Griffin in Oxford

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by Vanguard1917@November 27, 2007 10:01 pm
Yes, but is trying to close down debate an effective way to defeat them? Or does it in fact do quite the opposite?

By debating with fascists in this venue, it would legitimise them and present them as a legitimate voice that should be heard. That is exactly their strategy, to make their ideas acceptable to the mainstream and by that reshape mainstream opinion. We are arguing that they are a threat that must be smashed.

[Vanguard1917]

Originally posted by The Anarchist Tension+November 27, 2007 11:30 pm--> (The Anarchist Tension @ November 27, 2007 11:30 pm)

Originally posted by [email protected] 27, 2007 11:41 pm

Originally posted by The Anarchist [email protected] 27, 2007 10:17 pm

Vanguard1917

@November 27, 2007 11:01 pm
Yes, but is trying to close down debate an effective way to defeat them?

Yes of course it is! Fascists aren't interested in debating with you, they would sooner smash our faces in that engage in debate.

If Griffin and Irving want a public debate, i'm afraid that we do not have the luxury of backing out. We have a duty to confront their ideas, which shouldn't be hard.

They are and were confronted.

[/b]

Their ideas were not confronted. Their presence at Oxford university was opposed. That's all.

Antifa groups around the country do community work to counter the ideas that the BNP proposition, but when fascists like Irving and Griffin attempt to legitimise their politics by holding public meetings then we need to demonstrate that this is simply not acceptable. After all, their politics is not legitimate.

Whether political ideas are 'legitimate' or not needs to be decided through debate. Who are we to say that the BNP's arguments on, say, immigration are 'illegitimate' if we do not show that they are?

PRC-UTE:

By debating with fascists in this venue, it would legitimise them and present them as a legitimate voice that should be heard.

Why are you afraid of their arguments being heard? If their arguments aren't legitimate in the first place, then surely this would only be further proven through debate?

We are arguing that they are a threat that must be smashed.

Is censorship going to 'smash' the BNP?

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by Vanguard1917+November 28, 2007 02:17 am--> (Vanguard1917 @ November 28, 2007 02:17 am)

Originally posted by The Anarchist [email protected] 27, 2007 11:30 pm

Originally posted by [email protected] 27, 2007 11:41 pm

Originally posted by The Anarchist [email protected] 27, 2007 10:17 pm

Vanguard1917

@November 27, 2007 11:01 pm
Yes, but is trying to close down debate an effective way to defeat them?

Yes of course it is! Fascists aren't interested in debating with you, they would sooner smash our faces in that engage in debate.

If Griffin and Irving want a public debate, i'm afraid that we do not have the luxury of backing out. We have a duty to confront their ideas, which shouldn't be hard.

They are and were confronted.

Their ideas were not confronted. Their presence at Oxford university was opposed. That's all. [/b]

They were confronted. With exactly what they deserved.

Whether political ideas are 'legitimate' or not needs to be decided through debate. Who are we to say that the BNP's arguments on, say, immigration are 'illegitimate' if we do not show that they are?

We should show that, but we should also use physical confrontation to stop them from gaining political presence on the streets and in debating halls.

By debating with fascists in this venue, it would legitimise them and present them as a legitimate voice that should be heard.

Why are you afraid of their arguments being heard?

It isn't a question of fear. He isn't saying he's scared, he's saying that they shouldn't be heard and that means physical confrontation.

If their arguments aren't legitimate in the first place, then surely this would only be further proven through debate?

It's a disgustingly liberal position. We shouldn't be interested in debating them. There isn't a debate. We should be interested in community based counter-propaganda and physical confrontation. This isn't a game - They're fascists and should be stopped through any means necessary.

We are arguing that they are a threat that must be smashed.

Is censorship going to 'smash' the BNP?

Yes.

[spartan]

Is censorship going to 'smash' the BNP?

No it wont because it will make the BNP appear like political martyrs which will give them more sympathy and possibly support from the general public.

Also stupid kids who think that it is "cool" to like something that is censored and isnt accepted by the mainstream media will flock to the BNP and their cause because it is "radical" <_<

[Vanguard1917]

Originally posted by The Anarchist Tension@November 28, 2007 11:01 am
They were confronted. With exactly what they deserved.

They deserved their arguments to be ridiculed in the eyes of the public. The &#39;anti-fascist&#39; protestors showed that they were unable/unprepared to do this.

Whether political ideas are &#39;legitimate&#39; or not needs to be decided through debate. Who are we to say that the BNP&#39;s arguments on, say, immigration are &#39;illegitimate&#39; if we do not show that they are?

We should show that, but we should also use physical confrontation to stop them from gaining political presence on the streets and in debating halls.

I think that there is a definite difference between what we should do in the streets and in the arena of debate. If the far-right is marching, then we need to march against it. If it is debating, then we cannot afford to bottle out of a debate.

By debating with fascists in this venue, it would legitimise them and present them as a legitimate voice that should be heard.

Why are you afraid of their arguments being heard?

It isn&#39;t a question of fear. He isn&#39;t saying he&#39;s scared, he&#39;s saying that they shouldn&#39;t be heard and that means physical confrontation.

Well, i&#39;m saying that they should be heard - in order for them to be ridiculed in the open. Censorship benefits wrong ideas. It benefits reactionary ideas.

If their arguments aren&#39;t legitimate in the first place, then surely this would only be further proven through debate?

It&#39;s a disgustingly liberal position.

Actually, the postion of the vast majority of the liberal-left in this country is to call for censorship against the BNP. Their position is a lot more similar to yours than you might think.

We shouldn&#39;t be interested in debating them. There isn&#39;t a debate.

It was a debate, and the &#39;anti-fascists&#39; chose to back out of it.

We should be interested in community based counter-propaganda and physical confrontation. This isn&#39;t a game - They&#39;re fascists and should be stopped through any means necessary

Of course, we should be working in the community to fight support for reactionaries. But first we have to respect the community. We have to understand that working class people are intelligent and rational enough to listen to the all sides in an unrestricted, uncensored debate and make up their own minds.

It is a very middle class prejudice to argue that working class people need to be protected from bad opinions.

Is censorship going to &#39;smash&#39; the BNP?

Yes.

No. In the current climate, censorship will benefit the BNP.

[LSD]

We shouldn&#39;t be interested in debating [fascists]. There isn&#39;t a debate.

You&#39;re talking philosophy when you should be talking politics.

The issue isn&#39;t "why should" racists be allowed to speak, it&#39;s how would one go about stopping them.

No one is denying that racists, or "fascists", are wrong, but the problem with censorship is that by definition it requires a censor; that is, someone empowered to declare what is and what is not "acceptable" speech.

This thread seems to be of the opinion that an ad hoc censoring body somehow wouldn&#39;t be oppressive. The reality, however, shown again and again is that "mob censorship" can be just as bad if not worse than institutionalized suppression.

It&#39;s also intrinsically unstable.

In the small scale, sure, you can run around beating people up; but the moment it becomes politically significant, the bourgeois state will interfere, if only to maintain law and order.

I would remind you that the single best example of this kind of street fighting as politics was Germany in the 1930s, and we all know how well that turned out...

Whether before, after, or during a revolution, people must remain free to excersize their opinions. After all, the whole point of working class insurrection is to empower the people, not to subject them to ideological terror.

The communist cause is not the decriminalization of assault&#33; The excuse of "provokation" only goes so far.

Yes of course [trying to close down debate an effective way to defeat fascists]&#33; Fascists aren&#39;t interested in debating with you, they would sooner smash our faces in that engage in debate.

And if they try it, we should fight back. But until and unless they actually commit an assault, "fascists" (however you&#39;re defining that incredibly ambiguous term) must have the same rights as everyone else.

People&#39;s civil rights cannot be subject to the requirement of passing some sort of ideological test, even if that ideology happens to be valid. Our movement is supposed to be predicated on the notion of universal working class liberation, not just the liberation of the workers we happen to agree with.

Disagree with them, fight them, show the world how wrong they are. But when you start beating them or "no platforming" their activities, you head down an incredibly dangerous road.

