.

Occupy versus the real economy

Scholem Libertad, when I spoke to him last week, said that, although it is important to expose the antisemites, conspiracy theorists and cults who swim in Occupy’s murky waters (as we have been doing at Contested Terrain, and as our comrade Spencer does in Shift), we also need to pay attention to the weaknesses of the “mainstream” of the movement, including those weaknesses of which the presence of antisemites is a symptom.

For instance, the valorisation of the good, honest, organic “real economy” against predatory tentacular finance capital is not just a feature of the Zeitgeist movement and antisemitic cranks. Indeed, this was the main message Archbishop Rowan Williams took from the St Paul’s protestors the other week. (In fact, it is a deeply Christian message, which is perhaps why it resonates so well with the theologian Glasman and the Anglican hierarchy.)

The idea that capitalism would be fine if we removed all that smoke and mirrors finance stuff and got back to the “real” production of stuff is both deeply reactionary (based on nostalgia for something that never existed, and with a close kinship to the “socialism of fools” that thinks the problem is Jew-financiers) but also empirically nonsense. Sweatshops where adults and children labour for long hours in appalling conditions to make clothes and electronic components are part of “the real economy”. As are the biofuel plantations that are eating up the rainforests that produce the air we breathe. As are the oil wells and oil pipes that poison our river deltas; the manufacture of weapons of torture and warfare; the coltan mines that central African child soldiers kill and are killed for; the soybean and rapeseed monocultures that we rely on for our daily meals, the beds we sleep on wrought from rainforest lumber; and so on. All wage labour involves exploitation, whatever part of the capitalist economy you’re in. The “real economy” may be realer, but it is ultimately no better.

Beyond “corporate greed”

Ross Wolfe of Platypus deconstructs (at some length) the romantic populist nonsense in the Liberty Plaza Blueprint, described as a “half-literate blob assembled by the self-appointed anarchoid vanguard of OWS”. Central to that document is something very close to “the real economy”, which is “an economy in harmony with nature”. In an earlier post, he had criticised the limited focus on corporate greed within the movement. He quoted Max Weber on this:

Unlimited greed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalism, and is still less its spirit. Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism is identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise. For it must be so: in a wholly capitalistic order of society, an individual capitalistic enterprise which did not take advantage of its opportunities for profit-making would be doomed to extinction.

The corporate greed idea takes an “epiphenomenal” feature of capitalism and acts as if it is central. It focuses on the bad moral behaviour of “the 1%” rather than on the problems with the system – a “’diabolical’ view of society — the idea that all of society’s ills can be traced back to some scheming cabal of businessmen conspiring over how to best fuck over the general public.”

In fact, he argues, the “1%” need to constantly expand their capital if they want to stay in the game; the alternative is falling back down into the “99%”. That’s the rules of the game, not a matter of personal immorality.

Reconstructing solidarity

Earlier in this post, I said that I thought that bad ideas spread in the space left when class politics dies. Increasingly in the last decades, solidarity has weakened. Some of the political fault-lines of recent times have been about the absence of solidarity. As Emma Dorling and Begüm Özden Firat write in Shift,

It did not take people very long after the recent unrest in the UK to notice how alienated we are from one another within our supposed ‘communities’. But there is more to this than simply getting along with those you happen to live in close proximity with. What we have seen playing itself out in the media and on the streets in recent weeks are the multiple lines of conflict that weave their way through society, pitting white against black, black against brown, the less poor against the more poor, the unemployed against the workers, the looting youth against the small business owners.

Private sector workers have no solidarity with public sector workers, who they see as tax-eating parasites with cushy pensions. Working people have no solidarity with the benefit claimants who are falling into deeper and deeper poverty because of austerity measures, because they resent them not working. The low-paid have no solidarity for the “squeezed middle”, who they see as privileged whiners. The settled have no solidarity with immigrants, who are among the most vulnerable in the crisis, because they see them as jumping the queue and taking what others are entitled to.

How much the movement can reach out to and give voice to these different constituencies, across the trench lines of the culture wars, is the extent to which it is a space of hope rather than another version of the same old activist treadmill.

The slogan “We are the 99%” – idealistic, bland and vague as it is – points towards a reconstructing of solidarity. It emphasises the threads of common experience that bind us, rather than the identities that divide us. Dowling and Firat argue that:

The current protests and insurrections erupting in the wake of the crisis are – unlike the previous cycle of counterglobalisation struggles – much more explicitly directed to the politics of the local and everyday whilst recognising the connections across local and national boundaries... Of concern is how to connect the different struggles against austerity measures and cuts, debt, climate change, gentrification and housing, the crisis of care and social reproduction.

This challenge, the reconstruction of solidarity, is the most important task facing the Occupy movement.

Further reading: Marc Tracy: Could OWS be killed off by annoying drummers?; P. Naberrie: Observations From Zuccotti Park; Spencer Sunshine: Occupied With Conspiracies?; Adam Holland: Occupy Wall Street and the perils of the big tent; eM: Why Occupy Wall Street Won't Work; Salman Shaheen: Paternoster Square is not Tahrir Square, but OccupyLSX’s Goals are Clear; Jacob B-R: Why #OccupyLSX should be wary of Liberty; Reuben B-R: When are comments about “Zionists” not really comments about Zionists? A few tips on working it out.

British universities as platforms for racists

2011-11-15T17:07:00.009Z

Recent weeks have seen several more incidents adding to the already over-long litany of British trade unions, student unions and universities giving a platform to unhinged racists. Spaces that were once oases of anti-racist sanity in racist Britain seem to be becoming the last bastions of racism in an increasingly tolerant Britain.

If proof was needed that having parents who will spend thousands of pounds sending you to one of Britain’s most upper class universities is no guarantee of intelligence, Exeter University’s “Friends of Palestine” Society* invited poisonous Holocaust denier Gilad Atzmon to speak. Apparently, Atzmon told listeners that "Hitler was right" and that AIPAC were the "Jewish lobby in America" and 'Antisemitism doesn't exist.'

Meanwhile, Nottingham University Debating Society has invited the British National Party’s Nick Griffin to talk on 24 November. I have always hated the concept of the debating society, both for masturbatory displays of class privilege and for the reduction of important and complex ideas reduced to an intellectual game. It is a common habit of debating societies to “daringly” invite fascist scum to speak (Exeter University springs to mind as having invited Griffin before) and the idiotic “free speech” cultists always applaud them for it.

Turning to the University of London, as a trade unionist I have been vaguely following the minor furore sparked by off-the-cuff racist remarks by RMT London regional organiser Steve Hedley at a RMT-sponsored anti-Israel rally at SOAS, snidely saying “you’re one of the chosen people” to Richard Millett.
For those who won’t see why this is racist, read these remarks overhead by Orwell:

Middle-aged office employee: “I generally come to work by bus. It takes longer, but I don’t care about using the Underground from Golders Green nowadays. There’s too many of the Chosen Race travelling on that line.”
Tobacconist (woman): “No, I’ve got no matches for you. I should try the lady down the street. She’s always got matches. One of the Chosen Race, you see.”
Young intellectual, Communist or near-Communist: “No, I do not like Jews. I’ve never made any secret of that. I can’t stick them. Mind you, I’m not antisemitic, of course.” (Quotes via Daniel Marks).

The issue was taken up by David Greenstein in the trade union blog Workrep, with some slight inaccuracies that provoked an even more inaccurate and indeed defamatory response from Hedley.

Interestingly, one of Hedley’s allegations is that Richard Millett “openly consorts with the neo-fascist EDL”. Millett himself has in fact consistently and unambiguously denounced the EDL, but I continue to have concerns about the large amount of space taken up in his comment thread by Roberta Moore and other internet identities who promote the EDL. One of the EDLers, for example, thinks that Searchlight are “utter bigots and enablers of clerical thugs have no interest in combating antisemitism”, because they oppose Islamophobia as well as other forms of racism. I also feel there is a disturbing causal mucking along conviviality between Richard’s regulars and the EDLers.

Reading the comment threads at Richard’s place is a depressing experience. The kind of paranoia and hysteria that makes commenters read about Hedley and think “There is a strong feel of 1938 in Britain these days” or “Compare Berlin 1936 and London 2012 both Olympic years” is very worrying. This kind of paranoia is grounded in the very real pervasiveness of anti-Zionist antisemitism in British liberal culture, rather in pure fantasy, but it is enormously out of proportion with the actual facts.

One regular there is Jonathan Hoffman of the Zionist Federation, indefatigable campaigner against anti-Zionist excesses but not always the best advocate for his cause. I was interested to see a debate between Dan Sheldon, the president of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) and Hoffman. I have no stake in advocating for Israel, their topic, but only in combating antisemitism (a distinction that both the UJS and Zionist Federation like to blur), but I find myself agreeing with most of Sheldon’s sharp criticisms of Hoffman. Here is Jonathan’s response.

On the other hand, I think it is Hoffmanesquely counterproductive for the UJS to treat Norman Finkelstein as analogous to Gilad Atzmon and Nick Griffin, and to picket Finkelstein at Leeds University, as the UJS have done. Finkelstein has said some unpleasant things and has some unsavoury views, but there is quite a lot of clear blue water between him and the Atzmons and Griffins we should be no platforming. Telling the world we can’t tell the difference is to seriously undermine our case.

UPDATE: Contententious Centrist responds to this post here. (Also relevant, read this "conversation in D minor".)
UPDATE 2: CST report on Atzmon. JC report on these and other recent campus hate fixtures.

*On the Exeter event, Sarah informs me that some publicity for this event bills it as a Palestine Solidarity Campaign event. I haven't researched this fully.

Further reading: Raheem Kassam “Time to tackle denial of hate”; Inside Higher Education “When a Prof shouts ‘Death to Israel’”; Ken Marcus “Invoking ‘academic freedom’ to silence debate”; Engage: Political music festival featuring antisemite Gilad Atzmon sponsored by the Art’s Council, The Co-Operative and National Lottery Fund.

Other posts on Gilad Atzmon: at BfB and at CiFWatch.
Previous: Paranoia and hysteria at CiFWatch? and CiFWatch's response.

