"When she speaks out about antisemitism, people should listen and act rather than condemn her." So says Luciana Berger of Margaret Hodge who, you will recall, called Jeremy Corbyn a "fucking anti-semite and a racist" in the Commons last night. She was careful to say these words in the chamber and does not have the guts to repeat them outside of it. Because she knows they are not true and are, in fact, defamatory. Rightly action is due to be taken against Hodge under PLP rules and there are grounds for a complaint of bringing the party into disrepute as well. I am also of the view this was a stunt, a put up job to drive anti-semitism up the news agenda while the media are, for the moment, more interested in Tory divisions. If any of this has to do with the resumption of Labour lead in the polls is something for readers to judge.
At the centre of the dispute is the Labour Party's definition of anti-semitism and its refusal to adopt wholesale the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition. And the party is right not to do so for two very good reasons. It counts "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor" as an example of anti-semitic behaviour, as well as "Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation." While the definition notes that "overall context" matters, having seen how cheerleaders of successive Israeli governments have worked to characterise and discredit opposition to its actions, such would no doubt be used to try and close down legitimate and justified criticism.
For example, thanks to conquest and colonisation Israeli Jews are a fact of life, and like any other national grouping are entitled to the right of self-determination. However, that does not for one single moment hide the fact that Israel was founded as and remains a colonial project defined explicitly in ethno-nationalist terms (a self-designation almost uniquely shared with Japan). Israel discriminates against its minority Arab citizens, illegally annexes occupied land, steals water resources and, under the guise of self-defence, pursues military incursions against its neighbours, up to and including massacres of unarmed protesters. It is a racist state because it is formally racist, and its actions are racist. The exercise of national self-determination does not give any nation carte blanche to ride roughshod over the rights of others, be it Israel, the US, China or whoever. Claiming that your nation possesses such a right because your neighbours are inferior and barbarous is the very epitome of racist politics.
Neither is there any question of holding Israel to a higher standard than other liberal democracies. The United States is regularly berated, and rightfully so, for its "police actions", extra-judicial killings and meddling in other countries' affairs. French secularism and its particular model of republican citizenship is also criticised and attacked for the exclusion and marginalisation of migrants of North African descent, providing politicians scapegoats aplenty. And then there is the UK, which once faced an insurgency that came very near to wiping out the Thatcher government in the 1984 Brighton bombing. This last example is an instructive one because for all the brutalities and injustices of the low intensity war in Ireland, the British state did not flatten the Bogside with bombing runs and heavy artillery, it did not bulldoze houses belonging to the families of IRA volunteers, systematically assassinate leading figures in the provisionals and Sinn Fein, deploy white phosphorous, nor launch shock-and-awe punitive expeditions over the border. Criticising Israel for its incessant attacks on Gaza is not holding them to a higher standard, but a matter of taking it to task for violating the standards expected from a democratic country as a matter of course.
These are not anti-semitic arguments. Nowhere can the whiff of anti-Jewish racism be found. But what the IHRA definition does is discourage critical investigation along these lines for fear of getting tarred with the anti-semitism brush, and/or attracting the attentions of self-styled custodians of Israel in Labour Party circles. And you know who agrees with this? Chuka Umunna, who this week branded Labour "institutionally racist", Keir Starmer went on Andrew Marr a couple of weeks ago and said the IHRA definition should be adopted in full, and Anna Turley, today amplifying and cheering on Hodge. I pick these three because they sat on the Home Affairs Committee reporting on anti-semitism in the UK. This cross-party group concluded that it "broadly accepts" the IHRA definition but with "additional caveats". What might these be? The report notes it's not anti-semitic, in and of itself, to criticise Israel, to hold it to the same standards expected of liberal democracies, nor to take a particular interest in its activities. As Labour's position is similarly caveated, are our "comrades" saying their report with their name on it is racist and therefore is an example of institutional anti-semitism? As they haven't explained themselves we are forced to conclude it's factional hypocrisy guiding their words instead of principled anti-racism.
Like most of you, I'm sick of this. The party is not without its problems, but I'm sick of the endless stream of dishonesty, of the purposeful besmirching of Labour's name, part and parcel of scorched earth shenanigans as the right are democratically ejected from their positions of influence. This is not about Israel. It's not even really about Jews and anti-semitism. It is about stopping Corbyn, of taking the party back to where it trod water before 2015, of making it once again a timid and loyal opposition to the Tories but one where, at least, they ruled the roost.
Is there a point? Among those for whom Donald Trump is a pretty repulsive figure, then the answer is obvious. Simultaneously for the minority who don't think antagonising Trump, a man with a notoriously fragile ego along with a dainty set of hands, is a good idea then no, there shouldn't be any protesting. If you don't respect the man then at least respect the office, so goes the argument. And then there are the somewheres-in-the-middle who greet his "working" visit to the UK with indifference, or can't see any point in taking to the streets. Well, the protesters are right and the naysayers, whether they instinctively recoil from extra-parliamentary politics or go by the world-weary cynicism of the sofa, are wrong.
Protesting against Donald Trump sends a message. One of the predicted consequences of Trump's presidency is the attempt to normalise the abnormal. All capitalist societies (and all class societies, for that matter) are based on conflict. This means at any one time, tensions are in friction, classes and fractions of classes face off, and pathologies of violence, physical and symbolic, tear at, rip up, rework, and reweave the social fabric. Trump's presidency is an attractor and condenser of backward and declining forces who were/are attracted to him because he offers a simple analysis that makes sense of their own predicament, and whose political obscenities mark him out as someone and something different to what went before. If he refuses to abide by the etiquette of polite liberal society, if that makes him an outcast and a renegade then perhaps he will follow through with all the other outrageous, anti-globalist, anti-immigrant postures he's taken up.
A cynical strategy for Trump and those who hitched a ride on his bandwagon, but the consequences have been appalling. Every single racist arsehole in the US has been empowered by the example set by the bigot-in-chief. Racist attacks are up. Racist police violence continues virtually unchecked, despite the hard, necessary work done by Black Lives Matter. We've had children separated from their parents at the border and thrown into cages. Misogyny festers, making celebrities out of non-entities like Jordan Peterson, and spawning truly pathetic movements of entitled and embittered masculinity, like the incels, and worryingly giving fascism a leg-up. Protesting against Trump in the UK says to those back home that none of this is normal and should not be accepted. It shows people who are really in the thick of it, be it organising against the cops Trump champions, fighting the sexual violence Trump treats as a joke, and working to build unions in the firms Trump and his billionaire cronies own that they're not alone, that along with the comrades they have there that large masses of people overseas agree with them, refuse to accept the normalisation of racism and misogyny, and will take to the streets to make their opposition heard. They don't call them demonstrations for nothing.
Second, marches can be fun, but people as a rule don't go on them because they're a good larf. They attend to demonstrate their strength of feeling about an issue, but they also have an extremely important secondary effect: they help pull a movement together. Thousands of people are due to take to the streets and, in the shadow of the Trump balloon sailing above, make new connections, come into contact with new ideas, deepen their political understanding of the world and forge new friendships, while feeling a sense of solidarity with like-minded others. For not a few who get involved and for whom this is their first demonstration, it can be a life-changing experience. The march may only wind from A to B and hear the same roster of speakers who normally adorn leftwing demos in London (assuming the Met unban the mobile stage), but all this does not do justice to what cannot be seen: the spadework of movement building.
But why protest against Trump when worse people, like Erdogan, sundry Saudi princes, and Xi Jinping tend not to be greeted in the same way? So ask the self-appointed protest police, like Piers Morgan, whenever a leftist demonstration is organised. Let me put the case to them as patronisingly as possible. You see, when you have a movement and a politics that is somewhat marginalised in society in terms of numbers, media coverage, and general awareness of what it stands for, it has to use what meagre resources it has to make as big a splash as possible. That way it can win over new people and push the political envelope more towards the left. Trump, for example, is almost universally known in the UK as the American president. How many people have heard of Erdogan or Xi by way of comparison? Just because all the stops aren't pulled out for them and others does not mean the left are okay with them. Let's just repeat that, it does not mean the left is okay with them. It's only by building movements off the opportunities afforded us can we ensure that people worse than Trump can get a testy reception in the future, hopefully to the point where turnouts are so large they are deterred from visiting again. There endeth the lesson.