One that cannot lead to a progressive future.

We are arguing that they are a threat that must be smashed.

Except they&#39;re kind of not. I mean, yeah, they certainly would like to be a "thread", but there are so fucking few of them that they can&#39;t really do much.

Fascism hasn&#39;t been a major political force in over fifty years, and so while there are rump fascist organizations out there and all number of groups that you might choose to label "fascist", the fact is, big-F Fascism just doesn&#39;t exist anymore.

Indeed this whole leftist obsession with fighting "fascists" is more of a holdover than anything else, a mimicking of the great revolutionary movements of the twenties and thirties which really did have a powerful fascist enemy to fight.

Today, however, the primary agents of destruction and exploitation are not fascists, not in name and not even in ideology, but liberal capitalists and their agents.

Which means that wile "attacking the fash" might seem emotionally satisfying, it isn&#39;t the "great struggle" that "anti-fascist" groups like to make it out.

It also means, however, that if attacking fascists is justified because they&#39;re ideology leans towards mass destruction, then so must be attacking all manner of capitalists and even some self-declared leftists.

After all, primitivism if adopted would nescessitate the deaths of billions, does that make "beating the primmie" as acceptable as "bashing the fash"?

Why not? Both have about equal chance of gaining any serious power in our lifetimes, i.e., none.

but when fascists like Irving and Griffin attempt to legitimise their politics by holding public meetings then we need to demonstrate that this is simply not acceptable.

You are infantalizing the working class to an astonishing degree.

Have you heard the "arguments" for racism? Have most people on this board? If so, how come we all aren&#39;t out there beating up immigrants?

People don&#39;t become racists because they&#39;re "convinced" by the "logic", they do so, for the most part, because they are either raised that way from childhood or are drawn to the emotion of the "movement".

People join race-groups for the same reason they join churches. It isn&#39;t about the "arguments", it&#39;s about the feelings, about the community that these kinds of groups engender.

You can&#39;t fight that kind of emotion with "no platforming".

Besides, if we try to "out-censor" the "fascists", we will lose and what&#39;s worse we&#39;ll come across as petty and authoritarian. In an environment where 90% of the population already associates communism with the catastrophe of the Soviet Union, nothing could be tactically stupider.

If we&#39;re going to trust the proletariat, we need to stop treating it like it needs to be protected from "bad" ideas. The bourgeoisie censors because it knows that, given all the options, the working class isn&#39;t going to chose exploitation.

But our ideas don&#39;t need that kind of institutional packaging; we aren&#39;t trying to fool people or socialize them to apathy, we&#39;re trying to liberate them.

So getting all the ideas out there, even the "bad" ones, is in our interest.

We want a full and open discussion, we want a fully informed working class. &#39;Cause that&#39;s the only way that we win. A radicalized class-conscious proletariat can only develop in an environment of knowledge.

Trying to "no platform" our "enemies" only hurts our cause in the end because it helps keeps the working class ignorant and servile by perpetuating the notion that it must be "protected from itself".

There&#39;s nothing wrong with class-based economic actions like striking or work stopping. But there&#39;s a vast difference between leveraging economic power for better conditions and using positional authority to pursue a personal agenda.

Our strength is that we are espousing a theory of emancipation against oppression. We need to capitalize on that strength and not be afraid of debate, any debate.

[black magick hustla]

I would remind you that the single best example of this kind of street fighting as politics was Germany in the 1930s, and we all know how well that turned out...

Actually, if anything, the problem was that the fascists weren&#39;t crushed before, when they were just a bunch of brownshirt thugs with no state power.

the KPD was more concerned about putting candidates in bourgeois elections than funding the anti-fascist street gangs so that they would have been able to crush the fascists once and for all.

"Street fights" weren&#39;t what led to the fascist rise, it was actually, their ability to have a plataform.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by LSD@November 28, 2007 09:42 pm

We shouldn&#39;t be interested in debating [fascists]. There isn&#39;t a debate.

You&#39;re talking philosophy when you should be talking politics.

No I&#39;m not.

The issue isn&#39;t "why should" racists be allowed to speak, it&#39;s how would one go about stopping them.

I agree and my opinion is to physically prevent them from being able to speak.

No one is denying that racists, or "fascists", are wrong...

I didn&#39;t for a moment think they were.

...but the problem with censorship is that by definition it requires a censor; that is, someone empowered to declare what is and what is not "acceptable" speech.

When you talk about censorship, I talk about confronting their infrastructure and ability to foster support and their presence on the streets.

In any case, activists, working class or otherwise, are empowered to declare that fascism is not acceptable because it is not. In that sense, it is you talking philosophy.

Anyone who does not want to allow the rise of fascism is empowered to declare it is unacceptable.

This thread seems to be of the opinion that an ad hoc censoring body somehow wouldn&#39;t be oppressive.

Wait a minute. I&#39;m clearly talking about grass-roots activists and working class people dealing with this issue. I&#39;m not talking about state sponsered censorship or setting up a "body" to deal with it.

When the BNP attempt to organise or raise their filthy head; we activists should be their to kick it back down again.

The reality, however, shown again and again is that "mob censorship" can be just as bad if not worse than institutionalized suppression.

You&#39;re living in cookoo land.

I&#39;m talking about activists confronting the most reactionary and oppressive ideology on this planet by showing them they are not entitled to organise and disseminate their hateful ideas.

Whether before, after, or during a revolution, people must remain free to excersize their opinions.

I do not agree that fascists are entitled to exercise such opinions. They pose a direct threat to the working class and will do in a revolutionary situation. By giving them a platform you are giving them the opportunity to oganise.

After all, the whole point of working class insurrection is to empower the people, not to subject them to ideological terror.

I&#39;m not talking about subjecting the working class to anything. I&#39;m talking about working class people refusing to allow fascists to organise. Me included.

We are arguing that they are a threat that must be smashed.

Except they&#39;re kind of not. I mean, yeah, they certainly would like to be a "thread", but there are so fucking few of them that they can&#39;t really do much.

Actually mate, they are a threat and are growing everyday. The BNP have councilors up and down the country and it is only a matter of time before they get elected to parliament.

I don&#39;t know what the situation is in Canada, but your opinion on the situation in Britain is ignorant to say the least.

Have you heard the "arguments" for racism? Have most people on this board? If so, how come we all aren&#39;t out there beating up immigrants?

You&#39;re totally naive to the situation in this country. Immigration is a massive issue in mainstream politics and the BNP are getting more and more of a foothold in political power on that basis. People are accepting their arguments and if we are not prepared to confront them when they attempt to actively build their organisation then simply debating their ideas is just not enough.

People don&#39;t become racists because they&#39;re "convinced" by the "logic", they do so, for the most part, because they are either raised that way from childhood or are drawn to the emotion of the "movement".

That&#39;s an incredibly patronising and un-Marxist view to take.

The British government consistently fails to defend public services and protect jobs; it consistently fails to address the alienation in communities brought about by low-paid jobs, low income benefit, failing NHS and education services and the strain this puts on families leading to massive break downs in communities. People have actual fears and the media and BNP are using the obvious cultural changes in Britain as a political tool; they use those fears (just like in Germany) and relate them with immigrants and hark fascist and racialist solutions as a way of solving these problems.

It has nothing to do with how they were raised or "emotions" but the oppression and alienation of capitalism and the state and our response has to be more than subjective wrangling. It has to be community based and physical.

You can&#39;t fight that kind of emotion with "no platforming".

No, but you can stop fascists from building their movements.

There&#39;s nothing wrong with class-based economic actions like striking or work stopping. But there&#39;s a vast difference between leveraging economic power for better conditions and using positional authority to pursue a personal agenda.

I don&#39;t accept that working class people and activists confronting fascists in their communities by refusing them a platform to spread their ideas is authoritarian or the pursuit of a personal agenda.

If anything it&#39;s self-defence.

Our strength is that we are espousing a theory of emancipation against oppression. We need to capitalize on that strength and not be afraid of debate, any debate.