For the weekend

2011-11-12T08:46:00.017Z

First, a dose of Coatesism: on the left and the rise of Libyan kleptocracy; on Charlie Hebdo, Islamism, British Liberals and the Left; and on The Zeitgeist Movement and Occupy UK.

Second, Carl Packman on a new book on the BNP and on Hugo Chavez as political farce.

Third, although not breaking news anymore, Ron Radosh on Richard Goldstone's mea culpa.

Fourth, Alan A on "progressive" politics in Britain, relating to some of the things I said here.

Fifth, AWL tube workers say no room for antisemitism in the labour movement.

My plain coat, a lamppost, on a bridge An autumn night, on my cold lips the rain

2011-11-08T00:46:00.003Z

First, via N., a great piece of writing on whether OWS will make a difference. It's on Facebook, so I am quoting more than I normally would for all of you who (like me - I am looking over my wife's digital shoulder) don't do Facebook:

The road to political change is twofold: incremental change through politics, or outright popular revolution that forces the issue. The former is the rule, the latter the exception. I used “paradigm” advisedly earlier. What OWS is proposing is a sea change in the way business is done. No nipping around the edges, no legislative fix, no candidate, no standard bearer, no (big) funding, no party, no co-option/invasion. It has exempted itself from the political narrative by proposing ideas that are just Too Big, no matter how resonant they are. It is creatively attractive anarchy (and I mean that in a good way) that is pragmatically untenable.

More revolutions are crushed than are successful. Those few successes are often co-opted and redirected. Ask me, I was a Trotskyite long ago. Utopia, and Justice, and Fairness, these are ideals to strive towards. These are part of our common aspirational humanity, and striving is in our nature. Without pragmatic methodology, OWS is an inert expression of cumulative and common angst. We do, as humans, dare to dream. But we also have to act in a waking world.

Sticking with Occupy, my comrade Spencer has a piece on The Occupy Movement, Populist Anti-Elitism, and the Conspiracy Theorists published on-line at Shift.

My friend Daniel has a long and moving article in OpenDemocracy on the possibility and impossibility of living together, starting with his late father's hometown in Poland but also taking in urban inner London and Israel/Palestine.

Finally, at The Point, via my friend Christine, a great piece by Michael Berube on Libya and the left.

Oh, and the title of this post is from a poem by Alexander Penn, whose daughter Ilana Rovina features in the video above, singing his "Vidui". Penn is the subject of a fascinating post by Noga, whose translation I have lifted.

Links: Anti-capitalism, fascism, anti-fascism

2011-11-04T18:12:00.004Z

Left antisemitism
Rob has an interesting follow-up to his New Statesman article on the PSC and left antisemitism, reflecting on the comments thread.

OWS (and left antisemitism)
Adam Holland has a post on the hateful Patricia McAllister, the recently fired Los Angeles public school teacher who gained attention by carrying signs at the L.A. Occupy Wall Street demonstrations blaming "Zionist Jews" for the world financial crisis. She has now appeared on a show hosted by the KKK's David Duke. Adam's post explores what this means for the OWS "big tent". Highly recommended.

There is an interesting debate in the comment thread at Contested Terrain on "structural antisemitism" and OWS.

And, nothing to do with antisemitism, here are A Jay Adler's pessimistic thoughts about the OWS movement and American liberalism in general; here is Ross on some definitions of "corporations", "greed", "capitalism", "finance" and so on; here are Facing the War's thoughts, as well as some observations (and reflections on the position of an observer) of Occupy Chicago; and here is an interview in Shift with Occupy London from the beginning of October.

English Defence League
Demos has a new report out on the EDL. See coverage at the Staggers. EDL supporters are young, male and more concerned about immigration than Islamism. A third of them vote BNP, despite claims to have nothing to do with it. The report rejects the description of the EDL as fascist, and rejects a ban:

The EDL is not one-dimensional, and members' views are varied. The group is probably best described as a populist movement that contains some extreme right-wing and sometimes Islamophobic elements. Although there are some illiberal and intolerant sentiments voiced by some supporters in this survey (and at demonstrations), many members are in an important sense democrats. Allowing them to protest and demonstrate is an important way to ensure the group does not become more extreme... There is little doubt that the EDL contains some racist and openly anti-Islamic elements - but this is by no means true of all supporters. The task ahead is to engage with those who are sincere democrats, and isolate those who are not.

Meanwhile, Malesta is increasingly optimistic about the forthcoming demise of the EDL, after its series of increasingly damp squib demonstrations. The Infidels, the more explicitly fascist breakaway from the EDL, may gain ground if the EDL continue to underperform. Close to the EDL, but making more of an effort at respectability, are the English Democrats. Hope not Hate investigate their BNP links, and argue for the superficiality of their conversion from fascism.

And just to link this item with the one before, EDL activists apparently want to burn out the Occupy LSX camp and attacked the Occupy Newcastle one. The other connection is the KKK, with left antisemite Patricia McAllister's newfound alliance with David Duke, and increasing evidence of EDL links to the Klan.

Anti-fascism
This might seem a bit petty, but why is HnH headline their article on EDL and Infidel thugs "Redneck Roundup"? This plays into the liberal condescension towards the EDL that abandons anti-fascism for class conceit.

At the other end of the anti-fascist scale, a few militant anti-fascist groups have launched a new Anti-Fascist Network, apparently so far as an information-sharing thing rather than a new national organisation: "to support local actions, ensuring that anti-fascists are never outnumbered, join together to counter regional and national EDL events, share resources and provide legal support." Groups involved so far are Brighton Anti-Fascists, Portsmouth Anarchists, Plymouth Antifa,Welsh Antifa and Worthing Anarchists. For those interested in militant anti-fascism, some other local groups with web presence include Three Counties Antifa in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire (read their founding statement here), Scottish Anti-Fascist Alliance, Liverpool Antifascists, Manchester Anti-Fascist Alliance. Meanwhile, the Stop Racism and Fascism Network seems to have gone completely quiet.

Other topics
Flesh is Grass on hospital closures.

A quick raid

2011-10-30T22:08:00.001Z

Here are some things that caught my eye while stealing time to browse.

At Shiraz Socialist, Comrade Clive denounces the lies and distortions about Libya of the Grauniad's posh Stalinists Seamus Milne and Jonathan Steele, while Andrew Coates decries the Guardian's courting of a "progressive" (that word again) Islamism in Tunisia.

Rob Marchant writes in the New Statesman on antisemitism as the new black - on the pernicious (and ultimately anti-Palestinian) influence of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

From a strangely interesting nook of the Occupy Wall Street movement comes the dispute between "the Drummers" and "the Demands working group", in a post by Ross that I had to read twice before deciding if it was satire. And, if you haven't already, read History at Night's account of the London camp, which more or less exactly matches my feelings when I went there last weekend.

Some updates

2011-10-28T22:49:00.021+01:00

I am off;-line at the moment, so have scheduled this post, as a kind of post-it note of follow-ups to things I've been talking about recently.

CiFWatch v Socialist Unity v Gilad Atzmon
CiFWatch have published a response by Hadar Sela to my two posts (this one and this one) on opposing left-wing antisemitism. Because I've been away, I've only managed to dip my toe in the discussion. [Update: link fixed]

Gilad Atzmon, Holocaust-denying antisemitic nutjob
Original posts listed here.
Updates: Joseph W on JfJfP promoting Atzmon's antisemitic supporter Jonathan Blakeley.

#Occupy
Original post here.
I've already rounded up some of the statements and reports on antisemitism in the Occupy camp at Contested Terrain. Here are some other posts: Anti-Semitism & Occupy Wall Street: Our Commitment; Carl P on Brendan O'Neil's denunciations; History at Night's Second Thoughts; James B on revolution as play.

When is anti-Zionism not antisemitism
Original post here.
Update: From the summer, the very sane Kenneth Stern offers dissent within the AJC. (h/t Sina)

Bob Lambert, police spy and philo-Islamist
Original post here.
Update: An old friend speaks out.

Two for one
Waterloo Sunset does both Lambert and Atzmon here.

EDL, right-wing numpties
Below the line, some comments from the thread at HP which linked to my post.

alfie 19 October 2011, 9:03 pm

Fucking bastards.

Not that it matters to these idiots, but the Ahmaddiyas are persecuted throughout the Muslim world, because they are viewed as heretics who deny the finality of Muhammad as a prophet, because their school of Islam was set up by someone who mainstream Muslims say claimed prophethood himself. This persecution takes the form of murders, massacres, marginalisation, and has manifested in Britain too, when leaflets calling for Ahmaddiyas to be murdered were distributed in London. Sunni Muslims have successfully campaigned for an Ahmadiyya mosque to be denied planning permission in the midlands in a way that the EDL and ‘Stop Islamisation of Europe’ cadres would be proud of and could take inspiration from. When an Ahmadiyya mosque was opened in north London and the BBC reported on it, it put the MCB in a sulk. They are despised by mainstream Sunni Muslims.

Oh, and fuck the EDL.

Steven W . 19 October 2011, 9:10 pm

Bob is spot on as usual . And what alfie said , fuck the EDL .

It deteriorates fast after that.

Some resources on left antisemitism

2011-10-26T22:22:00.001+01:00

There is a huge list of resources on left antisemitism at Contested Terrain. There is a shorter list at this website. And Engage has several more, and Workers Liberty have more again. Here, I list a few more recent resources that have come to my notice. It should go without saying that inclusion does not necessarily imply endorsement. Can I particularly draw your attention to Radical Archives on Kalle Larson, as this is a reference point in recent debates on Occupy Wall Street.

