Pogue
17th November 2009, 17:36
www.http://www.libertyandsolidarity.org/ (http://www.http://www.libertyandsolidarity.org/)
In defence of defence
By Keith Hallack, published on November 15th, 2009
http://www.libertyandsolidarity.org/userfiles/question%20small.jpg [This is a discussion piece to add to the recent flurry of debate around antifascism, notably “Give Up Antifascism” in Red Pepper, which will get a full response at some point. L&S members have been active antifascists, and some of them have written the following to add to the debate. This is not the view of L&S as a whole and does not constitute policy in any way. It may be the start of a discussion that leads to a policy.]
In the weeks before the BBC conclusively overturned the practice and principle of No Platform For Fascists on October 21st 2009, the debate over whether this tradition should be upheld reached its highest point. Never before had so many voices suggested that No Platform was out of date or redundant, and never before had so many of these voices come from groups that had previously risked their safety and freedom to oppose the Far Right and organised racism. A few hours before joining the crowd that took the road outside BBC headquarters in Shepherds Bush I was forced to justify to myself why I was bothering when there seemed to be so many reasons not to. It was easy to answer the objections to No Platform in the mainstream media, but harder to answer the ones coming from people who fully recognised the No Platform argument but claimed to have gone beyond it; so this is aimed at both, firstly the arguments found in the press and then the arguments from inside the left.
Opposing the BNP is just giving them the attention they want. The BNP already have attention, and it is just not because every media outlet or professional (and amateur) politician falls over themselves to denounce them. They have the publics'http://www.libertyandsolidarity.org/userfiles/all%20our%20jobs.jpg attention because they have 943,000 of the publics’ votes, 46 councillors and 2 MEP’s.(1) They have it because they campaign against immigration and the preservation of ‘indigenous British culture’ when the most widely read newspapers do exactly the same thing. They get their publicity from the fact they say exactly what newspapers and politicians want to say on race and immigration, and opposing the BNP is used to mask supporting most of its opinions: so on pages 2-3 they can have BAN THESE SICK NAZIS and page one we can have IMMIGRANTS TAKE ALL NEW JOBS. Whatever the reasons for the BNP’s success, it is certainly not the fact that they have been opposed by antifascists; in areas where they have been opposed in a direct and uncompromised way there is evidence that their growth has been contained or even driven back - “Likewise the list suggests they had a significant fall in support in Leeds, Keighly, and other areas throughout Yorkshire; areas heavily targeted by antifascist activism.” (2) The idea that ignoring the Far Right will make them go away is out of touch with history, and especially out of touch with the raise of the Far Right in Europe today.
Opposing the BNP is an attack on free speech. Opposing an organisation is not the same as opposing its’ individual members’ right to free speech; opposing it as fellow citizens is not the same as having the police remove their rights. The BNP or any other group are free to speak their mind, and we are free to react. If a co-worker made racist comments you’d be inclined to oppose them – if an organisation carried out racist activities you’d be inclined to organise against them. When it comes to political parties and the mass media the whole concept of free speech becomes nonsensical anyway – there is no free speech in the way that the elite use the term. You are free to speak to the person next to you on the bus, but neither of you are free to speak to several million other people on TV that evening or in tomorrows’ papers. This is because we do not own or have access to the mass media, and the opinions it reflects come from people that do: rich people and people support the rule of rich people (politicians). There is a suggestion that the BBC is neutral and therefore must give a platform to the BNP as they would any other group: the BBC is not neutral. For instance, before and during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 they were massively biased towards the governments’ pro-war argument, avoided using independent sources, and downplayed Iraqi casualties and anti-war commentary. The BBC makes its own decisions like any other media institution.