It&#39;s not as binary as that. I&#39;m not opposed to debate, I embrace it but when an organisation that espouses ideology and politics in my community that fundamentally opposes emancipation and oppression by spreading hate and intimidation, that must be met with physical confrontation. It is the only thing they understand.

We cannot permit fascists to organise in our communities.

[PRC-UTE]

Then what should those of us who could be the targets of fascists do, LSD?

[LSD]

Originally posted by TAT+--> (TAT)When you talk about censorship, I talk about confronting their infrastructure and ability to foster support and their presence on the streets.[/b]

All of which translates to censorship. When you stop someone from expressing themselves you are, by definition, censoring them.

Now that&#39;s not nescessarily a "bad" thing, indeed a great many political strains hold that censorship is both nescessary and desirably, including many leftist ones. So there&#39;s no need for you to back away from the reality of your position: you are advocating censorship.

I can see why that would make you uncomfortable, however, since historically censorship has been an unmitigated evil. So much so, in fact, that even many of its supporters relly on euphemisms like "decency" or "protecting children" or "confronting infastructure".

In all cases, though, the underlying motivation ultimately comes from the same place. Someone doesn&#39;t like what someone else is saying and so moves to stop them from saying it.

They usually have all sorts of justifications for their behaviour, typically rooted in vague notions of "protecting" people from "bad" ideas. In your case, it&#39;s "protecting" people from the "bad" ideas of fascism.

But, of course, the reality is that ideas have never harmed anyone, it&#39;s their implementation which is dangerous; and more often than not it&#39;s the implementation which drives the matter.

National Socialist Germany killed 30 million people, but fascism didn&#39;t. And merely hearing about the "ideas" of fascism is not going to magically resurrect the Third Reich&#33;

Not, of course, that we&#39;re even talking about fascism really, since as a political force actual fascism doesn&#39;t even exist anymore.

Rather you&#39;re employing that particularly far-leftist trope of applying "fascist" to any far-right group you happen to be particularly angry at, in this case the British Nationalist Party and its supporters.

You see it on this board all the time, people writing as if the world never moved beyond 1936, as if the working class was all gruff men in overalls and the "fascists" were marching down the street.

I suppose it comes out of the fact that the 30s, in many ways, were the hight of the radical workers movement, certainly in this century anyway. Not only does that give the period a romantic attraction, but it also means that a great many classic socialist works date from around that time -- works that can&#39;t help but reflect the era in which they were written.

And it would seems that a great many people have internalized those works to such a degree that they, unconsciously or not, think that they&#39;re still fighting the Battle of Cable Street.

But you&#39;re not fighting a battle, TAT, you&#39;re not engaged in some epic war against the "forces of evil". The only "bad guys" here are a couple of misguided men and women with some stupid ideas; and you&#39;re the guy beating them up &#39;cause you disagree.

I know it&#39;s not as comforting an image as the noble crusader against "fascism", but it&#39;s a hell of a lot more accurate.

Wait a minute. I&#39;m clearly talking about grass-roots activists and working class people dealing with this issue. I&#39;m not talking about state sponsered censorship or setting up a "body" to deal with it.

Hence the terrm ad hoc. But make no mistake, it&#39;s still a censoring body no matter how "working class" its members or "grass-roots" its formation.

The fact that it wouldn&#39;t be formally organized only makes its suppression more incoherent, not any less oppressive.

I&#39;m talking about activists confronting the most reactionary and oppressive ideology on this planet by showing them they are not entitled to organise and disseminate their hateful ideas.

Sorrry, but asserting that the BNP constitutes the "most reactionary and oppressive" anything is so ridiculous as to hardly merit response.

Not only because the BNP is politically insignificant, but because even their most radical ideas are lightyears less oppressive than those of other groups around the world.

You want to see "reactionary and oppressive"? Take a trip to Saudi Arabia. I don&#39;t know if it&#39;s the worst in the world, but it&#39;s pretty damn close.

Not only does the Kingdom endorse on the worst appartheid systems in history, but it has the political power to enact it. It doesn&#39;t get much more disgusting or "hateful" than that.

And yet you&#39;re not calling for censorsing Wahabists or rabid sexists No, your obsession is "fascists". Not because they&#39;ve actually done anything of note in the past 50 years, but, I suspect, because you&#39;ve gotten caught up in this mythical "anti-fascist" crusade that so much of the left has been enchanted by.

And in the process you&#39;ve lost your objectivity on fundamental issues like free expression and human rights. Because you see the Wehrmacht hiding around every corner, you believe that unless the "fascists" are "stopped", their going to reopen the camps and ship us all off.

It&#39;s a mythic fantasy, to be sure, but that&#39;s all it is.

I&#39;m not talking about subjecting the working class to anything. I&#39;m talking about working class people refusing to allow fascists to organise.

No, you&#39;re talking about a bunch of ostensibly working-class people telling another bunch of working class people what they can and cannot listen to.

You&#39;re talking about dictating "acceptible" discourse to a mostly working class population and disallowing them from hearing anything that doesn&#39;t fall within your narrow definition of "entitled" ideas.

I&#39;ve never had an interest in hearing a "fascist" speech myself, but I&#39;ve been to a couple of Conservative ones. I happen to find them amusing.

What if some "grass roots" moralists decided tomorrow that they were too "reactionary" for me to hear?

You don&#39;t think I would be offended by that? You don&#39;t think it takes something away from me when I don&#39;t have the freedom to hear what I want?

We condemn government censorship not only because it comes from the bourgeois government, but also because it&#39;s censorship, no matter who&#39;s doing it, is an implicitly abusive act.

It strips of a piece of our individuality and humanity and reduces us to children.

Stopping this one speecjh isn&#39;t going to end the world by any means, but you&#39;re talking about censorship is a policy of mass action. And that, if manifested, has a very real chance of doing some very real harm.

Actually mate, they are a threat and are growing everyday. The BNP have councilors up and down the country and it is only a matter of time before they get elected to parliament

And if they did? Are you really so naive as to believe that bourgeois electoral politics are so important that winning a "seat" grants one immense social powers?

I have no doubt that there are members of the BNP who would like to do some truly awful things, but I also know that a couple of BNP MPs is not going to empower them to do a single one of them&#33;

People have actual fears and the media and BNP are using the obvious cultural changes in Britain as a political tool

And your "solution" is to legitimate their "arguments" by assaulting their supporters? Seems a little counterproductive to me, not to mention insanely authoritarian.

I don&#39;t accept that working class people and activists confronting fascists in their communities by refusing them a platform to spread their ideas is authoritarian or the pursuit of a personal agenda.

Of course you don&#39;t, because it&#39;s your personal agenda. And when something&#39;s that close to you, it&#39;s hard to seperate from it and examine it objectively.

But try to take a step back and examine just what it is your arguing for. You are proposing that someone&#39;s right to free expression should be entirely dependent on that person passing an ideological test.

I know, I know, "fascists" are a "threat" and in your mind that makes them "different"; but human rights aren&#39;t a tit-for-tat business. The fact that racists/fascists/whatever may have no intention of respecting our rights is irrelevent to the question of their own social enfranchisement.

Someone who actually goes around attacking other people obviously needs to be stopped and society has every right to defend itself. Buteven those people do not sacrifice their humanity merely by virtue of breaking the law.

Indeed the principle that "disruptive elements" are no longer human has long been a principle of fascist ideologies, the very ones that you&#39;re ostensibly defending us from.

Convicted murderers have proven themselves to be a danger to others, and yet even so as leftist we oppose cruel and inhumane prison sentences. We condemn the miserable condition of prisons. Not just because we don&#39;t like the state, but because we recognize that even genuinely "bad" people still retain their humanity.

Whatever your worries regarding "fascists&#39;" intent, unless they actually act to harm you or someone else, neither you nor any "grass roots" body has any right to dicate what they can say.

PRC&#045;UTE=

Then what should those of us who could be the targets of fascists do, LSD?

If a "fascist" kicks you or is about to kick you, you have every right to defend yourself from him/her.

What you do not have is the right to "beat them up" merely because you think that someday they might attack you based solely on your interpreation of their political beliefs.

