A Hollow Victory
why is my favourite political writer in jail! The answer is pretty claro.
[col. writ. 6/19/08] (c) ‘08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
As millions ready themselves for the general elections in November, it takes some effort to summon up the elections of 2 years ago.
In 2006, mid-term elections brought dramatic change to the Congress, and seemed to presage a change in the nation’s direction as well.
Those mid-terms centered around the public’s demand and hunger for an end to the Iraq war and illegal occupation, and was an electoral expression of that deep national discontent.
Well, it’s been two years now, and the Congress has just voted another $165 billion (that’s right, with a b) to fund the Iraq war.
It’s been two years - and the Iraq mess is still a scar on the national psyche.
It’s now become the property of both major political parties -Democrats and Republicans.
It’s the very nature of politics that politicians regularly betray the interests of those who have voted for them.
They’ll take the votes, yes: but they don’t answer to the people. As the saying goes, ‘They answer to a higher power’ - the military industrial complex.
If we think back to the primaries, candidates of both parties who ran on genuine anti-war platforms had to contend with waves of media ridicule. Think about how the corporate media treated either Dennis Kucinich (D. OH), or Ron Paul (R. TX), or former congressman, Mike Gravel.
All were depicted as little better than boobs, objects of an occasional sidebar, but never seriously presented as candidates of ‘presidential timber.’
And, as Marshall McLuhan (1991-1980) said, ‘the medium is the message.’
The media, hired guns for their corporate bosses, served their interest by coverage which slanted the perceptions of millions, that only those they thought electable were ’serious’ candidates.
’Only so-and-so can raise enough money’, most reporters opined, selling candidates as surely as they sold soap.
These processes have produced the very hour we now live in; a time of peril and disaster.
What kind of democracy can such a process engender?
And now, 1/2 year from another election, we will hear a plethora of promises, spun with the best commercials that money can buy.
We will march into the booth, our eyes shiny with anticipation.
In a matter of months, or years, we will look back at the ashes of promises aborted, and wonder how we keep doing it again, and again, and again.
–(c) ‘08 maj
He is your favourite political writer? Really?
Take this line, for example:
“And, as Marshall McLuhan (1991-1980) said, ‘the medium is the message.’”
Dismal!
What precisely is it about Abu Jamal appeals? Is it that he murdered a police officer: and that somehow really impresses anaemic wimps, who feel the anger, but know they haven’t the guts to actually kill a man in cold blood.
Or perhaps you buy the unlikely “I was just passing, while wearing an empty gun holster and the gun found near me was not mine” defence?
Abu Jamal should be serving about 30 years for what he did. He’s a crook and a murderer, with a background in extreme and violent politics. He is also a pretty average thinker, whose writing indicates that he is an unapologetic primadonna who is wholly incapable of accepting his guilt.
Obviously, this makes him a poster boy for the extreme fringes of the far Left.
Comment by David T — 29 June, 2008 @ 5:17 pm
David T: it was more foolhardy of you than normal to complain about someone being a pretty average thinker and an unapologetic primadonna. I suppose you’re safe with poster boy, though.
Comment by Nas — 29 June, 2008 @ 5:32 pm
Its always fun to reminded of what a reactionary nasty piece of work David T really is. Unsurprising given that his is a site where his regulars have interesting arguments about whether voting BNP might be progressive.
Comment by johng — 29 June, 2008 @ 5:43 pm
You wouldn’t find me or any of my fellow bloggers eulogising a convicted murderer.
I won’t delete comments from my blog. That is the measure of my commitment to free political debate.
That is why I also allow johng to post his similarly verbose and disgusting cheerleading for Hamas, and the other racist and genocidal militas for which he shills
You applaud any totalitarian murderous group you can find, because your own totalitarian murderous political movement has utterly failed. It is as pathetic a sight as a eunuch in a serraglio.
Comment by David T — 29 June, 2008 @ 6:03 pm
Free speech be damned. Its a serious mistake for leftists to engage in ‘debate’ on Adolf’s Place in any case - its just a racist cesspit. No one should ‘debate’ with these creeps (which does not of course preclude any intrepid person who wants to troll against them as they do here - though it seems also like a waste of time and energe to me.)
But ‘free speech’ be damned, this is a socialist discussion site, not a repository for provocateurs and racist sociopaths. Why not just delete his rancid witterings?
Comment by ID — 29 June, 2008 @ 6:47 pm
David T’s lot advocate voting BNP as a “protest vote”. Just to give the uppity wogs a scare, really, and then if the BNP get into any real power, the massed ranks of Harry’s Place will protest. Of course. When a BNP vote starts affecting middle class whites, that’s just taking the whole business rather too far.