We live in a democracy – the best way to oppose the BNP is through debate. Only in the loosest sense do we live in a democracy. 646 MPs are accepted by 3 parties to rule over a population of 60 million. Once every 4 years a minority of the 60 million chose one of the 3 parties. Of the 646 MPs 32% went to private schools (compared to only 7% of the UK population) and 27% went to Oxford or Cambridge Universities. The UK is far more democratic than China or Iran where you cannot even have elite groups forming rival parties, but to call the UK ‘a democracy’ is inaccurate: we have next to no input at all in decisions which totally govern our lives. Most antifascists are involved in projects to build a genuine democracy through mass participation in society, and no matter how unsuccessful these currently are they are far more genuine than the BNP’s attempts to grab the reigns of the undemocratic Parliamentary system we have at the moment. Debate is indeed a good tool to fight organised racism, and it would be a great idea if antifascist were a lot better informed on the BNP, immigration, and government policy. Too often supposedly antifascist arguments are nothing more than the electioneering of the 3 main parties; “multiculturalism” should be questioned and immigration should be openly discussed rather than dismissed. But this is for everyday life. When we are dealing with a well organised movement on the first rungs of the ladder to power, relying on our ability to debate alone is foolish. Relying on the elite to debate for us is madness.
Disrupting the Far Right by force makes you a fascist. Fascism is a very vague ideology that aims to give the state complete control over all aspects of society to forge a brutal ideal. It believes that any competing ideas make the nation weaker, so should be crushed. Given that the Taliban in Afghanistan or Stalin’s rule over Russia seem to have achieved fascism just as much as the fascist governments did in 1930s Spain, Italy and Germany, lots of people find it hard to identify fascism today. Not the fascists however. If we take a look at our native Far Right we can see they identify with similar parties and movements across the world; if they know who they are, so should we. There is a coordination of neo-fascist parties in the European Parliament and there are endless international visits between these groups to demonstrate who and what modern fascism is. So to reduce fascism to meaning ‘anybody who uses force in politics’ is pretty unsophisticated, and applied to society as a whole it is actually remarkably fascist. Probably the most dangerous thing we could do is surrender our right to self defence to the police and army. Accepting that the state is currently a mechanism for elite control (for all the reasons listed and many more) we accept it should not have the exclusive right to use force, and we must be able to defend ourselves. We can move on to the objections to antifascism raised by progressives, people who already agree with this.
Calling for the BNP to be banned is wrong. Yes. It is. People who call for the BNP and other groups they decide are extremist to be banned by law need to be shouted down. Banning Far Right parties has not worked in Europe and asking for peoples’ beliefs and politics to be policed at all is a terrible idea. Whilst we work towards a democratic society, we cannot possibly ask the state to decide what is and is not politically acceptable. The obvious next step after banning fascist groups would be to ban revolutionary groups and even moderate reformist groups – any group which intended to challenge the government would be a legitimate target. And yes, the existing laws against inciting racial hatred and inciting religious hatred set a really bad precedent: just because the BNP say this doesn’t mean we cannot agree with them here. However, most antifascists do not call for state bans. If you do not want to call for a state ban and still oppose fascism, you just do not call for a state ban. It is really that simple.
‘Unite Against Fascism’ are so bad they are almost part of the problem. The main antifascist campaign group, successor to the Anti Nazi League, is riddled with contradictions and politics so poor that it would actually make things worse in some circumstances. Despite being dominated on the ground by the Socialist Workers Party (the UKs largest revolutionary group), they include all the three governmental parties, http://www.libertyandsolidarity.org/userfiles/uaf(1).jpgoften call for state bans (never quite unanimously though), uncritically support the Race Industry and the multicultural project, happily confuse race and religion as the same thing, and refuse to discuss immigration. Mostly all they do is piss thousands of pounds away on pointless unity concerts in areas which are already racially mixed with no fascist activity – does Mile End really need to hold hands and listen to Dizzee Rascal? But what is really damaging is the message they send to BNP/potential BNP supporters: the three main parties want ignore you, ignore your concerns, and then they want your vote. Brilliant. However, the UAF are really the only going concern in antifascism open to the general public. Only the UAF regularly call demonstrations or set up local antifascist groups. It is understandable that an antifascist would end up in the UAF for want of anything better, and to be fair, in some areas the UAF are not that bad. We cannot assume that everyone who attends a UAF demo supports state intervention or follows their arguments, and hardly anyone attending UAF demo supports the 3 main parties. It is obvious that you can be an antifascist and not automatically agree with the UAF, and we cannot automatically dismiss everyone who is involved in it. We need to make better statements that stress equality not difference, call for open debate on immigration, and make proper arguments against the BNP rather than hysterical cries of ‘extremism’. Where an event is called by the UAF but is better than nothing, it is ok to go – and hopefully find decent people that agree with the criticisms of the UAF made here.