Why protest against Donald Trump? There's every bloody point.
I'm glad Ken Livingstone has decided to quit the Labour Party because I agree with his resignation statement. He writes "The ongoing issues around my suspension from the Labour Party have become a distraction from the key political issue of our time – which is to replace a Tory government overseeing falling living standards and spiralling poverty ... However any further disciplinary action against me may drag on for months or even years, distracting attention from Jeremy’s policies." Yes, his repeated remarks were a distraction from what the Labour Party is trying to achieve. And you know who's to blame for that? The former Labour Mayor of London, one Ken Livingstone.
Is Ken anti-semitic? I don't believe he is, but it's easy to see why others might have drawn this conclusion. When you have, on the record, compared Jews to Nazis, made out Hitler was some sort of Zionist "before he went mad", and stubbornly, repeatedly talked up collaboration between the Third Reich and the Zionist movement, and carried on once it became a major political scandal, you do start to wonder. Normal behaviour is to try and get out of the hole you're in, not calling in the earth movers.
The problem with Ken and, unfortunately, many politicians and activists is he thought he was bigger than the party. And in Ken's case, when you've been a prominent figure on the left for almost four decades, and won an election as against the full weight of the New Labour machine at the peak of Blair's imperial majesty, you can understand why. But, unfortunately, there is a culture on the left of a certain radical narcissism. This is characterised chiefly by the adoption of provocative position-taking, behaviour that is shrill, shouty-shouty, self-aggrandising and downright annoying, and a studied refusal to ever put the collective interest of the politics, party or movement one is ostensibly committed to before their ever-so-important selves. Ken fits this like a glove, but there are others. Our "friends" Tony Greenstein and Jackie Walker, for whom bringing Labour into disrepute is a price worth paying as long as they can carry on acting like overgrown children. Gerry Downing of Socialist Fight thought it was fine and dandy to rhetorically support Islamic State, and write about a transnational "Jewish bourgeoisie" exerting a malign influence on world politics, slap bang in the middle of an anti-semitism row. That "Dr ACActivism" fool who dashed onto the stage this year's Eurovision to shout a muffled "For the Nazis of the UK media, we demand freedom" is another example. And there are our old favourites: George Galloway and Tommy Sheridan, though the less said about them the better.
There isn't anything particularly radical about radical narcissism, and it's no different from what we can find on the right. There's nothing necessarily political about it either. In a world in which we are exhorted to be responsible for our actions, to pull up our bootstraps and be masters of our own fates without assistance or support from others, it is we - individuals, ourselves - who are the supreme authority and arbiters of efficacy. Discipline, optics, persuasion, none of these thing matter. The individual is everything. The movement, the politics, nothing.
By removing himself from politics and putting the party first Ken has done the decent thing. Ironically, by resigning his Labour membership he became a better Labour and Jeremy Corbyn supporter and left behind him his hitherto primary loyalty: the Ken Livingstone Party. But now life after politics beckons he should spend his time repairing his reputation, and avoid the temptation of the broadcast studio and the inevitable questions about Hitler and Jews.
NB Image courtesy of Jewdas.
If there's one thing I've learned from writing about politics, it's to avoid commenting on matters I know little or nothing about. If only "professional" pundits were so reticent. Therefore I didn't know if Amber Rudd was going to fall on her sword. After all, the impression - despite Rudd being the fourth minister to resign in six months - is that no one steps down any more if they get found out for incompetence/wrongdoing. Well, thanks to the pressure piled on by Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler and David Lammy, names conveniently written out of the scalping by celebrants of Yvette Cooper, Rudd has gone and, one hopes, the idea ministers resign when they do something wrong has reasserted itself. Boris Johnson, take note.
As news of Rudd's departure filled out social media feeds last night, there were wails of lamentation ... coming from the benches opposite. Lisa Nandy, once the great hope of the soft left argued, with a frankly laughable remark that her resignation should not be celebrated. Others were commiserating the banishment of a "liberal" from the Home Office to the back benches, in the ridiculous hope she would cause some Remain-related trouble. Yawn. Of course, we know a thing or two about liberal perfidy, but ask yourself this: what use is your liberalism when you have loyally toed the fundamentally illiberal line of your party since getting into Parliament, and without complaint implemented your boss's anti-immigrant obsessions? None whatsoever. Why the consternation? Perhaps Rudd is personable in her one-on-one meetings. Instead of getting a lackey to do it maybe she made the tea? There could even have been moments where Rudd and her "Opposition" guests grabbed a bite and nommed their baguettes over the latest LK Bennett lines (their "sun-ready" espadrilles are hotly "on-trend" at the moment, in case you didn't know). In short, the sympathy Rudd has got from Labour benches reminds us (again) that too many of our MPs feel a cosy affinity with the Tories. Luckily, that can be fixed.
Rudd is gone, but the Prime Minister remains. And despite hanging Rudd out to dry, the majority of the public blame Theresa May for the Windrush debacle. Therefore one cannot but detect a frisson of cynicism in her appointment of Sajid Javid. Reeling from accusations of indifference and racism, what better cover than the Tory who proclaimed his own disquiet over the whole affair? As the son of a working class migrant (funnily enough, the establishment media forget his time as merchant banker), May has got to be hoping he'll be better batting away the stinging criticisms. Then again, like Liberal Ambz, his record speaks for itself. He might personally empathise with Windrush cases, and undoubtedly has experienced the racism minority ethnicities in Britain have faced and continue to deal with, and yet none of it will count. The hostile environment continues, the deportations continue.
And here is the rub. The Windrush scandal has bubbled under for four years as an inevitable consequence of the direction May enthusiastically pursued at the Home Office, and chose to carry on once she became PM. Cases have trickled through constituency surgeries and correspondence with May and Rudd entered into as MPs have stuck up for those at the sharp end of these policies. And May did nothing, arrogantly assuming that the hostile atmosphere she'd spent the previous eight years stoking had created a, um, hostile atmosphere where no one gives a toss about the rights of immigrants, even if they had lived and worked here for decades. Wrong.
Nevertheless, as crisis convulses this government of permanent crisis there is an opportunity going begging: and that is to fundamentally challenge the terms of the so-called immigration "debate". For decades, good old British divide-and-rule has differentiated between acceptable and unacceptable minorities. The Gurkhas, the "wrong Jews", young black men, the Poles, each are examples of minority ethnicities and their sub-groups who fall one side or the other of what is and what isn't deemed a good minority, a good immigrant. As appalling as the Windrush scandal is, Tory ministers have worked hard to apologise and prostrate themselves before pubic opinion. They have argued they are "good immigrants" regrettably caught up in a dragnet designed to capture people who are here illegally. The transition from Rudd to Javid won't change this one iota, and nor would it had history turned out differently and the establishment left were still in control of the Labour Party.
Now that public opinion has glimpsed the brutalities and Kafkaesque nightmare of the immigration bureaucracy, it might provide an opening for a generalised offensive on the premises underpinning the government's and, sorry to say, the widespread antipathy toward people who come here. If "good" immigrants can be humanised in defiance of the Tories' efforts, there is the possibility the humanity could catch and the invisible, despised and reviled people hidden and exploited in the underground economy could likewise shed the dehumanising terms in which they are perceived. But only if this moment is used to make the case against immigration as a problem, that there is nothing wrong with wanting to come to Britain to build a new life, that newcomers are not to blame for the housing shortage or strain on public services, and that, in all essentials, their interests are our interests. Not in the liberal, fluffy, hand-holding way, but as our common existence as living labour exploited by the vanishingly small minority for whom the Tories represent and act for.