Marxist-Humanist Initiative: Beware of Left Anti-Semitism: Jew-Hatred Appears in Conspiracy Theories, Anti-Americanism, Lesser-Evilism, and Single-Issue Thinking (2011)
Michael Ezra: Stalinist Roots of Left-Antisemitism (2011)
Terminal 119 collective thessaloniki: Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism (2009)
Michael Ezra: Karl Marx: Radical Antisemitism (2009)
Moishe Postone: History and Helplessness: Mass Mobilization and Contemporary Forms of Anticapitalism [pdf]/html (2006)
Piotr Kendziorek and August Grabski: The Return of ‘Left Anti-Semitism’ in Poland? (2006)
New Internationalist special issue on Judeophobia (2004). Includes Asma Agbarieh on Arab antisemitism; Lucy Michaels and Adam Ma’anit on experiencing left antisemitism; as well as facts about Judeophobia and a resource list.
Radical Archives: Kalle Lasn of Adbusters and “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?” (2004)
Arthur Waskow, Charles Lenchner & Malka Fenyvesi: Jews and the Antiwar Movement (2003)
Daniel Mang: Left discourses, antisemitism, racism and gender (2002)
Naomi Klein: SHARON’S BEST WEAPON: The left must confront anti-Semitism head-on (2002)

Films, libraries, pizzas, Jew-haters - you know the sort of thing to expect here by now

2011-10-21T22:10:00.006+01:00

Bloggery: I don’t know how I missed the fact that my friend Tom Henri has a blog, “Unsettling Social Work”, aimed at “developing a critical sociology of social work”. The latest entry, from September, is the full text of his Guardian article on the summer riots in Lewisham, my corner of London. Moving to a totally different topic, have I recommended Critical Kabbalist before? The tin says "Reflections on studying Kabbalah and its relation to questions of spirituality, art, music and politics." But that doesn't really capture the interesting intersection of negative theology and communist theory.

A local blog for local people: I've been meaning to write about the campaign against Domino's Pizza in Honor Oak Park. I hope to do so soon, but in the meantime, go sign the petition (and read a little there about the issue). Also, local readers, go and watch A Screaming Man, which is supposed to be awesome, at the Brockley Jack Film Club on Monday night (the image above is from the film). Also of interest to both my local and non-local readers, here's Principia Dialectica on a Marxist showdown in the Brockley Barge: Urban rides: Potholing in south London. Meanwhile, rigorous academic research says Brockley Central is good for you.

Libraries:Talking of Crofton Park, it is incredibly depressing these days to go into our "social enterprise"-run "community library", slowing dying away in the shell of our wonderful old municipal neighbourhood library. I was incredibly irritated to read this Torygraph article by Peckham resident New Labor ex-librarian John McTernan, whose columns I normally like. The sub-editors, presumably, are responsible for the header and strapline: "Liberal whingers are wrong – we should shut our libraries: Middle-class liberals are fighting to keep libraries open out of condescension for the less fortunate and guilt that they, like everyone else, no longer use them." But McTernan is responsible for the nonsense that follows: "When did you last go to a public library? No, really, when? It’s probably a good few years – and if so, you’re not alone. From one year to the next, nearly 60 per cent of us don’t go to libraries at all. In fact, fewer than one in five adults in England go more than once a month." For a start, this misses out the children who go to libraries, in much higher numbers than adults, and surely the real core users. Even so, and accepting that these numbers are accurate (he doesn't say where they come from), aren't the 40% of the adult population who are library users, and the 20% who are regular users, important? And the additional few percent who'd also be users if the libraries weren't being emptied out and closed down? He claims that we don't need a gateway to international literature when you can buy from Abebooks, which is like saying we don't need the BBC because you can buy DVDs on-line. He claims that "every kid has a desk at home", which is not the case in Crofton Park and surely not the case in Peckham either. Lewisham and Southwark libraries are heavily used by teenagers (mainly black, as it happens) using the desks and computers to do schoolwork, and closing the libraries is a real insult to them. North London and Oxford libraries that get celebrity endorsements might be the concern of liberal whingers, but down here where fewer authors come we really need our libraries.

Anti-capitalism/RCPWatch: My last post on the Occupy movement mainly included positive commentary, but I have enjoyed reading Spiked's more jaundiced view. (Tim Black: V for Vacuous; Brendan O’Neill: Occupy London: a ragbag of political conformists; Nathalie Rothschild: The rage of hip consumers; Nathalie Rothschild: Is this Monty Python’s Occupy Wall Street?) They obsessively point out (e.g. here) that the movement can't really be radical because it is endorsed by Ben and Jerry, the president of the US, and Anglican priests. A very fair comment indeed. However, makes me wonder about Spiked's own empty claim to radicalism, given its writers are so widely disseminated by the super-establishment Daily Telegraph and the BBC, given sinecures by the Tory mayor of London and so on. They also reveal something of their esoteric Leninism in this article, where they attack the movement for its leaderlessness.

Real political leadership represents the embodiment of an ideal, a goal, which people subscribe to and are willing to fight for. In eschewing leadership, or rather in celebrating the objective reality of a lack of decent leaders, the occupiers are actually turning their noses up at idealism and political purpose, at the very basic idea of having a goal and a strategy for achieving it.[...] Here, we can glimpse what the celebration of leaderlessness really represents: an accommodation to the dearth of visionary thinking on the modern left.

True, visionary thinking is sorely lacking on the modern left, but this is not an argument for throwing our hats in with a Leninist cult run by the "visionary" Frank Furedi, which is Spiked's underlying if rarely spoken agenda.

Zionism/anti-Zionism... and the British labour movement: Nick Cohen on the foul smell of Britain's anti-Israel trade unions. Alan Johnson on Labour Friends of Israel.

Zionism/anti-Zionism... and Gilad Atzmon: Joseph W on Atzmonism as this century's Protocols. Lucy Lips on the nadir of the anti-Zionist Jews. Ben Cohen on John Mearsheimer And The Scandal That Wasn’t.

Fascism and anti-fascism: Alan Johnson on Matthew Collins' Hate.

Non-progressive socialism: Interesting post on Jon Cruddas, Blue Labour and BNP economics from Paul up North.

Conspirationism: At the weekend I was disappointed to see the latest Ziocentric conspiracy theory emerging from a source I expected better of: the claim that Liam Fox was a useful idiot for Mossad, pushed by Ian Bone of all people.

I've had a busy week: I might have blogged a little too much this week. If you missed them, go back back and read my posts on when anti-Zionism isn't antisemitism, Occupying Wall Street and London, the English Defence League and its Jewish Division, and Gilad Atzmon. Contested Terrain also took up the anti-Zionism/anti-imperialism/antisemitism issue, and I cross-posted part of my Occupy post there too.

Music: Finally, here's the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan singing "Mast Nazron Se".

CiFWatching, Andy Newmanism, Gilad Atzmon and the socialism of fools

2011-10-20T18:08:00.089+01:00

I've been writing this post, on and off, for a couple of weeks now, and it's not that coherent and trails off with no conclusion, but I thought I better just press publish, as it gets out of date faster than I can write it.

Hadar Sela on the socialism of fools
OK, as you'll know by now, Socialist Unity editor Andy Newman wrote a piece for the Guardian on left antisemitism, using Gilad Atzmon as one example. Hadar Sela had an article published at CiFWatch entitled "Andy Newman’s socialism of fools: The remarkable staying power of leftist antisemitism". She starts by noting that the "the sane centre-ish Left", including Harry's Place and me welcomed his comments, but were perhaps myopic in doing so. She correctly notes that "Gilad Atzmon is clearly a very extreme case; one would have to be either terminally intellectually challenged or willfully blind in order to not recognize his anti-Semitism." She suggests that, by concentrating on the extreme case, he (and his ilk) are trying to throw a smokescreen over the intimacy between "normal" anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

I agree that opposition to the most extreme antisemitism can serve to protect milder forms from criticism, creating a kind of cordon sanitaire around normal anti-Zionist antisemitism. But I don't think we have any evidence that throwing a smokescreen was Newman's intention, or that his criticism of Atzmon is anything other than in good faith.

Sela seems to think that the Guardian commissioned Newman to write this, and deliberately chose him because of his socialist credentials, whereas I don't see that we have any evidence that Newman did anything other than act off his own back because of anger at left antisemitism.

Sela makes a lot of Newman's involvement with the local Swindon branch of Stop the War, and from that condemns him because of national StW's links with Islamists. I agree (and have regularly argued here) that StW is tainted by its association with far right Islamists. "On October 8^th it will be holding a rally in central London at which known supporters of the anti-Semitic (and proscribed) terrorist organization Hamas such as Anas Altikriti and Mohammed Sawalha are billed to appear." Actually, I'm not sure they spoke; I think they just pledged to attend, along with Peter Tatchell. But even so, I'm not convinced it is fair to blame this on the Swindon branch. At any rate, and even if it was fair to indict him for links with Islamism, it seems like a pretty big jump from there to "In other words, inviting Andy Newman to rubber-stamp [?] Gilad Atzmon’s anti-Semitism is a bit like asking Nick Griffin to write an article denouncing Combat 18." That kind of excessive rhetoric devalues accusations of antisemitism.

A smaller quibble is that Sela focuses on Newman's attack on Atzmon, when of course Atzmon was simply an example of a trend; he also cited Alison Weir and the Zeitgeist movie. He left it up for debate where to draw the line. Sela also makes a lot of the words "far right" (she puts it in bold font) in this sentence: "“It is incumbent upon the left and the Palestinian solidarity movement to both be aware of the conscious effort of far-right antisemites to infiltrate the movement…”Newman has stated that the Guardian editors inserted this, which would confirm a lot of CiFWatch analysis, but she has not amended this. It seems to me, though, that there is nothing particularly left-wing about Atzmon or about Weir or Zeitgeist.

More interestingly, another point Sela makes is that left antisemitism is not new or rising. It is of course correct that it is not new, although it feels like it is rising to me, which is why we need resources like CiFWatch now. She gives Lenin as an example of the age-old antisemitism of the left.

From its very beginnings Socialism advocated the assimilation of Jews as an ‘answer’ to anti-Semitism rather than dealing with the problem itself. The only scenario under which a Jew could liberate himself from racist persecution was, according to Lenin, “when the non-native sections cease to be alien and blend with the general mass of the population”. In other words, Jews could only avoid anti-Semitism if they stopped being Jews.

This simplifies left antisemitism, by ignoring the "socialism of the fools" variety of antisemitic opposition to finance capital, a more significant form of left antisemitism than ortho-Marxist "red assimilationism". (Arguably, even as it rightly battled red assimilationism, Zionism historically absorbed some of the stereotypes of the socialism of fools, with its critique of the diaspora luftmensch and desire for muscular, productive, blood-and-soil Jews.)