&#39;Cause remember, most "fascists" these days do not label themselves as such. Sure, there are a couple thousand die hard "88" types. But most of the people you&#39;re talking about want nothing to do with Mussilini&#39;s corporatism or Hitler&#39;s varient thereof.

No, for the most part, they call themselves "conservatives" or "patriots" or some other innocuous sounding adjective. And while, to you, they may nonetheless be obvious "Nazis", your personal political assesment is not sufficient to deprive them of their right to not be beaten in the streets.

And this isn&#39;t just about social principle; I would remind you that to most people, communism is as much, if not more so, a danger than "fascism". Meaning that if you establish the precedent of politically-based assaults, it will quickly include you as well.

In the context of bourgeois society, mass assaults such as you are proposing will either lead to political chaos, and subsequently the ascension of the conservative "law and order" types, or a straightforward political crackdown.

Either way it isn&#39;t in our interests.

And all this attention being given to the politically insignificant crowd of "fascists" only helps our real enemies remain hidden and, even worse for us, portray us as hotheads and "anarchists" in the very worst sense of that word.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by LSD+December 01, 2007 01:13 am--> (LSD @ December 01, 2007 01:13 am)

TAT

When you talk about censorship, I talk about confronting their infrastructure and ability to foster support and their presence on the streets.

All of which translates to censorship. When you stop someone from expressing themselves you are, by definition, censoring them. [/b]

Fine.

I can see why that would make you uncomfortable, however, since historically censorship has been an unmitigated evil. So much so, in fact, that even many of its supporters relly on euphemisms like "decency" or "protecting children" or "confronting infastructure".

It doesn&#39;t make me "uncomfortable", I want to know that we are on the same understanding.

In all cases, though, the underlying motivation ultimately comes from the same place. Someone doesn&#39;t like what someone else is saying and so moves to stop them from saying it.

And this is the lack of your political understaind and you un-Marxist view towards the realities of the far-right.

I dislike it of course, but we have to understand the basis of that "dislike", rather than implying some emotive response to something.

I "dislike" fascism, because what it attempts to do in real-time political sense and in an endeavoring sense is to subjugate the working class; instill a regime of ultra-authoritarianism whereby all opposition and dissent is destroyed and ethnically cleanse the county.

This isn&#39;t an emotive response; it&#39;s an objective and calculated response to a political idea that is fundamentally opposed to the creation of a communist society that I daily attempt to propagate and that I, and you, believe is the most logical and justified way of organising human society.

This isn&#39;t a childish thing, as you are clearly attempting it to be displayed, it is a matter of us or them. There ideas are reactionary, much like capitalism and religion and it is only through the self-activity of the working class to destroy those ideas that they will find emancipation from oppression, exploitation and alienation.

This, I cannot belive, you disagree with.

They usually have all sorts of justifications for their behaviour, typically rooted in vague notions of "protecting" people from "bad" ideas. In your case, it&#39;s "protecting" people from the "bad" ideas of fascism.

This here is the issue. You are disassociating me from the working class. I am working class and so are the many people who come on anti-fascist actions. You attempting to portray my antifascism as an attempt to somehow "lead" the working class in an idea on their behalf. That&#39;s not only totally ignorant (although how could you understand it considering you do nothing but pontificate) it&#39;s totally unnecessary.

Other working class people oppose the BNP and it is through our activity that we engage with those people to build a community based network that refuses to allow fascists to openly organise in our communities. That may include censorship as you cal it, but this is the working class actively defending themselves against a reactionary idea.

Apparently you oppose this.

But, of course, the reality is that ideas have never harmed anyone, it&#39;s their implementation which is dangerous; and more often than not it&#39;s the implementation which drives the matter.

I&#39;m not sure that myself or the community in which I live want to wait around for the ideas of the BNP to be implemented. You are correct; ideas do not hurt people - it is their implementation and that is entirely the point.

If the BNP are able to implement their ideas we will soon learn that we are not in a good position to challenge them. This is why community based and grass-root activism to prevent their implementation of their ideas is possible in the first place.

What is the alternative?

National Socialist Germany killed 30 million people, but fascism didn&#39;t. And merely hearing about the "ideas" of fascism is not going to magically resurrect the Third Reich&#33;

What an absurd thing to say&#33; Fascism has had its fair share of killings. Of course it&#39;s not on the grand scale of Hitler&#39;s National Socialism, but it is certainly enough to know that we do not want it to become a reality.

Not, of course, that we&#39;re even talking about fascism really, since as a political force actual fascism doesn&#39;t even exist anymore.

Are we talking about Canada or in Britain? In Britain it certainly does exist and it exists in the form of the BNP and other political organisations that are making gains in terms of infrastructure. Eddie Morrison of the BPP has started standing candidates for local council. This is far more worrying that the BNP as the BPP are openly fascist.

Rather you&#39;re employing that particularly far-leftist trope of applying "fascist" to any far-right group you happen to be particularly angry at, in this case the British Nationalist Party and its supporters.

The BNP was exposed by the BBC to openly support fascist politics including the extermination of the Jews.

It&#39;s totally bonkers to peddle the line that the BNP are not fascists&#33; That is exactly what they are. They may attempt to brandish themselves as being a respectable right of the tories political party, but the reality is that they are a fascist organisation with links to groups like C18, Screwdriver and the National Socialist Movement - all of which have been exposed and proven by investigative journalism.

But you&#39;re not fighting a battle, TAT, you&#39;re not engaged in some epic war against the "forces of evil". The only "bad guys" here are a couple of misguided men and women with some stupid ideas; and you&#39;re the guy beating them up &#39;cause you disagree.

I find it rather infuriating a Canadian living in Canada telling me the situation in a country 4,000 miles away.

Erm, actually, the BNP are not just a group of "misguided" men and women, they are highly organised political organisation with institutionalised power.

Please be aware of what you&#39;re talking about.

I know it&#39;s not as comforting an image as the noble crusader against "fascism", but it&#39;s a hell of a lot more accurate.

Regardless of your arrogant patronising attitude, the fact is you&#39;re utterly ignorant and totally incorrent.

The fact that it wouldn&#39;t be formally organized only makes its suppression more incoherent, not any less oppressive.

Well let it be known then that I am totally in favour of the working class (ad hoc) suppressing fascists.

I&#39;m talking about activists confronting the most reactionary and oppressive ideology on this planet by showing them they are not entitled to organise and disseminate their hateful ideas.

Sorrry, but asserting that the BNP constitutes the "most reactionary and oppressive" anything is so ridiculous as to hardly merit response.

Then you should come to Dagenham and Burnley then.

Not only because the BNP is politically insignificant,

Not only is that incorrect, but it&#39;s very dangerous to propagate such a position. They aren&#39;t insignificant; they are a political party that are presented in local councils up and down the country. It is only a matter of time before they are represented in Parliament and if we do not confront them they will get there much easier.

even their most radical ideas are lightyears less oppressive than those of other groups around the world.

Any political activist in this country knows that their "take it easy", respectable veneer is total lie (except you it seems) The BNP have adopted this tactic of being as polite, as nice and as respectable as possible, but the reality is much different.

One of its leading activists was a convicted bomber who blew up a school in South Africa. Three of its leading organisers have charges of racial violence; Nick Griffins bodyguard was implicated in the Admircal Duncan bombing and David Copeland was a member of the BNP when it happened who was later commended publically by Sid Williamson.

Your understanding of the BNP is extremely naive. Actually, it&#39;s just ignorant.

You want to see "reactionary and oppressive"? Take a trip to Saudi Arabia. I don&#39;t know if it&#39;s the worst in the world, but it&#39;s pretty damn close.

I don&#39;t think anyone has taken an either/or position here. I happen to live in Britain, not Saudi Arabia; so as much as SA is a reactionary and oppressive nation, the BNP are a reactionary and oppressive organisation - which was my point...

And yet you&#39;re not calling for censorsing Wahabists or rabid sexists No, your obsession is "fascists". Not because they&#39;ve actually done anything of note in the past 50 years, but, I suspect, because you&#39;ve gotten caught up in this mythical "anti-fascist" crusade that so much of the left has been enchanted by.