Len McCluskey has played a blinder. Read his article for yourself. He doesn't give the impression, which he has in the past, that Labour anti-semitism is a put up job. He explicitly addresses it. Rightly, he contextualises it as an excrescence, a minority pursuit to be dug out and thrown out using the enhanced powers the party has adopted. And what he does is to give voice to the frustrations and anger rippling through the party membership about Labour's other big problem, the Parliamentary Labour Party problem.
Despite achieving in two years what it took Kinnock nine years to do (and even then got a much better share of the vote), large numbers of Labour MPs are not reconciled to Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, nor will they ever be. As noted last week, it's not a matter of a few disagreements here and there. When you have a big tent, you don't nod politely and sympathetically as folks take an axe to the supports, snip at the tethers and rip up the pegs. There is a hardcore group for whom their opposition to Corbyn is a cypher for their opposition to what Labour is becoming: a mass, democratic movement informed by and responding to the lived experience of millions of people hitherto excluded from mainstream politics. In our new, redefining, refounding party there is little room for champions of water privatisation, Labour friends of Erdoğan, enthusiasts for hospital car park charges, and self-styled practitioners of the stitch-up. They know it as well, and will do anything, anything to turn the clock back to the time when these people were feted, and their general shittiness wasn't a matter for embarrassment and shame.
This drives their exaggeration of Labour Party anti-semitism. As Len observes, it might be the case some are outraged by the emergence of anti-semitism, but it is also the case it is being talked up and used as a stick to beat the left and the Corbyn project with. They know Labour isn't riddled with anti-semites, they know that as a mass party it's bound to take in the prejudices - to a degree - from the society of which the party is part. But, appropriately in most cases, it's a scab our MPs can keep picking at. That Labour's leadership have looked all at sea at times has merely encouraged them. There are reasons for this, one being Corbyn's well known reluctance to throw long-terms associations under a bus, even if they have dodgy af views on some issues, but it doesn't matter. He could be as contrite as can be, not hang around with the "wrong Jews" any more, and get the Jewish Board of Deputies to oversee Labour's disputes panel, and it still wouldn't be enough. Because it's not about anti-Jewish racism. It's about politics. I know it, you know it, they know it, and the membership knows it.
Going from their behaviour, some have reluctantly accepted they're not going to stand as a Labour candidate ever again and so are bent on the destructive course of doing all they can to wreck the party's chances. They are doing over the party now, but they can be stopped. Their martyrdom fantasies culminate in a departure from Labour at the point maximum mayhem can be inflicted. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the membership can enforce a timetable on them by CLPs ensuring they send delegates to conference who agree with mandatory reselection - such is a suitable finish for people prepared to use anti-semitism for something as inconsequential as their dreary, unremarkable careers.
You don't need me to tell you what a disgrace Theresa May is. She can't be accused of mishandling the Windrush scandal, because the pain and misery caused to surviving family members is by design, not by accident. As Diane Abbott puts it, "Tory MPs and commentators who have always supported the government’s policy of creating a ‘hostile environment’ for migrants express astonishment that there is now a hostile environment." The government can try and plead ignorance, but the Home Office have been aware for years of the issues. Migrants who came here when they were little kids and have spent their entire lives working and raising families have fielded queries about their immigration status when they suddenly found themselves out of work, not eligible for social security, and denied treatment on the NHS. It wasn't picked up as a pressing issue because the Home Office doesn't care, and this indifference is baked into the immigration system by successive editorial-chasing home secretaries.
Immigration is the one topic we're "never allowed" to talk about, but it's the topic the press never shut up about. Since the war, and in some dishonourable cases long before it, the press have vilified successive waves of people coming here - Caribbeans, Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Ugandan Asians, Africans, East Europeans. They are responsible for framing migrants as "a problem", it is they who are responsible for scapegoating them for job losses and housing shortages, it is they who have powered the disfigurement of British politics by far right demagogues and hucksters, and it is they who stand responsible, along with the Prime Minister, for the disgusting abuses that are immigration detention centres and the officially-sanctioned harassment suffered at the hands of the Tory Home Office. They try and wash their hands of the misery they've caused, but it is they more than any other set of institutions who have whipped up anti-immigrant hysteria. They are the tools of divide and rule.
I'm not about to let Theresa May off the hook, though. By all accounts, when it comes to immigration sundry Tories are prepared to play cynical political games. Boris Johnson, for instance, is one of their vacant hypocrites who talks up the contributions waves of immigration have made to national life out of one side of his mouth, but carps on about controlling Britain's borders and nudge-nudge we don't want any more of the beggars here out of the other. But when it comes to the "right kind" of migrant, such as overseas students wishing to study at British universities, he and virtually every other cabinet member agree they should get special treatment and not be counted in the immigration figures. The only one who doesn't, the one who insists they too face the unremittingly hostile Home Office treatment is none other than the Prime Minister herself. For the others, anti-immigration posturing is a matter of opportunism. They're not so vulgar to actually believe it. For May on the other hand ...
No one talks about "Mayism" any more, but for a brief period between her assumption of office and calling the general election (a year ago to the very day, folks), it looked like a new hegemonic project was in the offing. i.e. A resetting of class alliances designed to buttress Conservative political dominance in the medium to long-term along with a new common sense that would be difficult to challenge and, as per Thatcherism's midwifing of New Labour into the world, ensure whatever came next would be committed to politics within the terms May sets out. However, it was a project erected on the most unstable of foundations. Her recommitment to One Nation Toryism sounded better than the dog-eat-dog idiocies of Dave and Osborne, but nevertheless its appeal was limited. Continuity Thatcher in some respects, the cut of May's authoritarian jib was never going to appeal to the newly important topographies of Britain's class landscape. Not that it mattered. After all, socially liberal youngsters never vote, do they?
You don't need to lather yourself with poststructuralist philosophy to know that a useful way of holding together a block of people is by uniting them against some alien "other". May, in her speeches about how wonderful her Britain is bound to be, waxed lyrically about insecurity. She understands, at least rhetorically, that a sense of dislocation and anxiety breeds disengagement and irreverence. To this she opposed a society (yes, there is such a thing as society) where everyone had a place and knew their place - in both senses of the term. And that means creating in-groups and out-groups. In are the fuzzily defined "British people", replete with some lip service to its multicultural and diverse characteristics. But in the outs were people who wanted to come here. May linked stability and senses of place with what we have, and made it contingent on severely limiting the numbers who might otherwise "threaten" it. Vote Leave with its "Take Back Control" slogan, which more than any other positioning won the referendum for Brexit, was seamlessly annexed to her project. Anti-immigrant Brexit voters found a willing ear and a comely xenophobic politics with Theresa May and her "team".
As such, from what May believes (yes, she does really hold a candle for this rebooted, anti-immigrant one nation Toryism) and the pragmatics of holding her declining coalition together, the Windrush families were always going to be double victims of her deliberate hostility to migrant populations. Double because her rules rendered them non-people as far as the state was concerned, and then treated them as such as they tried rectifying their residency status. None of this would have troubled her because she firmly believes you can never lose votes by being beastly to immigrants, and you can never gain them for helping them out, let alone being welcoming. Besides, the core of her coalition aren't going to care.
Not for the first time May has miscalculated. There is a hard core who won't countenance any immigration, but even among conservative layers of the population there is a residual (some might say grudging) affection for Commonwealth migrants, particularly those who arrived from the Caribbean. Unlike EU migrants and more recent arrivals, these are empire people who came to Britain because the mother country put out the call. They are, for millions of May's current supporters, part of the "in" team. To find out that they're not and have been subject to shabby treatment has certainly wounded May in their eyes - hence the apology, going cap in hand to visiting Commonwealth leaders, and trying to push the blame on to Labour in today's PMQs.
Might we be turning corner in wider attitudes to immigration? I doubt it, but there is no doubt this crisis has exposed the venality and heartlessness of May's government to many voters prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt, and that makes her already precarious position even more uncertain.