And it simplifies Lenin's position, which was richer and more complex, and included unambiguous opposition to antisemitism. He believed (wrongly) that antisemitism would die with the birth of socialism, but (unlike some of his Jewish Bolshevik comrades) did not think that meant socialists could afford not to fight it in the meantime.

I think we need a more subtle understanding of left antisemitism. Lenin is relevant to understanding the SWP's position, but not to understanding the forms of antisemitism being normalised (via people like Atzmon) in the anti-Zionist movement. Atzmon (and for that matter Hamas) bring right-wing, Nazi antisemitism, not left-wing antisemitism, into the anti-Zionist movement.

What happened next 1: Trolling
When CiFWatch's Adam Levik left a comment at Socialist Unity kindly informing them of Sela's article, Andy Newman deleted it, wrote "right-wing troll deleted" over it, and added this comment:

You need to be a special type of idiot to think that my article is evidence that I am equivalent of Nick Griffin. You also concentrate on the words “far right” that I have already explained was inserted by the Guardian editors. And clearly in your book ALL solidarity with the Palestinians or political disagreement with Zionism is anti-semitic; making you a zealot of the most extremist stripe

What an excessive, hysterical reaction, to not even allow the link to appear on the comment thread! If anti-Zionists can't talk handle people talking like this without this sort of response, then they can't claim much credibility.

What happened next 2: The Guardian bookshop

The latest twist is that the Guardian’s on-line bookshop, which usually sells books recommended by its staff and reviewers, started selling Atzmon’s The Wondering Who, billed somewhat illiterately, as “An explosive unique crucial book tackling the issues of Jewish identity Politics and ideology and their global influence.” I was thinking before that the next stage of the campaign was to go to Zer0’s distributors, but why bother when the Guardian will ship in one business day with money off the cover price? As Adam Levick put it, “The Guardian: Your one-stop, hassle-free, 24/7 purveyor of antisemitism.” However, within 24 hours of CiFWatch posting about this, the book thankfully disappeared from the shop.

A rather bizarre exchange occurred on the CiFWatch comment thread. My friend Keith Kahn-Harris left this comment:

...the Guardian bookstore also stocks books by Melanie Phillips, Alan Dershowitz and Anthony Julius. It clearly stocks thousands of works and is not as ‘careful’ and ‘handpicked’ in its selection as it claims. Amazon and other sites also sell Atzmon etc. There is clearly a debate to be had as to whether all online bookstores should stop selling racist/antisemitic works (and by the way I include Atzmon in the latter category). However this is not an issue that is best raised by focusing on the Guardian online bookstore alone – it is rather an issue about the value-neutrality of all online bookselling.

Keith also pointed out that the description from the website, the bit about the explosive unique global influence, is not the Guardian's text but appears wherever it is sold on-line. This means that the illiteracy is presumably the responsibility of the publisher, which is also worrying.

I'm not sure whether Keith is right on this issue, but CiFWatchers exploded with indignation at his dissent from their view. For example, Jonathan Hoffman (who my friend described as the Tony Greenstein of the right) thought Keith was drawing an equivalence between Atzmon and Melanie Phillips, which he obviously wasn't. More disturbing were the commenters who said things like "Welcome to Vienna circa 1938." Or "Would you find it objectionable if the Guardian were to sell Mein Kampf?" So, if Andy's response to Adam seemed hysterical, these folks make him seem calm and collected. It's my view that this sort of response completely undermines our ability to respond to antisemitism. So, just to be clear: saying the Guardian might not be completely at fault for distributing Atzmon is not the first step in a journey that leads towards Auschwitz.

Then, in a further twist, it turns out that the Times (of London) on-line bookshop also stocks the offending book, which has yet to provoke the chorus at CiFWatch, as it doesn't fit so neatly into their paranoid worldview. It turns out that Keith is at least partly right: one HP commentator points out that Tesco is selling the book too, and speculates that "This could be partly an artefact of online bookshops’s reliance on the Nielsen bookdata system. Virtually every book with an ISBN gets listed in every online bookshop by default (they usually use more or less the same warehouse too, just a different label too)... Actually I wonder how many other nasty books just slip under the net radar like that."

Thinking this through

I'm not sure what to think about all this. One thing I am sure of is that there are lots of different antisemitisms, including lots of different left antisemitisms, and they are not all as bad as each other or equivalent to each other, and they are not all genocidal in their logic. We need a sense of proportion and more calmness in approaching them. We hurt only ourselves through hysteria and paranoia.

For a very subtle and interesting take on some of the varieties of left antisemitism around, read this excellent piece by A Jay Adler on antisemitism as the Ur hatred, following on from his (also excellent “The Uncanny John Mearsheimer”. It is a very good account of the mechanics of Jew-hatred today. Half-way through, we are introduced to the bizarre figure of Ross Vachon, sender of an unambiguously antisemitic e-mail to AJA. It is worth noting that Vachon is a CounterPunch contributor...

Mentally deficient right wing numpties: EDL news and reflections for October

2011-10-19T08:44:00.001+01:00

At the weekend, two dozen English Defence League activists stormed a Muslim book stall and Qur’an exhibition in Cradley Heath in the Black Country. So much for the claim to be a non-violent protest movement. Even worse, perhaps, is that the bookstall was run by an Ahmadiyya Muslim group. The Ahmadiyya are one of the least fundamentalist or jihadist groups with Islam. They explicitly reject armed jihad, are not seen as part of the Ummah by many orthodox Muslims and indeed are regarded as kafirs (infidels) by fundamentalists. They have, therefore, been subjected to violent persecution by Islamists in Pakistan, Bangladesh and elsewhere. In other words, they are exactly who those who claim to be fighting Islamism should be in solidarity with, not attacking. This demonstrates the EDL's ignorance about its pet obsession, Islam, and also the hollowness of its claim to be against Islamism rather than ordinary Muslims. It exposes the essential racism and paranoia of the movement.

Last week, the EDL's tinpot leader, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson, a name he took in honour of a Luton Town hooligan), had his appeal dismissed against his conviction for football violence in teh summer at a Newport-Luton match. "He claimed it had all been about England and Wales and that, while he may have made "sheep" insults, he had never mentioned EDL." I've got nothing against football hooliganism as a leisure pursuit amongst consenting adults, but again it gives the lie to the EDL claim to be non-violent. Yaxley-Lennon will go on trial again next month for his assault on an EDL member in Blackburn, to add to his previous form for wife-battering.

Malatesta, in usual tabloid fashion, reports on the latest damp squibs of an Infidels national demo on Leeds and an EDL Angels event in London, as well as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon’s criminal career. Malatesta portrays things as not going so well for the EDL and its split-offs, which makes for comforting reading, but I don’t feel so comfortable - more on that at the end of the post. Here's EDLNews coverage of the Angels event.

Meanwhile, what of the English Defence League’s so-called “Jewish Division”? Here is an interview with its new “leader” (which I think we can take to mean its only real member), “James Cohen”. As the previous "leaders", Brazilian Roberta Moore and Dutch non-Jew Robert Bartholomeus, have had rocky relationships with the EDL leadership (e.g. consorting with terrorist group the Jewish Task Force, praising mass murderer Anders Breivik, saying the EDL had been taken over by Nazis, joining rival and more explicitly fascist grouplet the English National Alliance), there has clearly been a search for some new blood. "Cohen" resides in that part of England quaintly named Canada and located across the Atlantic. The guy is either dishonest or idiotic on a whole number of counts: he thinks that there were hate speech laws in place in pre-war Germany that failed to stop the rise of Hitler; he thinks hate speech laws are “never, never” applied to Muslims, despite many high profile examples such as Sheikh Raed Salah, Zakir Naik or Islam4UK); he thinks sharia law is “in place” in certain parts of Britain; he thinks the EDL is a non-violent organisation (“as far as I can tell”) despite the convictions for violence of several of its leading members; he thinks Tommy Robinson, a businessman, is “a regular working class guy”, and therefore excused for hitting his wife. More interestingly, I was struck by the way he thinks the condemnation of the EDL by every single Jewish organisation in the UK shows the latter are merely “professional Jews” who are not representative or reflective of “real” Jewish opinion. He has no evidence of this, given no British Jews are involved in the “Jewish Division”. But I was struck by how this view mirrors that of Leninist vanguard parties, who think they uniquely know and represent the “real” interests of the working class, despite all evidence to the contrary. This kind of vanguardism, alongside of course the whole obsession with “leaders”, is indicative, I think, of a totalitarian mindset.

Meanwhile, in another publicity fiasco, Yaxley-Lennon got himself photographed next to QPR striker Joey Barton, and then claimed Barton had joined the EDL. Barton, not one to mince words, exposed the stunt, and added "I categorically refuse to publicly release a statement, because I refuse to raise awareness in a group of mentally deficient right wing numpties." If I remember rightly, Yaxley tried this with Jordan Price (aka glamour model Jordan) last year, but I don't remember her response as vividly!

Talking of the EDL Angels, EDL News has published screenshots of Facebook comments by a Bristol EDL member. She posted them in response to Tariq Jahan deservedly getting the Daily Mirror's Pride of Britain award, in recognition of his moving appeal for peace after the death of his son during the summer riots in Birmingham. Andrews said: "pride of BRITAIN not pride of fukin MUZZIE LAND fuking cunts... dont even fukin tell me that coz this fukizies son got killed n he gave some piss ass speach he gettin a fukin pride of britain award". Another EDL member chimed in with "shame they didnt stab that cunt or he wldnt ave been there". How’s that for a non-racist, non-violent organisation, Mr Cohen?

Another EDL Angel, teenager Charlotte Christina Davies, has been convicted, along with an older EDL man, for spray-painting the letters "EDL" and "NEI" (North East Infidels) along with the Ulster Loyalist slogan, "no surrender" and images of poppies and the St. George flag on a mosque in Hartlepool, and for persuading her 24-year-old boyfriend to smash up and graffiti Asian businesses with no Islamist connections whatsoever. The EDL, like the BNP in the early 1990s, creates the conditions which encourage race attacks to flourish.