What about the Brixton and soho bombings? What about the racial attacks in Bradford?

I am happy to discuss the possibility of attacking Islamist. They pose a threat to the working class and as an anti-theist I would be more than happy to discuss politica action against such that defend the July bombings or the implementation of Sharia law in Britain.

Unfortunately, at the moment, there isn&#39;t room for that discussion and perhaps that will change, but in the mean time we should be focusing on the threat of the far-right who, unlike Islamists, have already gained a political foothold.

It&#39;s a mythic fantasy, to be sure, but that&#39;s all it is.

So, essentially what you&#39;re arguing is that the BNP, regardless of their exposed rhetoric and connections with Nazism, they aren&#39;t really as bad as they seem and we should all stop overreacting?

I&#39;m not talking about subjecting the working class to anything. I&#39;m talking about working class people refusing to allow fascists to organise.

No, you&#39;re talking about a bunch of ostensibly working-class people telling another bunch of working class people what they can and cannot listen to.

It seems as if you&#39;re not paying attention. It&#39;s typical with academics.

Look, I&#39;m not telling anyone what they can and cannot listen to. What I am, and other working class activists are doing, is preventing the far right from organising in our communiities. We are happy to engage in a debate with other working class people in our communities, but when fascists come here and attempt to propagate their racialist and hateful ideas we are justified in attempting to prevent that. Just as we are justified in preventing capitalists from exploiting our communities to create profit for themselves...Or are you going to start making apologies for them too?

You&#39;re talking about dictating "acceptible" discourse to a mostly working class population and disallowing them from hearing anything that doesn&#39;t fall within your narrow definition of "entitled" ideas.

Which is wrong. The ideas are already out there. The issues of immigration and economic/cultural/social mismanagement already exist in our society. We aren&#39;t closing off discussion - in order to do that we would have to stop everyone from thinking and speaking.

What I am advocating is that, regardless of those debates, we actively stop fascists like the BNP - and they are fascists, as much as they may have bedazzeled you into thinking the contrary - from organising in our communities.

What if some "grass roots" moralists decided tomorrow that they were too "reactionary" for me to hear?

Interesting. You haven&#39;t used the word "moral" in this argument up until now and the fact you have underlies a core anti-Marxist position that you hold.

It&#39;s about what is true. The BNP tell us that the working class should not organise into unions because they damage the economy. They tell us that jobs are being taken because immigrants are stealing them all. They are telling us that our NHS is being destroyed because it is being overloaded by people with dark skin. They are telling us that Muslims are evil because they want to kill us all.

This isn&#39;t about morality; this is about the economic and political realities of modern Britain and the BNP are telling lies to people in order to gain control. They are playing on actual fears in order to win political contests.

It&#39;s not moral to accept that the BNP are telling lies in order to gain political control. Erm, it&#39;s a fact.

You don&#39;t think I would be offended by that? You don&#39;t think it takes something away from me when I don&#39;t have the freedom to hear what I want?

If you want to go and hear the BNP tell you that Asians are the reason we don&#39;t have any jobs, you go to a BNP meeting...

We condemn government censorship not only because it comes from the bourgeois government, but also because it&#39;s censorship, no matter who&#39;s doing it, is an implicitly abusive act.

I suppose one view of preventing the BNP from gaining a political foothold could be viewed as abusive.

It&#39;s interesting that you used the word moral as an argument against censorship of fascists when you argue yourself the "rights" to hear fascist arguments.

It strips of a piece of our individuality and humanity and reduces us to children.

I am not interested in stopping the ideas of fascists from being discussed, I am interested in stopping fascists the opportunities to organise those ideas into a political battle.

Look, if that&#39;s how you want to view it that&#39;s fine. You could look beyond that at the economic and political ramifications of preventing fascists from speaking and realise that battling reactionary ideas like this is a part of striving for a communist society.

And if they did? Are you really so naive as to believe that bourgeois electoral politics are so important that winning a "seat" grants one immense social powers?

That&#39;s ridiculous&#33; Of course winning seats in parliament grant immense social powers...That&#39;s how governments are able to exact their control...

Clearly you have no grasp of bourgeois politics. If the BNP win 300+ seats, they are able to form a government.

I have no doubt that there are members of the BNP who would like to do some truly awful things, but I also know that a couple of BNP MPs is not going to empower them to do a single one of them&#33;

Your implication that we should therefore do nothing is incredibly reactionary. If the BNP win two seats without opposition they are perfectly able to then go on a win two more...and two more...and two more...

Your argument is very confusing. You are essentially saying we should do nothing to prevent this from happening.

I don&#39;t accept that working class people and activists confronting fascists in their communities by refusing them a platform to spread their ideas is authoritarian or the pursuit of a personal agenda.

Of course you don&#39;t, because it&#39;s your personal agenda. And when something&#39;s that close to you, it&#39;s hard to seperate from it and examine it objectively.

You&#39;re very good at being patronising.

This isn&#39;t about personal taste. It&#39;s about economic and political struggle.

But try to take a step back and examine just what it is your arguing for. You are proposing that someone&#39;s right to free expression should be entirely dependent on that person passing an ideological test.

Well, yes, I suppose I am. I am saying that any person or organisation that actively seeks to repress, exploit and alienate the working class must be opposed at every level.

I know, I know, "fascists" are a "threat" and in your mind that makes them "different"; but human rights aren&#39;t a tit-for-tat business. The fact that racists/fascists/whatever may have no intention of respecting our rights is irrelevent to the question of their own social enfranchisement.

In your liberal world perhaps but in the reality of political struggle it is necessary to defend ourselves from reactionary ideas and organisation. This idea must be propagated as a political tool and used as an argument within communities as a tactic.

----

In conclusion it seems to me that you are arguing a very liberal agenda and it bares no reality on the revolutionary struggle of the working class. Indeed, it argues the opposite. The concept of "rights" is a bogus one. "Rights" don&#39;t exist. We don&#39;t have "rights" unless we give ourselves "rights" and this means that we can accept, reject, modify and ignore entirely different levels of "rights".

There may be, in your "enlightenment" thinking some presupposed concepts of "humanity" and "rights", but the reality is, those concepts are devoid from the realities of struggling for a communist society. In fact, they&#39;re antithetical to them.

Fascists do not have a "right" to be fascists. That is simply a fact.

[LSD]

I "dislike" fascism, because what it attempts to do in real-time political sense and in an endeavoring sense is to subjugate the working class; instill a regime of ultra-authoritarianism whereby all opposition and dissent is destroyed and ethnically cleanse the county.

I don&#39;t doubt that, and I never suggested that your dislike of the BNP, and other "fascists", was anything but justified.

But the motivating factor here is still your dislike.

Just like it is for everyone who advocates censorship. &#39;Cause if you liked the ideas, you wouldn&#39;t want to suppress them.

I&#39;m stressing your motivations not to denigrate or minimize them, but to emphasize the point that, right or wrong, you are still asserting your own personal judgements onto the rest of society. And that in doing so, you are stripping them of their right to make their own decision in terms of what they hear, or read, or think.

My interest here is not primarily in the rights of the "fascists", although that&#39;s certainly at issue, but more critically the rights of everyone else to not have their personal choices dictated to them.

I seriously doubt that there&#39;s anything useful that&#39;s going to come out of the "fascist" movement, in Britain or anywhere else. But I am not so arrogant as to believe that I have the right to unilaterally close off that avenue of discussion.

Nor do I so distrust the working class that believe it must be shielded from the "evils" of fascist "arguments".

This isn&#39;t an emotive response; it&#39;s an objective and calculated response to a political idea that is fundamentally opposed to the creation of a communist society that I daily attempt to propagate and that I, and you, believe is the most logical and justified way of organising human society.

Most political ideas these days are fundamentally opposed to communism. We are, after all, both living in ardently capitalist societies.

Does that mean that we should attempt to suppress all non-communist expressions? That seems like a rather daunting, not to mention insane, notion. And I highly doubt that you&#39;d spport such a plan.

And yet that&#39;s the inevitable conclusion of your above "calculation". Any ideas "fundamentally opposed to the creation of a communist society" should be censored so as to not hurt the cause of communism.