Their relevance to any debate on the left is absolutely nil, as proved by their own words.
Comment by Rusu — 29 June, 2008 @ 7:03 pm
This is priceless stuff, coming from Donovan, who in 2001 was making precisely the same argument as I do, about the folly of the Left’s dalliance with Islamist theocrats. Back then, Bob Pitt called him a ‘racist’.
And lookee here! Now Donovan is calling me a racist, and he has joined RESPECT: a party of islamists in league with communists.
What went wrong, comrade?
Comment by David T — 29 June, 2008 @ 7:05 pm
For all our mutual differences, I’m sure that absolutely no one on this site was ‘doing’ anything even faintly reminicent of anything David T does.
Comment by johng — 29 June, 2008 @ 7:17 pm
RESPECT is indisinguishable from the BNP, in many of their policy positions. They just appeal to the bigots and paranoiacs within different communities.
Fortunately, RESPECT has now completely failed, and exists only as a vehicle for publicising Galloway’s stage shows.
Perhaps if the far Left were to return to fundamental progressive principles, you could play a useful role in preventing the rise of the BNP. That would involve, for a start
- abandoning communalism and pursuing a politics based on respect for democracy, equality, and human rights
- not wetting your knickers over some dude who, like, actually wasted a pig!!!!
Comment by David T — 29 June, 2008 @ 7:18 pm
Another interesting point. The likes of David T enjoy discussing how exciting they presume the left find violence. I lost track of how many times the SWP were accused of having an erotic fixation on violent action when Roobin posted his article on the cops.
Yet they have a raging hard on for interventionism in all its forms and the Iraq war. Considering the sheer scale of the conflicts they’ve been cheerleaders for, I presume that every Harry’s Place regular gets tissues delivered to them every day in industrial quantities (possibly by lorry).
And I shudder to think of the state of their keyboards.
Comment by Rusu — 29 June, 2008 @ 7:20 pm
I support any political movement which is committed to democracy, equality, and human rights.
Huge sections of the extreme Left will support any political movement which stands for the opposite of these values.
So, precisely, how are you better than the fascists?
Comment by David T — 29 June, 2008 @ 7:30 pm
Ooooooh! Fascist! Back to the Young Ones for David T
Comment by Nas — 29 June, 2008 @ 7:34 pm
No David, some sections of the left support reactionary organisations that they really ought not to, because they see the world of politics as being a dualistic battle between “Imperialist” and “Anti-Imperialist”. Personally I blame a generation of left wingers who grew up with Star Wars, and who haven’t read much politics beyond their own various groups’ tracts.
Equally, some Eustonites (and/or their hangers-on) look to me like little more than right wingers with fig-leaves.
Personally I think there are reasonable, decent people to whom both categorisations could apply. But then there are also total arseholes on both sides too. One of them issues where I sit on the fence, I guess.
Comment by Voltaire's Priest — 29 June, 2008 @ 7:38 pm
Oh sorry - are the fascists now regarded as a liberation movement by your part of the zany Left, Nas? I find it so hard to keep up with what unlikely positions you’ve adopted this week.
Comment by David T — 29 June, 2008 @ 7:39 pm
David T only comes to these sites because he feels guilty about prostituting for Northern European imperialism and wants to purge himeself. After all, its record is not good on anti-semitism. Otherwise surely he would not bother.
Comment by Leverage — 29 June, 2008 @ 7:41 pm
Fair enough, VP.
I’m principally talking about the Gallowayite and SWP part of the far Left.
Comment by David T — 29 June, 2008 @ 7:43 pm
Oh, and part of the Green Party too, whose erstwhile ‘principal male speaker’(!) apparently idolises a man whose only claim to fame is that he is a murderer.
Here’s a hint. Burying somebody is NOT the same as composting
Comment by David T — 29 June, 2008 @ 7:49 pm
David T: you don’t find it difficult at all. You just cry Islamofascist and head off to discuss the merits of voting for the BNP. Don’t pretend that takes intellectual effort - or is anything to do with the left.
Comment by Nas — 29 June, 2008 @ 7:54 pm
The mainstream of the Left grew up on Star Trek. Mostly they obey the Prime Directive. But sometimes, like Kirk, we make exceptions.