Despite the talk of its salt-of-the-earth “regular working class guy” status from its patronising middle class defenders (like Mr Cohen), it has not more roots in any working class community than your average Leninist vanguard party. (It is, rather, a highly mobile and mainly virtual network: note Ms Davies’ geographical distance in Aylesbury from her boyfriend up North, and her incitement to violence via mobile phone; note the use of Facebook.)

But remember that the BNP had no roots in any community in 1990, but within a couple of years was getting a quarter of the white vote in some council wards and was winning councillors and MEPs a decade later. And its rise was accompanied by a wave of race attacks in the areas where it was recruiting, including the murderous attacks on Rolan Adams, Rohit Duggal and Stephen Lawrence. Now, as the BNP continues to implode, if the EDL had just a little more smarts than they seem to they could be a force to be reckoned with. The left under-estimated the BNP until it was much too late, seeing its members as brainless boneheads. We cannot afford to make the same mistake with the EDL.

Hat tipping: Some of the above links via Luther, Flesh and others on Twitter.

Police spies

2011-10-18T18:12:00.006+01:00

I saw at Indymedia, via History is Made at Night's Twitter, that Bob Lambert was a police undercover agent in the green and anti-capitalist movement.

Former Detective Inspector Bob Lambert MBE had just spoken at a “One Society, Many Cultures” anti-racist conference attended by 300 delegates at the Trades Union Congress HQ in Central London. He was then challenged by 5 members of London Greenpeace who called on him to apologise for the undercover police infiltration of London Greenpeace, Reclaim The Streets and other campaign groups – an operation he took part in or supervised over two decades...

Bob Robinson (as Bob Lambert called himself at the time) was a spy in London Greenpeace from 1984 to 1988, and he went on to supervise others agents who continued with infiltration of groups such as London Greenpeace and Reclaim the Streets, along with anti fascist protests, and actions against genetically modified crops. These agents used pseudonyms, and engaged in fraudulent and deceitful long-term intimate relationships with people in the groups before disappearing without trace – a stasi-like tactic involving a gross abuse of trust which has caused great emotional damage to a number of people involved.

The leaflet given out at the event said:

Bob also went on to supervise others agents who continued with infiltration of groups such as London Greenpeace and Reclaim the Streets, along with anti fascist protests and actions against genetically modified crops. It is clear that these were not ‘anti terrorist’ operations, but were in fact state intervention aimed at disrupting and weakening the growing opposition to the domination of our society by the interests of multinational corporations and their pursuit of profits.

This is just the latest in a whole series of revelations about police infiltration of radical groups in this period, including Jim Sutton/Boyling, who married an activist he met while undercover and then went on to have children with her; Mark Kennedy, who infiltrated various eco-warrior groups and also had sex with lots of protestors along the way; as well as Officer A, who infiltrated ant-fascist groups and provoked riots.

What makes it more interesting is that Lambert now poses as some kind of lefty, as shown by his attendance at the “One Society, Many Cultures” shindig organised by the coalition of Trot and Stalinist groups that Ken Livingstone cultivates, and his close association with various UK Islamist groups with close links to Jamaat, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. In fact, the Guardian article was rather laughably headlined "Progressive academic Bob Lambert is former police spy".

Lucy Lips asks if Lambert "went native" or if he continuing to act as a nark on the Islamist groups he promotes.

The MCB's Daud Abdullah, a supporter of Hamas, responds at CiF with an alternative conspiracy theory:

The “exposure” of the former special branch officer Bob Lambertcomes at a convenient time: it can serve as a distraction from the scandals that have engulfed the neocon tendency in the government. Lambert has been a staunch critic of the government’s Islamophobic rhetoric and exclusivist policies. This, to a large extent, explains the excitement that has greeted disclosure of information about Lambert’s past career among certain people.

Lucy Lips replies:

Nice try mate. A small anarchist group is part of the World Wide Neocon Conspiracy? Of course it is.

ADDED: Martyn Lowe on deep cover and police lies (h/t HiM@N)

Soundtrack: A Different Bob by the Colorblind James Experience, ca.1987

Previously: Policing the G20 protests; Police spies in the anti-fascist movement; Policing the Miners' Strike; G8 and the Black Bloc.

#Occupy!

2011-10-18T11:27:00.005+01:00

This is an age when political events are calibrated to Twitter, activists’ thoughts are punctuated with hashtags and the circulation of politics proceeds memetically. I have mainly been bemused by the wave of occupations emanating from Wall Street and franchised “globally” (i.e. to the other wealthy countries of the global North) on 15 October. I find aspects of the movement encouraging, echoing the mid-1990s “anti-capitalist” moment I was very much involved in, such as the origination of the movement outside the dead space of the conventional left and consequent populist appeal to a constituency outside the usual one; the anti-authoritarian, participatory democratic, horizontal mode of organisation; the carnivalesque emphasis on play and fun, disrupting the tedium of conventional politics (including conventional protest politics); the internationalist invocation of democratic uprising in elsewheres like Cairo combined with an act-local focus on social ills here at home.

But I also see some very discouraging elements, including: the limited and contradictory critiques of “capitalism” involved (specifically, they are mainly critiques of big business and of finance capital, which is not the same thing); the empty idealist and liberal invocation of a meaningless “99%”; the spectacular, media-oriented, fashion-driven form of the protests, with an emphasis on kettling as an indicator of success and pornographic delight in images of “police brutality”, however unconvincing; a sense of out-of-touchnes with the concerns of a lot of ordinary people in the squeezed bottom and middle; the adulation expressed towards the half-arsed superstars of the movement, from buffoon Michael Moore to, more worryingly, Julian Assange; and the predictable heavy presence of the ortho-left, eager to appropriate the energy of the movement and channel it into the dead end of building the party (it was amusing to see the Socialist Workers Party, which likes to pretend it is Marxist, with “We are the 99%” banners and demands for jobs – two very un-Marxist slogans).

///Some very interesting critical reflections on #OccupyLSX by Jacob at Third Estate, with a thoughtful and unusually content-rich comment thread. (Third Estate is worth keeping an eye on, as reports come in from Max, Gilly and others.) More pithy, and also very interesting, are Chris Dillow’s thoughts here, on how the failure of the left gave us the situation we have now. Paul Mason, the BBC’s most intelligent journalists (not that that’s much of a compliment) has quite a good analysis based on his visit to St Pauls. For more cynical takes, try the veteran Class Warrior Ian Bone.

///From across the water on Wall Street, some of the more useful reflections from a few different sorts of positions are those of Doug Henwood and A Jay Adler. The latter is especially good on the difference between OWS and the tea party movement, and the follow-up here.

///I hadn’t realised there is a whole #OccupyJudaism thing going on at the margins of #OWS and other US occupations (here’s Occupy Judaism’s official blog, Facebook page and Twitter account). See, e.g. this broadcast on the very interesting radio613 of from the Yom Kippur Services that took place at #OccupyWallStreet and #OccupyPhilly, or this useful article in The Forward, or this round-up of items from Kung Fu Jew at Jewschool. (Comical tangent: Jewish occupiers put up a “Sukkah”; the NYPD appeared to have better halachic knowledge, noting that you couldn’t see the stars through it therefore not a proper Sukkah – although more halachically trained folks say the NYDPD got it wrong.)

///In contrast, the right (at times hysterically) has put a lot of attention into hunting down examples (or at least “hints”) of antisemitism in the Occupy movement. (For one of the more articulate litanies against the antisemitism, read David Brooks on milquetoast radicals; for a good round-up of the evidence see PJ Tatler; for another video see BreitbartTV.) It is undeniable that there is antisemitism in the movement, and it has manifested itself in several of the events. (I haven’t seen examples from the UK yet, but won’t be surprised when I do.) It is incumbent on the movement, and on anti-capitalists in general, not to ritually denounce it, but to be honest and aware about it, and to understand where it comes from. Where it comes from, in my view, is: a limited anti-capitalism that focuses on finance capital rather than on capital in general which segues easily into a “socialism of the fools” antisemitism. This, I think, is not an indictment of some inherent antisemitism in the left, but rather a consequence of the failure of the left, a failure to coherently argue for, and win people over to, a thorough anti-capitalist politics. This failure has left a vacuum, which is filled with conspiracy theory, vulgar materialism of the blood-for-oil/blame-the-Fed variety, a populist discourse of patriotic defence of the national economy being looted by the banks, and other extra-left forms of politics.

It is also the case that the scattered instances of antisemitism in the protest are no more prevalent than the scattered instances of racism and antisemitism in the tea party movement, which the right (correctly) argued were epiphenomenal and not central to tea partyism. And these scattered instances, involving handfuls of oddballs at the margins of the occupations, must be balanced against the thousands of people in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, DC and elsewhere turning up to Kol Nidre prayers and sukkot. Highlighting a few incidents of antisemitism in a large, disparate, weeks-long movement and claiming that renders the whole thing is to play the antisemitism card. I particularly recommend A Jay Adler on The Putrid Cynicism of the Emergency Committee for Israel for a good rebuttal of one example of this, promoted at CIFWatch.

///Matt at Ignoblus has a nice, short post written after his attendance at a Kol Nidre service at Occupy Wall Street. His concern is not with the antisemitism as such, but the way the lens of Zionism/anti-Zionism distorts the movement’s understanding of the world. The Tent City protests in Israel were a major episode in the so-called “movement of the squares”, the wave emanating out of the Jasmine Revolution via Tahrir Square which the Occupy protests want to surf. But they air-brush it out of the account because it was not against the other occupation, the Israeli one of Palestine. Ignore the fact that pro-Hamas Islamists and pro-Israeli Coptic Christians, for example, were part of the Tahrir moment: Arabs can be as politically correct as they like but Israelis had better denounce their state if they want to enter our big tent.

///Finally, for a more global take, Terry Glavin passes on a message from Occupy Kabul, who say "My tent is my AK47".

///ADDED: I have just noticed more posts on the occupations, which I'll add un-notated and may return to: History At Night's first thoughts; in London Mind Trumpet "Occupy in the Sky"; Flesh on London's anti-austerity protests.

///Photo credit: The Guardian

When is anti-Zionism not antisemitic?

2011-10-15T15:27:00.001+01:00

David Bernstein amplifying and qualifying some points I made. (I'll extract below the fold, to put the comment thread into context.)