And I think we both know what lies down that road.

This here is the issue. You are disassociating me from the working class. I am working class and so are the many people who come on anti-fascist actions. You attempting to portray my antifascism as an attempt to somehow "lead" the working class in an idea on their behalf.

You may be working class, but you are not the working class and you have no right to act on "its behalf".

This is the trap into which so many revolutionary groups have fallen into historically. They&#39;re so eager to help the working class that they start to suppress it "for its own good".

It&#39;s what happened in Russia, it&#39;s what&#39;s happening in Cuba, and to a far lesser extent it&#39;s what "no platforming" ultimately comes down to.

The ideas of "fascism" are so abhorrent to you, so logically and rationally against the cause you agitate for, that you cannot resist the urge to strike it with every weapon you&#39;ve got.

When someone is endeavouring to destroy everything you believe in, fighting back is a natural reaction. Unfortunately, it&#39;s also a highly dangerous one since it tends to result in eminently authoritarian responses.

The Bolsheviks faced a similar problem, they&#39;re dream of a socialist future was being challenged by all sorts of forces and their hold on power was tenuous at best. Unless they acted to suppress these counterrevolutionary agents, the working class would be crushed by the ressuregent international bourgeoisie.

So they stiffled dissent, locked up anarchists, forbid any political or social challenge to their iron grip on power. And they did it because they honestly believed, at least at the begining, that it&#39;s what the working class had to do to survive.

Were they right? I don&#39;t think so, and I don&#39;t think you do either. But the motivation was no different from yours.

And in the end, that&#39;s the point. Working class consciousness isn&#39;t enough, it needs to be coupled with a respect for the class as whole. It needs to be tempered with an understanding that power must flow from the masses, not from any particular subset, not matter if it calls itself a "vanguard" or "grass-roots".

If the BNP are able to implement their ideas we will soon learn that we are not in a good position to challenge them.

For the BNP to implement their ideas, they would have to gain real political power, something that doesn&#39;t appear likely in the forseeable future.

You seem to be arguing, however, that the ascension of the BNP is not only concievable but for some reason inevitable&#33; You speak as if it were on the cusp of dominance, when from what I can tell anyway, it hasn&#39;t even elected a single national politician.

But insofar as what can be done now to fight a hypothetical BNP rise, it seems to me that there&#39;s a great deal.

I don&#39;t think that formalized "debates" are likely to do anything, no one really bothers with those things, but defeating the BNP&#39;s ideas seems a much more productive tactic than busting up meetings or banning speeches.

Perhaps even more useful might be exposing the "underbelly" of organizations like this. For my part, I had no idea that this party was linked with the racist/fascist groups you mentioned.

Obviously that&#39;s largely because I&#39;m, as you say, 4000 miles away. But I would suspect that many people in Britain probably don&#39;t know those things either. And there&#39;s a probably a whole lot more that neither of us know&#33;

Getting that stuff out there would almost certainly be far more devastating to far-right recruitment than brute force and ad hoc suppression.

Not to mention that it doesn&#39;t deprive people of their right to listen to bullshit, it just clues them in on just what they&#39;re listening to.

In other words it treats the working class like adults, as intelligent rational people capable of making an informed choice; not rambunctious children who need to be protected from "bad ideas".

It&#39;s totally bonkers to peddle the line that the BNP are not fascists&#33; That is exactly what they are. They may attempt to brandish themselves as being a respectable right of the tories political party, but the reality is that they are a fascist organisation with links to groups like C18, Screwdriver and the National Socialist Movement - all of which have been exposed and proven by investigative journalism.

There may well be fascist elements within these parties, but I find it hard to believe that that&#39;s their core ideology. More relevently, I find it hard to believe that their supporters are aware of all this and support them anyway.

And if the BNP really is a radically fascist as you suggest, it only makes it less likely that they&#39;ll ever attain real political power. That&#39;s a good thing, obviously, but it also means that attacking them probably isn&#39;t the most important fight to be had right now.

But, to be honest, the question of whether or not they are actually "fascist" isn&#39;t really relevent to this discussion since I would oppose their censorship regardless.

I will concede, however, that you may indeed be correct and there are legimate fascists vying for power in the UK. Obviously you know this issue far better than I do.

I find it rather infuriating a Canadian living in Canada telling me the situation in a country 4,000 miles away.

I can&#39;t really argue with that.

You certainly know the specifics here much better than I do, but then I&#39;m not really arguing on the specifics. My position would be the same regardless of the group in question or what they believed in.

But I&#39;m sorry if I came across as overly authoritative on a subject you, quite rightly point out, I know not that much about.

Not only is that incorrect, but it&#39;s very dangerous to propagate such a position. They aren&#39;t insignificant; they are a political party that are presented in local councils up and down the country. It is only a matter of time before they are represented in Parliament and if we do not confront them they will get there much easier.

Who said anything about not confronting&#33;

Respecting free speech doesn&#39;t mean accepting rightist bullshit, it just means refraining from beating people up &#39;cause you don&#39;t like their ideas.

So, essentially what you&#39;re arguing is that the BNP, regardless of their exposed rhetoric and connections with Nazism, they aren&#39;t really as bad as they seem and we should all stop overreacting?

No, what I&#39;m arguing is that regardless of their rhetoric and connections, they still have a right to speak and the rest of us still have a right to listen. And that, yes, you&#39;re overreacting in equating the BNP to "fascists" on the cusp of power, or in comparing your opposition to them as a "life or death struggle".

I think that it&#39;s a romantic exageration of the situation, fed from particularly leftist nostalgia for the great anti-fascist battles of the 30s and 40s.

That doesn&#39;t mean that groups like the BNP shouldn&#39;t be opposed, of course, just that all this grandiose "anti-fascist" language comes across as somewhat empty.

Look, I&#39;m not telling anyone what they can and cannot listen to. What I am, and other working class activists are doing, is preventing the far right from organising in our communiities.

And how is that not limiting what people can listen to? Unless you&#39;re using a definition for "preventing" radically different from the one found in the dictionary, when you "prevent" a person from speaking you make it impossible for anyone to hear him.

Indeed, this thread was started because of a speech. Someone was invited to speak at a University, ironically enough on free speech, and people protested. Those in the "no platform" camp demanded that the speech not be permitted.

Now, did that Oxford speech constitute "organizing in [your] communities"? &#39;Cause if so, you&#39;re expanding that phrase to mean any expression of "fascism".

Not to mention, by any definition, "telling [people] what they can and cannot listen to"&#33; Specifically, a bunch of University students who, let&#39;s be honest, were pretty unlikely to become ardent fascists because of the experience.

They may, however, have learned something useful from the experience. Maybe something about the far-right in Britan, maybe something about free speech, maybe something completely tangential. I don&#39;t know.

It&#39;s certainly possible that it would be a complete waste of an time, of course, but if the speech had been prevented we&#39;d never know. Those students (and anyone else in attendance) would have been robbed of a potentially valuable experience.

The BNP, meanwhile, would have rolled happily along since speaking at Oxford was hardly the cornerstone of their electoral plan, but I&#39;m sure they&#39;d enjoy the publicity of being "oppressed" by evil leftist forces.

Again, I have no problem with fighting fascists&#39; recruitment tactics, with responding to their nonsense, with exposing their nature; but when you tell me that I can&#39;t listen to that nonsense, that I&#39;m so stupid as to be unable to make the right choice for myself, you strip a little bit of my humanity from me.

You put yourself in the position of my political "vanguard", here to stear me from "reaction" and guide me to "paradise".

And I know you don&#39;t see it that way, and in your mind it&#39;s just self-defence plain and simple, but surely at some level you must realize that there is something inherently destructive in dictating, no matter how ad hoc, what is and is not "acceptable" discourse.

Because there is something undavoidably corrosive about any body violently enforcing its vision of who is and who is not "entitled" to speak. And I just can&#39;t imagine that someone so opposed to enforced authority can&#39;t see that.

when fascists come here and attempt to propagate their racialist and hateful ideas we are justified in attempting to prevent that. Just as we are justified in preventing capitalists from exploiting our communities to create profit for themselves

How can you possibly equate expressing rotten ideas with actually physically exploiting people?