A statement put out by Red Labour from yesterday, and a model motion for Constituency Labour Parties on the the struggle against anti-semitism and reaffirming support for Jeremy Corbyn.
As Red Labour we are very serious in our commitment to eliminate antisemitism and all forms of racism from our society - highlighted again today by the disgusting "Punish a Muslim Day" being shared on social media.
We are equally serious about our commitment to organising and campaigning for a Labour victory in a forthcoming General Election, so that the lifelong anti-racist Jeremy Corbyn can become our Prime Minister and implement a democratic socialist manifesto that is so desperately needed by so many across our country.
These two commitments are intrinsically interconnected.
The sight of Labour MP's sharing articles from extreme right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes - someone with a track record in propagating racism - combined with an attempt to divide the Jewish community into "good" and "bad" Jews, is deeply offensive, and not a little antisemitic itself, as anyone with an understanding of Jewish history could tell you.
We would love to believe the Labour MP's concerned did so with the aim of combating antisemitism. We would strongly suggest to them that their Twitter posts in the last 24 hours have done that aim great harm, and have done nothing to promote an understanding of a diverse and pluralist Jewish community.
We say to them - accept your mistakes, and your use of the antisemitic trope of "good" and "bad" Jews - remove your tweets, and apologize.
Below is a motion for your CLPs that RL supports:
"This CLP notes the recent media furore surrounding accusations of antisemitism in the Labour Party.
Lies and misinformation are the stuff of life to the Tory party and have to be expected. It is with deep regret that this CLP notes the actions of a small but vocal minority of Labour Party MPs, and their role in feeding this right-wing attack on our leader and Party in the middle of the local election campaign. We call upon them to desist immediately.
This CLP also notes that antisemitism is a real problem in our society, and like all other forms of racism, must be combated unrelentingly – including through a determined programme of widespread political education. One of the unique dangers of modern forms of antisemitism is the way it sometimes masquerades as "progressive" politics, something we recognise.
This CLP affirms its support for Jeremy Corbyn, and welcomes both his and new General Secretary Jennie Formby's statements that the Chakrabarti report into disciplinary processes will be implemented, in full, as a priority – such processes must follow the principles of natural justice and be completed within a timely manner.
This CLP also welcomes the announcement of antisemitism awareness training for Party members, for without the political tools to challenge racism in our communities, the fight is much harder.
This CLP mandates the CLP Secretary to write to the Leader’s office to express our support and solidarity for Jeremy Corbyn, and to pledge ourselves to his side in the fight against intolerance in whatever shape it may take."
Like many people, I'm a member of some Facebook groups. These include the recently famous We Support Jeremy Corbyn, a gathering of some 69,000 users and the subject of a double Sunday Times and BBC News splash. Riddle me this. Because some people have posted on there comments ranging from the unconscious to the overtly anti-semitic, and despite their being challenged for doing so, does that make me an anti-Jewish racist as well? As it happens, I'm also a member of another group going by the name of British Politics. It's something of a cesspit, as well as a magnet for white supremacists, racists and Islamophobes. Does that mean I hate Muslims? And then many years ago, my mates and I used to regularly frequent a pub that was the known haunt of local BNP activists (this was before their suited-not-booted makeover under Nick Griffin). Does that mean I'm fash?
We can all play this stupid, silly guilt-by-association game, and deploying it to attack Jeremy Corbyn is a cloyingly desperate move. If this was such a massive big deal in the public interest, which is what the hacks would claim (among whom is the celebrated "Shippers"), then why have Murdoch's scribbling little helpers sat on it until it could be deployed for maximum effect? You don't need to be the brain of Britain to realise this is a deliberate political ploy designed to talk up Labour's anti-semitism issues and drive the news agenda for at least another day.
Tim Bale in his The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron makes a useful three-fold characterisation of the Tory party. There is the parliamentary party which, unsurprisingly, comprises the party in Parliament. I.e. The MPs (the action and shenanigans here are the main focus of his history). Then we have the party-in-the-country, or the thinning ranks of the voluntary party. Here are the activists, the members, and anyone daft enough to have ever paid a sub to drink in their local Association bar. And then we have his most important innovation: the party-in-the-media. Here, the small ecology of editorial offices and right wing commentators are considered as much a part of the Tory party as the 1922 Committee. Formally separate, certainly, but thanks to the influence it holds over leading party cadres, it is an organic constituent of it. Therefore expecting the right wing press to give Labour a fair hearing over anything is like supposing the Conservative Party proper ceases politicking for its, well, politics. It behoves the left, especially those tipping toward the centre, to come to grips with what the right wing press is. It is not a conspiracy nor a few bad apples, it's a structural relationship that has persisted over a long period of time, and one marked by special access, off the record briefings, and underpinned by private ownership of the press. This demands we have a media strategy to deal with it, and the nous to acknowledge that on no account should the Labour Party ever consider kowtowing to them.
There is something more than party politics going on here as well. Day after day the power of social media grows and the press are locked in long-term decline without the means to arrest, let alone reverse their crumbling influence. Talking up the dark side of social media, particularly the companies who have eaten into the advertising market at their expense add a few more dirges to the cacophonous mood music that it's all sinister and represents a threat - even if it means trashing the once-fine reputation of your paper. For example, from an aggregate of groups weighing in at 400,000 members (minus a few tens of thousands for overlapping subscriptions, etc.), The Times front page could only rustle up three dodgy examples - after a "two month investigation". That said, there are likely to be more. Why? Because anyone can post in a group. Take all the Corbyn-supporting groups that exist out there. How many posts and comments do you suppose that involves per day? We're talking thousands upon thousands. Search hard enough and you might even find a couple who think Dan Hodges is a great writer, for example.
"Dodgy" Facebook groups are a foil to attack Corbyn in defence of their party and class interests, but raising the pitch on social media abuse and goings-ons is designed to cater for their immediate commercial concerns. We all know how much value was wiped from Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica allegations, which suits the press fine. The more toxic Facebook is, the more likely companies will want to shower their advertising spend on them. Though it is ironic how the comments on articles for The Mail and friends are much worse than anything you'd find in a Corbyn supporting group. For example, even The Times's own Facebook page is, as Dan Hancox puts it, "a shitshow of anti-semitism, Holocaust denial and grim whataboutery". Are they going to do anything about it?
None of this is to minimise what we have to do in Labour. Our party does, after all, operate in the sewer of bourgeois politics and can't help but imbibe the effluent of its surroundings from time to time. But the Tory party, whether in its the formal guise of the present government or the network in command of Britain's most influential opinion-forming machines, when they resort to such desperate measures, you know we have them on the run.
We've encountered Matt Bolton's critique, and I use that term advisedly, of Corbynism before. In the market place of ideas his niche is a self-described Marxist take on Corbyn and his works. Funnily enough, this is just the kind of Marxism Matt's mates in Progress find congenial - which should tell you something about the direction of his politics. Anyway, Matt has been at it again in the New Statesman with Frederick Pitts, and so here we go a second time.
After a rough couple of days re: Labour and anti-semitism, the last thing we needed were further examples. But we got them. We saw a round robin open letter organised by a member of the We Support Jeremy Corbyn Facebook group that, groans, argued Corbyn is being targeted by a secretive "special interest group". And then it emerged Christine Shawcroft had opposed the expulsion of Alan Hull, a prospective council candidate who had posted a "Holohoax" article onto Facebook. She claims she was unaware of this, which is fair enough, but to not notice he was getting done for allegations of anti-semitism and not think "hmmm, this warrants a further look" is unconscionable. She was right to resign as the chair of the disputes panel, but she should step down from the NEC altogether.