(Also featured in Soccor Dad's mideast media round-up from that week, which has some other interesting links.)

ADDED: Echo responds at Contested Terrain, which I'll return to later.

My original statement, with David B's emphases and additions:

Anti-Zionism that also takes a consistent opposition to all nationalisms (including Palestinian nationalism) is not antisemitic; Jewish religious anti-Zionism such as that of the Satmer Hasidim is not antisemitic; Jewish anti-Zionism which rejects the Zionist solution to the questions of Jewish survival and continuity (such as the position of the Jewish Socialist Group or others in the tradition of the Bund, folkism and other diasporist traditions) is not antisemitic [Editor: though one wonders about the relevance of these traditions in 2011, when there is an existing Jewish state with almost eight million citizens]; anti-Zionism from the perspective of Israeli citizens (Jewish or Arab) who want to see Israel as a democratic state for all its citizens (rather than a Jewish state) is not antisemitic; finally anti-Zionism which sees Zionism as a form of imperialism and takes a consistent opposition to all imperialisms without singling out Zionism as unique is wrong-headed, but not in itself antisemitic. All of these forms of anti-Zionism can be used as fig-leaves for antisemitism or be used to feed antisemitism, but they are not themselves antisemitic. [Editor: And I would add one more. Islamist anti-Zionism that is based on the idea that “Palestine” is Islamic territory that for theological reasons may not be governed by non-Muslims is not, by itself, anti-Semitic.]

David's thoughts:

Unfortunately, it’s increasingly the case that even those who approach anti-Zionism from one or more of these perspectives are at best tolerant of the anti-Semitism indulged in by some of their allies, and at worst engage in rhetoric that smacks of classical anti-Jewish themes, even if the individuals in question are not themselves anti-Semitic.

As I’ve noted before, there are two basic reasons for this phenomenon. The first is that given longstanding Western cultural prejudices against Jews, marrying anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism can be extremely effective from a rhetorical perspective. And, second, if you are inclined to believe that Israel and its policies are an especially grave danger to world peace and security you will tend to err on the side of being tolerant of anti-Semitism to the extent that you think it is furthering the anti-Israel cause [update: because you see Israel as a greater threat/danger/cause for concern than anti-Semitism]. Neither of these explanations are excuses, of course.

Miscellaneous

2011-10-13T19:34:00.003+01:00

The real radical activism: The wonderful Peter Tatchell was at the “anti-war” rally in London last weekend. As Terry Glavin puts it, Tatchell’s “tireless international solidarity work and campaigns for gender equality and gay rights have set the gold standard for principled and militant left-wing activism in Britain, struck a boldly dissenting note at today's stoppist jamboree in London.” Read Terry and Peter’s e-mail exchange on Afghanistan.

Anti-capitalism (and antisemitism): Read this long and thought-provoking analysis of Occupy Wall Street by Ross Wolfe. Marxist-Humanist Seth Weiss at New Jewish Resistance on the protests being “marred by anti-Semitism”, and Daniel Sieradski (ie. “Orthodox Anarchist”) on Antisemitism at Occupy Wall Street: Image vs. Reality, both via Contested Terrain. [Added: OWS and the Fed by Bill Weinberg.] A superb Isaac Deutscher quote on Marxism as a labour-saving device at Facing the War, a blog which seems to be finally getting its feet and is one to watch.

Israel, Palestine, Anti-Zionism and antisemitism: A fascinating article by Kasim Hafeez, a British Muslim, on his journey from anti-Zionist antisemitism to Zionism. I wouldn’t have thought Alan Dershowitz could win over anyone not already converted, but maybe I’m wrong. I don’t get Hafeez’s criticism of the UJS’s pro-Palestinian/pro-Israel Liberation campaign, but well worth reading. Hafeez runs theIsraelcampaign.org. Another fascinating article by Iranian journalist Amir Taheri on Palestine as a cause not a nation. And a mildly amusing story on the keffiyeh industry.

No Blacks, no dogs, no Irish: In the 1990s, it was a staple of militant anti-fascism that British fascism was intimately connected to the Loyalist movement, and that British fascism could not be understood without reference to Loyalism. Since AFA was wound up, the dominant forms of anti-fascism have been a mixture of liberal populism, Stalinist nostalgia, and mechanistic ortho-Trotskyism, and the importance of Loyalism and of anti-Catholic racism is rarely recognised. In that light, I was interested in this post at Hope Not Hate on the BNP in Ireland.

Hat tipping: Some of the above links via Elder of Ziyon; some others via various folks on Twitter.

Guest post: Islam and the left – against secular fundamentalism and philo-Islamism, for Islamic communism!

2011-10-11T19:17:00.002+01:00

This is a guest post by Ali H

"I am going to give you such a weapon that the police and the army will not be able to stand against it. It is the weapon of the Prophet, but you are not aware of it. That weapon is patience and righteousness. No power on earth can stand against it." - Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan

“O you who have attained to faith! Do not deprive your charitable deeds of all worth by stressing your own benevolence and hurting [the feelings of the needy], as does he who spends his wealth only to be seen and praised by men, and believes not in God and the Last Day: for his parable is that of a smooth rock with [a little] earth upon it – and then a rainstorm smites it and leaves it hard and bare.” – Al-Qur'an 2:264

“To live like a tree in solitude and free

and like a forest in solidarity,

this yearning is ours.”

- Nazim Hekmet

The left and Islam

In general, the left takes one of two positions towards Islam. For me, as a Muslim and as a communist, both are completely inadequate.

Since 9/11, the dominant position on the left has been one I call “philo-Islamism”. This is an uncritical orientation towards the conservative ideologies that currently shout the loudest (although are far from representative) in Muslim communities. There are at least three motivations for this, and only one of them begins to take the content of Islam at all seriously. The first motivation is the most honourable. Many leftists see Muslims as a locus of resistance against the capitalist governments which took us to war in the Middle East, against racism and state racism, and against Western imperialism. Especially since the “war on terror”, if Muslims are attacked as Muslims, it is right to defend them as Muslims. Therefore, quite understandably, leftists orientate towards what they imagine Muslims to be. As Hakim Bey has written, “in the context of the new One World it now constitutes by definition one of the very few existing mass movements which cannot be englobed into the unity of any would-be Consensus. Unfortunately the spearhead of resistance – ‘fundamentalism‘ -- tends to reduce the complexity of Islam into an artificially coherent ideology -- ‘Islamism‘ -- which clearly fails to speak to the normal human desire for difference & complexity.”

Less honourably, this can take the cynical, opportunistic form of seeing Muslims as recruitment-fodder, as naive receptacles for party ideology - so long as the party ideology comes packaged in a form our sensitive Muslims stomachs can digest. In a tiny handful of cases, as with George Galloway or Lauren Booth, or some of Galloway’s former allies now involved in Counterfire, they are actually attracted to Islam and seek to engage with it. But this engagement is hampered by the romantic, Orientalist ideas they have of Islam, and by their reduction of Islam to its most conservative elements. (Hakim Bey again: “But Islamism will never provide the dialectic negation of [capitalist] Empire because Islamism itself is nothing but an empire of negation, of resentment and reaction. Islamism has nothing to offer the struggle against Globalism except desiccated theofascist spasms of violence.”) Whatever their motivation, none of these leftists take seriously the real, radical, emancipatory content of Islam as a faith.

The second position the left takes towards Islam was dominant up until 9/11. It is what I call “secular fundamentalism”. Secular fundamentalists see all religion as oppressive, out-dated, patriarchal and otherwise generally politically incorrect – but for some reason it is Islam they hate the most. Secular fundamentalists come from the centre left (“muscular liberals” and “decent leftists”), where it veers close to neocon positions. But they also come from the ranks of orthodox Marxists and orthodox anarchists. All these stripes are over-represented in this blog’s links. This approach is strategically limited, because it can never win over the Muslim masses who make up an ever-growing part of the Western working class. But it is intellectually inadequate, because it refuses to see that Islamic thought might be a source of original, progressive, left-wing ideas. Why is it that Islam is viewed as the most barbaric of religions by those who profess to hate all religions?

Engaging with religious communism

There are plenty of leftists who take other spiritual traditions seriously. Michel Lowy, a French Trotskyist, wrote a book called Redemption and Utopia Redemption and Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe, which looks at some of the Jewish thinkers who have fused Judaism with anarchist and socialist thought – such as Gustav Landauer, Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem. Other examples include Henri Polak, leader of the Dutch diamond workers union; Jacob Israel De Haan, the gay rights advocate who was the first Jewish victim of Zionist terrorism; and British Orthodox Rabbi Yankev-Meyer Zalkind, a Talmudic scholar involved in East End radicalism. Wikipedia gives more examples, like Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, kabbalist and follower of what he called altruist communism; Isaac Nachman Steinberg, a Russian revolutionary and Orthodox Jew; and Rabbi Abraham Yehudah Khein, a Hasidic anarchist.

In the Christian tradition, too, we have similar examples. Cornel West’s books Black Theology and Marxist Thought (1979), Prophesy deliverance!: an Afro-American revolutionary Christianity (1982), and Prophetic Fragments (1988) set out the basis for a Christian Marxism. Liberation theology is respected across the West, and has influenced mainstream socialist thinkers like Paolo Freire.

But, as far as I know, the only significant Western Marxist or anarchist who has really expressed interest in the radical content of Islamic thought is the rather marginal Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey), although a handful of bloggers, such as Eugene Plawiuk and the convert Yakoub Islam, have done so.

With the exception of Ali Shariati, most who preach “Islamic socialism” have been far from communists. With Gaddafi as the most baleful example, what they mean by “socialism” is the same as what Stalinists mean: dictatorial state control.

However, from the days of the Prophet Muḥammad, founder of Islam and considered by Muslims as a messenger of God, emancipatory ideas – of social justice, of freedom and of direct democracy – have been at the heart of Islam.