Fascists want to hurt a lot of people, but them telling you that doesn&#39;t a hurt a single one. Just like a capitalist arguing on behalf of capitalism is in and of itself a benign act.

It&#39;s not the ideas of capitalist that are the problem, it&#39;s what its implementation practically means. And so while the ideas of capitalism should not be suppressed, the means by which it actually hurts people should and must be.

I really don&#39;t know why I have to explain that distinction. I guess I just assumed that everyone understood that words and actions are two entirely seperate things.

I should have known better though, I suppose. Historically speaking, there&#39;s a long tradition on the left of treating words as if they were implements of destruction. I believe it was Comrade Stalin himself who popularized the notion that ideas are "like guns".

Certainly Comrade Mao took great strides forward in keeping the dangerous voices of "reaction" from infecting the minds of the proletariat. He was a tad more organized than you, obviously, but then he had somewhat more to work with.

It must be heartwarming, though, to know that you walk in the path of revolutionary giants, to be in such illustrious communist company.

It&#39;s truly inspiring.

If you want to go and hear the BNP tell you that Asians are the reason we don&#39;t have any jobs, you go to a BNP meeting...

Can I, though? A meeting sounds an awful lot like a "platform" and I thought your whole position was to say "no" to that sort of thing.

I know you don&#39;t have the power to stop them, but are you&#39;re saying if it were up to you, you&#39;d let the BNP hold public meetings? &#39;Cause you sure don&#39;t want them speaking at Universities&#33;

The BNP tell us that the working class should not organise into unions because they damage the economy. They tell us that jobs are being taken because immigrants are stealing them all. They are telling us that our NHS is being destroyed because it is being overloaded by people with dark skin. They are telling us that Muslims are evil because they want to kill us all.

Take away the third one, and that sounds like the platform of most conservative parties these days, including the Republicans in the US, or the fucking ADQ here in Quebec.

Again, there may well be fascist elements at work behind the scenes, but that just sounds like typical rightist bourgeois political crap. And I don&#39;t see why it cannot be responded to as such.

More to the point, I don&#39;t see what it poses such an immense danger that it supercedes every other interest or that we should tolerate blatant suppression and censorship.

For decades, the left has been agitating for the rights of the people to say and hear whatever they want, without fear or reprisals from the state or anyone else. If you really want to reverse that tide, you need to provide something a little stronger than some bullshit rhetoric from third-tier politicians.

Clearly you have no grasp of bourgeois politics. If the BNP win 300+ seats, they are able to form a government.

Obviously, but what&#39;s the chance of that happening, really? As you say, they haven&#39;t even one a single seat, let alone three hundred.

The bourgeoisie is no longer interested in what fascism has to offer, that avenue was exhausted fifty years ago. Oh sure, it may still occupy the fringes of political dialogue, but the capitalists learned a long time ago that, in the end, it just isn&#39;t profitable.

Especially when they&#39;re doing so well for themselves as it stands&#33;

No, support for groups like the BNP is pretty much coming from the bottom and lower middle of society. People who feel aliented and marginalized from society, who are frightened of social changes they see around them.

That kind of emotional base can help probel fringe parties to moderate infamy, but it&#39;s never going to overcome the bourgeois stranglehold on the political process.

That doesn&#39;t mean that fringe-right groups shouldn&#39;t be opposed, mind you, but it does mean you can probably relax somewhat on your apocalyptic predicionts of doom.

More importantly, it means that the rights of these "fascists" can be safely respected without the world ending. As, indeed, is usually the case.

The concept of "rights" is a bogus one. "Rights" don&#39;t exist. We don&#39;t have "rights" unless we give ourselves "rights" and this means that we can accept, reject, modify and ignore entirely different levels of "rights".

Rights don&#39;t exist in some abstract univeral sense, obviously, but they certainly do in terms of human societal relations.

You have the right not to be killed. You may not like the use of the word "right" in that sentence, but I seriously doubt you disagree with the sentiment. Rather I would suepct that you&#39;d strongly object to my "ignoring entirely" that particular "right".

That&#39;s self-prevervation, fundamentally. But your exectation not only that I won&#39;t kill you, but that if I were to someone would attempt to stop me, stems from something entirely else.

It comes out of your understanding that society has a duty to stop murder, that as a member of society you are owed certain protections and that these protections exist regardless of badly I may want to kill you.

That&#39;s what rights are about, not divine relevation, but the rational maximization of collective individual interests.

One of those interests is, rather obviously, not being dead. But another one, almost as important, is self-determination. The ability to live ones life as one wants, and not as others dicate.

Clearly that&#39;s not a right which is being particularly well-enforced under present socio-economic conditions -- although it&#39;s certainly better protected now than it was at virtually any other point in history.

Indeed, one of the chief reasons for pursuing communism is to ameliorate this situation and enact an social framework which does maxmiially bennefit its members.

That&#39;s what makes communism, as you say, "the most logical and justified way of organising human society", it&#39;s respect for human rights.

And, like it or not, one of those rights, one of those fundamental human interests which society has a foundational duty to serve, is the right to speak, regardless of how many people may not particularly like what you have to say.

No one has to the right to force speech on anyone else, but neither do they have the right to force silence.

But it isn&#39;t the "right" itself that matters, it&#39;s what the deprivation of that right entails. It&#39;s what it means for the person on the loosing side of that deprivation, what it takes away from them when they are no longer able to make their own choices.

In the end, "rights" are just a convenient short-hand for the complex interpersonal network that is human society, and the reciprocal obligations that exist therein.

Your duty to respect fascists&#39; free speech exists for the same reason as your duty to respect their life, not because you like it but because you need it, because the alternative means that you don&#39;t have those rights either.

Fascists do not have a "right" to be fascists. That is simply a fact.

Something isn&#39;t a fact because you assert it to be so, it has to be objectively true; and there is nothing true in your nonsense claim that people don&#39;t have the right to think whatever the fuck they want.

You really need to step back and look at what you&#39;re arguing here. You are stripping "fascists" (a dangerously loose term these days) of their humanity, and declaring that not only do they not have a right to speak fascism, they don&#39;t have a right to think fascism.

It&#39;s astonishing how quickly "no platform" turns into "re-education".

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by LSD@December 01, 2007 08:07 am
But the motivating factor here is still your dislike.

Just like it is for everyone who advocates censorship. &#39;Cause if you liked the ideas, you wouldn&#39;t want to suppress them.

There are many things in society that a communist would "dislike" yet, as you pointed out, I am not exercising no-platform tactics against them.

The reason for that is the motivation I have towards fascists is not because of my dislike for them, it is because quantitively, their rise into power means the end of the working class movement and the deaths of thousands of people.

Yes, of course I "dislike" that, but this isn&#39;t a personal thing it&#39;s a political one. Do you honestly think I would get up at 7am in the morning to go and confront the BNP if this was personal? Why on earth would I do that?

Just like it is for everyone who advocates censorship. &#39;Cause if you liked the ideas, you wouldn&#39;t want to suppress them.

I dislike the ideas propositioned by the Green Party, but I don&#39;t attempt to stop them from organising. I also don&#39;t like the ideas of the Socialist Party or the Quakers or the Tories for that matter.

I dislike a lot of ideas, but my "censorship" as you call it is directly only against fascists because to entitle them to a platform is far more politically dangerous than the Socialist Party or the Tories.

I&#39;m stressing your motivations not to denigrate or minimize them, but to emphasize the point that, right or wrong, you are still asserting your own personal judgements onto the rest of society.

I don&#39;t accept that it is a "personal judgment" that the far-right are fundamental political enemies and must be prevented from ascending into power.

And that in doing so, you are stripping them of their right to make their own decision in terms of what they hear, or read, or think.

I presume when you say "them" you mean working class people?

My interest here is not primarily in the rights of the "fascists", although that&#39;s certainly at issue, but more critically the rights of everyone else to not have their personal choices dictated to them.