Here then we have two instances of "left" anti-semitism. One that can be put down to ignorance of anti-semitic tropes, which is symptomatic of the unpolished and unsophisticated politics you'd expect to see when hundreds of thousands of "new people" enter the political process. And the other related to the internal culture not of the Labour Party, but of the groupthink of a section of the anti-war/anti-imperialist far left and hard left. Add to that a perception that Corbyn and his leadership are constantly under siege, which they are, you can understand why (without for a moment excusing it) how in these contexts anti-semitism isn't taken seriously and are dismissed as factional attacks.
In their argument, Matt and Frederick take it a step further. We've noted before the tendency of conspiracy thinking to be a gateway to full blown anti-semitism, yet they argue this conspiratorial politics more or less marks Jeremy Corbyn's outlook. They suggest, without any evidence it has to be said, that Corbyn talks about society being under the hoof of the "1%" who stitch up and rig the game at the expense of the 99%. Their version of Corbyn argues that the removal of these people would allow for socialism to emerge and usher in a world of freedom and plenty. In Corbyn's politics, the job is to find the guilty parties and remove them.
This, of course, is utter rubbish. If this is the calibre of their coming book on Corbynism I'd recommend giving it a miss. Yes, Labour has occasionally indulged populist rhetoric (it even did under The Master from time to time) but his politics are not. Corbyn's politics are fundamentally Bennite and remain within the envelope of Labourism. What does that mean? A number of things: a commitment to a "mixed economy" (i.e. an expanded state sector side by side with a market economy dominated by private enterprise), a Keynesian approach to investment in industry by the state, and an enhanced role for trade unions. Like Benn before him, Corbyn believes there is a role for limited economic democracy via cooperatives, employee stakes in firms, and alternative forms of ownership, as well as more democracy and accountability within the public sector. You can find all this in Labour's 2017 manifesto and the debates around it since. Also like Benn before him, Corbyn believes these reforms can be achieved by securing a Labour majority in Parliament via a general election, but must be augmented by the party becoming a massive movement of millions. This is to keep the Labour government honest and offer an extra-parliamentary lever against the opposition such an administration would face from bosses and other civil society actors. In practice it means a kinder, gentler capitalism, and would open up opportunities for a politics aiming to go beyond capitalism itself. And whether you agree with this or not, it is much more complicated than the goodies vs baddies caricature offered by Matt and Frederick.
Are our comrades arguing in good faith, then? I do wonder. For instance:
The inordinate focus on the crimes of Israel within the British left – far outweighing the attention given to the chemical slaughter currently inflicted by Bashar al-Assad for example – results from the portrayal of Israel as the evil “1 per cent” of the global community, a state whose very existence is the source of all suffering in the Middle East, if not the world.
What drivel. There are plenty of criticisms of Israel on the British left, ranging from the centre left who focus their critique on the right of Israeli politics and selected human rights abuses, to a more fundamental critique of Israel as a colonial project and, therefore, an institutionally racist one. Even here you find divisions over whether the Israeli state has a right to exist or not. And then there are other layers of analysis positioning Israel in the global system of power politics, and its role as a client of the West generally and America in particular. You pays your money and you makes your choice. Nowhere, however, do we come across any analysis claiming Israel is part of the "evil 1 per cent". In fact no one on the left continuum ranging from Progress to the SWP, from Labour First to the most degenerate Stalinoids operates with an analysis this superficial. All are rooted in an analysis of Israeli politics, and as we move out from the mainstream to radical arguments, an embedding in a critique of political economy and the international system. Sometimes this can manifest itself in crude anti-imperialism and an overstatement of Israel's power, but it's not conspiracy theorising.
Matt and Frederick have to set up these straw men for the grand reveal: that a conspiratorial approach has nothing in common with a Marxist analysis. Consider me thunderstruck. They turn to the work of Moishe Postone, who died in February, to argue that the object of the critique of capitalism should be capitalist social relations themselves. Postone has his virtues, but you can only suppose this is an original argument if you know no Marx at all. What is the body of work Marx left behind if not an unravelling of the impersonal dynamics of capitalism, a modelling and critique of its fundamental dynamics, and an appreciation of how the commodity form conditions, well, everything? Marx was also very clear that persons and personifications in his work condensed the social relations they typified and, in his writings on politics, represented - though with varying analytical power.
Where Matt and Frederick are right is rooting conspiracy theorising in fetishistic thinking. The commodity circuit, the operation of capitalism as an impersonal, amoral, unconscious and directionless beast presents the world to us, its inhabitants, as personifications. It can appear as if the system is rigged by a shadowy cabal, and the complex shifting (and shafting) attending capitalism is their doings, but it isn't. What hampers our comrades' theoretical position, quite apart from a tenuous relationship with the facts, is a refusal to properly situate their argument. There's their wafer thin case for classifying Corbynism as a type of conspiracy thinking and therefore a species of reification, which implicitly means it's illegitimate, but they fail to note the conspiratorial themes they ascribe to Jeremy Corbyn (remember, they're critiquing his thought, not his support) are common place, if not banal features of bourgeois politics. Consider the Labour right and its refusal to explain Corbynism beyond the machinations of sundry Trots and troublemakers - no evidence of an appreciation of the social relations at work there. And the Tories - bad GDP figures are about liberal chunterers talking the economy down, industrial unrest the result of unspecified militant troublemakers, the relative decline of Britain the fault of Brussels' bureaucrats. On and on it goes. With their greater reach, influence, and embeddedness in the institutions of government and media, why do they see it fit to ignore the mainstream if conspiracy thinking is so powerful and terrifying? I digress. By forgetting to situate their analysis in the context of wider bourgeois politics Matt and Frederick egregiously abuse the thrust and spirit of Marx and Postone. Their empty critique of Corbyn's positions allows them to construct not just a distorted view of his politics, but a false one. In other words, they have either maliciously, or as a result of their unthinking ignorance of their subject matter, created another phantom, another personification whose appearance obscures its essence. Call it what you like - a hatchet job, a cynical hit, whatever you do it's a rum business when self-described Marxists use Marxist categories to mystify the social world instead of rendering it intelligible and knowable.
Matt has form for this. His original piece, 'The Terrifying Hubris of Corbynism' (now mysteriously disappeared from the internets by Matt himself) was of similar character. In an analysis peppered with unused, decorative Marxist categories, he argued Corbynism wasn't an authentic left movement because it lacked x, y, z characteristics. It wasn't as ideologically coherent as the Militant Tendency, for example. This approach, needless to say, ain't a Marxist approach. Instead of taking social relations, the movement of hundreds of thousands of people into the Labour Party, their trajectory, and their common characteristics as a means of explaining Corbynism, Matt imposes his characterisation and, yup, distorts it. Good for getting noticed, not so good if you want to know the social world for the express purpose of changing it.
Yes, Corbynism does have its problems. As a movement it is uneven and parts of it are prone to conspiracy thinking and, therefore, anti-semitism - almost as if the two are an outer shell of an immature radicalism. But the way these problems can be dealt with is not just through a programme of education, as helpful as that would be, but by understanding our movement ourselves. In this endeavour Matt and Frederick's intervention is singularly useless. A nice fairy tale to help their establishment promoters and friends sleep at night, but nothing else.
A picture says a thousand words, so take a look at this one and tell me what you see. Did you espy the anti-semitic themes? And how did you arrive at this conclusion - did the caricaturing give the game away? And how long did you take - a fraction of a second? Or are you like leading Stop the War activist Yvonne Ridley who, in the Facebook thread below the now infamous image, couldn't see anything wrong with it?
Unfortunately anti-semitism has yet again resurfaced and as everyone reading this knows, this time it's Jeremy Corbyn who's in the firing line for failing to notice the image above, which he commented on, was racist. In the world of social media there is a tendency to shoot from the hip without looking properly at what or who you're commenting on/sharing. It's happened to me enough times when posts shared on Facebook have been construed as supporting the Tories because of the titles (as such I was expecting some earache for Friday's effort). And I'm happy to accept that Jeremy's explanation that he wasn't paying attention. After all, over the course of his career he has put his name to eight Early Day Motions attacking anti-semitism, and under his leadership Labour has adopted a line far harsher on anti-semitism than any of his predecessors. And still, this happened.