Islam as a religion of social justice

Equality (`adl), mutually beneficial economics (mudarabat), and sharing and giving (sadaqa wa zakat) are central concepts in Islam. Just as the prophet Jesus turned the money-lenders out of the Temple, Muḥammad would allow only tents and no permanent structures in the market place of Medina. Justice is a central theme of the Koran, and this includes social and economic justice. The insistence on zakat, taxation or giving, and interdiction of riba, interest, blocks capitalist accumulation and redistributes from the wealthy to the poor. God alone is the owner of all matter and humanity holds it in trust (amanat). In particular, the fruits of the earth are held to the common treasury of humanity, and private ownership of them prohibited: according to sunnah (the Prophet’s recorded sayings), “All Muslims are partners in water, pasture and fire."

Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī, a Companion of Prophet Muḥammad, preached against the greed and nepotism of the rulers and for redistribution of wealth. Abū Dharr formed an Islamic commune at Al-Rabathah, refusing gifts and possessions and holding all in common: “We have a house yonder [i.e. in the life to come], to which we send the best of our possessions." Some left of centre Muslim scholars have claimed that Islam, and specifically the early Rashidun Caliphate under the “rightly guided” Caliph Umar, pioneered the welfare state through institutions such as the Bayt a-mal and Waqf. Later Caliphates (with some exceptions, such as the Ismaili Fatamid Caliphate in Cairo, sometimes known as the anti-Capliphate) tended to leave the rightly guided path and serve the aggrandisement of rulers, but the seeds of a polity based on social justice were sown. Bedouins, who evade the authority of the Caliphate, practise a form of primitive communism based on the rule of hospitality (abad), a sacred economy of the gift.

Later, the labour theory of value – the foundation of Marxism, by which communists divine the objective antagonism between capital and labour and assert that profits are unpaid wages – is anticipated in Islamic thought. Ibn Khaldun, in his great work Muqaddimah (1377), writing at the dawn of capitalist primitive accumulation, described capitalists (al-mutamawwiluun), their participation in the ruling class and their accumulation of dead capital (ar-riyaash). He argued that if profit “results from something other than a craft, the value of the resulting profit and acquired (capital) must (also) include the value of the labour by which it was obtained. Without labour, it would not have been acquired.” Ibh Khaldun, unlike the classical economists but like Marx, takes the next step: “Whoever takes someone's property, or uses him for forced labour, or presses an unjustified claim upon him, it should be known that this is what the Lawgiver had in mind when he forbade injustice.”

Within the Shi’ite tradition, social justice sometimes designated the “sixth pillar” of Islam. In the contemporary period, some Islamic thinkers have taken this line of thinking further, and been directly influenced by the Marxist tradition. Ali Shariati, a major influence on the Iranian revolution but whose legacy was suppressed under the Ayatollahs, preached a classless society. He argued for a “red Shia” way, calling on followers to hasten the utopian moment associated with the coming of the 12^th Imam "even to the point of embracing martyrdom": "everyday is Ashoura, every place is Karbala."

Islam as a religion of freedom

Islam means submission: submission to God. No other form of submission is recognised as legitimate in Islam, which means there is a strong libertarian tradition within Islam. At its most radical, this has been reflected in a strong antinomian current within Islam. In fact, one of the great dialectics of Islamic history has been between antinomian movements and the centralising powers of successive Caliphates which have sought to crush them, just as the Ayatollahs negated the communist Islam of Ali Shariati, and just as Gaddafi suppressed the real socialists. The dialectic is between law (shariah) and the spiritual path (tariqah), between submission to human rulers and submission to God.

This antinomian current has acted as constantly revitalised Islam in every age. The Shi’ite tradition, which often fought under the black flag, contested the line of descent from the Prophet established by the statecraft of the dominant Sunni tradition; based on heterodoxy and secession, it was inevitable that “Revolution, or at least the hope of revolution, became a Shi'ite principle.”

This story starts from the time of the first Kharijites in the decades after the Prophet’s death, who refused the authority of the Caliph and believed any Muslim could be an Imam. Kharijites means “those who walk out”, and refers to the right (indeed obligation) of sedition against an illegitimate ruler, with some Kharijites seeing all rulers as illegitimate. The right of sedition is for them was focused on the notion that God rules through deciding the outcome of a battle, whereas rulings made in courts or parliaments are made by man and therefore insufficient; hence disobedience should be expressed through violence and regicide.

A later antinomian moment was the Zanj Rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate in 9^th century Iraq, led by the preacher ʻAlī b. Muhammad, who espoused an inflammatory doctrine of absolute social equality. The rebellion involved thousands of slaves (black, white and Indian), Bedouin Arabs and poor citizens. The Qarmatian movement a couple of decades later was another antinomian revolt against the Abbasids. Qarmatians established armed communes across the Islamic world, from Yemen to Transoxiana, awaiting the coming of the Mahdi. They rejected the institution of Hajj, and destroyed pilgrimage sites, burned religious texts, and practised vegetarianism. Small Qarmatian communes existed in mountain regions for decades and possibly centuries after the movement was crushed.

On 17 Ramazan 559/August 8, 1164, Hassan II, a mysterious Ismaili preacher, proclaimed the Qiyamat, or Great Resurrection, at Alamut in the mountains of Iran, breaking the Ramazan fast, and declared Shariah redundant: “the chains of the Law have been broken”. The Nizaris or Assassins, the Ismaili sect of Alamut, declared a non-state, an anti-Caliphate, a web of fortified communes in the mountains.

The antinomian current has flourished too within the Sunni tradition, in Sufi Islam. Some Sufi orders – the Indian Qalandars, who preach spontaneity, use cannabis and refuse work; the Nematollahis of 19th century Persia, who stretched Islam to the borders of heresy – refuse all authority.

Others have specifically refused monarchic and imperial rule. Sheikh Bedreddin led a rebellion against the Ottoman Empire in 1416; he preached no taxation without representation, direct action, direct democracy, international and interfaith human solidarity, equality and communal life. The 20^th century poet Nazim Hikmet claimed that Bedreddin and his companions emphasize that all things must be shared "except the lips of the beloved." Later, Emir Abdel Kader, a sheikh who followed Sufi master Ibn Arabi, led a Algeria in a failed revolt against French colonialism. Exiled to Damascus, he worked for Muslim-Christian reconciliation. In Libya, Sufi dervishes of the Sanussi Order led revolts against Italian imperialism. Abdel Kadar and the Sanussis were part of the neo-Sufi movement, which sought to present an alternative to the puritan hyper-Orthodox modernism of Salafi Islamism (the tradition that led to al-Qaeda). Later, neo-Sufism would become routinised and form a religion of state in postcolonial North Africa, the dialectic of Caliphate and antinomy continuing to unfold.

In the twentieth century, the antinomian current was reflected in the Wäisi movement in Tartarstan, an antinomian religious social movement which refused all state authority, including resistance to service in the Tsarist army and rejection of clericalism. Wäisi devotees formed a regiment in the Red Army and formed free communes on libertarian principles during the Russian Civil War, but were ultimately slaughtered in Stalin’s Great Purge.

Islam as a religion of democracy

Islam favours direct forms of democracy, and in particular the shura form. Shura (“consultation”) is a key concept in the Koran, and is the name given to deliberative bodies in the Islamic tradition, which involve face to face, dialogical decision-making rather than rule from above. In Sunni Islam, only decisions made by consensus of the shura are binding, and in Shia Islam shuras are characteristic of moments when corrupt ruling cliques are overturned in moments of religious revival.

The shura form is governed by an ethics similar to that of the consensus–based affinity group: Usul Al-ikhtilaf, or the ethics of disagreements.

In the twentieth century, Muslims in the Russian empire formed shuras, as well as Muslim Socialist Committees, after the February revolution, just as workers elsewhere were forming soviets, creating a system of dual power in which organic forms of direct democracy faced off against the emerging bourgeois state.

Similarly, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 saw shuras formed by workers which commanded large sections of the economy for a year before being forcibly dismantled by the new regime. And in 1991 Shia, Kurdish and other communities involved in the uprisings in Iraq at the close of war spontaneously formed local shuras as an alternative source of authority, another experiment in dual power, before being abandoned by the West and crushed by Saddam’s totalitarian secular state.

Against fundamentalist secularism and philo-Islamism: for an Islamic communism

The left needs to open its mind and heart to Islam. As Hakim Bey writes, “If a genuine anti-Capitalist coalition is to appear in the world it cannot happen without Islam... The ‘revolutionary potential’ of Islam is not yet realized -- but it is real.” This does not mean that non-Muslim leftists should capitulate to the most conservative currents in Islam – the apostles of new oppressive caliphates. Nor does it mean communists should cease to criticise anti-emancipatory teachings within Islam. It is part of the communist duty to reject all orthodoxy. Islam needs a communist revolution, but capitalism needs a communist Islam.

From Cable Street to Wall Street

2011-10-07T19:02:00.005+01:00

Another miscellany, taking up many of the same themes as the last one.

Post of the week: Eamonn McDonagh "Anti-Manc Prejudice And Premier League Abolitionism". A gem. (You'll guess I occupy the "Tom" position.) Runner-up: Alan A on waving other people's flags.

More on Cable Street: Dave Rich on the 75th anniversary, arguing that the Jewish communal leadership played a greater role in militant anti-fascism than is often acknowledged, that the battle was not a decisive defeat for Mosley but was decisive in shaping a British (Jewish and non-Jewish) anti-fascism that eventually did marginalise the far right. Dave recommends the Hope Not Hate/Searchlight material on Cable Street, which is very readable but seems to me to be extremely skewed in exaggerating the Communist role, downplaying that of other socialists (notably the Independent Labour Party), and whitewashing the generally pathetic CP leadership's attempts not to let the battle happen - as befits Searchlight's Stalinist/tankie roots.

Anti-capitalism: Some interesting analysis and reportage of #Occupy Wall Street from Never Got Used To It and Doug Henwood. A critical view from Spiked's Torygrapher Brendan O'Neill and from Alex Klein in TNR.

The English Defence League: I am not a regular reader of Bob Pitt's IslamophobiaWatch, a website that in my view tends to devalue the concept of Islamophobia by using it in the most tenuous of situations. (I was, however, a regular reader of its editor, Bob Pitt's, previous ventures, the excellent independent Marxist magazines What Next and New Interventions.) However, I have come more and more to the view of the EDL that Bob Pitt sets out very well here, from a position which was very close to Nigel Copsey's. Pitt also reports on other EDL developments, such as its alignment with various European and American Counterjihad groups, and its claim to be poised to launch a new political party.