Comment by David T — 29 June, 2008 @ 7:56 pm
BTW, everyone, you should go to Harry’s Place to understand that the true Left means voting for the BNP as a *cough* “protest vote” and no one ever gets harmed as a result of the BNP gaining power, oh no. They just exist to help the oppressed White British Man find his voice.
Comment by Rusu — 29 June, 2008 @ 8:30 pm
Also, David T, “the fascists” are regarded by your blog posters as worthy of their votes. Instead of chastising the left, why aren’t you getting rid of fascists on your own blog?
Comment by Rusu — 29 June, 2008 @ 8:42 pm
I would have though that david T’s sort of politics had a fairly mainstream ancestory in the British labour movement.
Gerald Kaufman, Ernie Bevin, George Brown et al.
Comment by Andy Newman — 29 June, 2008 @ 9:30 pm
And what of yours, Mr born-again “Euro Communist”?
Those in glass houses and all that
Comment by Voltaire's Priest — 29 June, 2008 @ 10:54 pm
Anyways, has David T actually called for a BNP protest vote, or is this just the usual whispering hysteria that goes on in Socialist Action/Respect Renewal circles? I’d be surprised myself if he has. Perhaps someone could point me to where he says it.
Comment by Voltaire's Priest — 29 June, 2008 @ 10:56 pm
So is his recent blog article titled ‘fuck off Shami Chatrabarti’ in the traditions of Ernie Bevin or Gerald Kaufmann? I reckon for instance, Frank Dobson is in a similar political space to Bevin or Kaufmann. I didn’t see him abusing the leader of Liberty for opposing the 42-day internment proposal, for instance. He is one of the rebels.
Andy is wrong here, and alibiing Toube. He is a political Zionist and gut level racist who sometimes uses a veneer of hypocritical liberal rhetoric as camoflague. But the mask frequently slips. I dont see the likes of Hattersley or Dobson - the real analogues of Bevin et al, involved in obsessive anti-Arab or anti-Muslim agitation. Like agitating for the of the deportation of the editor of Al Quds for mainstream pro-Palestinian views.
His obsessive anti-Muslim rantings put him politically in proximity to Mussolini rather than these old Labour rightwing types. Except of course that the corresponding form of bigotry in Mussolini’s day was anti-semitism, and Mussolini was atypical of his contemporaries as he had little use for anti-semitism. He thought Jews could make perfectly good fascists and imperialists. Toube shows he had a point, though Toube himself doesn’t share Mussolini’s uncharacteristic rationality about such matters.
And he’s a yuppie lawyer, not any kind of trade unionist even of an old right-wing type. There is no evidence that he has, or ever has had, any connection with the left, apart from his own self-promotion. He is a far right sheep in liberal clothing.
Comment by ID — 29 June, 2008 @ 11:35 pm
I should say wolf. That’s what comes of mixing up metaphors. But you get my drift.
Comment by ID — 29 June, 2008 @ 11:36 pm
Rusu “David T’s lot advocate voting BNP as a “protest vote”. ”
Where do Dave T’s lot do this. Can we have examples from HP ?
Comment by Bennett — 29 June, 2008 @ 11:58 pm
No, of course I haven’t. The entirety of my commentary is directed towards trashing the vicious fringes of the political spectrum.
What they’re talking about is a post on the best strategy for beating the BNP, in which two of the people in the thread suggested that they’d vote for the BNP, as long as there were no chance of them taking power. Other posters on the thread contested the folly of that suggestion: pointing out that, where the BNP is active, racist attacks rise. One poster in particular talked about the racism which he, his wife, and his child face in Loughton: which included shit bombs being left on their doorstep.
The truth is, you lot have no idea at all on how to fight the BNP. Your energies, so far, have been directed to producing a free gig which - as far as I can tell - was little more than an attempt to recruit for Socialist Action and the SWP. Must. Try. Harder.
Your central problem is this. Your politics is entirely discredited. It has palpably failed. It is not going to make a comeback. Fringe politics does not hold the key to beating the BNP. If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, or Mumia Abu-Jamal for that matter, you aint gonna make it with anyone, anyhow
The weird and nasty fringe politics is on the rise is not of the Left at all. It is neo-Nazi parties like the BNP, who - as Searchlight point out - have nearly made the breakthrough that Griffin has been promising them. The other group are their mirror image: the Islamists. Both are, incidentally, bourgeois imperialist totalitarian parties. That’s why so many former neo-Nazis have become Islamists. And you lot are allied with the latter group of fascists. You’ve made it your mission, in fact, to make them mainstream. You’ve toured them around the country. Heck, they’ve even ran as candidates for RESPECT!