While the Labour Party does not have an anti-semitism problem distinct from the anti-semitism problem of society as a whole, unfortunately a section of the left does, particularly those that have historically prioritised anti-war and Palestine solidarity activity. We're not talking conscious Jew hate a la neo-Nazis and assorted fash riff-raff, though some on the fringes of anti-war work order their conspiracy theorising with a side of anti-semitism, but rather a certain carelessness which, persistent and unchecked, amounts to anti-semitic behaviour. Cast your eyes over the Socialist Workers Party, for example. Previously the key organising force of Stop the War, Respect, and 'official' anti-fascism as per Unite Against Fascism, when it came to matters anti-war they tended to put a plus wherever the British establishment put a minus. They weren't hard "defencists" (i.e. calling for the defeat of one's own military and victory to whoever they are fighting), but in practice this meant tolerating far right Serbs on the small marches against the war in Kosovo, ditto with Islamic fundamentalists in the anti-war movement and, in the case of notorious anti-semite Gilad Atzmon, not just rubbing shoulders with but actively sponsoring his events. The SWP has a history of turning a blind eye to such characters. Sometimes this was for expediency's sake, such as not wanting to threaten the "united front" of whatever bandwagon they're riding at that moment. For others it's because they are of some use. Atzmon was so promoted because a now disgraced former leading member was really into jazz.
The SWP have diminished influence these days, but their attitude to problem people is typical. For them, overlooking the foibles of allies could be justified in terms of their lust for the big time, which was always one more demo, strike, and paper sale away. For others not so invested in sect building, making episodic common cause with people who shouldn't be touched with a barge pole was simply a fact of life of doing left-wing politics: you work with what you've got. Up until the sudden change of fortunes occasioned by the 2015 Labour leadership contest, self-described leftists were a small and dwindling bunch. The likes of Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein, both of whom are prophylactics for socialist politics, were tolerated because there wasn't exactly a massive pool of activists to draw upon. And it had been this way for a long time, so turning a blind eye was in many cases a condition of getting things done. Which also meant "left" anti-semitism wasn't taken seriously - a culture of sensitivity was absent.
Nevertheless there were some on the left who refused to go along with this. Among the remnants of self-described Leninism, the Socialist Party tended to prefer focusing on bread and butter issues and promoting its still born initiatives that were always a step toward a new workers' party. It worked with others when occasion demanded, but never fell into the crude 'my enemy's enemy' anti-imperialism of the SWP and friends. The Alliance for Workers' Liberty, in a number of ways the SWP's mirror image, regularly polemicised against the rest of the far left for not taking anti-semitism seriously, and often accused them of an at times unconscious, at times semi-deliberate anti-semitism for focusing so much on Israel and refusing to recognise the national rights of the Jewish people who live there. And Andy Newman via the legendary Socialist Unity blog regularly battled against anti-semitism in the anti-war/anti-imperialism movement, arguing that not only is it appalling in and of itself, it hands ammunition to Israel's supporters. How easy it is to dismiss criticism of Netanyahu et al's latest crimes if those same opponents can be associated with anti-semitic positions and propaganda. That and the small matter of it inevitably biting the left in the behind in due course. Like now.
In context, Jeremy's remarks could be read as symptomatic of this culture of carelessness. But let's not beat the left up too much. Simultaneously the groups and activists above, including the SWP, have a better record than virtually anyone else in the labour movement of taking on outright peddlers of Jew hatred. As Michael Segalov reminds us, writing in September 2016 during another anti-semitism controversy, it was the far left and a few hardy souls from the mainstream of the labour movement who were confronting neo-Nazis on our streets. As he rightly notes, those who take anti-semitism not as a problem to be addressed but as a stick to beat Corbyn and Corbynism with were never to be seen, and barely concern themselves with the threats the far right pose Jewish communities. It's almost as if they're acting entirely in bad faith.
What should be done then? The party is now institutionally anti-anti-semitic, but there remains a persistent and stubborn layer of members who either believe there is no issue, don't think it's worth talking about, or is entirely a weapon used against the leadership by the usual suspects. Clearly, there is much political education to be done. I don't mean every branch and CLP hosting its own diversity training or whatever, but rather a left declaration of war against anti-semitism specifically and the kind of thinking - conspiracy thinking - that incubates it and, in turn, finds a ready audience among large sections of Corbyn's online support. As a rule, the so-called alt-left media sites are dismal failures in this regard and, indeed, stoke the fires of click bait conspiranoia. This has to be opposed by materialist analysis, of understanding the world as it is so we can make the world what we want it to be. This takes a concerted effort at building an intellectual culture that encourages comrades to think critically for themselves, and treat with extreme prejudice any and all explanations that place social ills, however they're defined, at the feet of secret cabals working away in the shadows. Then, perhaps, the culture of carelessness can be overcome and "left" anti-semitism goes back to being what it should be: an oxymoron.
Spare me the faux outrage from the Tories over Jared O'Mara and his recently unearthed comments. Minus a positive programme and staring the uneasy prospect of a long decline in the face, seizing on every bigoted comment and every stupid indiscretion uttered by Labour's new generation of MPs long ago is all they have. This is the divide and rule they're used to. In the past, sexism, racism and homophobia did the job, but after Dave's superficial liberal make over they're quite happy to use the legacy of the left - anti-sexism, anti-racism, anti-homophobia - to achieve the same effect. Even if it means ignoring the egregious bigots on their own benches, and the apologists for state terror who support them to achieve their aims.
That O'Mara has been suspended by Labour is the right thing because of alleged comments made prior to his selection earlier this year. However, when do past utterances cease being relevant? Obviously, for anyone whose politics extend beyond point scoring, present records tend to trump what is long passed, no matter how colourful, foolish, or downright backward it might have been. Who but the most odious oaf, for example, would continue holding the young Ricky Tomlinson's membership of the National Front against him after a life time of union militancy, victimisation, and supporting socialist causes? To consider the point from an opposite view, Tory MPs, those leading the charge against O'Mara's sexist idiocy, are ever so squeaky clean in their interpersonal relationships. Some of them might even avoid harassing junior Commons staff as far as I know. And yet their antennae is blunt to the sexist and racist consequences of their policies. Who do they think suffer disproportionately from their Parliamentary votes to cut to social security, their cuts to the NHS, their real terms cuts to public sector wages? Oh yes, the very same people they profess to give a shit about when an idiot gives them a high horse to trot about on (though it is interesting to note no such Tory fuss was forthcoming when the unlamented Simon Danczuk was exposed for harassing a 17-year-old).
We can talk about hypocrisy, we can attack it, but truth be told it's a structural feature of mainstream politics everywhere, especially in the zero-sum game of Westminster and first-past-the-post. Whoever secures an absolute majority of seats can, provided winning is by a healthy margin, more or less do as they please. As Ed Miliband once put it, opposition is crap because there's not a great deal you can do. It is therefore an inherently adversarial system, even when the two main parties are closer in outlook than they are presently. All means are open to undermine the party opposite to sap their morale and cause them disciplinary difficulties. Whatever comes along is more or less useful fodder in the ceaseless struggle, regardless of how petty it might be or whether it makes one look like a ridiculous hypocrite. What matters is the splash made and how that contributes to the narrative you're pushing against the enemy.
Socialists should have a different approach. Attacking sexism, racism and homophobia isn't, or shouldn't be about shaming individuals in the first instance. Doing so accomplishes nothing. We work to defeat these forms of inequality not just because they're morally abhorrent and makes people's lives shit, but because they also imperil our ability to organise, to build the kinds of solidarities capable of challenging the present state of affairs, and of dismantling class and capital and constructing a new society on the foundations of the old. That's the key difference between us and those for whom a sexism/racism revelation is an occasion to burnish one's creds and very little else.