The Labour Party is more racist and authoritarian than the BNP. The BNP want to deport non-whites and build a populist right-wing dictatorship by scapegoating minorities; but the Labour Party are actually in power now, and they are in charge of a racist immigration system. They are part of an economic arrangement that channels money and resources from the developing world into the West, then slams the door shut when the citizens of those countries follow the flow back to Britain. The current government has started wars which have brought unbelievable devastation and death to the Middle East creating millions of refugees it largely refuses entry to; those that sneak past are rounded up, imprisoned and sent back – sometimes to face persecution, torture and death. None of the other electoral parties are any different either. Antifascists should oppose them then; we should argue for a fair international system that does not create war, poverty and refugees, and we should fight for one by taking democratic control of our home country. It does not follow that we need to adopt No Platform for Any Establishment Party however. The mainstream political parties are not fascist and are mainly racist in the sense that they are classist: racial minorities generally come to this country as economic migrants – therefore they are shafted along with the rest of the working class, and particularly badly for being at the bottom of the heap. It has been shown that the BNP are part of distinct and self identifying fascist tradition, and given that they are racially selective in their membership and have a racially pure vision for the UK, they can even be considered neo-Nazi. For the BNP to become a normal anti-immigrant nationalist party like UKIP they would need a total overhaul in their policies, leadership, and many of their members. If progressive want to show that they are a radical alternative, they will often have to displace or fend off Far Right groups attempting to take the same ground. On this basis, the Far Right still deserves special attention.
Community organising, not antifascism, will take ground away from the Far Right. One argument that has been gaining more and more support over the last two decades is that the growth of the Far Right is due to the abandonment of the areas their supporters come from by the Labour Party and the left in general. Therefore rather than confronting the Far Right, they should be out-organised in these communities. The question which never seems to be asked is ‘why not do both?’ Progressives should be community organising anyway, the rise of the BNP should not be the only reason this happens. Also, there seems to be an assumption that people are voting BNP because they are good community organisers and solve problems in marginalised areas. They aren’t, the BNP are utterly useless at getting anything done when they are elected – they get their support from playing to popular fears, being stridently anti-immigrant, and drawing fantasies that “things were simpler in the past”. Community organising and generally having a positive impact in the lives and neighbourhoods of BNP voters abandoned by Labour will hopefully disarm the BNP over time; but given that their voters consider immigration to be the number one issue facing the country, right now disrupting the BNP to stop them capitalising on this belief seems just as necessary as long term solutions. Having said this, antifascism should not actually be the main activity of antifascists. We should indeed be organising to try and unite normal people in a struggle against the problems we face in our areas and in our workplaces. Uniting in the face of common problems not only disarms irrational fears and prejudice, but will hopefully give us new faith that we can run our society democratically. It also helps us identify the real enemies – not economic migrants, but the business elite whose system creates a place for low wages by attacking workers’ organisation in the UK, and creates desperate migrants by wrecking their home countries. Still, when the chance to oppose the Far Right comes to us, to our cities, we should take it, and in some circumstances we should travel too.
There is a middle ground open to antifascists between the vacant chanting of the UAF leadership that comes across like a backhanded compliment to an unflustered Far Right, and a clandestine street war that many simply cannot hack due to its demands and risks. Disrupting events by blockading and invading them has worked, as has simply obstructing their canvassers and street stalls or pressuring venues that host their events. As the militant group Antifa have recently stated, any and all methods that can be sure to prevent fascists from going about their business should be deployed, as creatively as possible, by absolutely anybody. The only way to beat them in the long run is by uniting around our shared needs not our separate ethnicities: but would we really say that in the meantime it is better the fascists go unopposed? Would we really be happier if Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time had not sparked a near riot? A progressive movement that does not seriously oppose its most direct enemies does not demonstrate much faith in itself or its abilities.