You’ve had to forge this alliance, precisely because your ideas no longer have traction.
In politics, the fringes have the capacity to exert a gravitational pull on the mainstream. Neo-Nazis and Islamists have the mass which your lot utterly lack.
So, basically, what I’m saying is this. Stop being weird, or give up altogether. You’re not helping.
Comment by David T — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:00 am
Oh and “Donovan”
I see that you’re unable to explain to me why, less than 7 years ago, you were condemning precisely this embracing of the Islamist far right, while now, you actively promote it?
Comment by David T — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:04 am
Of course, Donovan won’t answer, because he is ashamed that his only rationale is the promotion of some epic global conflict between “Imperialism” and Islamism, which will, erm, lead to World Socialism or something.
Instead, we’ll be treated to yet more tragic mudslinging in my general direction, from a man whose entire political biography is one long green ink letter.
Comment by David T — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:10 am
I doubt that Toube would be so stupid as to call openly for votes for the BNP. He alibis the BNP more subtly, by propagating the view that various organisations of vulnerable ethnic minorities are ‘equally bad’ as the BNP, or that the left is ‘just as bad’ as the BNP. Of course, in objective terms, the BNP seeks to mobilise the hatred of the dominant (’white British’) ethnic group to crush ‘alien’ minorities with a genocidal thrust - whereas ethnic minorities do not have a snowball’s chance in hell of doing anything of the sort the other way. Toube and his ilk either look for exploitable elements in organisations of the oppressed in order to equate them with the nativist fascists, or else … they simply tell lies Goebells style.
But this propaganda thrust, that minorities are ‘just as bad, if not worse’ than the BNP, can only make the BNP more attractive to those influenced by their propaganda. So its hardly surpising that such types show up in the comments boxes at HP Sauce. Toube wouldn’t promote the BNP, largely because its Nazi origins mean it could never be trusted by people like him, whose ideal is a new type of far right movement based around the ‘clash of civilisations’ and an offensive of ‘Judeo-Christian civilisation’ against Islam, not the obsolete anti-Jewish thrust of Hitler’s shamefaced admirers in the BNP. But the traditional far right is also evolving … and a meeting of minds may be possible in the future.
There is a distinct fascistic thrust to the likes of HP, and nothing wrong with seeking to expose that. but we also have to remember that far right movements can be many and varied in their form. The late Pim Fortujin was new kind of liberal-talking, openly gay, far right politician. But far right he was. So are the HP Sauce types, in their real thrust.
Comment by ID — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:22 am
The only far right involved in this thread is Toube, whose racist and misogynistic abuse of Sami Chakratbarti, probably the most mild and genuinely liberal non-politician in public life in Britain today, shows his real nature. He is no liberal, but a proto-fascist neocon. He claims to support ‘human rights’, but support internment without trial, agitates for the deporations of Arab journalists for expressing mainstream pro-Palestinian opinions.
Comment by ID — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:37 am
Seriously though, ID, what HP has been saying about Islamism and integration has been accepted by the mainstream left several years ago now. Trying to pretend it’s somehow far right to deal with extremists is so 1990s. Nobody but for a few people on blogs like this really wants to go back to the days when Britain was the most important base for Islamist terrorism outside of the training camps in Afghanistan, or pretend it’s a sensible policy to allow people to segregate and guettoise themselves from other minority groups and the rest of society.
It’s long over, pal.
Comment by Ryan — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:53 am
Everybody likes Sami Chakratbarti - which is the problem. She has, quite astonishingly if you think about it, become the spokeman for human rights that the media always turn to for the truth.
If somebody is going to be treated like the Jesus of human rights then I’m afraid they do need to be told to fuck off now and again. It’s got nothing to do with racism, of course. Quite the contrary.
If anything the media loves her so much because she acts and speaks like ‘one of us’, which is a bit racist itself.
Comment by Ryan — 30 June, 2008 @ 1:05 am
And of course, Toube will not be able to quote anything I have ever written that posits the idea that there is any world conflict, revolutionary or otherwise, between imperialism and Islamism. In fact, I dont believe such a conflict is possible. But I do defend the right of Iraqis to fight against imperialist occupation and invasion. Afghans also.