I hate having to write about Anti-semitism and the Labour Party. Because, first of all, it shouldn't be an issue, but it is. And second, the responses encountered online to my last piece on this was nothing less than astonishing. Being told there was no anti-semitism problem in the party because incidences are no greater than found in the rest of society(!) was one response. Being told there was definitely no issue by another with a history of forwarding far right material also served as a sobering experience.
I therefore fundamentally agree with Coatesy about political confusionism and idiot anti-imperialism. There are people who are rightly opposed to Israel's colonialist project in the West Bank, the criminal terror rained down on the Gaza Strip and the shitty discrimination suffered by Palestinians, whether they are Israeli citizens or not. I can understand why some might conclude Israel should be opposed and replaced by a secular, multi-national state. Not because "it's the Jews", but because of its character as a warmongering and institutionally racist state resting on stolen land. The problem arises when opposition to all this bleeds over into the tropes beloved of anti-semites and conspiracy theorising.
As noted previously, there are three varieties of "left" anti-semitism. There is the naive kind, where the line between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism is blurred, and where inappropriate and offensive remarks about Nazis and the Holocaust are made. Yet there is a point at which this ceases as an explanation and becomes an excuse and a cop out, and that is when it carries on despite ample discussion and critique. This is of the hardened kind and entails a doubling down on what is objectionable. Here you see common or garden leftism mixed up with obsessions with "Zionism", of conspiracy theory, Rothschild and Goldman Sachs, of Mossad being behind every Islamist terrorist outrage, and the usage of what would have been anti-semitic imagery and tropes were one to substitute 'Zionist' with 'Jew'. This is beyond carelessness and accident: it is outright anti-semitism. And lastly, we have the cynical variety. These are your social media sock puppets that troll with conspiracy theories and use the language of anti-semitism while posing as Jeremy Corbyn supporters with the express purpose of smearing and discrediting Corbynism, or using it to find a wider audience for their anti-Jewish bilge.
For my liking, too much of the left and the self-styled anti-imperialist movement are located on a spectrum between the first and the second kinds. Because the supporters of Israel a-okay with its crimes frequently and repeatedly turn to accusations of anti-semitism as a means of attacking their opponents, surely that would mean Israel's critics are scrupulously anti-anti-semitic. And yet, time after time, we find ourselves having to go back to this issue - the case of Miko Peled arguing for free speech for Holocaust denialists at a Labour fringe event is demonstrative of the problem.
If "comrades" from this section of the party (and we are talking a small subset of activists happy to carry on regardless of the damage done to the wider movement) aren't going to sort themselves out then the rules voted through by conference to sort out anti-semitism are, regrettably, entirely necessary.
Almost seems I write more about Tony Blair than any other public figure these days. If only he'd make like a whack-a-mole and stay down after each polemical hammering. Anyway, his Blairness was all over the news today and found himself sharing time on Andrew Marr because he has Opinions, this time about immigration.
According to Blair, there is no need for Britain to leave the European Union. If we can come to an arrangement with the EU27 about the introduction of limits on movement across borders then the conversation about Brexit would change. Folks who voted to leave because they wanted more control on immigration, and there were a lot of them, might think again if such a deal could be hammered out. Britain would stay in the EU, the economy won't fall off a cliff and all those businesses who invest here can still look forward to unfettered access to the single market.
You can see why, for some, Tony Blair is a political genius. If only someone else had hatched such a scheme? Well, they did. Hard to believe, but it was only just over 18 months ago that Dave returned from Brussels having set out to "renegotiate" Britain's EU membership. What he came back with was the thinnest gruel. He knew getting exemptions from EU migration was never on the cards and, crucially, so did the voters who care about such things. Hence why Dave's stunt was a waste of time. It could never placate the xenophobic beast he and his mates had prodded time after time since taking over the Tory helm.
Back to the present, in a report published by the modestly-titled Tony Blair Institute, they argue for the introduction of higher tuition fees for EU migrants as well as proof new arrivals have a job waiting for them. There would also be conditions attached to social security claims. In short, the usual nonsense intent on stirring up antipathy against people from overseas who choose to work and live here. And again, entirely wishful thinking. Time after time Angela Merkel has reconfirmed the EU's commitment to its four freedoms, and that of movement is one of them. Blair might try the lawyer's trick of shilly-shallying - he claims these restrictions preserve free movement(!) - but it cannot fly as doing so imperils the EU's continued existence. If Britain got an immigration opt out, who next? The pantomime Voltaire resident in the Élysée Palace? The Belgians? The Dutch? The Danes?
Blair may be blinkered and out of sorts with the age we're living through, but he is not a stupid man. He does possess enough wit that surely this question occurred when he touched base with his Institute satraps to produce his immigration report. Yet he doesn't address it. Not in the coverage, not in his interview with Marr. It's as if the media are supposed to tiptoe around the gaping void in his argument in order to indulge him. And they do.
Still, even I find it difficult to disagree with his view that "Brexit is a distraction, not a solution, to the problems this country faces." Blair's intervention doesn't help, however. Nor does it assist Labour in trying to salvage something from the mess. Alas, in the same interview he declared a "renewed sense of mission", so this morning won't be the last time our Tony posts us a card from cloud cuckoo land. I regret to inform you there are more to come.
In the hot house factionalism of the Labour Party, every shift in policy, every utterance and intervention becomes a stake in the struggle to consolidate or remove Corbynism. As such, and because the Labour Party reflects the society that incubates it, ideas and prejudices that are alive and well in wider society are reflected in the party in all kinds of ways. Anti-semitism and sexism, to give two examples, have a life outside of Labour and therefore have a life inside Labour. In the context of a fraught and febrile political situation, they will be interpreted and used in the discharge of factional manoeuvring. Any old weapon, after all. But they wouldn't have potency if there weren't problems in the first place. To put it another way, if you think charges of anti-semitism are entirely made up by supporters of Israel, then they would have no traction. This, unfortunately, is nonsense. Anti-semitic incidents wouldn't be at their highest recorded level if these claims were a mere ploy.
Enough is enough. The party isn't institutionally anti-semitic - quite the opposite considering you can get slung out for it, and rightly so. But there are plenty of members who are indifferent to who they give credence to on social media, and often push stuff on Israel, its lobbies, and banking (particularly regarding the Rothschilds and Goldman Sachs) that accidentally-on-purpose play close to the line of anti-semitic conspiracy mongering. We would not, or at least I'd like to think we wouldn't adopt such a lackadaisical toward racism aimed at black or asian people, so it's time the left sharpened its anti-semitism antennae.
There is some help at hand. Anti-Nazis United (Twitter) is a blog dedicated to exposing and attacking racism, and anti-semitism in particular, wherever it rears its head in our movement. It's sad that we need an active anti-semite watch like this, but it's a necessity. Having recently been forced to shift from Medium to Blogger, the site regularly picks looks at ostensible Labour supporters on social media and provides evidence of their anti-Jewish racism. That said I don't always agree with some of the arguments made, but nevertheless it's a valuable and useful project - particularly for those new to the left on social media. And for established users too. There's been more than one occasion when I've punted something from a Corbyn supporting account only to have found a reservoir of anti-semitic bile hiding beneath the surface of run-of-the-mill leftism.
If there's going to be some weaponising going on, I'd like to see socialists weaponise against anti-semitism. It has no place in mainstream politics, let alone the movement dedicated to solidarity and anti-racism. And it's down to us to confront it and drive it out.
What's the liberal hot take on last weekend's white supremacist march in Charlottesville, North Virginia? According to Twitter, and never missing an opportunity to be smug, it definitely, definitely was not about "economic anxiety". Here are some typical examples. They think they're being clever funny ironic, of burnishing woke creds while caricaturing and mocking those annoying people who insist there is a relationship between what goes on in someone's life and their outlook on the world. This liberal heroism merely advertises their inability to think, and broadcasts their unwillingness to do so.