1) http://www.uaf.org.uk/news.asp?choice=70503
2) http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/10/440274.html#article
3) http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/07/13/greasing-up-to-power
In defence of defence
By Keith Hallack, published on November 15th, 2009
http://www.libertyandsolidarity.org/userfiles/question%20small.jpg [This is a discussion piece to add to the recent flurry of debate around antifascism, notably “Give Up Antifascism” in Red Pepper, which will get a full response at some point. L&S members have been active antifascists, and some of them have written the following to add to the debate. This is not the view of L&S as a whole and does not constitute policy in any way. It may be the start of a discussion that leads to a policy.]
In the weeks before the BBC conclusively overturned the practice and principle of No Platform For Fascists on October 21st 2009, the debate over whether this tradition should be upheld reached its highest point. Never before had so many voices suggested that No Platform was out of date or redundant, and never before had so many of these voices come from groups that had previously risked their safety and freedom to oppose the Far Right and organised racism. A few hours before joining the crowd that took the road outside BBC headquarters in Shepherds Bush I was forced to justify to myself why I was bothering when there seemed to be so many reasons not to. It was easy to answer the objections to No Platform in the mainstream media, but harder to answer the ones coming from people who fully recognised the No Platform argument but claimed to have gone beyond it; so this is aimed at both, firstly the arguments found in the press and then the arguments from inside the left.
Opposing the BNP is just giving them the attention they want. The BNP already have attention, and it is just not because every media outlet or professional (and amateur) politician falls over themselves to denounce them. They have the publics'http://www.libertyandsolidarity.org/userfiles/all%20our%20jobs.jpg attention because they have 943,000 of the publics’ votes, 46 councillors and 2 MEP’s.(1) They have it because they campaign against immigration and the preservation of ‘indigenous British culture’ when the most widely read newspapers do exactly the same thing. They get their publicity from the fact they say exactly what newspapers and politicians want to say on race and immigration, and opposing the BNP is used to mask supporting most of its opinions: so on pages 2-3 they can have BAN THESE SICK NAZIS and page one we can have IMMIGRANTS TAKE ALL NEW JOBS. Whatever the reasons for the BNP’s success, it is certainly not the fact that they have been opposed by antifascists; in areas where they have been opposed in a direct and uncompromised way there is evidence that their growth has been contained or even driven back - “Likewise the list suggests they had a significant fall in support in Leeds, Keighly, and other areas throughout Yorkshire; areas heavily targeted by antifascist activism.” (2) The idea that ignoring the Far Right will make them go away is out of touch with history, and especially out of touch with the raise of the Far Right in Europe today.
Opposing the BNP is an attack on free speech. Opposing an organisation is not the same as opposing its’ individual members’ right to free speech; opposing it as fellow citizens is not the same as having the police remove their rights. The BNP or any other group are free to speak their mind, and we are free to react. If a co-worker made racist comments you’d be inclined to oppose them – if an organisation carried out racist activities you’d be inclined to organise against them. When it comes to political parties and the mass media the whole concept of free speech becomes nonsensical anyway – there is no free speech in the way that the elite use the term. You are free to speak to the person next to you on the bus, but neither of you are free to speak to several million other people on TV that evening or in tomorrows’ papers. This is because we do not own or have access to the mass media, and the opinions it reflects come from people that do: rich people and people support the rule of rich people (politicians). There is a suggestion that the BBC is neutral and therefore must give a platform to the BNP as they would any other group: the BBC is not neutral. For instance, before and during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 they were massively biased towards the governments’ pro-war argument, avoided using independent sources, and downplayed Iraqi casualties and anti-war commentary. The BBC makes its own decisions like any other media institution.