To answer his feeble attempt at baiting me over this. There was some room for empirical disagreement over the Taliban in 2001, for the simple reason that both Al Qaeda and the Taliban were, though different, very much creations of the CIA in the recent past. 9/11 was an enormous provocation by any standards, which gave the war that errupted over it something of a different appearance to the unprovoked and nakedly imperialist invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Thus, while it was necessary to oppose the war on Afghanistan, it was also necessary to have a somewhat different attitude to the forces of the then-existing regime, who had been imposed on Afghanistan only very recently by war with the help of billions of dollars of US aid and training, which had been selected for their particularly bloodthirsty anti-communism (and in many cases even indoctrinated by the same kind of neocon ideologues who now promote Islamophobia).
Its not even clear to me that a genuine popular resistance movement exists in Afghanistan today, though there are signs that there might be elements of that, and that not all or even most of the alleged ‘Taliban’ who are inflicting casualties on Britain are really Taliban in the sense that this meant in 2001. Beyond that I cannot say. But the British and their allies should get out, and the Afghan people have every right to fight to drive them out.
Fundamentally, the peculiar ferocity of the Taliban and the ‘Afghan Arabs’; the peculiar virulence of that movement, was a product of their being artificially propagated for war by the US for war against ‘communism’. But that war against ‘communism’ is now a distant memory, what we now have is a racist war against Muslims that neocons like Toube support because they are fired up with the same kind of hatred for Muslims that they used to have for ‘communists’.
Comment by ID — 30 June, 2008 @ 1:17 am
And now we’ve sunk to hurling accusations of racism at me. For making precisely the arguments for which he’s now calling me a racist. Which incidentally, is the very thing Bob Pitt accused him of, seven years ago.
See how the young Jedi learns at the feet of the master.
Comment by David T — 30 June, 2008 @ 1:19 am
Is ‘Ryan’ really Mad Mel Phillips? I doubt it, more likely just a clone.
Since he thinks it OK to tell Sami Chakratbarti to fuck off, allow me to return the complement. Fuck off yourself.
Comment by ID — 30 June, 2008 @ 1:21 am
Do I give a shit about what Bob Pitt did or did not say seven years ago? Not really. I really didn’t give a toss then, come to think of it.
However, Toube is a racist, a supporter of a series of racist wars. The debate between myself and Bob Pitt was about how best to oppose such wars. The statement that I ever had anything in common with anything Toube propagates is another Goebells-like lie.
The war on Iraq was particularly obviously racist, popular support being garnered in part by revenge against all Arabs for 9/11. There are some, incidentally, who support the war on Afghanistan who opposed the war on Iraq for that reason. They believed that the Afghan war was provoked by 9/11, but the Iraq war was an unprovoked act of aggression. That is a misguided, but non-racist position. But Toube not only supports the war on Iraq, he supports an attack on Iran as well. He is racist scum, driven by bloodlust against Muslim peoples.
Comment by ID — 30 June, 2008 @ 1:31 am
ID, I appreciate that you’re trolling here, but I note you attack “yuppie lawyers” in one breath, then go on to defend the Sami Chakratbarti crowd. Not very consistent.
You also will have great trouble doing this hysterical anti American act after November. I hope you realise that. No more balls about racist wars when a brown guy is running the show.
Comment by Ryan — 30 June, 2008 @ 1:39 am
Was your motivation to support Saddam against the Muslim Shias and Kurds racist? Clearly opposing whitey was your main priority, as I suspect it is today in Iraq where you disreguard the lives saved by the surge just to score party political points at home.
As I say, the act will soon be over.
Comment by Ryan — 30 June, 2008 @ 1:40 am
Trolling here, yeah right. I suggest you ask the people who run this blog whether I’m ‘trolling’. And dont’ forget to fuck off.
Comment by ID — 30 June, 2008 @ 1:43 am
He is racist scum, driven by bloodlust against Muslim peoples.
I am too.
Comment by Ryan — 30 June, 2008 @ 1:44 am
My god, the arrogance of these fuckers. Ryan, why don’t you go and fight in Iraq, who knows, you might even get to star in your own video!
Comment by ID — 30 June, 2008 @ 1:47 am
I know! Now fuck off and good night!
Comment by ID — 30 June, 2008 @ 1:48 am
It’s a bit racist to tell me to fuck off, isn’t it?
Comment by Ryan — 30 June, 2008 @ 1:52 am
both Al Qaeda and the Taliban were, though different, very much creations of the CIA in the recent past. … Fundamentally, the peculiar ferocity of the Taliban and the ‘Afghan Arabs’; the peculiar virulence of that movement, was a product of their being artificially propagated for war by the US for war against ‘communism’.
Right. You do realise that the Taliban were neither the creation of the CIA, nor were they “artificially propagated” by the US. Al Qaeda didn’t even come into existence until the very final days of the conflict, and even then, played a tiny role.