And what is more, they are entirely wrong. They are even wrong on their assumptions about what economic anxiety is. Here I want to look at economic anxiety in a narrow and an expanded sense, that is how economics 'stands alone' (which as a proposition is only possible in an analytical exercise like this, in the real world it cannot be separated from wider social processes and inequalities) and how it combines, in this case, with race/ethnicity and, crucially, gender as a way into explaining how white supremacists become the hate mongering shits they are.
What is less than useless is the position of liberal heroism. Here racists are racist because they're racist. People voted for Donald Trump because they're racist. Studies prove it. Racists marched in Charlottesville because they're racists. Racists hate on blacks and Jews because they're racist, and so on. There is no attempt at a social explanation here, rather they're reducing racism to a matter of choice, to personal morality. In so doing they manage to avoid facing up to the sorts of social conditions that manufacture fascists. Or to put it another way, while all fascists are awful human beings, they are congenitally uninterested in why not every awful human being is a fascist.
Let's begin with economic anxiety, narrowly conceived. Traditionally fascism has been regarded as a movement powered primarily by petit bourgeois and declassed elements (the unemployed, precariously employed, etc.). That isn't to say working class people never get involved, but in the "classical" cases as per Germany and Italy the other classes and class fragments were present in disproportionate numbers. It all makes a certain sense when you look at these as positions and relationships: these are de facto unstable and precarious. Effectively, they are individuals versus the weight of the economic world. If you are a business person, even a successful (small/medium) business person, your position is caught in a vice. The employee class, the proletarians, are the pains you can't do without and they so pester you with unreasonable demands like health and safety at work, time off and decent wages. And at any time big business threatens to squash you with the competitive advantages they can bring to bear. If you are not a business owner and are declassed thanks to unemployment or sporadic work, you are still thrown onto your own devices. Unemployment and precarious employment are social failings, but experiencing it and the social security institutions policing it put your situation on you. Some thrive on this, but others are filled with existential dread. Among this layer then, we tend to find a concern for order, a tendency toward nostalgia, a hankering for authoritarianism and hostility toward scapegoats deemed to threaten and/or undermine their received position and perceived privileges.
As we have seen before, there is an assumption that economic anxiety just equals working class people, which is demonstrably false. While plenty of (white) working class people voted for Trump, it was the wealthier layers who turned out in disproportionate numbers to back him. The persistence of this understanding, or rather misunderstanding of economic anxiety starts looking deliberate the more it is repeated. It's almost as if layers of official opinion formation cannot cope with the idea of fascists as their local plumber, hot dog man, or restaurant manager. It's easier to dehumanise fascists if you conceive them as poor and working class. The more social distance you can put between them and you, the better.
So much for the narrow economics, what about a more expansive approach to anxiety? As per recent arguments, we live in a society which has been totally subsumed by capital. Market relationships and market logics have penetrated all aspects of social life, and increasingly the business of capitalism is about taking from the common store of social knowledge (or 'the common'), repackaging it and selling it back to us. Here, labour in advanced capitalist societies is increasingly immaterial. At the behest of our employers, we are much more likely to produce knowledge, information, services, relationships and types of people (subjectivities). We also tend to do this in our own time as well. This blog post as an example of knowledge/information-sharing and (hopefully!) subjectivity formation, for instance. Capitalism is now in the business of producing people, which means the contradictions and conflicts between capital and labour have rippled beyond the workplace and fused with the politics of identity formation. Class and gender and race and other locations of so-called identity politics can only ever be separated analytically: in real life they combine and condition each.
What has this got to do with our Charlottesville sad sacks? Quite a bit. One thing that strikes about last weekend, far right mobilisations and fascism generally is, well, where are the women? The alt-right and white nationalism are manly affairs. Very manly affairs. It glorifies fighting, militarism, weaponry, misogyny and the rest. It rails against anything that presents a danger to a mythologised, idealised and brittle hyper-masculinity, and here it conjoins with the racialism. The "threats" arrayed against whiteness can only be seen off by militant manliness, of white men protecting theirs and their bloodlines by having lots of children and aggressively seeing off competitors and deviants. Hence its fragility vis a vis male homosexuality (in particular). Its promise is a society in which everyone knows their place. All men are (white) men for whom there are enough jobs and enough women. It is an order that institutionalises white power and male privilege under some benevolent fascist administration that represses the deviants. It's a heaven for a few built on the hell of the many, of women, of "undesirable" races and ethnicities to be enslaved and wiped out, of sexual difference kept in the closet under pain of lethal force.
What kind of person is going to find views of this kind attractive? Presumably white men would in disproportionate numbers. And why might some of them (after all, not all white men ...)? Because of the lot young white men are facing, of a progressive dissolution of a privileged gender and racial locations. Let's bring it narrowly back to economics for a moment. Many scholars have written about the feminisation of labour markets. This doesn't just mean the progressive integration of more women into work, but also the spread of conditions one would previously associate with "traditional" women's employment (part time, low pay, short term) as well as the content of work. The immaterial labour that has always coexisted alongside the development of capitalism in the home, the affective caring work overwhelmingly undertaken by wives and mothers helped produce human beings with certain sets of capacities that left their children work ready, to a degree. Immaterial labour as an increasingly dominant arena of capital accumulation sees larger numbers of men drawn into affective, service-oriented cognitive labour, the sorts of labour that also produces social relations, networks, and human beings of certain types. Therefore, not only are younger men having to compete with women for jobs more regularly than their dads and grandads did, but they do so for jobs that fall short of the traditionally masculine manly man. There is a mismatch between this received masculinity, which finds itself expressed in whole and in part through a bewildering array of cultural artefacts, and the reality. Matthew Heimbach, the well known white supremacist interviewed in Vice's acclaimed Charlottesville documentary is a testament to this. Prior to his politics getting him the sack, he worked in child protection.
If that wasn't bad enough, women have expectations of being treated like human beings. The feminist movement has asserted women's autonomy. Millions no longer want to be the arm candy or the mothers gender ideology throws at women and men, and millions refuse the gender apartheid that underpins traditional male privilege and power. With greater freedoms, they might not only out-compete men at work but may also choose to be intimate with men who are not white. Therefore in the white patriarchal imaginary the liberated woman is a double threat - a threat to their economic well being and masculinist conceptions of work, and a sexual threat in her potential exodus from and abandonment of white men who feel entitled to her body. Hence, particularly in America, how the racist anxieties towards black men is bound up with a sexual anxiety, of their being hypersexual, better endowed, more manly than white men. A triptych of of gender, sexuality, and race on which the anxieties of alt-right, fascist America are represented.
Fascism is a promise to do away with these tensions. Instead of leaving white male privilege in contention, it reinforces it. Turning the clock back, rewinding the film, of repeating history is about stamping on uncertainty and, yes, anxiety (be it economic or otherwise). Women and minority ethnicities are to be put back in the box, the complex processes of struggle underpinning the feminisation of work substituted for conspiracy fairy tales of Jewish/communist/Jewish and communist manipulations, the fevered reification of masculinity with its celebration of militarism and war, and society locked into a rigid patterning of authority (overseen by a dictatorial patriarch) not only is a simple vision, but one that can only be achieved through the blood and fire of redemptive violence. Fascism is more than a dystopia attractive to a would-be elite, it's a weak apologia for criminality and wanton murder, of promising empowerment via the infliction of pain and suffering on one's enemies.
All this ineluctably leads to the conclusion that fascism has a great deal to do with economic anxiety refracted through class, gender, race and ethnicity. Understanding what fascism is, where it comes from, what it appeals to and crucially, who the fascists are and how they are made is not an idle exercise. It's the very basics of militant anti-fascism. Knowing what generates fascism allows for it to be pulled up by its roots, and that is inseparable from a wider programme of political change - a programme that addresses the antagonisms and conflicts pregnant with fascist possibilities by abolishing them altogether, and that brings us back to capital and its apparatus of command. Liberals fly from even trying to understand how their system works, and that might have something to do with why their anti-fascism considers racism and white supremacy matters of individual moral failure.