We live in a democracy – the best way to oppose the BNP is through debate. Only in the loosest sense do we live in a democracy. 646 MPs are accepted by 3 parties to rule over a population of 60 million. Once every 4 years a minority of the 60 million chose one of the 3 parties. Of the 646 MPs 32% went to private schools (compared to only 7% of the UK population) and 27% went to Oxford or Cambridge Universities. The UK is far more democratic than China or Iran where you cannot even have elite groups forming rival parties, but to call the UK ‘a democracy’ is inaccurate: we have next to no input at all in decisions which totally govern our lives. Most antifascists are involved in projects to build a genuine democracy through mass participation in society, and no matter how unsuccessful these currently are they are far more genuine than the BNP’s attempts to grab the reigns of the undemocratic Parliamentary system we have at the moment. Debate is indeed a good tool to fight organised racism, and it would be a great idea if antifascist were a lot better informed on the BNP, immigration, and government policy. Too often supposedly antifascist arguments are nothing more than the electioneering of the 3 main parties; “multiculturalism” should be questioned and immigration should be openly discussed rather than dismissed. But this is for everyday life. When we are dealing with a well organised movement on the first rungs of the ladder to power, relying on our ability to debate alone is foolish. Relying on the elite to debate for us is madness.
Disrupting the Far Right by force makes you a fascist. Fascism is a very vague ideology that aims to give the state complete control over all aspects of society to forge a brutal ideal. It believes that any competing ideas make the nation weaker, so should be crushed. Given that the Taliban in Afghanistan or Stalin’s rule over Russia seem to have achieved fascism just as much as the fascist governments did in 1930s Spain, Italy and Germany, lots of people find it hard to identify fascism today. Not the fascists however. If we take a look at our native Far Right we can see they identify with similar parties and movements across the world; if they know who they are, so should we. There is a coordination of neo-fascist parties in the European Parliament and there are endless international visits between these groups to demonstrate who and what modern fascism is. So to reduce fascism to meaning ‘anybody who uses force in politics’ is pretty unsophisticated, and applied to society as a whole it is actually remarkably fascist. Probably the most dangerous thing we could do is surrender our right to self defence to the police and army. Accepting that the state is currently a mechanism for elite control (for all the reasons listed and many more) we accept it should not have the exclusive right to use force, and we must be able to defend ourselves. We can move on to the objections to antifascism raised by progressives, people who already agree with this.
Calling for the BNP to be banned is wrong. Yes. It is. People who call for the BNP and other groups they decide are extremist to be banned by law need to be shouted down. Banning Far Right parties has not worked in Europe and asking for peoples’ beliefs and politics to be policed at all is a terrible idea. Whilst we work towards a democratic society, we cannot possibly ask the state to decide what is and is not politically acceptable. The obvious next step after banning fascist groups would be to ban revolutionary groups and even moderate reformist groups – any group which intended to challenge the government would be a legitimate target. And yes, the existing laws against inciting racial hatred and inciting religious hatred set a really bad precedent: just because the BNP say this doesn’t mean we cannot agree with them here. However, most antifascists do not call for state bans. If you do not want to call for a state ban and still oppose fascism, you just do not call for a state ban. It is really that simple.
‘Unite Against Fascism’ are so bad they are almost part of the problem. The main antifascist campaign group, successor to the Anti Nazi League, is riddled with contradictions and politics so poor that it would actually make things worse in some circumstances. Despite being dominated on the ground by the Socialist Workers Party (the UKs largest revolutionary group), they include all the three governmental parties, http://www.libertyandsolidarity.org/userfiles/uaf(1).jpgoften call for state bans (never quite unanimously though), uncritically support the Race Industry and the multicultural project, happily confuse race and religion as the same thing, and refuse to discuss immigration. Mostly all they do is piss thousands of pounds away on pointless unity concerts in areas which are already racially mixed with no fascist activity – does Mile End really need to hold hands and listen to Dizzee Rascal? But what is really damaging is the message they send to BNP/potential BNP supporters: the three main parties want ignore you, ignore your concerns, and then they want your vote. Brilliant. However, the UAF are really the only going concern in antifascism open to the general public. Only the UAF regularly call demonstrations or set up local antifascist groups. It is understandable that an antifascist would end up in the UAF for want of anything better, and to be fair, in some areas the UAF are not that bad. We cannot assume that everyone who attends a UAF demo supports state intervention or follows their arguments, and hardly anyone attending UAF demo supports the 3 main parties. It is obvious that you can be an antifascist and not automatically agree with the UAF, and we cannot automatically dismiss everyone who is involved in it. We need to make better statements that stress equality not difference, call for open debate on immigration, and make proper arguments against the BNP rather than hysterical cries of ‘extremism’. Where an event is called by the UAF but is better than nothing, it is ok to go – and hopefully find decent people that agree with the criticisms of the UAF made here.