Are you a “9/11 Truther” as well?
But Toube not only supports the war on Iraq, he supports an attack on Iran as well. He is racist scum, driven by bloodlust against Muslim peoples.
You realise, of course, that the Islamists have been the most prominent murderers of Muslim peoples in the region for some time now. And you support them. Heck, you’re in coalition with them.
In fact, when they go about their business of murdering those Muslims who belong to the wrong sect, or who reject theocracy, you call it “the right of Iraqis to fight against imperialist occupation and invasion. Afghans also.” Lovely.
Not only are you in coalition with pro-Taliban Islamists. You’re also in a party led by George Galloway who declared that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the saddest day of my life”, and whose view of the USSR in Afghanistan was that the West was “better off with the enemy they knew” (i.e. the Soviet Union). We’re talking here about an imperialist war in which 10% of the Afghan population were slaughtered, Ian.
By contrast, the war to remove the Taliban which you oppose resulted in popular elections. Some imperialism!
So, how do you justify your party’s pro-Taliban position? Like this, apparently:
“Its not even clear to me that a genuine popular resistance movement exists in Afghanistan today, though there are signs that there might be elements of that, and that not all or even most of the alleged ‘Taliban’ who are inflicting casualties on Britain are really Taliban in the sense that this meant in 2001. ”
Uh huh.
I’m sorry to say, this makes you a horrendous racist.
Comment by David T — 30 June, 2008 @ 9:41 am
It’s always a pleasure to see Ian Donvan offer a clever critique of Harry’s Place: the reference to Adolf’s place is a particularly fine piece of writing. And HP sauce! Laugh? I nearly did. A few plain words demonstrating that HP advocates supporting the BNP as a protest vote and I’m surprised that the foaming reptiles have not crawled back into their cess pit.
Er, not.
If the left want to criticise HP for its stand on Iraq and Israel fine by me. But the fact is that David T is really committed to debate, and I suspect (well I know) that is definitely on the left. He has opened the Blog to guest posts from people such as David Roesenberg and my good self whom most (I do not include Ian Donovan) would consider on the left. He took the same side as Socialist Unity in defence of Southall Black sisters and on many other topics. Plus, he is rather better line in jokes than the one about “racist scum”.
BTW: Derek Wall, after our recent exchange I asked a prominent local Green (he has an allotment just by mine)and he said something about the Euro MPs (realos) being wary of you. Which makes me consider you in a favourable light.
Comment by Andrew Coates — 30 June, 2008 @ 9:55 am
This thread is a bit ridiculoous - as it starts from a false premise.
The authors at Harry’s Place have not gone anywhere near promoting voting for the BNP.
What happened was that Neil D wrote a perfectly sensible article on opposing the BNP:
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/06/26/combating-the-bnp/
This included a quote from Nick Lowles about the basis of the BNP’s support, as articulating a sennse of identity, particularly for white working class voters who feel betrayed by the political classes.
In the comments, one or two people wrote things on the lines of: ” I would vote for them only to scare an incumbent who wasn’t listening, and not if the BNP man had a chance of getting in. … … Why is an organisation such as the Black Police Officers Association permitted to exist? What would happen if a white officer tried to join? In Broon’s recent proposals for “positive discrimination” (a fundamentally racist sentiment against whites), would Jews count as “white” or “brown”, and what would Arabs be? Is Obama “black” (after his absent father) or “white” (after his mother)? How much “black” do you need to be legally “black”? This really is a can or worms.”
Now, if you have spent any time arguing or debating with BNP voters, then you will know that thse are indeed the arguments that you hear, and the people who say this are not fascists, and don’t think of themselves even as racists. the fact that people will vote BNP but do so on the basis that they don’t really want the BNP to have power cetainly matches my experiecne of talking to BNP supporters and voters. It is something worth knowing.
The truth is that we will never defeat the BNP unless we are prepared to debate with working class people who are thinking of voting BNP, and quite a few people on the HP thread did take issue with those who said they might vote for the BNP. Yes, some of those people arguing against the BNP potential voters also used what i consider to be islamophobic arguments, but (whether we like it or not) that is a reflection of what are considered main-stream common sense arguments.