This is a political issue and it requires practical applications. If fascists want to organise then they must accept the opposition. That goes for anyone, whether it is a BNP organiser or someone flirting with the ideas of the BNP.

Look, I am not stopping people from being a fascist. I am stopping fascists from having a presence in our streets.

I seriously doubt that there&#39;s anything useful that&#39;s going to come out of the "fascist" movement, in Britain or anywhere else.

Why?

But I am not so arrogant as to believe that I have the right to unilaterally close off that avenue of discussion.

What discussion is being closed off? How is me stopping the BNP from selling newspapers on the streets closing off debate?

Nor do I so distrust the working class that believe it must be shielded from the "evils" of fascist "arguments".

This isn&#39;t about trusting my fellow workers. Debating issues like immigration or indeed fascism must and does take place in communities and work places. But as an activist and an anarchist it is totally justified for me to form an opposition to organised fascism.

Most political ideas these days are fundamentally opposed to communism. We are, after all, both living in ardently capitalist societies.

Yes, but most of them don&#39;t actively seek to smash the working class movement and murder communists, Jews, black people, gay people and form a strong authoritarian government and reconstruct society based on race.

Does that mean that we should attempt to suppress all non-communist expressions?

Absolutely not, but I&#39;m talking about fascism here.

And yet that&#39;s the inevitable conclusion of your above "calculation". Any ideas "fundamentally opposed to the creation of a communist society" should be censored so as to not hurt the cause of communism.

That&#39;s a bit of a leap there. I didn&#39;t say "any" idea did I? I&#39;m talking about fascism.

This here is the issue. You are disassociating me from the working class. I am working class and so are the many people who come on anti-fascist actions. You attempting to portray my antifascism as an attempt to somehow "lead" the working class in an idea on their behalf.

You may be working class, but you are not the working class and you have no right to act on "its behalf".

I gave that opinion to you

This is the trap into which so many revolutionary groups have fallen into historically. They&#39;re so eager to help the working class that they start to suppress it "for its own good".

I&#39;m not trying to "help" working class people, I&#39;m actively opposed to fascism.

This is the problem with people who do nothing but study and pontificate about class struggle. You use your logic and your ability to argue to reduce everything down to it&#39;s conclusion but you fail to really grasp the reality of activism.

This is a struggle to defend our class. It is a struggle to stop being exploited and oppressed. We want working class people to be conscious and fighting the causes of these things, don&#39;t we?

I&#39;m working class and I am conscious and I am attempting to defend my class from exploitation and oppression. I&#39;m not some academic who sits on his arse getting lots of degree&#39;s so that he can argue about class struggle theoretical - I&#39;m involved in the reality of it and this is the reality.

This is class struggle&#33;

It&#39;s what happened in Russia, it&#39;s what&#39;s happening in Cuba, and to a far lesser extent it&#39;s what "no platforming" ultimately comes down to.

Then I suppose unless the entire working class is involved in class struggle any attempt to oppose reactionary ideas, capital, the state etc is an attempt to "lead" them on their "behalf".

Clearly that&#39;s just nonsense. How can we create struggle if we can&#39;t struggle. How can we, as a class, change society if we are just going to shouted down for some fear of "leading" the working class on their "behalf".

I&#39;m sorry that I&#39;m a working class activist, and I&#39;m sorry that I&#39;m attempting to defend my class and struggle for a better society...Is that better?

When someone is endeavouring to destroy everything you believe in, fighting back is a natural reaction. Unfortunately, it&#39;s also a highly dangerous one since it tends to result in eminently authoritarian responses.

Then I suppose we should all wait until capitalism evolves into a communist society.

Were they right? I don&#39;t think so, and I don&#39;t think you do either. But the motivation was no different from yours.

The motivation are a little similar but the realities that this motivation create are completely different.

Locking up anarchists and other revolutionaries is totally ridiculous as discourse must exist among the left to attempt to build a future society. We are, essentially, on the same side.

Fighting fascists so they can&#39;t organise is something very different and you need to make that distinction.

You seem to be arguing, however, that the ascension of the BNP is not only concievable but for some reason inevitable&#33; You speak as if it were on the cusp of dominance, when from what I can tell anyway, it hasn&#39;t even elected a single national politician.

In the last 10 years they have been able to consolidate their political positions, deliver themselves as a real alternative and have gained councillors up and down the country.

In ten more years time, unopposed, where might they be? Perhaps lead several councils? Dagenham and Barnsley? They could, in twenty years have a sizable minority in Westminster.

They are organised and they are growing. Do you want to find out?

I don&#39;t think that formalized "debates" are likely to do anything, no one really bothers with those things, but defeating the BNP&#39;s ideas seems a much more productive tactic than busting up meetings or banning speeches.

Firstly, I don&#39;t support UAF&#39;s attempts to get Oxford University to cancel the debate. I think it was far better for activists to storm the meeting and disrupt it.

Secondly, antifa is attempting to defeat the BNP&#39;s ideas in communities. This isn&#39;t an either or situation.

There may well be fascist elements within these parties, but I find it hard to believe that that&#39;s their core ideology.

Well you should believe it. THey have been exposed as such on undercover BBC documentary where Nick Griffin was recorded idolising Hitler and talking about forced repatriation.

Nick Griffin was a member of the National Front and advocated race wars. Members of it&#39;s organisation openly support Nazism and it&#39;s leadership have, collectively, dozens of violent offences. The guy in charge of the website is a convicted bomber.

More relevently, I find it hard to believe that their supporters are aware of all this and support them anyway.

No, the supporters are not aware of this. The BNP leadership lie through their back teeths to present themselves to working class people.

----

I don&#39;t have time to respond to the rest, but hopefully I&#39;ve covered key points.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by LSD+December 01, 2007 12:13 am--> (LSD &#064; December 01, 2007 12:13 am)

PRC&#045;UTE=

Then what should those of us who could be the targets of fascists do, LSD?

If a "fascist" kicks you or is about to kick you, you have every right to defend yourself from him/her.

What you do not have is the right to "beat them up" merely because you think that someday they might attack you based solely on your interpreation of their political beliefs.

&#39;Cause remember, most "fascists" these days do not label themselves as such. Sure, there are a couple thousand die hard "88" types. But most of the people you&#39;re talking about want nothing to do with Mussilini&#39;s corporatism or Hitler&#39;s varient thereof.

No, for the most part, they call themselves "conservatives" or "patriots" or some other innocuous sounding adjective. And while, to you, they may nonetheless be obvious "Nazis", your personal political assesment is not sufficient to deprive them of their right to not be beaten in the streets.

And this isn&#39;t just about social principle; I would remind you that to most people, communism is as much, if not more so, a danger than "fascism". Meaning that if you establish the precedent of politically-based assaults, it will quickly include you as well.

In the context of bourgeois society, mass assaults such as you are proposing will either lead to political chaos, and subsequently the ascension of the conservative "law and order" types, or a straightforward political crackdown.

Either way it isn&#39;t in our interests.

And all this attention being given to the politically insignificant crowd of "fascists" only helps our real enemies remain hidden and, even worse for us, portray us as hotheads and "anarchists" in the very worst sense of that word. [/b]

You make a few valid points, but the problem I have is how abstract your responce is. I was really looking for something a little more real world or experienced, and I find this reply a bit inadequate. I know from experience that the best defence is a good offensive, like Gaelic Football. They&#39;re not going to hit you if they know youll hit him back harder.

The exeperience of a lot of immigrants I&#39;ve known to Britain, including my own family was harrassment and assaults for being Irish. At Bloody Sunday comm&#39;s it used to be common for loyalist types and fascists to come out and give the seig heil at their counter demos.

Fortunatley comrades in Red Action often stewarded the marches and helped defend them.

I think those like our comrades at the Oxford protest are making it harder for them to operate, at the very least they put them on the defense, probably saving the lives of a lot of innocent people on the fascist hit list by doing so.

Another problem with your analysis is that it&#39;s so superficial. We&#39;re not concerned with specific polity of fascists, or what banner they are under. What counts is a class marxian analysis taht you seem to lack on this topic.