Lifestyle politics and ethical living: Flesh is Grass on why she won't shop at Lush. Shift says give up lifestylism.

Left sectariana: Michael Ezra on Trotksy's war policy.

JLC statement on Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-07T00:39:00.002+01:00

In support of the Occupy Wall Street protestors

(Wednesday, October 5, 2011) New York -- The Jewish Labor Committee today issued the following statement in support of the Occupy Wall Street protestors:

The Jewish Labor Committee supports the activists in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and their message – that it is time for our elected officials to represent the 99% of Americans who are struggling to make ends meet in this difficult economy. This message is being heard not only on Wall Street, but on Main Streets across America. Through the recent actions on and near Wall Street, and the actions of labor, religious and community organizations such as the Jewish Labor Committee, in solidarity with those who are "occupying" Wall Street, this message will increasingly be heard and felt in the halls of Congress and in state and municipal governments around the country.

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Gilad Atzmonism

2011-10-05T17:56:00.003+01:00

This post adds some links and comments to my previous posts on Gilad Atzmon (main post, addenda, chronology). or those who've not been keeping up with it, here's a quick summary. Gilad Atzmon, "a modestly-talented jazz saxophonist once lionized by the SWP", has a new book about the Jews published by a tiny British independent radical publisher called Zero Books (or Zer0, as they generally type it), owned, I think, by the young writer, organic herb farmer, former model and consummate 'well dressed man about town' Tariq Goddard. Zer0 have somehow managed to secure an endorsement from right-wing "Israel Lobby" obsessive Stephen Mearsheimer. Two leading British socialist bloggers, the SWP's Richard Seymour (Lenin's Tomb) and the ex-SWP now Labour left Andy Newman (Socialist Unity), have led the criticism of Atzmon.

It should go without saying that my links to the various commentators I link to here implies no kind of endorsement of their general politics. I've got another post coming up (this time tomorrow I expect) on Andy Newman and Gilad Atzmon, partly in reply to this.

Here Mark Gardner of the CST reviews Atzmon's book The Wondering Who. He very carefully analyses the antisemitic content of the book, and its relationship to anti-Zionist politics. More from CIFWatch's Adam Levick. And if you still want more evidence, here's Atzmon's views on Mein Kampf.

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Additional comments on John Mearsheimer's endorsement of the book: Ralph Seliger, Hussein Ibish (via Rebecca.. Ibish, incidentally, was one of the first people to point the finger at the vile antisemitism of Israel Shamir, a close associate of Atzmon's), Gabriel Ash, Tony Greenstein.

The Mearsheimer kerfuffle has obscured the other high profile figures how have blurbed the book. Rebecca lists them here. Sad but unsurprising is Robert Wyatt, a musical genius. One of the few things I've ever won, in a phone-in competition on BBC London (hosted by the late, great Charlie Gillett), is Wyatt's extraordinary eccentric album Cuckooland, on which Atzmon features.Wyatt was a hardcore Stalinist in the 1980s.

Also unsurprising is James Petras, who (as Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University and someone who has supported the Cuban regime's repression of dissidents by saying "Cuba is justified in giving its attackers a kick in the balls and sending them to cut sugar cane to earn an honest living") more than qualifies for the title commieprof. Rebecca:

[Petras] is the inventor of the phrase "Zionist Power Configuration" as the new term for the international Jewish conspiracy - we've got to move on from the Protocols, after all. He is a frequent contributor to Counterpunch.

I've written about him a few times here. For more see Mark Gardner, Alan Johnson, Judeosphere, Louis Proyect, Allen Ruff.

And equally unsurprising is Alan Hart. Hart is a 9/11 Truth Cult demagogue, and someone who thinks Mossad is responsible for anything vaguely bad. He is also a Counterpunch contributor.

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I have already reported Richard Seymour and others disassociating themselves from Atzmon's book and its publication by Zero Books. I applauded them for this, and noted that Seymour saw through Atzmon as far back as 2004.

Of course, Seymour's party, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) promoted Atzmon energetically from 2004 to at least late last year. When Gabriel at JsF said "As the authors of Zero books have noted in their protest letter about Atzmon, it is easy to be fooled by Atzmon's convoluted and pretentious claptrap", I speculated that Seymour "can't be honest about how obvious it is because the SWP as a whole were in denial about it for years". (JsF's Levi responded that "Seymour cannot possibly have been trying to pass off over 5 years of SWP fraternisation with Atzmon as being down to Atzmon's ability to muddy the waters." Well, no, but maybe it helps justify it in his head.)

Tony Greenstein, a hardcore anti-Zionist who has taken a lead in exposing the SWP's fraternisation with Atzmon. is even more unforgiving:

In response to criticism [...] Richard Seymour of the Leninology blog and the SWP, made it clear that the ‘revolutionary party’ that the SWP claims to be is not answerable to anyone – and this much is true. The membership has no control, the leadership has no accountability and it can therefore lurch from one appalling mistake and piece of opportunism (John Rees accepting £10,000 cheque from a union busting capitalist in the Middle East for a trade union conference) to Martin Smith, its Secretary, promoting Gilad Atzmon despite his overt and acknowledged anti-Semitism and dabbling in holocaust denial.. At the time Jews Against Zionism and other anti-racists held a picket of the SWP’s meeting (June 17 2005)

In fact the only admission obtained from Seymour was in passing and related to what Seymour termed ‘The SWP's long-since aborted relationship with Atzmon’ and anyway ‘nor do I owe you any explanation for it.’ It is true I’m not personally owed an explanation, but perhaps the Palestine solidarity and anti-racist movements might be owed one?

It’s also untrue to talk about the SWP’s ‘long aborted’ relationship with Atzmon. I defy Richard Seymour to point to one article, one word, one syllable even, in Socialist Worker or their site, which states unequivocally that they have terminated their relationship and why. Instead they hope that people forget and like good Stalinists are intent on pretending it never happened or was a very long time ago (in fact about a year).[...]

[...] It is interesting that one of the reasons why Seymour and fellow authors have distanced themselves from Atzmon was on account of his essay ‘On anti-Semitism’ which was published in March 2003. It contains all you need to know about someone who believes Jews control the White House and that it doesn’t matter if the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are true or not. ‘American Jewry makes any debate on whether the 'Protocols of the elder of Zion' are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews (in fact Zionists) do control the world.’ The bracketed ‘in fact Zionists’ was added at a later stage after the essay came in for much criticism. However the meaning is unchanged. It was on June 17, 2005, over 2 years later that the SWP hosted Atzmon at Bookmarks to talk about Otto Weininger, about whom Hitler is alleged to have said that there was only one good Jew, and he killed himself. The idea of Atzmon giving a favourable lecture to the SWP faithful on Hitler’s favourite Jew, a misogynist to put it mildly, is beyond parody. [...]

It’s understandable that Richard ‘Lenin’ Seymour doesn’t want to answer for the SWP. Quite frankly, who can blame him? Nonetheless this rank piece of opportunism refuses to go away.
And having conducted a search of the Internet it would seem that Seymour has a habit of acting as the SWP's loyal subversive as when he closed down all discussion on his blog over the SWP's debacle in Respect and more serious charges that he acted as an apologist for the Serbian state and denied the appalling genocide in Srebenika (along with Spiked Magazine). It was a 'mere' massacre.

Gilad Atzmon and the SWP: a brief chronology

2011-10-05T08:30:00.000+01:00

I was looking for these dates which I found in a comment thread and am posting them here for future reference. If I ever have time, I will evidence all this with links.

Summer 2004: Gilad Atzmon speaks and performs at the Socialist Workers Party's Marxism 2004 event. Atzmon criticised by SWP blogger Richard Seymour as "disgraceful, incoherent and completely at odds with what the SWP stands for" and a "crank".

Summer 2005: The SWP's Socialist Review has a rave review of Atzmon's Orient House ensemble tour (only note of criticism is that he likes Ken Livingstone too much), and Atzmon plays Marxism 2005 as well as speaking at Bookmarks. Jews Against Zionism picket the Bookmarks event. JAZ are not by any means an oversensitive pro-Israel group, but made up of left-wing people like Tony Greenstein, Moshe Machover and Hilary Rose. Leading left-wing anti-Zionist website Labournet plays major role in this. SWP responds with a statement that refuses to accept any truth in the allegations.

2006: SWP organises “Five for Trane” concerts featuring Atzmon and the SWP's Martin Smith. At least two gigs.

Autumn 2006: Atzmon speaks and plays alongside George Galloway (then in alliance with the SWP in Respect) and Martin Smith at an SWP organised Stop the War event in Tower Hamlets.

January 2007: Michael Rosen, a high profile Jewish anti-Zionist very close to the SWP, criticises SWP for hosting Atzmon. Organisers of the SWP's Cultures of Resistance deny he is an antisemite. Evidence? “We would never give a platform to a racist or fascist. Our entire history has been one of fierce opposition to fascist organisations and antisemitism.” Therefore impossible that Atzmon could be a racist, because he was invited to our event.

Summer 2007: Atzmon plays Cultures of Resistance gig at Marxism 2007, and later Socialist Review gives another rave review of his CD Refuge, with no note of criticism.

Autumn/Winter 2007: Atzmon plays an SWP fund-raiser, Now’s the Timer, with Martin Smith. Four gigs.

January 2008: Atzmon now an explicit Holocaust denier, as revealed by Tony Greenstein and others, eliciting no comment from the SWP, despite their close association with him.

May 2008: Socialist Review again promotes Atzmon, listing him in their “Five things to get or see this month”

April 2009: Another Socialist Review rave review of an Atzmon CD, In Loving Memory Of America, again no note of criticism.

October 2010: SWP promotes the Jazza Festival, featuring Atzmon and several Atzmon linked groups.

November 2010: No trace left on any SWP website of their earlier statements and clarifications about Atzmon.

Summer-Autumn 2011: Richard Seymour's publisher, Zero, publishes an antisemitic book by Atzmon. Seymour and other authors issue statement against the publication, published on Seymour's blog.