The Labour Party is more racist and authoritarian than the BNP. The BNP want to deport non-whites and build a populist right-wing dictatorship by scapegoating minorities; but the Labour Party are actually in power now, and they are in charge of a racist immigration system. They are part of an economic arrangement that channels money and resources from the developing world into the West, then slams the door shut when the citizens of those countries follow the flow back to Britain. The current government has started wars which have brought unbelievable devastation and death to the Middle East creating millions of refugees it largely refuses entry to; those that sneak past are rounded up, imprisoned and sent back – sometimes to face persecution, torture and death. None of the other electoral parties are any different either. Antifascists should oppose them then; we should argue for a fair international system that does not create war, poverty and refugees, and we should fight for one by taking democratic control of our home country. It does not follow that we need to adopt No Platform for Any Establishment Party however. The mainstream political parties are not fascist and are mainly racist in the sense that they are classist: racial minorities generally come to this country as economic migrants – therefore they are shafted along with the rest of the working class, and particularly badly for being at the bottom of the heap. It has been shown that the BNP are part of distinct and self identifying fascist tradition, and given that they are racially selective in their membership and have a racially pure vision for the UK, they can even be considered neo-Nazi. For the BNP to become a normal anti-immigrant nationalist party like UKIP they would need a total overhaul in their policies, leadership, and many of their members. If progressive want to show that they are a radical alternative, they will often have to displace or fend off Far Right groups attempting to take the same ground. On this basis, the Far Right still deserves special attention.
Community organising, not antifascism, will take ground away from the Far Right. One argument that has been gaining more and more support over the last two decades is that the growth of the Far Right is due to the abandonment of the areas their supporters come from by the Labour Party and the left in general. Therefore rather than confronting the Far Right, they should be out-organised in these communities. The question which never seems to be asked is ‘why not do both?’ Progressives should be community organising anyway, the rise of the BNP should not be the only reason this happens. Also, there seems to be an assumption that people are voting BNP because they are good community organisers and solve problems in marginalised areas. They aren’t, the BNP are utterly useless at getting anything done when they are elected – they get their support from playing to popular fears, being stridently anti-immigrant, and drawing fantasies that “things were simpler in the past”. Community organising and generally having a positive impact in the lives and neighbourhoods of BNP voters abandoned by Labour will hopefully disarm the BNP over time; but given that their voters consider immigration to be the number one issue facing the country, right now disrupting the BNP to stop them capitalising on this belief seems just as necessary as long term solutions. Having said this, antifascism should not actually be the main activity of antifascists. We should indeed be organising to try and unite normal people in a struggle against the problems we face in our areas and in our workplaces. Uniting in the face of common problems not only disarms irrational fears and prejudice, but will hopefully give us new faith that we can run our society democratically. It also helps us identify the real enemies – not economic migrants, but the business elite whose system creates a place for low wages by attacking workers’ organisation in the UK, and creates desperate migrants by wrecking their home countries. Still, when the chance to oppose the Far Right comes to us, to our cities, we should take it, and in some circumstances we should travel too.
There is a middle ground open to antifascists between the vacant chanting of the UAF leadership that comes across like a backhanded compliment to an unflustered Far Right, and a clandestine street war that many simply cannot hack due to its demands and risks. Disrupting events by blockading and invading them has worked, as has simply obstructing their canvassers and street stalls or pressuring venues that host their events. As the militant group Antifa have recently stated, any and all methods that can be sure to prevent fascists from going about their business should be deployed, as creatively as possible, by absolutely anybody. The only way to beat them in the long run is by uniting around our shared needs not our separate ethnicities: but would we really say that in the meantime it is better the fascists go unopposed? Would we really be happier if Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time had not sparked a near riot? A progressive movement that does not seriously oppose its most direct enemies does not demonstrate much faith in itself or its abilities.
1) http://www.uaf.org.uk/news.asp?choice=70503
2) http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/10/440274.html#article
3) http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/07/13/greasing-up-to-power