The BNP are only going to be put back in the box if we can build a broad coalition that reflects the idea that the BNP are totally outwith the mainstream and acceptable political values of our society. As such, any anti-BNP strategy that prioritises the concerns and preoccupatipns of revolutionary far-left groups who are equally outwith the mainstream is doomed to failure. (notwithstanding cable Street, or the ANL - that was then, this is now)
Comment by Andy Newman — 30 June, 2008 @ 10:09 am
The truth is, you lot have no idea at all on how to fight the BNP…
Fringe politics does not hold the key to beating the BNP …
Stop being weird, or give up altogether. You’re not helping…
Wow. If only everyone listened to veteran street campaigner and activist David T, the UK’s number one expert on anti-fascist struggle.
See my post below for more details Mr. T’s anti-racism, in which he congratulates the Daily Mail, in spite of its consistently Powellite outlook and rhetoric on race, for including a story about a gadge who was turned away from a swimming baths because he wasn’t Muslim. Oh, and by remarkable coincidence, the man in question just happened to be him!
http://republic-of-teesside.blogspot.com/2008/04/dail-mail-and-political-correctness.html
I wonder if the aforementioned edition of the newspaper is left open on this guy’s desk everytime a visitor comes into his office.
He is, after all, the nearest thing to David Brent the “anti-racism” movement has.
Comment by D.B. — 30 June, 2008 @ 10:15 am
Andy, that’s great, but some of those words are probably too long for Ian.
Comment by Dustin the Turkey — 30 June, 2008 @ 10:22 am
Thanks Andy.
Comment by David T — 30 June, 2008 @ 10:43 am
You lot are a joke. Is it any wdonder the left is losing influence in Britain today! Some of you have received a university education as well, well, it just goes to show how cheapened that has become.
Comment by Sue R — 30 June, 2008 @ 11:03 am
“Right. You do realise that the Taliban were neither the creation of the CIA, nor were they “artificially propagated” by the US. Al Qaeda didn’t even come into existence until the very final days of the conflict, and even then, played a tiny role.”
Quite amusing to see this Zionist Muslim-hater suddenly become an apologist for the most bloodthirsty Islamist types the moment their origins and training are mentioned. In fact the Taliban were funded and trained by US and Pakistani ISI intelligence to restore ‘order’ after the previous CIA-backed Afghan Mujahdenin warlord movement the US had funded had collasped into internecine warfare and torn the country (and in particular Kabul) to pieces.
It’s actually likely that the Taliban were fairly mystified by the outbreak of hostilities between the US and the ‘Arab Afghans’ on their soil, being parochialists and xenophobes not very interested in what went on in the rest of the world, but very conscious of how they had benefitted from US help in the preceding period.
“Are you a “9/11 Truther” as well?”
Obviously not, from what I wrote in earlier posts. Why doesn’t Toupe learn to read? Since I wrote that 9/11 was an ‘incredible provocation’ against the United States, I am hardly likely to believe that it was organised by the same United States, am I?
Its lovely that Andrew Coates considers Harry’s Place to be ‘definitely’ on the left. He also regards George Galloway to be on the far right. That tells me that Andrew Coates has more in common with Zionist militarists and ’shock and awe’ mad bombers than with the left and antiwar movement. What this underlines is that Coates self-designation as part of the ‘left’ is a load of hairy old bollocks as well.
Incidentally, I criticised the crude assumption that HP people were simply promoting the BNP in post #31 above, before either Coates or Andy Newman did so. There is, however, a much more nuanced argument as to exactly how HP are promoting far-right politics of a rather different kind in the same posting. I would like to see Andy Newman refute this, and substantiate his characterisation that HP’s politics are analogous to, say, Ernest Bevin, whereas Frank Dobson’s are not. I don’t think he can.
Comment by ID — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:04 pm
Andy,
Ian xxxxxx Donovan’s conduct on this thread is the sort that would have him banned were he not a prominent member of the gallowayites. I’m against censorship -ID is doing a fine job of reducing RespectRenewal to tatters by acting as a frothing at the mouth stalinoid attack dog by acting this way- but I am for consistency. How is this sort of behaviour acceptable by some contributors and not by others?
Comment by martin ohr — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:07 pm
Martin
Currently only two people are banned from this blog.
Both for personal abuse far worse than ian is indulging in.
I don’t agree with Iian, nor think he is doing himself any favours with the way he is arguing, but he is agrown up and can take responsibility for his own actions. i also factor in that David T and the other HP regulars dish it out on their blog, so I presume they can take it as well.
Comment by Andy Newman — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:12 pm
Andy, you are full of shit.
Comment by martin ohr — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:14 pm
Martin, I admire your local knowledge of how we Bristol City fans are described by the gas-heads.
Comment by Andy Newman — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:16 pm
Guess it all comes down to what Oscar Wilde said, ‘There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.’.
Comment by Sue R — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:20 pm
Tis with joy - well I’ve got the time anyway before leaving the Library - to reply to Ian Donovan. I said that David T is on the left, not everyone on Harry’s Place. Perhaps the cde could explain his own rigorous Marxist analysis of how they are “promoting far right politics” before taking Andy Newman to task for comparing them to, say Ernest Bevin. On the latter, while Bevin would certainly have opposed the BNP I can’t see him coming back from the grave to promote Brett’s line on gay rights, and standing up for Southall Black Sisters. Neither Dobson nor HP are in any case quite in the tradition of Bevin’s bone-headed ‘labour patriotism’ (nor btw was Bevin a friend of Israel). Maybe other figures from the past, ‘revisionists’ (Crosland, even back further, Durbin?)? I don;t know: politics has changed so much over the yers that all previiosu categories are difficult to hold groups and people in.
Personally I would say that HP is a pretty complex blog where a lot of different ideas get discussed, ranging from defences of the Invasion of Iraq, Israel, to a range of issues (anti-racism for example) where there is a definite cross-over between them and other parts of the left - though evidently far behind Ian Donovan’s majesterial vanguard position. If you cannot put a coherent argument amongst the opinions expressed there, then you have started the debate a loser. Perhaps illustrating a wider inability on the left to accept contradiction. Accepting that is a condition of democratic socialism - something I, a lefty (hear the masses cry, yes Coatesy, you are indeed a lefty,comrade), consider important.
Comment by Andrew Coates — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:21 pm
This relationship between the contributors to a blog, and the people who commment is in any case complex.
It is clear that in general the people who comment on this blog are often well to the left of those of us who contribute articles, and on HP the people making comments are sometimes well to the right of the blog owners.
Comment by Andy Newman — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
We’ve got an exciting new blog development launching in the next few days…
Comment by David T — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:26 pm
This is silly, Andy, you should really ban all the scum from Harry’s Place AND the running dogs of imperialism, Alliance for White Liberty scabs from this site. Then we can concentrate on equally unproductive SWP vs RR slanging matches.
Comment by Randy Newman — 30 June, 2008 @ 12:54 pm
“Perhaps the cde could explain his own rigorous Marxist analysis of how they are “promoting far right politics” before taking Andy Newman to task for comparing them to, say Ernest Bevin.”
See post #31 above. No need to repeat myself here. As to ‘contradictions’, every single political formation has ‘contradictions’. The question is where its centre of gravity lies. HP’s puts it firmly in the category of ‘anti-Muslim hate site’.
I partly concur with ‘Randy Newman’ above. We should ban the HP trolls, because they are enemies of the left. But the AWL are part of the left, albeit a terrible part, and should merely be scandalised for their pro-imperialist politics. Ditto for individual ‘left’ Islamophobes like Andrew Coates. To ban them would be to solve a political problem within the left with bureaucratic methods. Of course, Andy won’t ban the HP types because he wants them to join a popular front against the BNP, which is a mistaken strategy both in theory and practice.
Comment by ID — 30 June, 2008 @ 1:49 pm
I would like to add my voice to the general condemnation of poster “ID” who’s trolling is an embarrassment to these comments boxes. Indeed I suspect he might even be a HP troll trying to discredit SU.
Lets hope he never shows his face again here. Good riddance.
Comment by Mark — 30 June, 2008 @ 2:17 pm
Andy, the difference is that it’s rather rich for David T to come here and moan about fascism while he’s got posters on his blog saying they would vote BNP. People in glass houses, etc.
When it comes to the poster who talked about his wife and the nature of the BNP in his town, he was told to f*ck off, that he was playing the victim card and that he was lying.
As for these being the arguments of the BNP voter generally, so what? Or that people treat it as a protest vote, again? Yes, that’s useful to know when you’re thinking of a broader strategy against the BNP, but it doesn’t mean that commentators have to be treated with kid gloves when they cart out that old crap like it’s something new and vital.
What could you promise someone like that, Andy? What could you say to them that would win them to your side?
Also, as someone pointed out, HP aren’t shy about dishing it out, so one presumes they can take it as well.
Comment by Rusu — 30 June, 2008 @ 6:24 pm
I missed the “” around someone
Comment by Rusu — 30 June, 2008 @ 6:26 pm
Could Rusu please substantiate his allegation that the poster who complained of his racist treatment in Loughton was told to fuck off and that he was lying.
Comment by Sue R — 30 June, 2008 @ 10:09 pm